A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k | Hacker News Reader

A party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k

log.jasongodfrey.info

193 pointsheifer132 comments

More alarmingly, the laser weapon was deployed before the FAA actually shut down the airspace:

https://apnews.com/article/faa-el-paso-texas-air-space-close...

I'd say these trigger-happy clowns chasing tough-guy optics are going to get innocent people killed, but then they already have -- multiple times.

Yeah, a bit late for that. But this would likely kill more at once than they've had before, so would land a new record.

Have you not seen the cowboy hat that she wears tho?

Remember, this is the same side that espoused "meritocracy" as their number one virtue. Instead, we got a cabinet full of loyalists and fascists that decided doing joint missions between the DoD and Border Patrol was a good idea.

Firing lasers at party balloons in American cities, everyone else be damned. OPSEC is clear.

To be fair, the current version of the party is nothing like the version of the party from even a decade ago.

Whats disturbing is how so many people on that side have completely abandoned everything they ever said about their principles and values.

Even more alarmingly, a US cabinet secretary came out with a public statement about the incident that was a complete fabrication (labelling it a "cartel drone incursion"), has issued no retraction, and no one seems to care.

(Less alarmingly but more personal: my personal prediction to this effect, expressing distrust about statements like this in real time, got flagged right here on HN because apparently our leaders lying to our faces about news relevant to our community is "politics" and unseemly to discuss.)

You didn't expect Kegsbreath to actually tell the truth?

Is he even capable of telling the truth?

The problem with that attitude is it normalizes it, which is extra scary for military

Hegseths personal lawyers worked at a law firm that was founded by epsteins long time personal lawyer.

Reading between the lines, it seems like the FAA shutdown the airspace to make public the fact that the DoD wasn't cooperating with the FAA.

The rate of return on this is phenomenal.

A 53" balloon costs $9.99. You could shut down all large and medium hubs in the US for $629.37/day. The asymmetry is astounding and I'm surprised we don't defend against this kind of attack more efficiently.

I'm equally surprised we don't fend off these rampant goblin threats too!

More pragmatically, such a system would cost multiple millions, and would take years to actually stabilize in a manner that would recover the fictitious costs to shutting down the airports with gaps. (i.e. I'm surprised you so easily bought into the 500k figure)

All because a bunch of idiots lost track of their one balloon, once? The asymmetry is banal. There are cheaper ways that require less planning than that.

I avoided the 500k figure and instead just mentioned airport shutdowns.

I'm surprised you saw it in my comment. It's reminiscent of an airport seeing a would be drone.

Such a system is as easy as a set of binoculars and an airsoft gun

I think the general assumption is that the US government is competent enough to know the difference between a party balloon and a real threat, but apparently it is not. At least not under the current admin.

America's war on balloons has been ongoing for some time:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo

Doesn't usually work. There are over a thousand incursions by unmanned aircraft systems along the U.S.-Mexico border each month, per the NORAD commander: https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/370778... . They pretty much never result in shutting down air space or launching missiles.

Responding to a single party balloon with a giant laser, thus causing a saner government official to close the airspace because some moron is firing giant lasers into the air, is unusual. Probably not a usable asymmetric attack vector.

wow maybe we should stop giving the law enforcement orgs weapons of war

All cops should have a nuke.

This sounds like the start of a really good beat poem...

"We'll try to stay serene and calm, When Alabama gets the bomb!"

'saner govt official because moron firing giant lasers into the air' - lasers just go everywhere at once and hit everything in the air, into the stratosphere? it's a big sky and gets bigger the higher you go.

lol, this is a great imply-but-don't-make-a-point from an account called gunapologist99.

Is the implication here that someone firing laser weapons at things flying near the airport has no realistic danger for planes flying near the airport and therefore this was an overreaction?

Yes, because the danger didn’t merit a panicked 10 day ground stop with no info and a shoot down warning, but a NOTAM about the risk and routing.

were they really firing it randomly into empty air? they sound even less competent than I thought.

