I don't think that's super clear - it seems to have covered somewhat over 20 miles but more importantly passed over a substantial (4k feet prominent) mountain ridge. That would make reliable control by line of sight radio very suspect and I don't think the operator would have risked it unless they had control by satellite or a high degree of confidence in its autonomous capability. Around the point it passes over the ridge the pilots briefly speculate that it may have encountered some kind of control problem due to its behavior, so perhaps it was being controlled from the ground with an autonomous safety capability... but that still indicates a high level of logistical sophistication since it departed the scene away from where the operator would have been (if we go on the autonomous safety theory it was presumably returning to autonomously land at a site north of Tucson?).

Maybe the operator was on the ridge?

Or on one of the helicopters?

Sounds like something a 4g modem could handle trivially.

4g modems connect to 4g towers.

4g towers transmit downward to users in the city below them. They do not transmit upward.

That is why if you leave you phone turned on during a commercial flight, it will stop working after take off anyway. The towers don't send signal upward. You might still collect some residual signal for a little bit if you are near a tower and directly above it for a thousand feet or so, but not at 14,000 ft.

This couldn't be done with a 3g/4g/5g/LTE modem.

does this mean I would be out of range on any construction crane higher than a skyscraper nearby?

> the drone... proceeded northwest at high speed and climbing, with the helo and another LE helo in trail. The copter began to climb and flew out of the TUS area about 50 miles to the northwest of town into the middle of nowhere desert out by the mine west of KAVQ. It was last seen climbing through 14,000’ and into the undercast, where it disappeared.

> the mystery craft was essentially playing with them by repeatedly positioning itself directly above their helicopters’ rotors, some 1,000 feet above them

> the drone maintained a speed of 75 knots in a 30-knot headwind

Can they do all of this for under $1k?

To my memory; these things have been repeatedly popping up in the southern US; Arizona and Texas.

Maybe not for under $1k. But under any price? Is it physically possible? Yes.

We're not talking about a hobbyist guy in his garage here. We're talking about either US Military accidentally caught in a game of cat and mouse with local law enforcement, or more likely: drug cartels.

Both organizations operate heavily in the southwestern US, clandestinely without the need or desire to inform local law enforcement of their operations, and have practically unlimited budgets to accomplish their goals.

The real goal of a press release like this is to drum up a little FUD to take up to the governor and secure more funding, maybe even get your local precinct another helicopter, a cool drone, or a task force. And hell, maybe that's what they legitimately need here.

This was my conclusion too. This isn't a hobbyist. This isn't even a rogue professional drone pilot that flies drones for Hollywood movies or something.

This is a real UAV that is military grade.

It was either the actual military (it was first discovered just outside of an AirForce base) or a drug cartel that got their hands on a drone. Military Grade drones are pretty available at this point to any group with enough means (money). For example the Elbit Hermes 450[1] is a long-endurance tactical drone that has been sold to many countries outside of the big militaries. For example Georgia (the country), Azerbaijan, North Macedonia, The Philippines, Zambia, Botswana, Thailand, and even Mexico, Brazil, Columbia. Columbia bought a ton of drones from Elbit in the range of "tens of millions of dollars". The benefit of the Hermes 450 is the cost, it is supposed to cost only around $1M, which makes it very affordable for countries without massive military budgets like the US. I don't think it is a stretch that a drug cartel bought one ($1M is a small price to pay if it can save a single $10M drug run from being captured), or that they bought it from another country like Georgia or Columbia.

They are satellite controlled and have a 20 hours flight time, meaning it could have easily flown from a long ways away.

Oh and even the US Customs and Border Patrol own two of these same drones. Which I find also interesting.

These helicopter pilots were either chasing a drug cartel drone like this or a USAF drone. Because they first spotted it nearby the Air Force base, it seems to me that most likely it was actually an Air Force drone (most likly a MQ-1 Predator drone) that was conducting a training simulation near the base when it was discovered by the helo pilots. Then it just proceeded to play around with them. The one pilot talked about how it would fly in front of the helicopter and then maneuver to get behind it and follow it, staying in the helicopter's shadow. That sounds like a military move. I bet this whole thing started off as a training mission and then went off course and they decided to train on the helicopter pilots. They even said that the average speed of the drone was an estimated 70 knots. Well the MQ-1 UAV has a cruising speed of... surprise, surprise... 70 knots!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbit_Hermes_450

Agree with your analysis here. I don’t think this could be military otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing a press release and release of audio under freedom of information. If this was under serious investigation doubt we wouldn’t of seen the audio released as well. My bet would be the helicopter pilots got overexcited and the FAA is comfortable this is just advanced hobbyist equipment.

