hckrnws

> Airline sources told Reuters the grounding of flights was believed to be tied to the Pentagon's use of counterdrone technology to address Mexican drug cartels' use of drones of the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-halts-all-flights-texass...

>. "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion.

The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.

The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming."

https://x.com/SecDuffy

“Threat” might be an exaggeration.

https://www.newsweek.com/us-military-shot-down-party-balloon...

Fox News first reported that the airborne object was intercepted after raising concerns of a potential drone operating near the southern border. Officials later concluded the object was not an unmanned aircraft but a party balloon, a U.S. official told the outlet.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-military-shot-down-party...

US military shot down party balloon near El Paso after drone suspicion, official says

Would be funny if they used some new fancy laser weapon to, let's say, discombobulate this imminent threat, as indicated by other reports.

Just think about the terrorist potential here. Buy a $10 party balloon, let it go near a major airport and they'll panic and shut down the airport. That's a lot of havoc for a couple of bucks.

Panic, shut down the airport, and reveal their top secret methods of defense against actual attacks.

And imagine the mayhem with 20 balloons, or 100. Very easy in trigger happy situation, a child is all you need.

But what do we know, maybe it was an evil terrorist party balloon. You see, the wall just needs to be a little higher to protect that beautiful country from all southern evils.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons

I have wondered if this would help Ukraine. Let a thousand balloons float serenely into Russian airspace. Some of them may have drones on them waiting to be cut loose and drop a payload on something important. Or they may be carrying a weighted 3d printed shell of a drone that does nothing, Russia can't afford to take that chance. And likewise in the other direction.

Which way are the prevailing winds at altitude over the Ukrainian-Russian border region, anyway?

Those winds favor Ukraine and this is something they are acutely aware of. Ukrainian drones into russian held territory have a range advantage.

> And imagine the mayhem with 20 balloons, or 100. Very easy in trigger happy situation, a child is all you need.

Sounds like a great way for a drug-runner to proceed - release 1000 balloons across a very large area, and have only one of them carry their payload of drugs (or whatever).

They (apparently) have much more efficient ways of doing this.

My guess would be that an actual catapult and an RC car would be enough. It may be necessary to be airborne to cross the land border, but only just enough for the physical barrier, the rest can be on land.

That said, I doubt they even bother with such small-scale trade. The narco-submarines are much higher capacity and now apparently well-built enough to be trans-pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine

It's one balloon, Michael. What could it cost, 10 dollars?

A large Mylar party balloon with helium? Yeah probably about that depending on where you are and the balloon type and size.

Yep. It seems like for this application you'd want a larger one, a few feet across, with a nice shiny metal foil coating for the radar to bounce off. So, not a $1 balloon.

Schiphol Airport has large No Balloons signs when you go down to the train station. Aluminum balloons can create havoc on the overhead power lines. It recently shut down the train service for the morning.

And they sell them right in the arrivals hall...

Maybe their born with it, maybe it’s…

How have we not blown ourselves up yet?

We do on a regular basis, it's just that most of the accidents are relatively small-scale, like one person being mistaken for an explosive-vest wearing terrorist chased onto a subway train and shot, or just one of many reactors being made to go Chernobyl, or just the occasional huge dam here and there failing and damaging a few million homes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Most people aren't sadistically malicious, and most security is professional, so random little failures like metalled balloons or reflections off clouds (or the moon) scaring a security system will only blow up to something important (even on the scale of previous paragraph) every decade or so.

> How have we not blown ourselves up yet?

It's not that we haven't, it's just that we can only observe from those few realities where we didn't.

Give it some time.

The Netherlands did not even blink when unknown actors (read Russians) were flying drones around the country but balloons is too much.

Hast du etwas Zeit für mich?

Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich

Von 99 Luftballons

Auf ihrem Weg zum ... well, El Paso as it turns out.

the English rewrite of course starts:

You and I in a little toyshop

Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got

Set them free at the break of dawn

'til one by one, they were gone...

>Just think about the terrorist potential here. Buy a $10 party balloon, let it go near a major airport and they'll panic and shut down the airport. That's a lot of havoc for a couple of bucks.

And rather than see the government have egg on face people (probably a majority here) will vote for politicians who promise all sorts of licenses and regulations on balloons because of it and then in 20yr when I complain and remind them that once upon a time every store used to sell balloons with no KYC BS they'll act like I'm some sort of barbarian, screech, wring their hands, clutch their pearls, etc.

At least then we’d stop throwing away all our helium away!

When you're done getting up on that cross the rest of the thread will be waiting for you

99 Luftballons

The lyrics of the original German version tell a story: 99 balloons are mistaken for UFOs, causing a military general to send pilots to investigate. Finding nothing but balloons, the pilots put on a large show of firepower. The display of force worries the nations along the borders and the defence ministers on each side encourage conflict to grab power for themselves.

In the end, a cataclysmic war results from the otherwise harmless flight of balloons and causes devastation on all sides without a victor, as indicated in the denouement of the song: "99 Jahre Krieg ließen keinen Platz für Sieger," which means "99 years of war left no room for victors." The anti-war song finishes with the singer walking through the devastated ruins of the world and finding a single balloon. The description of what happens in the final line of the piece is the same in German and English: "'Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen," or "Think of you and let it go."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons#Lyrics)

I'm learning to sing in German with Nena.

I especially like the way she rhymes "Captain Kirk" with "Feuerwerk".

https://genius.com/Nena-99-luftballons-lyrics

In other news, Director Gabbard and Secretaries Noem, Hegseth, and Kennedy met with Secretary Leavitt for her big Gender Reveal Party in El Paso...

She does that 'Captain Kirk' rhyme in the English version too though.

The real treat for German listeners is the first verse: ich, mich, dich, and neun-und-neunZIG (zig is pronounced like ich in the main German dialect).

With all of the 'neunundneunzig' (aka 99) repeated throughout the song, the ich/dich/mich/vielleicht rhymes is really a superior start over the English version.

It's a rhyming scheme that cannot be replicated in English at all.

Live performance (2018!) in German with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO5lfJ9dhs

(I can mostly understand spoken German. Have heard this song in German many times before. Never got the message. It's tricky!)

For me, singing the words myself forces me to understand them.

So just sing along. Every word, and understand as much as you can.

------

Once you know all the words, then the next step is to learn the grammar and learn how the words work together. If you give it a few months, full understanding will come!

* 99 red balloons go by … *

YHGTBFKM.

Unbelievable. Next I'll read they shot down "balloon boy".

If he’s here illegally they might

Doesn't really pass the sniff test. Why would you need a 10 day closure to deal with a drone incursion?

I'm guessing DoD and the FAA were squabbling over a test the military wanted to run, and it didn't go up the chain fast enough to get resolved before testing was scheduled to begin.

Edit: Here's the actual notice from the FAA[1]. Note that it was issued at 0332 UTC, but the restrictions weren't scheduled to go into place until 0630 UTC. Either the FAA is clairvoyant, or Sean Duffy is lying.

[1]https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

Recent updates say this was a unilateral call by FAA because DOD was refusing to coordinate with them for creating safety corridors for DOD drones and/or HEW usage. Issues came to a head after DOD shot down a highly threatening mylar party balloon, which FAA evidently considered to be a somewhat reckless use of military weaponry in a US city's airspace.

> Recent updates say this was a unilateral call by FAA because DOD was refusing to coordinate with them for creating safety corridors for DOD drones and/or HEW usage.

This is the first explanation I've seen that fits the odd facts perfectly. This is the kind of thing that happens when two regional bureaucracies collide. The FAA has long-standing mechanisms for coordinating military use of airspace with commercial and civilian flight operations.

But instead of the usual DEA border interdiction, the administration is now tasking the military to drive this. Military commanders on a new high-priority mission to intercept drones which can attempt to cross the border anytime and anywhere realized coordinating with the FAA would require committing to active corridors and time windows in advance, limiting their mission success and resisted. The FAA realized that could lead to lots of last minute airspace restrictions, flight cancellations and increased risk of a mistake resulting in downing a civilian flight.

The regional FAA administrators responsible for flight safety around El Paso decided to escalate the dispute by simply shutting down all civilian flights, knowing that would get immediate national attention. It was an extreme action but one that's within their purview if they can't guarantee the safety of the airspace. I'm sure they expected it would put political pressure on the military to limit operations and it worked. In a sense, it also helps the military commanders because being ordered to accept FAA operational limitations gives them cover if it reduces their mission effectiveness below what they'd promised. That's probably why the military wouldn't agree on their own without it being ordered from above. They're the ones responsible for deploying expensive new anti-drone tech in field ops for the first time. Future budgets and careers are on the line.

Damage to civilians planes is certainly possible, but more likely imo is inflicting physical injury and blindness. Those lasers are no joke.

Update: DoD’s pushing back on the story, saying that Border Patrol and ICE were the agencies using high-energy weaponry to shoot down party balloons, much to the consternation of NORTHCOM.

Source?

https://apnews.com/article/faa-el-paso-texas-air-space-close...

> The Pentagon allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to use an anti-drone laser earlier this week, leading the Federal Aviation Administration to suddenly close the airspace over El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

FAA ought to be drowning Kegseth’s DoD in bureaucracy at every possible opportunity, after the massacre over the Potomac River a year ago. They deserve no leniency whatsoever.

Additionally, that airport would be used to coordinating with the military due to proximity of both Fort Bliss and White Sands.

It sounds like the DOD was being unusually indifferent to the concerns, and after deadly prior mishaps, the FAA has to be particularly careful here.

Can you share a source for this? It's not in the updates to the NYT article.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

[flagged]

I think you're looking for Facebook, not HN

reckless use of military weaponry in a US city's airspace.

[dead]

Balloon looked brown?

Charitably guessing that if they don't know how long they'll need to keep airspace closed then you give yourself plenty of time and rescind early if necessary, as opposed to continually issuing extensions which could cause confusion.

Or you say “until further notice”.

Indeterminate end dates are not a new problem.

FAA restrictions aren’t applied in a hand wavy fashion.

This story would suggest otherwise.

In what way?

They don't have a mechanism for doing that. A military base near me has had continuous flight restrictions for decades. Each notice lasts a few months (e.g. https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_5_8746) and before it expires they issue a new one.

The NOTAM system certainly does allow users to specify the end date for a TFR as "PERM" (Permanent).

For example, see the Disneyland TFR (FDC 4/3635): https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_4_3635

Can you imagine how much more wild the speculation would have been if they had said that instead?

Was it meant to be "up to 10 days" rather than 10 days? If the drones are no longer flying over the airport it makes sense they'd open it back up.

The closure was for 10 days full stop. I can't think of a reason to do that in response to an active threat.

I think the point was to get headlines and attention, as someone else said it sounds like the FAA is frustrated that the DoD isn't cooperating, and this seems like a possible attempt to make this frustration public to pressure DoD into playing more nicely.

This is OpSec 101. Making the public closure too "tight" around the operational timeline could (negligently) leak operational details. You can always cancel a closure later.

Is Opsec 101 to increase the estimate by two orders of magnitude? "We think this operation will take about 10 weeks, so we're estimating 10 years."

The answer is "long enough to avoid giving away operational details," not some robotically applied constant multiplier like 10x.

We also don't know whether they expected this to take 1 day or more. Just because it worked out quickly doesn't mean that's the "worst case" operational timeline.

Isn’t that how estimating timelines should work?

Is saying "indefinitely" or "until further notice" any worse than "10 days?" The specificity of the timeline was what caught my eye.

Indefinitely infers permanence. You’ll scare everyone off with that language.

Ding ding. Always assume weaponized incompetence in this administration:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

> FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford on Tuesday night decided to close the airspace — without alerting White House, Pentagon or Homeland Security officials, sources said.

In the meantime, the politician responsible of course made up a quick lie and yall ran with it, fantasizing about cartel MANPADs:

> Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement, "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion."

[dead]

Drug smuggling shaheeds close to the ground..

[flagged]

  > yup, it was a lie

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/11/el-paso-air-space-cl...

Reuters has it too. It was indeed a lie.

And now the truth is out. IT WAS A FUCKING PARTY BALOON THAT GOT SHOT DOWN WITH A LASER, without warning or notice, causing a general freakout at the FAA about what was happening and where and what else might be at risk.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-military-shot-down-party...

It was not a "Drone Incursion". "Cartels" were not involved.

And just like I suspected, Duffy lied through his fucking teeth. I will accept your apology now, in this flagged subthread no one wants to notice.

I'm merely passing on live information to update the conversation. Don't shoot the messenger.

Is it OK to comment on and critique the message, though?

When you have multiple paragraphs in a quotation, each paragraph must start with a quote. Only the last paragraph in the quotation ends with a quote. Just pick up any book with dialogue in it and see for yourself. This is why I think your comment came across as you personally endorsing the official statement; it's not clear at first glance where the quote ends. The correct/incorrect placing of quotes is the kind of subtle thing that would lead someone to interpret one thing or the other without actually realizing what just happened.

