[HN Gopher] Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call fo...
___________________________________________________________________
Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of
emergency'
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 430 points
Date : 2024-12-11 19:02 UTC (1 days 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...
| mindslight wrote:
| > _DroneUp Delivery was working on mock deliveries for
| Walmart and had set up a delivery point outside of Mr Winn's
| ... home_
|
| > _The defendant stated he had past experience with drones
| and believed they were surveilling him_
|
| The question I'm left with after reading that article - was
| this test delivery point for a single trial run, or did this
| company choose one random location and then repeatedly send
| tests there over and over? If it's the latter, that seems
| like it should _also_ warrant criminal charges.
| binary132 wrote:
| Companies should not be sending UAVs to anyone's property
| without permission, period. This stuff needs to get sorted
| out in law and these bozos need to back off.
| 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.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| No they used Buk missiles instead.
| bananapub wrote:
| where they = the Russian military or Russian-military
| aligned terrorist groups.
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Ukraine's capabilities mostly consist of ramming a cheap
| drone into an expensive one.
|
| This is one of those times when the US has a Maginot
| Military - massively overpowered against traditional
| threats, inexperienced when dealing with something like
| this.
|
| This is not a trivial problem. A cheap drone with a
| relatively small explosive payload flown into an air
| intake can take down a military aircraft and cause
| serious problems for an airliner or private jet.
|
| An airfield is the ideal place to do that, because
| aircraft are most vulnerable during takeoff and landing.
|
| A few people and a hundred drones launched from a few km
| away can significantly delay incoming and outgoing
| flights.
|
| Equip the drones with weapons - or larger explosives -
| and it's potentially Pearl Harbour.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That's kind of reductive. I know some people who have,
| uh, relevant experience. The cheap drones are pretty
| comprehensively engineered and they're complex in the
| same way that a ballpoint pen is not as trivial to
| manufacture as it looks.
|
| But yeah, Maginot Military sounds about right.
| ponector wrote:
| But they engage only big drones. Like reconnaissance
| Orlan or Zala, maybe lancet. No one is shooting down fpv
| quadcopters, not yet.
| coretx wrote:
| Shotguns are being used for that purpose. Single buckshot
| from the top of a AR barrel are in vogue too. Someone
| should use a cheap arduino and a mike for aiming and
| shooting at fpv quadcopters. I really don't understand
| why that's not here yet. They can literally convert a toy
| from github.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They are "being used" but shotguns are the last line of
| defense. Good luck stopping a little FPV drone with one.
| If you do not disable it by 50ft you dead. And you have
| like 10% odds. Way better than 1% odds you might have
| with a rifle or nothing but...
|
| Jamming is first line of defense, a million times more
| effective FWIW.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Source? AFIK, the US trains soldiers in drone
| countermeasures, small and large.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb5qMvie9sU
| 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.
| ponector wrote:
| According to this logic we should wait untill Iran creates a
| nuke and only then destroy their nuclear facilities, right?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| We should follow the drones to see where they land, and
| continue the investigation from there.
|
| There is no evidence that the drones carry WMDs, or that
| they're dangerous like Iran. If we had reason to believe
| that the drones are associated with WMDs, then it would be
| okay to neutralize them, but we don't. Because of false
| assertions about WMDs, we've already had one unnecessary
| war in Iraq. How many more do you want?
| binary132 wrote:
| Why should we attack Iran if they develop a nuclear weapon?
| That seems pretty unprovoked.
| bagels wrote:
| Some of these photos are of passenger planes. I think most
| agree that shooting down passenger planes is bad.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Also rather hard to accidentally do if you have equipment
| capable of shooting down aircraft.
| 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.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| supposedly they originate and return to somewhere out in
| ocean. presumably boats or submarines.
| op00to wrote:
| Unsubstantiated rumors. I say they come from mole people
| underground. The same reliable source as your information
| i'm sure.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Not confirmed but not unsubstantiated. A coast guard ship
| filed reports of them both arriving from out at sea and
| returning to sea. Also several local sheriffs have
| observed the same.
|
| The War Zone is always a reliable source for national
| security related reporting -
|
| https://www.twz.com/news-features/coast-guard-ship-
| stalked-b...
|
| I feel this story from them would have been a better post
| for HN audiences.
| op00to wrote:
| Nothing these drones are doing are illegal.
| 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.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| That's my impression as well. They could be tracking
| individuals or materials of interest coming from the ports
| which is why they're over NJ specifically.
| 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".
| Amezarak wrote:
| Things like that happen all the time.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/public_records/uas_sightin.
| ..
|
| Keep in mind most of this stuff never gets reported.
| thephyber wrote:
| Yet this incident has happened several days in short
| succession in highly populated states/areas, and police
| have made public statements about this particular offender
| multiple times.
|
| Once it gets some media traction / popular mindshare, it's
| more likely to get policy makers to try and do something,
| even if that is a "limited state of emergency".
| engineer_22 wrote:
| > Also, reportedly these are the size of SUVs. I don't
| believe you need that much of an investment for "gathering
| data".
|
| A drone of such size has larger payload, further range and
| greater persistence than a smaller craft. Since the operator
| hasn't been identified we don't have an answer to their
| mission yet.
|
| Mystery drones this size have been a story in other areas in
| the USA over the preceding year without as much attention.
| They were never identified, and a motive never ascertained.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Do you presume government agencies just always know what's
| going on everywhere? I'm not the least surprised that the
| government hasn't spent any resources finding out who's flying
| drones around if they haven't caused any damage or been in
| airspace they're not allowed to be in.
| bigiain wrote:
| > Bit concerning that no government agencies have figured out
| what's going on
|
| I wouldn't be betting against this being a government agency.
| Anywhere between local cops and black/budgetless agencies you'd
| go to jail for even having heard of.
|
| That, or maybe organised crime. A friend of mine used to have
| what turned out to be a high level drug dealer living/working a
| few doors up the street. They'd fly DJI drones off the balcony
| and hover them where they could monitor the roads leading in
| and out of the area, presumably watching for cops. One night an
| unexpectedly large amount of unmarked cars all converged on
| that property, followed about 90 seconds later by about a dozen
| fully lit up and sirening cop cars. The occupants of the first
| batch of unmarked cars swept up about 8 people running away
| when the lit up marked cars turned into the street.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| > black/budgetless agencies you'd go to jail for even having
| heard of.
|
| Well stop telling people about them!!!
| j_bum wrote:
| Quick, how do I unread that comment??
| ct0 wrote:
| Quite a lot of detail coming from a friend who had a
| neighbor.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| With amounts of cameras everywhere I'd thought it would be easy
| to spot.
| op00to wrote:
| What makes you think that they don't know? Isn't it common for
| the military to lie about what they know?
| 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. If 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 _aside from the small fuel
| expense to route around the TFR which pilots are accustom to._
| This is just swapping out one training exercise with another.
| talldayo wrote:
| Some action is already being taken; supposedly the GREMLIN
| program is being rolled out in areas where sightings are most
| common: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-ufo-gremlin/
|
| > If no joy on ECW, disassemble them in the sky.
|
| I disagree, for the same reason the US doesn't send an SM-6 up
| to greet every plane without an IFF turned on. It's an
| expensive exercise in endangering human lives, not a valiant
| defense of homeland security. Understanding the battlespace is
| a crucial part of modern warfare and soldiers aren't going to
| blind-fire on a weird drone unless it presents an immediate,
| credible threat.
|
| Take the AIM-120s off your F-16 and put a FLIR pod on it, track
| the drones to wherever they land. Record the platform, dazzle
| it if it's got cameras or EO sensors, and send a few decoys out
| if you want to bait it into revealing last-resort defenses
| against a JDAM-like weapon. _Then_ , you destroy it. Hell, if
| it's an unmanned naval platform you could also just send a
| couple Marines out in a Chinook to lift it to the Pentagon.
| America's weapons are nice, but we can do a lot more than just
| blow stuff up.
| dylan604 wrote:
| F-16 seems like overkill for a drone. Send up the Apaches.
|
| Let's not forget it took how many sidewinders to take down
| the Chinese balloon? More than 1 makes someone look foolish.
| talldayo wrote:
| You send in a supersonic fighter because no conventional
| drone is going to escape it. Dogfighting it isn't
| necessary, it's doubtful they'd detect you at all if your
| fighter is loitering at 10,000ft. Eventually the drone is
| going to run out of power, and you can keep sending more
| fighters to relieve whichever jet is on duty (if
| necessary).
|
| Apaches are cool and all, but if cost is your concern then
| it's probably cheaper to send a single pilot in a single-
| seat F-16 even if the avgas costs more. Even if you gotta
| wait 4 hours for your target to go home, it's still
| probably cheaper than a single AMRAAM.
| YZF wrote:
| Drones are generally too slow and have too small of a
| radar footprint to engage with a fighter jet. Helicopters
| are a better tool. Unless they're very large drones than
| most missiles on the jet won't really be applicable. You
| can't shoot down a tiny front with radar or heat seeking
| missiles.
| justin66 wrote:
| What it would come down to is that an Air National Guard
| unit is well prepared to intercept something in the sky
| (although a slow, low flying drone might be tricky). It's
| pretty extreme to actually do that, of course, and just
| observing the thing would always be an option.
|
| An Army National Guard unit might have Apaches available,
| but putting one in the air in short order to perform air
| intercepts is not their mission.
| BWStearns wrote:
| A 30mm round plowing through someone's living room because
| some bath water IQ nitwit thought they saw an alien is not
| a valid use of government resources. Even if they're from
| Jersey.
| buildsjets wrote:
| F-16s are commonly used as drones. They are called QF-16s.
| https://www.airforce-technology.com/news/boeing-delivers-
| las...
| 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.
| yard2010 wrote:
| The Situation always reminds me of Date Mike. "I'm date mike!
| How do you like your eggs in the morning?" is something he
| would definitely say.
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| ATC and military bases only have primary radar covering a
| tiny fraction of US territory. Most of what people think of
| as radar relies on active transponders to work. Or it's ADS-B
| output and not radar at all.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Social media impressions/likes.
|
| That's usually what drone videos are for, isn't it?
| aaron695 wrote:
| How strange we get great footage out of Ukraine but no one in New
| Jersey can get a photo that's not shakey rubbish that looks like
| an airplane, or helicopter or Xmas lights or Sasquatch walking
| down the street with a glow in the dark cock ring.
|
| Mustn't have the latest cellphone? I hear smart phones have
| cameras. They sound as good with technology as HN commentators.
| 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.
| sitkack wrote:
| He was 20 in 1973, that doesn't qualify as a CW relic.
| Not even a curio.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Relic from the Cold war, not a relic at the time of the
| cold war.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It still doesn't make sense. He was elected to Congress
| in 2018, long after the end of the Cold War. I think GP
| is just mixing him up with someone else.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Something tells me that if there were so much as an Iranian
| dinghy sitting off the coast, the military would be
| extremely aware of its presence. Monitoring absolutely
| everything that it did.
| dylan604 wrote:
| what/who ever that something is that is telling you that,
| i'd suggest a better source. it is part of the "game"
| that militaries the world over try to do things without
| their opponents knowing they were ever there.
| international boundaries are 12 miles of water, yet navy
| submarines get much much closer than that as a matter of
| course.
|
| do you think the military or any 3 letter agency knows
| 100% where all foreign spies are within their borders?
| bhk wrote:
| Something tells me that if there were a bus-sized Chinese
| spy balloon floating all the way across the continental
| US, the military would be extremely aware of its
| presence.
|
| (As I recall they were, but they would not publicly
| acknowledge it until the public sightings became
| undeniable.)
| shagie wrote:
| One of the channels that I follow is "What is Going on With
| Shipping" (its mostly about ocean going supply chain things
| and started with the Evergiven)... and today's video is:
| War of the Jersey Shore! | Did Iranian Navy Carriers Launch
| Drones Over the New Jersey? - https://youtu.be/hTpYN70tZ6Y
|
| And since this is a "the Iranian mothership off the coast"
| - the info about where the drone carriers are is presented.
|
| The video discretion links to other sites with info.
|
| https://x.com/TankerTrackers/status/1866922032681652322
|
| > Iran has two drone carrier vessels; the SHAHID BAGHERI
| and the SHAHID MAHDAVI. Both are located in the anchorage
| of Shahid Bahonar, Iran.
|
| > We know this because we are looking at them right now.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yes and where did he even get this from? Why do we have
| representatives literally making up stories and telling
| them to the American public? What is actually going on
| here?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Probably just made it up. He's a naked opportunist and
| there's no penalty in the GOP (or arguably in Congress in
| general) for being a shameless liar.
| bhk wrote:
| "...without evidence..."
|
| What he claimed was "high" (high-level, I assume, rather
| than intoxicated) and "reputable" sources who needed to
| remain anonymous told him there was circumstantial evidence
| of this.
|
| I don't see any motive for him to make this up, or for
| those sources to. Perhaps someone in some agency is jumping
| to conclusions on partial information.
|
| Or perhaps this fits into the pattern of DoD officials, ex-
| officials, and whistleblowers spinning tales of UAP
| sightings and an official UAP retrieval program.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > I don't see any motive for him to make this up
|
| To get people to pay attention to him?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >I don't see any motive for him to make this up, or for
| those sources to.
|
| To whip up more hysteria against Iran?
| bhk wrote:
| Maybe. There's a pattern there, too. For example:
|
| https://x.com/mtracey/status/1855682527756697724
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Jaff Van Drew is endorsed by AIPAC and has received just
| over $100k from them.
| 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?
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Other than social media, what other sources could the
| public rely on for something like this? Would local law
| enforcement observations suffice? What else would be
| publicly available?
| 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.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| I do wonder how many will get the reference.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The Red Lectoids were real!
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Did you post this before or after taking the 10 seconds
| necessary to look up the Pentagon and White House responses
| to this, or the FBI's?
| _djo_ wrote:
| After. They're responding to the public and media uproar,
| and have to be seen as taking action in response to it, but
| they're clearly not massively concerned.
|
| I don't doubt that there was some drone activity, but most
| likely it was regularly authorised operations or testing.
| Once the hysteria started you may have a few pranksters
| flying theirs just to add to the uproar.
|
| But when media houses are publishing pictures of what are
| _clearly_ commercial airliners and passing them off as
| unidentified drones you know we 're in the middle of a mass
| hysteria moment.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Perhaps its satanic ritualists turned techo-optimists who are
| attempting to convert the public to their baby killing ways
| through drone-based mind control.
| 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.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| > People live on site watching the object move should
|
| Be careful here. Human eye witnesses are not reliable,
| especially at night like this. It is very hard to
| determine size of shapes at night in the dark. It is hard
| to determine distance which makes something small look
| like it might be bigger but further away.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I think "hard" is underselling it. Unless you already
| know some of the parameters, it is outright impossible to
| visually determine size, distance, or speed of a distant
| object in the sky. So many UFO accounts completely fall
| apart when you realize this.
| murderfs wrote:
| I think photos 2 and 9 are actually JetBlue. There weren't
| any Alaska flights in the area at the time [1], but there
| were two JetBlue planes flying in the area, before and
| after an American Airlines jet. If the images were posted
| in the same order they were taken, this would fit
| perfectly.
|
| 1: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?replay=2024-12-09-01:33&
| lat=...
| carabiner wrote:
| AA = American Airlines
|
| AS = Alaska Airlines
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've been waiting for the fans of FlightAware type places
| to start posting their findings.
| 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?
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| That's my favorite part of this mass hysteria.
|
| Why would they have nav lights on?! Any lights...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Clearly, my spy craft isn't a spy craft. Look, it has
| lights on it for Pete's sake.
|
| Plausible deniability
| netsharc wrote:
| It'd be more clever to have lights and leave them
| unilluminated. If caught they can still claim what you're
| claiming, adding "You just didn't see them!".
| genewitch wrote:
| i mentioned elsewhere but if you had a large octocopter
| (think like 8' across) you could fashion lights to it to
| imitate other aircraft, like nose and tail and wing
| markers. My DJI has a front and rear light, the rear one
| blinks two colors so you know which side is which, my older
| DJI clone had lights on all four rotors, different colors
| between front and back (green and red? or am i confusing
| boat markers, haha).
|
| If i wanted to freak a bunch of people out i'd start my
| design like this, at least. Some aircraft can fly really
| slow (biplanes, for instance), but the videos i saw of
| ostensibly these aircraft they were moving too slow to be
| actual fixed wing aircraft of the shape the were implied to
| be by the lights. But who knows if the videos were doctored
| (cropping would fool my brain about relative speeds), or
| even of the aircraft we're talking about? I didn't save
| them so i got no idea, sadly.
| roflyear wrote:
| Well, let's say they are spy craft - seems the "it's not
| real" narrative is working, no?
| amyfp214 wrote:
| My favorite part is the part when they say "Aha! It's
| camoflauge! It LOOKS like an aeroplane but in fact it's a
| disguise!". I mean, what's next, a helicopter is chasing a
| drone and they say "Aha! The alien craft has disguised
| itself as one of our helicopters chasing one of our drones,
| who would suspect that!"
|
| Anyway the non-alien conspiracy theories are along the
| lines of radiation sniffers for a suitcase nuke, drone
| tests for material transport between bases & offshore navy
| ships, red team vs blue team drone tests.
| 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.
| sitkack wrote:
| Can you or can you not draw a red line with a blue pen?
| sitkack wrote:
| The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
|
| It was a comment on the inability of half of this thread
| to use basic logic.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > The pentagon, for example, just declared that they do not
| know what they are[1].
|
| This sounds impressive, but people don't seem to realize that
| there is no USGOV tracking of drone-sized objects in US
| airspace. Of course they can't say who is doing it or where
| they're coming from, they also don't know what's going on
| when you launch a drone from your backyard and fly it around.
|
| The FAA has a database of reports of people illegally flying
| drones around planes and airports, it's been happening
| constantly since they've been mass market items and the perps
| rarely get caught.
| bragr wrote:
| >people don't seem to realize that there is no USGOV
| tracking of drone-sized objects
|
| Anything 250g or heavier has to have Remote ID now. Now
| that doesn't exclude the possibility of illegal drones
| without it, but it isn't true that there is "no drone
| tracking".
|
| https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id
|
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-
| F...
| op00to wrote:
| What do you think Drone ID is? It's basically Bluetooth
| transmissions. Very localized reception and basically
| impossible to monitor over a wide area without many, many
| receivers spread out evenly all over the place.
| 15155 wrote:
| Who exactly is enforcing this law in reality?
| echoangle wrote:
| Unless there are also receivers for this operated by the
| government, that's technically not a conflict with the
| claim. Tracking means you're tracking something, not just
| forcing them to send a signal. It's only tracking once
| you receive and process the signal.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The pentagon, for example, just declared that they do not
| know what they are_
|
| That is absolutely not what was said in that video. They just
| said that they're not drones from a foreign entity or
| adversary, nor are they US military drones.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Could they be defense contractor drones being tested?
| block_dagger wrote:
| The Pentagon - credible!? Ha.
| mrandish wrote:
| > The pentagon, for example, just declared that they do not
| know what they are
|
| I often hear those hyping UFO sightings citing this type of
| statement by the Pentagon. However, the Pentagon saying the
| don't know what it is doesn't mean anything. Of course, they
| don't know what it is. They weren't there. They didn't see it
| nor have any idea if there was anything unusual seen. The
| null hypothesis is the still the most likely: this is a
| result of media hype causing increased erroneous reports of
| aircraft and hobbyist drones along with false reports by
| social media attention seekers.
|
| Also, the Pentagon has a consistently terrible track record
| of failing to properly identify spurious internal lens
| reflections, digital stabilization artifacts, IR ghosting and
| gimbal rotation on their own footage.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The pentagon also didn't tell anyone in the 80s that all the
| "UFO sightings" in Nevada were test flights of the F-117.
|
| You know the pentagon doesn't have to tell you (or even the
| feds!) the truth, right? You know that when they say "We
| can't track 1 trillion dollars of our budget!" they aren't
| being fully honest, right?
| 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| At least 6 out of 10 images in the linked article are clearly
| commercial aircraft.
| abuani wrote:
| And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not commercial
| airlines. I live in NJ was very skeptical of this at first,
| but after seeing the same patterns 5 nights in a row for
| aircrafts not going towards Newark, I really have a hard
| time believing it is simply airlines.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Sure, I'm not saying there's nothing, but there's clearly
| some component of hysteria.
| abuani wrote:
| Oh, very much so some elements of mass hysteria. It took
| the better part of two weeks for authorities to recognize
| it, then it was "nothing to see here", then FBI is
| investigating. It sucks that one of our state
| representatives is out their claiming it's Iran and
| stoking further tensions.
|
| My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our
| military would have already taken them down. It's hard to
| imagine we'd let this go on for many weeks without a
| response. But it's also hard to imagine military testing
| so obviously over public space. So who knows lol
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our
| military would have already taken them down
|
| I think you overestimate a few things here... the
| military isn't constantly monitoring all airspace across
| the country for drone-sized objects and shooting things
| down if they don't recognize them.
|
| Perhaps they should be as we enter this brave new world
| of drone-everything, but they don't right now.
| abuani wrote:
| NJ has some of the leading research centers for the US
| military, our new president's second estate, and critical
| infrastructure for telecommunications. Reportedly drones
| were flying close to all of these spots. I would fully
| expect our military to be monitoring these parts of the
| country for drone-sized objects given how effective they
| have been in waging our wars the past 20 years. So yeah,
| it's a massive intelligence failure if these are
| combatant drones.
| dylan604 wrote:
| ahem, our president-elect. he is not the new president,
| yet.
| vaxman wrote:
| 20 years lol Off by a factor of 2.5x, but your
| expectation is reasonable --so is having a Defense
| Secretary that tells his staff when he's checking into
| the hospital for a serious medical condition and an
| airspace that doesn't allow balloons to get within range
| of broadcasting firmware updates to ESP32s.
|
| https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-
| jersey/2024/12/11/d...
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > Abichandani has no idea as of now whether the drones
| over New Jersey are swarming drones.
|
| Then this article goes on to speculate about scary
| things.
| vaxman wrote:
| ..and Abichandani is reported to be an actual academic
| (in drone swarming technology) at a prestigious
| university that is local to the observations, not an
| enthusiast or politician!
|
| In next room, I have a nearly 100yo man who, in a small
| group of people using computers with (literal) core
| memory, invented the technology, satellites and delivery
| systems to do Reconnaissance from orbit and more
| importantly, to spot the first signatures of arial
| weapons systems, yet downvoted here in the dystopian
| future when I merely correct the peanut gallery for
| spreading obvious fiction that America's ability to spot
| drones does not go back further than 20 years (or that
| the internal proprietary code of the latest ESP32 series
| Chinese MCUs has the well known ability to receive
| firmware updates via RF, even from Chinese balloons,
| Chinese LEO Starlink competitors and yes, drones).
