For the past couple of weeks, mysterious drones have been spotted not only over New Jersey, but many other states as well, and other places in the world also.

I have an excellent theory as to what they are and their purpose, which I will get to at the end of this post.

Several weeks ago, around 10:30pm, I let my dog out in the backyard for a last potty break of the night.

I like to look at the stars when I'm out there, because there are fascinating things to see, like Orions' Belt (which shows up in the eastern sky) beginning in November.

I was looking in the eastern sky and I saw a fairly bright, stationary object; it had red, green, and blue lights and I had noticed it before, but didn't think much of it.

That evening, I saw something ( I thought was an airplane) flying eastward. As it approached the stationary "star", it stopped parallel to it. The "star" then blinked several times to the "airplane" that had stopped beside it, and the "airplane" responded in kind. Then the "airplane" continued on it's way eastward.

This morning, I was listening to Glen Beck who was interviewing Brian Bergen regarding these drones. It was quite interesting.

Those who are in "authority", keep saying :"We don't know what they are."

Well, I do. My theory is as believable as them saying "we don't know".

Santa Claus has decided his job is finally getting to him, so he is delegating his delivery tasks. These drones are perfect for that, with some of them being quite large; large enough to hold lots of gifts. The only problem, is that the reindeer have lost their jobs.

Would love to hear your thoughts and/or theories on this latest news.

* the Reindeer are Welcoming this, didn't others notice they've been horribly exploited, don't have IP rights to their appearances, haven't had a raise in years? Unless the "X" administration tampers with their Social Security benefits, they'll be fine with retirement!

Then: do the drones have permits, meet all government regulations? Are the operator(s) well trained? Are they insured? How about the necessary lighting (Red on the port side, Green on starboard)? What about the fire possibility of their Ni-Cad batteries?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2024 05:49PM by GNPE.

1. Two chumps in Boston

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyvnnj8g34o

"Two people have been arrested after allegedly conducting a "hazardous drone operation" near the airspace of the US city of Boston's main airport, police said.

Robert Duffy, 42, and Jeremy Folcik, 32, were arrested on Long Island, part of the Boston Harbor Islands, on Saturday night.

They were charged with trespassing and police said they may face further counts and fines over the drones, which were "dangerously close" to Logan International Airport."

2. Possible Chinese espionage in California

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/calif-man-arrested-sfo-allegedly-flying-drone-19974445.php

"A California man was arrested at San Francisco International Airport on suspicion of flying a drone and taking photos over a United States Space Force Base on the Central Coast.

The suspect, a Chinese national and permanent U.S. resident from Brentwood, was arrested Monday at SFO, where he intended to board a flight to China, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a news release.

The man allegedly flew the drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County on Nov. 30 and photographed the base’s layout, the release said. The base’s drone detection system discovered the device as it flew over."

Strange goings on in Oregon too.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/oregon-pilot-puzzled-mysterious-lights-sky-ufo-sightings/283-ec41b739-acdb-4112-8ae7-6d75f9ef50a2

Maryland has been getting a few, and I'm not happy about it. The government either needs to claim them or investigate them.

The lost tribe of Israel is coming from the skies. Rusty should send the Three Nephites out to greet them.

Just more insane silly B.S.


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/13/2291745/-About-Those-New-Jersey-Drones?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2024 01:42PM by Dave the Atheist.

There are rumours of Chinese or Russian intelligence paying groups in Western countries to fly drones over US military bases and industrial sites.

Pranksters looking to make news are also a possibility.

Right now, we don't know for sure exactly who is behind this or even if it's an organised group or not.


############


https://www.yahoo.com/news/behind-mystery-drones-buzzing-over-103000239.html


American air bases in the US and UK have reported dozens of mysterious drones hovering over sensitive sites, in a bizarre and concerning trend under investigation by the Pentagon.

The drones vary in size, and are able to evade restrictions on flights above military bases.