Which writing style standard does that correspond to?

This is an internet discussion board with people from diverse backgrounds. Informal quotation style is common. Your comment is the first time I’ve seen someone assert that new paragraphs should start with a quote.

It's common practice when dealing with sites and clients that don't have fancy quoting features, going all the way back to USENET forums and probably before. It avoids just this ambiguity when you might be mixing quote and commentary.

Hmm, honestly I’ve mostly seen > used for quotations in plain-text-y environments. Not sure about USENET, but ever since email it seems to be the de-facto standard everywhere. (On HN, I mostly see >, italics, or monospace as the quotation indicators.)

Not sure which particular standard it is but it is a thing. Agreed that it’s nitpicking though, it’s pretty easy to understand the boundaries of the quotation either way.

And I was merely commenting on the likely veracity of the quote you posted. No shooting happening here.

HackerNews will be shut down for 10 days as we deploy counter-messenger technology.

Good news, the messenger has been neutered. You may continue messaging.

Productivity will go up, stress levels will go down, there will be fewer cases of down-vote-button-induced-carpal-tunnel-syndrome - DVBICTS - so it sounds like it is worth a try.

Thats true - and I noticed that (but I wanted clarity from shots fired). Though the other follow on comments are interesting - say I may or may not endorse by how I wrote it, that my grammar/punctuation (it was just a fast cut copy) makes it look like i'm endorsing.

My comment is a non statement but people are clearly riled up these days.

It seems like the messenger might endorse the message though, and is attempting to be coy.

Folks should be careful of people using the "messenger" title to attempt to obtain the appearance of impartiality.

Looks like they shot the drone down with a laser:

> UPDATE (CNN): Source briefed by FAA tells me that military activity behind the El Paso flight ban included unmanned aircraft operations and laser countermeasure testing in airspace directly adjacent to civilian routes into El Paso International. Airspace restriction just lifted.

https://x.com/petemuntean/status/2021586247827828812

Good thing they allocated 10 days of airspace shutdown for taking out a single (edit: or a few) drone(s).

I get the feeling this was a case of really wanting to test a new weapon combined with general organizational dysfunction for something unusual like this.

On CNN, they talked about how a shutdown like this would be the first time something like this has happened since 9/11. Is that really correct?

How do we know it was a "single" drone, or that they knew for sure that it was?

New updates are in.

The single drone was in fact a mylar party balloon.

Who's to say that balloon wasn't transporting a kilo of cocaine?

Indeed.

So with this lack of information: Why 10 days? Why not 3, or 12, or some other number instead?

Or: Why must there be a number?

Is the officious equivalent of "We've got some shit to deal with, so El Paso's airspace is closed for now" insufficient?

CNN is now reporting that the FAA had a meeting scheduled with the DoD on the 20th to discuss use of the system, but someone decided to use the system earlier. (The 20th is one day short of 10 days.) They also report that CBP was operating it.

https://lite.cnn.com/2026/02/11/us/faa-el-paso-texas-flight-...

> Or: Why must there be a number?

NOTAMs require a range of timestamps for which they're in effect.

Well this could get ugly. https://x.com/Acyn/status/2021613820553335090

I personally don't think that's the whole story. They're likely going to act against the cartels to take out cross-border drone capabilities and are preparing for S-A retaliation as well.

A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them just like 9/11 or the Iran hostage crisis. The US has been trying to extent the "foreign terrorist" label and casus belli to drug activities forever to justify military operations (ex. the "arrest" of Maduro was for drugs, not oil/Cuba/political stuff). That would be a massive self-own on the cartels part. (And if it did happen, just like 9/11, it would be used as justification for anything even remotely immigration or drug related at every level.)

My understanding over the US/MX cartel relations is performing an invasion and “act of war” would solidify asylum status claims by Mexican residents and throw a wrench into the whole immigration scheme every administration plays.

But then again this time seems different, laws aren’t followed or upheld. Human rights are a fleeting staple.

Starting a war with Mexico would be a pretext for interning everyone of "Mexican" ethnicity, citizen or otherwise, as was done to Japanese nationals.

Its mincing words a bit, but an attack targeting drug cartel assets wouldn't necessarily be viewed as a war with Mexico. It could lead to that for sure, and the Mexican government could declare it an act of war, but we did just see the US literally invade a foreign country and arrest their sitting leader without war being declared on either side.

Yet. It has certainly ratcheted up worldwide tensions, to put it mildly.

The US hasn't declared war since World War II.

I suspect Mexicans would view it as another Pancho Villa Expedition, which was also event where neither side declared war.

We declared war on drugs and on terror, maybe AIDs and Covid as well? Though you're right, we haven't declared war on another state since WWII despite being in multiple wars over that time.

I assumed when you wrote "war being declared" you meant in Constitutional sense which reserves to Congress the power to declare war.

Not in the metaphorical "war on poverty" sort of way.

FWIW, examples in addition to Maduro are Aguinaldo (Philippines), Noriega (Panama), Hussein (Iraq), and Aristide (Haiti).

(Technically speaking, the US didn't recognize Philippine independence so didn't consider Aguinaldo to be its president, but instead a rightful cession from the Kingdom of Spain due to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish–American War, where the US had made a formal declaration of war.)

(Also, the US says Aristide's departure was voluntary.)

its a lot more expensive than the US properly controlling what weapons are leaving its borders.

rather than arming the cartels to fight against the mexican government, thr US could just... not

[flagged]

From what I've seen in the news, and also in history books, and also from anecdotes from the family of a previous (American dual national) partner, I don't agree that Americans as a whole see the international border as "a bright line" nor "a defining point of jurisdictional change".

Some Americans may, I don't know how many, but definitely not Americans as a collective.

I tried writing a comment to explain the Chicano perspective, but since I am a non-Chicano American, I was just making things up.

Suffice it to say that the Chicano experience and perspectives on nationalism are different than that of typical Americans. And that Americans cannot understand the political relationships or the border states or the Chicano enclaves without accepting that our perspective is not shared by them, and their worldviews on race, ethnicity, culture, territory, nationalism and legal status has led us to this point in 2026.

Our national motto is "E PLURIBUS UNUM" and our structure is a republic with 50 states. But like the Internet is a network of networks, the United States is a nation of immigrants, where not everyone is playing by the same rules.

I take it you don’t know much about the Troubles, then. The SAM missiles would be saved for returning ICE Air flights, not Delta.

> A cartel using a SAM against a US civilian aircraft would massively solidify public opinion against them

In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

> In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

They definitely care about not ratting the cage with the US - they don't harm US federal agents, or take US hostages, and the last incident of Americans being killed in Mexico by cartel-affiliated gunmen in a case of mistaken identity - it was the cartel who handed the perps over and apologised[0]

[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/09/us/mexico-matamoros-ameri...

It is, of course. What they mean, I assume, is that it would reach a tipping point where intervention would be more broadly supported. Virtually everyone is willing to say "that's bad" with regards to something happening somewhere, it is far less agreed upon that the US should intervene in that bad thing. An effective tipping point is probably something on the order of "we feel attacked".

Much of the world was against Saddam Hussein, but it took the wholesale invention of an Iraqi nuclear program to justify and get authorization for deposing him through international military action. Iraq didn't attack us, though in attacking an oil partner they might as well have, but the public certainly didn't feel attacked until someone dreamed up the prospect of Iraq nuking Israel, Europe, and/or us.

In that case, the justification was a prerequisite to Congress authorizing a war without losing elections, and then selling it to the US's allies so we wouldn't have to send quite as many troops and thus lose elections. This administration demonstrably doesn't care about justification, authorization, alliances, or elections. So why bother? If they're going to stage an arbitrary Venezuela-like military operation in Mexico because of "cartels", they wouldn't wait for a civilian mass-death event, or for Congress, or regional allies, or public opinion. They didn't wait for any of that in Venezuela.

TBQH this just felt like a cheap and easy way for them to perpetuate the idea that we're always at war with terrorists. Now they're "narcoterrorists", but they're still "terrorists". And this administration might not like obstacles like authorization and due process, but it loves cheap, easy terrorists.

I don't mean that many people actively support them (in the US, my understand is in some areas they do have local support in Mexico, but anyway), but rather that this is not the forefront of most peoples minds, nor would people necessarily support any conceivable action against them. Moreover, many would criticize efforts against them as "failed war on drugs" and see it primarily in that lens absent any clear attack on US civilians not involved in the trade.

There were plenty of people that were not against Pablo Escobar as he spent a lot of money back in his home town. Once the violence escalated, like when they took down a civilian flight, even that support waned. So I can see where GP is saying similar that by the time cartels get to the point of shooting down civilian aircraft even those that did support them would consider that the final straw.

There's still a difference between the opinions on cartels and the opinion on an invasion and bombing of groups hopefully-related-to-cartels during another years long not-war.

The world where Americans buy billions in illegal drugs every year and turn a blind eye to cartels. "My dealer is nice"

The cartel can recreate 9/11 and people will still buy drugs.

> In what world is public opinion not universally against the cartels? It's hard to take you seriously after that.

I think you’re getting tripped up by some specific wording and managing to miss the point the poster was making. The point should be taken seriously even if imprecisely articulated. While most folks are against the cartels, there’s a much wider range of belief on how much they warrant government or military intervention and to what degree we should be spending various resources on them. The historical state of play was(is?) that cartels are criminal organizations which are generally a policing matter that has escalated to specialized policing agencies and multinational networks of policing agencies. The marked escalation of the military into this is a more recent piece that is somewhat more controversial. One doesn’t have to be “in favor of the cartel” to ask questions about whether our military should be bombing boats or invading countries to ostensibly neutralize organizations that historically have been subject to policing operations.

To go back to the parallel… the public wasn’t in favor of Al Qaeda before 9/11 either, but there was a huge difference in the level of response the public was in favor of after. It turned from an intelligence monitoring level of response into an active military invasion of multiple countries.

The best part about bombing the boats is that the second strikes on them were war crimes, while the few survivors that were picked up... All ended up repatriated.

If they were all drug runners, why weren't they put on trial? Why was so much effort made to sink all the evidence? Why did an admiral resign, when told to do this?

Everybody involved, starting from the people pulling the trigger, to the people giving the orders should be getting a fair trial and a swift punishment for that little stint of piracy and murder.

But these people all act like there is no such thing as consequences.

>But these people all act like there is no such thing as consequences.

Are there?

There could be. Don't settle for anything less.

[flagged]

What cross-border drone capabilities, drug deliveries? People are talking like the cartels are conducting Ukraine-style drone warfare and blowing up Americans on the regular. Let's stick to a factual baseline here.

Well, turns out I was right, so I can't help you there if you didn't understand what I said.

Right about what? You're just flattering yourself without any substance.

What does that even mean? Cartels can buy those DJI drones from China by the container load.

Russia and Ukraine can't stop drones. Does the US have a secret weapon?

> Does the US have a secret weapon?

It sounds like that's what was being tested requiring the NOTAM. We just don't know if it did or didn't work. It could have failed so badly they decided to just shut it down, or it could have worked so successfully they decided no more testing was needed.

> Russia and Ukraine can't stop drones. Does the US have a secret weapon?

That does actually seem to be what they are saying now, yes.

The only confirmed thing they have shot down was a child's birthday balloon

This admin is focused on the message of stopping the inflow of drugs to the US. There are probably some true believers, and there are probably some reactionary accelerationists. There’s also significant evidence of amateurism, misinformation, and incompetence.

All of that coming together, I see this action coming out of meeting where

  - one party was convinced that this would solve the fentanyl epidemic
  - one party was hoping this would escalate military action in Mexico
  - one party was convinced that America had lost its masculine bravado and taking swift and unprecedented action like this would make their wife respect them again
  - one party was busy making “bets” on Kalshi

If the US wanted to end the fentanyl and xylazine and nitazene epidemic, it would legalize the controlled manufacture, sale, and usage of the drugs being adulterated. This won't happen, because the 50-year-old War on Drugs is a load-bearing pillar of the US government.

Xylazine and fentanyl are already legally distributed in the US. I believe Xylazine is still unscheduled.

https://www.dechra-us.com/our-products/us/equine/horse/presc...

Those are the adulterants, not the drugs being adulterated such as heroin, meth, and MDMA.

For the most part, no customer wants fentanyl. The dealers like it because it's a cheap booster for cutting the drugs that their customers actually do want to buy. It just has this unfortunate side effect of making small overdoses lethal.

That's why "ending the fentanyl crisis" is a curious goal. We had a perfectly good War on Drugs going on, but fentanyl is making the illicit drug industry too dangerous. You'd think that if we wanted to stop drugs, and we knew how to do that, we'd stop drugs. Instead we're stopping fentanyl, so we can get back to the regularly scheduled version of the War on Drugs that was always intended to last forever.

Fentanyl is the drug for effect, but it's being sold as a cheap alternative to heroin, or as counterfeit heroin. Unfortunately for users, the effect is short-lasting and it is about 30x as potent, so it is difficult to for them to dose properly. The traffickers like it because many more doses fit into a small space.