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > Abichandani is reported to be an actual academic
|
| He pretty much says nothing, and the article uses him as
| a mouth piece to give other individuals mentioned
| legitimacy.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| I don't disagree with any of this. Obviously drones are
| an extremely real intelligence and actual security threat
| that we clearly don't know how to handle.
| obmelvin wrote:
| The military isn't allowed to shoot down drones in the
| US. There was a WSJ story last month about drones flying
| over Langley for 2 weeks. All the general could do is
| stand on the roof and watch
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Yeah they can only shoot down unidentified weather
| balloons.
| bee_rider wrote:
| IIRC there were multiple instances of the balloons and
| the one they shot down was intentionally shot down in a
| relatively safe area.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| They shot down at least 3 including one that 100%
| belonged to a local club, meaning the military had no
| clue what they were launching missiles at. One was shot
| down over Lake Huron, and the pilot actually even managed
| to miss the balloon with his missile. It's like 99 Red
| Balloons meets Idiocracy.
|
| Obviously the military can shoot down whatever they want,
| let alone use EM tech, which is highly effective at
| grounding drones. Drones keep getting sighted near the
| exact areas that would be testing out drone
| militarization, and not getting shot down. Gee, I wonder
| who's they might be.
|
| People would be so dramatically more informed if they
| dropped social media and corporate news.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| He's the one that got elected as a Democratic candidate
| and switched to the Republican party about a month after
| he was elected.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Reminds me of the hysteria we had about drones shutting
| down an airport in the UK, with loads of reported
| sightings yet no evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident
| hersko wrote:
| It's not hysteria if UFOs start showing up en-masse and
| then people start thinking everything in the sky is a
| UFO. It just means people are more likely to attribute
| lights in the night sky to this new phenomenon. Of course
| there will be false positives, but it does not mean the
| underlying issue exists.
| wbl wrote:
| Which ones clearly aren't that or a police helicopter?
| ricksunny wrote:
| There is supposed to be an elemwent of 'mimicry' on the
| part of the Phenomenon. Kelleher in his work with AAWSAP
| was the most vocal in studying & concluding that aspect:
|
| https://www.rdrnews.com/opinion/columnists/drones-
| mimicry-an...
| lxgr wrote:
| I'm very sorry, as it's probably a perfectly respectable
| local news source, but: Did you just link a Roswell
| newspaper article on UFOs? :)
| mp05 wrote:
| Stop believing your lying eyes for they deceive you.
|
| Here, read this, it will calm your nerves.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Most of us have not actually seen these things. We've
| just seen social media posts about them.
| murderfs wrote:
| I believe the other 3 pictures are this helicopter: https
| ://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ab19fa&lat=39.865&lon=-..
| .
|
| Image 8 is too blurry to make out, but it's probably also
| a plane.
| sandos wrote:
| I would agree with that! It matches the curvature of the
| fuselage in one point, and there is an image with faintly
| visible nav lights on this page:
|
| https://www.anthelionhelicopters.com/flight-training/add-
| on-...
|
| which matches the images as well, with the green light
| bright, so its likely flying head-on in the picture.
| toofy wrote:
| why hasn't someone got decent pictures to back this up
| after five nights?
| roflyear wrote:
| The drones only operate at night and it's hard taking
| good pictures at night with phones (or even nice cameras)
| - try to take a picture of the moon, which isn't moving,
| is brighter, etc.. you can tell it's the moon but it's a
| lot quality picture.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Drones are a lot closer than the moon. I'm fairly certain
| my middle of the line camera can do better than what I
| see on that article.
| gloflo wrote:
| Drones are small while the moon is far away.
| roflyear wrote:
| Why argue online? Just try to take a picture outside of a
| streetlight, or something, in a dark area. You'll see
| what I mean.
| motorest wrote:
| > And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not
| commercial airlines.
|
| Cool, so a simple cursory glance of these mysterious
| phenomena is enough to immediately call bullshit on 60%
| of the claims.
|
| That's a heck of a false positive rate, given the fact
| that this happens before any verification takes place.
|
| If at least 60% of the claims given the same credibility
| are outright rejected without any effort, what does it
| say about the claims and those who make them?
| bluescrn wrote:
| If it's got bright lights on it, it's very unlikely to be
| espionage.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Hiding in plain sight is also a thing.
| numbsafari wrote:
| So is sowing mass hysteria and deepening distrust in
| authorities.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It sucks that we have to worry that our normally silly
| and harmless UFO hysteria and other fringe stuff might
| actually be an influence operation. (Just because tone
| doesn't go well over the internet sometimes: Not
| disagreeing or being sarcastic, commiserating).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Well that's the natural result of not doing anything
| meaningful against Russia and its "plausible deniability"
| campaigns in well over a decade. Of course Russia and
| China feel emboldened when they never felt consequences.
| highcountess wrote:
| But they got you to click and flip through the slides
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| As someone who lives in New York near two very busy
| airports, I can assure you that after seeing dozens of
| planes fly over my house every hour, year after year, it
| isn't hard to figure out what isn't a plane.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Are there any recordings to back up your story?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Under what circumstances and motivations, exactly, do you
| think that unlicensed and illegal (clearly not FAA Part 107
| compliant) drone operators would be motivated to put blinking
| white, red and green lights on their mystery drones? Why
| would they do that?
|
| If you're doing to build a drone to fly at night and do
| clearly illegal things you're going to make the thing matte
| black and have no lights on it whatsoever.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Or disguise them as birds.
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/china-shows-new-drones-disguised-
| bi...
| ddtaylor wrote:
| It would allow for different configurations to make
| identification harder. It's very easy to only operate at
| night and swap out the color and pattern of the lights
| constantly. Almost every photo device would capture the
| light pattern the attacker WANTS them to capture. High
| quality equipment could get better pictures, but such
| equipment is often not rolling 24/7 or easy to point at a
| drone moving fast.
| op00to wrote:
| What's not part 107 compliant? All the activity I've heard
| was fully legal.
| walrus01 wrote:
| For starters, you need special waivers from the faa to
| fly at night. If any such waivers existed, I am sure the
| FAA would have told the news media who are hyping up this
| story.
| 15155 wrote:
| This has not been the case for years.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/operations_o
| ver...
| mmooss wrote:
| > blinking white, red and green lights
|
| I feel like I've seen a lot of that this time of year ...
| carabiner wrote:
| Ok, what configuration are these drones? Quadcopters?
|
| Why are they only flying at night? To evade detection? Then
| why do they have lights?
| genewitch wrote:
| The videos i saw ostensibly showed what looked like rear
| fixed wing aircraft, like a small f-16 or something. But
| you could only make out that detail from the lights, which
| can be configured however you want to configure them to
| look, so, technically, it could be a large quadcopter (or
| octa, or hex) with lights affixed that make it look like a
| fixed wing aircraft.
|
| none of the videos i saw had sound from the drone to verify
| fixed wing or "copter".
|
| regarding night flights, FLIR would work better for certain
| things at night ;-)
| 05 wrote:
| > FLIR would work better for certain things at night ;-)
|
| At those distances and with typical thermal imager
| resolutions, the zoom lens required would cost more than
| a cheap car..
| genewitch wrote:
| when i say FLIR i mean the things that militaries use,
| not the little doodad you plug into a cellphone or a
| handheld device with a screen and a camera. I was under
| the impression these things loitered much longer than any
| commercial quadcopter or normal battery powered aircraft.
| if my understanding is correct, that leaves two options -
| a glider, which is weight constrained so probably just a
| gopro or two, or a fueled aircraft, in which case, FLIR
| makes sense because that's a decent platform.
|
| the reports were "flying around for hours" but that could
| be exaggeration and it flew a pattern several times over
| a couple of hours but was landing to swap batteries or
| whatever. IDK. I think this is all much ado about
| nothing.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Nope, it would cost more than an expensive car.
|
| The only openly available price I've seen for such things
| is from China, and then it's $80k. The Teledyne FLIR
| stuff is probably quite a bit more expensive.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| "large drones"
|
| How large is "large"?
|
| Some of the articles are claiming "SUV sized" drones, but
| their photos are either of commercial aircraft, or of
| something that looks to be a DJI Phantom 4, or something much
| like it.
|
| Have you managed to capture any videos of images of these
| large, low flying, slow moving drones?
| toofy wrote:
| it's amazing how so many people have seen these truck sized
| drones but they've all somehow failed to get pictures.
|
| i can go outside right now in the dark with this phone i'm
| typing on and get a solid picture of stuff but somehow they
| keep showing us pictures that look like 1940s era ufo photo
| blur.
| roflyear wrote:
| No you can't - try it. Take a picture of the moon.
| sethammons wrote:
| careful, you may get an AI moon to make up for the fact
| you can't really get a good picture of it.
|
| https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-
| galaxy...
| HPsquared wrote:
| The same probably happens with blurry small aircraft in
| the scene. It'll "upscale" (i.e. draw in) all kinds of
| objects with what it thinks is most likely from the
| context, from its training set.
| karamanolev wrote:
| Probably not with a phone, but "affordable" full-frame
| MILC/DSLR cameras with 100-400mm or 600mm lenses exist
| and people have them. Much better chances.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| This article links photos from a Sony full frame camera
| and 600mm lens but it clearly struggles:
|
| https://eu.app.com/picture-
| gallery/news/2024/12/10/drones-in...
| ycombinete wrote:
| These photos look very much like a helicopter. Especially
| the fifth photo.
| sandos wrote:
| Odd, one of those pictures clearly show either a regular
| RC helicopter, or a full-scale helicopter. You can see
| the boom and tail light clearly. And no sound associated
| with it? There are designs for "silent" blades. I mean
| theyre not silent, bud at least less noisy.
| haswell wrote:
| Even decently fast glass won't do a good job of capturing
| drones at night unless there's a significant amount of
| ambient light.
|
| And telephoto lenses with the range you mention with fast
| apertures are not exactly cheap. A 600mm F/4 goes for
| $12-15K and is still not fast enough for shooting moving
| subjects in the dark.
| theodric wrote:
| I did find it odd when this news reporter said of the
| craft "it's really difficult to show you with our camera,
| so we have to show you with our phones." You'd think a
| broadcast-grade camera rig would be better than a
| smartphone at this.
|
| At the 11-second mark: https://youtu.be/M186uZ1RCxU?t=11
| ben_w wrote:
| I can get an acceptable picture of the moon with my phone
| (at least when autofocus doesn't decide to do something
| stupid), yet also I can't get good pictures of birds in
| nearby trees or urban foxes on the other side of the
| road.
|
| Phone can do night with just hand jitter ok, can't
| effectively compensate for target motion.
| ZenRiots wrote:
| In my experience the majority of that 1940s photo blur
| comes when you crop and zoom what otherwise looks like a
| beautiful digital photograph. I experienced this quite
| often when utilizing security cameras to try and read
| license plates.
|
| Any movement of the vehicle whose plate you are
| attempting to track creates pixelization requiring you
| sometimes to stitch together multiple frames where
| individual characters on the plate have become clear in
| order to read the entire license plate.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| High resolution film can get to the equivalent to 500 MP
| resolution just in 35mm.
|
| Larger film has insanely high resolving power...
|
| https://www.analog.cafe/r/409200000-pixels-with-adox-
| cms-20-...
| ninininino wrote:
| Incorrect, there are dozens or hundreds of video clips
| showing these drones in both social media and mainstream
| news.
| op00to wrote:
| "large" is whatever is scary.
| taylorius wrote:
| What sort of noise do they make? Do they sound like normal
| drones?
| JPKab wrote:
| Nah dude, all of these people in the comments thread who live
| in northern California and have no knowledge of drones beyond
| playing with a buddy's DJI one time at a cookout are
| insisting it's your imagination, and that you're gripped by a
| mass hysteria.
|
| Who are you gonna believe? Them, or your lying eyes?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I don't think your sarcasm adds anything constructive to
| the discourse. If anything, it makes the person you're
| replying to look _less_ credible because you 're furthering
| the stereotype of UFO conspiracy theorists touting "trust
| me bro" evidence and little else.
| paul7986 wrote:
| This story is so strange. I mean the US if im not mistaken
| allowed a huge white ballon to transverse the country and i
| heard Trump say that was from China. If that's true we just
| allowed it fly all over our airspace (weird). Is that not a
| potential public safety hazard and now these things. So odd
| nothing is being done like one of our jet fighters going up
| and shooting one down into a field.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Shooting things down over populated areas is a public
| safety issue.
|
| Drones flying about may or may not be.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Into a large field or farm
| scottyah wrote:
| It's much more valuable to watch it, see what kind of scans
| are coming from it than to just shoot it down immediately.
| It is also a bargaining chip for those in international
| politics.
|
| If you're going to shoot it down, it has the same value if
| you do it immediately or later (assuming any remote
| wiping/detonation), so either you're paranoid that it poses
| a legitimate threat or it's beneficial to not shoot it down
| immediately.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > American officials later disclosed that they had been
| tracking the balloon since it was launched from Hainan and
| its original destinations were likely Guam and Hawaii,[a]
| but prevailing winds blew it off course and across North
| America.[11]
|
| > The Chinese government maintained it was a civilian
| (mainly meteorological) airship that had been blown off
| course.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident
| paul7986 wrote:
| overall this says the US will allow undenitified drones in
| our air space and to fly unabated to our enemies ... one of
| these or future ones could be weaponized. So its
| unfathomable to me that they we are letting these things
| fly unabated in our airspace, as well the govt is providing
| zero info or re-assurance.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| If we start blasting things out of the sky:
|
| - We certainly can't deny that "something" is happening
|
| - The US, if not the world, is going to be rocked by
| (basically) open war in the skies of America
|
| - If we fail to down these things, we look like utterly
| weak fools
|
| - Succeed or fail, we reveal our capabilities (or lack
| thereof)
|
| - Legit public safety issue, bullets/shells/missiles/etc
| that miss these things have to come down somewhere, as
| well as wreckage (if any) it self
|
| These drones, IF hostile are not necessarily the security
| risk one might think IMO. If we are just leaking radio
| signals into the air around bases that these things can
| intercept, then those communications could just as easily
| be intercepted by people/cars/etc on the ground. And our
| "near peers" have plenty of satellites overhead.
|
| I am not going to tell you that letting them fly around
| unmolested is good. It is not. It sucks. But it is
| probably the least shitty option.
| paul7986 wrote:
| All our pussy footing around now will look so foolish
| once these or others attack us. Jesus!
|
| If these are US military and they refuse to acknowlegde
| such yet now with social media it makes us look stupid,
| foolish and a target for drone strikes somewhere overhead
| in all the US of A.
| JohnnyLarue wrote:
| Because they're not threats, and your 'enemies' are just
| other countries who have resources your country wants,
| but won't do what your country says. The calls are coming
| from inside the house.
| paul7986 wrote:
| So weird my comments in this thread here are being
| downvoted a ton.
|
| Those who are downvoting and you are in the US i'd love to
| hear why you have no concern about these things and or no
| concern the world thinking we let drones fly unabated in
| our airspace ... prompting various foreign nations to try
| and do the same over our massive US of A airspace on up
| into remote-ish Alaska. You have congressman saying scary
| things while the Pentagon says those congressman words
| arent true.
|
| I mentioned Trump above (i voted for her) if that was
| something that triggered some downvotes?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _can see how it 's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria,
| but they are absolutely large drones of some kind_
|
| It's probably neither enemy infiltration or hysteria, but
| mis-identified drones and aircraft. (Together with some
| hooliganism.)
|
| Pentagon should investigate. But this is way below the
| threshold of warranting public alarm. "What is that thing in
| the sky" is a notoriously terrible game for the public.
| megablast wrote:
| And you recorded if of course!
| mcphage wrote:
| If all we had to depend on was cell phone footage, I'm not
| sure I'd believe the moon existed.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I've been following the story and this has been discussed on
| the local Reddit subs. They are almost certainly
| PteroDynamics XP-4 drones flying from and to the military
| bases in question for testing purposes. There literally was a
| public demo of them on the USNS Burlington in Philadelphia a
| year ago.
| senkora wrote:
| Video of that model of drone: https://www.reddit.com/r/Engi
| neeringPorn/comments/13juxdi/pt...
| VectorLock wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA1ENhxLqTo
| bloopernova wrote:
| I really like that it switches off the outer pair of
| propellers in level flight, that's a nice feature.
|
| Changing the vertical alignment of the wings to
| horizontal after takeoff is also really cool, an
| interesting alternative to 4 vertical propellers with a
| separate pair of wings. It seems to eliminate the extra
| moving parts to control those vertical propellers.
| topspin wrote:
| Something actually patent-worthy.
| fer wrote:
| How? it's just a UAV, quad version of a V-22 Osprey.
| Maybe I'm missing something peculiar about it?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Boeing_V-22_Osprey
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The hinge mechanism and the control dynamics.
| topspin wrote:
| Osprey has a common power shaft between the engines for
| fault tolerance, constraining the structure's design,
| such as the lack of dihedral. This has a different set of
| design constraints and a different solution to propulsion
| failure.
| matsemann wrote:
| "just" is doing a lot of work there. Everything is "just"
| an evolution of something else. Doesn't mean it's not
| novel or clever.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The wing folding mechanism is pretty novel as far as I'm
| aware. The idea of quad hover to forward flight isn't new
| or unique but the specific configuration is something I
| haven't seen before. NASA was working on some that tilted
| the whole wing not this folding design which uses fewer
| motors compare to the old NASA Greased Lightning test
| article.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXql26sF5uc
| j-krieger wrote:
| HN is yet again amazed that military technology is in fact
| used to carry out secret operations.
| carabiner wrote:
| > low and slow
|
| How can you be sure? Are you aware of the speed-size
| illusion? https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid
| =2551105#....
| motorest 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.
|
| You better crank out your camera and collect any proof at
| all,because what you are describing bears no resemblance to
| the sightings mentioned in the article.
|
| There is a reason why sightings of supernatural fenomenal
| went down abruptly with the inception of cheap digital
| cameras.
| iepathos wrote:
| For real, with everyone having a smartphone with high
| quality cameras on them there really is zero excuse for
| there to not be highly detailed accurate videos of this if
| they are legit especially with people describing them as
| "low and slow".
| The_Colonel wrote:
| The article suggests the drones appear during nighttime
| with which cameras will struggle. "low" is relative and
| can mean 200 meters which would be very difficult even
| for regular cameras (without a tripod), let alone a
| smartphone.
| jahnu wrote:
| Even taking a picture of the moon with a typical phone
| results in a white mushy blob.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Unless you have a Samsung phone...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-
| moo...
| HPsquared wrote:
| This technology may well "fill in the blanks" with small
| flying objects too. Make them look like the most common
| i.e. airliner or helicopter.
| diggan wrote:
| I like that parent said "200 meters" and then you give a
| "even" example with the distance of ~400,000 kilometers
| :)
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Compared to the radius of the known Universe, it's in the
| ballpark
| jahnu wrote:
| Haha fair enough :D
| xattt wrote:
| I'll stop you there and say there are videos. They just
| happen to be of naturally-occurring phenomena and
| captured by inept operators who don't subscribe to
| Occam's Razor.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| had to look it up, the opposite of Occam's Razor, it is
| Hickham's Dictum
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam%27s_dictum
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Smartphone cameras are absolutely useless when it comes
| to taking useful pictures of distant, moving objects.
| Even a proper DSLR is extremely difficult to use on a
| moving object at night due to focus issues.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Not focus issues. Set to infinity it will be fine. But
| shutter speed issues certainly. When people take sharp
| photographs at night they generally aren't handholding a
| camera and shooting a moving subject. And if they are
| they are close enough to use flash.
| wyager wrote:
| Tbf, smartphone cameras are not really "high quality" in
| a way that's useful here. Try taking a video of something
| with small angular subtension like an aircraft at
| cruising altitude with a cell phone camera.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| >with everyone having a smartphone with high quality
| cameras on them there really is zero excuse for there to
| not be highly detailed accurate videos of this
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| I understand the tendency to assume that modern tech
| would make it relatively easy thing to accomplish but
| there are considerable challenges with ground-based
| aerial photography/videography...at
| nighttime...completely unplanned and unscheduled...by an
| amateur. Better technology makes the field more
| _accessible_ in a general way, but there is still a very
| large barrier of: skill, hardware, and out-right luck
| involved in _good_ image capture as a medium.
|
| Consider, if you ever look towards the beginning or end
| of some runways you may see a group of plane spotters
| setup taking photos and video of the airplanes. The
| typical hardware used to capture things well is a minimum
| of: DSLR, tripod, battery extenders (or spares), and good
| perch to rest during lulls (it's more physically
| demanding on your arms then you might imagine.) More
| crucially, this is for airplanes that are taking off and
| landing 1) in a predictable pattern 2) at routine
| intervals 3) captured primarily in daylight.
|
| Add in height? Introduce increased shake. Add in
| darkness? Introduce exposure (hold the camera still,
| longer to get a brighter image). Add in inexperience?
| Introduce beginner mistakes. On top of those practical
| concerns, it's probably also pretty creepy to see these
| unknown objects/drones/whatever. Fear impacts our ability
| to react in a helpful way.
|
| Smartphones make it simpler to capture _a_ picture or _a_
| video, but there is profound gulf between getting
| _something_ and something even remotely good.
|
| If you're not sure what I mean, here's a simple test you
| can try: 1) Grab a pencil and go into a completely dark
| room like a basement 2) Turn off the flash on your phone
| 3) Holding the pencil between pointer finger and thumb
| stretch your hand as far from your body as you physically
| can 4) Take one photo of the tip of the pencil eraser
| one-handed.
|
| That is considerably easier than it would be to
| photograph/video a moving object across the night sky,
| even if it is perceived as moving "low and slow". Longer
| exposure times mean the camera has to be held motionless
| for longer so the camera sensor can "soak up" more light
| to "expose" the photograph properly. (This is why photos
| at night feel like they take perceptibly longer to
| capture than they do in daytime - they do take longer!)
| Flash can help with nearby subjects, but for objects far
| away (thousands of feet above you) no amount of flash is
| going to reach the object to reduce exposure time.
|
| Then, let's make things even worse! The object is
| _moving_ which means that _over_ exposure will turn that
| solid object into a blur. This is something that is
| easily possible[1] when taking photos of the night sky.
|
| [1] https://photographylife.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/07/Sharp...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You go take that smartphone of yours and try and take a
| high quality video of just an airliner at night. Its not
| easy at all. Even in daylight this is like a 35mm lens on
| a tiny sensor its not the hardware you need to crop out a
| speck from the sky and show the world what it is. You
| really need a lens thats about the size of your calf and
| the sort of camera that goes along with that. And
| probably a tripod. Not something many have handy.
| bagels wrote:
| I'm not arguing that these are or aren't anything
| interesting, but low, relative to airplanes is still
| pretty far for cell phone cameras, especially in the
| dark.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I live in the Pacific NW and there are a vast number of
| people with _really good quality_ trail cameras who put
| them tied to trees all over the place for deer and elk
| hunting purposes. If Bigfoot was real, we absolutely would
| have seen one by now.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Futurama - s4e17
|
| Sir, if I may? Why don't you just set up, like, a billion
| video cameras...
|
| In the woods and see if he walks by one?
|
| Ah. That would be very expensive...
|
| And most people who believe in Bigfoot are broke.
| epr wrote:
| There are multiple videos already, some even in broad
| daylight. For example, the nbc news clip on youtube about
| 15 seconds in.
| K0balt wrote:
| These are being extensively tested in the area:
| https://pterodynamics.com/
| keepamovin wrote:
| Please take my upvote for your first hand account over
| someone's speculation. What do they sound like?
| foxglacier wrote:
| It contains speculation about their height and speed. You
| usually can't estimate those things for a UFO because near,
| low, and slow looks the same as far, high and fast when you
| have no idea how big it is or how it "should" behave.
| keepamovin wrote:
| It's not just NJ, here's one weirdn in Miami: https://www.red
| dit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hcfaqw/glowing_orb_f...
| (https://archive.is/VPxBG) (from tiktok account
| jessica.leigh)
|
| Also, a consensus is building that it's ridiculous for the
| powers that be to claim they have no clue. This is an
| underappreciated take. See for example: https://www.reddit.co
| m/r/UFOs/comments/1hcdsgf/whatever_this...
| (https://archive.is/mFMis)
| darkarmani wrote:
| That sounds like a legal height then.
| 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...
