Drone Incursions Closed Wright Patterson Air Force Base's Airspace Friday Night | Hacker News Reader

Drone Incursions Closed Wright Patterson Air Force Base's Airspace Friday Night

twz.com

25 pointsalchemist1e918 comments

So let me see if I've got this right. You can fly drones over a US air force base and shut it down. This lets you conduct a DOS attack on the base. You can also get to a place where if the drones contained munitions they would be very difficult to stop before they did their damage, but nobody is authorized to stop it.

Also, if I understand correctly, Wright Patt is a place where they experiment with new radars and stuff. But they couldn't track the drones to see where they came from or where they went. (Or didn't - it might be deliberate strategy to not turn on the fancy toys while the drones are there to monitor.)

All in all, I have a hard time buying all this. In a world of Russian hybrid warfare, in a world of China gearing up to at least be able to invade Taiwan, in a world of Iran still trying to find ways to pay the US back for the death of Sulameini, in a world with North Korea being willing to do just about anything, doing nothing about all this would be somewhere between incredibly gross negligence and active treason.

I consider it more likely that someone (US military and/or intelligence) at least knows exactly what is going on, and likely is doing it themselves. They just aren't talking about it.

>All in all, I have a hard time buying all this.

You might, but if there's anything 2020-24 has taught us, the target audience is definitely going to be stupid enough to believe whatever the narrative becomes, probably "we need such-and-such extra powers and funding".

Hysteria has found its home in the US.

Yep, somewhat to be expected given the societal response to the idea of critical thinking.

It's always been that way. Americans love to get hysterical about whatever the current thing is.

I know there are legal restrictions on military shooting them down but still surprised how chill the US is with having key bases mapped.

Especially since it’s been months since it started. Would have thought they’d straighten out the legalities by now

The bases have been mapped years ago, maybe decades. By satellite.

We're building a small device with a 'cheap' lidar sensor. It can see right across the street, through a window, and show people walking around inside their living room. We have a process to remove this data before any human sees it. However a lot of intelligence can be collected from the ground these days; and a lot of secure sites are aware of exposing too much to the sky. I'd be more worried about that Cessna Caravan doing lazy racetracks over my site than a drone buzzing around.

Clearly some opposing force is seeing value in going the drone route else they wouldn’t be opting for this route

It's unclear whether any opposing force is "opting for this route".

Lol. Remember the weather balloon? If we didn't know where this came from, it'd already been splashed.

> I know there are legal restrictions on military shooting them down

Seriously ?

You'll miss 99% of the shots and they'll eventually come down, this airbase is surrounded by civilian areas

IIRC, the US shot down some weather balloons in Jan-Feb 2023. Why not the same expediency with these drones?

CNN:

> Asked Sunday about the president-elect’s post calling on the government to shoot down the drones, [Homeland Security Secretary] Alejandro Mayorkas said, “We are limited in our authorities.”

> “We have certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security that can do that, and outside our department, but we need those authorities expanded as well,” he added, after he called on Congress to expand the federal government’s authorities — specifically to empower local agencies to counter drone activity with federal supervision.

Well

This looks like a good way to get popular and political support to "expand authorities" in the interest of national security.

Coordinate to launch a 'classified' training or research operation that is sure to get some eyeballs and prompt some conspiracy theories. And refuse to confirm or deny it is a planned/authorized exercise, prompting some form of hysteria.

Then casually remark on record that your authorities are limited.

They have limited authorities! They should be unlimited. /s

I thought they had they obligation to shoot them down. If not malicious it's still good training.

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