Sites in New Jersey, California and the UK have all been visited by drones in recent weeks. Similar incidents happened over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia last year.

The most amazing part is that this has been going on for a while, and nobody in NJ has been reported for shooting a few down. That's insane!

The White House as assured us that these are just conventional aircraft sightings. "Who ya gonna believe, us? Or your lying eyes?"

The White House is right and you are wrong.

If they are conventional aircraft, then why are they flying over military bases and other no-fly zones? Surely they should know better.

Most military bases are in restricted airspace and clearly marked as such on VFR sectional charts. Take a look for yourself.

https://skyvector.com/

You also can't fly in terminal control areas (TCAs) around busy commercial airports without clearance, and you need a transponder (radar beacon that sends your altitude and other info to air traffic control) and ADS-B (GPS that also sends your position to ATC).


All drones over 0.25 Kg flying in US airspace have to be registered with the FAA like all other aircraft -- if they are operating legally.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2024 08:22AM by anybody.

And yet we've had drones flying over restricted airspace at night here in Maryland. There are lots of military bases and other facilities here. Hence my concern. I understand that the same thing has been happening in New Jersey.

The rumors are Putin is getting professional gangs to fly drones over military bases, frighten civilians, disrupt commercial aviation, etc. as "payback" for aiding Ukraine (forgetting that the US, UK, and RF all agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up her nuclear weapons left over from the USSR).

No licensed pilot or certified drone operator is willing to risk losing their ticket for this. It has to be some underground group or groups doing it.

I suspect that the FAA and DoD know who's behind this and isn't releasing the information for security reasons.

And yet, that would not explain what is going on in Oregon. We do not have the capability to move like that with our known technology.

Starlink satellites, according to this news story:

https://www.oregonlive.com/weather/2024/12/you-are-cleared-to-maneuver-to-avoid-the-ufo-pilots-report-unidentified-lights-over-oregon.html

Read the quotes in the article I posted above. That doesn't make sense either.

I know. There's no confirmation of anything at this point.

The Daily Mail is saying that some sightings match Russian Orlan-10 drones:


############

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14183057/drones-new-jersey-sighting-intelligence-analyst-theory.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2024 08:48AM by anybody.

I've seen a Starlink trek flying with my daughter over Nashville. Launched from Florida. It looks like a lighted string of pearls, and moving superfast. Only in our sight for about 40 seconds. This is nothing like Starlink.

Starlink satellites have a distinct look to them -- normally single lights that move as a group, similar to a meteor shower. The drones in the videos that I've seen have four lights such as you might expect with a drone or other aircraft.

I was just reporting another probable explanation.

If we're sticking with unmanned aircraft, i.e. drones, I can only think of three possible scenarios:

1. A U.S. or Allied government "Red Air" type adversary training exercise
2. Pranksters / hoaxsters seeking attention and/or media coverage
3. Foreign adversaries wanting to cause panic and to send a message, e.g. "we didn't attack you this time, but we could have"

Reports are these drones are much larger than typical hobby or amateur photography drones, and are both rotary and fixed-wing.

You also need more sophisticated equipment to operate a drone beyond the line of sight, typically a satellite or encrypted mobile network connection if you're looking to stay connected undetected.

Most recreational UAV operators don't have this type of equipment or the proper FAA certification for flying beyond LOS (if they are doing it legally).

That leaves the first and third possibilities.

Go read about the dozen drones following a US Coast Guard vessel off the NJ coast. Guaranteed, the government knows exactly what these are and who is behind this.

No way ordinary pranksters would be able to harass a vessel that far offshore.

My point exactly. It's no locals. But, our government knows exactly who it is. They're collecting info on these drones and their operators. They could end it in an hour if they wanted to.

The Whitehouse has never lied before. I completely trust them. /s

Publicity stunt for wicked

I think Orson Welles and his theater group is behind it.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/290049e335b37634ae4a6b7061f668877f2f837c3bc2915599725dd61916461d.jpg



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2024 12:45AM by caffiend.