I'm not sure I believe that making heroin legal and available for "recreational" use would solve the problem. People who propose it usually say that it's working in another country (such as Portugal), but then you look at that country and it's not really legal or available, it's just that they do not jail people for personal use anymore. I can agree with that, but it doesn't solve the trafficking problem. The only way to get rid of trafficking is to either allow people to easily buy it legally without onerous taxation, or to reduce demand to zero. If you do the former, you will still be stuck with lots of addicts, the associated crime and suffering, and probably many overdoses. Most likely, the number of addicts will increase, as they did with OxyContin, Actiq, etc. Worth mentioning that Actiq is fentanyl and it was in demand.

Reducing demand is a multifaceted problem with complicated solutions, many of which are politically unpopular.

Interestingly, some drugs can simply be taken off the market and the demand plummets. Quaalude is one example. Nobody stepped in to make an illicit version and the users probably just stopped using or switched to benzodiazepines and then hopefully stopped those. Unfortunately, it seems like we have a persistent demand for opioids.

I live in Seattle, decriminalizing drugs didn't turn out that way here.

Can you elaborate?

Do you mean that drug dependence has become more visible? That petty crime has increased?

One fun thing about harm reduction policies is that, as a result of fewer people dying, more people are on the street. So while you don’t see people in the morgue on your daily commute, you do see them down the alleyway. This side effect may be more unpleasant for you, but that’s only because you’re not personally inconvenienced by the corpse sitting in the freezer at the coroner.

"controlled" is key. Seattle decriminalized drug use. That's a tiny part of a larger solution rooted in harm reduction.

Singapore kills drug dealers. That works much better.

Idk, if the number of people executed increases over time, maybe it doesn't.

https://www.afr.com/world/asia/singapore-executions-touch-22...

This article cites Singapore saying the existing laws mostly get low-level users and not kingpins because kingpins operate outside of the country.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/singapore-drug-executions/

Decriminalization of drug use doesn't have to mean decriminalization of anything else. Thieves and murderers should be prosecuted regardless of any state induced by the voluntary ingestion chemicals.

Decriminalization without legalization is something I can't support. If it's not illegal for me to have and use a drug, them why should I be forced to buy it from criminals? Either legalize it, or go whole hog on criminalizing it. Execute the dealers and put users into mandatory rehab, or let people buy it in shops. Any of these half measures are intolerable, they exist to make sure the situation is in a constant state of tension, to nobody's benefit but the governments.

Ideally we would pick one or the other on a drug by drug basis. Executing people for selling weed isn't something I actually want, but neither do I want them simply imprisoned or fined either. But with shit like fent? Trying to find a single policy to fit both drugs is inane.

There's a significant number of people who want their life micromanaged and a significant number of people who want to micromanage other people's lives. The need to have a sense of control and therefore safety manifests itself in weird ways in various populations and can't be contained without a lot of sustained, continuous effort, just like the other base desires of humankind. I just wish the federal government didn't have a hand in it, and then all the people who want to execute weed smokers can do so in their own states and leave the other states alone.

Neighbouring countries including Thailand and Indonesia also have the death penalty for drug trafficking. It is almost impossible to visit parts of those countries without being receiving unsolicited offers of drugs...

I can’t tell if this is sarcastic or not.

Anyway: Capital punishment is an elegant solution.

If we're having a serious conversation about effective drug policies, it would be remise to not discuss Singapore. For some reason the conversation online is always about America and European countries, as if the rest of the world doesn't exist.

I think it usually doesn’t come up because Singapore is a very complicated country, perhaps the most “outlier” country on the planet. Most people in the US (even well-educated ones) don’t know nearly enough about the social, cultural, and historical dynamics to speak on it intelligently, let alone compare and contrast it to a country like the United States.

Might as well talk about drug policy in South Sudan to be honest.

Edit: I will say I do have one Singaporean expat friend who finds capital punishment for drug possession vile, and cites it as one of the reasons she no longer lives there. Along with the crushing wealth disparity between the servant class and the working class. Not that it adds much to the conversation except personal flavor.

Decriminalizing public intoxication didn't turn out to be a good idea.

It's like if Canada wanted to end gun smuggling and school shootings, it would legalize the controlled manufacture, sale, and usage of the guns being banned. But they won't.

If I squint gun control doesn’t look much different than legalized drugs. They’re both just a question of how restrictive the regulation is.

There are still legal ways to have a gun in Australia and many other countries that “ban guns”. They don’t have total bans, they just have more restrictive regulations than the United States.

Consider how we regulate alcohol or marijuana as examples of how legalization of drugs works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control

I mean, prohibition works while legalization just makes more people use whatever you legalize and increases the negative externalities of its use. You see that almost universally (alcohol, drugs, sex work). The exception is it gets rid of the black markets and some (but not all) of the violence associated with them.

So if the goal is to put cartels out of business then yea, full legalization would help. If the goal is to stop overdoses and addiction then absolutely not.

Alcohol is legal. We don't have gun battles between gangs of smugglers, or between them and the cops. We also don't have people dying or going blind from trying to drink wood alcohol.

But we still have a depressingly large number of alcoholics. The campaign against drunk driving has helped reduce one set of negative side effects, but not others.

The decline in alcohol consumed by Gen Z is interesting though. We’ll see if it holds with Gen Alpha, or if it can just be chalked up to Gen Z dealing with Covid during their formative years when other generations would have been partying quite a bit.

Maybe an unintended positive externality of marijuana legalization?

So alcohol prohibition worked at reducing alcohol consumption. The organized crime and violence are negative externalities that were real, but my point is that if you're just looking at the goal of stopping drinking, then prohibition worked.

> one party was busy making “bets” on Kalshi

This would arguably be much more severe -- and quite likely already happening -- than the whole "congress trading stocks" thing because most of those (besides the sports ones) tie very directly to government actions in a way that the economy or a large company in generally doesn't as predictably.

It's definitely already happening and should lead to a congressional inquiry if we had a functioning congress: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gn93292do

Isn't the whole idea of prediction markets to let insiders bet on things so that you'll get insider info leaked?

Maybe this is fine until it incentivizes easily-achieved but adverse actions that would greatly harm the public.

For a silly example, I would imagine the streaker from this year’s Super Bowl is either (a) a complete idiot, or (b) put a significant amount of money on a “prediction market” of there being a streaker at the Super Bowl - more than enough to cover his ticket, legal, and medical costs.

That has already happened before: https://frontofficesports.com/offshore-sportsbook-voids-bets...

Yes and no. AIUI there's generally a lot less liquidity available in prediction markets, which limits the profitability.

Even if you have perfect clairvoyance, you still need someone to take the other side of the bet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3I6gFmlls

Watching the dynamics of the vote count on this post throughout the day has been interesting.

> bets

Investments on Kalshi!

--one party was hoping we'd stop talking about Epstein

> reactionary

they want to overthrow the Jacobites

> accelerationists

how's that going to work ?

Reactionary accelerationists want a local war of some sort so they can grab war powers and then roll back all the US's post-WW2 social progress (and most of the New Deal too).

My understanding is accelerationists or liberals to go full hog so that they can go "see".

For my entire life, the US's idea of "liberals" is extremely small-c-conservative, Chesterton's fence style.

The Republicans may wave the "Conservative" flag, but they're the only ones I see going full-hog on pretty much anything.

That said, pre-Trump Republicans were milquetoast in comparison to what has happened over the last 13 months. Assuming US democracy doesn't collapse before the next transition of power, I wouldn't want to guess if the next Democrat government will continue this trend or be as full-hog in disregarding all checks-and-balances constraints on executive power to get stuff done.

"FAA abruptly lifts order halting El Paso airport flights for 10 days" - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/faa-el-paso-airport.html

don't attribute to security concerns...what can be explained by incompetence...

As someone else mentioned, there’s some speculation in aviation subreddits that the bounds of the altitude restriction map to the MANPAD capabilities that some cartels are purported to have.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1r1s4zt/comment/o...

My read is that the admin is planning forceful strikes on the cartels within Mexico and is worried about their ability to retaliate by taking down US aircraft across the border.

Edit: The closure has now been kiboshed. The wording seems a little “don’t panic-y” to me, but better that than the alternative! https://x.com/FAANews/status/2021583720465969421

Knowing the restriction goes to 18k certainly says that either S-A or A-S reach must be limited but the as your post points out no buffer between MANPAD actual range and the limit imposed. I think unlikely to say MANPAD, specifically.

There's a small private airfield to the west with only a single victor airway connecting to el-paso. the victors end at 17999 ft, effectively cutting traffic for non-commercial or non-business jet operators.

Closure of the victor airway there seems, again limiting airborne craft due to airborne hazards.

Hazards in the air, near the surface that are, seemingly, unplanned with a cone pointing at mexico.

That's kind of the most anyone will get until more info, could be some urgent testing of some capability or response to small craft (drones) coming over the boarder. Emergency timing could be to garner interest or emphasize importance, which works well politically.

Las Cruces International Airport and Dana Jetport are unaffected.

The restriction goes to 18k because that's the top of VFR space. Anyone operating above 18k has to be on an IFR clearance and under positive ATC control. That makes it easy for the feds to make a call and say "Hey, center, get everyone out of this airspace" wheras in the VFR altitudes it's very difficult for them to legally clear the space since a VFR plane could be flying around not talking to anyone.

I only know about Las Cruces from the Organ Mountain Outfitters training material in the DaVinci Resolve sample footage. Sadly they closed a few months ago, which is a shame because I never got my arse in gear to order a shirt from them.

Even Cartels know that shooting down civilian aircraft in US airspace would be an escalation that would lead to heavy retaliation. Doesn't seem likely to me.

Coming from groups that just pickup busses of people to murder, I wouldn’t be so sure that firing back at the US would be out of the question.

Murdering buses of people doesn't bring the full force of the US military on them. The difference is the risk not the depravity.

This is the answer. The cartels would have to be insane to poke that particular bear. They would get crushed like a bug. IIRC they murdered a single US undercover officer in the 90s and the retaliation was so bad that they themselves handed over the perpetrators.

> They would get crushed like a bug.

Much as I despise them, I'm not so sure that would be the case. I seem to remember folks saying the same about the Taliban, and the cartels have a lot more money and high-tech kit, than the Taliban.

Asymmetric warfare is a tough gig, on all sides.

I don’t think the technology matters nearly as much as the asymmetry. Iraq had better technology than the Taliban and their military didn’t last a week.

True enough, but the cartels are also experts at running what is basically guerrilla warfare, against each other. Not sure if the Mexican Army has ever tried to take them on. A lot of cartel soldiers come from the army.

That conflates two very different things:

* A conventional military war, on a battlefield: Neither Saddam Hussein's military nor the cartels nor the Taliban would last long against the US.

* An unconventional insurgency: The Iraqis quickly turned to this approach and it worked very well for them, as it did for the Taliban. The Taliban won, and the Iraqi insurgency almost drove the US out of Iraq and was eventually co-opted.

The cartels of course would choose the latter. They, the Taliban, etc. are not suicidal.

The Taliban did not "win" their insurgency.

The US decided to leave because staying was not politically popular, and left. They were not beaten by the Taliban, they were beaten by the political climate at home.

If someone is actively kicking your ass, then they decide that you aren't worth the effort to keep hurting and decide to walk away, that doesn't mean you "won" the fight even if you get what you want afterwards.

The Taliban control what they and the US and allies fought for. That's winning. Your personal requirement of how it must be won is not important - nobody cares how it was done and it doesn't change the outcome. The Taliban don't care and the US and its allies don't care.

It's also a perfectly common, expected way to win a war: First, wars always end with political solutions. The most well known principle of warfare is that it is 'politics conducted by other means' (i.e., by violence rather than by law or diplomacy). If there is no political solution, the war never ends. That's why the US didn't win the war in Afghanistan after decades - they couldn't create a stable political solution because they were unable to impose one on the Taliban, who in the end imposed one on the US and its allies.

Victory by outlasting enemy resources, including political will, is fundamental to warfare; wars end when resources to fight (for the political outcome) run out, but few end in total kinetic destruction of those resources - someone runs out of money or political will. It's also the explicit strategy of insurgencies. Enemies of the US know it very well and have used it for generations - that is how North Vietnam won, for example. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Afghans famously told them, 'you have the clocks (the technology), we have the time'.

Annoying your parents until they give you a cookie is still getting a cookie. Just because you didn't leverage overwhelming military firepower to get the cookie does not mean you aren't holding a cookie

The analogy here is you are verbally arguing with your parents over whether or not you can have a cookie.

Your parents get frustrated and leave. You now take a cookie from the jar.

You have a cookie, but that doesn't mean you won the argument.

I think the key difference between the Taliban and the cartels is that the Taliban were a bunch of ideologues who actually enjoyed being an insurgency and living under siege in caves, with making money from the drugs trade being a mere means to their real purpose of fighting infidels, whereas the cartel leadership sees wealth and power from controlling the drugs trade as an end, crushing local rivals as a means, and would really rather avoid the sort of conflict that's bad for their medium term business prospects.

