[HN Gopher] Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call fo...
___________________________________________________________________
Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of
emergency'
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-12-11 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| lisper wrote:
| Martians!
| ents wrote:
| Why are they not being shot down at the very least?
| soared wrote:
| I don't think anyone has the tools to go to an area after a
| spotting and capture/destroy them quick enough.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Not to mention that it's illegal to shoot down aircraft
| runjake wrote:
| Shooting large, apparently car-sized, stuff down over populated
| areas isn't a good idea.
|
| As an aside, I presume at this point, the military and FBI are
| stationing their SIGINT aircraft over the area and probably
| have a good idea what's going on but aren't saying publicly.
| These things are emitting electromagnetic energy in more ways
| that one, eg. radios and electric motor RF signatures.
|
| RIP the SkyCircles accounts on Twitter.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| The FAA looks down on people shooting at flying objects they
| can barely recognize, as this guy learned the hard way:
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/retiree-shot-walmart-delivery-dro...
| dartos wrote:
| Gravity
| bell-cot wrote:
| "Shot down" with what? Surface-to-air missiles? Duck hunters
| with shotguns? Attack helicopters with miniguns?
|
| Whatever you spray into the sky (to knock a drone out of it)
| will also fall back to earth, plausibly generating civilian
| casualties on the ground. (And if you use lasers - high power
| laser beams have plenty of safety issues, too.)
| potato3732842 wrote:
| If Ukraine is any indication you shoot them down with other
| drones.
| gowld wrote:
| No one in Ukraine is in the habit of shooting down
| commercial airliners and helicopters, though.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Ukraine's capabilities in that domain are plausibly far
| more advanced that America's.
|
| Also - costs, casualties, & collateral damage may be far
| more acceptable in an active war zone, and against drones
| which are busy killing people & destroying valuables
| whenever they are not shot down.
| antonvs wrote:
| > Duck hunters with shotguns?
|
| Duck Dynasty season 12 is going to be a doozy
| OutOfHere wrote:
| It's always wrong (in every possible way) to be the first one
| to engage hostilities. To be morally in the clear, you should
| always wait for the other side to engage first. If we didn't
| follow this doctrine, we would've already had a nuclear
| holocaust. Warmongers and civilization don't mix.
|
| We don't know anything about their capabilities as individual
| drones or as a cluster of drones. For all you know, when you
| shoot one, the other ten take that as declaration of war.
| bagels wrote:
| Some of these photos are of passenger planes. I think most
| agree that shooting down passenger planes is bad.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Why? Just follow them and see where they land / head to (they
| can't fly forever) and ask some questions to the owners.
| soared wrote:
| Bit concerning that no government agencies have figured out
| what's going on, but hardly seems like there is a reason for a
| limited state of emergency given there is no known threat at all.
|
| My guess is a US company is gathering data and hasn't admitted to
| do so without some type of licensing/etc
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >My guess is a US company is gathering data and hasn't admitted
| to do so without some type of licensing/etc
|
| My guess is "Flowers By Irene" or more likely someone
| contracted to do stuff on their behalf for optics/politics
| reasons. Real companies that do drone stuff are pretty by the
| book because they know the fed crosshairs are on them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's the beauty of things like this. Most local
| municipalities are just not equipped for this type of
| situation. The feds are, but the locals have to become aware,
| realize they can't do anything, and then request help. A mayor
| calls the governor, the governor calls the feds. That's the
| hierarchy, and that's pretty much what happened.
| thephyber wrote:
| There was an article 1-2 days ago saying that one was in the
| area of a LifeFlight helicopter, preventing the safe operation
| of that medical transport. There has been a threat articulated.
| It may not be a true report and the response may not be
| proportional/appropriate to the threat, but to say there is
| zero threat is wrong.
|
| Also, reportedly these are the size of SUVs. I don't believe
| you need that much of an investment for "gathering data".
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Seems like an opportunity for a training exercise. Have the FAA
| put a TFR in place and let the national guard interdict, ECW and
| such. Take control, land it in the x-ray scanner, check for
| explosives then take it apart and get telemetry data. The US
| taught Ukraine how to do this with great success. No joy on ECW,
| disassemble them in the sky.
|
| If the drones were legit they would be broadcasting their ID as
| would the controllers and they would be within visible range
| unless they have the approved part 107 on file _or part 107
| waiver_ and approval for long range drone usage.
|
| If these are not really drones and it is just mass hysteria the
| national guard would rule that out rather fast. As a bonus there
| is no added cost to the tax payer. This is just swapping out one
| training exercise with another.
| mkmk wrote:
| A practical question, beyond the questions of whose drones these
| are: what are they looking for?
| dylan604 wrote:
| They're just looking for the Situation or Snooki out on the
| Shore. Someone forgot to tell them what decade it is.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Presumably something with a heat signature since they're
| operating at night.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The most plausible explanation is that people who know nothing
| are in hysterics over legally operated and licensed aircraft.
|
| ATC has radar, military bases have radar. If there were
| threats, they would see them and do something about them. Folks
| are reporting to their state senators? and some whacky
| congressmen have said some absurd things, but no one who is
| actually responsible cares and folks are trying to spin it like
| they're clueless.
|
| This is the equivalent of calling the FBI because you're a
| pepperpot and you saw someone you didn't recognize walking down
| the street.
|
| Drones near sensitive power infrastrucure... like those
| transmission sites will all the equipment are all over the
| place. And police stations? Give me a break.
|
| There's probably some unlicensed or amateur operators doing
| slightly inappropriate things, but silly people are trying to
| frame it like some kind of attack.
