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> they believed the drone was highly unlikely to be battery-powered based on the altitude, distance, and speed at which it flew Does that mean it's gasoline powered? Do we have many details on gas powered drones ? i.e. the kind of range, altitude and speed they can achieve?
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Why would you need an experimental drone to do that when you can use satellite photos?
You want to test your ability to get physical payloads in place, e.g. in the future the drone could carry a bomb or something else clever (listening devices? Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes? Etc) You want low angle shots? You're not well funded enough to get good satellite photos?
Is there anything that building a delivery mechanism to carry and then drop gallium onto a plane does that an actual gun wouldn't?
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Could be any number of defense contractors, military, or LEO recklessly testing out a high end drone, then breaking the rules to avoid consequences. Is there any intelligence that a drone that size could provide that you couldn't get from a combination of satellites and just driving around a decent camera? It seems really risky for a foreign adversary for limited gain.
Right, this is why I'm confused. There's no play by any sufficiently advanced adversary that makes sense. Except domestic terrorism. A fairly rich / savvy domestic actor with bad intent might be interested in seeing if they can fly about with a fast / large drone. Prior to, you know, equipping that drone with something bad.
If it was domestic terrorists it seems likely they would have seized the opportunity to do damage immediately instead of showing their hand like this. An "advanced persistent threat" (such as a foreign country) to borrow from the computer security world seems more likely to take this sort of "test but don't actually damage anything" approach.
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I can't imagine a defense contractor imperiling their flow of money when they could certainly arrange to test at White Sands or some such. This kind of thing is straight to jail, do pass Go, do not collect $2 billion. LEO, same; perhaps they might play loose with the law, but around refueling infrastructure and airports? That brings the Feds in 100%. Again, straight to jail. What is the risk/reward here? A three-lett…
So the argument is "no one commits crimes except for terrorists"? I'm afraid I'm not convinced.
My money would be on terrorists as well, but that's why we have investigations. Let's see where the satellite photos take us.
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According to the description “The quad copter was described as approximately 5 feet long by about 3 feet wide, with a single green flashing LED light.”
Odd that the creators of the drone bothered with a flashing light.
Also entirely possible they used some stock parts and just didn't realize the LED was there.
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You want to test your ability to get physical payloads in place, e.g. in the future the drone could carry a bomb or something else clever (listening devices? Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes? Etc) You want low angle shots? You're not well funded enough to get good satellite photos?
> Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes? Is there anything that building a delivery mechanism to carry and then drop gallium onto a plane does that an actual gun wouldn't?
Hypothetically it might act as a more subtle form of sabotage, the goal being to bring down a plane in the air. It might also be harder to cleanup/patch than a bullet hole if detected. I don't think it's a serious threat though and is really acting as a stand in for "fancy forms of sabotage".
It could be interesting that the 4-6 rotor configuration, range/time of around and hour and 50mi, and the 14,000ft+ performance strongly indicate a fuel-powered device, but that the night vision goggles couldn't see it. It didn't indicate if the NVGs were of the ambient-light-enhancing type or IR type. This probably tells us that the NVGs were the ambient-light-enhancing type as there would be very little ambient ref…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to the description “The quad copter was described as approximately 5 feet long by about 3 feet wide, with a single green flashing LED light.”
Odd that the creators of the drone bothered with a flashing light.
This could simply be mischief with an off-the shelf, gasoline, quad copter with upgraded long range radios. Flashing green strobe would be an FAA navigation light -- if viewed from the other side you would see a flashing red.
All of the natsec and domestic spying theories would be nullified by the thing having nav lights.