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Comment by ericbarrett | Hacker News Reader

Is there any conclusion to reach here (assuming this report is correct) besides a hostile entity scouting U.S. infrastructure?

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Could be any number of defense contractors, military, or LEO recklessly testing out a high end drone, then breaking the rules to avoid consequences.

Is there any intelligence that a drone that size could provide that you couldn't get from a combination of satellites and just driving around a decent camera? It seems really risky for a foreign adversary for limited gain.

Right, this is why I'm confused. There's no play by any sufficiently advanced adversary that makes sense. Except domestic terrorism. A fairly rich / savvy domestic actor with bad intent might be interested in seeing if they can fly about with a fast / large drone. Prior to, you know, equipping that drone with something bad.

Why domestic? The US isn't lacking in international adversaries that would be interested in the ability to execute low cost attacks against critical infrastructure.

If it was domestic terrorists it seems likely they would have seized the opportunity to do damage immediately instead of showing their hand like this. An "advanced persistent threat" (such as a foreign country) to borrow from the computer security world seems more likely to take this sort of "test but don't actually damage anything" approach.

Foreign states have the resources to build their own field tests.

But time will tell. In fact it already has. We just need to wait for the investigation to complete.

My own money would be on a terrorist organization. A bit less certain that it would be domestic, but domestic is still more probable than foreign in my mind. The past few years, and the past year in particular, has shown me that our domestic terrorists on the left and the right are bat$#!t crazy.

But as I said, we'll see.

I suppose I mis-spoke. Could easily be a domestic ally of a foreign adversary.

I can't imagine a defense contractor imperiling their flow of money when they could certainly arrange to test at White Sands or some such. This kind of thing is straight to jail, do pass Go, do not collect $2 billion.

LEO, same; perhaps they might play loose with the law, but around refueling infrastructure and airports? That brings the Feds in 100%. Again, straight to jail. What is the risk/reward here?

A three-letter agency doing a "red team" penetration test, perhaps. But why do it with a secret modified drone? And buzzing a CBP helicopter?

So the argument is "no one commits crimes except for terrorists"? I'm afraid I'm not convinced.

I may be mistaken, but I think the argument being made is more like, "no one commits crimes, or any acts really, without a motive." These people, at least their leadership, have significant motive to not commit an act like this.

My money would be on terrorists as well, but that's why we have investigations. Let's see where the satellite photos take us.

But that's the same argument, right? The "motive not to commit an act like this" which the article provides is fear of prosecution; so if this argument went through it would just as well be an argument against any crime ever occurring.

Why would anyone ever rob a bank when you can earn money legally?

Also everyone is rational--but isn't it a happy surprise "nation-states" didn't come up again?

No, the argument is that the incentives aren't really there for other possible groups to commit this crime since they have legal alternatives to what was done. Doesn't make it impossible, just less likely.

Someone in the article comments pointed out that everything described could be accomplished by a $25,000 off the shelf drone from lockheed [1].

Now that's not something you find on every street corner, but well within the range of 'training some bored enlisted guys' or 'contractors on an evening test mission'. I'm not sure if they sell those to energy companies, but if so that fits as well.

I've heard many stories of crazier shenanigans from those types than "we were fooling around with the drone off flight-plan then got too close to the airport, and they called a freaking police helicopter so we took off lol."

I'll admit that it's a low risk-reward scenario, but especially given all the test infrastructure in the desert out there, it seems more Hanlon's razor appropriate to me than a foreign adversary testing high-end surveillance technology deep in enemy territory completely obliviously. They even left a running-light on!

[1] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/r...

That drone is battery powered and has a ceiling of hundreds of feet. So no. You would also be able to see it with night vision. They reported that they weren’t able to see it with night vision which seems impossible at first. But they probably were able to do that by painting it with something like vanta-black.

Nobody is building something like that with 25k. Sure you could build it, but it wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t be anywhere close to reliable enough for a mission as crazy as entering into restricted military airspace. It would take lots of testing and iteration for someone to produce something that worked reliably and has been shown to be able to do things like evade night vision detection. It’s a specialized price of hardware developed specifically for this kind of task. Nobody is their right mind would do anything like this unless they already had access to the hardware and flippantly decided to take it for a cruise over and air force base (idiot employee at government contractor) or if they had an interest in doing this (China/Russia).

Fair enough on the flight ceiling, I misread that, so it's a substantially higher spec drone.

> idiot employee at government contractor) or if they had an interest in doing this

I guess that's where my Hanlon's razor comes in. Idiot employee(s) just seems so much more reasonable to me.

China is testing a hardcore stealth drone over a military base, but chooses one in CONUS in a highly civilian accessible major metro area, and then leaves the running lights on? It strikes me as far less likely than domestic alternatives.

Holy shit it was China after all. They linked to this in the article.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36085/troubling-drone-...

That is terrifying.

They commit brazen acts of cyber espionage targeting our infrastructure all the time so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for them to do something like this.

>flew out of the TUS area about 50 miles to the northwest of town into the middle of nowhere desert

Tucson sits in a plain surrounded by tall mountains. Whoever was controlling the drone must've had a much stronger radio than the one with the Lockheed 10km line of sight limit.

It could be probing the response to a drone intrusion for the purpose of using drones as weapons in the future.

> Is there any intelligence that a drone that size could provide that you couldn't get from a combination of satellites and just driving around a decent camera?

Dropping disguised sensors for espionage comes immediately to mind

Yes. A (secret?) US military project testing drone surveillance on unwitting US navy assets.

US testing it’s own drones against known defenses?

Why would you need an experimental drone to do that when you can use satellite photos?

You want to test your ability to get physical payloads in place, e.g. in the future the drone could carry a bomb or something else clever (listening devices? Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes? Etc)

You want low angle shots?

You're not well funded enough to get good satellite photos?

> Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes?

Is there anything that building a delivery mechanism to carry and then drop gallium onto a plane does that an actual gun wouldn't?

Befuddle the public with scary sounding words?

Hypothetically it might act as a more subtle form of sabotage, the goal being to bring down a plane in the air. It might also be harder to cleanup/patch than a bullet hole if detected. I don't think it's a serious threat though and is really acting as a stand in for "fancy forms of sabotage".

Less visible bullet hole more structurally compromised Al.

It doesn‘t need a clear vantage point with straight-line access to the target.

It's stealthier and quieter.

All three of your points make sense, but for me the last point really resonates.

No need for a space program, or going through someone that does.

Just acquire drone > use drone.

Don't satellites only occupy a given area once or twice a day (if not geosynchronous)? If you know the pattern you can hide assets before it gets in view. A drone can do surveillance at any time.

Satellites are tracked and interesting activities are scheduled to happen when the satellite is not overhead.

Also, a drone could have radio receivers to collect short range comms.

US spy satellites have a maximum resolution of 5-10 cm. A drone close to the ground can do better.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/t...]

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