Take note of the brand name:

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c35b91639b98d25587ed0e01bf85163db801d7dd0b5c8011ca4f94eeba88273c.jpg

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/076dcddbe379da92e611e606f38ffd716f65bf1dcb632c2fd049d706d6474d17.jpg

When I saw the giant drone show on America's Got Talent, I suspected that we are setting ourselves up for drone shenanigan problems.

Eventually people figure out how to be jerks, weaponize, scare, and ruin things for everyone.

I flew (as a crew member) in the Air Force, which requires a ton of training, even if one isn't a pilot. We had training in night flying, and how your mind works. For several days, you wear dark goggles all day to improve your night vision. Then, in a completely dark room, they show you lights, and how to detect lights moving here and there. We kept our eyes on one or more small red lights. We had to determine direction of flight, whether or not it hovered, and just generally describe how the flight moved about. At the end, they turn on the overhead lights, and show you that you were looking at one small completely stationary light. All the movements were in our minds. Out of about 20 students, they all reported the same movements and directions of flight. It was not only just in our individual heads, but also in our group imaginations. Yet, none of it was real. The moral of the story is that it's really possible to see a light move across the sky, even if it's a stationary warning light atop a cellular phone mast. So... It's very easy in the night sky to get confused when watching stuff.

(Read sometime how JFK, Jr. flew his airplane into the water, killing both him and his wife. It all had to do with seeing and feeling things that were not there -- but all because he trusted his brain, and did not trust his instruments.)

I don't know how accurate this is, but it's one person's take on everything that went wrong that night:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2010/july/pilot/10-mistakes-jfk-jr-made

Kennedy hubris.

You're correct. My daughter is a CFI and teaches students Instrument rating. The have "Foggles" to simulate flying blind. But, for thousands of people reporting, it's not because they are mistaking stationary lights as moving objects. It's because there are a ton of drones in the sky.

https://smartpilot.ca/airmanship/airmanship-articles/9-airmanship/airmanship-articles/530-the-jfk-jr-crash


"The three display modes all indicate a bank to the right. The left indicator is rotated counterclockwise. In the centre indicator, the aeroplane symbol is rotated clockwise. In the right indicator, the horizon is the same as on the left, but, in addition, the aeroplane symbol is rotated clockwise by the pilot's aileron input, indicating that the plane will continue to roll to the right. The instrument represented on the left is the standard system in today's aeroplanes, including John Kennedy's Piper Saratoga II. With the display at the right, pilots maintain wings-level flight merely by aligning the aeroplane symbol with the horizon, a natural response.

Flight experiments support the conclusion that John Kennedy Jr. became spatially disoriented in the absence of a visible horizon in conditions of poor visibility. The overwhelming probability is that he wound up in what is known by pilots as a "graveyard spiral." That is exactly what 19 out of 20 similarly trained pilots did with the loss of a visible horizon in an experiment at the University of Illinois 45 years ago (Bryan, Stonecipher and Aron, 1954).

XX
XX
XX

Stanley N. Roscoe, PhD, WW II pilot, is emeritus professor of aviation engineering psychology and aeronautical and astronautical engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; emeritus professor of psychology, New Mexico State University; former head of the Display Systems Department of Hughes Aircraft Company; president of ILLIANA Aviation Sciences Limited of McKinleyville, California, and Las Cruces, New Mexico; and senior vice-president of Aero Innovation, Inc., an aviation human factors company of Montreal, Quebec. For more on this topic, visit http://www.aero.ca/e_kennedy%27s_spiral.html.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2024 09:25PM by Maude.

Cludgie, what do you think about what is going on in Oregon? This is different than the drones.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/oregon-pilot-puzzled-mysterious-lights-sky-ufo-sightings/283-ec41b739-acdb-4112-8ae7-6d75f9ef50a2



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2024 12:23AM by Susan I/S.