This is already a thing in Eastern Europe.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8655gn84ego

If it became a real issue you'd hire someone for $25/hr to patrol with an airsoft gun

"99 red balloons" starts playing in the background.

Ninety-nine dreams I have had

In every one, a red balloon

It's all over and I'm standin' pretty

In this dust that was a city

If I could find a souvenir

Just to prove the world was here

And here is a red balloon

I think of you, and let it go

99 Decision Street, 99 ministers meet

To worry, worry, super scurry

Call out the troops now in a hurry

This is what we've waited for

This is it, boys, this is war

The President is on the line as 99 red balloons go by

"99 red balloons" sounds almost quaint and innocent, even ironically a bit darkly refreshing, with its portrayal of the relatively clear threat of cold war nuclear annihilation.

Compare it to the constant flux of threats we now face, all given similar coverage today, large or small, sometimes plausibly real, but often ultimately fictional: brought on for distraction, by deception, incompetence, poor communication, ego, and/or other unethical agenda.

On the plus side, this method of disabling the target is cheaper and more environmentally friendly than using a guided missile. Any object can just be locked on to and effortlessly zapped out of the sky - that’s impressive.

> Who among us hasn’t, at some point, mistaken a party balloon for a cartel drone? Let him cast the first stone.

It's a shame the F-22 wasn't publicly allowed to get its second A2A kill! ;)

Fyi, the f-22 logged a second kill shortly after the first:

https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-shoots-down-unknown-flyi...

Which is generally believed to have been a radiosonde launched by hobbyists in the US:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo

I once mistook a Scottish lake monster for a narcosub, but can’t say I’ve ever mistaken a party balloon for a narcodrone.

Firstly, how is the world's most powerful military afraid of "cartel drones"? Don't they already have some sci-fi laser/EW gizmos to take care of those considering how much taxpayer dollars go to the defense sector?

Secondly, contrary to popular belief, cartel leaders are smart enough to know not to directly mess with and attract the wrath of the US military when that's not good for their core business.

The laser gizmo is central to this story.

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the FAA maybe did not trust CBP to "test" operate the high powered laser near civilian aviation, in part given that they mistakenly identified a balloon for a cartel drone.

I am not sure how much the average person realizes that drones in both a reconnaissance and observation role or an attack role have changed the nature of warfare and have threatened localities.

We don't have good tools to deal with them, especially groups.

It would be trivial, right now, for a few fpv drones to cause extreme chaos somewhere like a popular highway in Los Angeles, and the amount of economic damage that could do.

It's a technological shift in how warfare is conducted, but from a protection standpoint, the tools aren't great to counter them yet.

If we had tools, the airport would never have been shut down.

Yeah the answer to

> Don't they already have some sci-fi laser/EW gizmos to take care of those considering how much taxpayer dollars go to the defense sector?

Is pretty much a flat "no". Or at least "not yet".

It wasn't the military it was DHS.

This wasn't the military. It was DHS, who is lead by the cosplaying cowboy hat lady, so this sort of incompetence should be completely expected.

Really making you wonder why does DHS have direct access to this hardware?

It's pretty directly relevant to "homeland security", anti-terrorism, etc. I wouldn't say that's the problem.

Make no mistake, the actual drone terrorism is coming. I guess you could say that only the actual military should handle it, but... Why?

Nuclear weapons are also directly relevant to "homeland security" (at least as a deterrent), yet I doubt many would be in favor of putting them under DHS as well.

Nuclear weapons are controlled more specifically by law. Lasers are not.

That both of those are labelled "homeland security" is almost a coincidence. Strategic security vs a fancy brand name for counter-terrorism.

I may have foolishly accepted the premise of incompetence in posing my question. Basically it seemed to me like the complaint was untrained/experienced (incompetent) people were deciding/deploying the fancy laser munition. That seemed worth of rebuke. After some brief searching I'm less clear about who took what action.

It seemed more like giving police forces (or allowing them to buy) APCs, armored Humvees, etc. Less trained/experienced people using things made for a different use case, ultimately exposes the people to more risk. Instead of say coordinating with the DOD to deploy the system and personnel accepting requests or being the decision maker for "take action" after some level of expertise in the area of evaluating targets and whatever else need be considered has also contributed to the process.

