Advanced Pentagon laser weapon shot down party balloons instead of drone by mistake, says report — airport shut down after Customs and Border Protection mistakenly believed it was targeting Mexican cartel drones

A frighteningly farcical series of events involving laser weaponry, the FAA, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Pentagon has been retold by a trio of insiders talking to the Wall Street Journal. The punch-line, reportedly, is that the advanced LOCUST laser weapon system was used to shoot down party balloons over the U.S-Mexico border.

It is difficult to condense this self-satirizing chain of events, but as briefly as we can; agents from the CBP used an advanced Pentagon laser weapon to target ‘Cartel drones’ over the U.S.-Mexico border. However, insiders assert that the FAA had warned the CBP not to go ahead, had to suddenly close airspace over the target area, and diverted and delayed numerous flights for safety. The cherry on the silly cake is that the CBP actually shot down aerial objects that “turned out to likely be party balloons,” says the WSJ, which has sources who have had eyes-on debris analysis reports.

After he became aware of the CBP plans going ahead against his advice, Bryan Bedford, the Federal Aviation Administration chief, closed an 11-miles radius of airspace adjacent to El Paso International Airport. This abrupt closure caused chaos, according to the source report, and also came as a surprise to officials at the White House, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the CBP.

However, the 10-day closure per the official FAA notification was cut short, after the trigger-happy CBP had finished zapping party balloons. The FAA was probably assured by the aforementioned agencies that ‘operation party balloon pooper’ had been a success and the CBP had stood down.

The WSJ frames the farcical incident as evidence of a long-standing spat between the various governmental, safety, and security agencies and the problematic communications between them. FAA, DOD, DHS and White House spokespersons haven’t responded to the WSJ’s requests for comment, as yet.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.) urged the FAA and the Pentagon to coordinate better, reports the WSJ. “We could do something legislatively, but I’d rather that they just started talking to each other,” said Duckworth, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Roger Wicker, hadn’t reportedly been briefed on the laser weapon farce, at the time of writing.

Authorities may yet release more solid investigatory information to clarify the timeline and series of events, and reveal any drone wreckage that was recovered. However, embarrassments tend to get swept under the rug, so if no traces of drone wreckage are found expect the authorities to remain quiet.

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