Trumpy testing the waters to see. Im guessing they make a reappearance at a perfect time to terrorize the US population.

normal aircraft.

"Mostly" is the quote. In the movie, Aliens, the hero Ripley is speaking to the little girl, Newt, as she explains that the alien monsters come out mostly at night. She looks with fear at at Ripley and repeats, "Mostly."

Sure, a lot of the silliness in reporting on this was misidentified authorized aircraft, but the word "mostly" in the report makes me wonder if there was something else going on with those drones and sightings. Not saying there was, but it makes me wonder.

There were some commercial drones. But no more than usual. As often the case with these, the more people start looking, the more they see. So more misidentified planes were reported.
Mostly, people don't pay attention to what is flying around.
In the end, another case of something from nothing.

Granted, you could be right that every one of these is a plane misidentified as a commercial drone. However, you make a few unjustified assumptions such as the government knows the number of commercial drones in the night sky at any given time and at any given lat/long, you imply none of the drones were military by simply not mentioning that possibility, and you adopt the undefined phrase "no more than usual". How many are there, usually?
Other knowledgeable people come to a different conclusion as well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-capability-to-handle-drones-60-minutes/
"Officials in Washington have underestimated the threat posed by drones in U.S. airspace, despite several cases of mysterious drone swarms over sensitive military sites, warned Glen VanHerck, the former joint commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command."
Not saying it was foreign military, nor aliens. But it seems unlikely the strong response from military and law enforcement was just because of misidentified planes.

According to the article in the Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/us/politics/drone-sightings-explanations.html

Puts Donnie's "Golden Dome" into perspective.

The idea nukes would be delivered by ICBMs is not rational. Too expensive and detectable. I wouldn't be surprised if we're doing something similar to bad actors. It would be disappointing if we weren't.

Which means it'll likely be obsolete. Plus trump thinks stealth means the planes are really invisible, so think what he thinks the dome is. He could be easy scammed on any plans he is shown by anyone he thinks is smart. And we know he doesn't trust advisors unless again he thinks they are smart and we see who surrounds him as advisors now.

Besides if a drone is already inside the area to protect it won't do any good. Drones can fly low enough not to be sensed.

I felt a shift in the balance of power. I felt an irrevocable change in the means of war.

💙💛🕸️💙💛

I also read tonight that the attack was planned in total secrecy by Ukraine in a building right next to the FSB.

FSB:

as well as much of the rest of World War II,
and have gamed out scenarios of that attack, and the whole war...


We Americans had good reason to discount the probability of any attack on Hawaii,
because of the distance from Japan, and the fuel it would take
for any Japanese attack fleet to get there, and be able to make it back home----
(I presume that was their assumption, although I've never read any documentation of such--
simply, they thought Hawaii was safe from any possible Japanese attack, that is, the majority
of the military.... there were a few alarmed dissenters, but they couldn't get that message through)


While OTOH, the Japanese fleet, to be able to make this attack on Hawaii and return
from this attack which they had been planning all through the year of 1941,
were storing extra fuel on all of their ships in 5-gallon cans, in any space that was available
(as well as on fuel tankers accompanying the attack fleet).

On their return home, some of the Japanese aircraft carriers broke away
and participated in the Japanese siege of Wake Island...
(When the Americans on Wake realized that they were finally being attacked by carrier planes,
they thought their time was just about gone--- they were forced to surrender just before Christmas 1941.)


The Ukranian drone attack here was absolutely brilliant!
No idea how they managed to truck all those drones so close to their targets,
but obviously Russian security was even more faulty than that of the Americans in December 1941!

The Japanese failure to take Hawaii (or destroy the US aircraft carriers) was even bigger and eventually contributed to their defeat.

The loss of Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines would have pretty much eliminated the US from the Pacific. The US carriers being out at sea during the Japanese attack probably quickened Japan’s defeat To be honest, neither side really recognized how important aircraft carriers would be in the Pacific.

on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. They had no invasion troops with them. The objective of the attack was do enough damage to our fleet to inhibit any effective US Naval response for at least six months, to their offensive across most of the rest of the pacific, which did include Guam, the Phillipines, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, as well as Wake Island, that desolate rock whose only importance was as a possible base for American air power mid-pacific. The attack on the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor was only one small part of that grand offensive, meant to protect the Eastern flank of that offensive. In that objective, they were mostly successful--- the US was prevented from any meaningful action against the Japanese until May of 1942, six months later, when the US Navy turned back a Japanese offensive against Papua New Guina.