Unlikely, but they probably could for under $10k. The expensive part is the long-distance high-bandwidth radio system. The aircraft itself is trivially easy, assuming it's a liquid-fueled fixed-wing craft.

You'll notice I used the word "basic" above to imply a starter or hobbyist capability.

I would think that most people with $10k+ of drone up there, aren't risking it physically or legally by playing with helicopters?

Someone playing with tech that someone else is paying for though?

Don't underestimate the scale of wealth, $10k for a few moments of joy/adrenaline is far from unheard of for those with the means. If you have others, or can reproduce that piece of equipment with mere currency and you're sitting on a mountain of it.. why not?

I don't underestimate it, but if I wanted to play around with an expensive drone I could afford to lose, it would be during the day when I could see what I was doing or in a more interesting place. Dangerously flying a large/experimental drone near an air force base goes from "lose my $10k drone" to incurring the wrath of serious entities. Take down a chopper and if it's traced back to you, you're in some sort of trouble.

I just don't think private drone is the angle here. More likely to be an experimental agency thing, and someone flying a work gadget they haven't personally paid for, IMO.

> Dangerously flying a large/experimental drone near an air force base goes from "lose my $10k drone" to incurring the wrath of serious entities.

Messing with the armed forces or police seemed to be part of growing up as a teenage boy for some of my friends. (I was tempted to write rite of passage here but that would imply that it happened once for each.)

Of course they like me wasn't too well of so it was all about illegal fireworks, sneaking, swimming or canoeing into military or naval bases etc.

No doubt in my mind they could have tried something similar to this if they were young today and had the tech skills and money for it.

I know you're responding to the single point as a conversational thing, but it gives a collective theory of: teenagers mucking around, who have enough money that throwing away a $10k+ experimental drone is no issue, and they just happen to live near an air force base where there are definitely no actual experimental drones being tested. My issue then with that is that the modern teenager typically films things for credibility, and this sort of stunt isn't going to be very satisfying at night. (I fly drones. Flying at night, I try to get the footage I'm paid for and then land.)

IMO, either the story as reported has been exaggerated in many dimensions (altitude above the chopper, size of drone, time in the air, distance before landing) or it's something from the air force base that's not commercially available.

Thanks, both for your insight and the way you presented it :-)

And yes, you are right that I'm only talking about young people playing games with police/military and I don't have any idea if this is feasible or not.

But it could be a demo flight to prove to cartels this drone tech is above the law. "Look, we flew circles around a police bird and casually strolled into military airspace, imagine what we could do if we tried".

Flying a work gadget sounds way more likely a way to get yourself caught. And lose your job. No, I'd rather risk a $10k toy than risk getting fired.

All kinds of exciting things can get people into serious trouble but they still do it. For example, drifting and street racing expensive cars at night. Some even taunt the police. Here's a good series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clf-KhniImw

In my mind flying a remote controlled drone over an air base seems way less risky than hitting the streets in a car.

Yes, the cartel is very concerned about following laws and wouldn’t want to risk anything like upsetting the police to test a thing that might be specifically designed to avoid them.

Not sure the cartel would be testing in the US with a drone that has its lights on and is capable of novel flight movements, and hang around circling police helicopters, rather than just pick a place away from an airforce base and prioritise carrying a load without notice. I could see speed being an advantage, but not aerobatics.

What fixed wing craft can hover 1000' directly above the rotors of the helos? Don't fixed wing aircraft need to be constantly moving to stay in the air?

Small ones usually have sufficiently strong motors to do things that the bigger ones can't.

FPV just means that the drone has a camera with a first person view and doesn't rely on the user being able to see the drone to fly it.

Yes, it can be easily done for under $1k. This is not $1k for the drone, just for making whatever drone FPV capable, if that's what you were misunderstanding.

