[ericbarrett]

I can't imagine a defense contractor imperiling their flow of money when they could certainly arrange to test at White Sands or some such. This kind of thing is straight to jail, do pass Go, do not collect $2 billion.

LEO, same; perhaps they might play loose with the law, but around refueling infrastructure and airports? That brings the Feds in 100%. Again, straight to jail. What is the risk/reward here?

A three-letter agency doing a "red team" penetration test, perhaps. But why do it with a secret modified drone? And buzzing a CBP helicopter?

[showerst]

Someone in the article comments pointed out that everything described could be accomplished by a $25,000 off the shelf drone from lockheed [1].

Now that's not something you find on every street corner, but well within the range of 'training some bored enlisted guys' or 'contractors on an evening test mission'. I'm not sure if they sell those to energy companies, but if so that fits as well.

I've heard many stories of crazier shenanigans from those types than "we were fooling around with the drone off flight-plan then got too close to the airport, and they called a freaking police helicopter so we took off lol."

I'll admit that it's a low risk-reward scenario, but especially given all the test infrastructure in the desert out there, it seems more Hanlon's razor appropriate to me than a foreign adversary testing high-end surveillance technology deep in enemy territory completely obliviously. They even left a running-light on!

[1] https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/r...

[101001001001]

That drone is battery powered and has a ceiling of hundreds of feet. So no. You would also be able to see it with night vision. They reported that they weren’t able to see it with night vision which seems impossible at first. But they probably were able to do that by painting it with something like vanta-black.

Nobody is building something like that with 25k. Sure you could build it, but it wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t be anywhere close to reliable enough for a mission as crazy as entering into restricted military airspace. It would take lots of testing and iteration for someone to produce something that worked reliably and has been shown to be able to do things like evade night vision detection. It’s a specialized price of hardware developed specifically for this kind of task. Nobody is their right mind would do anything like this unless they already had access to the hardware and flippantly decided to take it for a cruise over and air force base (idiot employee at government contractor) or if they had an interest in doing this (China/Russia).

[showerst]

Fair enough on the flight ceiling, I misread that, so it's a substantially higher spec drone.

> idiot employee at government contractor) or if they had an interest in doing this

I guess that's where my Hanlon's razor comes in. Idiot employee(s) just seems so much more reasonable to me.

China is testing a hardcore stealth drone over a military base, but chooses one in CONUS in a highly civilian accessible major metro area, and then leaves the running lights on? It strikes me as far less likely than domestic alternatives.

[101001001001]

Holy shit it was China after all. They linked to this in the article.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36085/troubling-drone-...

That is terrifying.

They commit brazen acts of cyber espionage targeting our infrastructure all the time so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for them to do something like this.

[anonAndOn]

>flew out of the TUS area about 50 miles to the northwest of town into the middle of nowhere desert

Tucson sits in a plain surrounded by tall mountains. Whoever was controlling the drone must've had a much stronger radio than the one with the Lockheed 10km line of sight limit.

[unanswered]

So the argument is "no one commits crimes except for terrorists"? I'm afraid I'm not convinced.

[HideousKojima]

No, the argument is that the incentives aren't really there for other possible groups to commit this crime since they have legal alternatives to what was done. Doesn't make it impossible, just less likely.

[bilbo0s]

I may be mistaken, but I think the argument being made is more like, "no one commits crimes, or any acts really, without a motive." These people, at least their leadership, have significant motive to not commit an act like this.

My money would be on terrorists as well, but that's why we have investigations. Let's see where the satellite photos take us.

[unanswered]

But that's the same argument, right? The "motive not to commit an act like this" which the article provides is fear of prosecution; so if this argument went through it would just as well be an argument against any crime ever occurring.

Why would anyone ever rob a bank when you can earn money legally?

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

Also everyone is rational--but isn't it a happy surprise "nation-states" didn't come up again?