I mean, some sort of cartels would bounce back after any "war on drugs" because supply and demand, but the people running them aren't hankering for martyrdom or glory over consolidating their territory and accumulating.

The Taliban was repeatedly crushed. All of the leadership was killed many times over. The problem is the Taliban is an idea that transcends individual human members and it can always be reconstituted. It also benefited from being able to harbor supporters in Pakistan, which is a nuclear power the US was not willing to also invade.

There isn't a real analogy there because cartel leaders have no official state support anywhere, let alone in a bordering nuclear power, but even if they did, it hardly seems reassuring from their perspective to know the drug trade will outlive them after they all get killed. It's different when you're deeply religious and believe what you're doing is worth dying for and the larger arc of history is more important than your own life and wellbeing. I don't think drug lords think that way.

All this is true. Yet the cartels operate like militarized insurgents. Adopting similar tactics seen in Ukraine fighting so it’s interesting to say the least that they might be utilizing drone technology for their purposes.

I didn’t mean to start this giant thread about Mexican Cartels but here we are. Most think it’s just an isolated problem. Others know it’s more widespread. I simply stated that these murderous thugs are out there in full force with technology and armored vehicles. If provoked, they would lash out. It’s ridiculous because of course going up against the US is a losing proposition but each “generation” of cartel leader thinks they can somehow manage it.

You are right rationality is their strongest character trait.

How are they not rational? Violence is a tool. They operate an illegal business so they can’t sue other parties for breach of contract. They can't call the police if they are robbed or file an insurance claim for what was taken. Even the over-the-top violence has a rationale. They aren't punishing the victims as much as they are attempting to broadcast that there is a higher price to be paid than any gain from giving information, to reduce their future losses and enforcement efforts. It isn’t moral or ethical, but I wouldn’t say it is irrational.

Lots of organized crime around the world manages to operate without cutting all the limbs off somebody then arranging them like flowers in a "vase" made out of the poor soul's ribcage. The cartels take violence far beyond what is pragmatically necessary. Their system of crime breeds excessive violence and insanity.

Marketing, if you don't know the answer it's always marketing

This stuff mostly followed after the zetas. It was a very deliberate strategy to compete in a hostile landscape that others eventually copied to survive.

It's notable that a lot of the Zetas came from a military special forces background, making it seem as if their extreme brutality was a strategic choice inculcated during their training.

https://ctc.westpoint.edu/a-profile-of-los-zetas-mexicos-sec...

> How are they not rational?

It's the meth.

The cartels are incredibly rational - what they lack are morals and ethics

Do you have much evidence of them behaving irrationally?

It's a business not an ideology.

I would recommend reading the Freakinomics book or listen to their podcasts on drugs.

TL;DR: drug cartels are run like businesses. They are very rational. But, unlike your boss, their boss can also shoot you in the face if you annoy them too much

How did that full force of the US military work out in Vietnam?

Millions of dead Vietnamese.

In any case that was a war against a hardened, experienced, determined enemy fighting for its freedom from any form of colonial occupation, both as a formal military and as an insurgent force in South Vietnam.

I scarcely think the Mexican population would rise up in defense of the cartels here.

The problem is you can't just target the cartels, the cartels are made up of random Mexican people. There is an almost guarantee that any significant US strikes would be 90%+ civilian casualties.

A non-aligned population will look out for their own interests and are aware that the attention of the US is temporary but the cuadillismo that lead to cartels are a durable cultural artifact.

  The Battle of Culiacán, also known locally as the Culiacanazo and Black 
  Thursday, was a failed attempt to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Sinaloa 
  Cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who was wanted in the United States 
  for drug trafficking.
  
  Around 700 cartel gunmen began to attack civilian, government and military 
  targets around the city, despite orders from Ovidio sent at security forces' 
  request. Massive towers of smoke could be seen rising from burning cars and 
  vehicles. The cartels were well-equipped, with improvised armored vehicles, 
  bulletproof vests, .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles, rocket launchers, grenade 
  launchers and heavy machine guns.

I think a lot of people would be cheering on the destruction of the cartels.

They'd probably quickly stop cheering as their own homes and families were destroyed as collateral damage, which is what would happen if the "full force of the US military" were deployed against the cartels.

The last time America invaded Mexico City it created martyrs. It's a fascinating story that they do not teach at US highschools lol.

Curious, because the martyrs were Mexican high-school students.

We were briefly greeted as liberators in Iraq too.

The destruction of cartels would involve careful policing and corruption controls, the best American administrations have been bad at this. The worst... can barely put its pants on much less dismantle foreign organized crime. You can't shoot a missile at a cartel and poof it's just gone.

It was never used, there.

Pretty badly for both sides

I don't really think you thought through that one. It sounds like what your saying is that the Vietnamese won and thats the outcome that matters. It does matter but that isn't the issue - it is the cost that everyone is talking about: the amount of destruction that was brought upon the country and people was terrible.

The distinction is those are cases where they are murdering Mexican citizens. If a cartel murdered a bus of people in America I suspect most any administration would retaliate in some form.

Dude, Americans are getting kidnapped and murdered in Mexico all the time. The cartels don’t care your nationality.

If the administration strikes cartels first, they may find it egregious enough to do what they refused to do in the past…

I don’t rule out any options when it comes to murderous organizations.

*EDIT* This isn’t me saying don’t go to Mexico or that Mexico is unsafe either. Out of the tourists that visit from America, 0.001% see violence or are kidnapped or anything negative. If anything it would be petty theft near cruise ports and resort towns that would be the biggest culprit of crime for Americans.

“Dude”, murdering a us citizen in Mexico is different than murdering an entire bus of people on US soil.

You say it’s happening all the time but then say it’s .01%.

Looked it up myself, maybe 40 to 300 people annually. Hard to discern how many of those are pure tourism vs visiting family. I suspect you have a greater risk visiting family, especially if it’s a border town.

13.5mm US citizens visit d Mexico in 2024 so .00002% got kidnapped. I bet that number is even lower when you separate pure tourism vs dual nationals or similar going back home to visit.

The point is any action taken on US soil in a large capacity would be seen as an attack by any administration.

I never said “In the US” guy

Why are you being so rude, dude?

Your right anything can happen but any large attack on US grounds or equally blowing up a plane on either side of the border is going to bring the full weight of the US on the cartels. It makes little sense. Cartels have for decades ingrained that into their organizations no matter how violent that may be.

Dismissing their violence is rude. They are capable and willing to do whatever. As evidenced here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_San_Fernando_massacre

It's a much bigger problem that you all realize. Right now they have authorized attacks on border patrol agents...

I'm not saying that the US wouldn't retaliate, I'm saying our enemies are getting bolder under this administration's pressure. Turns out the closure was because of drones... But it's still a real issue in Mexico that Mexico would love the eradicate.

When did I dismiss the violence? You’re flapping with hyperbole.

When the cartels make their first major attack we can circle back on this until then I don’t think there is much to mention. Cartels are powerful but still not as powerful as a first world military. Air assets work wonders against ground targets. Isolated violence or the memo (has not happened yet) that CJNG has authorized hits on border agents are only memos until it starts happening at frequency.

Of course things happen sometimes. But, the cartels typically do not want to mess with Americans, particularly in tourist areas, because that brings heat they don't want. It's literally bad for business.

I think the GP was referring to buses on US soil rather than Americans on buses in Mexico.

Cartels only strike their own on US soil…

You’re missing the point. Absolutely cartel violence impacts all types of people in the US and Mexico but large scale brutal violence that is usually saved for Mexico since unfortunately the Mexican federal government does not have control in most of the regions.

There is a huge difference between a one off gang killing in the US and someone taking a whole grey hound bus and burying the bodies in the desert.

Which is why I bring up their affinity for going after busses of people, because they have, in Mexico…

The world does not stop at the Us border.

The world obviously doesn't stop st the US border. The point in this thread was that the attacks on buses full of people have, so far stopped at the US border and that it would be a huge, and dangerous, escalation should that change.

> Dude, Americans are getting kidnapped and murdered in Mexico all the time

Dude, can you put some numbers with a citation behind that? Then we can extrapolate a risk ratio and see if it really merits the "all the time" claim.

https://cuid.mx/en/blogs/seguridad/la-realidad-de-los-secues...

https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/crimina...

https://www.osac.gov/Content/Report/8f3ac9f0-a827-455f-bf61-...

No one disagreed it happens. You claimed it happened "all the time". Unless I"m missing it, your links don't provide numbers of how many Americans are kidnapped & murdered per year. Further, it'd be useful to compare that to the overall number of American visitors to Mexico.

I'm going to go out on a limb and claim it's a small fraction of a percent that find themselves kidnapped & murdered "all the time". But prove me wrong.

who are we (the US)? People who wantonly murder people on fishing boats, etc.

I’m not saying our cartel is any better…

Your use of "our" makes me wonder if the people of Mexico see the drug cartels as "theirs".

Merely pointing out that the US administration is operating like a cartel now a days.

I doubt Mexicans see the Mexican cartels as “theirs” in the same way. Cartels have only been interested in paying off politicians and (as far as I’m aware) weren’t interested in being politicians. However, our politicians here… would LOVE to be Cartel members and make millions it seems. Because they definitely don’t give a shit about law and order.

Absolutely. I suppose my question was really more interested in the perceived legitimacy (or lack thereof).

This is different.

See, Drug cartels over here operate with the blessing and favor of our president. They are tightly connected.

If a cartel dared to ground a US flight. The US government would have a "free pass" to break all hell loose in Mexico, and Sheinbaum wouldn't have a way to stop it.

She doesn't want that in any way, so the message to the cartel bosses would be to be very careful in that respect.

Sure, there have been US citizens killed within Mexico here and there, but those can easily be attributed to local violence. And as retribution, Mexican government sends a couple of wanted criminals to the US.

Yeah, if a cartel actually used anti-aircraft weapons on a US passenger plane in US airspace? It wouldn't even matter if MAGA or the Democrats were in charge. The US would collectively lose its shit and spend the next 10 years and several trillion dollars retaliating against the cartels. The media would be ecstatic, because it would give them a decade of story arcs, starting with "our brave troops in uniform" all the way through to covering the eventual quagmire and anti-war protests. By year 6-8, editorial columnists would be writing columns reconsidering their initial support for the war.

Please, let's not do this.

Good point. I guess it depends on the force, size, and especially effectiveness of any potential strikes. (i.e. How cornered a cartel might feel and how much flexing an outsized response might stand to gain them.)

If that aircraft held a person they wanted dead, I would not put it past them.

Unless we start bombing them first. That’s not hard to imagine these days.

Not hard to imagine these days? Wouldn't you hope for an intervention if it were known that a hostile, state-level military planned to down civilian aircraft?

What happened after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 ?

I can't read your mind.

I had a quick check, and there were zero Americans on board this Malaysian aircraft shot down by a nuclear power over Ukraine, so I don't know how you think it's relevant to an American aircraft full of Americans being shot down in American airspace by cartels immediately on the other side of the American border.

EDIT: Unless you think Malaysia not bombing the Kremlin in retribution is somehow indicative of how America would respond to the situation we're actually talking about.

Mistakes happen though

Yea you have to be a nation state like Israel, Iran or Russia to blow civilian aircraft out of the sky with no retaliation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

US has also blown a civilian airliner out the sky.

Yes that might be the high-level logic, but if you give a MANPAD to a 19 year old sicario on meth, accidents do happen.

I think you misunderstood that movie.

I’d be surprised if cartels would tolerate hard drug use by their soldiers, it seems like the kind of thing they’d kill you for, lack of discipline.

Unless the government is planning an attack on the cartel[s] that is so existential that such action wouldn't be considered an escalation but rather a tic for tat.

A trapped animal will generally use all its facilities regardless of its expected effectiveness.

Remember that there is no "the" cartel, just so many different towns and interests and bribed officials. It makes it a significant (and perhaps convenient) misnomer dont get me wrong, but maybe important to remember.

Extremely good, highly researched book if you want to get angry at me or call me idiot!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Cartels_Do_Not_Exist

My read is most likely some kind of strike on the cartels. There hasn’t seemed to be any significant US military buildup so it’s something they’ll be able to do with a smaller force.

The trapezoid makes me worried about a ground incision there- it extends to the border and would be a cover space for an invasion force. Absolutely bonkers that we are even having this discussion.

The TFR is most likely contingency planning for possible retaliation by cartel drones and the need to keep the airspace clear so they can see (with radar) and shoot down drones and not passenger aircraft.

You are the first person to mention invasion. Kind of bonkers to jump to that conclusion.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves living in a bonkers time.

Nuts, definitely. Bonkers to jump to that conclusion? No, especially with this US administration. Mexico itself is concerned enough about the possibility that it's made statements to make it clear it wouldn't be acceptable. Mexico thinks it's nuts, too, but not bonkers to think the US might do it.

