Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 943 posts

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

#691

Post by tigerBL00D »

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…

I would not write this.off as hysteria. It's important to consider motivation of potential actors. Every advanced rocket guidance system uses cameras to zero in on its targets during the final approach. You can't rely on GPS at that point. To do a good job you need to know what your target looks like and high resolution drone imagery helps a lot.

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

#692

Post by nonameiguess »

jerf wrote: post #649
ninininino wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been following this news story at all? There are probably hundreds of video clips on social media depicting the same craft. So I'm not sure what the relevancy is of your story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9rrkYGAUU&list=RDNSOT9rrkY... 3 minutes and 7 seconds in this video is a good example of what these typically appear as. But yes it's most likely a US military drone exercise or active operation (have…

The military theory doesn't fit to me on the grounds that at this point they should be just admitting it. They're calling more attention to the drones than they would if they would just say "yup, those are ours". You don't hide things by parading them around in front of people. They've got all sorts of places to secretly fly things and all the permits they need to create whatever RF environment they want in the proce…

With all due respect, this is yet another instance of Hacker News confidently stating very wrong things. My wife ran the operational testing program for a classified Naval aircraft capability for nearly a decade. They flew unmarked planes out of a commercial airport. People photographed them and asked questions all the time. Nobody ever answered them. Neither confirm nor deny is standard practice. If you have something like the U2 flying at 50,000 feet, by all means, hide it. Fly out of Area 51 or whatever. But if you're just modifying standard aircraft and it flies low enough that people are going to see it anyway, the best you can do is keep it out of anyone's hands to physically examine, but you can't keep people from seeing it.

She used to show me speculation just like this on hobbyist observer web forums. People speculating the planes belonged to the CIA, were running cocaine shipments, all kinds of crazy shit. Nobody for whatever reason ever guessed the obvious and only true statement. It was just basic military aircraft testing out new surveillance tech that wasn't ready to field yet. Not "surveillance state monitor the public" shit that Hacker News thinks we're doing, either. Just cranky weird shit like hiring a bunch of people in west Texas to ride around on camels and horses and seeing if you can tell the difference, because it's a lot easier to do that first over territory you control before you try to do it in Iraq.

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

#693

Post by red_admiral »

j2bax wrote: post #572
diggan wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just follow them How exactly do you follow a fixed-wing drone? Some of the high-end/industrial drones has pretty impressive ranges.

With a fixed wing drone of your own of course!

Yeah, unless someone really really big is behind this (or it's aliens), then a US military drone should be able to track and follow one of the unknown drones for a while.

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

#694

Post by axus »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #685
delfinom wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why would they be interested in a random military installation in New jersey? And not omething on the Pacific coast or Hawaii or Guam or in the Philippines or Japan or Okinawa be more likely?

To get paid for the pictures, but not have to travel far?

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

#695

Post by zelon88 »

hiatus wrote: post #615
curt15 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot one down and see who comes knocking?

If history is any indication it will be local police responding to shots fired. Many municipalities in NJ do not allow the discharge of a firearm within town limits. Morris Township has such a law in their code as well.

I wonder where the threshold is for claiming self defense against a drone? Does the Castle Doctrine apply to non-human assailants?

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

#696

Post by ANewFormation »

bee_rider wrote: post #391
ANewFormation wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they can only shoot down unidentified weather balloons.

IIRC there were multiple instances of the balloons and the one they shot down was intentionally shot down in a relatively safe area.

They shot down at least 3 including one that 100% belonged to a local club, meaning the military had no clue what they were launching missiles at. One was shot down over Lake Huron, and the pilot actually even managed to miss the balloon with his missile. It's like 99 Red Balloons meets Idiocracy.

Obviously the military can shoot down whatever they want, let alone use EM tech, which is highly effective at grounding drones. Drones keep getting sighted near the exact areas that would be testing out drone militarization, and not getting shot down. Gee, I wonder who's they might be.

People would be so dramatically more informed if they dropped social media and corporate news.

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

#698

Post by roflyear »

Aeolun wrote: post #453
roflyear wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drones only operate at night and it's hard taking good pictures at night with phones (or even nice cameras) - try to take a picture of the moon, which isn't moving, is brighter, etc.. you can tell it's the moon but it's a lot quality picture.

Drones are a lot closer than the moon. I’m fairly certain my middle of the line camera can do better than what I see on that article.

Why argue online? Just try to take a picture outside of a streetlight, or something, in a dark area. You'll see what I mean.

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

#699

Post by nradov »

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…

AH-64 Apache helicopters sound similar to most every other turbine engine helicopter. I doubt that you could distinguish between them, especially not at any distance.

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

#700

Post by btbuildem »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #685
delfinom wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why would they be interested in a random military installation in New jersey? And not omething on the Pacific coast or Hawaii or Guam or in the Philippines or Japan or Okinawa be more likely?

Because the US is full of infrastructure that is critical but weak, and the JIT supply chain stretched to the thinnest of margins in the name of sacred profit can often be the best point of attack.

Remember when Helene ravaged the southeastern US? One of the things that got cut off was a plant producing saline -- turns out, the US gets its saline from three manufacturers, when one went dark, the effects were felt nation-wide. Effects like cancelling surgical procedures for the lack of basic resources, and saline shortages lasting until today.

It would make a lot of sense for foreign adversaries to scope out these weak points, and integrate them into their strategies.

Post reply on HN