Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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-...
Please tell me that’s someone who takes photos using drones not photos of drones - for a living
I would be amazed if there’s enough of a demand for drone photos to support someone
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.
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.
And I really can't think of any reason to want something like this to be a national news story, rather than possibly a couple months' worth of entertainment on r/ufos.
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.
It's just more of the same.
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.
At least it not uncontrollable dancing.
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…).
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!
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.)
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
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/4712445-key-senato...
All those published videos were no less than a psyop to demonstrate weapons system's capabilities - with the implicit brag that there's even more powerful stuff they're not showing.
and promoting conspiracy theories. which is fine, I'm just telling you what US military officers testified to congress about under oath.
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.
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.
Not even as nefarious as that I don't think. The NJ and NY port authorities have an existing agreement as of Feb 2024 to allow for experimentation and buildout of drone-based last mile delivery systems. I think this is all a case of lazy/sensationalist journalists realizing that if they report "mystery drones" they get to write multiple content-free articles that will generate a lot of attention but if they do the investigative work they'll find a boring answer that costs them attention. Journalism in America being an industry that converts your attention into money.
And if this were the reason for these particular drones the NJ and NY port authorities don't really have any reason not to just come forward and state as much. You'd think they'd be more than happy to crow about their "innovation hub" and the work they are doing. They've already gone to the trouble of having their Media Relations staff write up the article you cited. Why waste an opportunity certain to have a greater reach now?
Journalists didn't generate this attention, the drones themselves did. The public is genuinely interested and concerned. Journalists may be capitalizing on what the public is already wanting to learn more about, but I don't think they're avoiding investigative work for fear of the public losing interest. There is simply no one they could ask who would be willing to provide them with the truth.
Any journalist who did somehow manage to get the real story would pull the attention from all the other journalists without answers so they've got the incentive, just not the means. All they really can do is repeat what little they are told to a public which has been asking them to give them that information while also pandering to their audience with whatever speculation they think their viewers/readers will want to hear. A large part of journalism in America is entertainment after all. They wont waste this opportunity since they absolutely want attention and money, but they can't take the blame for "content free articles" when no one is willing to provide them with anything but speculation and more questions.
What about a swarm of drone Zodiac rafts?
The problem here appears to be conflicts at a state level (safety mandates) and that at the federal level (airspace management, you don't shoot at planes and drones are small planes).
That's the gist of what I've seen with regards to these things. Paralysis and lack of proper chain of command absent disaster, is a sign of impending collapse when there is calamity.
Its unclear who owns the drones but it should be relatively simple with SIGINT to trilaterate the control signal, any decently experienced ham should be able to do that.
If there is no control signal and they are operating autonomous, they should be considered restricted/military weapons with a proper chain of command and oversight. Lawmakers have been paralyzed and unable to keep up for decades though. Its hardly a surprise.
When the costs aren't paid for proper preparation beforehand, the cost is almost always paid in lives.
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 cover thoroughly 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]
As to why they don't fly during the day: it seems that they don't want to be seen, and have been observed to "go dark" when confronted.[2] Incidentally, that's also what "The Angry Astronaut" said in his video posted on 1 Dec [3] about the craft he attempted to chase down in the United Kingdom next to the Lakenheath US Air Force installation-- well before this behavior was reported in the USA.
[1] https://youtu.be/qpFz-SPCSJc?t=50
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-new-jersey-drones-go-dark-w...
GNSS is a general term that encompasses GPS and systems like it. GPS is the American GNSS.
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.
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...
Up to you how you want to interpret his exact words.
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?
What's weird is the authorities are saying: "we don't know what they are, but we know for sure they're not a threat." This doesn't make sense. No one is allowing them to be there, it's safer to assume they're a threat until you know for sure what 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?
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
How exactly do you follow a fixed-wing drone? Some of the high-end/industrial drones has pretty impressive ranges.
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".
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.
Can you elucidate what you meant?
Which is why I asked
> Can you elucidate what you meant?
For various locally-defined values of "low".
I expect a police drone to be visually distinguished.
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.
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.
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.
That said, the FAA's jurisdiction ends with the National Airspace, which physically ends the moment it crosses into a structure.
There's plenty of states where you don't even have that.
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.
Personally I'd rather have evidence of this before dwelling on all the possible tragedies here.
Because they are theirs, obviously. They just won't say it.
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.
And neither of those agencies ever did anything they're not "able" to do... regularly...
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.
I am virtually certain those UAVs fly outside of it, otherwise there would not be much public attention to that.
Agree that the signalling strongly suggests government use.
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.
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.
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.
No "official" conclusion, but the common sense position seems to be that most or all of the reported incidents were nothingburger.
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?
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.
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.