US troops in Mexico 'not on the table', Sheinbaum tells Trump https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260112-us-troops-mexi...

She's on the Cartel payroll. Of course she would say that. You can't be a simple mayor without cartel involvement in Mexico.

> She's on the Cartel payroll

> You can't be a simple mayor without cartel involvement in Mexico.

I don't know what world you're living in, but this is absolutely not the case. Mexico is not a failed state, don't get all your news from places trying to scare you.

It is totally nuts. We will see I guess. If there will be a ground invasion, people will see the convoys moving into position. You can’t really hide that much stuff.

Other commenters here in this thread as well as many people on reddit and other sites about this news are also saying the same thing. Our minds are not as unique as we think :)

What’s also bonkers is our political whimpiness that allowed this to happen, right? If there is a drone response it’s pretty damning evidence that we are way too dovish in our policy against drug smuggling up until now

It doesn't say much either way.

I'm from the UK, we had the ("real") IRA put a RPG-22 anti-tank rocket at the walls of MI6 HQ (the UK version of the CIA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_MI6_attack

Dangerous things like these are not expensive, compared to even low budget small-time group.

I mean the RIRA is a splinter group of the PIRA which had massive funding from overseas, especially from the United States. PIRA was not a small-time group.

I definitely phrased my comment badly; but to your point, it depends on the era. Here's the House of Commons estimate in 2002, I don't know how different it would have been in 2000: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmni...

(Table 1): RIRA Estimated running costs (per year) "£500,00", Estimated fundraising capacity (per year) "£5 million".

I'm assuming that's a typo missing a zero (i.e. should be half a million), not a typo substituting comma for decimal (i.e. five hundred quid). Even with 24 years of inflation, that spend does not suggest a big group to me.

"Maybe, or maybe FL180 is a nice clean line for class A airspace. No need to bother transcontinental flights for a local issue."

Way more plauible

FL180 is the floor of Class A airspace, "the flight levels", where airliners etc. operate.

Relevant chapter from FAA "Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge": https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/17_phak_ch15.pdf

In the "Flight Levels", altitudes are referred to not in feet above sea level but as "FLxxx" where xxx is a nominal altitude in 100s of feet.

Altimetry is done using barometric pressure. Since this varies with weather, airplanes at lower altitudes set their altimeters to the local barometric pressure for a reasonably accurate reading. In the flight levels, where planes are typically covering ground quickly and there is very little chance of your path conflicting with the surface of the Earth, every plane sets to an agreed-upon reference of 29.92 inches of mercury as the altimeter setting.

What does that mean sorry?

It means any aircraft transitioning over the area at high altitude isn't impacted, because they're too high to care.

It is a ground and "everything near the ground" stop. Meaning low altitude helicopters and private aircraft have to consider it, even transitioning, but realistically commercial aircraft not taking off/landing in the area won't.

FL180 is 18000 feet, meaning that flights OVER don’t need to divert.

It is a pedantic but meaningful distinction that I'd only point out on a sorta geeky site like this, but actually, FL180 (or, flight level one-eight-zero) is the altitude at which an altimeter will read 18,000 feet if it's set to assume that the barometric pressure is 1013 hPa (29.92 inHg). Above a certain transition altitude, aircraft switch their altimeters from reading altitude in the local pressure to this "standard" pressure. This is because above that altitude and safely away from terrain, it's no longer important to know precisely how high you are, but it _is_ important to know what altitude you are relative to all the other aircraft nearby.

It means that you have no business being below FL180 or 18,000ft to enter this airspace.

That it limits local flights but not international ones as they fly higher.

Doing a closure up to 18k feet is common because that's where class A airspace starts, i.e. you need a clearance to go there, you can't just fly around VFR wherever you want. The airspace above 18k might not be officially closed, but controllers can be instructed to just not give a clearance into whatever area they deem is unsafe on a particular day.

I think it's simpler. It's going to make the cartel drones easier to spot.

Do you think the cartels won’t see this news? If this is all it was, the cartels can just wait 10 days and start up again.

Today I learned: Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) are shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles designed for use by individuals or small teams to engage low-flying aircraft, helicopters, and UAVs.

Shooting down civilian American aircraft like that would seem to just be for an even more strong response…

Seems unlikely.

If only this was a certainty - Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down with 298 people killed 12 years ago but still no one was directly punished for it...

Malaysia isn't going to attack Russia.

I highly doubt the Russians/separatists running the Buk knew the identity of the flight before shooting it down.

Most certainly not, but I don't see how that is relevant.

The problem (from a victim/Dutch perspective) is that there is complete denial from the Russian side (despite heaps of evidence around the people involved, origin and transport of the launcher from Russian territory).

Even if Russian judges and prosecutors are completely corrupt and biased, an actual investigation/trial is the least that would be expected here, but all we got are the bald faced lies that Russia is particularly fond of.

Because the thread was about how shooting down a civilian airliner has consequences, and the person I replied to insinuated it didn't because Malaysia was ill-equipped to push the issue militarily.

Which isn't relevant if the people who shot it down had no idea if it was / wasn't Malaysian.

Similar to how cartels likely wouldn't have the sophistication to nationally ID any aerial targets they choose to shoot.

Makes sense! Misunderstood the point you were trying to make.

At least some vengeance has been already done in blood, although indirectly, given how oversized has been dutch support for Ukraine compared to other similarly sized countries.

> Shooting down civilian *American* aircraft like that would seem to just be for an even more strong response…

They would want to avoid escalation. Escalation with cartels historically does not go well for anyone involved.

Escalation by attacking US civilians or the homeland has also gone poorly. It’s been the casus belli many times, notably ending in two Japanese cities getting nuked…

The homeland? Yikes.

The last time there was an attack within the United States’ borders it notably ended with a self-owning combination of perhaps the largest bureaucratic waste of time and money in human history (DHS/TSA) and the systematic erosion of enumerated rights.

Dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was in an entirely different context which has no relevance here. We're not in the middle of a global war (nor is anyone even at war with Mexico), nor in a nuclear arms race asserting nuclear capabilities for the first time in history.

You're forgetting all the times the US failed too, and those cases weren't even on its own border. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam... the list is very long. Creating an existential threat on your own border is a bad move for anyone. Remember how bad Columbia got? I guess not. The current situation has the potential to be much more dangerous.

> You're forgetting all the times the US failed too, and those cases weren't even on its own border.

Doesn't the US have more resources at home, not less?

Wouldn't a strike on US soil be a larger escalation and dictate a swift and larger response?

This is real life. They don't to cause a problem they can't solve.

You are now leaning your premise as an argument. I disagree that it would cause a problem.

I believe it's unrealistic that "the cartel" would strike back against the USG, particularly on US soil.

Would that account for the trapezoidal shape of the one restricted area?

My bet is a showy armored advance though the open terrain near there… it’ll look great on camera! /s

Sounds like a great way to reinforce the "We ready to move along from Epstein" narrative.

It seems crazy not to just, tell people that if that's what it is. "Hey if you are flying above 18,000 please don't go lower because you could be blown up by a MANPAD."

If the cartels have MANPADS then our intel is already blown by issuing the TFR, so what's the harm in just saying it out loud?

Mass panic? Think of how wildly it would be misrepresented in the media and how disruptive it would be to all air travel in the country. People aren't rational actors and the most sensationalized headline is what ends up spreading

For your first point, on the off chance they have other equipment capable of surpassing MANPADS I’d prefer as a passenger they just fly around.

Second point, it’s not obvious if its for MANPAD reasons or it’s our own operation though we can speculate.

I'm not sure if the person I replied to edited their comment, or I looked at the wrong one, but the one I originally read said the TFR only had the restriction below 18,000 ft. I was addressing it on that basis, which wasn't requiring people flying above that to route around it.

Of course, the US elected the only celebrity of the 80s and 90s who hates blow.

On the other hand a careful analysis of the plumbing system of Trump's Tower and Trump's Hotels in general would reveal possibly the highest concentration of coke than any other building in the world considering the intersection of wealth and istrionic personalities who called those apartments home at one time or the other.

Fate sure loves irony

Besides I would go to my grave claiming that racism is particularly strong in the war on drugs, if coca grew plentiful and naturally in the US and Europe it would not be illegal at all.

But it's scary because uh ohh inssulfation of an extract of a plant coming from the global south we are all gonna die, somebody will please think of the children.

But hey you can gulp 60 oz of super strong energy drinks which equate to about 5-6 fat lines, matter of fact you can gulp 600 oz and cause yourself a heart attack and nobody would bat an eye or investigate the safety profile of such drinks

It's the same old story with alcohol too

> But hey you can gulp 60 oz of super strong energy drinks which equate to about 5-6 fat lines

Are you joking?

Look, I’m no stranger to drugs, but coke is not a “60oz energy drink” and its potential for generally destroying someone’s life is, while not at the same level, definitely in the same ballpark as crack, heroin, and meth.

60 oz energy drink = 5-6 fat lines perhaps more

The most dense energy drinks have 350-400 of caffeine in a can these days and on top of that there's the taurine etc.

60 oz is 4 cans, do your math. 4 * 400 = 1600mg of caffeine alone

> > potential for generally destroying someone’s life is, while not at the same level, definitely in the same ballpark as crack, heroin, and meth.

That's more of the result of the enviornment and the associated people who frequent such circles and not the stimulant per se.

I don't say this lightly, as someone who has spent decades around drugs, and as a result, knows more than a few recovering addicts: this comes across as wild rationalization by an addict.

And while 1600mg of caffeine is 4x the FDA's recommended daily intake and really isn't a good idea, someone on that much caffeine is neither going to feel nor behave in any way similar to someone on coke.

I am sorry but you are way off.

Sewer stats tell us that in reality the most civilized places in the world have the highest amount of coke in their sewers.

Zurich, Brussel, Berlin, Melbourne, Billionaire's row in NYC, Nantucket [0]

For those who don't jump the hedonic treadmill blow is just edgy chic coffee with the thrill of doing something 'illegal' and snorting it instead of consuming it orally.

Of course if you take coffee and nicotine and that gives you plenty of stimulation for 6-7 hours you have no business moving into the stronger stimulants, although they are also availible not just in the form of blow but Wellbutrin, Adderall, Dextra etc and again plenty used in the most civilized places and not so much used in the less civilized places

[0]https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/pods/waste-water-ana...

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“Terrorists” would tend to not consider themselves such.

I doubt the same is true of cartels and their members.

I'm pretty sure no one else reading the comment has any trouble understanding what is meant when talking about cartels in Mexico. What exactly is ambiguous to you?

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[dead]

A drug cartel is a criminal organization composed of independent drug lords who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the illegal drug trade.[1] Drug cartels form with the purpose of controlling the supply of the illegal drug trade and maintaining prices at a high level. The formations of drug cartels are common in Latin American countries. Rivalries between multiple drug cartels cause them to wage turf wars against each other. Drug cartels often transport both drugs and narcotics, and most often the term "Narcotics cartel" is not used to describe an organization that transports the latter legally defined set of illegal substances, such as marijuana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_cartel

It means organized crime focusing on drugs in this context

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There is a circular restriction around the airport and a trapezoid one next to the city (https://elpasomatters.org/2026/02/11/unexplained-faa-order-s...).

What are the plausible explanations here? I can't think of anything except military action against Mexico (or the cartels inside Mexico). But even that doesn't fit well.

A suspected terror attack could explain the airspace around the airport, but not the weird trapezoid restriction next to the city.

The duration of 10 days is also weird, that seems very long for any kind of emergency situation. And as far as I understand, it is unusual to have no exceptions at all here e.g. for medical transports via helicopter.

The not-totally-crazy ideas from Reddit include:

- it's related to the annouced GPS disruption test (although that's a really long time and doesn't seem urgent enough)

- someone in Mexico is getting kidnapped by Gov

- nuclear tests

I wish those were crazy ideas, but here we are...

> - it's related to the annouced GPS disruption test (although that's a really long time and doesn't seem urgent enough)

Those are done regularly without TFRs. See recent example in Texas:

* https://avbrief.com/overnight-gps-testing-affects-huge-area-...

A link to a list of notices at:

* https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/gps-service-interruptions

I don't know which Reddit thread you're reading (there are many I'm sure) but the one in r/Aviation seems to have a favourite theory that there was a credible threat of someone with MANPADS, which are shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles and not some sort of sanitary product.

Apparently they have a ceiling of 18,000ft which is exactly the limit of the restriction in El Paso. Aircraft are allowed fly over if they go above that

That's also just the cutoff for class A airspace. I think people are reading too much into the specific height.

> GPS disruption

Ah, a very plausible explanation!

https://avbrief.com/overnight-gps-testing-affects-huge-area-...

The map indicates it will be centered on Lampasas and the region of effect seems to be east of El Paso. So, if the GPS exercises are the cause, the TFRs would've been more likely to bring in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio.

Isn't it possible that a 10-day TFR could be lifted early once the concern is past? They've probably made it 10 days just to establish an upper bound.