I don't know how it does work, let alone have enough context to imagine how it should. While I do agree "things to deter drones are appropriate border defense tools," the rest of the details painted a picture that seemed less reasonable.

Mostly agree. I wouldn't give high powered lasers to local police forces either. My point is that the problem is less to do with lasers and anti-drone tech in particular than with incompetence and abuse of power generally. Lasers are just the way it manifested in this instance.

https://youtu.be/uo63QQsm5Dw?si=SvD7JZrpJbVXF7nf&t=91

Lasers are not particularly controlled by regulation. Most people in the US can own a class 4 laser if they want.

Also, most laws that do restrict weapons specifically exempt government law enforcement anyway.

Okay, but they're not like styropyro on YouTube here... presumably the DHS people are using the whatever government weapons contractor made device, which is going to come with more nuance, controls, targeting system, etc. than whatever someone might buy off the shelf or cobble together independently.

I think it might have actually been DOD people operating the system even, but there's conflicting reporting and I'm not sure. Either way it seems like there was at the very least some kind of coordination failure.

Pentagon gave it to them. The heads of both these orgs are incompetent and should be impeached.

I thought I read that they borrowed it from the actual military, which tends to be a little bit more cautious with these things.

The former TV personality slash alcoholic slash sexual predator that is running the DoD probably gave it to DHS at the request of the cowboy hat wearing psychopathic domestic animal killer that runs that agency.

hey friend, this comment is better suited for Reddit than here, even though likely agree with you.

Using absurd language to describe absurd people is a rhetorical device that is suitable for HN.

If the administration hired serious people who don’t wear costumes and act ridiculous to get publicity, I wouldn’t have to write absurd descriptions about them.

Jim Mattis and John Kelly were serious people who did not wear costumes and treated their offices and the people below them with respect. They were Trump’s first SecDef and DHS Secretary, respectively.

This absurd language idea is good. Let me have a try...

Clearly everyone except the nerdy web developers that populate HN is completely incompetent. The aforementioned web developers though - they know everything due to all the time they spend on Twitter. I wonder why they aren't in charge of the country, must be a great conspiracy.

Customs and Border Patrol is not the military. They weren't "afraid" of it, their job is to control the border. They do have laser gizmos, that's what they used.

>their job is to control the border

Thank god they’re here defending us from rogue party balloons. Where would we be without their vigilance?

I think it's clear they were mistaken, I don't really think the sarcasm is adding to the conversation.

Fair enough

The problem isn’t the mistake, it’s the recklessness.

I never said otherwise.

so why are you defending instead of condemning them?

I'm not defending anything? Replying to someone doesn't mean I hold an opposite viewpoint. You don't have any clue what my opinion is because I haven't posted it.

Yes, you can get a lot more mileage out of hinting and indignation than taking a public position.

I think the real question here is why after this many comments you still haven’t taken a position other than generally arguing with other people. When people do that, especially online, it generally means they are being deliberately opaque with their opinions. It’s intentional. So the reasonable thing to conclude is that you disagree until you say otherwise. If that’s not your goal then try a different approach here.

I agree that it’s frustrating to be misinterpreted or misrepresented, but if you fail to represent yourself at any stage (which you seem to agree you haven’t done) then that’s what’s going to happen. So say what you think or just move on. I think at this point we can stop playing these rhetorical games.

Don't they already have some sci-fi laser/EW gizmos to take care of those

Isn't that the problem? Someone (but apparently DHS, not the military though there were military staff present, maybe?) had one of those sci-fi laser gizmos and used it without authorization or proper notifications.

I don't think we'll ever learn the real details about exactly what happened, the audit trail (if there was one) is probably in shredder baskets by now

> Firstly, how is the world's most powerful military afraid of "cartel drones"?

They sent an aircraft carrier to fight "cartels". /s

What can drones do to a civilian airport? A lot of damage and it’s not easy to stop at all. There are a lot of CombatFootage subreddit videos showing how bad it can go.