Another option is a variation of the above, where they might have a "person or company of interest" that is too soon to talk about, but they suspect the game being played is that they are owned by some tech startup who is trying to fly their/others drones around to drum up business by scaring people to in turn secure huge military contracts for drone-sensing and drone-countermeasures which they can sell as a solution to the problem/risk they've created. Am I too cynical?
Or as the original poster implied and some statements I've seen are clearer about than others, the wording is just sloppy in distinguishing between: "There is no evidence these drones are a threat/harmful" (ie they have been non-violent, so far) vs "There is not a threat here" (of any kind now or future... "keep calm and carry on"/"Don't panic... because we told you so; we don't see any particular reason".)
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.
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.
(When some John Bircher shoots one down though I suppose we'll have our answer, ha-ha, not-ha-ha.)
> 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.
‘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.
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/09/20/chinese-balloon-n...
Honestly, "sensors" means anything from cameras to thermometers. Either way, the balloon was recovered by the US Navy. It wasn't a spy balloon.
Also keep in mind the US military isn’t necessarily going to be honest about what they think the balloon is and how much they can discern about its purpose.
But they apparently didn't fly on Thanksgiving, which is an interesting coincidence if true.
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...
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?
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.
The FBI said public reports and eyewitnesses said they're drones.
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.
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.
They can potentially claim "our initial assessment was wrong" later, but IMO they could have done that anyway regardless of their word choice here.
The FBI simply repeated what public reports and eyewitness have said - a rather massive difference.
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.
Let me guess, it is parked in the "Bermuda Triangle".
It's easy to make theories when you are unburdened by evidence.
Looking forward to a spin off of ancient aliens on this haha Evidence smevidence! Aliens!
If fully manned Navy frigates and destroyers were vanishing without warning or explanation there is zero chance of keeping a lid on that. Way too many people involved, many of which are civilians.
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).
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.
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.
https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science_in_science_f...
Element 115 wasn't a building material, it was supposed to exhibit antigravity properties under the right circumstances and was part how UFOs flew in such abnormal patterns.
> We enter the first order of business is checking for E115 then leaving the ship together to send it away.
Once again, E115 decays fully (multiple half-lifes, very little left) in mere seconds and is very radioactive.
That said, this only applies to the isotopes we've been able to synthesize so far. It’s not the definitive answer for all possible isotopes. Nuclear physics theories, particularly around the "island of stability," suggest there could be heavier isotopes of Element 115 with more favorable neutron-to-proton ratios. These isotopes might have significantly longer half-lives—potentially lasting seconds, minutes, or even days or weeks.
We simply haven’t discovered these isotopes yet. With better technology and experiments in the future, there’s a chance we might find longer-lived variants of Element 115, but for now, we can only speculate.
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.
https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...
What's this got to do with anything? Nothing, but it's no less of an explanation than what these people have proposed.
do you think the military or any 3 letter agency knows 100% where all foreign spies are within their borders?
(As I recall they were, but they would not publicly acknowledge it until the public sightings became undeniable.)
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.
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.
To get people to pay attention to him?
To whip up more hysteria against Iran?
He's using this as an opportunity to paint the current federal administration, and state administration in NJ, as being incompetent, negligent and putting people in harms way.
It's standard politics.
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?
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.
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.)
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.
1: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?replay=2024-12-09-01:33&lat=...
AS = Alaska Airlines
If you were some foreign adversary why would you put navigation lights on your secret reconnaissance drone?
Why would they have nav lights on?! Any lights...
Plausible deniability
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.
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.
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...
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.
It was a comment on the inability of half of this thread to use basic logic.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
I can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but they are absolutely large drones of some kind.
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
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.
https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...
Then this article goes on to speculate about scary things.
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).
He pretty much says nothing, and the article uses him as a mouth piece to give other individuals mentioned legitimacy.
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.
From the WSJ article I mentioned: “ Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway”
2) as you probably know, the pilot doesn’t really guide the missile…calling the pilot an idiot just clearly shows you have an axe to grind. Also, it’s not like the seekers are calibrated to take out balloons.
3) regarding EW - the tech is obviously still evolving and not always deployed “ U.S. officials said they didn’t know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones.”
Also, it is certainly possible to harden drones against EW as is being done in Ukraine on an evolving basis
Here you have supposedly car sized drones operating, in large numvers, in high risk areas and the government response is nonexistent. Nearby flights have not even been diverted as they do when there's the slightest security risk in an area.
Its probably just drones searching for the source with the secrecy aimed at trying to avoid a mass panic.
Also... why wouldn't the feds just say they're inspecting infrastructure and avoid the entire question...?
IMO this is almost certainly a commercial LIDAR mapping effort plus right wing conspiratorial hysteria.
