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El Paso airport and airspace closed without warning for 10 days for ‘national defence’

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brihard

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This is weird as hell. Last night, FAA put in a temporary flight restriction closing El Paso airport with a 10nm bubble up to 18,000 feet. They did this with three hours’ notice and it’s in effect for ten days. Stated reason is ‘national defense airspace’ and the warnings to pilots go all the way to warning of deadly force. There’s another similar TFR zone a bit west right along the border.

No exemptions for military, law enforcement, medevac… Sounds like nobody had a heads up including the civilian airport or Fort Bliss.

Not sure what’s up. I wonder if they’ve suddenly got a fastball warning on a cartel MANPADS or drone threat or something?


www.nbcnews.com

El Paso airport grounding was in response to testing of U.S. military technology, sources say

The testing, which was taking place near Fort Bliss, was of high-energy lasers that are designed to protect against drones from drug cartels that could cross over the U.S. border, three of the sources say.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
 
Or aliens and not Mexicans

america guy GIF
 
brihard said:
This is weird as hell. Last night, FAA put in a temporary flight restriction closing El Paso airport with a 10nm bubble up to 18,000 feet. They did this with three hours’ notice and it’s in effect for ten days. Stated reason is ‘national defense airspace’ and the warnings to pilots go all the way to warning of deadly force. There’s another similar TFR zone a bit west right along the border.

No exemptions for military, law enforcement, medevac… Sounds like nobody had a heads up including the civilian airport or Fort Bliss.

Not sure what’s up. I wonder if they’ve suddenly got a fastball warning on a cartel MANPADS or drone threat or something?


www.nbcnews.com

El Paso airport grounding was in response to testing of U.S. military technology, sources say

The testing, which was taking place near Fort Bliss, was of high-energy lasers that are designed to protect against drones from drug cartels that could cross over the U.S. border, three of the sources say.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
Click to expand...
Article suggests that there are about 10,000 passengers daily through the airport (3.5M over the preceding 11 months). Plus cargo.

And closed with about 30 minutes notice.
 
dapaterson said:
Article suggests that there are about 10,000 passengers daily through the airport (3.5M over the preceding 11 months). Plus cargo.

And closed with about 30 minutes notice.
Click to expand...
It was about three hours from issuance of NOTAM to taking effect, but yeah, due to comms lag inbound planes were finding out on final approach.

The more I think about it, this has gotta be some sort of sudden and imminent threat. The airport’s only a few miles from the Mexican border and Ciudad Juarez. Flights IVO El Paso could definitely be threatened from Mexican soil.
 
brihard said:
It was about three hours from issuance of NOTAM to taking effect, but yeah, due to comms lag inbound planes were finding out on final approach.

The more I think about it, this has gotta be some sort of sudden and imminent threat. The airport’s only a few miles from the Mexican border and Ciudad Juarez. Flights IVO El Paso could definitely be threatened from Mexican soil.
Click to expand...
Or they're relocating Area 51.
 
Don't you people get that Trump is a Russian agent!

This is the beginning of the maskirovka to provide justification and cover for incursions into Mexico.
 
brihard said:
This is weird as hell. Last night, FAA put in a temporary flight restriction closing El Paso airport with a 10nm bubble up to 18,000 feet. They did this with three hours’ notice and it’s in effect for ten days. Stated reason is ‘national defense airspace’ and the warnings to pilots go all the way to warning of deadly force. There’s another similar TFR zone a bit west right along the border.

No exemptions for military, law enforcement, medevac… Sounds like nobody had a heads up including the civilian airport or Fort Bliss.

Not sure what’s up. I wonder if they’ve suddenly got a fastball warning on a cartel MANPADS or drone threat or something?


www.nbcnews.com

El Paso airport grounding was in response to testing of U.S. military technology, sources say

The testing, which was taking place near Fort Bliss, was of high-energy lasers that are designed to protect against drones from drug cartels that could cross over the U.S. border, three of the sources say.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
Click to expand...