Yes, you are quite correct that the Japanese failure to destroy US aircraft carriers in Hawaii (since they weren't there) was their most significant failure of that Dec. 1941 offensive-- and made our great victory at Midway possible in June of 1942-- where our naval forces with 3 carriers were able to sink four Japanese carriers while losing one. Had the Japanese been able to take Midway Island and defeat our fleet carriers there, that certainly would have set the stage for a subsequent invasion of Hawaii.

Attackers can just buy their own planes.

Defense is gutted since it was decided thet DEI is the enemy and not world powers: "We're on great terms"

Connect the dots.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220295160

Though no one wants to admit it, surface ships* have been highly vulnerable for decades. The only reason they’ve been able to survive so far is that for the most part they don’t bring vessels within range of an adversary’s anti-ship weapons**. The enemies fought didn’t have the long range missile tech because they couldn’t afford it and/didn’t have the tech base to build/maintain them. Ships aren’t even armored any more because they decided to trade protection for speed***.

Now a swarm of cheap aerial delivery vehicles can overwhelm ship defenses. It’ll only get worse when they use the lessons learned to build submersible unmanned vehicles. Unmanned surface ships already exist…

Nothing will be done until we get a bloody nose. Strategic planners are always ready to fight the previous war (see Maginot Line, Spanish Armada, and the operation to rescue the Iranian hostages for examples).

*Submarines at sea are safe-ish for the moment, but their days are also numbered.

**You think people would have picked up on this during the Faukland (or Malvinas) Island war, when the British ships Hermes and Invincible were heavily damaged by Argentinian anti-ship missiles (though stupid operational practices by the Brits contributed). The Brits almost lost their one carrier to an undetected Argentinian submarine, but the sub suffered a malfunction that prevented torpedo fire.
***Look up photos of the USS Stark after a rowboat of explosives was detonated alongside her.

Last edited Mon Jun 2, 2025, 01:52 AM - Edit history (1)

I was sort of hoping Putin would bet pissed off at tRump and have him fall out of a window and his big, beautiful birthday parade on June 14th would be his funeral procession but Putin hit by a drone also makes me smile!

I just watched a very good video about this. It was very clear and even I was able to understand it...

I hope No retaliation from Russia gets by.

💙💛

Redirect that money to drone, and anti-drone manufacturing.

It’s a whole new industry that is going to need hundreds of thousands
Of $2000 drones, instead of $100 million manned aircraft.

We had drones that could reach Mach 5 in the 1950s. We've had drone swarms for quite some time too.

Safe to say that the last few decades the US military has been devoting a ton of time and resources to drone defense.

What was so stunning about this drone attack was that it was launched from inside Russia. Short of autonomous drones to defend this type of attack in every major city, I just don't know how we could stop a drone attack launched near the targets from our own airspace. I am sure they're working on things like response time to combat these things, but it's pretty unstoppable right now IMO.

much like those on naval ships go a long way to defend our warplanes on the ground. I don't mean to make it sound so simplistic but that's my way of finding the quickest solution when I see a problem.

Just a thought. Go ahead vets, fire away.

Something just occurred to me, friendly fire.
Where would shells not hitting their targets land? Not to mention other commercial flights and tall buildings. Did I just answer my own question about why we wouldn't use that as a defense? See I knew it was too simple.

They fire 20mm shells at a rate of 3000 rounds per minute. They can be set to auto mode where they detect, track, and then fire upon any incoming target the system deems to be a threat.

I'm guessing Russia had nothing like that, operational?

close to and above US military bases, and other installations.

Seems lost on most folks. Better to have stable relationships and economic integration than be constantly preparing (spending outrageous sums of money) for war or demonizing/dehumanizing other people.

Just my thoughts for what they’re worth.

I saw photos of security personnel with electronic jamming 'guns' at the last Pope's funeral where so many heads of states attended.
Problem is most electronic jamming does not work for fiber optic controlled drones that can have several miles of fiber to spool out. And a human FPV pilot precisely targeting and controlling the drones to an exact target. Many videos from Ukraine of these drones flying under netting and directly into a tank through an open hatch.

Areas like reviewing stands for a parade, or a motorcade, or helicopter landing area are all now 'soft' targets.

Quad-copter drones are Another one of those technologies that have far reaching results way beyond anything initially imagined.

They could have chosen any number of surprise attacks from history, (Trojan Horse, Doolittle Raid, or the Battle of Trenton) but they went with framing Ukraine as the aggressor nation in WWII allied with fascists. That was intentional, IMO.

As we all know, the war that started by bombing Pearl Harbor, ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This could be a very subtle bit of propaganda by Putin to draw that conclusion, and point out America used nuclear bombs in much the same situation…

Unmanned drones and AI will make human fighter and bomber pilots all but obsolete in the next decade or two.

The huge financial, manufacturing and performance advantages will require it.