| ▲ | philipallstar 4 hours ago |
| > Cartels routinely use drones to deliver drugs across the Mexican border and surveil Border Patrol officers. Officials told Congress last summer that more than 27,000 drones were detected within 1,600 feet (500 meters) of the southern border in the last six months of 2024. No wonder they mistook one of theirs for one of these. |
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| ▲ | orwin 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| That's such am inefficient, hands-on, loud and dumb way to smuggle drugs across a border this large, this cannot be true. Unless you they are talking about submarines and land RCs, in that case sure, probably. |
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| ▲ | carefulfungi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The statements can also be parsed as "we have thousands of detections of an unknown number of drones that are being used by cartels to surveil the border in order to smuggle". The number of drones vs. the number of detections is ambiguous. How detections are counted is ambiguous. Whether drones are physically moving drugs or part of an intelligence network is ambiguous. It would seem entirely unsurprising that cartels are monitoring border enforcement by drone. That's not great, obviously. But different from "thousands of drones are carrying contraband into the US". | | |
| ▲ | JasonADrury 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Lets be realistic, at best it actually means: "We have thousands of possible detections of an unknown number of possible drones that are possibly being used by cartels to surveil the border in order to smuggle" | |
| ▲ | XorNot 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's about 142 detections per day and yeah the big question is are they tracking unique drones (probably not) or radar contacts which appear and disappear? In which case the same drone flying around for 20 minutes and then being recharged would appear multiple times. That number breaks down to 6 detections per hour across the entire boarder. | |
| ▲ | kgwxd 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's no reason to believe a single letter or number that comes from these people, and every reason to believe it's completely made up. |
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| ▲ | Aurornis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why do you say that? Fixed wing RCs can fly fast and have long range. Anyone can buy radios for them that transmit for many kilometers. There are open source autopilot projects. Drugs like Fentanyl are so potent that each dose is less than a milligram. It’s not far fetched at all. | |
| ▲ | stronglikedan 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > loud and dumb way Sounds like the perfect distraction! | |
| ▲ | smallerize 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Quadrotors are loud, but fixed-wing drones are quieter, more efficient, and have much longer range. | |
| ▲ | piokoch 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Check what is happening in Ukraine. The war moved a field of moderately cheap and moderately powerful drones forward. We don't understand the consequences yet... Ukraine is actively working on hunter drones that could operate on 10 km altitude to shot down enemy targets. Now, imagine that cartel, terrorists put their hands on such technology, endangering whole civilian air transport. | |
| ▲ | 2OEH8eoCRo0 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What about model trains? | | |
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| ▲ | duxup 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wonder how accurate that number is. Are detected drones just blips on some detection system? Are they even drug running drones, are they even drones at all? |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | iso1631 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Given they have so far managed to shoot down a balloon and a government drone you'll forgive my scepticism. |
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| ▲ | pjc50 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Alternative hypothesis: the reported number of drones isn't real (anything the Trump government says about "cartels" can be assumed to be made up). The military got increasingly on alert, with senior officers pushing to get a shootdown on one of the not real drones. Therefore the laser operators end up firing on the first drone they confirm seeing. Compare the MH-17 incident. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident , which also involved no confirmed actual drone. |
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| ▲ | sidewndr46 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | isn't this more comparable to the incident where a US Navy ship shot down an Iranian aircraft. They somehow convinced themselves it was a lone attack aircraft coming to intercept them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | Georgelemental 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | t-3 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Drones are not perfectly reasonable when semi-trucks filled with literal tons of drugs pass the border every day. They are used to smuggle drugs into prisons, but not really any better than the old hollow tennis ball trick and more trackable as well. | | |
| ▲ | Georgelemental 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Semi-trucks can get inspected, putting the driver at personal risk. With a drone, even if it is intercepted, the operator is safe | |
| ▲ | JasonADrury 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > not really any better than the old hollow tennis ball trick and more trackable as well. Depends on the size of the prison and it's perimeter, but in many cases yeah. |
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| ▲ | iso1631 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yet the US government can't seem to parade the hundreds of drones they are surely catching with the new operating model? It seems 100% of the drones they have shot down are US government ones. Which is it 1) US government is deliberately avoiding the cartel ones 2) US government is completely incompetent and the cartel outmatch the might of the US military 3) The cartel isn't actually using drones 4) The US government have shot down dozens of drones but are keeping quiet about it |
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