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, that looks pretty damn normal. I mean, what kind of
| Nefarious Power would send out its Secret Drones with
| standard wingtip lights and headlights on?
|
| Note that in this aviation context, those headlights are more
| to make the plane itself more visible to everyone else, not
| to give extra information to its pilot(s). It's hard to make
| lights bright-enough that they could illuminate something in
| time for an in-air plane to avoid it. (E.g. a magical flying
| sleigh.)
| wbl wrote:
| That sleigh does have a high visibility red light although
| the mounting is somewhat unorthodox.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I considered trying some napkin-math for how many
| calories Rudolph would need to burn running a luciferin
| reaction like a firefly, but immediately stumbled over
| the issue of many lumens the FAA would consider
| acceptable. (Assuming they could be convinced to overlook
| all the other issues of proper color and signaling etc.)
| carabiner wrote:
| People are claiming that these show "mimics," some type of
| drone designed to look like commercial aircraft.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| At that point, how do we know they aren't commercial aircraft
| mimicking drones mimicking commercial aircraft?
| carabiner wrote:
| did yall see the drone outside my house it came down and it
| said hello and then it touched me
| _djo_ wrote:
| Such people are idiots, to be blunt.
| carabiner wrote:
| I know. Some people have REALLY gotten into it though:
|
| > I'm a professional videographer by trade. I filmed these
| things for 6 hours last week. High native ISO, tripod,
| 400mm lens, new camera model. No one here will believe me
| (especially those who have not witnessed this first hand)
| but they mimic planes when filmed. With my naked eye they
| are more abstract. Some where as close as 100ft to me. Then
| once they are within a certain range or a camera is pointed
| at them they mimic aircraft. So many people online are
| mocking those that say this, but I'll take the downvotes.
| I'm a professional in my field and know what I'm describing
| is accurate. You just need to see it to believe it. My
| footage would just be mocked as plane footage. I need to go
| back out there but with a flight tracker app in real time
| as hard proof.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/NJDrones/comments/1hcon8h/comment/
| m...
|
| I'm guessing the camera sensor is catching more light,
| detail, than what the guy is seeing with his own eyes,
| possibly because he hasn't waited long enough for to adjust
| to the darkness.
| superfrank wrote:
| From what little I've seen on this, it kind of feels like the
| issue with Priuses acceleration out of control like 15 years
| ago. It was a huge scandal that lead to multiple Toyota recalls
| and even a lawsuit settlement and in the end, it seems like it
| was basically human error.
|
| One person messed up and crashed their Prius claiming the
| accelerator got stuck and it got picked up by the news. That
| story then primed other people to start looking for that and
| from then on anytime a Prius crashed people were looking to
| blame the accelerator. More people reported their Priuses
| accelerating out of control which then reinforced the idea even
| more and so on and so on.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| That's known as mass psychogenic illness, and history is full
| of examples.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Otherwise known as gaslighting
| genewitch wrote:
| well, it wasn't a prius originally, it was a lexus that
| launched off a southern california freeway because they
| burned the brakes up trying to stop the acceleration.
|
| Toyota and lexus sometimes have the gas pedal _hinged_ on the
| floor panel, rather than suspended from piece of metal from
| up above. If you swap out the stock floor mats for ones not
| designed with this in mind, during a hard brake your feet can
| move forward, jamming the floor mat into the accelerator and
| causing the engine to receive more fuel.
|
| If you'd like a picture, i can go take a picture of the
| accelerator pedal in my lexus from 2012, and the floor mats
| which are all but _bolted_ down to prevent this from
| happening.
|
| as a side note i prefer the hinged design because there's
| less distance to traverse, i just wish the brake was the same
| way!
| bsder wrote:
| Most of the Toyota acceleration accidents were almost
| certainly the result of operator error. The fact that the
| staistical probablity increased with age gives that away.
|
| However, Toyota got convicted because their software
| development process was so terrible that they were
| effectively criminally negligent and deserved to get
| absolutely roasted for it.
| jahewson wrote:
| > criminally negligent
|
| Well, civil reckless disregard, as it wasn't a criminal
| case.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Did they use tons of global variables?
| bluGill wrote:
| Globals are common and even right in this application.
| However they didn't take proper care in other ways (i'm
| not clear what I've just been in embedded long enough to
| know globals are often required despite how hard they are
| to get right)
| UltraSane wrote:
| tons of global variables on code that has lots of people
| working on it seems almost as hard as trying to write
| lock-free data structures.
| bluGill wrote:
| In general embedded controllers like this don't have a
| lot of people working on them. They also have rules
| (enforced by review which isn't great) about when they
| can be accessed. In an embedded context you are not
| allowed to allocate memory (except at startup), so a lot
| of these globals are just arrays/buffers only used by one
| function or pseudo class (a class by intent but not
| actually a class by the language if the language even has
| a concept of class)
| bee_rider wrote:
| Probably didn't use misra
| 7thaccount wrote:
| The investigation literally called their code
| "spaghetti".
| fdkz wrote:
| Some information about the Toyota cases: https://users.ece.cm
| u.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_... page 14 is
| especially interesting.
|
| And more technical information: https://www.safetyresearch.ne
| t/Library/BarrSlides_FINAL_SCRU...
| brandonmenc wrote:
| iirc wasn't it the floor mats being designed such that they
| were prone to interfering with the pedals?
| gooseus wrote:
| I have had a bet going with two of my friends on this exact
| point for almost a week now, and the fact that it is _still_
| not been resolved by any agency is insane.
|
| I also have a couple friends who work at Picatinny as well, and
| have heard that their civilian security have spotted some
| (which is strange since their airspace is always restricted),
| but there haven't been any internal memos regarding them.
|
| Some things I've observed/heard/thought during arguments and
| searching for evidence in either direction:
|
| 1. People need video evidence and assume it's easy to get
| because everyone carries a video camera with them.
|
| 2. Most people have never tried to capture a fast-moving object
| with lights in the night's sky with a cellphone.
|
| 3. People assume everyone else is a complete fucking idiot,
| including police, the media, politicians, and most every
| authority on the subject. This is also in both directions, but
| with my friends they seem to assume that people have
| coincidentally forgotten what a plane looks/sounds like in the
| nights sky and decided to report them as "not planes" to the
| authorities.
|
| 4. The skeptical position on this is firmly in the minority
| across all social media I've seen.
|
| 5. Lots of videos are completely indistinguishable from planes,
| and any that seem "weird" can be easily explained by tricks of
| perspective.
|
| 6. If there ARE drones being operated in a way where they would
| prefer not be recognized, then it doesn't seem crazy they would
| put lights on and move in ways that would disguise them as
| planes.
|
| 7. Flight trackers are not reliable because not all planes that
| fly need to have flight plans and transponders.
|
| I have taken the position that _something_ weird is happening,
| and that not all of the reports can be explained by
| commercial/private planes, but I don't mind being wrong so long
| as a definitive answer is going to present itself.
|
| Anyways, glad to see the discussion has made it to HN so I can
| crowdsource some more arguments, would love it if you all could
| help resolve this wager.
| bragr wrote:
| >not all planes that fly need to have flight plans and
| transponders
|
| Technically true but since 2020 almost all aircraft are
| required to have transponders to fly in controlled airspace.
| You could have a small GA aircraft without a transponder and
| only fly in and out of small uncontrolled air strips, but in
| practice most aircraft are going to have ADS-B out now.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/equipadsb/researc.
| ..
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > If there ARE drones being operated in a way where they
| would prefer not be recognized, then it doesn't seem crazy
| they would put lights on and move in ways that would disguise
| them as planes.
|
| Wouldn't it be much, much, much easier and less crazy that,
| if you want to fly a small object at night and hide its exact
| nature and position, you would just paint it a deep, non-
| reflective black? Adding lights to an object you want to hide
| at night is completely crazy.
| gooseus wrote:
| This is true, and we had this debate a little bit -
| disguising is not the same as hiding.
|
| If you're trying to avoid any detection then you would also
| want to mask the sound, or else people will be hearing
| things in the sky and not seeing anything... until they
| start pointing low-light and infrared cameras at the sky.
| When that happens the vantablack drones are going to pop
| against the background and leave no doubt that there is
| something strange in the sky, since they def won't be
| looking/moving like bats.
|
| By disguising as planes you blend in with the air traffic
| for most people, and create confusion and debate with
| anyone who does notice they are out of the ordinary
| (exactly what we're seeing now).
|
| Another point is that lights on flying objects in the dark
| serve a purpose, and if these drones are coordinating with
| each other, they may be using the lights to maintain
| formations or avoid running into each other without relying
| on other communication channels that could give away more
| information.
| 01100011 wrote:
| > the fact that it is _still_ not been resolved by any agency
| is insane
|
| I don't think it's insane. We won't get serious about
| tracking UAVs/drones/RC aircraft until there is an incident.
| Until then, agencies likely do not have the money, resources,
| time or motivation to do it.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| What blows my mind, is that damn near every single person
| seeing this has a phone that can record video, and the best we
| can do is grainy night pictures.
|
| I mean fucking hell we've got people in this thread saying
| "yeah but they don't move like that" ,which fine, cool, and yet
| somehow the only stuff circulating is pictures?
|
| This whole thing reeks of overreaction to something small
| signal boosted by filtering of bad data. Send a clear video "oh
| that's obviously a helicopter". Send some barely readable photo
| "MASSIVE DRONE SIGHTING", put it on the front page.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Take the drone, leave the Cannoli
| genewitch wrote:
| there were videos of ostensibly these drones. i've seen two
| that claimed such, but unfortunately i did not save the
| videos - dumb. "remote control aircraft" are so low on my
| radar (PI) that i wrote it off as people scared of their
| shadow. The original story was it was loitering near some
| Trump property, and that's why FAA issued a NOTAM for that
| area. afaik, this is standard procedure? But maybe people
| don't know that or the news they watch is explaining things
| poorly. who knows. I just know why i didn't save the videos.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >grainy night pictures
|
| Because that's what you get when you point your phone at the
| sky at night and start recording.
|
| Have you never tried to do this?
|
| Even the moon, the brightest and largest object in the sky,
| by far, comes out looking really bad on night pictures.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I don't think the Coast Guard mistook 12 American Airlines
| planes for drones following their boat:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-jersey-a978470fa3b...
|
| In another article a Sheriff saw 50 drones coming in from the
| ocean.
|
| Here a New Jersey elected official talks about the
| Sheriff/Police helicopter following an unidentified drone, then
| pull back because they feared for their safety (so low
| probability it was not something odd but just an American
| Airlines plane):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yxDXqU9OQQ
| op00to wrote:
| You keep posting the same stuff multiple times in the thread.
| It doesn't help your argument.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| My argument that the Coast Guard didn't mistake American
| Airlines planes for 12 drones following their boat is
| invalidated because I posted an AP article twice?
| bragr wrote:
| Why not? The navy confused infrared lens flairs of UFOs
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
| hersko wrote:
| This would be convincing if the pilots who captured the
| video didn't see it with their own eyes.
| magic_smoke_ee wrote:
| Yeap. The media people parroting this are morons.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The Pentagon says they are not our military, and probably not
| foreign.
|
| What the Pentagon does not say is that they don't exist or are
| just ordinary planes.
|
| Why wouldn't they say that if there was any remote chance to
| sell it, even if they were trying to lie about something? Hell
| especially then.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Lol that one even has a telltale _incandescent_ landing light!
| It 's a weird quirk of the conservative nature of Airlines and
| the FAA but most planes still rely on a gigantic incandescent
| light bulb for their landing lights, which is quite distinct
| nowadays.
|
| Speaking of which, if it has landing lights or recognition
| lights or the red/green navigation lights, you can bet it is
| not a UFO, and probably not a foreign adversary.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Why is that particularly surprising? If the planes were
| certified with a particular landing light, it's an awful lot
| of paperwork and STCs to change things out. Plus, you
| wouldn't just be swapping out the bulb - you'd have to swap
| out the entire reflector to keep the beam pattern sane. The
| retrofit LEDs on car headlights regularly demonstrate what
| happens when you change from a more or less point source of
| light on the central axis (the filament in an H4 bulb or some
| other similar type) to a source that's "not that," you get
| all sorts of weird focus and cutoff issues.
|
| Also, consider icing conditions. Any modern airliner is rated
| for flight into known icing, which includes deicing
| equipment. A halogen landing light is self-deicing for the
| most part (airliner landing lights are hundreds of watts,
| some are closer to a thousand). It will happily keep ice
| buildup away from the lens, whereas a LED will need some
| other variety of deicing to keep it clear. This is one of the
| reasons I use halogen bulbs in my motorcycle - I ride year
| round, to include in ice and snow (Ural, so has a sidecar, I
| can drive the sidecar wheel too, it's totally fine in these
| conditions). A halogen bulb keeps the headlight nicely free
| of ice buildup. LEDs don't put out enough heat to solve that
| problem, and it doesn't take that much ice buildup to totally
| scramble the beam pattern off a good glass lens.
|
| You can get LED retrofit landing lights for smaller planes,
| and the club I fly with has them - but they're also Cessnas
| not rated for flight into known icing, so "keeping ice off
| the landing lights" is not a particular design concern.
|
| Anyway, it surprises me none that airliners are still using
| halogens for the most part.
| dantillberg wrote:
| There was a similar phenomenon a few years back in Colorado:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Colorado_drone....
| amatecha wrote:
| TIL (from that page): "Flying drones at night without a waiver
| from the FAA is a violation of federal law" -- perhaps relevant
| to the top level article
| Aloisius wrote:
| You haven't needed a waiver since 2021. Now you can get near
| real-time approval to fly at night under Part 107.
| op00to wrote:
| You don't need any prior approval under 107 to fly at
| night. You don't need a part 107 license to fly at night if
| you're flying for "fun". You simply need lights.
| amatecha wrote:
| Oh, then I suppose that page is out of date and should be
| updated. Thanks for the up-to-date info!
| 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.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Isn't it true about Afghanistan in 1999 and probably now too?
|
| A lack of military projection doesn't mean that your country
| can go in and rout out all insurgency. It just means that
| Afghanistan isn't going to be able to wage war on US soil
| from Afghanistan.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| This. Blame Iran by default is getting really tiresome at this
| point
| toofy wrote:
| > So is Iran just going to be the default bogeyman...?
|
| likely, until theyre crying everything is antifa again. they
| seem to cycle around through their paranoia targets.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I think the American public is a lot more cynical than when
| they were duped into war with Iraq 20 years ago.
|
| Certain people will try and drag you into an Iranian war, but I
| don't think it will work now. The playbook has been used too
| many times.
| c0redump wrote:
| I agree with you in general, except for one important point -
| I think it _will_ work again. Plenty of people will see
| through the lie, but enough will buy it that they'll get
| their war.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42225609
| op00to wrote:
| Exactly my thought! It feels very much the same.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Devil#Reported_sighting...
| gowld wrote:
| What kind of equipment (available to civilians) can capture
| accurate and useful data about of UFO size, distance, and
| trajectory/heading?
| genewitch wrote:
| you'd probably need active radar if it isn't transmitting
| anything, unless you had a extremely high gain and directional
| passive radar system (i do, but i've never tried to track
| anything small, but i can see commercial jets just fine).
|
| The Hydra (it's changed names so many times) can do passive
| radar, which you can probably make active with a tx switch and
| a transmitter. Passive radar works thus: you aim a directional
| antenna in one direction, toward some transmitting signal (FM
| radio, television, whatever), and aim your passive detection
| antenna in the other direction. The signal from behind will hit
| whatever you're aiming at and possibly reflect some of the
| signal back to you, and the hydra radio software can detect
| "echos" of that sort and put them on a chart with relative
| sizes and speeds and "distance" as well.
|
| https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/hydrasdr/
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Israel has been mounting guns and speakers on long-distance
| quadcopters and shooting at Gazans. Only a short time until that
| tech becomes widespread. Israel seems to be a proving ground for
| mass population terrorizing tech like this. I'm having a hard
| time seeing how society is not going to devolve into capitalist
| tech fascism as we lose all our privacy and tech becomes more
| powerful than our governments, aka the will of the people.
| boc wrote:
| Wait until you hear that the US mounted hellfire missiles on a
| drone in 2001 and shot at trucks/people in Afghanistan.
|
| Or it is only "terrorizing" to a population when you use
| bullets instead of enormous bullets that also kill everything
| in a 30m radius?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Both are obviously terrorism
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The whole appeal of their defense industry is that they have
| people to test their weapons on
| MisterTea wrote:
| Those floating balloon things we saw previously, the ones which
| were shot down, I had a thought they could be used as floating
| drone platforms. Like the carrier in Starcraft. The whole thing
| can silently float for days, the drones can awake and deploy,
| surveil, return, then float away silently. It could then scuttle
| itself in the ocean where a waiting ship can salvage it.
| bluescrn wrote:
| It'd be a lot more subtle to just have a spy on the ground
| operating a drone from nearby, looking like just another
| careless hobbyist flying where they shouldn't be.
|
| Small drones don't have much range, and balloons could have
| ended up hundreds of miles off target.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Oh, like the gas stations in TaleSpin.
| guhcampos wrote:
| [flagged]
| redeux wrote:
| If you look at who is claiming espionage, I don't think it's
| intended to be a plausible explanation - just an excuse to
| further agitate.
| nixosbestos wrote:
| Oh, here, I'll make you feel better. Go check sub of the
| alien/ufo subreddits. Literally you'll see comments that amount
| to "my life sucks and is boring, this would be exciting even if
| bad".
|
| It's uh, a bit maddening and a bit sad.
| nixosbestos wrote:
| Lol.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| Which models? What are the specific dimensions? I assume if
| you're confident they're widespread, commercially available,
| you know what kind of aircraft we're dealing with. I'd hope you
| can help me demystify further what's going on in the controlled
| airspace near military installations.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'll admit that were I seeing such stories in my area, I'd be
| hard pressed not to hang some bit of a Halloween costume on a
| drone and send it around the neighbourhood.
| shagie wrote:
| Done 11 years ago - https://youtu.be/tB8D2QZ9lA4
|
| Drones of today would likely be a fair bit easier to work
| with.
| carabiner wrote:
| Just take a clear video of an airplane landing or taking off
| and that should be enough.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| There was also a lot of drone sightings reported last week in
| Britain of similar fear, drones near a US military base
| somewhere in UK, think it was also in the Guardian.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Not commenting on NJ specifically, but there have been drone
| sightings near sensitive military sites recently, as reported
| by the military
| mcphage wrote:
| > there have been drone sightings near sensitive military
| sites recently
|
| How near is "near"? There's an awful lot of sensitive
| military sites in the US.
| op00to wrote:
| New Jersey is essentially one big sensitive site. Between
| Picatinny Arsenal, Joint Base McGuire-Dix, NWS Earle, and
| all the other smaller sites, you're about 15 miles away
| from any one site and if you're near civilization you're
| much closer. Add in other sensitive sites like power
| stations and reservoirs, and the entire state is
| "sensitive". This smacks hard of manipulation and
| agitation. 99% of the sitings shared with me have been
| airplanes.
| roflyear wrote:
| Lots of what is shared is airplanes, but there have been
| official sources confirming drone sightings too. I
| haven't seen a drone yet myself tho.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| So why do most of the UFOS ... sorry UAP's ... come to
| New Mexico?
| lazide wrote:
| Lots of swamp gas, very few independent observers.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| Here's one recent example in Virginia:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/drones-
| milita...
|
| A graduate student in Minnesota flew to a naval base in
| Virginia, used a consumer drone to photograph the area, then
| attempted to board a flight to China before he was caught by
| authorities.
|
| His defense was that he was a fan of boats and drones, and as
| his lawyer said:
|
| "If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever
| known"
| tyre wrote:
| But you do know about him!
| boringg wrote:
| Vanderberg Air Force Base - International espionage attempt
| at least thats what the news is saying:
| https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/11/chinese-
| citiz...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I mean there were 12 drones following a Coast Guard lifeboat.
| Doubt the Coastguard crew mass hysteria'd themselves into
| thinking 12 nearby 737s were following their boat (unless they
| just raided some Colombian drug submarine prior to coming into
| port).
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-jersey-a978470fa3b...
|
| And the official government response is super odd. Police were
| following a drone (that is totally safe we are told) then
| called the helicopter back because he felt unsafe. But the
| drones are safe (except if you are a police helicopter?).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yxDXqU9OQQ
|
| Lots of strange behavior.
|
| EDIT: Downvotes for posting an APNews article and an elected
| New Jersey Assemblyman that just came out of the government
| briefing, really?
