Hacker News

>. "The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion.

The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region.

The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming."

https://x.com/SecDuffy

Looks like they shot the drone down with a laser:

> UPDATE (CNN): Source briefed by FAA tells me that military activity behind the El Paso flight ban included unmanned aircraft operations and laser countermeasure testing in airspace directly adjacent to civilian routes into El Paso International. Airspace restriction just lifted.

https://x.com/petemuntean/status/2021586247827828812

Well this could get ugly. https://x.com/Acyn/status/2021613820553335090

I personally don't think that's the whole story. They're likely going to act against the cartels to take out cross-border drone capabilities and are preparing for S-A retaliation as well.

The only confirmed thing they have shot down was a child's birthday balloon

This admin is focused on the message of stopping the inflow of drugs to the US. There are probably some true believers, and there are probably some reactionary accelerationists. There’s also significant evidence of amateurism, misinformation, and incompetence.

All of that coming together, I see this action coming out of meeting where

  - one party was convinced that this would solve the fentanyl epidemic
  - one party was hoping this would escalate military action in Mexico
  - one party was convinced that America had lost its masculine bravado and taking swift and unprecedented action like this would make their wife respect them again
  - one party was busy making “bets” on Kalshi

"FAA abruptly lifts order halting El Paso airport flights for 10 days" - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/faa-el-paso-airport.html

don't attribute to security concerns...what can be explained by incompetence...

Knowing the restriction goes to 18k certainly says that either S-A or A-S reach must be limited but the as your post points out no buffer between MANPAD actual range and the limit imposed. I think unlikely to say MANPAD, specifically.

There's a small private airfield to the west with only a single victor airway connecting to el-paso. the victors end at 17999 ft, effectively cutting traffic for non-commercial or non-business jet operators.

Closure of the victor airway there seems, again limiting airborne craft due to airborne hazards.

Hazards in the air, near the surface that are, seemingly, unplanned with a cone pointing at mexico.

That's kind of the most anyone will get until more info, could be some urgent testing of some capability or response to small craft (drones) coming over the boarder. Emergency timing could be to garner interest or emphasize importance, which works well politically.

Las Cruces International Airport and Dana Jetport are unaffected.

Even Cartels know that shooting down civilian aircraft in US airspace would be an escalation that would lead to heavy retaliation. Doesn't seem likely to me.

My read is most likely some kind of strike on the cartels. There hasn’t seemed to be any significant US military buildup so it’s something they’ll be able to do with a smaller force.

The trapezoid makes me worried about a ground incision there- it extends to the border and would be a cover space for an invasion force. Absolutely bonkers that we are even having this discussion.

The TFR is most likely contingency planning for possible retaliation by cartel drones and the need to keep the airspace clear so they can see (with radar) and shoot down drones and not passenger aircraft.

"Maybe, or maybe FL180 is a nice clean line for class A airspace. No need to bother transcontinental flights for a local issue."

Way more plauible

Doing a closure up to 18k feet is common because that's where class A airspace starts, i.e. you need a clearance to go there, you can't just fly around VFR wherever you want. The airspace above 18k might not be officially closed, but controllers can be instructed to just not give a clearance into whatever area they deem is unsafe on a particular day.

I think it's simpler. It's going to make the cartel drones easier to spot.

Shooting down civilian American aircraft like that would seem to just be for an even more strong response…

Seems unlikely.

Would that account for the trapezoidal shape of the one restricted area?

Sounds like a great way to reinforce the "We ready to move along from Epstein" narrative.

It seems crazy not to just, tell people that if that's what it is. "Hey if you are flying above 18,000 please don't go lower because you could be blown up by a MANPAD."

If the cartels have MANPADS then our intel is already blown by issuing the TFR, so what's the harm in just saying it out loud?

Of course, the US elected the only celebrity of the 80s and 90s who hates blow.

On the other hand a careful analysis of the plumbing system of Trump's Tower and Trump's Hotels in general would reveal possibly the highest concentration of coke than any other building in the world considering the intersection of wealth and istrionic personalities who called those apartments home at one time or the other.

Fate sure loves irony

Besides I would go to my grave claiming that racism is particularly strong in the war on drugs, if coca grew plentiful and naturally in the US and Europe it would not be illegal at all.

But it's scary because uh ohh inssulfation of an extract of a plant coming from the global south we are all gonna die, somebody will please think of the children.

