included sightings of both fixed-wing and rotary drones, Robert Wheeler, the assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, said during a Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on security threats posed by drones.
source: https://www.nj.com/news/2024/12/more-than-3k-mystery-drone-s...
Up to you how you want to interpret his exact words.
Article gets the quote slightly wrong, but semantically it's right: some are described as being slightly larger than um um than a commercial uh available drone um fixed Wing as well as rotary
Technically you could say the rotary/fixed-wing is only invoked to describe the class of drones compared to which these reports are larger, not that the reports "include" ("some are described") fixed wing and rotary.
I'm OK with either the weaker (less UFO) or stronger (more UFO) interpretations. How about you?
What's weird is the authorities are saying: "we don't know what they are, but we know for sure they're not a threat." This doesn't make sense. No one is allowing them to be there, it's safer to assume they're a threat until you know for sure what they are.
They are - obviously - lying. This screams secrecy to me. All 3 know that these drones are not a threat. They aren't US military because they are a 3 letter agency program. They know there's nothing to worry about it, but they won't tell you any more details. Which has been the modus operandi for secret services for decades, so I'm surprised it's such an issue?
Can you elucidate what you meant?
Which is why I asked
> Can you elucidate what you meant?
For various locally-defined values of "low".
I expect a police drone to be visually distinguished.
In fact, we know that the gun nuts in the US were broadly on the side of SUPPORTING those two things.
An absurd amount of the most aggressive 2A types are literally just cops, you know, the actual boot that would stand on the neck in any tyranny situation. They'll scream and cry about the ATF and then talk with their cop buddies while smoking some MJ, in a state without recreational cannabis laws.
In short, they are dishonest, whether they are smart enough to realize it or not.
To be clear, I have a lot of guns, but it's not because I have any special love of the US BoR or even a belief that they are useful against state actors. Or, even a real enjoyment of shooting.
I have guns because my neighbors all have guns and think queer/trans/atheist/lefty/etc folks are literally demonic. They are explicitly waiting for any suspension of regular government in which they can play their fantasy of a "purge". I'd much rather be collecting pretty dresses, but this is how it is where I live.
I would say that the parent comment is accurate in noting 2A loving folks don't want government authority applied to -them-, but it's -only- to them and many are living in the privileged fantasy that this power will never be applied to them and only to their grievances- hence the boot licking they do.
I don't think that's dishonesty, I think it is delusional. And they generally go from being "normal conservatives" to out right fascists just as soon as that fantasy weakens even a little.
The NRA's complete silence on the murder of Breonna Taylor by government agents, as retaliation for Kenneth Walker exercising his 2A natural right to self defense (at home at night!). I'm unable to find a kind way of explaining that away. "Freedom" culture seems to have become just as post-reality detached from effective values as everything else.
They will absolutely identify themselves. The reason you should be worried is the endless, expensive process you’ll be subjected to after they knock on your door.
Are you going to shoot people for knocking on your door?
One wonders how they'd keep tracking it down a secret especially if the perpetrator was smart and gave them a decent run for their money.
It would be like shooting someone for taking pictures of your house from the street.
I'm relatively certain law enforcement would have opinions about that.
If a drone is trying to gain access to your home, do you have the right to defend against it using deadly force? Meaning; Force that would be deadly to a human attacker.
That said, the FAA's jurisdiction ends with the National Airspace, which physically ends the moment it crosses into a structure.
There's plenty of states where you don't even have that.
The FAA may have someone who knows, but the interesting people wouldn't be the ones to show up when there's no need for them to do so.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire#Injuries
https://www.faa.gov/Air_traffic/Publications/atpubs/aim_html...
Damaging an aircraft is considered criminal aircraft sabotage under 18 U.S.C. 32
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/32
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
There is nothing in there about if the aircraft is legally or illegally operated.
https://dronedj.com/2024/06/30/florida-walmart-delivery-dron...
And for more resources for drone pilots: https://www.dronepilotgroundschool.com/shooting-drone/
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Firing on drones is a good way to lose your freedoms and even beyond that one's rights to have firearms.
It seems to me what's happening is a "Streisand Effect" where the whole attitude of "go away, nothing to see here" is in fact maximizing attention and defeating the purpose of hiding this away.
If it were me I'd put a band-aid on a drone, fly it to a person, and say, "we are testing military capabilities to render first aid to our soldiers" or something similar. It's not a lie, it's good optics, adversaries can worry about it... then put whatever it is on ice for a while until the heat dies down
How exactly do you follow a fixed-wing drone? Some of the high-end/industrial drones has pretty impressive ranges.
And even if you can't follow one all the way to its destination you can still take some real good pictures with flash and plaster them all over the news and wait for someone to say "I pump fuel and sweep floors at airport X and a bunch of dickbags with black suburbans and bad attitudes have a hanger full of those things".
Since you're replying to a question about tracking fixed wing it's worth mentioning that their range can be well over 1000 miles as some of the Iranian Shahed drones have a range of almost 1600 miles.