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yxDXqU9OQQ
|
| Isn't this just the standard politician response? I am angry,
| this is ridiculous, so on. It might be more useful to
| actually listen to the hearing.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| 'We don't know what these drones are, where they come from,
| so we followed one, then we... just stopped following it'.
|
| That's not the normal Police/Sheriff response, no.
|
| There are multiple New Jersey state government officials
| that attended this government hearing retelling that the
| Police/Sheriff said a Police helicopter did just stop
| following the unknown drone because 'the Police/Sheriff
| felt unsafe'.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| > There are multiple New Jersey state government
| officials that attended this government hearing retelling
| that the Police/Sheriff said a Police helicopter did just
| stop following the unknown drone because 'the
| Police/Sheriff felt unsafe'.
|
| I can't find that? Care to share?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Sorry I don't have Twitter and didn't save the link.
| Believe the one was a female New Jersey elected official.
| I suggest you start with looking up responses of
| officials from the meeting today if you don't believe
| this Assemblyman.
| Arrath wrote:
| To be fair helicopters are held aloft by man's
| engineering hubris and blatantly flaunting gravity.
| Taking a drone to the tail rotor may not be entirely
| healthy to the crew of the chopper.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Oh, my understanding was that they manage to fly because
| they're so ugly that the ground wants nothing to do with
| them and pushes them away. I stand corrected :D
| op00to wrote:
| Can you site an actual reliable source, and not the
| mouthpiece of a political party?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| If we can't trust the Coast Guard then we are screwed as a
| country.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| If there was such a news source we'd all be reading it and
| agreeing with one another.
| jwarden wrote:
| But there is such a reliable source, it is right in GP's
| post -- the AP article with the cosst guard interview. I
| don't understand these comments.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-
| jersey-a978470fa3b...
| shadowtree wrote:
| Name one, please.
| jwarden wrote:
| GP also provided this AP article as a source. This article
| quotes a coast guard official directly.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-
| jersey-a978470fa3b...
| koolba wrote:
| > And the official government response is super odd. Police
| were following a drone (that is totally safe we are told)
| then called the helicopter back because he felt unsafe. But
| the drones are safe (except if you are a police helicopter?).
|
| A misguided drone flying into a helicopter does seem unsafe.
| Just because something isn't a threat to a ground pedestrian
| does not mean it can't be a threat to a whirlybird.
| y33t wrote:
| Helis have to get out of the vicinity of drones all the time,
| it's a safety thing. If a drone suddenly flies into heli
| rotor, what do you think happens?
|
| Somebody died near where I live because LifeFlight aborted
| after a drone was spotted by the heli. Firefighters abort
| flights for drones too, it's really serious.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think social media is really having a detrimental impact on
| these sort of mass panics.
| cyx65 wrote:
| Vernor Vinge called it Belief Circles. And in Rainbows End he
| tells a story of how to get them to stampede in one direction
| or another to suit anyones agenda. But on the flip side, once
| you create a herd of domesticated animals (side note: always
| useful to deeply understand how the process of animal
| domestication works), Stampedes can start from just one
| individual getting scared by their own shadow. To keep things
| from going out of control, the herd manager is then
| programmed (or "learns"), to get the herd to run in circles.
| They eventually get tired. And the story ends happily ever
| after.
| bamboozled wrote:
| you mean...it's not "the radical left"?
| jerlam wrote:
| Traditional media is also involved, I've overheard Fox News
| hosts definitively state we're under invasion, blame Biden
| for it, and explain why Trump will fix it.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Most of the coverage I saw online was from local affiliate
| stations. A deliberate attempt to alarm the public seems more
| likely than many of the theories offered.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Anybody with a DJI can fly over NJ with impunity right now.
| Xmas night is going to be dronapalooza.
| Erikun wrote:
| When the Ukraine war started, there were drone sightings
| reported near the airport and some energy installations in
| Stockholm, Sweden. Then there suddenly were tons of
| sightings, everyone was talking about possible Russian drone
| operations. Many are still unexplained but a whole bunch
| turned out to be other things, birds, ambulance aircrafts. I
| think the consensus now is that there was just a few, non
| state, drone flights and the rest were just mass hysteria.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah the avg person in the US is in a state of complete terror
| because grades better than C's in high school make you an
| uncool nerd. Imagine thinking everything is made of magic and
| people who try to explain basic science are trying to lie to
| you with confusing gotcha arguments. We are absolutely cooked.
| roflyear wrote:
| They aren't small drones - they seem to be really large, like
| 4-10 feet wide. It's hard to tell but they definitely are not
| small.
| cuuupid wrote:
| At times like this it's helpful to use a simple, three point
| framework: [1] What do we know? [2] What is noise? [3] What is
| the boring explanation?
|
| For [1], we know there are likely _some_ drones. We know drones
| are a very hot topic for defense at the moment and that
| countries are heavily investing in this area. We know that
| these systems need very heavy testing for coordination,
| surveillance, etc. and we know that other countries have
| conducted these in urban areas. We also know that these drones
| have been seen often nearby military installations. We know
| that our government is claiming to have no idea what these are,
| but has declared them safe and does not intend to take them
| out. We know that Ukraine (backed by the US) has used drones
| pretty successfully against Russia. We know that Israel has
| used drones successfully against targets across the region. We
| also know that the US is deploying pretty heavily in PACOM, and
| we can see that there are a wide array of large value contracts
| regarding drones being handed out to defense contractors.
|
| For [2], there is SO much noise. A congressman immediately
| blaming Iran (a country an entire ocean away that is incurring
| heavy regional losses). The news and mass hysteria online that
| it's aliens. People confusing helicopters and planes for
| drones, but with just enough actual drone footage in the mix to
| false flag. Pretty much everyone looking at the skies which
| will greatly increase incidence. Just enough counter culture
| online that these are kids drones, regular planes, helicopters.
| Lots of varying narratives coming from different branches of
| military and law enforcement.
|
| That's all very interesting, but if you subtract [2] from [1]
| you get a very boring explanation, [3] that these are likely
| our own drones being tested. I've seen this boring explanation
| get dismissed as technically the US has testing sites, but
| these are typically for bombs, and drones are best utilized in
| populated areas or for surveillance (both of which are hard to
| test in the desert). I also see dismissals of this as "the
| military would have said something by now," but they have:
| they've declared these "safe." If they were testing out new
| functionality on cutting edge tech they wouldn't admit to it,
| no matter how many likes a tweet gets or how many videos get
| posted online.
|
| There is also no way a state government, governor, or law
| enforcement would know about this (yeah, even the FBI) because
| drone programs in the US are coordinated by intelligence
| agencies that are very secretive and don't like to share
| information among themselves.
| quantadev wrote:
| > An entire ocean away.
|
| Ever heard of submarines and ships. the Congressman said he
| heard from a good source there was an Iranian "mothership" on
| the East Coast. I guess you claim he's being lied to, or
| making it all up?
| macintux wrote:
| Remember Jewish space lasers?
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Remember Chinese weather balloons? We live in a time
| where through incompetence or corruption, almost anything
| possible can actually happen.
| tyre wrote:
| Yes, he's clearly making it all up.
| quantadev wrote:
| If he was a Democrat you'd be saying the opposite. lol.
| Arrath wrote:
| "He made it up" certainly seems more likely than Iran,
| what, retrofitting one of their old Kilo class D/E subs to
| be a drone mothership that's just lurking off the coast?
| quantadev wrote:
| Ever heard of Cargo Ships? That's the most likely
| delivery mechanism. If Trump was the Commander right now,
| all these Democrats saying "nothing to see here" would be
| losing their minds over it, especially if the tables were
| fully turned and it was actually a Democrat congressman
| saying there was a mothership somewhere. So sad how most
| Americans just "cheer for their tribe" and always say
| their side can do no wrong. There's a reason MSM/CNN has
| lost the faith of the American people and Fox is on top.
| People finally realized which side has been lying for the
| past decade.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Congressional reps can be... credulous.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-
| vi...
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >I guess you claim he's being lied to, or making it all up?
|
| Don't forget rank stupidity as a strong possibility.
| pfisch wrote:
| How much time did he get on fox news? How many new
| followers on social media?
|
| This is the game they are playing. The attention game. Just
| like the kid who misbehaves so people pay attention to him.
| This is what social media has done to our society.
| cuuupid wrote:
| With everything intel-coded you can quickly figure out what
| is actually happening by applying the three point
| framework:
|
| [1] What we know: Iran does not have a strong drone
| program, and it is almost impossible to get a ship that
| close to our shores without it being blown to literal bits
| by our 3 navy's.
|
| [2] Noise: Congress has almost no insight into what the DoD
| does outside of hearings and oversight committees; Jeff Van
| Drew is on none of the committees that oversee any of our
| drone programs or space command, nor do these meet on a
| frequent enough cadence for them to have weighed in intel
| already. He's also a gun nut pro-lifer who has voted with
| Russian interests in the last two votes, and I doubt he
| would receive many markings or special briefings from intel
| agencies. The Pentagon (which currently directly oversees
| TF Lima, is where CDAO is based out of, and collaborates
| closely with SPACECOM) has also very publicly shot down
| these claims.
|
| [3] Boring explanation: he's making it all up.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Iran does not have a strong drone program_
|
| They punch above their weight, and have one of the most
| battle tested drone program besides the US.
|
| https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Documents/News/Military_P
| owe...
| cuuupid wrote:
| This release just links Iranian technology to UAVs used
| against Ukraine; they are nowhere near the capabilities
| of top military powers. The only country that can claim
| the #2 spot on the list is China.
|
| To give you an idea of the comparison, Iranian drones are
| not even close capability wise to a Reaper. The Reaper is
| damn near EOL as it was developed in 2007(!) and is
| basically caveman technology compared to what we are
| currently running.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _they are nowhere near the capabilities of top military
| powers_
|
| Russia is a top military power, and they use Iranian
| drones.
|
| BTW, I didn't say they were number 2, I said they were
| battle tested unlike other top programs, like China'.
| Iran's drones are currently actively being used in two
| wars (vs Ukraine, vs Israel).
|
| I don't think there are Iranian drones in NJ, but it
| isn't because they don't have a capable program. It's
| because it makes no sense.
| cuuupid wrote:
| Russia is not a top military power when it comes to
| technology, and probably not manpower after bleeding out
| in Ukraine.
|
| There are plenty of advanced drone programs that are
| "battle tested." They are successful and so you do not
| hear about them :)
|
| I maintain the Iranian drone program is incapable. They
| are very similar to the Ukrainian drones, botched
| together and little more than big model airplanes with
| explosives inside. They neither have the capability to
| get a ship onto our shores, nor to launch drones
| undetected, nor to pilot them undetected, nor to evade
| our defenses and intelligence network.
| quantadev wrote:
| Whatever these drones are they're smart enough to vanish
| once we try to tail them. It's likely not simply Iranian
| tech. Remember China and Iran are allies, and sharing
| technology. If China wanted to prove something to the
| USA, they could easily let Iran do it, simply to cause
| less of an "International Incident" if the truth comes
| out of what's going on. My hunch is that it's a Chinese
| Technology Demonstration, and the "mothership" might be
| nothing more than a cargo container on a cargo ship. That
| would go totally unnoticed by our military sensor arrays.
| slt2021 wrote:
| if you trust congressman's word (purchased by AIPAC for 30
| shekels), you are lost
| quantadev wrote:
| But there's also a reason CNN (and most MSM) have lost
| all credibility. People finally realized which side has
| indeed been lying basically nonstop for the past 10
| years.
| ncr100 wrote:
| 1. Local air taxi service is testing, per some random YouTube
| comment.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Fort Dix, which is an airforce base, is in New Jersey.
| Wouldn't be surprised if it was them. There was an incident
| some years ago when a very strange supersonic noise blasted
| out from that area and the government was very quiet about
| it.
| cuuupid wrote:
| I haven't been highside in almost a year now so I don't
| purport to know the actual operation behind this, BUT I
| would place my money on testing surveillance systems and
| on-device tracking modules. CDAO has been investing very
| publicly in these areas alongside the Maven program and TF
| Lima. They need a lot of good data on populated areas to
| make this work; they also can't risk testing this in
| warzones where a downed drone will both [1] leak advances
| in technology we have made since Reapers and [2] expose the
| on-device models they have in place. Could even be a vendor
| trying to evaluate their models; there is nothing
| particularly illegal about these drones.
| stephencanon wrote:
| I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're
| referring to as Fort Dix, is in fact, Joint Base McGuire-
| Dix-Lakehurst, or as the DOD has recently taken to calling
| it, JB MDL. Fort Dix is not an army base unto itself, but
| rather another component of a fully functioning tri-force
| base hosted by the Air Force and including units from all
| six service branches.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| I feel like you already have decided that this is safe and
| then are using "boring" explanations to back that narrative.
| This is easy cause nothing bad has happened in a while so
| it's less cognitive dissonance to go with that narrative.
|
| Have you even tried coming up with boring explanations on how
| this could be not safe?
|
| Also why specifically boring explanations? Plenty of
| incidents have dramatic explanations. How do you know when to
| pick what? Is the idea most incidents have boring
| explanations? And what happens when there is a black swan and
| you fuck up because you only relied on boring explanations?
| Shouldn't you be doing some sort of probability distributions
| instead?
| cuuupid wrote:
| The DoD has very publicly stated that these are safe; I
| know Americans have a lot of distrust in their military but
| when it comes to matters of national security and defense
| the intel community is more or less omniscient.
|
| Knowing the current capabilities of the military, there is
| also no possibility that this is not safe and yet cannot be
| handled after this long, which kinda rules out any boring
| explanation.
|
| When it comes to matters of UFOs, drones, and lights in the
| sky, it has only ever been a boring explanation. I think
| people want very much for it to be fantastical, but often
| times the boring reality is still very dramatic if you step
| back and consider we're talking about secret testing of
| highly advanced drones.
| ribadeo wrote:
| No, the DOD has NOT "declared them safe"
|
| Please confirm the actual statement made.
|
| No evidence of harm as of yet, or somesuch.
| cuuupid wrote:
| From Singh earlier today: https://www.defense.gov/News/Tr
| anscripts/Transcript/Article/...
|
| > at no point were our installations threatened when this
| activity was occurring
|
| > What our initial assessment here is that these are not
| drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or
| adversary
|
| > initial assessments are that these are drones and
| potentially, you know, could be small airplanes
|
| > But I think what's also important to remember is that
| at no time were our military installations or our people
| ever under any threat
|
| This is about as declarative as the Pentagon will get on
| the matter
| 8note wrote:
| this is mind you, a specific form of satefy in that they
| didnt consider it a threat to the US military.
|
| thats not to say it wouldnt be healthy for you if it
| crashed and caught your house on fire.
|
| safe is more than "not a threat"
| cuuupid wrote:
| By the same definition every helicopter, plane, kid
| flying a drone, even car on the road is not "safe."
|
| It's the same way I can call a system reliable when it is
| 3 9's, but that doesn't imply 100% guaranteed uptime. Or
| a statistician can reject a hypothesis that has a low
| enough p-value but still more than 0. Or how health
| systems and procedures are considered safe above a
| threshold, or how we consider condoms safe sex while
| understanding they are not 100% effective.
|
| I'm finding it frustrating that when it comes to UFOs,
| people tend to isolate the most remote possibilities.
| nine_k wrote:
| If the military proclaimed these drones safe and are not
| shooting them down like crazy, these drones are likely
| reasonably safe, and are not an enemy that the US military,
| arguably the top one in the world, would fight.
|
| A possible bad explanation: the US military actually would
| love to shoot down these drones, but cannot, because e.g.
| they are known to contain smallpox virus, dangerous
| radioactive contaminants, etc. These would be released at
| the slightest attempt to sound alarms or interfere. Someone
| caught them unawares and is now enjoying impunity.
|
| A worse version: the US military and/or government is
| complicit, actually overrun by aliens / reptiloids /
| crackpots, and is allowing an invasion.
|
| Etc.
|
| Which version looks more plausible, any of these, or that
| the US military is testing something that can fly, but
| keeps the lips tight?
| ribadeo wrote:
| The military did NOT "declare them safe".
|
| A spokesperson said that there was no proven harm done or
| something to that effect, as i particularly noted this
| oddball statement for what it was.
|
| Please do go back and confirm.
|
| I also think that any threat actor would attempt to
| dampen down alarm. GIVEN Putins proclivity and
| capabilities in convincing a cerain percentage of
| decadent western nations (tm) populations of certain
| scenarios in world power mongering, i dont see a brazen
| foreign drone surveillance campaign as out of the
| question.
|
| Mind you, i did not allege that this is such, but that
| dismissal of such is currently impossible and unwise.
| cuuupid wrote:
| I believe they very explicitly said they pose no threat
| and also explicitly ruled out foreign entities and
| adversaries.
|
| I talked about this in another comment but Putin/Russia
| and Iran could never be contenders for this. If it was a
| foreign entity it would pretty much be limited to China
| in terms of capability & readiness.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > Also why specifically boring explanations?
|
| Without referring to anything specific about this case,
| things usually have boring explanations because what makes
| an explanation boring is that it is expected and
| empirically likely.
|
| "The most likely explanation is the most boring one" is
| practically a tautology, because "boring" practically means
| "likely" in regards to explanations of events.
| keepamovin wrote:
| The problem with the "secret testing over civilian areas"
| idea is that it's self-contradicting.
|
| So you think the military and intelligence has technology
| that is so secret they won't admit to it, but they're so
| uninterested in protecting that they're testing them willy
| nilly over populated areas??
|
| The other contradiction is risk: so you have an aerial
| technology test and you do it over US civilian populations
| and military bases over long periods in large numbers, not
| caring about risk of an object crashing, nor of triggering a
| mistaken response or misinterpretation by US or another
| nation, and without a NOTAM to protect aircraft?
|
| None of that scans.
|
| The other point is this is not limited to New Jersey and the
| United Kingdom.
| cuuupid wrote:
| > So you think the military and intelligence has technology
| that is so secret they won't admit to it, but they're so
| uninterested in protecting that they're testing them willy
| nilly over populated areas??
|
| The explicit purpose of most advances in drone technology
| over the last ~20 years is not to be the biggest baddest
| weapon in the sky, but to be a hard to catch camera that
| sees everything and knows everything. That is also the
| biggest drone program that I am aware of and the explicit
| purpose of Maven.
|
| > The other contradiction is risk: so you have an aerial
| technology test and you do it over US civilian populations
| and military bases over long periods in large numbers, not
| caring about risk of an object crashing, nor of triggering
| a mistaken response or misinterpretation by US or another
| nation, and without a NOTAM to protect aircraft?
|
| The latter part of your question is the answer to the
| former. If we conduct tests abroad, we risk a response or
| the tech getting stolen. We need somewhere to test it, so
| we test it here. There is pretty low risk of these
| crashing, and civilians would not have the technology
| needed to down these drones (this capability would be
| pretty thoroughly tested in unpopulated areas).
|
| We do issue NOTAMs when drones are in airspace, these are
| low flying and so do not warrant any notice.
| keepamovin wrote:
| That's fair about NOTAM's if they are low flying, how do
| you know they're low flying?
|
| Your answer sounds official. Is this an official answer
| from someone in the military or IC? You say "these
| drones" - do you know unequivocally what they are?
|
| How does the purpose of the Maven drone program you
| mention resolve the contradiction of testing a classified
| program that cannot be acknowledged, over civilian areas
| willy nilly? What is the purpose of a secret surveillance
| platform that is now an international news story? That
| goes against how such platforms are protected. So many
| contradictions.
|
| These were also spotted in the UK over multiple bases
| (RAF Lakenheath, etc). Even if this were a test of our
| own technology, there's a lot of risk, and a lot of
| unknown and concern among officials who are in the dark,
| which creates more risk. It does not scan.
|
| I don't really think you've provided answers that resolve
| these questions. I think it's legitimate that everybody
| has questions and there's a lot unknown. You seem to be
| saying you have the answers. Is that how you feel? Is
| that what you're saying?
| cuuupid wrote:
| All of the media sightings I have seen about these so far
| has been low flying. I don't deny that we have very high
| flying drones but I doubt they would be tested without
| NOTAMs (over CONUS).
|
| > Your answer sounds official. Is this an official answer
| from someone in the military or IC?
|
| Not official - I have not been part of the IC for about a
| year now. I can't talk about my background there without
| doxxing.
|
| > How does the purpose of the Maven drone program you
| mention resolve the contradiction of testing a classified
| program that cannot be acknowledged, over civilian areas
| willy nilly?
|
| I don't think I can answer this without doxxing or
| leaking, but there are a lot of public communications on
| MSS, its goals, what it involves, etc. and its recent
| expansions.
|
| > These were also spotted in the UK over multiple bases
| (RAF Lakenheath, etc). Even if this were a test of our
| own technology, there's a lot of risk, and a lot of
| unknown and concern among officials who are in the dark,
| which creates more risk. It does not scan.
|
| I haven't seen any reports of these; my gut reaction
| would be to suspect these are not drones and just regular
| aircraft. I wouldn't rule out drone tech (UK is in FVEY)
| but don't think it is likely.
|
| I'm not saying it is necessarily ethical or a correct
| thing that these programs have such infrequent and
| limited oversight. I'm just quoting the reality (at least
| up to last year).
|
| > You seem to be saying you have the answers. Is that how
| you feel? Is that what you're saying?
|
| I'm just applying a framework that typically works for me
| and my existing knowledge of these programs. I'm not
| actively in the IC and can't definitely say I'm 100%
| right, but I don't see any other explanations at this
| point.
|
| If you are looking for 100% answers there are probably
| entire chatrooms and threads dedicated to this on
| chatsurfer by now :)
| keepamovin wrote:
| 100% answers? I'm the one asking the questions, you're
| the one who seems confident. I just wanted to understand
| from what basis your confidence arises.
|
| Here's 1 high flying UFO (50k feet):
| https://x.com/rosscoulthart/status/1866994569088573838
|
| I can't accept the blanket "trust us, we're the IC",
| because it's not credible. More so because how
| credibility has been surrendered by officials in IC on
| this topic through historical deception on UAP/UFO/NHI.
| Even more so when there's a motivation to lie to protect
| the secret that you don't control your skies, when that's
| your mandate.
|
| There has to be a reckoning with truth if we hope to
| advance, and I actually see the Pentagon statement as +ve
| progress on that. In the larger context of this story,
| it's a bit of an acapella solo atop a harmony of voices
| from military saying "We don't control our airspace.
| There's unknown objects arising from non human
| intelligence." People include: Ryan Graves, Tim
| Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Jay Stratton,
| David Grusch, Karl Nell.
|
| It's disappointing that with your IC "frameworks" you
| didn't even realistically consider "other explanations";
| maybe such possible blindspots have been part of the
| problem institutionally, which is sad - because those are
| the ones who should be on top of it.
|
| Or maybe you're just being a good soldier and still have
| NDAs, or never knew. Anyway, if you're interested I
| encourage you to go down that UFO/NHI rabbithole!
| Fascinating stuff. I bet you'd do great work on it, too,
| with you analytic skills. Give it a try maybe :)
|
| There's plenty in this comment to get you started.
| So...go for it! :) And the UK stuff can be searched
| easily, for example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-air-
| force-drone-sightings-uk... and if you're keen on
| rabbitholing here's two more to suck you in :)
|
| - https://www.liberationtimes.com/home/usaf-confirms-
| drone-inc...
|
| - https://www.liberationtimes.com/home/uk-drone-
| incursions-adv...
