Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan seemingly mistaken for US drone | Hacker News Reader

Enemy drone that killed US troops in Jordan seemingly mistaken for US drone

apnews.com

26 pointsanigbrowl22 comments

So that prompted me to try and look up which countries don't have U.S. troops. Came up with: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-troop-...

Which says there is no presence in only these countries:

  Venezuela
  French Guiana
  Ivory Coast
  Libya
  Western Sahara
  Guinea-Bissau
  Eritrea
  Lesotho
  Eswatini
  Syria
  Iraq
  Iran
  Afghanistan
  North Korea
  Vanuatu
  New Caledonia
  Falkland Islands

...Don't know how accurate that is, since it says there are 38 US troops in Russia? Maybe they're all moonlighting as diplomats?

Maybe they are counting embassy security..

Could be

> Data include personnel who are assigned to the State Department and Embassies overseas.

In that case the list is basically all countries without a US embassy? And aren’t there US troops in Iraq still?

Embassies are guarded by the US Marine Corp.

I think these might be the marine embassy guards, which would make sense since the us doesn't have embassies in these countries, but it does have one in Russia.

https://www.marines.com/resources/marine-security-guard---em...

That map could do with a logarithmic scale to its colour coding. Australia with 2k+ troops is the same colour as all the countries with ~10

That list is wrong. At first glance the Vatican should be on it, the Falkland Islands shouldn't (not being a country), and Syria shouldn't. This very attack was initially believed to have been against one of the US military bases in Syria.

As others have pointed out marine embassy guards exist. Many countries, including the US, also assign military attachés as diplomatic personnel.

A better metric is countries with a US base or cooperative security location. There are 80, or about 40% of all countries. Still high, but more more plausible. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...

French Guiana and New Caledonia are French territories, not countries. They have no US consulate (go to Suriname for French Guiana and to Fidji for New Caledonia).

Those last two are not sovereign nations, nor are Western Sahara or French Guiana.

Otherwise, that mostly reads like a list of nations that lack normalized diplomatic relations with the US, hence no embassy staff. Except for Vanuatu, which is in the process of getting a US embassy.

EDIT: As others pointed out, Syria and Iraq do have US troops. All together I'd say this is a pretty terrible source!

That page shows no presence no presence in United States either.

And oh well it did show no presence in Afghanistan. So that's there.

There are US troops in Iraq. In fact Iraq is trying to get them out, without success.(so far)

There are US troops in Syria. Al Tanf and the whole area where the oil is to the east of the Euphrates River.

> As the enemy drone was flying in at a low altitude, a U.S. drone was returning to the small installation known as Tower 22, according to a preliminary report cited by two officials, who were not authorized to comment and insisted on anonymity...

SO - we're not using IFF for drones, or the IFF was spoofed, or the ground-based IFF equipment was non-operational or ignored...or the latter just sucks so bad that the overworked troops don't bother.

Attacks on US bases in the region have become a routine. Expect more casualties in the following months and years.

The US does not has a good response to this escalation. It could continue to bomb proxies, but it has almost no effect and it may even be counter-productive since it plays right into the Iranian propaganda, especially in the light of the Gaza war. Meanwhile, a big war with Iran would be a VERY risky endeavor with extremely unpredictable consequences for the global economy.

> a big war with Iran

I wonder what percentage of American Congress will start feverously salivating just at the mere sight of text like this.

Surely these things must have some sort of crypto, friend or enemy identification thingy??

[dupe]

More: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39178142

Skynet wins another round?

How are you supposed to go up against a drone? Use a emergency blanket for cover?!

No claim to the effectiveness of this information or it's practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmnaVhAliPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbKZze_J4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4nmuJ2G6As https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHnkUHsliSg

If you die in a drone strike, you may not sue me.

> How are you supposed to go up against a drone?

You don’t. Most counter-drone technologies are unreliable, and even if they are not, they are extremely expensive and only effective against large drones. In the era of single drones, you will soon face a swarm of drones that can fly intelligently and pinpoint the target or person of interest. In fact, I believe several countries already have such technology, as I managed to build a PoC swarm that can evade/avoid obstacles and identify objects, while communicating with each other and the command and control. So it is definitely already out there.

Centurion is basically a minigun (or other ordnance) hooked up to an auto-targeting system with SOTA optics, mountable on a truck.

https://armyrecognition.com/united_states_us_army_artillery_...

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