I don’t want to image how forcefully the US will respond if that type of terror attack were to happen.

The military isn't afraid of them. And they do have the capability to take them down and are always developing new methods, including lasers like this. The issue is that cases of mistaken identity of sensor glitches or ambiguity do happen, and if you have trigger-happy people at the wheel (like the DHS in this case, and the DOD who stepped in to help lie to cover it up) it can spiral out of control.

Is there any reputable source for this claim? Apologies if I missed it but didn't see one linked in the article. I ask because it's not what I'd read or understood yesterday.

Yes: 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.

...

Customs and Border Protection used the laser weapon earlier this week after training from the U.S. military, according to multiple sources familiar with its deployment. Officials had recently given the FAA a 10-day window in which the technology would be used.

The anti-drone technology was launched near the southern border to shoot down what appeared to be foreign drones. The flying material turned out to be a party balloon, sources said. One balloon was shot down, several sources said.

The Mexican cartels have been running drones on the border lately, the sources said, but it was unclear how many were hit by the military's anti-UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) technology this week. One official said at least one cartel drone was successfully disabled.

Thanks!

Reuters has a slightly different take on this:

> Three U.S. military officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection had been using the technology without issues before Tuesday's shutdown and expressed confusion as to why the shutdown was deemed necessary. [0]

It was definitely the army [1] who fired the laser causing the shutdown of El Paso airport, but the army doesn't seem to understand the alarm on the part of the FAA, because DHS (Border Protection) has been using it for some time now without the same alarm from the FAA. Someone at the FAA reacted differently to this army firing than they had to previous DHS firings.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/senator-says-el-paso-airpor... [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/aeroviron...

What you read yesterday was most likely a deliberate lie to cover up dysfunctional federal government agencies:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

All of the "reputable" sources appear to be relying on "highly placed" anonymous sources, and many of the articles conflict with each other.

Could have been little green men! But what exactly happened is probably (or should be) classified.

No. Only unnamed sources. I would say it is more likely a balloon than not though. Both stories are perfectly believable, a mylar balloon is def going to show up on radar, and the cartel does use drones. I think the balloon story is more believable though because the cartels would gain almost nothing from this, and if it was a drone I would expect photos of the debris by now.

I think this should be higher. It’s a sad day when HN joins the fake news cesspool.

To be more clear than the headline:

It was NOT the party balloon, it was the CBP's [0] massively irresponsible use of the laser weapon as a response to a threat it failed to identify properly, inside commercial airspace with zero coordination with the FAA or other air operators.

Any significant competence or even communication would have turned this into a literal non-event.

But this so-called 'administration' values only loyalty to a leader and find competence an impediment to implementing authoritarianism. So, here we are, squandering a half-billion dollars on a horde of idiots with a laser and a party balloon.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/cbp-shot-...

[0a] "Defense Department has a working relationship with Homeland Security, where CBP is headquartered, that allows its personnel to use certain military equipment for its objectives, testing, evaluation and use along the southern border.". Seems the laser was on-loan from the DoD, and the yahoos at CBP just decided to go wild.

"99 Luftballons", Mariachi remix.

  99 ministros de guerra
  Fósforos y bidones de gasolina
  Se creían gente muy astuta
  Ya olfateaban un gran botín
  Gritaron: “¡Guerra!” y querían poder
  Hombre, ¿quién lo hubiera pensado?
  Que alguna vez llegaría tan lejos
  Por culpa de 99 globos

That doesn't rhyme at all though.

Thinking more practically though. Why wouldn't there be "narco drones", with drone technology becoming so ubiquitous and cheap? And what would their operators care about airspace restrictions? The practical ones, as in "not get sucked into a jet engine or damage a wing and cause a plane crash"?

Why would they fly near an US airport though? There are miles and miles of border with practically no people living near.

(Regardless, seems building a wall was kind of a waste of money.)

Practically drugs comes into the US via containers and packages. And since the government has never even come close to shutting that operation down why screw around with drones?

