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

theguardian.com

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

#671

Post by echoangle »

bragr wrote: post #178
Amezarak wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Unless there are also receivers for this operated by the government, that's technically not a conflict with the claim. Tracking means you're tracking something, not just forcing them to send a signal. It's only tracking once you receive and process the signal.

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

#672

Post by briandear »

ptero wrote: post #579
otikik wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing whose they are? Because they are theirs, obviously. They just won't say it.

Neither FBI nor Pentagon have ability to fly drones in the US airspace at will. On the contrary, they, like everyone else, have to get FAA approvals and those always leak. And usually in fact published by the FAA who needs to warn pilots of potential threats -- one could go to the official FAA website and search those NOTAMs. Ignoring FAA by the FBI or the military just doesn't happen, the price to pay is WAY too hig…

There is a NOTAM for these.

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

#673

Post by hersko »

jyounker wrote: post #596
j_timberlake wrote: post #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 wi…

It's easy to say they're probably no threat. The number of ways for something to be a threat is much smaller than the number of ways of something being a not a threat, therefore the probability of them being a threat is very low. 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 d…

What? There are many recreational (small) drone rules with the FAA because they can harm people. A 6 foot drone falling hundreds of feet on someone is obviously a threat.

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

#674

Post by bloopernova »

VectorLock wrote: post #459
senkora wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video of that model of drone: https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringPorn/comments/13juxdi/pt...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA1ENhxLqTo

I really like that it switches off the outer pair of propellers in level flight, that's a nice feature.

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.

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

#675

Post by dialup_sounds »

Mistletoe wrote: post #618
dgfitz wrote: post #616

Late to the thread so this will probably get buried. 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 l…

I guess I would say why are people concerned about this? I’d be much more concerned about ones without navigation lights.

It's a social contagion of panic.

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.

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

#676

Post by michaelt »

jerf wrote: post #644
rozab wrote: post #607

People would do well to keep in mind the episode of drone hysteria which happened at Gatwick airport in 2018. Hundreds of sightings were reported over a period of several days, shutting down the airport completely. 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 late…

The real story here is the apparent... and I use this term very, very deliberately... fecklessness of all the relevant authorities. Apparently... again, a deliberate choice... nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability, or something like that. I'm not sure what the problem is, exactly, and that is in some sense now the dominant problem…

> fecklessness of all the relevant authorities. [...] nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation

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.

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

#677

Post by hersko »

Aeolun wrote: post #75
abuani wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not commercial airlines. I live in NJ was very skeptical of this at first, but after seeing the same patterns 5 nights in a row for aircrafts not going towards Newark, I really have a hard time believing it is simply airlines.

Sure, I’m not saying there’s nothing, but there’s clearly some component of hysteria.

It's not hysteria if UFOs start showing up en-masse and then people start thinking everything in the sky is a UFO. It just means people are more likely to attribute lights in the night sky to this new phenomenon. Of course there will be false positives, but it does not mean the underlying issue exists.

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

#678

Post by rolph »

15155 wrote: post #637
rolph wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the synthetic precursors are.

Which? All of the weaponized forms involve some pretty nasty flourinated precursor chemicals which themselves are quite toxic -- and controlled.

all of them. if you understand chemistry; nasty, quite toxic, and controlled are not barriers.

e.g. isopropyl alcohol.

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

#679

Post by reverendsteveii »

jerf wrote: post #644
rozab wrote: post #607

People would do well to keep in mind the episode of drone hysteria which happened at Gatwick airport in 2018. Hundreds of sightings were reported over a period of several days, shutting down the airport completely. 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 late…

The real story here is the apparent... and I use this term very, very deliberately... fecklessness of all the relevant authorities. Apparently... again, a deliberate choice... nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability, or something like that. I'm not sure what the problem is, exactly, and that is in some sense now the dominant problem…

Question: how do you think the US government post-9/11 would respond if they actually didn't know who belonged to these drones and they were less than an hour from Washington DC (given a flight speed of 200mph https://en.defence-ua.com/weapon_and_tech/325_kmh_while_ukra...)? Would they pussyfoot around for a week, then blow smoke up our asses about it or would they immediately eliminate the threat and then blow smoke up our asses about it? I think that someone somewhere knows what's happening and won't tell us but has enough authority to stand down an armed response, which to me sounds like DHS or DoD.

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

#680

Post by reverendsteveii »

delfinom wrote: post #663
pjc50 wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability 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 th…

[flagged]

You'll notice they were able to identify both the flyer and the purpose of the flight in both these cases.
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