>. "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion.
The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.
The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming."
The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.
The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming."
https://www.newsweek.com/us-military-shot-down-party-balloon...
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-military-shot-down-party...
US military shot down party balloon near El Paso after drone suspicion, official says
Would be funny if they used some new fancy laser weapon to, let's say, discombobulate this imminent threat, as indicated by other reports.
In the end, a cataclysmic war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons and causes devastation on all sides without a victor, as indicated in the denouement of the song: "99 Jahre Krieg ließen keinen Platz für Sieger," which means "99 years of war left no room for victors." The anti-war song finishes with the singer walking through the devastated ruins of the world and finding a single balloon. The description of what happens in the final line of the piece is the same in German and English: "'Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen," or "Think of you and let it go."
I especially like the way she rhymes "Captain Kirk" with "Feuerwerk".
https://genius.com/Nena-99-luftballons-lyrics
In other news, Director Gabbard and Secretaries Noem, Hegseth, and Kennedy met with Secretary Leavitt for her big Gender Reveal Party in El Paso...
The real treat for German listeners is the first verse: ich, mich, dich, and neun-und-neunZIG (zig is pronounced like ich in the main German dialect).
With all of the 'neunundneunzig' (aka 99) repeated throughout the song, the ich/dich/mich/vielleicht rhymes is really a superior start over the English version.
It's a rhyming scheme that cannot be replicated in English at all.
(I can mostly understand spoken German. Have heard this song in German many times before. Never got the message. It's tricky!)
So just sing along. Every word, and understand as much as you can.
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Once you know all the words, then the next step is to learn the grammar and learn how the words work together. If you give it a few months, full understanding will come!
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum ... well, El Paso as it turns out.
the English rewrite of course starts:
You and I in a little toyshop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
'til one by one, they were gone...
And rather than see the government have egg on face people (probably a majority here) will vote for politicians who promise all sorts of licenses and regulations on balloons because of it and then in 20yr when I complain and remind them that once upon a time every store used to sell balloons with no KYC BS they'll act like I'm some sort of barbarian, screech, wring their hands, clutch their pearls, etc.
How have we not blown ourselves up yet?
It's not that we haven't, it's just that we can only observe from those few realities where we didn't.
Most people aren't sadistically malicious, and most security is professional, so random little failures like metalled balloons or reflections off clouds (or the moon) scaring a security system will only blow up to something important (even on the scale of previous paragraph) every decade or so.
But what do we know, maybe it was an evil terrorist party balloon. You see, the wall just needs to be a little higher to protect that beautiful country from all southern evils.
Sounds like a great way for a drug-runner to proceed - release 1000 balloons across a very large area, and have only one of them carry their payload of drugs (or whatever).
That said, I doubt they even bother with such small-scale trade. The narco-submarines are much higher capacity and now apparently well-built enough to be trans-pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine
Which way are the prevailing winds at altitude over the Ukrainian-Russian border region, anyway?
Unbelievable. Next I'll read they shot down "balloon boy".
I'm guessing DoD and the FAA were squabbling over a test the military wanted to run, and it didn't go up the chain fast enough to get resolved before testing was scheduled to begin.
Edit: Here's the actual notice from the FAA[1]. Note that it was issued at 0332 UTC, but the restrictions weren't scheduled to go into place until 0630 UTC. Either the FAA is clairvoyant, or Sean Duffy is lying.
We also don't know whether they expected this to take 1 day or more. Just because it worked out quickly doesn't mean that's the "worst case" operational timeline.
Indeterminate end dates are not a new problem.
For example, see the Disneyland TFR (FDC 4/3635): https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_4_3635
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...
> FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford on Tuesday night decided to close the airspace — without alerting White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security officials, sources said.
In the meantime, the politician responsible of course made up a quick lie and yall ran with it, fantasizing about cartel MANPADs:
> Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement, "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion."
It sounds like the DOD was being unusually indifferent to the concerns, and after deadly prior mishaps, the FAA has to be particularly careful here.
This is the first explanation I've seen that fits the odd facts perfectly. This is the kind of thing that happens when two regional bureaucracies collide. The FAA has long-standing mechanisms for coordinating military use of airspace with commercial and civilian flight operations.
But instead of the usual DEA border interdiction, the administration is now tasking the military to drive this. Military commanders on a new high-priority mission to intercept drones which can attempt to cross the border anytime and anywhere realized coordinating with the FAA would require committing to active corridors and time windows in advance, limiting their mission success and resisted. The FAA realized that could lead to lots of last minute airspace restrictions, flight cancellations and increased risk of a mistake resulting in downing a civilian flight.
The regional FAA administrators responsible for flight safety around El Paso decided to escalate the dispute by simply shutting down all civilian flights, knowing that would get immediate national attention. It was an extreme action but one that's within their purview if they can't guarantee the safety of the airspace. I'm sure they expected it would put political pressure on the military to limit operations and it worked. In a sense, it also helps the military commanders because being ordered to accept FAA operational limitations gives them cover if it reduces their mission effectiveness below what they'd promised. That's probably why the military wouldn't agree on their own without it being ordered from above. They're the ones responsible for deploying expensive new anti-drone tech in field ops for the first time. Future budgets and careers are on the line.
> The Pentagon allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use an anti-drone laser earlier this week, leading the Federal Aviation Administration to suddenly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.