Local journalist goes out, sees, and reports:

https://www.mtracey.net/p/drones-and-mass-hysteria-an-inquest

Snippet:

“Here’s what I would preliminarily urge people to consider. Group psychology and mass hysteria are real things. Undoubtedly, plenty of interested parties would love for the drone/object ‘invasion’ to be attributable to the standard cadre of scary “adversaries” like Russia, China, or Iran. Others may wish for it to be a secret Pentagon program being covered up by some elements of the Biden Administration, because they dislike the Biden Administration and a cover-up would be another datapoint confirming their dislike. Others may want to somehow blame it on Trump, who has now called for the drones to be shot down. Whatever your preferred explanation for these object sightings, harboring that preference should be paired with an openness to receipt of information without overwhelming confirmatory bias. Ideally, there should probably be no preference at all. Why should you have a preference, one way or another, what the genesis of the activity is? My preference is to simply know what the genesis is, rather than having a preference for any particular explanation. In other words, my dominant preference here is for truth-seeking, rather than explanation-hoping.”

When I was there, there was new information about a new drone program that was in beta. Makes me wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Thank you to all of you; you are all so intelligent and well- informed. I learn something new here all the time.

Reminds me of the Chinese balloon. That turned out to have a US call sign. The media hyped the Chinese balloon story. Probably our drones. All sorts of reasons they could be flying around. They could be trying to sniff out nuclear or chemical materials, dirty bombs, tracking terrorist operations. All sorts of things.

> Reminds me of the Chinese balloon. That turned out
> to have a US call sign.

You may want to do a bit more research there, Sparky. The spy balloon used an American internet provider for its own navigation but it never had "a US call sign."

What Human said in his post up-thread.

Once I was at a computer conference in Calgary, and I needed to get back to Dakotasota for a class the next morning, so I drove all night across southern Canada. It was late June.

I saw the sun go down in the NW, the light of dusk moved from the NW to due north to the NE, and the sun came up in the NE about 4:30 in the morning. The sky was never completely dark all night long.

Fast forward a couple of years. I am having dinner with some friends in a rural town near Calgary, and again it is late June. I tell them about how Calgary is far enough north that near the time of the summer solstice, the sky never gets completely dark. There were about ten people there, all Calgarians, most over 50 years old. Nobody believed me. It was a talkative group, so we kept chattering until 1 am, at which point, we decided to go out on the back porch to see if dusk light was still visible.

Turned out it very much was visible. It wasn’t even a close call. The sky was definitely not pitch black to the north. None of these people had ever noticed that, nor had even heard it from someone else.

My point - it is surprising what people will not notice if they are not looking for it. There was a popular YouTube video 20 some years ago where you were supposed to count how many times a group of guys passed a basketball around. During the video, a guy in a gorilla suit walks right through the group of men, and most people do not notice the gorilla suit at all. Replaying the video, there it was, bigger than life.

So, if people are suddenly watching the sky looking for lights, they are going to start seeing a lot of lights that have been around all the time, but they never noticed before.


Second story: Central Utah and SL Counties are popular sites for reporting UFO sightings, on a line from Lehi to West Valley City. The reason this happens is that there are mountain ranges on both sides of the airport, so large planes can’t approach the airport at a right angle and turn on final approach to line up with the runway.

Planes approaching from the south line up directly with the runway clear down between Payton and Delta Utah, which is 40 to 50 miles south of the airport, so they can easily clear the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains, and have enough distance to lose the 10 or 12 thousand feet of altitude needed to get down to 4,250 or whatever the airport altitude is.