|
| Also some of them are certainly just ordinary airplanes.
| apcragg wrote:
| The photos I've seen posted look very obviously like commercial
| airliners and helicopters with their navigation lights on. You
| can even make out the American Airlines livery on the tail!
|
| https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...
| _djo_ wrote:
| Same. This is a ridiculous mass hysteria driven by media
| sensationalism and ignorant members of the public.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, I took a look at the map for Spring
| Lake, NJ. There's an airport ~7 miles inland. There's a
| national guard center just to the south. Just to the north,
| there's Sylvan Lake that looks like the profile of a
| jetliner.
|
| What's this got to do with anything? Nothing, but it's no
| less of an explanation than what these people have proposed.
| fourteenfour wrote:
| Lol, also rep. Jeff Van Drew claiming without evidence that
| the drones are coming from an Iranian mothership off the
| coast.
| gowld wrote:
| In his defense, he is a Cold War relic.
| postalrat wrote:
| Is that your gut feeling or do you know something the
| government isn't willing to reveal?
| antonvs wrote:
| It's essentially a null hypothesis. There doesn't seem to
| be any actual evidence of anything. It's all based on
| social media posts. It shows all the signs of being a mass
| panic.
|
| The OP article put it like this:
|
| > It is not known whether a group or individual might be
| behind the phenomenon, or whether any credible issue even
| exists - there has been speculation that the flurry of
| activity might merely amount to confusion over sightings of
| regular planes or be the product of social media
| distortions.
|
| If you think there's some real issue here, can you explain
| _why_ you think that?
| labster wrote:
| The AA livery just means it's a false flag attack. Truly, we
| haven't seen such an invasion in Grover's Mill, New Jersey
| since 1938.
| gowld wrote:
| Which picture has the AA livery visible?
| apcragg wrote:
| 6 and 7. If you squint and lean on a bit of confirmation
| bias, photo 9 looks like a commercial airliner with the
| Alaska Airlines livery.
| gowld wrote:
| Ah. Knowing what AA tails look like makes it look likely
| that the blurry triangle has blue and red in the right
| places.
|
| Without context, it does appear to be a quadcopter-ish
| shape, but since the caption says the object was at high
| altitude, it fits a regular airplane well.
|
| People live on site watching the object move should
| certainly know better. (Perhaps they do know, and are
| intentionally trolling.)
| nimbius wrote:
| this would be relatively easy to solve with historical ADS-B
| data correlated to the time and date of the spottings.
|
| https://adsb.lol/
| apcragg wrote:
| AAL578 flew by Tom's River (Bay Shore area, where the photos
| were taken) around 20:43 on December 8th which is right when
| the photos were taking, on a heading that would result in an
| observing on the ground looking at the port side of the
| aircraft, just as seen in the picture.
| daemonologist wrote:
| Yeah that's very clearly a helicopter in most of the photos,
| and the rest could easily be an airliner. At most it might be
| some knucklehead with an old RC helicopter in violation of FAA
| regs (flying at night, no remote ID).
|
| If you were some foreign adversary why would you put navigation
| lights on your secret reconnaissance drone?
| jklinger410 wrote:
| There is more evidence here than just pictures from this one
| article.
|
| The pentagon, for example, just declared that they do not know
| what they are[1]. Among many other credible sources.
|
| [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hc1l58/pentagon_no_e
| ...
| antonvs wrote:
| > There is more evidence here than just pictures from this
| one article.
|
| What "more evidence"?
|
| All the Pentagon is saying is that there's _no_ evidence
| that's a foreign entity is behind it. Not "more" evidence.
| gradus_ad wrote:
| I live in NJ. I've seen these drones. They are not commercial
| airliners or helicopters. They are loud, fly low and slow, and
| make abrupt turns unlike any planes I've seen. Their lights are
| also very different from other aircraft.
|
| I can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but
| they are absolutely large drones of some kind.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| You are absolutely wrong. Why is this the top comment?
| plipt wrote:
| I find the discussions on Metabunk.org helpful with news
| stories like this.
|
| For example here is a clip that a Fox News host recorded.
| Presented as a drone, but is it not clearly just an airplane
| filmed flying directly overhead?
|
| https://www.metabunk.org/threads/drones-over-new-jersey.1377...
| dantillberg wrote:
| There was a similar phenomenon a few years back in Colorado:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Colorado_drone....
| pygar wrote:
| So is Iran just going to be the default bogeyman until they drum
| up enough negative sentiment for a war?
|
| Iran doesn't really have any military projection. It can't even
| move equipment and people into countries it's close to (Syria,
| Iraq), let alone the US. Why would they take the risk of doing
| this? It's obviously bullshit.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Iran doesn't really have any military projection.
|
| I'll take "things people said about Afghanistan in 1999" for
| 400!
|
| Just to be clear, I fully agree with your sentiment. Probably
| not Iran or any other foreign power.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42225609
| OutOfHere wrote:
| In the worst case, if these were to be Chinese military drones,
| they could now be testing our responses, and we could be in for a
| really bad time when war does happen. Of course I hope that this
| is not the case.
| gowld wrote:
| What kind of equipment (available to civilians) can capture
| accurate and useful data about of UFO size, distance, and
| trajectory/heading?
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Israel has been mounting guns and speakers on long-distance
| quadcopters and shooting at Gazans. Only a short time until the
| tech becomes widespread. Israel seems to be a proving ground for
| mass control tech like this. I'm having a hard time seeing how
| society is not going to devolve into tech fascism.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-11 23:00 UTC)