Trump Says U.S. Ship Shot Down Iranian Drone in Strait of Hormuz | Hacker News Reader

Trump Says U.S. Ship Shot Down Iranian Drone in Strait of Hormuz

wsj.com

25 pointsbreck20 comments

Where in this article does it cite "electronic jamming"? Just curious where the title is from here as it doesn't seem to match the article

They presumably first read an article on another site such as CNN that mentions electronic jamming: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/trump-us-destroyed-i... but then decided to share an article based on it from a particular well known source such as WSJ in this case, that happens not to mention what they included in the title. So yes, the person should have shared the actual article they read and that they based on the title on.

My fault. That's exactly what happened. I saw it first on CNN, but posted the WSJ article (just because I find WSJ to generally be a better source), but it was only after posting that I realized the WSJ didn't mention "electronic jamming", which was actually the reason why I thought it was interesting to HN in the first place. Curious why the WSJ did not mention that.

Submitted title was 'U.S. Destroys Iranian drone using “electronic jamming”'. We changed it to the article title as the site guidelines ask.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The linked article doesn't mention it.

CNN reports[1]: The drone was destroyed using electronic jamming, according to a US defense official

1 - https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/trump-us-destroyed-i...

It is mentioned in this article.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/18/politics/trump-us-destroyed-i...

It was mentioned somewhere that the USS Boxer had the LMADIS. This article has a bit more about it:

https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019...

The LMADIS is entirely EW (electronic warfare) with no direct kinetic kill ability.

And this is now confirmed: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29063/marine-anti-dron...

What makes that really interesting is that the Marines are strapping land vehicles onto ships to add capability. This is such a hack. Want another weapon or sensor for the ship? Add an entire truck that has it, including the wheels and engine and everything else. Somebody gets to sit in the truck.

Why is it a hack? You have an emerging threat the existing assault ships aren't scoped to handle, and you find a cheap expedient way to handle it. If we (heaven forbid!) did end up going to war with Iran, do you not think Marines would need to land? Do you not think they'd need counter-drone vehicles to survive? Seems like an odd couple, but a good use of tactics to me.

Let's just agree that anyone's drones are completely fair game for anyone else with the means to destroy them. Their destruction is not justification for anything other than a claim for damages in court.

I agree. Spies, when detected, are often killed by the country they are operating in. Why should the machinery of a drone have a higher value on it than human life?

Military drones cost $4M to $140M. That's well in the range of what govts and private entities risk human life over, whether you like it or not.

Missiles are similarly expensive.

Seems to be the stance both sides here are taking - a big factor in the US not responding to the shootdown a few weeks back is that it was just a drone.

>Their destruction is not justification for anything other than a claim for damages in court.

No one is going ballistic over downed drones (not yet at least), but only damages? C'mon, be serious. These things are often classified tech in their own right and may contain classified information. Back and forth like this between sovereign countries is not really a matter for a civil court.

Not true. Trump nearly retaliated over a downed drone with an attack estimated to cost Iranians 100 lives. He called it off at the last minute when confronted with the potential death toll.

I like to think that was all theatre for the benefit of Iran, but you never can tell with trump between crazy on purpose and well just crazy.

>Not true. Trump nearly retaliated over a downed drone with an attack estimated to cost Iranians 100 lives. He called it off at the last minute when confronted with the potential death toll.

Sure, and how many appalling things does Trump "nearly" do each week? The guy's mouth leaks like a sieve and I don't imagine you really believe he received a casualty estimate mere minutes before giving the go ahead. That is not at all how these things work. His story made no sense at all... unless he was lying to both frighten Iran and appear empathetic at home. Your second sentence is far more likely than your first.

Likely, but we don't know. So you can't just brush it off and say nobody is overreacting to downed drones, clearly one very important party is.

>So you can't just brush it off and say nobody is overreacting

"Acting" is a fairly important part of the word "overreacting". There were no actions, so there was no overreaction. You know Trump better than this by now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com