This year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas has better protections against rogue drones than the many small U.S. bases in the Middle East like Tower 22, where three American soldiers were killed by a kamikaze drone last month due to minimal anti-drone defenses, as I reported at The Intercept.
Unlike Tower 22, this year’s Super Bowl will enjoy a host of “hardened” measures including electromagnetic weapons that can incapacitate drones. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week declared the area around Allegiant Stadium a “no drone zone,” saying that his agency, together with the FBI and even the military, has been preparing for 18 months to protect the event. All of this effort has gone into protecting the event against drone attacks despite Mayorkas conceding that the intelligence agencies have no evidence of any specific threat.
“To be clear: there are no known, credible, specific threats to the Super Bowl or to Las Vegas at this time — but we are vigilant, and we are prepared,” Mayorkas said at a Super Bowl Security Day press conference on Wednesday.
Compare this hypervigilance with the glib way the Biden administration has discussed the terrorist drone that slipped past military defenses and killed three Americans and injured 41 others.
“For the most part, our air defenses have been able to catch, or been able to destroy, any impact or any incoming, whether it be rockets or drones at bases,” said Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh.
For the most part. You know, besides the deaths of three National Guard soldiers from Georgia. Working class people with families — the supposed focus of the Biden administration’s “foreign policy for the working class.” But who cares about them?
Especially with electromagnetic weapons. I imagine those drones are shot down routinely, so this is an anomaly, not a symptom of lack of protection for our troops.
Cheap dig is a cheap dig.