If you build a basic quadcopter yourself you can even include everything for $1000. This would buy you a fun hobbyist FPV rig, although it wouldn't have the range, speed, or endurance of the drone in the article. For that you'd have to pay more, but even then we're talking "serious hobbyist" money, not "nation-state" money.

Maybe some nation states are buying closeup footage of military bases and a whole market has sprung up, including local pros to service that demand.

Probably not but that's not what the post above you said. Do you think it's reasonable to say this drone was controlled by a -satellite-?

Satellite? Obviously these police don't know what a repeater is.

TIL pilots don’t need to have a HAM license, huh.

No. Just like CB radio truckers don't need them. In fact, most people don't just to use radios. Really even a lot of drone pilots aren't getting HAM licenses. Though of course any HAM would know what I said above.

> FPV systems don't require satellites, and you can put a basic one together for less than $1000

This is a strawman argument. While technically yes it is true that an FPV drone can be put together for $1,000. But such a drone would not have the characteristics described in the observations.

A drone with capabilities matching the observations could certainly NOT be put together for $1,000. In fact, it would rival the capabilities of American military drones like the MQ-1 and MQ-9 which cost $10M and $28M respectively. These collective observations are why the two trained and experience pilots, who understand flight mechanics and capabilities, are so dumbfounded by what they saw.

The assumption made by the pilot suggesting that it must be satellite controlled is actually a valid conclusion. The pilots followed this drone from TUS area all the way to 50 miles outside of town, up to an elevation of 14,000 ft. Not only did they cover that distance, but they crossed over a mountain range. They were outside of the airport's radio range which is only transmitting low fidelity audio from one of the tallest towers in the area at presumably a ton of power (electricity...wattage) behind the transmission.

So for a line of sight transmitter we would need a low latency, high fidelity transmission capable of those distances. This MIGHT be possible physically, but not practically. The pilot of the drone would certaintly require a massive tower with a ton of power more powerful than the airport has. They would need to be doing it at a higher frequency (which degrades even faster over distance). This type of transmission would HAVE to come from a tower and it would require FCC licensing to transmit on the power and/or frequency required to make this happen (if its even possible to begin with, which I doubt). I am not even addressing the absurd claim that this could be built for $1,000. It simply can't. Full stop. I am addressing the actual capabilities, even if money were no object. This type of thing (if it were possible, which I don't think it is), would require significant infrastructure. This isn't somebody with a FPV they built off a video they watched on YouTube.

So then we get to the conclusion... how do you communicate with something at these distances and elevations? Satellite. This isn't possible for line of sight. At the $1,000 pricepoint or any other pricepoint.

There are a lot of other claims, such as the fact that it was outmaneuvering the helicopters. It had no thermal profile. But it had the ability to outlast the helicopters in flight time. It also was able to fly up to 14,000 feet which is actually another impressive feat for a smaller aircraft. I suspect it was fixed wing in order to accomplish these elevations and endurance.

Really this type of drone doesn't sound like something a civilian would be capable of building, it sounds like it matches the capabilities of a military grade UAV. Since it was first discovered near the AirForce base, I wouldn't discount the fact that it was a military UAV on a training exercise that just decided to harmlessly fool around with the helicopters after it was discovered.

I think what they were chasing was an MQ-1 UAV (popularly known as "The Predator"). The military is mostly replacing these now with the newer MQ-9 (Reaper), so it is common for the military to send all the shiny new equipment overseas to fight in wars and the older ones come back to the states to be used as training equipment. The helicopter pilots estimated that the drone they followed was averaging 75-80 mph. This is actually a peculiar speed because it is faster than a quadcopter is capable of, but even an old high-wing Cessna would fly closer to 100mph. But surprise surprise the MQ-1 has a cruise speed of 80 mph. The MQ-1 can also climb to 25,000 ft. It is operated by aviation fuel (so it can fly for hours), but has a low thermal profile (to avoid Surface to Air missiles). It also switches between satellite transmission for general flight and line-of-sight transmission for take-off and landings.

That's just my theory, but I think they were chasing a $10M MQ-1 military UAV. Not a $1,000 FPV someone built off a Youtube video. Everything just seems to point to that. It matches the capabilities perfectly. I can't think of anything cheaper that could do what the helicopter pilots observed. The drone should have been flying with full aviation lighting since they were flying in American airspace, but maybe they had turned off those because they were simulating a night strike training mission.