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > So you think the military and intelligence has technology
| that is so secret they won't admit to it
|
| It's more like "does not have to disclose anything so
| chooses not to".
|
| When you are in the long game of keeping your information
| and intentions secret, you don't reveal anything if you
| don't have to. They do need to test low flying aircraft in
| populous areas. They don't need to say anything about it.
|
| It's like when you're a kid, and your friends are trying to
| get you to admit who you have a crush on. If you actually
| want to keep it secret, you have to provide the same
| response to every question they ask, otherwise you are
| revealing information. If you say "no" truthfully to some
| questions but then refuse to say "no" untruthfully to other
| questions, then they can just pepper you with enough
| questions to triangulate what they want to know. Or you can
| just say "no comment" to everything but people take that
| worse.
| 8note wrote:
| if youre good at it, youll triangulate the questioners to
| the wrong conclusion, rather than leave them with no
| conclusion
| keepamovin wrote:
| Lying to your population is not good. Especially when
| it's about the nature of reality.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Hahaha funny metaphor but I don't think it's like that.
| It's more like they don't want to say if they can't
| control it, if it makes them look bad.
|
| In your world, where is the precedent of extensive
| prolonged testing of secret tech over populated areas in
| full view?
|
| But more important it doesn't make sense: it's either
| secret or you can test it so it becomes a news story.
| It's not both hahaha :)
| keepamovin wrote:
| What 'commercially available' aircraft can operate for at least
| 6 - 7 hours, sized up to 6 feet, not always detectable by FLIR,
| evade detection by helicopters, don't always use lights, have a
| range of at least 15 miles, are not obeying FAA line of sight
| regulations for night flights (all per the statewide briefing
| provided to NJ legislators yesterday:
| https://x.com/DawnFantasia_NJ/status/1866896860578717994) , and
| are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday (https://www.youtube.com
| /live/gSIKXMt4qHk?si=HafZLJzX8lUqQvrd...) to not originate in
| the US or any other nation?
|
| What extra-terrestrial amazon.com or Weyland-Yutani
| intergalactic commerce do you have access to haha? :)
|
| Also, videos of the 'drones' show them hovering for long
| periods, so they're not conventional fixed wing craft. I think
| local officials should put together some investigative task
| forces using local scientists, engineers and commercial
| providers that have access to good electronic intelligence
| surveillance capabilities and get more data so we can see more
| and know more about this.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday to not originate in
| the US or any other nation
|
| To be clear, they stated that "these are not US military
| drones", and that they have no evidence that they are from a
| foreign entity or adversary, which is very different from
| what I interpreted you as saying.
| keepamovin wrote:
| You interpreted me as saying?
| comp_throw7 wrote:
| "are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday... to not
| originate in the US or any other nation" = "the Pentagon
| claims to actively know that the drones aren't from any
| publicly-known line of drone models"
| keepamovin wrote:
| Well that's not exactly what they said. Here's the
| transcript:
|
| "at this time we have no evidence that these activities
| are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an
| adversary...these are not US military drones"
|
| What do you make of that?
| comp_throw7 wrote:
| I didn't say they said that. You asked what the other
| poster interpreted you as saying.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Right but how would you know how the other person
| interpreted it? What you said is not what I said. What I
| said is just a paraphrase of the Pentagon statement. How
| is it very different hahaha? :)
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I interpreted your statement as "the Pentagon has
| assessed the drones and determined that they did not
| originate in the US or any other nation".
| keepamovin wrote:
| Basically yeah, there's some room for interpretation, but
| the key thing is the exact words the Pentagon spokesmen
| used are:
|
| _" at this time we have no evidence that these
| activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work
| of an adversary...these are not US military drones"_
|
| The linked video starts at the relevant timestamp.
| craftsman wrote:
| > "are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday to not
| originate in the US or any other nation"
|
| This statement logically means that:
|
| * The Pentagon assessed (determined) that X is true
|
| * Where X is defined as "The drones do not originate in
| the US or any other nation"
|
| That is different than the statement:
|
| * The Pentagon has stated that (a) X is false, and (b)
| they have no evidence that Y is true.
|
| * Where X is defined as "The drones are US military
| assets"
|
| * Where Y is defined as "The drones originate from and/or
| are assets of a foreign nation or adversary."
| keepamovin wrote:
| For clarity the exact words the Pentagon staff in the
| video used are:
|
| "at this time we have no evidence that these activities
| are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an
| adversary...these are not US military drones"
|
| What's your thoughts?
| craftsman wrote:
| I'd just revise the second part of my post to:
|
| That is different than the statement:
|
| * The Pentagon has stated that (a) X is true, and (b)
| they have no evidence that Y is true.
|
| * Where X is defined as "These are not US military
| drones"
|
| * Where Y is defined as "these activities are coming from
| a foreign entity or the work of an adversary"
| keepamovin wrote:
| I guess "US commercial drones" is the gap or intersection
| of the relevant Venn diagrams, but that doesn't make
| sense. Why would you test them over a military base?
|
| I think we can apply some Gaussian blur and assume the
| statement is an approximate fit to the meaning by
| remembering that: this was a statement provided by a
| human in real time, ad libbing in response to a press
| question. They didn't spend hours drafting it to
| elucidate all possible logical connections and deftly
| conceal the unstated meaning by crafting some inference
| puzzle. Hahaha! :)
|
| Communication between people is successful
| miscommunication. It's not an API - remember that,
| engineer! :)
| gredbeard wrote:
| Not "military" drones seems very very open to
| interpretation. Is DARPA Military? Or is military being
| used in a generic sense of the dictionary definition vs.
| the US government budgetary definition?
|
| My assumption is these are US military drones.
| keepamovin wrote:
| I'm guessing "Defense Advanced Research" is pretty
| military haha :)
| tw04 wrote:
| If anduril, for instance, sends the US military some new
| drones to try out, it is not technically a false
| statement for the military to say they aren't military
| drones.
|
| The wording, imo, is intentionally very vague.
| 8note wrote:
| confirmed that jesus has returned as an alien to bring
| about the apocalypse.
|
| but uhh, the most standard thing is that its some weather
| balloon put up by an undergrad student who isnt aware of
| the relevant regulations theyre supposed to be following
| and whod really prefer to ask forgiveness than permission
| keepamovin wrote:
| Well this is a ridiculous take. They are flying around
| powered. Check out the vids.
| conductr wrote:
| What evidence do they have though? I'm going with none and
| it seems odd to me they're ok just letting the local law
| enforcement run point
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Why would one believe that US intelligence agencies have
| no information about extensive reports of drone activity
| near military installations? Given that this has been
| happening for a couple weeks now, and the military has
| said "these are not a threat", the clearly more plausible
| explanation is that they know what these are, and they
| aren't saying.
|
| This is what the military does when they are testing
| classified military technology. "It's not ours. It's not
| the enemy's. It's not a threat. Nothing to see here."
| keepamovin wrote:
| Maybe they state that, but they're not going to test it
| in the open so it's not a secret.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Can you really assume they have no evidence?
|
| You'd hope they'd have sensors and analysis capable of
| forming some conclusions, such as tracing the drones to a
| origin point, or classifying based on signature, etc.
|
| They've haven't provided much and there's a lot of
| questions unanswered, but they've said unequivocally what
| they think the origin is not.
| EGreg wrote:
| Honestly you can drive down the Gowanus expressway any day of
| the week in NYC and see these mysterious large drones somehow
| sitting up in the air for HOURS, silently. You can see their
| lights as they hover, if you are coming from the tunnel to
| the verazzano bridge. What kind of battery tech do they have!
| Who flies them??
| keepamovin wrote:
| Cool. What do you think? Have you tried to record them? Do
| they make any noise? How low do you think they are? :)
| EGreg wrote:
| Yes, I have recorded them, they are there for hours every
| night, every car can see them
|
| Thought they were official, watching traffic
|
| My thoughts are -- how do their batteries last that long
| at night?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> What extra-terrestrial amazon.com or Weyland-Yutani
| intergalactic commerce do you have access to haha? :)_
|
| I got a guy at Wolfram & Hart.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Isn't it illegal to have unannounced drones flying about?
| They're not trackable any public platform. Screw that.
| davidw wrote:
| A decent percentage of the population thinks that the president
| of the US can control the weather.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-not-controlling-the-...
|
| The fact of the matter is that a lot of people have rotten,
| worm-riddled cabbage for brains.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Where in that article does it state the percentage of people
| that believe that?
| vasco wrote:
| Of course the government can control the weather, what are
| you on about:
|
| > In the United States, cloud seeding is used to increase
| precipitation in areas experiencing drought, to reduce the
| size of hailstones that form in thunderstorms, and to reduce
| the amount of fog in and around airports. In the summer of
| 1948, the usually humid city of Alexandria, Louisiana, under
| Mayor Carl B. Close, seeded a cloud with dry ice at the
| municipal airport during a drought; quickly 0.85 inches (22
| mm) of rain fell.[77]
|
| > Major ski resorts occasionally use cloud seeding to induce
| snowfall. Eleven western states and one Canadian province
| (Alberta) had ongoing weather modification operational
| programs in 2012.[78] In 2006, an $8.8 million project began
| in Wyoming to examine cloud seeding's effects on snowfall
| over Wyoming's Medicine Bow, Sierra Madre, and Wind River
| mountain ranges.[79]
|
| > In Oregon, Portland General Electric used Hood River
| seeding to produce snow for hydro power in 1974-1975. The
| results were substantial, but caused an undue burden on the
| locals, who experienced overpowering rainfall, causing street
| collapses and mudslides. PGE discontinued its seeding
| practices the next year.[80]
|
| > In 1978, the U.S. signed the Environmental Modification
| Convention, which bans the use of weather modification for
| hostile purposes.[81]
|
| > As of 2022, seven agencies in California are conducting
| cloud seeding operations using silver iodide, including the
| Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which began employing
| the technique in 1969 to increase the water supply to its
| hydroelectric power plants, and reported that it results in
| "an average of 3 to 10% increase in [Sierra Nevada]
| snowpack".[82]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding#:~:text=In%20t.
| ..
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| That's not "controlling the weather" anymore than a person
| with a box of matches can control fire.
| vasco wrote:
| I literally agree with the second sentence. Humans
| control fire. If we can make it rain whenever we want we
| also control the weather. If they didn't they wouldn't
| need laws preventing them from overdoing it.
| 8note wrote:
| the alberta cloud seeding program isnt controlling the
| weather, its blunting it. the storm still comes by
| mmooss wrote:
| > The fact of the matter is that a lot of people have rotten,
| worm-riddled cabbage for brains.
|
| Does that comment reflect intelligence?
| 65 wrote:
| What if it's just someone testing a New Year's drone show?
| walrus01 wrote:
| The idea that mystery nefarious drone operators would be sending
| up things with blinking red and green navigation lights on them
| is patently absurd. As others have pointed out in this thread,
| there's a lot of more mundane explanations.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| What if the lights are how they are controlled and pass data,
| rather than an RF link?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| That's as plausible as them beaming spy data directly into
| the operator's brains via midichlorians.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Exceedingly unlikely in my opinion, I've seen pictures/videos
| of these mystery drones and they look exactly like commercial
| aircraft white, red and green navigation lights. Or the red
| and green lights you would see on the end of the arms on a
| COTS DJI/Autel/competitor type UAV.
| pyth0 wrote:
| What if the moon were made of cheese?
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| https://lifi.co/lifi-applications/aerospace/ The technology
| is real, and the application is plausible, why the down
| votes?
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| it seems the videos posted with blinking red and green
| navigation lights are actually not representative of the drone
| sightings authorities are investigating but instead represent a
| side effect of the mania with people posting videos of private
| aircrafts as everyone is looking up and trying to record the
| "drones" but doesn't realize the aircraft have been there all
| along and first they are paying attention.
|
| The real drones go dark and evade helicopters.
| PepperdineG wrote:
| Also it can depend on what people consider nefarious. For a
| long time I noticed drone coverage over my area regularly at
| night, which how they were operating over a populated area
| would be illegal for a civilian. Eventually I figured it out to
| be law enforcement drones. It's perfectly legal for there to be
| cop drones but people might consider them nefarious and law
| enforcement has been taking a boiled frog approach to drone
| acceptance.
| standardUser wrote:
| It could be some politicians are leveraging the situation to
| get stricter drone laws passed. It should be unnerving to all
| of us that any semi-intelligent person with a few thousand
| bucks could weaponize a drone and send it off to wreak havoc.
| I'm not a drone enthusiast, but it seems like the level of
| regulation and enforcement has fallen way behind the access to
| the technology.
| partiallypro wrote:
| This is the biggest mass hysteria I can remember. People are
| sharing video of things that are very obviously airplanes and
| helicopters. I'm sure there are some drones but that isn't 95%+
| of what people are seeing.
|
| This is honestly terrifying, because it's baffling people can't
| determine what is generally regular aircraft (some of these
| videos are SO obviously planes coming in for a landing, with jet
| engine noises and all) and the other is that eventually some nut
| is going to open fire on a commercial airliner just coming in for
| a landing because they think it's China or aliens or something.
| That won't take down the plane but could hit someone inside.
| People need to chill.
|
| I think drones are a new threat for various reasons (look at
| Ukrainian war footage, it's absolutely terrifying) but while I'm
| sure there were -some- drones, probably a mix between government
| and hobbyist...uh, the overreaction to it is seriously worrying.
| The US is turning into a land of paranoia.
|
| Side note, it's very difficult to determine the size and altitude
| of something even in the daytime, so at night it's even harder.
| These "car sized" drones could literally just be the size of a
| larger DJI drone. The media and government officials feeding into
| this is bad.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > This is the biggest mass hysteria I can remember.
|
| The biggest panic about unidentified flying objects in New
| Jersey since October 30 1938.
| partiallypro wrote:
| This is going to shock you, but I wasn't alive in 1938, which
| is why I would have no memory of it. I would venture to guess
| you weren't either.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Why are you so certain it must be mass hysteria and not UAP?
| What are your piors? Are you a resident of NJ? Are you familiar
| with the UAP phenomenon?
|
| I venture you are neither of these.
| partiallypro wrote:
| For starters the Pentagon's AARO office, which is over
| monitoring UAPs has told reporters they have received 0
| reports regarding UAPs over this "drone" stuff. Second, while
| I don't live in New Jersey, I have friends that do live in
| this area, and they have told me it's mostly mass hysteria.
| So, I venture to guess you're quite wrong.
|
| Finally, I think it's quite dangerous if people are saying we
| should shoot down unknown aircraft, especially when it's very
| likely commercial airliners. That is not just conjecture,
| that is what people are saying online and to reporters -in
| person-. Seems like an important part of my post, which you
| seem to have conveniently ignored. Get just one person hyped
| up and they could shoot off in the air, and even if they
| don't hit the aircraft, that bullet it landing somewhere.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| For starters, it seems you are unaware that AARO is
| considered compromised and is this era's project bluebook
| 2.0.
|
| You have demonstrated you are not informed.
|
| Check back in a few months time and you'll come around.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1gv9o56/how_do_we_kn
| o...
| left-struck wrote:
| While your concern is still totally valid, if a civilian
| mistakes a 747 for a drone and shoots at it with anything but a
| laser, they're gonna miss lol. It will probably be out of range
| in fact.
|
| In other words, if you're within 1km (0.6 miles) of a large
| passenger jet, you're absolutely not mistaking it for a drone.
| throwthis1287 wrote:
| The Guardian in 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2017/aug/03/secret-servi...):
|
| _Secret Service will deploy drones to watch Trump during golfing
| vacation_
|
| The Guardian in 2024 (this submission):
|
| _Concerns have focused on drones spotted near the Bedminster
| golf course of president-elect Donald Trump, as well as sensitive
| infrastructure including electric transmission sights, rail
| stations and police departments._
|
| After the Butler assassination attempt, there have been numerous
| criticisms that the FBI did not use surveillance drones on the
| site. I would not be surprised if 50% of drone sightings _are_
| government surveillance drones and the rest are just hobbyist
| photographers etc.
| Eumenes wrote:
| The US military can track and engage ICBMs moving at 15k MPH but
| can't identity drones above residential neighborhoods in the
| continental US? They really do believe we're stupid.
| dboreham wrote:
| Based on this post they're right.
| emchammer wrote:
| Those are different types of radars and they are pointed in
| different directions.
| talldayo wrote:
| Quadcopters occupy the same flight regime as most clutter does:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)
|
| Truth is, a Patriot system would probably also miss something
| like this unless it had special SHORAD or CIWS defenses
| alongside it. A lot of these drones are going to be invisible
| to conventional radar if they want to be.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Just wait. Some startup will confess, just like many of the
| balloons were hobbyists, students, and clubs.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| I wish we as people could have meaningful conversations on the
| internet.
|
| To clarify some common logical issues I see spread across dozens
| of responses in this thread:
|
| Drones != Quadcopters
|
| Drones COULD use a housing to mimics common aircraft or
| helicopters.
|
| The military and FBI do not commonly monitor ALL airspace at all
| times beyond air-traffic radar.
|
| The government is not a hive-mind and individuals only know what
| they know despite the fact the are asked to make statements.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I fly drones, sometimes even to me a drone can look suspiciously
| unnatural. Especially at night the way the drone moves abruptly
| with all the led lights, its difficult to judge its distance.
|
| But ... what if Aliens and Ghosts are the same thing? DaDaDa!
| xyst wrote:
| Reminds me of the Chinese balloon incident of 2023 [1]
|
| Unsubstantiated theory, but maybe a foreign adversary scanning
| ground for targets? Critical east coast transmission lines and
| substations in NJ possibly a target?
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_inciden...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| You can see these things with satellites
| op00to wrote:
| Or airplanes. Like the ones flying overhead all the time in
| N.J.
| hedora wrote:
| Or here:
|
| https://felt.com/explore/us-electric-power-transmission-
| line...
|
| (Account signup required.)
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| A lot of people here are writing this off as hysteria.
|
| I don't know if this is anything nefarious or not, but I would
| note that being suspicious of these things is often a good thing,
| not a bad thing.
|
| Even Michael Shermer, the famed skeptic, wrote a book on how
| suspecting conspiracy is often a valid default stance. Abstract
| from his book:
|
| "One reason that people believe these conspiracies, Shermer
| argues, is that enough of them are real that we should be
| constructively conspiratorial: elections have been rigged (LBJ's
| 1948 Senate race); medical professionals have intentionally
| harmed patients in their care (Tuskegee); your government does
| lie to you (Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Afghanistan)"
|
| There are obviously people that always suspect conspiracy, and
| that's not good. But it's equally not good to always suspect a
| benign explanation, which is the majority of this thread.
|
| Just adding a different perspective to this community.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I do find it rather hard to make sense of the antagonism here.
| My only guess is people feel the need to distance themselves
| from the "sheep" and do so by ridiculing them from their ivory
| tower. In some cases it's the same thing, but there's a
| political bent added to it ("some people" from "that side").
|
| Sad to see what HN is slowly devolving into.
| binary132 wrote:
| It's probably an organized group of shills / bots trying to
| discredit and downplay the concerns so it doesn't get out of
| hand. ;)
| gg2222 wrote:
| Agreed. If it is mass hysteria why doesn't the government
| just say so instead of saying "they don't know".
|
| Some people just can't accept not "knowing it all".
| demarq wrote:
| This is the "Iraq has WMD" for this generation.
|
| It's just laying the ground work for some insidious nonsense.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I'm already seeing the propaganda wheels rolling on X blaming
| Iran.
| geor9e wrote:
| A more accurate headline would be ...prompts one New Jersey
| legislator on social media to call...
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The BlackFly is an Ultralight Aircraft originally designed by
| OPENER in Canada, and is a single-seat personal aerial vehicle
| (PAV).
|
| It appears a few clowns are illegally flying something similar in
| the US air space, and over populated areas (FAA will hit hard on
| this point.)
|
| That odd looking air-frame design is very similar, and a simple
| phone call may put the drama to rest. =3
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivotal_BlackFly
| paxys wrote:
| > On Wednesday, the Pentagon responded and addressed the baseless
| claims from one Republican New Jersey congressman that the drones
| were from an "Iranian mothership" lying off the coast of the
| state.
|
| A lot of people in power seem to be panicking because so many
| international conflicts are dying down in recent months. After a
| Ukraine-Russia ceasefire how is the military industrial complex
| going to sustain itself? We need a new boogeyman, asap.
| lxgr wrote:
| Of course there's the chance that something is actually going on.
|
| But if there isn't, telling people that there's been some strange
| lights in the sky is a pretty good way to get people to look up
| at night and receive even more reports about just that.
| le-mark wrote:
| Adding tho this; It's clearly some business that hasn't been
| forthcoming about their activities up to now. The drone
| delivery company Wing.com got a lot of pushback from the public
| about how noisy their drones are, and spent a lot money making
| them quieter. Same will happen here.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| This is all quite very strange. I've been down multiple decision
| trees. Especially since this has been going on for weeks in NJ
| and then months in the greater vicinity.
| smallmouth wrote:
| Seems rather eerie reading some of the eyewitness reports. I'm
| reminded of the mystery airship flap of the late 1800's into the
| early 1900's. See:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship
|
| https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29...
| toofy wrote:
| why are we ignoring occam's razor here? clearly this is santa
| testing new sleigh models.
| quantadev wrote:
| Guided missiles have been illegal for consumer use for decades,
| and nobody cared. It makes sense that those are a military
| weapon. I also think drones are a military grade weapon. I've
| been saying for the past 24 years drones should be illegal. After
| 9/11 2001, I started saying that. I've also said they will _not_
| be made illegal _util_ there 's a massive terror attack proving
| their lethality to the lethargic naive public, who seems to think
| they're a toy, or that we need Amazon to fly one package at a
| time, which is nonsense.
| kurtoid wrote:
| A _lot_ of hobbyists (me included) disagree with you on this
| one. I think the current Remote ID law (controversial, yes) is
| a reasonable balance.
| quantadev wrote:
| Once a high profile attack or assassination happens with
| remote operated vehicles (drones or high-speed model jets),
| everyone's minds will change in a heartbeat. For now yeah
| most people think of drones as toys. It's just a failure of
| imagination and a failure to predict the obvious future
| events that are certain to unfold.
| hedora wrote:
| The US has been murdering civilians overseas with drones
| for over a decade.
|
| Also, domestically, we have all sorts of school shootings,
| etc, that don't make the news.
|
| I'm sure if someone in power wanted to ban commercial
| drones, they could run a propaganda blitz and get the
| outcome you describe, but we're pretty much a post-truth
| society at this point.
| logicchains wrote:
| >Once a high profile attack or assassination happens with
| remote operated vehicles (drones or high-speed model jets),
| everyone's minds will change in a heartbeat
|
| Pretty much any high-profile assassination with drones
| would probably have the support of at least half the
| population (or even more, in the case of the recent
| healthcare CEO assassination).
| pontifier wrote:
| [Blank] doesn't kill people, people kill people.
|
| Lethal action will occur when seen as a solution regardless of
| the tools available. It's happened throughout human history,
| and will likely keep happening until we can solve our problems
| without it.
| irobeth wrote:
| i'm reminded of a story from around 2012? about an aerial
| surveillance program where they recorded a bird's-eye view of the
| city [1?]
|
| they used the footage to solve some cartel murder by playing the
| footage in reverse to track the origin of the killers
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lowrider
| 01100011 wrote:
| Funny, I just posted this story a couple of days ago. I think
| it was from 2014. There was a lot of noise about this sort of
| tech and then it just went quiet. I really doubt this tech is
| going unused. I suspect something like this was used to track
| down the CEO killer recently(with a parallel constructed cover
| story).
| mvcalder wrote:
| At the risk of being labeled a kook or an idiot, I photographed
| drones flying over my suburb of Boston neighborhood a few weeks
| ago. This was about 6am, definitely drones not regular aircraft.
| I assumed it was something flying out of Hanscom or the city
| mapping streets. And yes I took photos not video, sorry.