How would flying drones be useful to a drug runner? Their priorities are to transport a large amount of material over a long distance and to avoid detection. Drones have a relatively low payload capacity, have limited range, and are easily detected - they're not practical.

(A very different kind of "drone" has seen quite a bit of use in drug running - remote-controlled submarines! They've proven able to carry a large load over a long distance while remaining hard to detect.)

There are commercially available drones that can carry a payload of high-single-digit to low-double-digit kilograms for at least 10km.[1] They fly low enough and are small enough to avoid most radar.

Their use in cross border smuggling of weapons and drugs is well documented[2]; interception rate is low enough that they can make multiple runs before being downed, and they can pay back their purchase cost with only a few successful runs. Typical concept of operations is similar to manned ground crossings, but with drones covering the most dangerous 5-10km of actually crossing the border: a team on one side loads them up and sends them to a team on the other side, with both having a LOT of real estate to hide in because of the drone's range.

(I work on counter drone EW, and border-control customers are under intense pressure to get this under control.)

[1] Just from DJI, see e.g. the Matrice 400 [https://enterprise.dji.com/mobile/matrice-400/specs], with 6kg payload and approximately zero purchase controls; or the T25 [https://ag.dji.com/mobile/t25p/specs], with >20kg of payload capacity, and even in restrictive regulatory regimes only requiring a shell crop spraying company to buy.

[2] https://www.maariv.co.il/news/military/article-1183896

I would suspect that flying such drones near an airport is likely to be a bad idea because it's very likely to be detected.

According to the CBP they seize about 50,000 lbs of drugs at the border each month which is about 22 tonnes of drugs, and that's what gets seized, not the amount that makes it through. So Drones today probably don't carry enough weight for far enough to make a big impact on the amount of drugs you can bring into the country. So it probably happens, but to do it at a scale where it's genuinely contributing to the total volume you'd need dozens of drones doing dozens of trips a day to be getting up to volumes that people would notice, and people would probably notice the drones first, and the drones are probably much more expensive than desperate people.

Is this the case of radar automatic targeting unable to distinguish between a balloon and a drone. Or was this a border guy manually pulling the trigger with bad eyesight?

It better be the latter because letting an automated system pull the trigger on unknown aircraft in public airspace that is not closed down is horrifying.

That's Russian levels of shooting down innocent planes. Fuck.

Alexa play 'Nena - 99 Red Balloons'...

We posted simultaneously! :)

This recalls the Miami Miley Cyrus Hanna Montana balloon incident of 2008. https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2008/11/11/Hannah-Montana-birds...

I remember things.

At least it's better than when the moon nearly caused nuclear apocalypse https://blog.ucs.org/david-wright/the-moon-and-nuclear-war-9...

There is no defence against an enemy that can cause hysteria so easily.

Speaking of, that helium is a precious non renewable resource.

Nena, you are a messenger from god!

https://youtu.be/Fpu5a0Bl8eY?si=vpSXWV5-pUOIjvac

And when there are exactly 99 comments on this subject.

Someone please make this into a meme.

We are on the dumbest timeline.

Imagine if there had been 99 balloons?

So can we dismantle other security theater with balloons? Can we make a balloon for Tsa that is harmless and will cost too much to fight and demonstrates the pointlessness of Tsa?

> Can we make a balloon for Tsa that is harmless and will cost too much to fight and demonstrates the pointlessness of Tsa?

You don't need a balloon. A real gun will do.

https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-ope...

"The news of the failure comes two years after ABC News reported that secret teams from the DHS found that the TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening."

maybe it wasn't a "party balloon"

Is it even legal to release a party baloon in class D airspace?

It's illegal everywhere in Texas

https://1023thebullfm.com/texas-bans-outdoor-balloon-release...

Yet another 5 year old doing covert ops?

You guys said that we did this for the show!

Compared with the AI bubble $573k is nothing.

the double down on stupidity is that the cartels now know that deploying party balloons will work as decoys, too bad they dont have mirror finnish ones, oh wait!

The Secretary of Homeland Security thought the balloon was her dog and treated it as such (/s?)

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