11–20 of 83 posts
Very common for people to report drones when there are no drones. This is what shut down gatwick airport for 3 days! https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/gatwick-dron...
We might be laughing now, but this kind of things bring us new laws, limitations and regulations. Drones are a great tool, even in the hands of a total amateur. Some regulation is needed (eg. not flying over crowds of people), but otherwise a top-down view shows many, many interesting things, from far crash remains (missing people, atleast finding a body) to illegal dumping operations (eg. a company pouring toxic was…
They are still facing prison after 2 years of investigation.
We know it happens but we rinse and repeat. Watch out there are two shooters! People loot after disasters! Most of the time there's a chemical leak at a school or business. (ie The plane that dumped fuel over a school recently)
Given a day by day counters for the Coronavirus on social media, it'll hit hard. The mass hysteria for the 2019 n-CoV is going to kill a lot more people than the virus itself although you can't slow / stop the Coronavirus without mass hysteria, it's hard to know if it's just collateral damage or an incident in itself.
CDPS “confirmed no incidents involving criminal activity, nor have investigations substantiated reports of suspicious or illegal drone activity.” this means the "activity" was legal.
On the one hand, we have 23 sightings a week, across the town, from a variety of people, including a helicopter pilot, over a sustained period of time. On the other hand, we have a government report that all of those sightings were of "stars, planets, or hobbyist drones". The people of this town have never seen a star before? Really? Is the government report really more believable?
It sounds like the scene in Men in Black, but even more lame. "No. Those weren't drones. Those were nothing."
"Mass hysteria" is an explanation that seems hard to swallow. These people weren't panicking, they weren't seeing demons or magic, they were making reports of real things (drones) acting in plausible ways. That a group of local government officials couldn't find any evidence doesn't seem to mean anything. What evidence would we expect them to find?
I'd like to know what the usual rate of false drone reports is in a typical town. Is this an average number of reports? More than average, and if so, why?
I work with lots of people who seem to have this attitude. When customers submit bugs that immediately think the customer is imagining the problem, or doing something wrong, or that the bug is magically a transient issue that isn't worth investigating or something like that. I think the reality is investigations are hard and sometimes yield nothing, but that doesn't mean we should jump to preposterous conclusions.
Thirty years ago it would have been aliens, right? I'm a little surprised no one reported being abducted by the drones.
Did you notice in the police report that "someone got a picture of the drones" but it turned out to just be a picture of a "white light in the sky". This would definitely be UFO two or three decades ago. Also the number of spelling and grammatical errors in the sheriff's email was quite... surprising. Or maybe not, for small town police...
I think it's just a matter of what you've focused on in your life, purposely or not.
Recently in Australia they have had the Satanic ritual child abuse mass hysteria come around AGAIN. They are still facing prison after 2 years of investigation. We know it happens but we rinse and repeat. Watch out there are two shooters! People loot after disasters! Most of the time there's a chemical leak at a school or business. (ie The plane that dumped fuel over a school recently) Given a day by day counters for…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly this. I'm not convinced in the least that nothing happened, merely that nobody was breaking any laws with whatever they were doing.
> 13 were determined to be “planets, stars, or small hobbyist drones.” Six were commercial aircraft, and four remain unconfirmed. Sounds to me like a case of one or two guys flying drones sometimes that turned into "What's that light in the sky?! It must be a drone!!"
There were Sheriffs who reported seeing these fleets of drones. Sheriffs would normally try to calm hysteria rather than contribute to it, and it would be pretty hard to mistake a fleet of drones, not to mention they saw them moving in what they called a "search pattern". The numbers they were talking about were also higher than the number of traditional aircraft than can normally be seen at once, even near major airports with parallel runways in operation. If someone spots a few drones, I could see that being a mistake, but 17 flying in a search pattern? That person saw something exceptional no matter what it was.
Given the way that they worded this response, it seems like there was activity and that activity was found to be legal (ie. the operators had the appropriate 107 waivers to operate multiple drones and at night). It could have been your average joe, but that many drones makes it unlikely.
What else could it be? Lockheed Martin has a significant presence in Colorado and they hold both of these waivers that are necessary to operate multiple drones and at night (the FAA database is public and I looked in there for anyone who holds both waivers). Lockheed also has a small drone product in production that operates as a fleet with an extraordinary flight time and range using mesh networking:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/indago-vtol-ua...
Not to mention, Air Force Global Strike Command, "confirmed that it conducts counterdrone exercises" and it "oversees underground Minuteman silos spread across northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and western Nebraska, the area where the drones have been spotted nightly the past two weeks"
https://gazette.com/military/colorado-drone-mystery-sighting...
Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure -- it's impossible to prove something didn't happen. All they can do is not find them when they try, and that was over a month after the initial sightings. Of course, it's completely logical not to believe it unless there is definitive proof too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you notice in the police report that "someone got a picture of the drones" but it turned out to just be a picture of a "white light in the sky". This would definitely be UFO two or three decades ago. Also the number of spelling and grammatical errors in the sheriff's email was quite... surprising. Or maybe not, for small town police...
I've found spelling and grammar errors after very common, even among "smart" people. I think it's just a matter of what you've focused on in your life, purposely or not.
We might be laughing now, but this kind of things bring us new laws, limitations and regulations. Drones are a great tool, even in the hands of a total amateur. Some regulation is needed (eg. not flying over crowds of people), but otherwise a top-down view shows many, many interesting things, from far crash remains (missing people, atleast finding a body) to illegal dumping operations (eg. a company pouring toxic was…