What we know about the mysterious drones flying over New Jersey | Hacker News Reader

What we know about the mysterious drones flying over New Jersey

bbc.com

13 pointsjorgesborges20 comments

The only hypothesis that makes sense to me is that there is something very dangerous on the loose that is being searched for, such as nuclear material. The highest authorities don't want to cause panic so they are executing a search this way.

I saw this hypothesis in another thread. Although interesting, I did wonder why a regular helicopter doing the same thing would not be sufficient.

I don’t now anything about such scans but that was my immediate rebuttal.

Like you, though, at least I find this explanation plausible.

The military has all sorts of cool techniques to find things without using drones, which makes me wonder if it's a private party conducting a search. Or is this in order to make it deniable for the military - not _looking_ like a military op

Yeah wouldn't they pull out all the stops if this were the case? Including running these drones during the day and all night (and making up a cover story)?

Gas mileage, safety, noise, cost, on top of the fact they already have tons of long range single prop drones kitted out with surveillance gear. Almost all of the videos look like predator style drones flying search grids. Maybe they have some large quadcopter drones in the air but I haven’t seen a single photo or video of anything that looks like one.

The highest authorities have indicated that the drones are not U.S. military [1].

I guess they could be playing semantic games. Could be defense contractor owned and operated as opposed to directly military controlled.

In any case, if they know what they are they are lying. Either directly or by omission. Not that either would be unusual.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/11/pentagon-says-mystery-dron...

EDIT: Actually there were statements that didn't leave room for semantic games:

“The Bureau is actively investigating the situation you mentioned, the unexplained sighting of drone activity over that part of New Jersey, including in proximity to sensitive sites and areas of concern. We do not attribute that to an individual or a group yet."

https://homeland.house.gov/2024/12/12/unexplained-sighting-d...

"When the situation is serious, you have to lie."

If they are Department of Energy, that's consistent with them not being US Military. For example, DoE is publicly known to have radiation detection helicopters - See Aerial Measuring System (AMS) and Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST)

The reason AMS like functions are carried out by fixed wing aircraft and helicopter slung pods is the weight of the doped crystal packs required to sense gamma radiation from even relatively low ground clearance.

Radiation surveys are steady paced gridding runs, evenly spaced lines flown at a uniform height and speed.

Little drones bobbing about aren't doing a good job running a detection grid.

Highly doubt someone in military PR is doing the 4d chess involved with making this quote while also being in the search grid and not informed:

"While no direct threats to the installation have been identified, we can confirm multiple instances of unidentified drones entering the airspace above Naval Weapons Station Earle," Bill Addison, public affairs officer for the naval station, said in a statement to ABC News.

They’d just say nothing was seen, or it was normal flight ops, or make up a training mission.

The military doesn’t re-enforce the reason for public panic or admit they aren’t omnipotent unless they really don’t know.

I think you are underestimating how compartmentalized the government is.

I'm not. I was part of the government and a defense contractor.

As to what these are: they are clearly something complying with the FAR on dusk to dawn lighting, it's going to be some disappointing, boring outcome like dominos pizza delivery drones.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F...

Half the videos I saw were people noticing a commercial aircraft with landing lights on. I saw a bell 412 with some terrain mapping sensors mounted on it hovering in a pattern around my neighborhood earlier in the year and it turned out to be scanning for the power company, a new way of checking the lines. I'll be far more interested in a UAP that doesn't follow our dusk to dawn lighting rules.

That’s the only hypothesis that makes sense to you? Are you sure you’ve applied any critical thought at all?

I’m calling it - this is going down as the largest case of mass hysteria in recorded history.

You could have taken a more curious approach on responding instead of a thinly veiled insult.

https://twitter.com/MilaLovesJoe/status/1868042627360403849

CEO of a drone manufacturer seems to agree with your hypothesis

I feel like myself and a few others, some cash, some materials, a bit of legal immunity, could easily have a working solution to capture a few of these for analysis.

Materials, or an eagle? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kAYVyj6vf3Y&pp=ygUURWFnbGUgY2F...

Hilariously, that was one of the ideas I had... among others: everything from shotguns (when loaded with birdshot and fired upwards, the shot falls back to earth harmlessly), to FPV chase pilots, long endurance ISR and tracking to origin, or even getting the right people to the table that have faster drones.

All of these things are pretty simple, I'm sure with the right people in the room even better ideas would emerge.

drones

- with bright lights,

- flying over the same populated areas

- at the same time each night.

Not fake at all.

Here's a video by Mick West, who's an expert in analyzing things people see in the sky, that does a great job of explaining what's happening and making it seem obvious in retrospect. It's short (< 4 minutes) and if we could figure out a way to make it required viewing for media that would help a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4HFxzsjgo

tldr: People aren't seeing drones. It's collective delusion.

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