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

theguardian.com

381–390 of 943 posts

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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 'commercially available' aircraft can operate for at least 6 - 7 hours, sized up to 6 feet, not always detectable by FLIR, evade detection by helicopters, don't always use lights, have a range of at least 15 miles, are not obeying FAA line of sight regulations for night flights (all per the statewide briefing provided to NJ legislators yesterday: https://x.com/DawnFantasia_NJ/status/1866896860578717994 ) , and a…

> are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday to not originate in the US or any other nation To be clear, they stated that “these are not US military drones”, and that they have no evidence that they are from a foreign entity or adversary, which is very different from what I interpreted you as saying.

You interpreted me as saying?

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

#382
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...

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.

> low and slow

How can you be sure? Are you aware of the speed-size illusion? https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2551105#....

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure that with Trump unsealing much of the anticipated documents around Epstein, Diddy, Kennedy, UFO/UAP I think the only cognitive dissonance is expecting Trump to unseal anything he didn't already unseal in his first term.

[flagged]

I'm not sure the man is capable of reflection. I think all we can say is that he's reliably unpredictable. Perhaps he will do something different this term.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

overall this says the US will allow undenitified drones in our air space and to fly unabated to our enemies ... one of these or future ones could be weaponized. So its unfathomable to me that they we are letting these things fly unabated in our airspace, as well the govt is providing zero info or re-assurance.

If we start blasting things out of the sky:

- We certainly can't deny that "something" is happening

- The US, if not the world, is going to be rocked by (basically) open war in the skies of America

- If we fail to down these things, we look like utterly weak fools

- Succeed or fail, we reveal our capabilities (or lack thereof)

- Legit public safety issue, bullets/shells/missiles/etc that miss these things have to come down somewhere, as well as wreckage (if any) it self

These drones, IF hostile are not necessarily the security risk one might think IMO. If we are just leaking radio signals into the air around bases that these things can intercept, then those communications could just as easily be intercepted by people/cars/etc on the ground. And our "near peers" have plenty of satellites overhead.

I am not going to tell you that letting them fly around unmolested is good. It is not. It sucks. But it is probably the least shitty option.

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

#385
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Jersey is essentially one big sensitive site. Between Picatinny Arsenal, Joint Base McGuire-Dix, NWS Earle, and all the other smaller sites, you’re about 15 miles away from any one site and if you’re near civilization you’re much closer. Add in other sensitive sites like power stations and reservoirs, and the entire state is “sensitive”. This smacks hard of manipulation and agitation. 99% of the sitings shared wi…

So why do most of the UFOS ... sorry UAP's ... come to New Mexico?

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

#386
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you already have decided that this is safe and then are using "boring" explanations to back that narrative. This is easy cause nothing bad has happened in a while so it's less cognitive dissonance to go with that narrative. Have you even tried coming up with boring explanations on how this could be not safe? Also why specifically boring explanations? Plenty of incidents have dramatic explanations. How do…

If the military proclaimed these drones safe and are not shooting them down like crazy, these drones are likely reasonably safe, and are not an enemy that the US military, arguably the top one in the world, would fight. A possible bad explanation: the US military actually would love to shoot down these drones, but cannot, because e.g. they are known to contain smallpox virus, dangerous radioactive contaminants, etc.…

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

#387
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. Knowing what AA tails look like makes it look likely that the blurry triangle has blue and red in the right places. Without context, it does appear to be a quadcopter-ish shape, but since the caption says the object was at high altitude, it fits a regular airplane well. People live on site watching the object move should certainly know better. (Perhaps they do know, and are intentionally trolling.)

> People live on site watching the object move should Be careful here. Human eye witnesses are not reliable, especially at night like this. It is very hard to determine size of shapes at night in the dark. It is hard to determine distance which makes something small look like it might be bigger but further away.

I think “hard” is underselling it. Unless you already know some of the parameters, it is outright impossible to visually determine size, distance, or speed of a distant object in the sky. So many UFO accounts completely fall apart when you realize this.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the "secret testing over civilian areas" idea is that it's self-contradicting. So you think the military and intelligence has technology that is so secret they won't admit to it, but they're so uninterested in protecting that they're testing them willy nilly over populated areas?? The other contradiction is risk: so you have an aerial technology test and you do it over US civilian populations and mil…

> So you think the military and intelligence has technology that is so secret they won't admit to it, but they're so uninterested in protecting that they're testing them willy nilly over populated areas?? The explicit purpose of most advances in drone technology over the last ~20 years is not to be the biggest baddest weapon in the sky, but to be a hard to catch camera that sees everything and knows everything. That…

That's fair about NOTAM's if they are low flying, how do you know they're low flying?

Your answer sounds official. Is this an official answer from someone in the military or IC? You say "these drones" - do you know unequivocally what they are?

How does the purpose of the Maven drone program you mention resolve the contradiction of testing a classified program that cannot be acknowledged, over civilian areas willy nilly? What is the purpose of a secret surveillance platform that is now an international news story? That goes against how such platforms are protected. So many contradictions.

These were also spotted in the UK over multiple bases (RAF Lakenheath, etc). Even if this were a test of our own technology, there's a lot of risk, and a lot of unknown and concern among officials who are in the dark, which creates more risk. It does not scan.

I don't really think you've provided answers that resolve these questions. I think it's legitimate that everybody has questions and there's a lot unknown. You seem to be saying you have the answers. Is that how you feel? Is that what you're saying?

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

#389
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...

I don't think the Coast Guard mistook 12 American Airlines planes for drones following their boat: https://apnews.com/article/fbi-drones-new-jersey-a978470fa3b... In another article a Sheriff saw 50 drones coming in from the ocean. Here a New Jersey elected official talks about the Sheriff/Police helicopter following an unidentified drone, then pull back because they feared for their safety (so low probability it was…

Why not? The navy confused infrared lens flairs of UFOs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's very clearly a helicopter in most of the photos, and the rest could easily be an airliner. At most it might be some knucklehead with an old RC helicopter in violation of FAA regs (flying at night, no remote ID). If you were some foreign adversary why would you put navigation lights on your secret reconnaissance drone?

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

My favorite part is the part when they say "Aha! It's camoflauge! It LOOKS like an aeroplane but in fact it's a disguise!". I mean, what's next, a helicopter is chasing a drone and they say "Aha! The alien craft has disguised itself as one of our helicopters chasing one of our drones, who would suspect that!"

Anyway the non-alien conspiracy theories are along the lines of radiation sniffers for a suitcase nuke, drone tests for material transport between bases & offshore navy ships, red team vs blue team drone tests.

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