alt Hacker NewsA party balloon shut down El Paso International Airport; estimated cost –$573k
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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.
> Who among us hasn’t, at some point, mistaken a party balloon for a cartel drone? Let him cast the first stone.
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.
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?
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"?
There is no defence against an enemy that can cause hysteria so easily.
Is it even legal to release a party baloon in class D airspace?
Imagine if there had been 99 balloons?
We are on the dumbest timeline.
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?
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The Secretary of Homeland Security thought the balloon was her dog and treated it as such (/s?)
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.