- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/67231615
This month, Ukraine pulled off its own Pearl Harbor, decimating more than 40 of Russia’s strategic bombers worth more than $7 billion. This despite lacking an air force.
The attack was a masterclass in asymmetric warfare. It involved 117 explosive drones, hidden inside wooden sheds, quietly trucked to remote Russian bases from Siberia and the Arctic, then unleashed in coordinated waves.
Flash back to early December 2024, when strange lights hovered over New Jersey skies. Residents flooded 911 and social media with reports. But what followed was worse: government paralysis.
No one — not the Federal Aviation Administration, not the FBI, not Gov. Phil Murphy (D) — could say what the drones were, how many there were or where they came from. Instead, they gaslit the public, blaming the sightings on helicopters and meteors.
We have seen this movie before, most recently in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, when government obfuscation and lack of coordination between local, state and federal agencies generated confusion, outrage and chaos. After the New Jersey drone debacle, we should all be sounding alarm bells about our unpreparedness in the face of this new threat.
Complacency comes in a variety of forms — misplaced hope, denial, fatalism — but the results are always the same. It leaves you flat-footed in the face of imminent threats. It prevents you from doing what needs to be done to avoid a worst-case outcome.
The antidote to complacency is vigilance, that is, having a plan for what we will do if suicide drone attacks start.
Such a plan would start by breaking down the walls between silos such as the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense, FAA, FBI and others within the federal government itself. It would hard-wire the broken connections with law enforcement at the state and local level. It would establish accountability: Who is going to keep watch around the clock, assess the threat in real time and notify everyone with a need to know?
The agency with the mandate to build this kind of nationwide, coordinated response is FEMA. That’s what makes the president’s proposal to dismantle it not just misguided, but dangerous. Now more than ever, we need a powerful, professional FEMA to unify efforts across government and industry to confront the asymmetric threats of this new era.
It is the responsibility of the federal government to envision and prepare for this worst-case scenario. Innovative solutions are needed, whether to create an impenetrable dome, new jamming technology or high-tech weaponry to shoot drones out of the sky. Only businesses and certain parts of the military have this kind of know-how, and only FEMA can build the public-private ventures we will need to get it done.
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More police, more military, more defense spending, and more mass surveillance of US citizens. Surely, this is what the US needs.
The “temporary” measures enacted after 9/11 never ended, and now they want to enact more under an aspiring authoritarian.
It is as if US politics exists entirely for the benefit of defense contractors.
I’d say I’m pretty knowledgeable on night time blinkies in the sky, having stargazed for a decade. Between binoculars and flight tracking sites, I got used to determining which blip on the map was in my view. Plus of course, I’ve seen thousands of satellite passes, hundreds of stars, and spotted planets hundreds of times.
I went drone hunting in that debacle. All I found was a bunch of clueless, paranoid people pointing to the sky and calling everything a drone. I absolutely believe the drones were real, somewhere, some time, but it was undoubtedly blown out of proportion. Of course the agencies couldn’t verify all the reports, they were planes 20 miles away. EWR/JFK/LGA/PHL all throw planes in the air here. People who never stared into the starlit abyss before had no concept of typical plane characteristics, automatically eliminating their ability to gauge altitude and distance. Don’t get me started on the people calling in every mini hobby drone as the same as the “car sized” drones. Like no, the CIA is not in your backyard. Not like that. Or the fucking “hologram” planes.
Funny how Trump promised to unveil the plot if elected, to the praise of the local MAGAts, all to… Forget about it? There was never any real substance to the volume claimed. The actual drones in question didn’t need airspace clearance because they weren’t in the category that required it.
My accepted theory is testing out of Picatinny. I do believe I unwittingly caught an earlier squadron, about a year prior to it blowing up. 4 craft, distinct 6500K white lights, staggered formation, and oddly quiet for their seeming altitude. I could only follow them for a mile before I ran out of road and I believe they turned. All I can say is they looked weird to me, which is what caught my attention. But that was it, one accidental glimpse. Not a single unexplained sighting after.
But that’s my opinion as someone who believes the truth is still being misrepresented by my political allies.