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Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

theguardian.com

171–180 of 943 posts

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#171
post #13

The photos I've seen posted look very obviously like commercial airliners and helicopters with their navigation lights on. You can even make out the American Airlines livery on the tail! https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...

From what little I've seen on this, it kind of feels like the issue with Priuses acceleration out of control like 15 years ago. It was a huge scandal that lead to multiple Toyota recalls and even a lawsuit settlement and in the end, it seems like it was basically human error. One person messed up and crashed their Prius claiming the accelerator got stuck and it got picked up by the news. That story then primed other…

well, it wasn't a prius originally, it was a lexus that launched off a southern california freeway because they burned the brakes up trying to stop the acceleration.

Toyota and lexus sometimes have the gas pedal hinged on the floor panel, rather than suspended from piece of metal from up above. If you swap out the stock floor mats for ones not designed with this in mind, during a hard brake your feet can move forward, jamming the floor mat into the accelerator and causing the engine to receive more fuel.

If you'd like a picture, i can go take a picture of the accelerator pedal in my lexus from 2012, and the floor mats which are all but bolted down to prevent this from happening.

as a side note i prefer the hinged design because there's less distance to traverse, i just wish the brake was the same way!

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my favorite part of this mass hysteria. Why would they have nav lights on?! Any lights...

Clearly, my spy craft isn't a spy craft. Look, it has lights on it for Pete's sake. Plausible deniability

It'd be more clever to have lights and leave them unilluminated. If caught they can still claim what you're claiming, adding "You just didn't see them!".

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NJ. I've seen these drones. They are not commercial airliners or helicopters. They are loud, fly low and slow, and make abrupt turns unlike any planes I've seen. Their lights are also very different from other aircraft. I can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but they are absolutely large drones of some kind.

This story is so strange. I mean the US if im not mistaken allowed a huge white ballon to transverse the country and i heard Trump say that was from China. If that's true we just allowed it fly all over our airspace (weird). Is that not a potential public safety hazard and now these things. So odd nothing is being done like one of our jet fighters going up and shooting one down into a field.

Shooting things down over populated areas is a public safety issue.

Drones flying about may or may not be.

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#174

There was a similar phenomenon a few years back in Colorado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Colorado_drone... .

TIL (from that page): "Flying drones at night without a waiver from the FAA is a violation of federal law" -- perhaps relevant to the top level article

You haven't needed a waiver since 2021. Now you can get near real-time approval to fly at night under Part 107.

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#175
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. This is a ridiculous mass hysteria driven by media sensationalism and ignorant members of the public.

Lol, also rep. Jeff Van Drew claiming without evidence that the drones are coming from an Iranian mothership off the coast.

Yes and where did he even get this from? Why do we have representatives literally making up stories and telling them to the American public? What is actually going on here?

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#176
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NJ. I've seen these drones. They are not commercial airliners or helicopters. They are loud, fly low and slow, and make abrupt turns unlike any planes I've seen. Their lights are also very different from other aircraft. I can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but they are absolutely large drones of some kind.

At least 6 out of 10 images in the linked article are clearly commercial aircraft.

But they got you to click and flip through the slides

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in NJ. I've seen these drones. They are not commercial airliners or helicopters. They are loud, fly low and slow, and make abrupt turns unlike any planes I've seen. Their lights are also very different from other aircraft. I can see how it's tempting to chalk this up to hysteria, but they are absolutely large drones of some kind.

Under what circumstances and motivations, exactly, do you think that unlicensed and illegal (clearly not FAA Part 107 compliant) drone operators would be motivated to put blinking white, red and green lights on their mystery drones? Why would they do that? If you're doing to build a drone to fly at night and do clearly illegal things you're going to make the thing matte black and have no lights on it whatsoever.

It would allow for different configurations to make identification harder. It's very easy to only operate at night and swap out the color and pattern of the lights constantly. Almost every photo device would capture the light pattern the attacker WANTS them to capture. High quality equipment could get better pictures, but such equipment is often not rolling 24/7 or easy to point at a drone moving fast.

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more evidence here than just pictures from this one article. The pentagon, for example, just declared that they do not know what they are[1]. Among many other credible sources. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1hc1l58/pentagon_no_e...

> The pentagon, for example, just declared that they do not know what they are[1]. This sounds impressive, but people don't seem to realize that there is no USGOV tracking of drone-sized objects in US airspace. Of course they can't say who is doing it or where they're coming from, they also don't know what's going on when you launch a drone from your backyard and fly it around. The FAA has a database of reports of pe…

>people don't seem to realize that there is no USGOV tracking of drone-sized objects

Anything 250g or heavier has to have Remote ID now. Now that doesn't exclude the possibility of illegal drones without it, but it isn't true that there is "no drone tracking".

https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id

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

Re: Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'

#179

[flagged]

I’ll admit that were I seeing such stories in my area, I’d be hard pressed not to hang some bit of a Halloween costume on a drone and send it around the neighbourhood.

Done 11 years ago - https://youtu.be/tB8D2QZ9lA4

Drones of today would likely be a fair bit easier to work with.

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