> 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.