> There is absolutely zero chance a cruise missile would be fired without closing the airspace to civilian aircraft.

Sometimes the military misses a lot of items on the checklist, and accidentally ships a nuclear missile where it didn't intend [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...

I wouldn't say "absolutely zero chance", but I'd say "it's unlikely this was an expected outcome, and it's possible that someone is in deep trouble right now."

Cruise missiles are able to fly in controlled and uncontrolled airspace on Military Training Routes (MTR). There are procedures in place for a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) to be requested and published that alerts other operators of the hazard to flight.

Speaking as a pilot, If there was a NOTAM I can guarantee with 100% certainty an airline pilot would know about it. Also the military doesn’t screw around with this sort of thing, I think the chance is virtually nil they intentionally flew an unmanned aircraft that close to an airliner.

Also pilot here: I’d drop that figure to 90% as there are so many notams it’s easy to miss the needle in the haystack with the ridiculous volume of irrelevant notams out these days.

https://ops.group/blog/the-problem-of-bullshit-notams/

The military screws around constantly. That's why Cavalese happened. That's why that Apache crashed showing off in Afghanistan. IR655 got blown up. Like, we have lots of "military screwing around" instances and like zero aliens. It's so hard to believe that it's aliens.

Just doesn't make sense in a Bayesian sense.

It's not military. It's private weapons development company. There's no payload, so they do not need to notify commercial airliners, and it's a classified project, so they cannot anyway.

They are testing hypersonic missile systems for both ABM and warhead delivery.

If a private weapons contractor was testing a new hypersonic missile without any warhead on it, under a classified program - it seems to me that they would need to fly it outside restricted space to test long distances range and guidance systems.

As long as they were not at commercially used altitudes, it seems to me that they wouldn't advise anyone.

A320 and U-2 go the same speed. Also the U-2 has big wings and a big radar signature. Basically this makes no sense.

They go the same speed, but the U-2 is at twice the altitude.

Due to retinal persistence you will see the part of an aircraft that is longest in the direction of travel (the body) more clearly than the wings. Only military aircraft carry radar, commercial planes depend on TCAS which requires the other object to be transmitting a beacon signal.

For others unfamiliar and reticent to google, a "U-2" is:

> The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is an American single-jet engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency.

On the contrary, the USA has accidently dropped nuclear missiles from planes, and have experience all kinds of other incompetence over the decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Ill...

There are quite a few more safeguards in place now to prevent accidentally letting a missile reach over 30k feet above US soil.

0 chance implies no one makes mistakes.

U-2s don't fly fast.

They do when they’re flying the opposite direction as you.

Also, he’ll if we civilians know what kinds of retrofits have been made in the past several decades, particularly for the purpose of testing and development.

The U2 is a very well-understood and photographed airframe. Even if given engine upgrades, it wouldn't be more than a few mph faster than before. Those big glider wings limit it to a very narrow, predictable, flight envelope.

Tell that to the people on the plane that was shot down above Ukrainian airspace.

Wait, wait, wait...you're saying that because a missile has shot down a plane before in another country during a conflict, the United States military is firing cruise missiles without clearing civilian airspace?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down with a surface-to-air missile, a weapon intended specifically for targeting aircraft. A "cruise missile" by comparison is intended for terrestrial targets and has a minimum range of a few hundred miles. Should the missile come in contact with an aircraft during its initial launch phase, your warhead would basically come right back down on top of you - which is why they close the airspace.

This is reference to this incident that happened during peacetime in 2001 - not later incident during the conflict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia_Airlines_Flight_1812

I'm not sure how that's related? Ukraine was a warzone at the time.

And still is at the time :(, just nobody cares anymore

this is a poor comparison

shh, those were aliens too, at least according to Russia.