alt Hacker NewsEven Cartels know that shooting down civilian aircraft in US airspace would be an escalation that would lead to heavy retaliation. Doesn't seem likely to me.
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Yea you have to be a nation state like Israel, Iran or Russia to blow civilian aircraft out of the sky with no retaliation.
Good point. I guess it depends on the force, size, and especially effectiveness of any potential strikes. (i.e. How cornered a cartel might feel and how much flexing an outsized response might stand to gain them.)
If that aircraft held a person they wanted dead, I would not put it past them.
Unless we start bombing them first. That’s not hard to imagine these days.
Mistakes happen though
Yes that might be the high-level logic, but if you give a MANPAD to a 19 year old sicario on meth, accidents do happen.
Unless the government is planning an attack on the cartel[s] that is so existential that such action wouldn't be considered an escalation but rather a tic for tat.
A trapped animal will generally use all its facilities regardless of its expected effectiveness.
Coming from groups that just pickup busses of people to murder, I wouldn’t be so sure that firing back at the US would be out of the question.