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

theguardian.com

501–510 of 943 posts

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

#501
Quick summary after following this for a few days: FBI says they're rotary and fixed-wing drones, White House says they aren't foreign adversaries, Pentagon says they aren't USA military, all 3 insist that there's no indication of a real threat despite the drones being bigger and higher tech than retail drones.

Politicians are PO'd that something about this doesn't add up: How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing whose they are? Why isn't anyone bringing them down? Where do they land? Is this similar to the Chinese spy balloon?

I've seen a huge number of theories by now, and not one of them actually fits.

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

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For clarity the exact words the Pentagon staff in the video used are: "at this time we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary...these are not US military drones" What's your thoughts?

I'd just revise the second part of my post to: That is different than the statement: * The Pentagon has stated that (a) X is true, and (b) they have no evidence that Y is true. * Where X is defined as "These are not US military drones" * Where Y is defined as "these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary"

I guess "US commercial drones" is the gap or intersection of the relevant Venn diagrams, but that doesn't make sense. Why would you test them over a military base?

I think we can apply some Gaussian blur and assume the statement is an approximate fit to the meaning by remembering that: this was a statement provided by a human in real time, ad libbing in response to a press question. They didn't spend hours drafting it to elucidate all possible logical connections and deftly conceal the unstated meaning by crafting some inference puzzle. Hahaha! :)

Communication between people is successful miscommunication. It's not an API - remember that, engineer! :)

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For clarity the exact words the Pentagon staff in the video used are: "at this time we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary...these are not US military drones" What's your thoughts?

Not "military" drones seems very very open to interpretation. Is DARPA Military? Or is military being used in a generic sense of the dictionary definition vs. the US government budgetary definition? My assumption is these are US military drones.

I'm guessing "Defense Advanced Research" is pretty military haha :)

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

#504
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Did you post this before or after taking the 10 seconds necessary to look up the Pentagon and White House responses to this, or the FBI's?

After. They're responding to the public and media uproar, and have to be seen as taking action in response to it, but they're clearly not massively concerned.

I don't doubt that there was some drone activity, but most likely it was regularly authorised operations or testing. Once the hysteria started you may have a few pranksters flying theirs just to add to the uproar.

But when media houses are publishing pictures of what are clearly commercial airliners and passing them off as unidentified drones you know we're in the middle of a mass hysteria moment.

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

#505
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For clarity the exact words the Pentagon staff in the video used are: "at this time we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary...these are not US military drones" What's your thoughts?

confirmed that jesus has returned as an alien to bring about the apocalypse. but uhh, the most standard thing is that its some weather balloon put up by an undergrad student who isnt aware of the relevant regulations theyre supposed to be following and whod really prefer to ask forgiveness than permission

Well this is a ridiculous take. They are flying around powered. Check out the vids.

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do they have though? I’m going with none and it seems odd to me they’re ok just letting the local law enforcement run point

Why would one believe that US intelligence agencies have no information about extensive reports of drone activity near military installations? Given that this has been happening for a couple weeks now, and the military has said “these are not a threat”, the clearly more plausible explanation is that they know what these are, and they aren’t saying. This is what the military does when they are testing classified milit…

Maybe they state that, but they're not going to test it in the open so it's not a secret.

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

#507
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something actually patent-worthy.

How? it's just a UAV, quad version of a V-22 Osprey. Maybe I'm missing something peculiar about it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Boeing_V-22_Osprey

Osprey has a common power shaft between the engines for fault tolerance, constraining the structure's design, such as the lack of dihedral. This has a different set of design constraints and a different solution to propulsion failure.

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

#508
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s not part 107 compliant? All the activity I’ve heard was fully legal.

For starters, you need special waivers from the faa to fly at night. If any such waivers existed, I am sure the FAA would have told the news media who are hyping up this story.

This has not been the case for years.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/operations_over...

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A _lot_ of hobbyists (me included) disagree with you on this one. I think the current Remote ID law (controversial, yes) is a reasonable balance.

Once a high profile attack or assassination happens with remote operated vehicles (drones or high-speed model jets), everyone's minds will change in a heartbeat. For now yeah most people think of drones as toys. It's just a failure of imagination and a failure to predict the obvious future events that are certain to unfold.

>Once a high profile attack or assassination happens with remote operated vehicles (drones or high-speed model jets), everyone's minds will change in a heartbeat

Pretty much any high-profile assassination with drones would probably have the support of at least half the population (or even more, in the case of the recent healthcare CEO assassination).

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