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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3535 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 8, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Does anyone have any theories with the US shutting down airspace with no warning over El Paso, Texas? And similarly over the southern New Mexico border?

Overflight of the zone above 18k feet is legal, which makes jumping to the "someone-lost-a-MANPADS-in-Juarez"-theory the obvious choice. Both the Stinger and the Verba have an effective ceiling a little under 18k feet. The interesting questions is how hard do you have to kick the cartels for them to fire one at everything that flies?

The other option would be counter-drone operations in that airspace, probably also against the cartels and their drone activity. But stranding tens of expensive commercial aircraft for 10 days would be a little absurd for something that should be easy to plan...

It's hard for me to imagine anything that could piss the American public off more than shooting down one of our passenger planes in our own airspace. The risk/reward there doesn't make sense at all.

Makes a bit more sense as a bluff, I guess, especially if it were mostly unspoken and so plausibly deniable. "No, we're not about to do something like this, but remember that we could."

Well, other than flying our planes into our own buildings, that is.

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