[llamaimperative]

> My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our military would have already taken them down

I think you overestimate a few things here… the military isn’t constantly monitoring all airspace across the country for drone-sized objects and shooting things down if they don’t recognize them.

Perhaps they should be as we enter this brave new world of drone-everything, but they don’t right now.

[abuani]

NJ has some of the leading research centers for the US military, our new president's second estate, and critical infrastructure for telecommunications. Reportedly drones were flying close to all of these spots. I would fully expect our military to be monitoring these parts of the country for drone-sized objects given how effective they have been in waging our wars the past 20 years. So yeah, it's a massive intelligence failure if these are combatant drones.

[llamaimperative]

I don't disagree with any of this. Obviously drones are an extremely real intelligence and actual security threat that we clearly don't know how to handle.

[dylan604]

ahem, our president-elect. he is not the new president, yet.

[vaxman]

20 years lol Off by a factor of 2.5x, but your expectation is reasonable --so is having a Defense Secretary that tells his staff when he's checking into the hospital for a serious medical condition and an airspace that doesn't allow balloons to get within range of broadcasting firmware updates to ESP32s.

https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

> Abichandani has no idea as of now whether the drones over New Jersey are swarming drones.

Then this article goes on to speculate about scary things.

[vaxman]

..and Abichandani is reported to be an actual academic (in drone swarming technology) at a prestigious university that is local to the observations, not an enthusiast or politician!

In next room, I have a nearly 100yo man who, in a small group of people using computers with (literal) core memory, invented the technology, satellites and delivery systems to do Reconnaissance from orbit and more importantly, to spot the first signatures of arial weapons systems, yet downvoted here in the dystopian future when I merely correct the peanut gallery for spreading obvious fiction that America's ability to spot drones does not go back further than 20 years (or that the internal proprietary code of the latest ESP32 series Chinese MCUs has the well known ability to receive firmware updates via RF, even from Chinese balloons, Chinese LEO Starlink competitors and yes, drones).

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

> Abichandani is reported to be an actual academic

He pretty much says nothing, and the article uses him as a mouth piece to give other individuals mentioned legitimacy.

[obmelvin]

The military isn’t allowed to shoot down drones in the US. There was a WSJ story last month about drones flying over Langley for 2 weeks. All the general could do is stand on the roof and watch

[ANewFormation]

Yeah they can only shoot down unidentified weather balloons.

[bee_rider]

IIRC there were multiple instances of the balloons and the one they shot down was intentionally shot down in a relatively safe area.

[ANewFormation]

They shot down at least 3 including one that 100% belonged to a local club, meaning the military had no clue what they were launching missiles at. One was shot down over Lake Huron, and the pilot actually even managed to miss the balloon with his missile. It's like 99 Red Balloons meets Idiocracy.

Obviously the military can shoot down whatever they want, let alone use EM tech, which is highly effective at grounding drones. Drones keep getting sighted near the exact areas that would be testing out drone militarization, and not getting shot down. Gee, I wonder who's they might be.

People would be so dramatically more informed if they dropped social media and corporate news.

[obmelvin]

1) there was a very public delay to shoot down anything even remotely above people. They just aren’t going to shoot something down over a city

From the WSJ article I mentioned: “ Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway”

2) as you probably know, the pilot doesn’t really guide the missile…calling the pilot an idiot just clearly shows you have an axe to grind. Also, it’s not like the seekers are calibrated to take out balloons.

3) regarding EW - the tech is obviously still evolving and not always deployed “ U.S. officials said they didn’t know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones.”

Also, it is certainly possible to harden drones against EW as is being done in Ukraine on an evolving basis

[ANewFormation]

Just think rationally - in one case you had completely harmless weather balloons, and the government completely freaked out, scrambled fighters and even recklessly launched missiles at them.

Here you have supposedly car sized drones operating, in large numvers, in high risk areas and the government response is nonexistent. Nearby flights have not even been diverted as they do when there's the slightest security risk in an area.