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derektanktoday at 1:55 PM3 repliesview on HN

While I think Trump political appointees have set the stage for these kinds of incidents generally by cutting back on training for DHS law enforcement officers (though I’m not sure if CBP has been impacted to the same degree as ICE), I’m not convinced that this kind of communication failure at the tactical level couldn’t have happened under previous administrations


Replies

duxuptoday at 3:18 PM

The story of the El Paso airspace closure seems to have involved multiple chances to properly coordinate but they chose not to. Folks at the pentagon have claimed their use of lasers pose no risk and seem to be skirting or ignoring the law as far as their coordination with the FAA goes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/us/politics/el-paso-airsp...

Seems to less a misunderstanding that could happen to anyone and more administration style and choices.

bonsai_spooltoday at 2:17 PM

> I’m not convinced that this kind of communication failure at the tactical level couldn’t have happened under previous administrations

What examples do you have? There was a Chinese spy balloon that was monitored for a whole week before it got shot down - the exact opposite of what’s happened twice (!!) this month in the current administration.

XorNottoday at 2:18 PM

Sure, like most things it's possible and yet it didn't and it's on top of a list of compounding failures of a similar nature: e.g. firing live artillery over an in use highway (while insisting it was safe, and then damaging the vice presidential motorcade) [1].

It's worth noting this screw up happened on the back of the FAA basically hitting the panic button when they realized the military was going to shoot at air targets with high power lasers near an active civilian airport.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c051p3981m4o