But hey you can gulp 60 oz of super strong energy drinks which equate to about 5-6 fat lines, matter of fact you can gulp 600 oz and cause yourself a heart attack and nobody would bat an eye or investigate the safety profile of such drinks

It's the same old story with alcohol too

The not-totally-crazy ideas from Reddit include:

- it's related to the annouced GPS disruption test (although that's a really long time and doesn't seem urgent enough)

- someone in Mexico is getting kidnapped by Gov

- nuclear tests

I wish those were crazy ideas, but here we are...

Probably laser shootdown of drug carrying drones.

Another interesting note, the trapezoidal TFR is still in place

Most plausible comment I found on the internet was the government lost something in that trapezoid and doesn't want anyone to fly over it and find it until it's collected.

I honestly assume it's something petty. Like an El Paso air traffic controller was rude to a deportation flight pilot.

My guess is nuclear test.

Airport circle to secure the transport of the device to the ground adjacent to the test site.

Trapezoid is the test site, wider on the side that is less controllable (border-facing).

Disconnected because two separate teams executed in parallel without informed oversight.

El Paso is the 6th largest city in Texas so not “major” but certainly large.

The explanation given is that cartel air drones entered US airspace.

I guess my question is, doesn't this happen all the time? I would think drones would be an easy way to fly a Kilo over the border to whatever dropspot you wanted. I wonder what the new wrinkle is?

Will be interesting when/if more information is released. I am not sure why folks are so surprised or think it’s shocking. While definitely out of the norm, my mind was immediately thinking 10 days seems like an even number where you are trying to find or do something, not sure how long it’s going to take so you just stick it. Certainly odd that it’s only a few hours but for all I know there is some written government procedure for whoever is doing that sets it at 10 days.

So bizarre

Why the 10 day announcement overnight only to totally rescind it before the majority of US citizens wake up and read the news?

don't attribute to security concerns...what can be explained by incompetence...

WTF? The FAA announces a ban on all flights at an international airport and then withdraws the ban within a few hours of the announcement? What kind of insane police state would try a stunt like that? Even for the Trump administration, that is setting the bar at a new low.

That looks like a rather flat trapezoid for something that fell from high above.

With a fast-moving object, we can usually tell its trajectory across the map much more accurately than we can tell where along that trajectory it impacted the ground. See: MH370.

They probably lost a nuke in the area. Wouldn't be the first time.

speculations are it's either related to ICE or drug cartel investigations

The former has a long history of not cooperating with local authorities (also in ways I personally think are sometimes quite malicious but that is off topic). Und normal circumstances ICE would never have the power to lead to a shut down of air space, but with the current administration who knows.

And drug cartel investigations won't cooperate with the city council as an investigation big enough to shut down airspace wouldn't want to risk it leaking by speaking with a city council about it.

But this is a pretty big deal and lets hope this is just about preventing some high ranking drug cartel members from fleeing and not some retaliatory horror story implicitly triggered by the repeated public rejections and denouncements of Trump in recent week. Like if we look at full (and violent) dictatorships(1) you would expect an internet outage to follow and then a lot of people to die.

(1): To be clear no the US is not a full blown violent dictatorship. Even through things are bad, they are not "that" bad. Through IMHO there seem to be people in the government which want to make it exactly that bad.

No exemptions for medical life flights, local law enforcement, or even the military. You can read a more normal NOTAM posted for New Orleans likely for Mardi Gras (https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2231)

As a Minnesotan I wonder what this does to the deportation flights going to and from Camp East Montana.

"I wish all these people would stop pursuing politics discussions about an authoritarian regime, instead can't we all just talk about how interesting authoritarianism is?"

Weird take...

What a bizarre move.

poor PTZ mount :(

I think not; it's not somewhere you can conduct a nuclear test without starting a war with Mexico. However it is interesting to look at the TFR area in Google maps; it looks just like a nuclear test site, but the craters are natural volcanoes.

Probably just closing the airspace for the space alien emissary.

Wouldn’t the Nevada Test Site be much better for this? Huge, government controlled, no major airports or cities, and moreover, already used for this sort of thing.

This was my thought as well given the length of time of the closure.

3.6 roentgen you say?

It shows how bad the lack of available sources is, when they interview someone familiar with the type notice in general, but not this specific notice.

it's too spontaneous for that

it it's "just" a training exercise or test they could have announced the closing weeks or month before it happening massively reducing the cost fallout from it

not that the current administration has in generally acted with care when it comes to causing huge financial damage to US cities, especially such they don't like

Stopping life flights though? The supposed risk of cartels shooting down a helicopter vs the immediate risk of "this guy is going to die if we don't fly him to the nearest trauma center"... That risk calculus doesn't make sense.