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/Lwfn134LqdEp6xbG9
| garbagewoman wrote:
| why would someone call you a kook for a video of a thing
| mvcalder wrote:
| I read several comments referring to: idiots, morons,
| delusional, and hysteria.
| neom wrote:
| I didn't think you were a kook, I did wonder why you
| decided to film it in the first place, more the 6am thing,
| or more it was unusual thing?
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Looks like a bird with flashlights on it's wings. You're a
| kook. :)
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I mean...police departments use drones all the time. I see them
| constantly in my metro area and never think much of it.
| jaco6 wrote:
| The concerns about it being a foreign power seem misplaced.
| Shouldn't the main concern with drones be domestic terrorism? A
| civilian could easily buy a small fleet of drones, equip them
| with small IEDs or sarin gas, and fly them into otherwise secured
| areas with large crowds. Are there any procedures in place to
| prevent this?
| kardos wrote:
| > A civilian could easily buy a small fleet of drones, equip
| them with small IEDs or sarin gas, and fly them into otherwise
| secured areas with large crowds.
|
| Easy? Is sarin gas freely available at big-box retailers?
| rolph wrote:
| the synthetic precursors are.
| 15155 wrote:
| Which?
|
| All of the weaponized forms involve some pretty nasty
| flourinated precursor chemicals which themselves are quite
| toxic -- and controlled.
| rolph wrote:
| all of them. if you understand chemistry; nasty, quite
| toxic, and controlled are not barriers.
|
| e.g. isopropyl alcohol.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Don't underestimate hackers. The internet is supercharging
| hobbyist hackers in many domains, including electronics,
| chemistry and bioengineering.
|
| I doubt the precursors to nerve gases(the worst ones, anyway)
| are readily available, but they are probably a handful of
| undergrad-level reactions away from easily available
| chemicals.
| 15155 wrote:
| > but they are probably a handful of undergrad-level
| reactions away from easily available chemicals.
|
| It's a bit further than that, and all of the intermediate
| chemistry is toxic.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Wouldn't a novice likely die synthesizing the amount of sarin
| needed to kill a large group of people? Then attaching a
| disbursement mechanism to the drone to make it into a gaseous
| form, etc. Seems like a lot of high risk effort to _maybe_ have
| it work.
|
| As for IEDs, the drones used in the Ukraine war use what look
| to be very effective munitions, and they seem to be only
| effective against a single target really.
|
| Is that really of concern?
|
| And its not like drones that can carry things are cheap, nor is
| the way you are hypothesizing about them being used.
| hersko wrote:
| That's not true. They have drones that can drop multiple rpg
| warheads or grenades. Imagine a bunch of drones each with ten
| grenades dropping them over Times Square. I doubt there is
| anything the NYPD would be able to do.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Do you have any media of those drones that drop "multiple
| rpg warheads" so I can visualize how large they are?
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga_(aircraft)
| 15155 wrote:
| RC helicopters have been a thing for decades.
| chasd00 wrote:
| yeah there's a lot of very very skilled people in these kinds
| of hobbies. A large RC Airplane + Ardupilot can be turned
| into a cruise missile pretty easily. The HPR rocketry crowd
| can get past the karman line and active stabilization
| (basically guidance but just straight up) is a thing now so
| decent range surface-to-surface guided missiles are pretty
| doable technically. The fortunate thing is these people also
| care deeply about their hobby and, besides, they just aren't
| mass murderers.
| lxgr wrote:
| While I do believe that whatever is happening will largely be
| explained by selective attention and confirmation bias, here is
| at least one instance of a drone sighting on the final approach
| path to JFK over a landing airplane:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQiSkTVeN78
| thehappypm wrote:
| My father took this picture of a drone in Morris County, NJ.
| Anyone want to help identify what it is?
| https://i.imgur.com/Sfet0Ps.jpeg
| YZF wrote:
| I'm far from an expert but looks more or less like a garden
| variety quad-copter. Maybe a somewhat larger one. You guys are
| really seeing them all over the place? That's the start of a
| good sci-fi movie. Let's see if we find something out. Is it
| possible people are just a lot more sensitive to seeing drones
| that are around anyways?
| Balgair wrote:
| I mean, drones are pretty cheap, yeah? Why not just join the
| fun? Buy a drone, follow one of these other ones around, see
| what happens. Worst case: Some army dude knocks on the door
| and says to stop it, maybe you gotta pony up to a lawyer.
| Best case: Your new alien friends have great new schnapps on
| the intergalactic party-barge.
| tauntz wrote:
| Looks like a standard quadcopter. Might be a bigger one from
| DJI perhaps? Matrice 350 or similar
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Based on the apparent size and arrangement of the central
| section, that looks like a DJI Inspire 1 or 2.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Almost no chance these are not US military.
|
| The drones have been appearing very consistently, if there were
| the slightest concern of foreign military drones, then military
| jets would have been scrambled to intercept - there have been no
| such reports.
| binary132 wrote:
| Military jets scrambled to intercept a bunch of random UAVs? Do
| you know how expensive those things are to operate?
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Yes, that is the protocol when aircraft enter restricted
| airspace like next to military bases - which has been
| reported.
|
| Besides training, intercepting aircraft is primarily what
| jets do. In terms of cost, it's a lot less expensive to
| scramble jets than the alternative, that's why that is the
| protocol for a number of situations including things as
| mundane as aircraft losing communications.
|
| Here there has been significant reporting, so it would be a
| national security risk and national embarrassment for the
| Country if the military was unable to demonstrate air
| superiority when our territorial sovereignty is violated by
| drones.
|
| Unless you're familiar with different FAA and NORAD protocols
| than I am, which it doesn't seem like you are, the most
| likely explanation is they are military craft and exercises.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Picture this. You fly a kite in a park near a military
| base. Your kite blows over the fence. It is now an
| unidentified flying object over a military base. Now do you
| as base commander order jets to be scrambled to respond
| what could literally be a scrap of trash or some teenager
| with a dji drone? It is a different situation entirely
| compared to an actual airplane.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| No need to picture a cute hypothetical set of facts that
| are dissimilar to that actual set of facts.
|
| These are serious military protocols not a academic
| exercise in a vacuum.
|
| Unauthorized flying of even dji drones near and over
| military bases is illegal and people get arrested for it.
| In fact a Chinese citizen was just arrested yesterday for
| flying a drone over a Space Force base.
|
| Based on reports and video evidence the drones being
| observed are not common dji drones (certainly not a kite
| blown over the fence), reports are these are 6-10ft and
| don't have any radio frequency. Otherwise they are being
| reported as specifically going to/coming from military
| bases.
|
| And though I don't think it is credible, at least one
| Congressman is publicly stating these are Iranian
| military drones being launched from Iranian submarines.
|
| Just seems to me "scrambling jets" seems like something
| out of a movie to people unfamiliar, but it's an daily
| occurrence.
| abenga wrote:
| Airforces do a lot of ceremonial flyover stuff just to train
| and keep pilots' hours up. I doubt flying to deal with
| drones, even just for training, is a big lift.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I saw a video of some pentagon rep commenting on these
| sightings over military bases. They basically said 'we say we
| don't know because any old joe shmoe can fly a drone suddenly
| next to a military base and have it enter restricted space and
| in that moment no one knows what it is.' Then they went on to
| mention how if they respond with force e.g. shooting down a
| drone like this there is risk of where missed bullets land. And
| if it turns out to be some kids air hogs plane that blew into a
| base then that's a really sorry excuse for using ordinance. So
| they are taking a position that there is no threat and no
| response needed until there is indeed a threatening action. And
| just flying around is not deemed as that.
| VonGuard wrote:
| I'm wondering if these sightings are occurring in Grovers Mill,
| NJ.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I hope Americans are wise enough now to not believe things like
| this are from Iran. Remember there are powerful foreign interests
| in the US who desperately want you to fight Iran on their behalf
| - don't listen to them, your lives are worth more than that.
| binary_slinger wrote:
| I think I'm going to keep my camera with a 600mm lens on me at
| all times.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| 600 mm sharp zoom is expensive glass, kudos sir
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| "a post-Chinese spy-balloon world"
|
| Noticed it because of the typo ("spy-ballon") but realized it's
| also a pretty funny phrase.
|
| Are we living in a spy-balloon world which is no longer Chinese?
|
| Or maybe in a balloon-world, post the Chinese spy?
| ripped_britches wrote:
| Best comment in the whole discussion
| guerrilla wrote:
| I think you're the only person engaging in this with the right
| level of seriousness.
| kcaj wrote:
| Mark my words, this will turn out to be a form of mass hysteria.
| x-_-x wrote:
| I guarantee it's some local police agency that got them donated
| by the military.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Pretty terrible guarantee to make since the Pentagon already
| said it wasn't their drones.
| tzs wrote:
| If they were given to local police by the Pentagon then the
| Pentagon would be correct to say they aren't theirs.
|
| Someone needs to ask the Pentagon if they _used_ to be
| theirs.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's hilarious to watch UFO conspiracy theorists say "I
| believe what the Pentagon has said" and not explode in a puff
| of hypocrisy.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Yeah that's definitely something they said and not a
| strawman you hallucinated in your head.
| ksec wrote:
| I am not normally for regulation but I think Drones needs to be
| regulated.
| nradov wrote:
| Drones already are regulated. Some drone operators don't follow
| the regulations.
| Ziggy_Zaggy wrote:
| Perhaps we should consider the tech GTRI developed to study the
| situation?
|
| Link - https://www.twz.com/air/militarys-recently-deployed-ufo-
| hunt...
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| DoD testing Starlink (wich is their product, from their front
| company SpaceX) with their shiny new drones
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| Downvoter, you are historical illiterate:
|
| https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB509/
|
| Competition is the greatest tool for innovation
|
| And i am omniscient
| garbagewoman wrote:
| Govt agencies claim to have no knowledge of an issue which they
| very much can and would have a very good knowledge of? It's them.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Precisely.
| yobid20 wrote:
| These are defense contractor drones being tested. Not foreign,
| and not military (well, not YET, lol).
| K0balt wrote:
| These are being extensively tested in the area. PteroDynamics
| XP-4 https://pterodynamics.com/
|
| They look like airliners, drones, and helicopters depending on
| when you see them. They are large, noisy, and carry FAA compliant
| lights.
|
| They aren't secret, per se, but the military is more interested
| in understanding the perception of their use than it is in
| sharing exactly what it is they are up to, as usual.
|
| This is a gigantic nothing burger.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Wow, the FBI has already stated they can't figure these drones
| out, but you sure figured it out fast, you need to contact the
| FBI tipline ASAP.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Quick summary after following this for a few days: FBI says
| they're rotary and fixed-wing drones, White House says they
| aren't foreign adversaries, Pentagon says they aren't USA
| military, all 3 insist that there's no indication of a real
| threat despite the drones being bigger and higher tech than
| retail drones.
|
| Politicians are PO'd that something about this doesn't add up:
| How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing whose
| they are? Why isn't anyone bringing them down? Where do they
| land? Is this similar to the Chinese spy balloon?
|
| I've seen a huge number of theories by now, and not one of them
| actually fits.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Why do the theories not fit? And where's the link to the FBI
| statement? I believe they said " _include_ rotary and fixed-
| wing " not exclusively, but this is based on reports received.
| They haven't actually captured one.
|
| _included sightings of both fixed-wing and rotary drones,
| Robert Wheeler, the assistant director of the FBI's Critical
| Incident Response Group, said during a Homeland Security
| subcommittee hearing on security threats posed by drones._
|
| source: https://www.nj.com/news/2024/12/more-than-3k-mystery-
| drone-s...
| j_timberlake wrote:
| No point quoting articles, just watch him say it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTotPeiMjlc&t=6767s
|
| Up to you how you want to interpret his exact words.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Yeah there's a point quoting, people here don't always
| watch videos, but thanks for the link.
|
| Article gets the quote slightly wrong, but semantically
| it's right: _some are described as being slightly larger
| than um um than a commercial uh available drone um fixed
| Wing as well as rotary_
|
| Technically you could say the rotary/fixed-wing is only
| invoked to describe the class of drones compared to which
| these reports are larger, _not_ that the reports "include"
| ("some are described") fixed wing and rotary.
|
| I'm OK with either the weaker (less UFO) or stronger (more
| UFO) interpretations. How about you?
| xattt wrote:
| Back in my day, we called "commercial fixed-wing drones"
| RC model planes.
| j-krieger wrote:
| > How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing
| whose they are
|
| They are - obviously - lying. This screams secrecy to me. All 3
| know that these drones are not a threat. They aren't US
| military because they are a 3 letter agency program. They know
| there's nothing to worry about it, but they won't tell you any
| more details. Which has been the modus operandi for secret
| services for decades, so I'm surprised it's such an issue?
| rjrdi38dbbdb wrote:
| I think what's so surprising is that they would run a
| secretive program in such a conspicuous manner, not that the
| secretive program exists.
| cheschire wrote:
| Can you think of a better way to normalize it? Think about
| the average persons response to online privacy these days
| for a good indicator about how people will feel about drone
| monitoring in a few years if this is normalized.
| fasa99 wrote:
| Exactly. That's what I think it is, government secrecy as
| their standard operating procedure. When unsure, don't say
| anything. After all, disclosing the public includes
| adversaries also knowing.
|
| It seems to me what's happening is a "Streisand Effect"
| where the whole attitude of "go away, nothing to see here"
| is in fact maximizing attention and defeating the purpose
| of hiding this away.
|
| If it were me I'd put a band-aid on a drone, fly it to a
| person, and say, "we are testing military capabilities to
| render first aid to our soldiers" or something similar.
| It's not a lie, it's good optics, adversaries can worry
| about it... then put whatever it is on ice for a while
| until the heat dies down
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| a shining example of a functioning democracy.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| If you wanted to find out whose they are, just follow them
| and see where they land, and who picks them up?
| diggan wrote:
| > just follow them
|
| How exactly do you follow a fixed-wing drone? Some of the
| high-end/industrial drones has pretty impressive ranges.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Well, there's a lot of evidence that humans evolved to be
| persistence hunters, so we just need to continue this
| process and adapt further.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You pay a bunch of money to someone who has a Dash 8 or
| similar common commercial aircraft. These drones probably
| don't have 1000mi range.
|
| And even if you can't follow one all the way to its
| destination you can still take some real good pictures
| with flash and plaster them all over the news and wait
| for someone to say "I pump fuel and sweep floors at
| airport X and a bunch of dickbags with black suburbans
| and bad attitudes have a hanger full of those things".
| almog wrote:
| >These drones probably don't have 1000mi range.
|
| Since you're replying to a question about tracking fixed
| wing it's worth mentioning that their range can be well
| over 1000 miles as some of the Iranian Shahed drones have
| a range of almost 1600 miles.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| That's a 400 lbs, 11 ft by 8 ft UAV powered by a 50 hp
| gasoline piston engine. It's half the size of a Cessna
| 172 and makes a similar noise, observers would for sure
| classify it as an airplane.
| nradov wrote:
| A Dash 8 or other similar commercial aircraft lacks the
| radar necessary to track an aerial target. Most airliners
| have weather radar but it's not really useful for this
| purpose. In much of the airspace around that region a
| Dash 8 would also have to operate under ATC control; the
| pilot can't just fly wherever without getting violated.
| philistine wrote:
| Get your own 1600 miles range black ops drone of your own
| then.
| j2bax wrote:
| With a fixed wing drone of your own of course!
| red_admiral wrote:
| Yeah, unless someone really really big is behind this (or
| it's aliens), then a US military drone should be able to
| track and follow one of the unknown drones for a while.
| nradov wrote:
| Nah. None of the publicly acknowledged US military drones
| carries the type of X-band air search radar that would be
| necessary to reliably track a small aerial target. There
| is some stuff in development with that capability but it
| hasn't been fielded yet, and for safety reasons it
| certainly wouldn't be authorized for flight in controlled
| civilian airspace or over populated areas.
| curt15 wrote:
| Shoot one down and see who comes knocking?
| euroderf wrote:
| Fourth Amendment in action !
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| This could be scoped very tightly to reasonableness with
| an emergency warrant, plenty of probable cause.
|
| Can you elucidate what you meant?
| euroderf wrote:
| Are you suggesting that these drones have warrants for
| every piece of property they overfly ?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Careful who you wish on your door...
| weard_beard wrote:
| This is America. If they want to come knock on my door
| without identifying themselves they'll get worse
| treatment than their drone.
| tuyiown wrote:
| I don't know much about america, but after shooting down
| a secret drone, you really would assume that people
| knocking at your door really is the situation you think
| it is ?
| KumaBear wrote:
| People like this talk a big game but the warrant will be
| written and they will comply. Always the online warriors
| that act tough but always fold.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| All this talk about "2nd amendment is about deposing
| tyranny" and yet they weren't the ones protesting the
| wars in the middle east and the Patriot act, two recent
| and objectively tyrannical acts.
|
| In fact, we know that the gun nuts in the US were broadly
| on the side of SUPPORTING those two things.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| I think you're importing heavy bias into your
| interpretation. 2A types are interested in deposing
| tyranny when its directed against them by their own
| government. Not tyranny anywhere on the face of the
| Earth. If that's true, and I do believe it is, it is not
| at all incompatible with foreign wars, whether one
| believes they're tyrannical or not.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Full transparency: I think the only "Tyranny" that "2A
| types" care about is a law banning guns. They seem to
| love the militarization of the police, police having zero
| accountability ("They do a hard job", so do I but I don't
| get to shoot someone cause I was spooked and then go on
| vacation), and literally vote for Trump, who objectively
| has done more to remove gun rights than any democrat
| since clinton.
|
| An absurd amount of the most aggressive 2A types are
| literally just cops, you know, the actual boot that would
| stand on the neck in any tyranny situation. They'll
| scream and cry about the ATF and then talk with their cop
| buddies while smoking some MJ, in a state without
| recreational cannabis laws.
|
| In short, they are dishonest, whether they are smart
| enough to realize it or not.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I agree.
|
| To be clear, I have a lot of guns, but it's not because I
| have any special love of the US BoR or even a belief that
| they are useful against state actors. Or, even a real
| enjoyment of shooting.
|
| I have guns because my neighbors all have guns and think
| queer/trans/atheist/lefty/etc folks are literally
| demonic. They are explicitly waiting for any suspension
| of regular government in which they can play their
| fantasy of a "purge". I'd much rather be collecting
| pretty dresses, but this is how it is where I live.
|
| I would say that the parent comment is accurate in noting
| 2A loving folks don't want government authority applied
| to -them-, but it's -only- to them and many are living in
| the privileged fantasy that this power will never be
| applied to them and only to their grievances- hence the
| boot licking they do.
|
| I don't think that's dishonesty, I think it is
| delusional. And they generally go from being "normal
| conservatives" to out right fascists just as soon as that
| fantasy weakens even a little.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _2A types are interested in deposing tyranny when its
| directed against them by their own government_
|
| The NRA's complete silence on the murder of Breonna
| Taylor by government agents, as retaliation for Kenneth
| Walker exercising his 2A natural right to self defense
| (at home at night!). I'm unable to find a kind way of
| explaining that away. "Freedom" culture seems to have
| become just as post-reality detached from effective
| values as everything else.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Or they will end up in situation that in most cases will
| end in their death. Which seems so obvious that they must
| be suicidal. Law enforcement can bring far more force to
| bear than a single person can defend against.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| HN has so much boot in its mouth. Authority says jump and
| you guys ask how high.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not just that, there are plenty of documented instances
| of people being shot dead for being _suspected_ of
| holding a gun. Do people really think they can just shoot
| a cop, close their front door, and go back to living
| their life?
| afthonos wrote:
| I like the idea that the government will show up without
| identifying themselves just so people can live out their
| fantasy of shooting someone without getting into trouble.
|
| They will absolutely identify themselves. The reason you
| should be worried is the endless, expensive process
| you'll be subjected to after they knock on your door.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Apparently they didn't identify themselves to Breonna
| Taylor. It's probably happened more than once.
| jf22 wrote:
| What will you do?
|
| Are you going to shoot people for knocking on your door?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Ha, with all this publicity someone will likely take up the
| challenge and possibly succeed. The hunting instinct in
| some is just too strong.
|
| One wonders how they'd keep tracking it down a secret
| especially if the perpetrator was smart and gave them a
| decent run for their money.
| duxup wrote:
| This seems like it would be a difficult task to accomplish.
| hiatus wrote:
| If history is any indication it will be local police
| responding to shots fired. Many municipalities in NJ do not
| allow the discharge of a firearm within town limits. Morris
| Township has such a law in their code as well.
| zelon88 wrote:
| I wonder where the threshold is for claiming self defense
| against a drone? Does the Castle Doctrine apply to non-
| human assailants?
| Loughla wrote:
| More like - does the castle doctrine apply to defending
| yourself against someone not actually trying to enter
| your castle.
|
| It would be like shooting someone for taking pictures of
| your house from the street.
|
| I'm relatively certain law enforcement would have
| opinions about that.
| zelon88 wrote:
| I don't think you understand. It sounds like you think
| I'm talking about defending youself against a human. I am
| not.
|
| If a drone is trying to gain access to your home, do you
| have the right to defend against it using deadly force?
| Meaning; Force that _would_ be deadly to a human
| attacker.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Strictly speaking, my understanding of the federal law
| and regulation is that there is no exception to the crime
| of shooting at an operating aircraft.
|
| That said, the FAA's jurisdiction ends with the National
| Airspace, which physically ends the moment it crosses
| into a structure.
| shagie wrote:
| The answer would be the FAA for sabotage of an aircraft and
| the local sheriff for unlawful discharge of a firearm
| within town limits.
|
| The FAA may have someone who knows, but the interesting
| people wouldn't be the ones to show up when there's no need
| for them to do so.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| These are the least-bad theories, but if an agency is
| desperate enough to deploy the drones night after night even
| after being noticed, then that's extremely foreboding. What
| would drive them to do that, a dirty bomb that needs to be
| found with drone sensors?
|
| Personally I'd rather have evidence of this before dwelling
| on all the possible tragedies here.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I guess the CIA/NSA are technically not "military"?
