[openasocket]

My money is on a foreign hostile entity, but not for a scouting operation, this is an exercise in deterrence. This is someone who wanted to let the US know that they are capable of getting a high-end drone into the country and launch it near important civilian and military infrastructure. Which is also why they would affix it with a bright LED light, they wanted to get noticed and then show off its capabilities.

It might sound counter-intuitive to outright tell your enemy what you are capable of, but that's exactly how deterrence works. Winning a war is good, but it's better to convince your opponent that they shouldn't start a fight in the first place. Which means your opponent needs to have some understanding of what you are capable of. If they don't, if you develop significant capabilities but keep them secret, your opponent may initiate hostilities with you, under the mistaken assumption that they could win. You don't give them everything, but you give them enough to make them concerned, and even better make them over estimate the size and scale of the threat. Done right, you can get an adversary to devote far more resources to counter your threat than you put into it, or more than is warranted.

[asdff]

Why not do it like the U.S. and just show off the weapon on soil with domestic press coverage and not risk a diplomatic incident? You don't have to show your whole hand, iirc when they showed the press the B2 they didn't let them see the rear of the plane.

[openasocket]

I think the big capability here isn't the technology, it's that they could get it into the country and deployed over a major air base.

[sandworm101]

>> it's that they could get it into the country and deployed over a major air base.

Just like guns, why bother smuggling it in? It would be easier to buy/build it within the US. As for deploying it, anyone can drive a pickup to within range of a variety of US bases. These aren't remote arctic outposts surrounded by tundra. US bases are generally near civilian populations. Nobody would think twice about seeing a pickup truck parked near a base at night. Any number of aviation enthusiasts do this regularly.

[openasocket]

I wouldn't be surprised if portions of it were bought within the US, or if it was largely made from off-the-shelf components legally imported and then assembled. Unless there were capabilities demonstrated that haven't been made public (Like some new low-power high-intensity jamming) this doesn't seem too far off from the capabilities of a non-state actor. The main reason I think this is a state actor is because of the motivation (terrorists would have actually tried to use it as a weapon to do damage).

It doesn't need to be some super-advanced weapon or capability. Sometimes all it takes is a demonstration to make people aware of vulnerabilities that have long existed. Think about the billions spent on airport security after 9/11, that frankly aren't doing much to prevent future attacks. This incident, and others like it, don't have a body count and haven't provoked a massive public outcry, but they are unnerving people. You can bet funding is going to be diverted to securing airbases from this sort of threat.

[lamontcg]

The first most obvious state actor would actually be the USA itself. Some sort of red team test to demonstrate our own vulnerabilities and to secure that funding.

It probably wouldn't be necessary for someone like China to actually stage a demonstration, since its easier for China to just have some high up diplomat get themselves drunk and boast to or around a known CIA operative that they have hundreds of drones ready to strike facilities in the USA that can be activated on a moments notice. Then leave just enough of a paper trail lying around in other places to validate it (although probably a dozen or less, not a hundred), without compromising anything. Maybe even go so far to have a private military briefing (that a CIA operative was invited to) which displayed a particular model of drone built using off-the-shelf parts that could be acquired in the US ("we built this on our soil, we could be building another one very much like it on your soil").

[openasocket]

So a lot of people are posting something about a red team test or some defense contractor. But is that really something a defense contractor would do? This thing violated federal and most likely state regulations in a bunch of different ways, there are serious consequences to this. I mean this isn't the days of MKUltra, are there any contemporary or recent examples of defense contractors blatantly violating regulations like this without consequence?

[csa]

> Why not do it like the U.S. and just show off the weapon on soil with domestic press coverage and not risk a diplomatic incident

Because then you can’t probe unannounced/classified defensive abilities, strategies, and tactics.

[sandworm101]

Well, the fact that the one helicopter it got close to was a police helicopter is too unlikely to be coincidence. Maybe the drone operator knew the police helicopter location. Maybe these were other cops doing something stupid with their new equipment.

[infoseek12]

If it is an exercise in deterrence the actor responsible might see displaying a calculated degree of belligerence as a feature not a bug.

[jlos]

"Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Art of War 3:2

[vl]

Most likely explanation is that military was testing their secret drone from this AFB.

[mrandish]

Yep, either the military or a defense-type contractor taking their new toy out for a spin. There could be a lot of reasons they didn't privately fess up afterward (at least that we know of):

* The flight was an "ad hoc training exercise" that wandered a bit too far (ie not specifically approved by higher authority).

* It was a capabilities test to see how well it could do stealthy observing of energy infrastructure in a civilian controlled airspace. While the US doesn't need to spy on its own infrastructure, it's convenient to trial run locally before deploying the capability over Crimea or Venezuela.

* It was a penetration test to measure response to a potential terrorism scenario. If they had warned the airport or police in advance, it wouldn't be an instructive test.

[openasocket]

Seems like a weird choice. There's plenty of other air bases that are far removed from the public which are meant to be used for testing. Not to mention there's no justification for doing this in a populated area where someone could get hurt.

[nradov]

Unlikely. Everyone already knows it's possible to smuggle small amounts of military equipment into the US. So what. That kind of demonstration would have zero deterrence value.

[watertom]

A 6lb drone is not exactly a deterrent for war.

Don't automatically assume this is foreign, not all branches of the U.S. government play nice with the other branches of the U.S. government.

[openasocket]

Well this wasn't a quad copter someone bought at a Walmart. This thing was allegedly 5ft by 3ft, had a range in excess of 50 miles, outran a police helicopter (though as other comments have pointed out, take that with a grain of salt) and was able to reach and cruise at 14,000ft.

I'd like to hear why you think some branch of the US government would be behind this. To what end?

[oh_sigh]

How would deterrence work when no one has any idea who the drone belonged to?

[openasocket]

Two thoughts:

1. The public doesn't know, but the same may not be true of US intelligence services. There are various ways to drop hints. Have a colonel pretend to get drunk at a bar and ramble something about drones. Feed a known mole some hints about an operation underway. Maybe a unit stationed on that base recently was involved in some operation the foreign adversary didn't like, and they have a diplomat cryptically say something about reprisals. But most importantly you do it in a way that it isn't definitive proof, or publicly accusing them would require revealing important sources/methods. That way the US can't publicly respond or escalate.

2. Perhaps the goal isn't necessarily deterrence, it's misdirection. Reveal the vulnerability of civil and military infrastructure to attack in a public and embarrassing way, and the US government will be required to take actions to prevent this from happening again. And it's way more expensive to secure infrastructure than it is to attack it. You could get the US to spend billions on securing this infrastructure, which is dollars that aren't being spent on something that could be used offensively.

[InitialLastName]

Have you ever played Hearts? That game plays much differently when you know who has the Queen of Spades vs if you don't vs if it's already been played. If somebody has a capability that deters you, it can be more effective in making you play cautious if you don't know who has it.