This whole administration is staffed with incompetent suck ups hired for their stupidity.

But I’m a writer and always reach for the most dramatic outcome for a mysterious happening.

Would an intelligent alien race choose to make first contact with these idiots?!

There’s, at least, a short story here.

showing off his military might playing with his toys.

In 2021 Pati Jinich proved all trump's lies about the border in a four part special 'La Frontera'
Why do I bring this up?
Because one episode, was devoted to El Paso
A thriving commerce benefiting BOTH countries!

It happens. I didn't buy that it would have been a "cartel" drone, though.

"illegals" and "trans"

Jeez, I forgot "domestic terrorist"

the story, as we currently understand it, is that DHS has been testing this laser, which was "on loan" from the military, for some time in El Paso, DHS did this at risk. FAA recognized the risk to public safety and enacted the shutdown because of the recklessness of DHS, and (my speculation) as a CYA move to prevent being the scapegoat. "they", the military, took no action to protect civilian air traffic. the whole story was clear as mud, and readers made the best judgement they could of the situation given the information available.

it currently seems that someone in the FAA deserves a lot of credit.

that said, cartel drones are a real problem. is it a problem that justifies using dangerous new weapons over US cities without coordination of other federal agencies?

A couple of years ago both a University of Washington game and a Seahawks game were halted on the same weekend because of private drones flying over the stadiums. We used to have an issue with them at the dog park, their horrible whining noise bothered all of us on what was supposed to be a fun outing.

Drone law is sticky and complicated but drones should definitely not be near crowds or airspace.

no disagreement from me that regulation and counter measures are necessary. this is about the latest deployment of military weaponry on our civilian population without our knowledge or consent, with potentially disastrous consequences. it should be very concerning that they shot down a party balloon with this laser, this means they did not properly ID the target before using this force. even in a war zone this is unacceptable, in a civilian area this should result in a congressional investigation.

It is at a retired Navy base, but pretty sure these were just obnoxious recreational drones and I didn't see any counter drone efforts.

so on edge and trigger happy that it made residents of Grovers Mill, NJ seem restrained by comparison.

there was some perfidy afoot.

I live within a hundred yards of the border in El Paso. It's a very secure place. Biggs field has been there a long, long time with no problems even though it is very close to El Paso International. I've seen the NASA PQ4 fly by house on it's way to the Gulf for hurricane season. There were quite a few combat aircraft flying east out of Biggs this past week so I suspect there was something from the pentagon causing an air safety issue. Anyway, with clowns in charge of everything we'll probably never know the truth.

...I'd need to look out the windows to confirm. They literally lie by reflex, about everything. Their lies are shamelessly transparent.