Federal officials initially claimed a cartel drone infiltrated U.S. airspace in bizarre incident

Homeland Security Kristi Noem abruptly ended a press conference in Arizona on Friday after being asked about a bizarre incident in which federal officials closed the airspace above El Paso this week after border officials reportedly used a laser to shoot down a party balloon they mistook for a cartel drone.

During the press conference in Phoenix, a journalist asked if the reports were true, and if so, why border officials did not appear to coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“You know, this was a joint agency task force mission that was undertaken and we’re continuing to work on the communication through that but recognize we’re grateful for the partnership of the Department of War and FAA as we go forward,” said Noem, who then walked away from her microphone.

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[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

We don't like them balloons. Was the balloon chinese like the last one?

[–] Manjushri@piefed.social 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It's probably more likely that it was another research balloon...

Purchased for less than $15 and operated by the ham radio hobbyist group Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a silvery, 32-inch-wide pico balloon called “K9YO-15” was launched from a nature preserve north of Chicago in October 2022. It dangled a 10-gram (0.35-ounce) payload that included a radio tracker, a solar panel and a long antenna wire. Some 123 days later, on February 11, 2023, K9YO-15 was on its seventh circumnavigation of the globe, its hobbyist operators say, when they lost contact with the pico balloon near Alaska’s border with the Yukon. This was the same day that a U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down a UFO using a nearly half-million-dollar Sidewinder missile in the same general vicinity. K9YO-15 has not been heard from since.

Half million dollar missile to take out a $15 balloon. At least using a laser is probably cheaper.

[–] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

An F-22 logged flight-time. I think those are like $70,000 an hour in collective operational costs.

[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 2 points 12 hours ago

To be fair, though, they need to log a certain amount of flight time just to meet pilot training requirements, so this sortie could probably just be counted against that.

(Same thing with flyovers at sporting events and such. Those are actually done as practice bombing runs -- gives pilots practice at flying over a specific target at a specific time.)

[–] Manjushri@piefed.social 1 points 12 hours ago

Good point. That would bring it up by at least a couple hundred thousand bucks.