721–730 of 943 posts
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Pretty terrible guarantee to make since the Pentagon already said it wasn't their drones.
It's hilarious to watch UFO conspiracy theorists say "I believe what the Pentagon has said" and not explode in a puff of hypocrisy.
The CIA vs Pentagon vs FBI vs whatever else natsec department that was once set up for a singular purpose before expanding scope into everything else.
There isn't a central controller seeing everything - just a President (whoever that is) sitting on top of a herd of out-of-control broncos desperately trying not to fall off. These drones are almost certainly US origin, but the departments don't talk to each other, so when one says they don't know anything about it, I'm inclined to believe that it is actually the case
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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.
> I doubt that you could distinguish between them Do you think that is is possible that someone can? Just not me? Or literally impossible? I would also encourage you not to make assumptions about the background of a random person on the internet. > especially not at any distance They fly over our home.
I don't doubt for one second you can identify an Apache by sound.
Almost no chance these are not US military. The drones have been appearing very consistently, if there were the slightest concern of foreign military drones, then military jets would have been scrambled to intercept - there have been no such reports.
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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.
Those who are downvoting and you are in the US i'd love to hear why you have no concern about these things and or no concern the world thinking we let drones fly unabated in our airspace ... prompting various foreign nations to try and do the same over our massive US of A airspace on up into remote-ish Alaska. You have congressman saying scary things while the Pentagon says those congressman words arent true.
I mentioned Trump above (i voted for her) if that was something that triggered some downvotes?
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Military jets scrambled to intercept a bunch of random UAVs? Do you know how expensive those things are to operate?
Yes, that is the protocol when aircraft enter restricted airspace like next to military bases - which has been reported. Besides training, intercepting aircraft is primarily what jets do. In terms of cost, it’s a lot less expensive to scramble jets than the alternative, that’s why that is the protocol for a number of situations including things as mundane as aircraft losing communications. Here there has been signifi…
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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.
Why put lights on the drones? Why not map during the day?
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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 somethi…
"civilian areas for weeks at a time making damned sure thousands of people can get photographs and turn it into a national story " was not an extraneous part of my quote. This is not just "not answering questions", this is rubbing it everyone's face, this is running around in the airport shrieking about their secret airplanes and making sure everyone notices them and then telling everyone "oh, but no, those aren't ou…
It's just more of the same.
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…
The concerns about it being a foreign power seem misplaced. Shouldn’t the main concern with drones be domestic terrorism? A civilian could easily buy a small fleet of drones, equip them with small IEDs or sarin gas, and fly them into otherwise secured areas with large crowds. Are there any procedures in place to prevent this?
RC helicopters have been a thing for decades.