Is the U.S. Vulnerable to a Drone Sneak Attack?
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Its possible a sleeper cell of terrorists could effectuate some small area drone strikes with commercial off the shelf drones and improvised explosives.
The large scale military drones you are envisioning that can do the same damage as military aerial bombardment, that is a much harder thing to "sneak" into the US at any kind of scale or to build in secret.
As for future state actor capabilities. It seems possible that China is working on drone tech deployed from submarines or other force-projection platforms. Yet another reason to avoid a hot war with near peer militaries in current year.
Ok I'll just come out and say this, I think it would be easy for a certain corrupt individual to create a false flag drone attack from a "foreign adversary" in order to boost patriotic morale and gain the support necessary to drag a certain country into a war he has repeatedly and very publicly announced he does not want to be involved in despite all evidence to the contrary.
Especially given that corrupt individual has dismantled several safety measures and regulations and eliminated positions of individuals who are trained to keep something like this from happening.
If you look at the amount of damage done by the Beeper attacks a few years ago, you really don't need a gigantic war drone to cause a catastrophe in certain conditions.
I know it sounds paranoid AF, but I find it especially odd that same individual is trying to shut down the only agency that would thoroughly investigate an industrial chemical explosion if one were to occur.
https://grist.org/energy/trump-quietly-shutters-the-only-federal-agency-that-investigates-industrial-chemical-explosions/ -
From whom?
Specifically? Who knows, but the concept has already been tested by someone, and afaik, they have still not figured out who did it.
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When they're behind enemy lines, I'd say they're on offense.
Then they’re commandos or special forces. ‘Insurgents’ implies an uprising against a central government, and serves to reinforce the Russian narrative of Ukraine being part of their empire.
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I think they mean insurgency as in resistance in occupied areas.
The attack on Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was not carried out by resistance fighters in e.g. Crimea, which would be the implication under that interpretation.
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Yes, indeed. Can you buy or build a drone in the US? No problem. Can you get explosives or other nasty stuff to arm it? No issue for a determined group. Can you find an undefended soft target? Of course, there is a smorgasboard of those.
One person making a drone is far different from China staging an attack.
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I think basically everyone except North Korea is. Anyone who allows goods and people to move through their borders with any level of freedom can theoretically get attacked like Russia did.
I mean, this has always been true, the drones only close the gap by miles. The big issue with the drone attack was Ukraine ability to sneak explosives deep into Russian territory. The delivery mechanism of drones may make it more accurate, but it could have been rockets/mortars and the effect would have been the same.
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One person making a drone is far different from China staging an attack.
It only needs one right drone with the right payload at the right place and time...
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Then they’re commandos or special forces. ‘Insurgents’ implies an uprising against a central government, and serves to reinforce the Russian narrative of Ukraine being part of their empire.
Then they’re commandos or special forces.
Sure, fair enough.
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The attack on Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was not carried out by resistance fighters in e.g. Crimea, which would be the implication under that interpretation.
Yeah and iirc there have been some acts of sabotage in Russia that could have been carried out by actual insurgents, but as far as we know this one was Ukrainian special forces
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Exactly, it's a modern day trojan horse. It seems to be fairly easy to then potentially pin the attack on just about anyone using shell companies for shipment. Especially with the deregulation and removal of so many safety and security positions over the last several months.
I was reading a little about the beeper attacks the and I think even now there is still some uncertainty about which company actually worked with the Mossad to manufacture the batteries that contained the explosive.
The only reason I even bring that up, is that there were so many steps involving so many different groups of legitimate manufacturing companies as well as shell companies to ship the beepers. Some of the beepers were even taken apart and inspected before being distributed as a security measure, but they had used such a small amount of explosive fuel within the batteries, that it was completely missed.
Unless there's another beeper attack I missed, the one last September was directed at Hezbollah, across Lebanon and Syria.
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Unless there's another beeper attack I missed, the one last September was directed at Hezbollah, across Lebanon and Syria.
Yeah you're right, my bad.
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One person making a drone is far different from China staging an attack.
It isn't hard to make a drone. I have confidence that I could do it, and I've never tried. They are available off the shelf, and nobody will bat an eye if that becomes my hobby - just keep a few around and ready to fly with cameras and post photos of my various outings and I look just like any of dozens of other people I know who have drones.
I would need a place to test my first attempts, but it isn't hard to find a farmer's field in winter where nobody will see what I'm doing. Which is to say I couldn't stage such an attack today, but I could next year.
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It isn't hard to make a drone. I have confidence that I could do it, and I've never tried. They are available off the shelf, and nobody will bat an eye if that becomes my hobby - just keep a few around and ready to fly with cameras and post photos of my various outings and I look just like any of dozens of other people I know who have drones.
I would need a place to test my first attempts, but it isn't hard to find a farmer's field in winter where nobody will see what I'm doing. Which is to say I couldn't stage such an attack today, but I could next year.
Nobody bats an eye when you buy ONE drone. Buy 100 and people will ask questions.
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The author seems like a total dick, but given the recent fear/rumor of the possibility of a false flag attacks on U.S. soil, I feel like something like this isn't inconceivable.
Boston Bomber with a drone.
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The Billion Dollar Question.
Japan tried to bomb the US by sending balloons over the jet stream and it was largely ineffective due to the range and lack of precision. Moving a weapon across an ocean and into range of a target without a ton of telecommunication support and manual intervention would be a herculean task. Far easier to just bomb one of the hundreds of US military bases local to your neighborhood, as with the Al Qaeda bombing of the US base in Somalia or the Houthis in Yemen targeting US bases and large ships trying to navigate the Red Sea.
But domestically? A little surprised nobody has tried to turn a large drone aircraft into a weapon for an Oklahoma City style attack.
If you look at the techniques employed by the Ukrainian insurgents against Russia, explosives embedded into the shipping containers of large trucks have been incredibly potent. Drones hidden within the tops of shipping containers put Ukraine within striking distance of the Russian bomber fleet.
Definitely something a committed insurgency within the States could employ against police/military.
...into a weapon for an Oklahoma City style attack.
In terms of the actual explosive, I think that was a whole lot of mass.
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...into a weapon for an Oklahoma City style attack.
In terms of the actual explosive, I think that was a whole lot of mass.
Heavy Lift drones can carry upwards of 55 lbs. And there's no reason you're limited to one.