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Perhaps Dr. Evil has shown up, requested 1 million dollars, or
| otherwise his drones will attack innocent civilians?
| otikik wrote:
| > How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing
| whose they are?
|
| Because they are theirs, obviously. They just won't say it.
| ptero wrote:
| Neither FBI nor Pentagon have ability to fly drones in the US
| airspace at will. On the contrary, they, like everyone else,
| have to get FAA approvals and those always leak. And usually
| in fact published by the FAA who needs to warn pilots of
| potential threats -- one could go to the official FAA website
| and search those NOTAMs.
|
| Ignoring FAA by the FBI or the military just doesn't happen,
| the price to pay is WAY too high.
|
| NSA or spooks could theoretically be behind this, but why do
| it where it annoys people and attracts attention and not in
| some desert or foreign place? Something doesn't add up.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Neither FBI nor Pentagon have ability to fly drones in
| the US airspace at will.
|
| And neither of those agencies ever did anything they're not
| "able" to do... regularly...
| tomrod wrote:
| Attracting attention in one direction can be misdirection.
| I have no idea if that is the case here, simply felt like
| it's an avenue not considered.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| While completely true, it doesn't address the fact that
| CIA, NSA, FBI and other gov agencies have used their
| control or secret ownership of 'private' companies to break
| federal regulations in the past. They _could_ be using some
| sort of cutout to confuse the ownership/control to get
| around regulations.
| nradov wrote:
| The FBI, NSA, and all other civilian agencies must follow
| FAA regulations but legally speaking the military doesn't.
| The military operates aircraft in domestic airspace under a
| memorandum of understanding with the FAA which basically
| states that they'll follow the regulations. This makes
| things easier for everyone and prevents mishaps. But if the
| military chooses to violate that agreement then there
| aren't really any enforceable legal consequences.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| Isn't airspace around all military installations exempted
| from this? How would you train your people to use your
| drones otherwise?
|
| What's more, the feds are clearly signalling that these are
| ours. As others point out, you can't say its not an
| adversaries asset unless you know whose it is. Which would
| suggest either they are flying these illegally, they have
| some kind of exemption to fly in civilian air space, or
| they are being flown in military air space that is
| observable from non-military locations.
| briandear wrote:
| There is a NOTAM for these.
| otikik wrote:
| I can imagine a parallel chanel where FAA is informed but
| NOTAMS are not issued, or issued selectively.
| darkarmani wrote:
| They don't need approval for under 400 FT AGL in class G
| airspace.
|
| The idiots reporting on it have NO idea how high these
| drones are. And the military has a bunch of carved airspace
| in various places. I think last time i looked (4 weeks
| ago), there was some reserved airspace off Cape Hatteras
| for the US Marines.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| To add to your last point, looking at maps of drone
| sightings in the area, the biggest hotspots are in
| reserved airspace over military assets, including ones
| that store and load nukes on ships.
|
| If they were truly a threat, or some random person's
| drones, they would have been taken care of nearly
| instantly.
|
| I have personally seen the response of someone flying
| their drone in that airspace. They do not hesitate to
| send out goons with guns strapped over their shoulders
| and megaphones to make it clear that what you're doing is
| very much not okay.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| Why don't they just say it then? Who cares?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Same reason the feds didn't say anything about the F-117 in
| the 80s when hundreds of people in nevada were mistaking it
| for a UFO: They have no interest in telling the world about
| the exact nature of their ISR assets.
|
| The US DoD has recognized a lack of capacity and capability
| in our native drone programs when examined in context of
| the Ukraine war. They are spending plenty of money to shore
| of that lack, and not all of the programs and projects they
| are funding are through Anduril and have literal fan
| groups.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm reminded of https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-...
|
| No "official" conclusion, but the common sense position seems
| to be that most or all of the reported incidents were
| nothingburger.
| gregw2 wrote:
| "How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing
| whose they are?"
|
| Easy. They didn't say they don't know whose they are. They
| could belong to a private contractor who is paid by the
| military but the military doesn't own the drones nor company
| (plausible deniability /outsourcing.) Or they could be a
| friendly country (e.g. UK) red-teaming the US with our consent.
|
| I've never heard anyone apply the Five Eyes horse trading to
| inter-country UFO-related dynamics of operation but its fairly
| conceivable and has a bit of precedent, right?
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| yea this is the sad shitty answer - it's just a private
| company w/ a government contract gathering data on us
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > gathering data on us
|
| A substantial leap. Given that these are flying near
| military installations, wouldn't the most plausible
| explanation be that these are test flights? What data would
| be gathered from low altitude that could not be aggregated
| from the myriad other sensors in our environments? Or from
| satellites, etc.?
|
| Seems like the U.S. military has taken to heart that in any
| near future conflicts, forces of any branch will need to be
| heavily augmented by drones for reconnaissance, offense,
| and defense. So, if that's true, I would expect any
| military site at which personnel are trained to be flying
| drones constantly. And it serves them no benefit to let
| everyone know what they're doing. If the U.S. public is
| "read in", so are all potential adversaries.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| "They didn't say they don't know whose they are."
|
| The FBI explicitly said they didn't 2 days ago. There's a
| possibility the FBI is being purposefully left in the dark by
| other feds, or lying under oath at risk of prison time for
| perjury, but without any evidence that's just one more of
| MANY conspiracy theories here.
| philistine wrote:
| In the three-letter agency soup, it's very possible another
| agency called them and said: _you guys don 't know who
| these are, and you will never know. But we know._
| jyounker wrote:
| It's easy to say they're probably no threat. The number of ways
| for something to be a threat is much smaller than the number of
| ways of something being a not a threat, therefore the
| probability of them being a threat is very low.
|
| It's always possible to make a just-so story about them being a
| threat, and those are the kind of stories that catch people's
| attention. The odds are they belong to a mapping company, or a
| drone construction company, or a university or something else
| completely innocuous.
|
| Why don't we know? Well because it's a big world, and people
| dealing with actual problems have more important shit to deal
| with.
| hersko wrote:
| What? There are many recreational (small) drone rules with
| the FAA because they can harm people. A 6 foot drone falling
| hundreds of feet on someone is obviously a threat.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 1) You don't need a single theory to fit all the evidence --
| some sightings might be unrelated to others.
|
| 2) You don't need a theory to fit all the evidence since,
| undoubtedly, not all the evidence is accurate. A theory that
| fit _most_ of the evidence is adequate.
|
| 3) We all know people and even photos lie. That gives us quite
| a bit of leeway to be dismissive of sightings and official
| responses as well.
| duxup wrote:
| It doesn't strike me as odd that politicians would be out of
| the loop at times, especially locals.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The most likely theory I have seen is regarding a craft from
| Pivotal Aero [1]. I'm not sure what the holes in that theory
| are.
|
| (When some John Bircher shoots one down though I suppose we'll
| have our answer, ha-ha, not-ha-ha.)
|
| [1] https://pivotal.aero
| rmah wrote:
| The Chinese "spy balloon" that it turned out wasn't a spy
| balloon (according to the pentagon)?
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66062562
| pc86 wrote:
| Your assertion is not supported by your source:
|
| > Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on
| Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had
| intelligence collection capabilities". ... He said the
| efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering
| "contributed" to the balloon's failure to gather sensitive
| information.
|
| So it was a spy balloon but it was off, or it was a spy
| balloon and on and we outsmarted it, or it was a spy balloon
| and it malfunctioned at least in part.
|
| Nothing in that source suggests that it was not a spy
| balloon.
| left-struck wrote:
| Maybe the article had a different headline and they didn't
| read the actual article? I'm baffled how some could read
| that incredibly short article and come away with any
| assertion about what the pentagon thinks about the balloon
| other than that it can collect "intelligence data"
| left-struck wrote:
| From the article you just linked
|
| 'Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on
| Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had
| intelligence collection capabilities". But "it has been our
| assessment now that it did not collect while it was
| transiting the United States or over flying the United
| States".'
|
| When did the pentagon confirm it was not a spy balloon? The
| article is very short and the meaning is clear, it doesn't
| say anything about whether the pentagon thinks it's a spy
| balloon.
| axegon_ wrote:
| I think the one thing no one really mentions is the fact that
| drones are extremely easy to build in the comfort of your
| living room. If you have a 3d printer, some spare parts laying
| around and a cheap electronics store around the corner(check,
| check and check in my case), you can build a drone for less
| than 300 bucks which is far less than the retail ones -
| completely autonomous, no radio link needed, takes off, does
| what it does and lands on it's own with no human intervention.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| We all have that same cheap electronics store, it's called
| AliExpress.
| axegon_ wrote:
| Delivery success rate is pretty much a random number
| generator here. Sometimes stuff arrives on time, sometimes
| it shows up 6 months late, sometimes never. For me it's
| either the physical store, amazon or mouser.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Pentagon says they aren't USA military
|
| But they apparently didn't fly on Thanksgiving, which is an
| interesting coincidence if true.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| If you are US military, your probably won't be flying on
| Thanksgiving...
|
| If you are a spy trying to look at the activity or capture
| changes at a site, you probably aren't going to be flying on
| Thanksgiving since no work was done...
| andrewla wrote:
| > FBI says they're rotary and fixed-wing drones, White House
| says they aren't foreign adversaries, Pentagon says they aren't
| USA military
|
| Do you have sources for these? Not challenging the assertions,
| but all I see in the news articles is vague un-attributed
| paraphrasing of statements. For example you say that the "FBI
| says they're rotary and fixed-wing drones"; the latest I saw
| from the FBI was what this article said; that they had lots of
| reports of sightings but no further information.
|
| The pictures I've seen all look like blurry pictures of
| helicopters; also occasionally blurry "orbs". Does nobody have
| access to anything better than this? Is this even a real thing?
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Skip the articles, go to the source:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ETJ2d0o3Zk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MPJydlIpfs
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTotPeiMjlc
|
| (CSPAN links would be better, but I've already spent way too
| much time on this.)
|
| Would have put sources in if I'd realized I'd get this many
| views. I also might have mixed up what the Pentagon says vs
| the Press Secretary, but since they both answer to Joe, it
| shouldn't matter much.
| Aloisius wrote:
| So the FBI didn't actually say they were drones.
|
| The FBI said public reports and eyewitnesses said they're
| drones.
| noworld wrote:
| Someone just needs to shoot one down.
| pelorat wrote:
| Because they have navigation and avoidance lights on, as
| required by the FAA. This is dumb hysteria.
| kulshan wrote:
| AP reported yesterday they are often running without any
| lights at all.
| briandear wrote:
| "The aren't military."
|
| Yet there are dozens of other agencies that work with the
| Pentagon that aren't military either.
|
| These are likely part of an SCI program -- either a real op or
| a training op. Very few people would know what's going on, so
| most of the agencies commenting likely are being completely
| honest based on their own knowledge.
|
| This is government.
|
| FAA NOTAM FDC 4/1797 Restricts the airspace until 20 December.
|
| If they were truly "unknown" then why would the NOTAM
| arbitrarily end on 20 Dec? If they were unknown, they'd have
| the NOTAM be indefinite until the situation were resolved.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Interesting NOTAM, thanks.
|
| This is the government clearly stating they can intercept
| unknown drones in the area.
|
| > UAS OPR WHO DO NOT COMPLY WITH APPLICABLE AIRSPACE
| RESTRICTIONS ARE WARNED THAT PURSUANT TO 10 U.S.C.SECTION
| 130I AND 6 U.S.C.SECTION 124N, THE DEPARTMENT OF
| DEFENSE(DOD), THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY(DHS) OR THE
| DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE(DOJ) MAY TAKE SECURITY ACTION THAT
| RESULTS IN THE INTERFERENCE, DISRUPTION, SEIZURE, DAMAGING,
| OR DESTRUCTION OF UNMANNED ACFT DEEMED TO POSE A CREDIBLE
| SAFETY OR SECURITY THREAT TO PROTECTED PERSONNEL, FAC, OR
| ASSETS.
| pc86 wrote:
| Did the WH say "these are not foreign adversaries' drones" or
| did they give some mealy-mouthed nonsense like "there is no
| evidence that ..." or "we have no reason to believe that ..."?
| Because those are two very different things.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| Pentagon: "Our initial assessment here is that these are not
| drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or
| adversary."
|
| They can potentially claim "our initial assessment was wrong"
| later, but IMO they could have done that anyway regardless of
| their word choice here.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> FBI says they 're rotary and fixed-wing drones_
|
| The FBI simply repeated _what public reports and eyewitness
| have said_ - a rather massive difference.
| narrator wrote:
| For those who want to know the most consistent UFOlogy angle
| that wasn't invented last week: Over on 4chan there was an
| alleged leaker and follow ups back in 2023 who says that
| there's an underwater ET mothership off the east coast that
| produces 3-d printed made to order small anti-gravity drones
| that launch and do various tasks to monitor us. Anything that
| approaches the underwater mothership is destroyed before they
| even know they're under attack. They treat us like zoo animals,
| have been here for at least 100 years, and mostly ignore us
| except when we get trigger happy with nuclear weapons[1]. This
| is largely consistent with "The Crowded Galaxy" resolution to
| the Fermi Paradox[2].
|
| From a UFOlogy angle, America trying to start WWIII with Russia
| might have something to do with all this uptick in drone
| activity since there was a huge amount back in the 40s and 50s
| when we were also at the brink with the USSR.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/4chan-whistleblower-NXjWQaN
|
| [2] https://botsfordism.substack.com/p/the-crowded-galaxy
| jandrese wrote:
| > Anything that approaches the underwater mothership is
| destroyed before they even know they're under attack.
|
| Let me guess, it is parked in the "Bermuda Triangle".
|
| It's easy to make theories when you are unburdened by
| evidence.
| boesboes wrote:
| Yup, but it only attacks military targets that are threat.
| Otherwise it just hides deeper.
|
| Looking forward to a spin off of ancient aliens on this
| haha Evidence smevidence! Aliens!
| narrator wrote:
| There used to be no evidence at all, but now you have David
| Grusch who was given explicit authorization to talk to
| people in unacknowledged special access programs about UAPs
| and he said under oath before congress that yes, there are
| crashed ET craft with biologics in them that have been
| recovered going back to the 1930s.
|
| https://x.com/cspan/status/1684217673716989958
| javajosh wrote:
| Testimony is not evidence, and using the passive voice
| ("given explicit authorization", by whom? why does this
| matter?) is an explicit argument from authority. Physical
| evidence or nothing. There are no shortage of credulous
| people in the world happy to bask in the glow of
| attention.
|
| Consider the counter-factual. If indeed there are aliens
| here, and have been here for decades, why not centuries?
| Why haven't previous generations found them, and not
| known their true origin? How curious that these artifacts
| only started appearing in the space age, when if they had
| appeared previously they would have been attributed to a
| religious origin (and not only not suppressed, but shared
| widely as evidence for God.)
|
| Note: if aliens are here then FTL travel is not only
| possible but common, and easy, and this would undermine a
| great deal of verified physics. To get around _this_ you
| 'd need a conspiracy across all physics research (a la
| the SF novel "The Three Body Problem"). I'd also add that
| if going to other planets was like sailing a ship, then
| we could expect (lazy, sloppy) tourists to come around
| who don't "toe the line" when it comes to staying hidden.
|
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and
| without it all such claims can be safely ignored (and
| indeed, can and should negatively impact the people
| making them).
| narrator wrote:
| Grusch was given access specifically by an act of the U.S
| Congress to investigate UAPs. Watch the CSPAN link of the
| congressional hearing I provided for the full details.
|
| Read the link to "The Crowded Galaxy" theory for what's
| probably going on based on that testimony. It answers all
| your questions. There are probably millions of planets
| with life in the galaxy. We're not remarkable except with
| how hyper-violent and invasive our species is, which is
| why they're keeping an eye on us. We evolved here so we
| have the right to live here, but we don't have any rights
| to live anywhere else in the galaxy. Transforming is
| probably a ghastly notion to them.
| krapp wrote:
| The government also studied remote viewing, psychic
| powers, and tried to control people's minds with LSD. The
| government has been investigating UFOs since Project
| Grudge back in the 1940s. None of that is evidence that
| remote viewing, psychic powers, mind control or UFOs are
| actually real.
|
| David Grusch repeating second and thirdhand claims about
| alien conspiracies is not evidence that those claims are
| real, nor is investigating UAPs evidence of the existence
| of alien spacecraft. None of this is actually evidence if
| anything, it's literally the same _non-evidence_ the UFO
| community has always believed in as a matter of faith,
| and insisted that everyone else take as proven, self-
| evident fact.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's impossible to discover novel phenomenon if you are
| unwilling to start without evidence. Meanwhile, you
| yourself _just_ made a meta-theory, without any burden
| whatsoever.
| darkarmani wrote:
| > despite the drones being bigger and higher tech than retail
| drones.
|
| How does anyone know how big these are? I've heard reports like
| this:
|
| 1. They looks larger than normal drones. 2. The look like they
| are operating at a height greater than 400 ft AGL.
|
| How do they know the height? If they don't know the height,
| they certainly don't know the size. If it looks large, it isn't
| very high.
|
| If it is large and high, I would think they would get some
| radar contacts.
|
| If these are heavier than 55 pounds, I think we'd see the FAA
| jumping all over it. I also don't see why any LE would announce
| that they are actively figuring it out as they'd want to keep
| the element of surprise and track the drone back to the
| operators.
|
| > Why isn't anyone bringing them down?
|
| Only federal authorities can do anything to aircraft. This is
| in the realm of the FAA.
|
| > How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing
| whose they are?
|
| What kind of threat are we worried about here that wasn't
| around yesterday (last year)?
|
| > White House says they aren't foreign adversaries I don't
| think the military is going to reveal its methods and
| capabilities.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Literally an UFO mystery, but with every chance of being real
| this time.
| janalsncm wrote:
| One question I have but which may be impossible to answer is
| whether there is some level of confirmation bias here. Frankly
| every drone sighting is mysterious to me. I don't know whose it
| is.
|
| So yes, they are drones but maybe this is only one standard
| deviation from normal? Many non-military people own drones.
| red_admiral wrote:
| If he weren't Russian, we could hire "spear guy" to take some
| drones down. This one: https://imgur.com/gallery/runestone-
| showing-drone-incident-1... (context:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/y4ih8z/viking_throw...)
| lerp-io wrote:
| maybe its just plasma
| https://www.scirp.org/pdf/jmp_2024022816363998.pdf
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| The drones keep transmitting the code 01000111 01010100 01001100.
| What can it mean??
| j0057 wrote:
| Why would anyone put lights on a drone if it was meant to be kept
| secret?
| ct0 wrote:
| Common, "false flag" or deception tactic in military
| simulation. Leaving the lights on would be a good
| deception/psyop tactic. If these are adversaries, they are sure
| learning the rate of response by military forces.
| squarefoot wrote:
| The ones shown in video all emit light. I'm sure if I had
| something nefarious in mind that wasn't spreading fear among
| passers by, I'd turn the damn drone lights off. They behave like
| their owners want them to be seen.
|
| It's quite possible their only task is to fly around and make
| sure people see them, as a form of less violent terrorism that
| rather counts on news channels and social media to spread fear.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| So this is out there but the late John Keel who investigated
| UFO's and the paranormal during the 20th century believed that
| these phenomena aren't even physically there.
|
| It's some kind of trick that an unknown entity plays on people.
| Like Bigfoot, lochness monster etc. It's possible the drones
| don't physically exist. Yet we can see and hear them.
|
| The government might know this. Hence lack of response
| tzs wrote:
| Some people report erratic motion of the objects which you
| wouldn't expect from a normal plane or helicopter.
|
| If the lights on the things are blinking, I have a possible
| explanation for the erratic motion.
|
| I've found that if I'm in a dark place with a green LED that is
| blinking and there is not enough light to see anything but the
| LED then the LED appears to jump around erratically.
|
| I'll see it come on and go off and I'm _sure_ that I am
| continuing to stare at the now off LED but when it comes on it is
| somewhere else. If I 'm about 40 cm from the LED it can appear to
| have jumped up to maybe 15-20 cm.
|
| It can be quite disconcerting if there is a series of apparent
| jumps in the same direction, because each time I have to move my
| eyes/head in the same direction to recenter the LED, and after 4
| or 5 jumps it feels like I should be turned significantly but I
| can tell that I'm actually still looking mostly straight ahead.
|
| If I arrange for their to be some faint light in the closet so
| that I can see even hints of the other things in there when the
| LED is off then I can actually keep staring at the LED's
| position.
|
| I believe this phenomenon is due to saccades [1]. Our eyes
| normally jump around randomly when we are looking at things. We
| can override that and force ourselves to stare at a point. My
| guess is that we need some reference in the field of view to
| focus our attention on to be able to do an override.
|
| I'd guess that this same effect could happen with a blinking
| object in a dark sky.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
| rozab wrote:
| People would do well to keep in mind the episode of drone
| hysteria which happened at Gatwick airport in 2018. Hundreds of
| sightings were reported over a period of several days, shutting
| down the airport completely.
|
| It was a massive media event, camera crews from every outlet were
| at the airport, but none ever photographed a drone. None of the
| radar systems at the airport, nor the military anti-drone systems
| sent later on, ever picked up anything.
|
| In this article, a professional drone photographer describes
| mistaking a helicopter for a drone:
|
| > But when he opened up the image on his computer, ready to send
| to his editors, he realised he'd made a mistake. The image did
| not show a drone. It was a helicopter hovering 10 miles away;
| between the darkness and the distance, his eyes had played a
| trick on him. "If I'm making a mistake - and I fly drones two or
| three times a week - then God help us, because others will have
| no idea," he said. He called police to retract his reported
| sighting.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-...
| left-struck wrote:
| >Professional Drone photographer
|
| Please tell me that's someone who takes photos using drones not
| photos of drones - for a living
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| Some people have the most bizarre hobbies. From photographing
| bigfoot to ufo's or planespotters. I dont intend to
| understand all of them but photographing drones might be one
| of the more moral ones in this century. Just imagine drones
| filming your living room, or military installations like
| feared in the article. Having someone record such incidents
| is appreciated.