If it's just routine testing, then why couldn't they have announced it earlier to allow companies to plan and/or fly their planes out of the affected area?

> > The map indicates it will be centered on Lampasas and the region of effect seems to be east of El Paso. So, if the GPS exercises are the cause, the TFRs would've been more likely to bring in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio.

Wait so people in South Texas won't be able to use GPS on the ground either?

Also if the goal is to disrupt the cartels and the people using GPS to know where they are at in the process of crossing the border illegally why is the Army involved in this at all?

The Army has no business in taking part of operations to disrupt cartels and illegal immigration, it's the whole rational behind having 3 letters agency including the evil one that rose to prominence lately

The Global Positioning System is owned and operated by Space Delta 8 at Schriever Space Force Base in CO[1]. Testing in collaboration the US Army (the primary customer of GPS services) is hardly noteworthy.

[1] https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Fact-Sheet-D...

Probably laser shootdown of drug carrying drones.

Most plausible comment I found on the internet was the government lost something in that trapezoid and doesn't want anyone to fly over it and find it until it's collected.

Ah, so an alien's contact lens

Roswel is a few hours away by car. Interesting theory but they would lose it there.

Broken Arrow?

Quick, someone call Skinner and get Mulder and Scully on the case!

Another interesting note, the trapezoidal TFR is still in place

I honestly assume it's something petty. Like an El Paso air traffic controller was rude to a deportation flight pilot.

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Nice, I would have fed it through rot13 first, giving:

4775722052636667727661205376797266

its hex ascii for : "The Epstein Files"

Not a bad theory actually. None of the stuff they have done to distract from the files has been without other purpose, but that is how it is done. You have a backlog of things you want to do ranked by unpopularity, and you try to only do one of them when you are being grilled over a worse one already. I'm sure it is down to a science and probably has a name.

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I don't think you need a NOTAM for that, you could just close the airport directly. And so far this administration hasn't shown itself to be particularly concerned about preventing the spread of infectious diseases like measles.

Without cutting off the roads first? That wouldn't make much sense, right?

People drive too much. Cut off ais travel and only a few care - who drive to Los Cruzes NM to fly. cut off roads and they will in mass break the barricades.

>People drive too much

That doesn't seem like a good argument for instituting a quarantine by blocking air travel but not ground travel. And why block everything including police, cargo and medivac flights for a quarantine?

It is why they won't block ground travel even though they might want to.

Then there's no real infection risk if they'll continue to let people drive out of the area, including let people drive a 4 or 5 hours to another airport to make their trip.

Closing the El Paso airspace will reduce the number of people flying, but not stop it, lots of people will make the drive to Tucson or Albuquerque to catch a flight.

I could maybe see it if it was, say, LAX which is a major travel hub, but shutting down a small regional airport without also shutting down ground travel is "quarantine theater" rather than a real quarantine.

I’m sorry I have to say I have never seen Las Cruces spelled like that.

Disgraphia - the inability to spell (and otherwise write well). Sorry about it.

Well, air travel spreads things harder and faster.

Sure, but people will just drive to the next closest airport and fly. Quarantine makes no sense as an explanation without accompanying roadblocks.

>Sure, but people will just drive to the next closest airport and fly

Tell me you've never been to west Texas.

The next closest airport is Juarez, it's like 6 miles away, full fledged international airport. It's a few hours walk at worst.

They really prefer you have a passport now, and the vast majority of people do not. Also, I doubt this admin would mind if there was suddenly an uptick in one way travel into Mexico

>The next closest airport is Juarez, it's like 6 miles away

...In Mexico, sure. The closest major US airport to El Paso is Albuquerque or Tucson, 4 hours each.

Well, this wins for silliest non-alien theory, with bonus points for the hyperbole of “concentration camp” to describe illegal immigrant detention.

In what way is it "hyperbole"? From the leaks and reporting I've come across it seems like a reasonable description.

It's not labour camps, and not extermination camps, but rather places where people are 'concentrated' while the bureaucracy figures out where to move them next.

If anything it's really weird to present it as having to do with supposedly illicit immigration, since citizens and people with residence permits are vacuumed up as well.

It's almost like these detention centers are holding concentrated amounts of people without due process

My guess is nuclear test.

Airport circle to secure the transport of the device to the ground adjacent to the test site.

Trapezoid is the test site, wider on the side that is less controllable (border-facing).

Disconnected because two separate teams executed in parallel without informed oversight.

... I don't think they're detonating a nuclear weapon in a National Monument 50 miles from a large US city...

There are plenty of better places for them to do this.

NTS was 60-80 mi away from Las Vegas.

yes there might be safer locations for an underground nuclear test, but how many of them offer the same "F U" PR capacity relative to Mexico/Juarez/cartels, etc.

A nuclear weapon is only "F U" PR to cartels if you believe they're literally braindead, which given that they run massive international businesses, I suspect they're not.

Nukes mean nothing to a cartel. What an insane idea.

While we have an excuse explanation from the admin now which nobody knows how true or not it is, its trump of course. Why is it off or weird that he'd want to see a big boom.

It’s probably not SOP to land nuclear weapons at the municipal airport either.

There is a military base with its own airfield located within El Paso basically right next to El Paso International Airport.

While Mexican side has no restrictions - that would be supremely dumb even for a primary school level of thinking. Tons of civilians dead with clear reason who caused it, completely preventable.

Fantasy often likes extreme options but most probably saner reason like expected strike on cartels and their retaliation is whats happening.

>supremely dumb even for a primary school level of thinking

So 100% Trump

Action to close airspace over a major city in the US for security reasons over extended period hasn’t happened since 9/11.

10 day closure for security reasons seems really long.

edit: Same restriction imposed around Santa Teresa, New Mexico. ~15 miles northwest of the El Paso airport.

El Paso is the 6th largest city in Texas so not “major” but certainly large.

25th largest in the United States.

Ft. Bliss is there as well...

Closure rescinded https://x.com/FAANews/status/2021583720465969421

The explanation given is that cartel air drones entered US airspace.

I guess my question is, doesn't this happen all the time? I would think drones would be an easy way to fly a Kilo over the border to whatever dropspot you wanted. I wonder what the new wrinkle is?

I think it's worth correcting the record here because drone warfare is pretty different from what actually happened. What they identified and shot down was a mylar party balloon.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-military-shot-down-party...

The smuggling is nothing new. Sounds like they're testing laser-based countermeasures against them now.

[0] https://x.com/petemuntean/status/2021586247827828812

> I guess my question is, doesn't this happen all the time?

Yes, all the time.

agricultural drones used for spraying can lift up to 60-80kg payloads.

Will be interesting when/if more information is released. I am not sure why folks are so surprised or think it’s shocking. While definitely out of the norm, my mind was immediately thinking 10 days seems like an even number where you are trying to find or do something, not sure how long it’s going to take so you just stick it. Certainly odd that it’s only a few hours but for all I know there is some written government procedure for whoever is doing that sets it at 10 days.

I got zeros votes amongst the mass speculation over lost nuclear weapons or military experiments but I was pretty close to correct with my guess. Just picked the wrong people.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46972610#46974380

So bizarre

Why the 10 day announcement overnight only to totally rescind it before the majority of US citizens wake up and read the news?

If you shut it down for too long and there is a lapse in reopening it, planes are grounded for an extra bit of time.

If you shut it down for too short and there is a lapse in extending the grounding, planes are getting shot out of the sky (or whatever threat it was).

edit: I would add that maybe there are forms for shutting down airspace of various specific time lengths and a convenient time for something of unknown duration would be 10 days. 10 days might also be enough time to be sure whatever resources need to be brought to bear on this are available where an hour or day might not be. Shut it down basically indefinitely, or at least long enough that the crew who handles this extraordinary situation will be on hand to turn it off.

Hoping it slips under other news like "Woah someone else should pay for this wall/bridge/investigation" so no one really notices it. To be fair, seems most things are about trying to direct the news somewhere else, most of the times being successful at that too.

NYT reports they're claiming it was about testing anti-drone tech at Fort Bliss.

> The brief shutdown was related to a test of new counter-drone technology by the military at nearby Fort Bliss Army base, according to a person briefed on the matter.

There is also a detention center at Fort Bliss from which some very unsettling reports have emerged.

This is ridiculous and patently false. The US is equipped with many bases with permanent air space restrictions where they could perform such tests. It makes less than zero sense to test anti-drone tech in a crowded civilian space. I fully blame incompetence.

Latest update from NYT

> According to a social media post by the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace, prompting temporary closure of airspace over El Paso. The Defense Department took action to disable the drones, Mr. Duffy said. Another person familiar with the situation had described the cause of the shutdown as a test of anti-drone technology. It is unclear if the brief airport closure was directly related to the presence of drones or how the technology was deployed.

It does not seem implausible or unreasonable to me that an anti-drone system would trigger airspace restrictions when activated. Whether system activation is intended to put out a 10 days block is probably a different issue, but probably related to SOP for an event of unknown duration.

I'm not a huge fan of conspiracy theories, but starting a 240 hours closure, ending it after 4, and claiming it was a test? What sort of testing are they doing that they were off by two orders of magnitude about the duration?

Who knows. Maybe the system was malfunctioning and they didn't know how long it would take to shut it down. More likely the admin is just blabbing the first thing they think will shut everyone up.

Someone probably briefly thought they brought Skynet online via AI powered drones.

Hanlon’s Razor

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Someone probably just screwed up

You don't screw up something this major, it doesn't happen by accident nor by incompetence.

They had plans to bomb something south of that airport, they had to postpone those plans now that the info is public enough that whatever their target was is definitely aware of those plans.

They have confirmed it was for testing a counter-drone weapon. They did not say why they set it to expire in 10 days, that part seems like it was probably a mistake.

They gave you a plausible-enough reason and you took their word for it. That's completely fine, you are well within your rights to decide for yourself whether you believe them or not.

I don't, and since neither of us can know for sure given the info we've been given, it's useless for us to argue about our opinions.

I am curious, what explanation would justify a full closure of the airspace over a major us city for 10 days, in your opinion? That is the real screwup here. Whatever justification they are giving is entirely beside the point. Closing the airspace, even to emergency medevac flights, is negligence.

Miss me with your jUsT cUrIoUs, I have no need to make up hypothetical scenarios under which this would be justifiable. The burden of proof is not on me.

> You don't screw up something this major

Liz Truss begs to differ.

This is exactly what happened and not to be immodest but it was my first guess before it was confirmed. The closure was a miscommunication between the FAA and Pentagon set off by a balloon. This was pure incompetence and arrogance. This HN thread is almost unbelievable how many wild guesses were made.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airspace-closure-followed-spat-...

If there was ever a time when the old Soviet Union could have won the Cold War... Fortunately for us, the window of top-down incompetence came far too late.

Their stupidity is a true threat to our lives. Regardless of how you want to classify it we need to remove it as a threat.

don't attribute to security concerns...what can be explained by incompetence...

Or alcoholism

WTF? The FAA announces a ban on all flights at an international airport and then withdraws the ban within a few hours of the announcement? What kind of insane police state would try a stunt like that? Even for the Trump administration, that is setting the bar at a new low.

You should have been here a month ago. The FAA halted all air traffic to and from the Caribbean region with no explanation (well, duh) and no announcement of a resume date. Then it was lifted 24 hours later with no notice.

I think the military did a thing without telling the FAA so they had to guess?

Trump needs to be impeached immediately for this. How dare he close airspace and then just lift that closure once the danger has passed.

What danger?

What kind of government would use their statutory authority to shut down an airport when there is a risk to the planes?

Why do you think the FAA doesn't have this authority? Or, why do you think the FAA shouldn't have this authority?

In other words: This may have been needed but poorly executed; this may have been incompetent planning and response. But I wouldn't call the FAA shutting down an airport "police state".

>> What kind of government would use their statutory authority to shut down an airport when there is a risk to the planes?

It could be either an incompetent government or an authoritarian government that is trying to militarize certain institutions of civilian life.

>> Why do you think the FAA doesn't have this authority? Or, why do you think the FAA shouldn't have this authority?

The FAA does indeed have the authority. The question is simply: why did the FAA choose to exercise its authority in this case? If there was a real danger to the public, then the FAA should be honest with the people and tell them what is the danger. That is what citizens should expect from a democratic government.

>> This may have been needed but poorly executed; this may have been incompetent planning and response. But I wouldn't call the FAA shutting down an airport "police state".

The reason why I ask if this is an example of police state behavior is because in this case the government apparently took drastic measures without explaining to the people why it was doing so.

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So basically an ass-covering squabble between bureaucrats?

"can you guarantee shit will be fine?"

"we can't guarantee anything"

"so you're saying it won't be fine"

"no, I'm saying it will"

"so you're guaranteeing it'll be fine then"

"no, I said I can't make any guarantees"

"well if you can't guarantee it'll be fine we have to shut it all down and you'll have to explain that to the boss"

"be my fucking guest"

<shit proceeds to be fine and everyone looks like uncooperative assholes>

According to postings on a couple Reddit discussions, this surprised the El Paso city council among others:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1r1r7tu/what_does...