E-File? Like, taxes?

Don't worry. Mexico will pay for it 100 %.

Probably $Bs. Around 100 flights per day from there, so there would be dozens of planes on the ground.

But they didn't block the desert, only air zone and also only directly above the city not beyond it.

That's kind of what I'm thinking too though my money would be on something like "super secret stealth cruise missile ripped off it's mounting pylon" or control software went crazy rather than an airframe loss.

It's likely be something small enough and with little/no fuel because if it left a big smoking hole they'd find it quick. And it's gotta be something with fairly questionable aerodynamic properties (i.e. damaged) or questionable guidance (i.e not an inadvertently released bomb) otherwise they'd have a very good idea of where it landed.

The elders sang songs of this day, and we were foolish not to take heed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY

Probably the least unhinged theory in this thread, but unfortunately it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If they had intel about such a threat, they'd have to move all high value assets to another base pronto. A flight ban won't stop a shady box truck from rolling into town and releasing a swarm of small drones.

(It would also be uncharacteristic of Iran to actually attack America directly, on American soil. Try to find examples of Iran doing that and you'll come up quiet short.)

You aren’t, probably was flagged down by not being hacker enough (or more likely for being an open invitation to runaway speculation without any grounding in reality and facts)

Email the mods and they’ll check and merge the dupes :)

You mean like, a three-day invasion of Mexico ?

Underground nuclear test and trying to mitigate the EMP grounding proximate planes?

El Paso is in a very Red state, ICE involvement is minimal there.

It's closed below 18,000 ft, over a 10 nautical mile radius: https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

Yep. TFR was issued three hours ago.

https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2233

I did not have “airspace closed for ten days to shoot down a drone with lasers” anywhere on my bingo card. Huh. When life gives you lemons, file a TFR about it, I suppose.

This one's responding.

https://skyvector.com/?ll=31.836456906566234,-106.7029640846...

It seems like you linked to a different area on the border to Mexicali?

that link shows the wrong blocked airspace in my case

(it shows that some areas above the border in the desert are blocked off, which makes sense to fight drug smuggling by drones without risking mistaking drones with aircrafts)

but he article is about the new circular zone directly placed over El Paso with El Paso International Airport directly in it's center. (Interestingly because they used a circle it technically covers the Mexican side of the boarder including a part of the airport on their side, but practically FAA can't shut down Mexican airspace so it's misleading).

Also worth noting there is:

- Holloman Air Force Base

- White Sands Missile Range

- Fort Bliss

- Fort Bliss McGregor Range

direct besides the city

so a Military exercise, or deployment of Military (Trump has said he will bomb cartel hideouts in Mexico) can be added to the list of possibilities

Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

Another source from Thom Hartmann mentioned the military was testing counter-drone lasers and failed to inform the FAA. Seems like the FAA used unreasonable collective punishment to passive-aggressively chastise the military publicly.

Probably an attempt to embarrass the admin. Now watch for the orangemanbad articles about a reckless military operation personally planned by the president in the middle of the night on X.

Hah im trying to be tongue-in-cheek but I have to admit that doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility actually lol

Well, if the only comparable antecedent is closing American airspace after 9/11, and that order came down from Bush, it seems reasonable to suppose that this order came down from Trump.

As for why? No clue.

doesn't need commercial air space lock down, at most private/small low altitude/drone plain lock down

it's in general highly abnormal

which kinda makes it normal to not have a explanation

because anything abnormal enough to cause something like that is also likely something kept secret until it's done

(Like large scale operations against drug cartel, "special military operation", or a large scale ICE operation which shouldn't be able to cause this but does because the current administration is uh, what it is.)

Nothing unusual - DOUGHCON 4: https://www.pizzint.watch/

Neither military nor medevac is exempted. This is unusual.

Anything to distract from Congress getting unredacted access to Trumps good friend's files/emails and naming 6 of their potential clients.

Who knows, but everyone's got that on their mind, now.

If it was aliens trump would be telling everyone and taking credit for finally telling the people the truth.

Well surely they wouldn't block flights for ten days because of ad blockers?

Aren't those countries thousands of miles away from El Paso, Texas?

Invasion of Mexico is also possible ...

>President Donald Trump said US forces will "start now hitting land" in Mexico targeting drug cartels

https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/09/trump-says-us-to-start-n...

(Jan 2026)