Greatcoats on, greatcoats off.

www.reuters.com

El Paso flights resume after US anti-drone system prompts sudden shutdown

A secret military laser-based anti-drone system prompted the Trump administration to ban air traffic for more than seven hours in and out of the Texas border city of El Paso after U.S. aviation officials raised drastic concerns about the safety of commercial air traffic.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
A U.S. official told Reuters Mexican cartel drones breached U.S. airspace. The Pentagon took action to disable the drones and then the FAA and Pentagon determined there was no threat to commercial travel.
Airline sources earlier 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 on the U.S.-Mexico border. The flight prohibition also covered some rural air space in neighboring New Mexico.
Some airline sources also said the closure had been due to coordination issues between the Pentagon and FAA.
Click to expand...
 
Lumber said:
Lol.

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

www.foxnews.com

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

A U.S. official says the military shot down a party balloon near El Paso, Texas, after initially suspecting it was a foreign drone, prompting a temporary airspace closure.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
Click to expand...
I’m waiting for more to firm up on this whole thing. No friggin’ way this was simply some clown-shoes squabble between DoD and FAA over counter-UAS that ended in the violent death of a party balloon.
 
The latest update:

www.cbsnews.com/…

Airspace closure followed spat over drone-related tests and party balloon shoot-down, sources say'

The unexpected but brief airspace closure in the Texas border city of El Paso stemmed from disagreements between the Federal Aviation Administration and Pentagon officials over drone-related tests, multiple sources close to the matter told CBS News.

The Pentagon had undertaken extensive planning on the use of military technology near Fort Bliss, a military base that abuts the El Paso International Airport, to practice taking down drones.

Two sources identified the technology as a high-energy laser.

Meetings were scheduled over safety impacts, but Pentagon officials wanted to test the technology sooner, stating that U.S. Code 130i requirements governing the protection of certain facilities from unmanned aircraft had been met. [/url]
Click to expand...
 
brihard said:
I’m waiting for more to firm up on this whole thing. No friggin’ way this was simply some clown-shoes squabble between DoD and FAA over counter-UAS that ended in the violent death of a party balloon.
Click to expand...
Well, I have seen up close and personal some interesting inter-agency fuckery in the US.

I would imagine it is orders of magnitude worse nowadays.
 
I guess you can say that the fire control and anti-drone system works, but the identification and classification one needs work.
 
brihard said:
I’m waiting for more to firm up on this whole thing. No friggin’ way this was simply some clown-shoes squabble between DoD and FAA over counter-UAS that ended in the violent death of a party balloon.
Click to expand...

They’re not sending their best these days.
 
brihard said:
Oh geez. So it mostly was exactly that except with the added bonus detail that the laser had been transferred to the control of - of course - Customs and Border Protection through DHS.


This is ineptitude.
Click to expand...

Ineptitude ++++++

www.nytimes.com

Inside the Debacle That Led to the Closure of El Paso’s Airspace

The F.A.A., citing “a grave risk of fatalities” from a new technology being used on the Mexican border, got caught in a stalemate with the Pentagon, which deemed the weapon “necessary.”
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

https://archive.ph/Bk8RO
 
From what Ive been reading and hearing . It turns out that the device in question had been turned over the ....wait for it !
The Department of Homeland Security.
Supposedly for testing and use against Mexican cartel drones ,which actually do exist and are a real threat (albeit minor at the moment) .
As I understand it DOD's initial response to being screamed at by the FAA was something along the lines of , "We did what ? No I'm pretty sure none of our guys would do something that stup ....oh wait.
You need to speak to DHS , yeah they got one of ours on loan. "
The Department of Homeland Security the gift that just keeps on giving... one slow motion train wreck at a time.
Somebody thought it would be a good idea to fire a laser at poorly identified target through the airspace of El Paso International Airport during a fairly busy part of the their day.
 
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