It is not uncommon, especially in the wintertime, to have 3 or 4 planes all lined up in that unusual approach pattern of a very long line straight out from the runway. If you are in West Valley City and look south, you will see the landing lights from all the planes on final approach, and the lights will look like they are just hanging in the air. If you look at them for several minutes, you will notice that at least one of the sets of lights is getting larger, and you may see the lead plane fly right over your head, but for a shorter look, all you will notice is 3 or 4 bright lights in very close formation, hovering in the sky, slowly moving back and forth relative to each other as air currents move the planes slightly off the approach path.

Looks for all the world like a bunch of UFOs having a committee meeting in the sky.


Third item: if foreign countries really had spy drones that it didn’t want to be seen, there’s a really simple thing they could do. TURN OFF THEIR F******* NAVIGATION LIGHTS. Yeah, that’s illegal, but since when would spy planes worry about that? Navigation lights are not so the spy plane can see. They are so others can see the plane. Turn off the lights. Have a custom transponder so the pilot flying the drone can tell where it is, but nobody else can. A government would easily have the resources to do that. If they really want to be fancy, make the drone so that it has a miniscule radar footprint. That would make it practically invisible, especially at night.

So, in summary, a lot of people who never paid much attention to the sky are suddenly looking at it and seeing stuff that has always been there. At least some of the “drones” they were seeing are not actually drones. Basically anyone who has the money can buy a drone these days. That is likely the source of the real drone sightings. Foreign countries intent on spying could easily do a much better job of hiding their drones.


Color me extremely dubious.

Oops, wrong button. Posting equivalent of butt dial. :-/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2024 01:42PM by Brother Of Jerry.

I live on the approach path for an airport, and I also get lots of military aircraft (helicopters, planes, and jets) that fly over. It's rare that I can't tell what is what. The commercial jets are easy to pick out, to the point that I know from their noise when they depart from the conventional approach path or are lower than normal. But then again, we have a lot of light pollution in these parts.

I think that many of the current drone reports are both true and concerning, and that the drones need to be investigated.

"So, if people are suddenly watching the sky looking for lights, they are going to start seeing a lot of lights that have been around all the time, but they never noticed before."

I doubt this was your point, but to me this says "Mass conjuring event". UFOs are appearing literally by magic because a critical mass of the collective consciousness expects to see them.

Or maybe they were there the whole time, and the government knows this, but their cloaking technology keeps them hidden. But then you have this mass attention event that inhibits cloaking.

The government's response has been to get its drone fleets airborne to provide plausible deniability, rather than fessing up to the open secret of UFOs.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and my uncle told me that the Navy had computers that were 10 to 20 years ahead of those in the civilian world. Turns out he was right. https://www.wired.com/story/secret-history-of-the-first-microprocessor-f-14/

But in those days the CAGC was highly classified. Government secrets can be widely known but still kept under wraps or within the realm of myth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2024 03:25AM by bradley.

those who distrust government & the prospect of being governed prefer anonymity, but that doesn't explain why the drones display ordinary lights as licensed airplanes are required to...

Why, remains to be learned.

Why is because if John Q Public buys a drone as a toy, first, there is no way for them to turn off the lights short of removing the bulbs, and without a transponder in the drone, and a receiver on the pilot console, it would be pretty difficult to be able to fly the drone because the pilot would have great difficulty seeing it, especially at night.

Your ominous sounding “they” is, I suppose, meant to imply that “they” are foreign actors. I contend that if espionage was the goal, they’d at least make a half-hearted effort to hide the drones. Not trying to hide them strikes me as really flimsy “proof” that it must be furriners up to no good.

I wrote "they" because an operation of this scope is not likely to be the work of a single person, but some organization or collective entity. Even Ernest Blofeld needed henchmen. Whether the "they" turns out to be malevolent or benign, domestic or foreign, remains to be seen.

If the operators are sophisticated enough to send out scores, or hundreds, of these, they are probably sophisticated enough to turn running lights on and off. It's possible that they're guided by sensors and advanced (AI?) programing, and are not optically tracked and controlled. Incidentally, some reports have them go dark at the end of their mission. Or foray. Or display. Or whatever.