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1r1pqnp/10_day_tfr_is...

They probably lost a nuke in the area. Wouldn't be the first time.

Honest question: do you mean it was stolen or it fell out of the plane by accident or something like that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...

Check out the book Command & Control by Eric Schlosser

I mean it fell out. It has happened before.

Probably the latter.

speculations are it's either related to ICE or drug cartel investigations

The former has a long history of not cooperating with local authorities (also in ways I personally think are sometimes quite malicious but that is off topic). Und normal circumstances ICE would never have the power to lead to a shut down of air space, but with the current administration who knows.

And drug cartel investigations won't cooperate with the city council as an investigation big enough to shut down airspace wouldn't want to risk it leaking by speaking with a city council about it.

But this is a pretty big deal and lets hope this is just about preventing some high ranking drug cartel members from fleeing and not some retaliatory horror story implicitly triggered by the repeated public rejections and denouncements of Trump in recent week. Like if we look at full (and violent) dictatorships(1) you would expect an internet outage to follow and then a lot of people to die.

(1): To be clear no the US is not a full blown violent dictatorship. Even through things are bad, they are not "that" bad. Through IMHO there seem to be people in the government which want to make it exactly that bad.

The president has way too much executive power. In my country everything is decided by a cabinet meeting in America one man orders and everyone obeys.

Theoretically a lot of that is true for the US.

It's just that

- both parties have undermined the separation of power, and expanded power of the president repeatedly for many years (e.g. with granting special privileges to the president after 9/11 which where way to broad and not strictly limited to a very short time)

- especially Trump has undermined/dismantled a lot of "checks and balances" mechanisms, including in his previous presidency

- people spreading "legal theories" which are very clearly nonsensical but at least half of the countries press pretending they are credible potentially true. As some are about the constitution you can see this as a direct propaganda attack against the US constitution. With close no consequence, too.

- the current supreme court is IMHO strange. They are not at all impartial and have interpreted laws multiple times in ways which are neither backed by the laws wording nor it's spirit (if you based the spirit on the history due to which the laws where made) with this decision often having been reasoned by what looks a lot like "make pretend everything is normal excuses". But at the same time it hasn't gone fully "we go with whatever Trump/Mega wants" or anything like that. I can't really understand what they are thinking, tbh.

so yes, the president has too much executive power at the moment. Both more then intended with the founding of the US, and in practice more then they even legally have.

You’ve left out that both chambers of congress is of the same party as POTUS and have abdicated their part in checks and balances.

Who forms the cabinet though? In a two party system - where one party seems to be built around a personality cult - cabinet can be filled with rubber stampers

Yeah, it could be formed by one person, or from two parties, or possibly by an even more opaque network of influence backed by god knows who.

The cabinet is formed with congressional approval which this spineless congress did with a rubber stamp

>To be clear no the US is not a full blown violent dictatorship.

The key word you forgot here is "yet".

>Even through things are bad, they are not "that" bad.

They will get "that" bad if you take on the attitude that things aren't that bad.

>IMHO there seem to be people in the government which want to make it exactly that bad.

We should act accordingly then.

[dead]

To me the trapezoid suggests something traveling south fell in the area. Narrow at the top, wide at the bottom.

Maybe they dropped a nuke by accident (again)

That looks like a rather flat trapezoid for something that fell from high above.

With a fast-moving object, we can usually tell its trajectory across the map much more accurately than we can tell where along that trajectory it impacted the ground. See: MH370.

Maybe fits the "DoD is shooting something at some kind of incoming drone" explanation - they know they're shooting _from_ the top of the trapezoid but in terms of direction, only that they're vaguely facing south. (Doesn't really explain why the TFR doesn't extend into Mexico though.)

The area they would expect to find it would be much narrower than the area they would expect a plane overhead to be able to observe it.

Here's a direct link to the notice: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

Temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) tend to be pretty terse, but they do usually call out "VIP" if they're due to someone visiting.

The type listing of "security" gets thrown around a lot, though. For example there's a permanent security TFR around the closest Air Force base to me (https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_5_8746) because they regularly fly unmanned aircraft that can't fly in insufficiently controlled airspace, and the standard airspace layout around an airport of that size isn't sufficient, so instead of making special rules for that airport, there's a "security" TFR to give air-traffic controllers extra control of what would normally be uncontrolled airspace.

It is pretty unusually to get such a short notice, and to not have instructions for exemptions.

No exemptions for medical life flights, local law enforcement, or even the military. You can read a more normal NOTAM posted for New Orleans likely for Mardi Gras (https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2231)

As a Minnesotan I wonder what this does to the deportation flights going to and from Camp East Montana.

The percentage of comments written primarily for the purpose irrational political ranting is frustrating, considering the genuinely interesting nature of the story.

It's not irrational to assume current statements from this particular government are not true. If anything, it's irrational to just believe what you're told. We're well past the point where lies outnumber truths, so if you're a betting man, you should assume what you've been told is not true.

The speculation, however, is just that. But, I think we all understand that the reason this was done is not for the reasons stated, and there is something else going on that we are not privy to.

[flagged]

>> for the purpose irrational political ranting

> pursuing politics discussions

Did you intentionally ignore this specific point?

Closing a small patch of airspace while military activity is occurring is not authoritarianism. Get a grip you lunatic

I don't think anyone said closing this airspace was an authoritarian act... double check the posts above.

No, but the whole situation being caused after shooting down a birthday balloon is macabre incompetence.

i think the comment you replied to said what you said

Further commentary/speculation on this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADSB/comments/1r1pqnp/10_day_tfr_is...

It includes a local city Councilmember who's says he is working to get more information.

[flagged]

First of all, you want "font". Second of all, don't do that.

Or "fount" from older, non-American English.

Fount is definitely more correct. If we're talking a baptismal font, then it's font, but if were talking a fount of knowledge, the correct term is fount with font sometimes being used but derived from fount.

Etymology 1, meaning 3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fount

Etymology 3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/font

Thank you, I couldn’t remember which but I figured I’d hit Muphry’s Law either way.

Don't do what, exactly?

Do not mix more than 1.00mL of chlorine with more than 0.00mL of bleach.

Don't do what?

Return VHS tapes without rewinding.

[dead]

"A person familiar with the notices, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, said the action to close airspace over a major U.S. for security reasons over extended period hasn’t happened since immediately after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

https://elpasomatters.org/2026/02/11/unexplained-faa-order-s...

It shows how bad the lack of available sources is, when they interview someone familiar with the type notice in general, but not this specific notice.

Nuclear weapons test? The latest test treaty just expired.

Edit: There are two TFRs, one in El Paso and one right next to it in the mountains: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2234

I think not; it's not somewhere you can conduct a nuclear test without starting a war with Mexico. However it is interesting to look at the TFR area in Google maps; it looks just like a nuclear test site, but the craters are natural volcanoes.

Well, somebody has suggested nuking a tornado before. Why not a vulcano?

Mexico isn’t going to start a war with the US. it would last a week at most, and they’d end up glowing even more than if the us ‘downwinded’ them all year.

If Mexico went to war with America they would rely on asymmetric insurgency tactics. They have no shortage of sympathetic people in America, not just Mexican nationals but native born Americans as well. America hasn't dealt with a genuine domestic insurgency situation before.

That's exactly what russia thought before invading the Ukraine.

Not to be pedantic but it’s just Ukraine. It is an independent country.

Russia calls is “the Ukraine” because they think it’s their territory and not an independent nation.

Thanks, did not know that!

Probably just closing the airspace for the space alien emissary.

Welcome. Tremendous to have you here. Really historic. Some people said it couldn’t happen, but I said keep an open mind, and now look. Intergalactic diplomacy. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We’re ready to make a deal, a fair deal, maybe the best deal in the galaxy.

If there was ever a time for a Mars Attacks style invasion it is now

Wouldn’t the Nevada Test Site be much better for this? Huge, government controlled, no major airports or cities, and moreover, already used for this sort of thing.

No because there's no enemy there to shoot at.

[dead]

This was my thought as well given the length of time of the closure.

3.6 roentgen you say?

Representative Veronica Escobar, an El Paso Democrat, said in a news conference that the explanation citing Mexican drones crossing the border as the reason for the closure was “not the information that we in Congress have been told.”

She said that there was no current or past threat to the area. “There’s no threat. There was not a threat, which is why the F.A.A. lifted this restriction so quickly,” she said. “The information coming from the administration does not add up.”

“There have been drone incursions from Mexico going back to as long as drones existed. So this is nothing new” (NYT)

The Federal Aviation Administration said it had lifted the temporary closure of airspace over El Paso that it had imposed last night. “All flights will resume as normal,” the F.A.A. said on social media.

What a bizarre move.

Reminds me of the chaos monkey. Building resilience by breaking and fixing stuff.

Not sure if applicable here, though.

Live camera of runway https://app.truelook.cloud/dashboard/581/980/live

Linked from airport website: https://elpasointernationalairport.com/live-cameras/

poor PTZ mount :(

FAA closed another airspace nearby: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2234

- From February 11, 2026 at 0630 UTC (February 10, 2026 at 2330 MST)

- To February 21, 2026 at 0630 UTC (February 20, 2026 at 2330 MST)

My guess is nuclear tests

it's too spontaneous for that

it it's "just" a training exercise or test they could have announced the closing weeks or month before it happening massively reducing the cost fallout from it

not that the current administration has in generally acted with care when it comes to causing huge financial damage to US cities, especially such they don't like

Maybe there's credible threat of MANPADs from the cartels? Wouldn't be the first time around, apparently.

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1r1s4zt/faa_groun...

Stopping life flights though? The supposed risk of cartels shooting down a helicopter vs the immediate risk of "this guy is going to die if we don't fly him to the nearest trauma center"... That risk calculus doesn't make sense.

To be fair, risk calculus does not appear to be this administration's strong suit.

Lets just for a second pretend that cartel g2a attacks are the legitimate threat. You now have a decision in regards to sparing lives: 1 Life, ground the medivacs, vs 3-4 Lives and letting them fly. Risk the life of 1 person by not allowing them fly, vs risking more lives by Allowing them to fly. (I had to explain it again so that you hopefully understand)

Seems like they understand risk calculus more than you.

You forgot to weigh the relative likelihood of somebody needing a life flight to survive vs the likelihood of that flight being shot down. The first is very high, or they'd not have called for a helicopter, while the second is quite low even if there is a cartel psycho running around with MANPADS. They're more likely to hold their missile in reserve than to randomly fire it off at some helicopter out of the blue.

The military panicked and shot down a balloon with a laser. https://newrepublic.com/post/206483/el-paso-airport-closed-m...

Thats little nerve racking. What happens if a commercial airplane gets confused with a bunch of balloons.

Then potentially people die - like they died when there were reckless helicopter flights in front of a DC area airport, until a helicopter collided with an airliner, killing all on board.

Millions of dollars of stuck planes and cargo. If it was somebody’s fantasy, it sure was an expensive one - but I’m not sure I want to know what it was if it was a real thing

Don't worry. Mexico will pay for it 100 %.

Probably $Bs. Around 100 flights per day from there, so there would be dozens of planes on the ground.

The closure has been lifted: https://x.com/FAANews/status/2021583720465969421

My money is on misplaced black budget project craft

Maybe that new F-47 did a trump and fell asleep somewhere in the desert

But they didn't block the desert, only air zone and also only directly above the city not beyond it.

That's kind of what I'm thinking too though my money would be on something like "super secret stealth cruise missile ripped off it's mounting pylon" or control software went crazy rather than an airframe loss.

It's likely be something small enough and with little/no fuel because if it left a big smoking hole they'd find it quick. And it's gotta be something with fairly questionable aerodynamic properties (i.e. damaged) or questionable guidance (i.e not an inadvertently released bomb) otherwise they'd have a very good idea of where it landed.

More likely to be related to the E Files than the X ones

E-File? Like, taxes?

Epstein files.

> Epstein files.

Nobody cares

Someone asked what an acronym stood for. All I did was expand the acronym.

Are you so tightly wound up that even seeing someone simply answer a direct question about what "e-files" means sets you off?

I think it might be a good time to step back and evaluate your engagement with media, HN, and the internet. Because it seems like you've got a wildly partisan reflex here.

Without rule of law, we don't really have a civilization.

Should there be some people laws don't apply to?

Nobody cares that a large number of billionaires and world leaders, individuals with the power to steer the course of society as a whole, are implicated in one of the largest (and darkest) scandals in history?

Speak for yourself.

[dead]

I wonder if the dormant volcanic field west of El Paso that is covered by the TFR may be similar to Iranian volcanic mountains?

Remember, the Netanyahoo just arrived in the US mere hours before this and it is always a bad omen when the devil comes to collect.

Whatever happened to the New Jersey drones? Did we give up on them or did they give up on us?

What drones, there were never any New Jersey drones.

