Fly the Friendly Skies of El Paso
We had a situation in El Paso Tuesday this week – seems one or more drug cartel drones intruded into our air space, causing the FAA to call a ten DAY closure over El Paso.
The El Paso International Airport is located less than 10 miles from Biggs Army Airfield on Fort Bliss.
Leadership at the installation remained in the dark about the decision to shut down the air space around the base and were not informed when the restrictions were lifted, according to a defense official.
Restrictions were lifted, as noted above, within a few hours after some of our finest at Ft. Bliss took said drone/s out of commission. The method was not specified.They moved the duckhunter air defense artillery school years ago, but then, the Ft. Bliss Rod and Gun Club isn’t that far away and I’m sure if they asked for volunteers to yell “Pull!” they would have attracted a crowd.
Love that “located less than 10 miles” line…as anyone who has ever been stationed at Ft. Bliss knows, the two airfields miss bumping up into each other by maybe a couple of miles on a good day.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in a post on X, said the Department of Defense “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion,” though he did not specify how many unmanned systems were involved.
“The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region,” he wrote, adding, “Normal flights are resuming.”
On Tuesday, the FAA announced that it would ground flights — including commercial, cargo and general aviation — in and out of the airport until Feb. 21 due to “special security reasons.” That decision was lifted hours later.
One can only assume that cartel ownership was established when instead of vanishing in a puff of orange powder the way God intended clay pigeons to do, there was a large white cloud and anguished cries of “Ay Caramba!”… nah, I’m kidding. Just suffering the aftereffects of that white cloud… Be interesting to know how they took the drone/s down… for that matter, how many there were so I could quit using this silly slash/s.
One would think the only people who could get upset about this were people who make money off cartel shipments. Purely coincidentally, by the way:
Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who represents the El Paso area, called the move “unprecedented.”
“The highly consequential decision by the FAA to shut down the El Paso Airport for 10 days is unprecedented and resulted in significant concern in the community,” Escobar said in a statement. “There was no advance notice provided to my office, the City of El Paso, or anyone involved in airport operations.” Military Times
Guess she thinks the cartels should publish a schedule?
A tip of the old Hatlo hat to Jeff LPH for the Military Times link.
Think you last flight sucked?
A guy flying out of LAX to Houston and on to Managua seems to have been directed to the wrong plane, and after six hours of a supposedly 3-hour flight, found out he was on a flight to Japan. United seems to think they were responsible – apparently they comped two days at a hotel in Japan and his fare to get him to the right destination. (Houston used to be really bad for this – they would scan your pass, send you down an escalator to where an agent would direct you right or left to your proper flight – maybe. Twice in the ’90s I almost wound up flying to Mexico instead of El Paso.) Daily Mail
Oh, and it could be worse – there is a permanent desk at the Wien (Vienna) airport to handle passengers who mistakenly booked their tickets to the wrong country. Think about it.
Thursday update – now it is claimed that the weapon was a new laser loaned to Customs and Border Patrol (without the FAA being notified first.) When the FAA got wind of it, they shut down commercial flights for 10 days. A few hours later, cooler heads prevailed and everything went back to normal. Sounds a bit of a Charlie Foxtrot. Nothing like inter-agency coordination, huh… and “nothing like it” occurred in advance when it should have. Military Times II
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Border, Society
I flew into El Paso from Houston and landed 1 hr before the shutdown occurred. Glad I made it. Woke up on Wednesday to people calling me about this. I was like what are you talking about? I landed there yesterday.
Looks like you got a free passo.
32 AAMDC is still located there because the Army can conduct PATRIOT gunnery at neighbor White Sands. There are at least six battalions there.
I don’t know how they took down the drones but all they have to do is fill the sky with energy from an actively cuing PATRIOT RADAR and it will drop a drone out of the sky within range. There are other ways they have available near that particular base which are also highly effective such as LASER weaponry and other kinds of things. The LASERs can down drones at amazing distances but pose threats to civil aviation which, if I had to guess led to the closure of air space. Some of these systems and programs are above big Army level and not actually located on Ft. Bliss but White Sands.
It would be quite easy for a laser system on White Sands to drop a drone crossing the border. So, free target practice.
There have been several conflicting claims about the shut down. The prevailing one is the drone incursion story. There is a claim that the drone was downed by a laser weapon that was to be tested at the fort.
Coincedentally the laser weapon test was also one of the reasons given for the shutdown to avoid damage / danger to civilian flights. Seems to me that the missile testing grounds or even the Yuma proving grounds would be a better test location than next to El Paso.
There was also a video posted that was supposed to show one of the cartels using an armed drone dropping a bomb on a meeting of another cartel using the same tactics as the Ukranians.
Lastly on one newscast, the talking head reported that a General, possibly in the El Paso region said that the cartels have been doing about 10,000 drone incursions a month into the US in the El Paso area alone to do surveillance on BP and or deliver drugs. That’s a lot of airspace violations.
Yuma is also used for testing DEW weapons.
Ah, good ol’…
you know Ft. Bliss was named for a person, it sure wasn’t for the weather.
…and not just the weather a few years back.
The weather’s fine, depending on your temperament. Falling snow appeared sporadically during a day and a half, then melted.Low temperatures averaged 24 degrees or so for several days, according to google, and then rose to the high 30s.
The sun is already coming up earlier in the mornings which are usually glorious.
110F in the summer, 9F between Christmas and New Year’s. 3900 feet above sea level (not counting going over the Franklin Mountains).
Like I said, great weather. Love the open space too.
Just inhuman distance from everything and everyone else.
Folk didn’t call it End of the Earth, Texas for nuttin’.
Maybe related to this??
(Disclamer: The post misrepresents a Mexican military operation in Sinaloa by SEDENA and SEMAR against Los Chapitos cartel members. Helicopters used were Mexican-owned Mi-17s (Russian-made) and UH-60 Black Hawks (US-made); no Russian or US forces involved.)
https://x.com/PamphletsY/status/2021709148724113572
Or was it this……??
I heard this morning on the radio the “drone” was actually a mylar balloon…hmmmm 🤔
Seems to a lot of dispute about what actually happened.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15550191/Trump-cartel-warning-drones-swarm-El-Paso.html
Those heathen Chinee are flying baroons over us again?
Well, jeez, after years of falling rounds from bullsh*t in Juarez, somebody doing something about aerial crap ftom there in a good thing.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-military-shot-down-party-180026235.html
Now it’s a party balloon. Seems like a typical administration overstatement, doesn’t it.”It was the biggest grizzly bear ever!
Well, a large bear. Actually an Irish wolfhound! No, a Golden Retriever, but a really bad one! Ok, it was my neighbor’s chihuahua.”
So you are blaming the administration for an act taken by the locals without even calling “higher” at the time??
Yup, “Trump’s fault”…
“A tip of the old Hatlo hat to Jeff LPH for the Military Times link….
They’ll do it every time!