A single value at a moment in time doesn't mean anything at all. You need to see the variance over time. And you need to trust the source data. The only "dangerously high" readings I saw were from counters that had no name, no history, no identifier, no additional values.
This theory makes no sense from the get-go and this "evidence" is extremely low quality.
You sort of people are so weird.
My original point was and is that there are many laws restricting what the military is able to do domestically.
Though even if such law exists, which it doesn't, then like any law in modern times, or even increasingly the Constitution, if the political establishment deemed it inconvenient then they would simply ignore it, and make up some lies.
And on that note, they are now acknowledging that they are indeed drones. The 'its just airplanes' lie lasted about 5 minutes. These people seriously hold the public in contempt.
https://www.rdrnews.com/opinion/columnists/drones-mimicry-an...
Here, read this, it will calm your nerves.
Image 8 is too blurry to make out, but it's probably also a plane.
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.
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?
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.
https://www.newsweek.com/china-shows-new-drones-disguised-bi...
https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/operations_over...
Of the number of operators who have active BVLOS waivers I am aware of, such as for powerline, pipeline survey and delivery operations, very few or none are trying to also operate at night.
I feel like I've seen a lot of that this time of year ...
Why are they only flying at night? To evade detection? Then why do they have lights?
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 ;-)
At those distances and with typical thermal imager resolutions, the zoom lens required would cost more than a cheap car..
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.
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.
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?
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.
https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-galaxy...
https://eu.app.com/picture-gallery/news/2024/12/10/drones-in...
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.
At the 11-second mark: https://youtu.be/M186uZ1RCxU?t=11
Phone can do night with just hand jitter ok, can't effectively compensate for target motion.
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.
Larger film has insanely high resolving power...
https://www.analog.cafe/r/409200000-pixels-with-adox-cms-20-...
Who are you gonna believe? Them, or your lying eyes?
Drones flying about may or may not be.
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.
> The Chinese government maintained it was a civilian (mainly meteorological) airship that had been blown off course.
- 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.
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?
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.
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.
How can you be sure? Are you aware of the speed-size illusion? https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2551105#....
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...
The point is: the moon is easier to spot, moves less and emits more light.
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 overexposure 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...
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.
Although in this case if the person thinks it was low, and slow, that's less remarkable than if it was high and fast, because then it would be giant.
Overall, I'd say we're "converging on truth" because of all the reports. Like sparsity, even if each report is incomplete or has innacuracy overall we can build a picture, which is what we're doing. Killjoy. Hahahaha :)
I know someone who saw an alien spacecraft landing on a distant mountain. Turned out to be Venus :P
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.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hcdsgf/whatever_this... (https://archive.is/mFMis)
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...
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.)
> 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.
Human eyes also have blind spots called Scotomas- our brains do some sort of calculation to make us not notice the fact our eyes have blind spots. I imagine if your brain is wired to do the calculation "wrong" in this scenario you end up seeing things differently than a camera would.
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.
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!
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.
Well, civil reckless disregard, as it wasn’t a criminal case.
Mostly you have specific inputs from some other tasks and your outputs are consumed by different tasks. So, even though the variables are "global" they generally only have one writer with multiple readers in properly done embedded programming.
What Toyota did was not even in the same universe as "properly done embedded".
It wasn't just one thing. It was a near complete and total disregard for the fact that they were writing code for machines that could kill people.
And more technical information: https://www.safetyresearch.net/Library/BarrSlides_FINAL_SCRU...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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):
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Let's not forget it took how many sidewinders to take down the Chinese balloon? More than 1 makes someone look foolish.
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.
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.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaEPvrq5VFM [video][21 mins]
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c2tMH4Qn1w [video][35 mins]
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.
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.
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.
The biggest panic about unidentified flying objects in New Jersey since October 30 1938.
I venture you are neither of these.
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.
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_kno...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, reportedly these are the size of SUVs. I don’t believe you need that much of an investment for “gathering data”.
https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/public_records/uas_sightin...
Keep in mind most of this stuff never gets reported.
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”.
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.
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.
Well stop telling people about them!!!
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.
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.
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.
I don't doubt for one second you can identify an Apache by sound.
One of them is probably intensifying their testing program and doesn't want news to leak out too early.
Edit: my $dayjob is unmanned vehicles
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.
Sad to see what HN is slowly devolving into.
Some people just can't accept not "knowing it all".
The real drones go dark and evade helicopters.
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...
https://felt.com/explore/us-electric-power-transmission-line...
(Account signup required.)
It's just laying the ground work for some insidious nonsense.
Consumer drones have collision lights that look all fancy. They are also in the FAA jurisdiction so there's nothing the locals can do to stop it because it's not something they deal with, even if flying at night is illegal for non commercially licenced UAV operators.