Could it be that USA government believe that Iran might be trying to do something similar to the Ukraine operation spiderweb, where they attacked the Russian long distance bomber fleet with short distance FPV drones? While there aren't bombers at Fort Bliss. As far as I know there are other high value targets.

Probably the least unhinged theory in this thread, but unfortunately it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If they had intel about such a threat, they'd have to move all high value assets to another base pronto. A flight ban won't stop a shady box truck from rolling into town and releasing a swarm of small drones.

(It would also be uncharacteristic of Iran to actually attack America directly, on American soil. Try to find examples of Iran doing that and you'll come up quiet short.)

You may want to recalibrate things. That’s just about the most unhinged theory here. So “Iran” is just going to go “well, shucks, I guess we can’t launch our drone swarm now that they issued a TFR.”

Not even to mention you’re ignoring the TFR far outside and away from El Paso over the Potrillo volcanic mountains

I can hear russia/iran now “darn they thwarted our plans to take out el paso and that mountain. There are absolutely zero other targets in the vicinity we can fly to. Zero in a 100 mile radius our drone has a capability to get to within 10 days. I mean if we had 11 days sure but how do they know 10 days???”

Your volcano theory is less unhinged, but most of the talk is about nuclear weapons tests, which would be enormously unhinged if that theory is true.

Am I hallucinating? Wasn't there just an identical thread on the front page not even an hour ago?

You aren’t, probably was flagged down by not being hacker enough (or more likely for being an open invitation to runaway speculation without any grounding in reality and facts)

This also seems to be an open invitation to runaway speculation.

A lot of the speculation is ridiculous given only a small area has been closed. That is not a prelude to war, for example!

The last time anything even close to this has happened was 9/11. Lately, we have been living in times that are more often unprecedented. But, do not let that desensitize you. This was not business as usual. This was extremely strange. Things like this only happen in times of War. Why are they happening now?

War no, but extraction absolutely.

Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire were closed off the day before Maduro's extraction

*runway speculation

You've just described every comment section on HackerNews.

Proper hackers are interested in homeschool propaganda, but not in closed airspace.

Email the mods and they’ll check and merge the dupes :)

"Special security reason", sounds like a prelude to a special military operation?

You mean like, a three-day invasion of Mexico ?

Or just stirring up a bunch of ICE noise at the border.

Underground nuclear test and trying to mitigate the EMP grounding proximate planes?

An underground nuclear test is going to happen within ten miles of El Paso airport? Sounds unlikely

The second TFR which was released at the same time is in the NM desert directly east

Map of both: https://i0.wp.com/elpasomatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/...

EMPs only occur in very high altitude tests

Why wouldn't that be announced in advance? It'll be detectable internationally as soon as it happens.

If true they would have told the Russians and the Chinese and yes everybody will know after the fact. But for various reasons they might not want to disclose ahead of time in case Trump gets talked out of it or they realize they're not ready or various other reasons (perhaps the Energy Dept. doesn't actually want to do it but they're going forward step by step hoping it gets halted).

If they already know, complaining about it in advance will soften the public shock when it happens, which is probably not what Russia and China want. They'd prefer that the rest of the world be maximally shocked and outraged by such a transgression of international norms.

EMP from an underground blast? Ok bud.

I wonder if this was issued by the VP’s Secret Service to the FAA directly; they got caught last year fucking with DC airspace using a beacon spoofer, and they would (presumably, they’re the SS) have the authority to issue these secretly without having to be named and answer for the impact: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/aviation-flights-whi...

(See also Die Hard 2, I suppose.)

But: of the “less simple than invading Mexico” theory (which would be trivial to confirm or refute with binoculars and telescopes) I think the nuclear testing theory is more likely, as it would be in character for the current U.S. administration to decide to turn a border region radioactive to both decrease both the quantity of, and the median fertility of, those who cross the border, especially following posturing about health care costs. Presumably the U.S. does not view itself as liable to Mexico for across-the-border downwinder’s treatment costs. Not seeing a spike in KI prices in a couple spot checks, though.

Hopefully it’s something offensive enough to finally get the world to embargo Palantir.

I did not have “airspace closed for ten days to shoot down a drone with lasers” anywhere on my bingo card. Huh. When life gives you lemons, file a TFR about it, I suppose.

Correction: Party ballon.

During the ICE surge in Chicago drone traffic was banned for a while but this is obviously much more extreme if for a similar reason. Note that at least on some roads out (I'm most familiar with the road to Carlsbad from El Paso since I used to have to travel there in grad school, often from ELP) there are already CBP checkpoints.

El Paso is in a very Red state, ICE involvement is minimal there.

Reminds me of this: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-plot-plant-bombs-c...

El Paso is a hub for cargo. Probably takes some days to go through all that parcel.

I just think it's weird that major events regarding the Epstein files always seem to be below the fold because something huge, that just happens to be entirely under executive branch discretion, ends up dominating the headlines.

Judging by the previous actions of this administration — Operation Metro Surge 2: Tex-Mex Boogaloo

According to CNN the entire airspace is closed, not just the airport https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/11/us/faa-el-paso-texas-flig...

It's closed below 18,000 ft, over a 10 nautical mile radius: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

Yep. TFR was issued three hours ago.

https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

It was a party balloon. GG.

https://x.com/clashreport/status/2021642699603144708

Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

Venus was at its peak brilliance last night. You probably thought you saw something up in the sky other than Venus, but I assure you, it was Venus.

Some drug cartel probably bought a SAM and they’re trying to find it.

Map :

https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_0091

This one's responding.

https://skyvector.com/?ll=31.836456906566234,-106.7029640846...

It seems like you linked to a different area on the border to Mexicali?

that link shows the wrong blocked airspace in my case

(it shows that some areas above the border in the desert are blocked off, which makes sense to fight drug smuggling by drones without risking mistaking drones with aircrafts)

but he article is about the new circular zone directly placed over El Paso with El Paso International Airport directly in it's center. (Interestingly because they used a circle it technically covers the Mexican side of the boarder including a part of the airport on their side, but practically FAA can't shut down Mexican airspace so it's misleading).

Also worth noting there is:

- Holloman Air Force Base

- White Sands Missile Range

- Fort Bliss

- Fort Bliss McGregor Range

direct besides the city

so a Military exercise, or deployment of Military (Trump has said he will bomb cartel hideouts in Mexico) can be added to the list of possibilities

Today I learned of the broader disruptive capabilities of a mylar birthday balloon.

The elders sang songs of this day, and we were foolish not to take heed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY

Could be a window for a bunch of deportation activity? It's not very low profile if that's the case.

Crashed alien vehicle recovery?

NPR just announced the El Paso airport is back online for air travel.

Aliens? I want to believe...

It's inter-organizational disfunction. Always more plausible than any conspiracy.

https://apnews.com/article/faa-el-paso-texas-air-space-close...

Pentagon wanted to test the new laser but didn't give FAA enough information to assure safety of the NAS and civilian aviation (when, where, effects, etc.) so they felt forced to pull the big TFR lever. They fired the laser of at who knows what and then FAA lifted the TFR.

It was reported on Democracy Now! that an anonymous source said the military representing Biggs Army Air Field at Fort Bliss (KBIF) couldn't guarantee safety of commercial air traffic around El Paso International Airport (KELP). There was no specific details communicated and the message released caused unnecessary panic. The most likely explanation seems to be an unresolved dispute between the military and the FAA related to improving airspace safety around military flight tracks near major airports (class B/C/D airspace).

Another source from Thom Hartmann mentioned the military was testing counter-drone lasers and failed to inform the FAA. Seems like the FAA used unreasonable collective punishment to passive-aggressively chastise the military publicly.

FAA has rescinded the TFR - looks like a possible DoD goof in relation to army exercises, leading to the FAA being overcautious.

> BREAKING: A source briefed by FAA tells me the El Paso flight ban was driven by military operations from Biggs Army Air Field at Fort Bliss https://x.com/petemuntean/status/2021573468341383284

Probably an attempt to embarrass the admin. Now watch for the orangemanbad articles about a reckless military operation personally planned by the president in the middle of the night on X.

Hah im trying to be tongue-in-cheek but I have to admit that doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility actually lol

[dead]

If there were some mundane reason for the shutdown (e.g. ATC staffing, or volcanic ash) it wouldn't be a secret, and if there were an emergency (one severe enough to ground all aircraft for so song) we would've heard or seen something.

Occam's Razor says, this order came down from Trump. If that's the case, only question remaining would be what is he planning.

Well, if the only comparable antecedent is closing American airspace after 9/11, and that order came down from Bush, it seems reasonable to suppose that this order came down from Trump.

As for why? No clue.

Downed UAP recovery?

doesn't need commercial air space lock down, at most private/small low altitude/drone plain lock down

Related to the Guthrie kidnapping perhaps?

“For special security reasons”. Is a “special military operation “ following? Maybe somebody in Mexico said something mean about the president.

But seriously, is this normal without any explanation? The cost must be enormous.

it's in general highly abnormal

which kinda makes it normal to not have a explanation

because anything abnormal enough to cause something like that is also likely something kept secret until it's done

(Like large scale operations against drug cartel, "special military operation", or a large scale ICE operation which shouldn't be able to cause this but does because the current administration is uh, what it is.)

I'm from El Paso. This is bullshit if I've ever heard. There are no fucking drones around here, especially not from cartels. The only criminal cartel here is ICE.

They lifted the restriction:

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/faa-el-paso-airport.html

TACOs…..

If a reasonable administration took this step without any justification, I'd have serious questions.

Under this administration, I'm very very concerned that it's cover for something deeply nefarious.

What are the odds that Claudia the President of Mexico has already been extracted now?

Has anybody checked the pizza/chinese takeout traffic in DC?

Nothing unusual - DOUGHCON 4: https://www.pizzint.watch/

https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

This isnt a particularly special thing. It's a catchall rule and given the identical one to the west, it looks like a common military one.

Neither military nor medevac is exempted. This is unusual.

The medevac is scary. This could cost lives. Hopefully there's a reason but, given how clumsy this admin is, who can say?

There is a slim possibility that if it was airtraffic control equipment upgrades, but that would be put in the bullitin and known about long in advance, that it is just imposed with no warning is wrong and just shows how the FAA is becoming more 3 letter every day.

Strike on Mexico incoming.

Anything to distract from Congress getting unredacted access to Trumps good friend's files/emails and naming 6 of their potential clients.

They were testing a laser-based anti drone weapon in the area. The administration lied that it was in response to Mexican drones to stoke fear in xenophobia in their base as that is what keeps them in power (making scared people feel like they have some control).

Is Trump planning to attack Mexico?

Who knows, but everyone's got that on their mind, now.

guys. it's aliens. nbd.

If it was aliens trump would be telling everyone and taking credit for finally telling the people the truth.

No, he’d be rounding them up and deporting them. Have you not been reading the news lately?

The entire conspiracy theory industry is praying that the closure runs its course for the established 10 days and then everything is re-opened and the reasons behind the closure are not further explained or even better become classified

Not saying this isn't suspect though.

Another distraction from the Trump Files.

https://archive.is/GCep9

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"Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker"

Well surely they wouldn't block flights for ten days because of ad blockers?

Ads are pretty risky, it could happen

It is alright, the site of FOX is not whatng cartel web engine gated like the site of the times.

"Wag The Dog" movie all over again. Sure looks like deflection from the Epstein Files and economy.

Launching the invasion of Canada and Greenland perhaps..

Aren't those countries thousands of miles away from El Paso, Texas?

Please understand, Geography is only taught for optional extra credit in American schools.

(I wish this were a joke.)

What? I had to take Geography.

They taught us that Geography is old fashioned so the geography classes and history were all replaced with "Social Studies" at some time in the 80s. Most of that class was just about reading holocaust books, I think we had a week or two where they taught us what islands and fjords are, but the only time putting names to countries and capitals on a map came up was an optional extra credit quiz in 8th grade. Most people skipped it.

We had to take Geography, Social Studies, World History, American History, Civics, etc. as separate classes.

Islands/fjords etc were covered in Geology/Earth Science, and we also took separate courses for those as well.

Geography was reserved for understanding where things are in the Earth, how borders are defined, a little bit of world history as far as borders changing, etc. And also Apartheid for some reason because I guess they didn't know where else to stick that lesson in.

Rote memorization has never been my strong suit and so I suffered a lot in geography as it was taught to me. I got a D in that class. Now that I'm out of school and can actually properly learn, it all sticks a lot better because I've learned to contextualize everything and link together facts.

Well you take this sharpie and draw a line and bam direct line of attack - if it works for hurricanes it will work for war plans

Cuba could be one. While Florida is closer, it's possible due to El Paso being considered highly isolated.

If it is for a military reason (very doubtful at this point), there is a country that is literally 0 miles away from El Paso.

Mexico is also possible.

Invasion of Mexico is also possible ...

>President Donald Trump said US forces will "start now hitting land" in Mexico targeting drug cartels

https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/09/trump-says-us-to-start-n...

(Jan 2026)