New details on F-16, drone collision in banned Arizona airspace (opens in new tab)

One would assume that people who fly their drones in banned airspace would disable transponders.

I'm quite interested how the ground control station for that is set up, or if it's flying autonomously and in radio silence. If you're illicitly controlling a drone, presumably you don't want to be standing around holding a great big radio transmitter like a Vegas searchlight pinpointing your location. And you also don't want the drone to be broadcasting either since modern planes are bristling with electronic warfare sensors.

At least the F-35 doesn't have six fingers and ten wings.

All those "spot the difference between two photos" games from childhood are turning into critical life skills.

probably generated from the source of this article: https://www.azfamily.com/2024/04/05/report-fighter-jet-that-...

News reporters are known for their extreme accuracy and precision, and their in-depth knowledge of subject matter. Maybe the MIC is still trying to convince US taxpayers to throw more countless trillions at nonfunctional pork projects for the benefit of Lockheed-Martin and uncountable layers of subcontractors? You know the A-10 just isn't whiz-bang enough for CAS roles because it can't run 13 nested levels of hypervisors and K8s.

Nation states, human/narco traffickers, or criminal-acting crazy people. 0.001% it was a stupid amateur. Either way, the source wasn't good. The prescription isn't more regulation but better defenses and integration of on-the-ground civ&mil police work.

The article is misleading or misinformed. There are numerous cheap consumer drones that can go miles high. The hardware is more than capable of it - it's just the firmware that's crippled, but it can be modded. You can also just make them quite easily. Here's [1] a video of a guy with a homemade drone that hit a height > 40k feet, along with links to buy the exact parts. It's almost certainly just people trolling, because it's somewhat predictably turning into the Great Balloon War of 2023, part 2.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6QL0VjqYgI

I'm torn on this.

Would a nation state be brazen enough to risk a state of war with the US over this?

But on the other hand, if an adversary was brazen enough to try that, would the US admit it and therefore effectively admit it has something close to zero control over its own airspace when it comes to drones? Maybe that's what this theoretical adversary is banking on.

The only outcome that seems plausible is that all personal drones are grounded. For maybe ever.