If it's a secret drone then it doesn't have collision lights. If it doesn't have lights you can't see it at night.
Even after watching the videos I think you can figure this out a priori without the videos - drones exist and people have them, lots of them.
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.
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
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.
I think this is misinformation stemming from today’s meeting with NJ mayors. There was a statement that they are seen for 7 hours at a time. At no point did they say the same drone stayed in the air for 7 hours. I believe they were stating that the sightings start after sundown and go on for around 7 hours. Of course the internet took this and ran with it as the internet does.
they used the footage to solve some cartel murder by playing the footage in reverse to track the origin of the killers
So I think that's the most likely explanation – surely the US military would not have their drones fly around in an active final approach path of a major civilian airport...? And if it was a foreign military, I really hope that the US wouldn't be as casual about it.
Also iirc there is a funding bill for anti-drone programs gummed up in congress so I am sure anyone looking to get it passed isn't in a rush to quell this just yet.
The government will finally get all these local yokel politicians to put a cork in it and stop fanning hysteria when some idiot puts a bullet hole in a cessna thinking it is an Iranian drone from a mothership off the east coast.
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
But ... what if Aliens and Ghosts are the same thing? DaDaDa!
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.
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).
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.
Edit: if this is a normal drone company with a process, they are going to be filing these requests. You don't mess with the FAA. The drones have their lights on, I'm guessing they are also filing their paperwork.
Also I learned from the a recent JRE with Marc Andressen that the US really doesn’t make consumer drones domestically because of regulations but China is allowed to import them here. But still not to say someone isn’t making them at home on their own.
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
Small drones don't have much range, and balloons could have ended up hundreds of miles off target.
They could run completely blacked out and it would make no difference to the operator.
Link - https://www.twz.com/air/militarys-recently-deployed-ufo-hunt...
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.
That's usually what drone videos are for, isn't it?
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.
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1858717730746126444
There is zero evidence to support any of the claims made in this post, and it seems to have spread virally from here. It appears that rawsalerts posts disinformation and then it is disseminated through a massive network of fake news sites and fake social media accounts. Just do a google search for "rawsalerts" to see what I mean. It looks like much of its content is constantly reposted by NewsBreak, which has been noted as a disinformation/fake news site set up by China.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/top-news-app-us-has-chine...
Starting to get the idea? I believe this was a case of mass hysteria that was literally engineered by one of our enemies.
Wouldn't this only maybe prevent the mystery from being solved? By preventing further sightings?
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.
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.
It's uh, a bit maddening and a bit sad.
Drones of today would likely be a fair bit easier to work with.
How near is "near"? There's an awful lot of sensitive military sites in the US.
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”
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?
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.
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'.
I can't find that? Care to share?
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-jersey-a978470fa3b...
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-jersey-a978470fa3b...
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.
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.
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.
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?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-congressman-falls-vi...
Don't forget rank stupidity as a strong possibility.
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.
[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.
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_Powe...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Please confirm the actual statement made.
No evidence of harm as of yet, or somesuch.
> 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
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"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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 :)
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...
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
"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?
"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.
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."
"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?
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"
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! :)
My assumption is these are US military drones.
The wording, imo, is intentionally very vague.
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
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.”
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.
Thought they were official, watching traffic
My thoughts are — how do their batteries last that long at night?
I got a guy at Wolfram & Hart.
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.
> 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...
Does that comment reflect intelligence?
Someone needs to ask the Pentagon if they used to be theirs.
Everyone else did. How else would you explain 65,536 probes evenly dispersed along a lat-long grid that barely left any square meter of planetary surface unexposed? Obviously the Flies had taken our picture. The whole world had been caught with its pants down in panoramic composite freeze-frame. We'd been surveyed—whether as a prelude to formal introductions or outright invasion was anyone's guess.
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.
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
So yes, they are drones but maybe this is only one standard deviation from normal? Many non-military people own drones.
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.
Or it is only "terrorizing" to a population when you use bullets instead of enormous bullets that also kill everything in a 30m radius?
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.
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.
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.
likely, until theyre crying everything is antifa again. they seem to cycle around through their paranoia targets.
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.
Competition is the greatest tool for innovation
And i am omniscient
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.
Easy? Is sarin gas freely available at big-box retailers?
All of the weaponized forms involve some pretty nasty flourinated precursor chemicals which themselves are quite toxic -- and controlled.
e.g. isopropyl alcohol.
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.
It's a bit further than that, and all of the intermediate chemistry is toxic.
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.
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.
Mustn't have the latest cellphone? I hear smart phones have cameras. They sound as good with technology as HN commentators.
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.
> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
But yeah, Maginot Military sounds about right.
Jamming is first line of defense, a million times more effective FWIW.
Duck Dynasty season 12 is going to be a doozy
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.