| left-struck wrote:
| Oh yeah I totally get having a niche hobby. I've personally
| considered starting a collection of photos of modified 90s
| Japanese cars. I take photos all the time of my cat with a
| "pro" camera but that doesn't make me a professional cat
| photographer. Now if I were making money from it on the
| other hand...
|
| I would be amazed if there's enough of a demand for drone
| photos to support someone
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Probably. At least, I know that job definitely exists.
| ninininino wrote:
| Have you been following this news story at all? There are
| probably hundreds of video clips on social media depicting the
| same craft. So I'm not sure what the relevancy is of your
| story.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9rrkYGAUU&list=RDNSOT9rrkY...
|
| 3 minutes and 7 seconds in this video is a good example of what
| these typically appear as.
|
| But yes it's most likely a US military drone exercise or active
| operation (have seen conjecture about a search for something,
| testing drone capabilities in a noisy RF environment.
| jerf wrote:
| The military theory doesn't fit to me on the grounds that at
| this point they should be just admitting it. They're calling
| more attention to the drones than they would if they would
| just say "yup, those are ours". You don't hide things by
| parading them around in front of people. They've got all
| sorts of places to secretly fly things and all the permits
| they need to create whatever RF environment they want in the
| process.
|
| The military has had all sorts of secret aircraft over the
| years and they never test them by loitering around civilian
| areas for weeks at a time making damned sure thousands of
| people can get photographs and turn it into a national story.
| There's plenty of things like photos of the stealth aircraft
| that people accidentally caught and didn't realize what they
| were until years later when the relevant aircraft become
| public knowledge, but those were generally obtained despite
| the precautions taken, not because they were cruising around
| in major cities in broad daylight.
|
| The fact that this is still one of the _best_ theories I 've
| got despite everything I just said is a sign of how weird
| this situation is.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The next question after "yup those are ours" is "then why
| are they there", and they might not wish to answer that
| one.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| "Training exercise" case closed if they wanted to end it
| right there.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| That wouldn't close the case for most people. Not that
| leaving it a mystery like they're doing right now is any
| better.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| With all due respect, this is yet another instance of
| Hacker News confidently stating very wrong things. My wife
| ran the operational testing program for a classified Naval
| aircraft capability for nearly a decade. They flew unmarked
| planes out of a commercial airport. People photographed
| them and asked questions all the time. Nobody ever answered
| them. Neither confirm nor deny is standard practice. If you
| have something like the U2 flying at 50,000 feet, by all
| means, hide it. Fly out of Area 51 or whatever. But if
| you're just modifying standard aircraft and it flies low
| enough that people are going to see it anyway, the best you
| can do is keep it out of anyone's hands to physically
| examine, but you can't keep people from seeing it.
|
| She used to show me speculation just like this on hobbyist
| observer web forums. People speculating the planes belonged
| to the CIA, were running cocaine shipments, all kinds of
| crazy shit. Nobody for whatever reason ever guessed the
| obvious and only true statement. It was just basic military
| aircraft testing out new surveillance tech that wasn't
| ready to field yet. Not "surveillance state monitor the
| public" shit that Hacker News thinks we're doing, either.
| Just cranky weird shit like hiring a bunch of people in
| west Texas to ride around on camels and horses and seeing
| if you can tell the difference, because it's a lot easier
| to do that first over territory you control before you try
| to do it in Iraq.
| jerf wrote:
| "civilian areas for weeks at a time making damned sure
| thousands of people can get photographs and turn it into
| _a national story_ " was not an extraneous part of my
| quote. This is not just "not answering questions", this
| is rubbing it everyone's face, this is running around in
| the airport shrieking about their secret airplanes and
| making sure everyone notices them and then telling
| everyone "oh, but no, those aren't ours what on Earth
| could they possibly be??!?". This is not how they do
| things, which your post reinforces, not contradicts. Tell
| me when anything your wife did ended up on the national
| news for days at a time like this.
| freejazz wrote:
| > was not an extraneous part of my quote
|
| It's just more of the same.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I don't do anything military or classified or anything,
| just work for a big tech company. And my employer's
| standard policy for anything that leaks through public
| testing is "say nothing, and if they're really
| persistent, issue a one-sentence statement that says
| nothing". Confidential stuff I do ends up in the national
| news all the time, but it turns out that if you're really
| boring and don't engage in a conversation, people forget
| about you next week.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _The military theory doesn 't fit to me on the grounds
| that at this point they should be just admitting it._
|
| They aren't going to confirm or deny any classified
| programs that they probably spent billions of dollars on
| just because the public is spooked.
|
| See also: Mirage Men (2013). The government spent countless
| hours and millions of dollars to convince _one_ man who saw
| classified aircraft that what he saw was actually aliens.
| They even set up a fake alien crash site for him to
| investigate in order to throw him off.
| 404mm wrote:
| After seeing that news clip, my only question is "why do they
| care?". I'm not saying nobody should care but why do we have
| citizens on the hunt for drones. From the look of it, the
| drones don't seem to be invading citizens privacy, nor does
| it put them in danger. It's pretty clear they don't even know
| where exactly the drones operate, which is understandable
| given the conditions. And why does the mayor care? Cities can
| impose certain restrictions on drone operations but they
| cannot just ban drones. They don't own the airspace.
|
| This is up to FAA/FBI/DHS to investigate, if they have
| reasonable belief laws are being violated or safety is being
| threatened. Local law enforcement or state agencies can
| investigate as well but from a different angle (privacy
| violations, local ordinances, noise complaints,
| trespassing...).
| anarchy79 wrote:
| This is too funny, someone's having a laff!
| anarchy79 wrote:
| Aaahahah! The guys who are doing this are absolutely shitting
| themselves laughing right now, sending the whole nation into
| UFO panic and getting it on national news and talked about at
| the highest levels of government for a couple hundred bucks.
| No drones necessary!
|
| It's fucking genius, and just like magic tricks, it's so
| simple that everyone overlooks it and jumps straight to "MUST
| be actual magic/Aliens/secret government program/evil
| communists!", and for the same reason- people want to get
| tricked, mesmerized, shocked, see something magical and
| special, to the point that they become absolutely blind to
| the most mundane explanations, and that's precisely why it
| works so well!
|
| Not going to ruin it for them either, if you figure it out
| you figure it out and then you know, it's pointless telling
| people anyway because they will just come up with random
| nonsense to dismiss it because 1) they want to believe so
| hard, 2) they won't admit they were so easily tricked.
|
| Sorry for being an ass, I'm just finding this situation
| absolutely hilarious!
| Aloisius wrote:
| I don't understand. That is clearly just a plane at 3 minutes
| 7 seconds.
| eagerpace wrote:
| Every clip in that video looks like an aircraft to me.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| the military isn't responsible for domestic
| security/surveillance.
| jerf wrote:
| The real story here is the apparent... and I use this term
| very, very deliberately... fecklessness of all the relevant
| authorities. Apparently... again, a deliberate choice... nobody
| has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has
| the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability, or
| _something_ like that. I 'm not sure what the problem is,
| exactly, and that is in some sense now the dominant problem.
| How can there be no clue by now?
|
| Your sort of post is relevant in the first few days of the
| story. But if this was the case, with all this attention on it,
| it should already have been determined. But authorities aren't
| even floating this as a theory. Basically all they're doing is
| shooting down (pun somewhat intended) every theory.
|
| That there is this much confusion, days later, is itself now
| the most important aspect of the story.
|
| And we're getting up to where there are international
| consequences to this sort of issue, too. If we can't figure out
| what these drones are in a week, how can we be trusted to
| defend Taiwan or other allies in a world where "drone swarm" is
| slowly but quite steadily moving its way up to the #1 most
| likely attack vector? At some point it stops mattering if maybe
| it is just helicopters miles away being misidentified, at some
| point that becomes even worse in some ways than other answers,
| as it gets hard to claim we're going to be totally awesome at
| defending you against drone swarms if we can't even figure out
| in less than two weeks whether or not there are drones in our
| own airspace.
|
| I don't know what's going on and am not pushing any particular
| theory. I've got a lot of things in my probability matrix but
| none of them particularly make any sense at all, which means
| I'm missing something critical. (Which is hardly a surprise.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| > nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or
| nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical
| capability
|
| Well .. SNAFU? This is basically what I'd expect. In these
| kind of cases there's a steady stream of crank reports from
| the public which are 100% false positives. The authorities
| will have a process for routing all the UFO reports to
| someone who sends out form letters and otherwise ignores
| them. The _actual_ airspace protection is done by radar and
| whatever the US calls "QRA".
|
| There's no suggestion or evidence of any damage, so this
| ranks as a much lower threat than all sorts of other things
| like celebrity CEO assassins.
|
| In order of decreasing likeliness:
|
| - nothing there
|
| - just regular commercial aircraft
|
| - weird aircraft, but classified, hence the blank response
| from authorities
|
| - eccentric hobbyist or intentional faker
|
| - aliens
|
| - foreign drones
| lupusreal wrote:
| Foreign drones must be above aliens (but no higher I
| think.) Foreign drones are known to exist, while aliens are
| just speculative science fiction.
| voxic11 wrote:
| I assume it was just a joke since the one thing the
| authorities have been willing to say is that they are
| definitely not foreign drones.
| jerf wrote:
| SNAFU is high on my list too, though generally I'd expect
| _someone_ to have jumped in front of this by now. (That may
| be happening; see the responses from Congress today, which
| are the sort of thing that would look like.) Again, part of
| my analysis is the length of time this has been occurring;
| theories I had in the first couple of days generally
| involved the problem being only a couple of days old. The
| longer the mystery persists, the more we have to reconsider
| such theories.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> fecklessness of all the relevant authorities. [...] nobody
| has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody
| has the motivation_
|
| Some would see that as an admirable example of a small
| government not overstepping its bounds.
|
| The local sheriff doesn't have the authority to shoot down
| aircraft? And doesn't exceed their authority by shooting them
| anyway? Good job local sheriff.
|
| The FAA has a handful of drone regulation folks? Nowhere near
| enough for a 24/7 national quick response drone tracking
| force? Very restrained and cost-conscious, good job FAA.
|
| Congress hasn't authorised the military to spend taxpayer
| money on a national anti-drone-swarm defence system, and
| nobody's spent taxpayer money without authorisation?
| Sensible, we don't need bureaucrats funding their pet
| projects on the taxpayer's dime.
| teksimian wrote:
| > Some would see that as an admirable example of a small
| government not overstepping its bounds.
|
| some would see it as a government in paralysis through
| bloat and bureaucracy with accountability not being clearly
| assigned to anyone. This is more likely the case now.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| Ah yes, but who is responsible for delegating authority
| and assigning accountability? Certainly can't trust the
| government to such tasks. They might try and use
| bureaucracy.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Question: how do you think the US government post-9/11 would
| respond if they actually didn't know who belonged to these
| drones and they were less than an hour from Washington DC
| (given a flight speed of 200mph https://en.defence-
| ua.com/weapon_and_tech/325_kmh_while_ukra...)? Would they
| pussyfoot around for a week, then blow smoke up our asses
| about it or would they immediately eliminate the threat and
| _then_ blow smoke up our asses about it? I think that someone
| somewhere knows what 's happening and won't tell us but has
| enough authority to stand down an armed response, which to me
| sounds like DHS or DoD.
| venatiodecorus wrote:
| yeah they shot down a friggin weather balloon with a JET,
| but nothing to worry about with these? they definitely know
| what they are and they're fine with it. field testing new
| drone based surveillance systems?
| nradov wrote:
| The type of drones that are small and cheap enough to make a
| "swarm" lack the range to cross the Taiwan Strait. They would
| have to be launched from a ship or larger aircraft, which are
| vulnerable to existing defenses. Lessons from land conflicts
| in Eastern Europe have very limited relevance to naval
| conflicts in the Indo-Pacific.
| tigerBL00D wrote:
| I would not write this.off as hysteria. It's important to
| consider motivation of potential actors. Every advanced rocket
| guidance system uses cameras to zero in on its targets during
| the final approach. You can't rely on GPS at that point. To do
| a good job you need to know what your target looks like and
| high resolution drone imagery helps a lot.
| exitb wrote:
| Why put lights on the drones? Why not map during the day?
| pc86 wrote:
| Could be multi-phase testing? Easily-acquired lighted
| drones in one phase, dark drones in a future phase?
| theodric wrote:
| My theory was that _assuming these are_ some kind of
| adversary drone, they seem to have read and understood the
| law and are making some effort to remain within its bounds
| so that 4th Amendment and other relevant protections apply
| to them. That means operating at the legally-allowed
| altitude, running navigation lights, etc...but then somehow
| deciding not to run the required ADS-B ID that would, in
| theory, give away who they are and allow their comings and
| goings to be tracked.
|
| Causing a collision with another plane that might then fall
| onto a residential neighborhood is a great way to get the
| entire weight of the government to come down on you, have
| the remains of your craft picked apart, and have your
| entire cover blown. Don't mess with the NTSB!
|
| I realize this theory has holes, but it's what I've got,
| and I feel like it's making more effort at explanation than
| e.g. the retired Air Force Major-General who was quoted as
| saying "they're flying with lights on, they're flying where
| people will see them; that tells me... there's nothing
| nefarious about it, or we're dealing with the world's
| dumbest terrorist."[1]
|
| It seems that they don't want to be seen, and "go dark"
| when confronted.[2] Incidentally, that's what "The Angry
| Astronaut" said in his video posted on 1 Dec about the
| craft he attempted to chase down in the United Kingdom.[3]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/qpFz-SPCSJc?t=50
|
| [2] https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-new-jersey-drones-go-
| dark-w...
|
| [3] https://youtu.be/1yglSSzP8Qk?t=331
| tlrobinson wrote:
| Or not even imagery collection, but testing to see what our
| response is like. If we're scrambling and unable to
| explain/contain it, that's useful for an adversary to know a
| little about our current defensive capabilities.
| stormfather wrote:
| Or testing our own response. If we want to test what
| China's response might be, both public and military, but
| its too provocative to try, we might try it on ourselves.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's not true. Many missiles exclusively use GNSS and/or
| INS, for example ATACMS and MLRS.
| chasd00 wrote:
| someone from the drone racing scene should do an intercept with a
| high speed drone and get footage up close. It would make for a
| good YouTube video.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Our whole hobby is kinda right on the edge of "legal". The last
| thing most of us want is a viral video with our name attached.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Late to the thread so this will probably get buried.
|
| My spouse and I have seen these things flying for __years__
| around the northern Baltimore area. They even had patterns.
|
| Recently, we have been hearing what sound like Apache helicopters
| at around the same time at night.
|
| This video in this article: https://apnews.com/article/fbi-
| drones-new-jersey-a978470fa3b...
|
| Is 100% __identical__ to what we have been seeing for literal
| years, at least 5.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I guess I would say why are people concerned about this? I'd be
| much more concerned about ones without navigation lights.
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| It's a social contagion of panic.
|
| Blurry video clips trend on social media > local news talks
| about it > people report to state and local government >
| national news talks about it > people report to national
| agencies > national agencies shrug > people say it must be
| aliens, Iranians, or the CIA.
|
| A few thousand people _might_ have seen a drone, but a few
| million people saw a politician going on national television
| claiming there 's an Iranian mothership off the coast.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| That's what I'm saying. Drones are so common that you can buy
| them at Walmart, and I would be willing to bet that people
| reporting large drones are just not able to properly judge
| scale in the sky. What's next, people panicking because they
| are seeing cars driving around the streets?
| nradov wrote:
| AH-64 Apache helicopters sound similar to most every other
| turbine engine helicopter. I doubt that you could distinguish
| between them, especially not at any distance.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > I doubt that you could distinguish between them
|
| Do you think that is is possible that someone can? Just not
| me? Or literally impossible? I would also encourage you not
| to make assumptions about the background of a random person
| on the internet.
|
| > especially not at any distance
|
| They fly over our home.
| chasd00 wrote:
| My dad can identify fighter aircraft by engine sound alone,
| he is/was just really really into military aircraft. He
| gave me a CD once of mp3s of just the sound of jets flying
| by. To me, it was just a headache generator hah.
|
| I don't doubt for one second you can identify an Apache by
| sound.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| As I mentioned in another comment, police departments have been
| using drones for around 10 years. That's not to mention all the
| other professional and amateur use. I personally know at least
| a handful of people who regularly fly theirs. Most major metro
| areas are going to have drones flying all over the place. So
| what I'm saying is...why is this interesting?
| jimcollinswort1 wrote:
| Why are we just looking up at the sky and wondering what they
| are? Send up a few AI assisted hunter drones to go find them and
| see. Then track, photograph, disable as needed.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i said the same up-thread, just get some drone racers to
| intercept and film them. At the very least you'll get closer
| footage than cell phones on the ground.
| anarchy79 wrote:
| I am very certain I know what this is, and sorry, it's not
| aliens. I've seen this before and people were freaking TF out
| back then, too. That one is still labeled unexplained. It's not
| hard to figure it out.
|
| I'm actually loathe to spoil it in case they're doing this as a
| prank (and they definitely are) because it's such a genius
| fucking way to throw a whole nation into full UFO panic for a few
| hundred bucks, and very easy to do completely undetected. (No,
| not drones)
|
| I bet I'm not the only one who figured it out, especially on
| here.
| fonix wrote:
| k
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I'm guessing you mean the reports are fake, or at least the
| ones seeding the panic, generated by bots, social media ads, or
| something. Once you hit a critical mass, hysteria kicks in, and
| the chain reaction becomes self-sustaining. A psy-ops weapons
| test, basically. I think this is very possible, and yes it
| could be a prank in this case, but it should not go unpunished
| if so.
| jotjotzzz wrote:
| Based on all the sightings and someone flying a drone next to
| these things, the size of these "drones" is much bigger, like the
| size of a car! Additionally, drones can hover for less than an
| hour. These "drones" stay floated for many hours on end!
|
| These should be called UFOs, not drones. The light on them and
| their shape make them look like regular drones, but I think these
| crafts are much more than the regular drones that the media has
| called them.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| why would anything nefarious be running avoidance lights? this is
| some sort of mass hysteria with very little critical thinking
| involved
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yes it's mass hysteria, but most cases of mass hysteria are
| seeded by a real event. So I'm guessing some agency or police
| force ran some drones, they were spotted, it hit social media,
| and became a mind virus.
| tummler wrote:
| There are people in the government who know exactly what these
| are, and why they are not threatening. I assume the vague non-
| response is because if they reveal this information, the very
| next question is "how do you know this"? And the answer to that
| question involves revelations that could very possibly lead to
| upheaval and civil unrest.
|
| In short, they're at a total loss on how to respond to this
| phenomenon, because the answer opens a big ol' can of worms, or
| Pandora's Box, or pick your metaphor.
|
| FWIW, the "drones" (they're not drones though some present as
| such) are the opposite of a threat. They're here to help, if
| they'd be allowed to. Can't wait to hear the justification for
| why they haven't been allowed to. _grabs popcorn_
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| What really amazes me is that society feels that we're in such
| a perilous state that they've deluded themselves into believing
| we're all going to be saved by little green men. If you think
| about it, it's the same reason humans invented god, but for the
| antitheistic.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Honestly, this looks like a some kind of a training exercise,
| probably a contractor working with the DOD or another acronym
| agency. From the videos, they're definitely quadcopter drones,
| definitely larger than most hobby drones (and def above the size
| you need to file a flight plan with the FAA). What's puzzling to
| me is that they run with all lights on, at night -- as if being
| seen was a goal.
|
| I imagine part of a training exercise could be to learn how local
| authorities respond to such aircraft activity. If you see what
| the Ukrainians have been able to accomplish using this type of
| tech (with a lot of cottage-industry DIY-type contributions) in
| an active theatre of war, it should give you pause.
| andai wrote:
| >senator called for a ban on all drones until the mystery is
| solved
|
| Wouldn't this only maybe prevent the mystery from being solved?
| By preventing further sightings?
| hunglee2 wrote:
| We routinely underestimate the factionalism that exists in the
| collective US 'deep state'.
|
| The CIA vs Pentagon vs FBI vs whatever else natsec department
| that was once set up for a singular purpose before expanding
| scope into everything else.
|
| There isn't a central controller seeing everything - just a
| President (whoever that is) sitting on top of a herd of out-of-
| control broncos desperately trying not to fall off. These drones
| are almost certainly US origin, but the departments don't talk to
| each other, so when one says they don't know anything about it,
| I'm inclined to believe that it is actually the case
| atentaten wrote:
| Have any laws been broken by flying these drones?
| seaourfreed wrote:
| I wonder if this is happening: "Hey US military drone
| manufacturers! You are allowed to test your drones at night.
| Don't say anything publicly. Start RIGHT after the Nov 2025
| election. STOP right when Trump gets in office. Extra points if
| you put big lights on them."
|
| Let's keep the citizens starting at the night sky and scratching
| their head.
|
| It happened right after election. If they few in the day time, it
| would be easy to find out they are military test drones. The
| citizens wouldn't be as distracted.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I don't even know what you're suggesting. That the drones are
| to distract us from the fact that Trump got elected?
| ck2 wrote:
| https://google.com/search?udm=2&q=xp-4+drone
| throw7 wrote:
| What pisses me off is when the pentagon says "we don't know, but
| don't worry everything having to do with the security of the U.S.
| is perfectly fine!" Don't lie to me.
| lukeplato wrote:
| reading this thread was a good reminder that being intelligent
| but closed off to alternative hypotheses is the same thing as
| being ignorant
| whalesalad wrote:
| 100% this is a defense contractor testing new gear.
| graybeardhacker wrote:
| Here's a theory, they are owned by United Health or hired by the
| healthcare industry to flood the news cycle and distract
| everyone.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Someone make a FOIA request to the FAA for AANC and 'FAA Drone
| Zone' authorizations for flights in areas experiencing drone
| sightings. Be very specific with like 'AANC and 'FAA Drone Zone'
| authorizations for the ABC affected area and in force during XYZ
| specific timeframe (and break out each night, preferably in
| separate FOIA requests). My guess is that would shed some light
| on things. 'ABC' above would need to be the specific official FAA
| name for the AANC or FAA Drone Zone.
| htk wrote:
| Suppose I have a strong blue laser and point it at said
| unrecognized drones. Would I be in trouble? How long should we
| wait an answer from the government before we can "fight back"?
| Aloisius wrote:
| You want to shine a laser with the intent to "fight back" at
| things flying in the sky at night that you don't recognize?
|
| Well. That would be a federal crime with up to a $250,000 fine
| and/or a federal prison sentence of up to five years.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-12 23:01 UTC)