That drone is battery powered and has a ceiling of hundreds of feet. So no. You would also be able to see it with night vision. They reported that they weren’t able to see it with night vision which seems impossible at first. But they probably were able to do that by painting it with something like vanta-black.

Nobody is building something like that with 25k. Sure you could build it, but it wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t be anywhere close to reliable enough for a mission as crazy as entering into restricted military airspace. It would take lots of testing and iteration for someone to produce something that worked reliably and has been shown to be able to do things like evade night vision detection. It’s a specialized price of hardware developed specifically for this kind of task. Nobody is their right mind would do anything like this unless they already had access to the hardware and flippantly decided to take it for a cruise over and air force base (idiot employee at government contractor) or if they had an interest in doing this (China/Russia).

>flew out of the TUS area about 50 miles to the northwest of town into the middle of nowhere desert

Tucson sits in a plain surrounded by tall mountains. Whoever was controlling the drone must've had a much stronger radio than the one with the Lockheed 10km line of sight limit.

No, the argument is that the incentives aren't really there for other possible groups to commit this crime since they have legal alternatives to what was done. Doesn't make it impossible, just less likely.

I may be mistaken, but I think the argument being made is more like, "no one commits crimes, or any acts really, without a motive." These people, at least their leadership, have significant motive to not commit an act like this.

My money would be on terrorists as well, but that's why we have investigations. Let's see where the satellite photos take us.

Also everyone is rational--but isn't it a happy surprise "nation-states" didn't come up again?