Personally I'd rather have evidence of this before dwelling on all the possible tragedies here.
Because they are theirs, obviously. They just won't say it.
Ignoring those rules by the FBI or the military just doesn't happen, the price to pay is WAY too high.
NSA or spooks could theoretically be behind this, but why do it where it annoys people and attracts attention and not in some desert or foreign place? Something doesn't add up.
And neither of those agencies ever did anything they're not "able" to do... regularly...
What's more, the feds are clearly signalling that these are ours. As others point out, you can't say its not an adversaries asset unless you know whose it is. Which would suggest either they are flying these illegally, they have some kind of exemption to fly in civilian air space, or they are being flown in military air space that is observable from non-military locations.
I am virtually certain those UAVs fly outside of it, otherwise there would not be much public attention to that.
Agree that the signalling strongly suggests government use.
The idiots reporting on it have NO idea how high these drones are. And the military has a bunch of carved airspace in various places. I think last time i looked (4 weeks ago), there was some reserved airspace off Cape Hatteras for the US Marines.
If they were truly a threat, or some random person's drones, they would have been taken care of nearly instantly.
I have personally seen the response of someone flying their drone in that airspace. They do not hesitate to send out goons with guns strapped over their shoulders and megaphones to make it clear that what you're doing is very much not okay.
The US DoD has recognized a lack of capacity and capability in our native drone programs when examined in context of the Ukraine war. They are spending plenty of money to shore of that lack, and not all of the programs and projects they are funding are through Anduril and have literal fan groups.
No "official" conclusion, but the common sense position seems to be that most or all of the reported incidents were nothingburger.
Easy. They didn't say they don't know whose they are. They could belong to a private contractor who is paid by the military but the military doesn't own the drones nor company (plausible deniability /outsourcing.) Or they could be a friendly country (e.g. UK) red-teaming the US with our consent.
I've never heard anyone apply the Five Eyes horse trading to inter-country UFO-related dynamics of operation but its fairly conceivable and has a bit of precedent, right?
A substantial leap. Given that these are flying near military installations, wouldn't the most plausible explanation be that these are test flights? What data would be gathered from low altitude that could not be aggregated from the myriad other sensors in our environments? Or from satellites, etc.?
Seems like the U.S. military has taken to heart that in any near future conflicts, forces of any branch will need to be heavily augmented by drones for reconnaissance, offense, and defense. So, if that's true, I would expect any military site at which personnel are trained to be flying drones constantly. And it serves them no benefit to let everyone know what they're doing. If the U.S. public is "read in", so are all potential adversaries.
The FBI explicitly said they didn't 2 days ago. There's a possibility the FBI is being purposefully left in the dark by other feds, or lying under oath at risk of prison time for perjury, but without any evidence that's just one more of MANY conspiracy theories here.
Another option is a variation of the above, where they might have a "person or company of interest" that is too soon to talk about, but they suspect the game being played is that they are owned by some tech startup who is trying to fly their/others drones around to drum up business by scaring people to in turn secure huge military contracts for drone-sensing and drone-countermeasures which they can sell as a solution to the problem/risk they've created. Am I too cynical?
Or as the original poster implied and some statements I've seen are clearer about than others, the wording is just sloppy in distinguishing between: "There is no evidence these drones are a threat/harmful" (ie they have been non-violent, so far) vs "There is not a threat here" (of any kind now or future... "keep calm and carry on"/"Don't panic... because we told you so; we don't see any particular reason".)
It's always possible to make a just-so story about them being a threat, and those are the kind of stories that catch people's attention. The odds are they belong to a mapping company, or a drone construction company, or a university or something else completely innocuous.
Why don't we know? Well because it's a big world, and people dealing with actual problems have more important shit to deal with.
2) You don't need a theory to fit all the evidence since, undoubtedly, not all the evidence is accurate. A theory that fit most of the evidence is adequate.
3) We all know people and even photos lie. That gives us quite a bit of leeway to be dismissive of sightings and official responses as well.
(When some John Bircher shoots one down though I suppose we'll have our answer, ha-ha, not-ha-ha.)
‘Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities". But "it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States".’
When did the pentagon confirm it was not a spy balloon? The article is very short and the meaning is clear, it doesn’t say anything about whether the pentagon thinks it’s a spy balloon.
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/09/20/chinese-balloon-n...
Honestly, "sensors" means anything from cameras to thermometers. Either way, the balloon was recovered by the US Navy. It wasn't a spy balloon.
Also keep in mind the US military isn’t necessarily going to be honest about what they think the balloon is and how much they can discern about its purpose.
> Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that the US was "aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities". ... He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering "contributed" to the balloon's failure to gather sensitive information.
So it was a spy balloon but it was off, or it was a spy balloon and on and we outsmarted it, or it was a spy balloon and it malfunctioned at least in part.
Nothing in that source suggests that it was not a spy balloon.
But they apparently didn't fly on Thanksgiving, which is an interesting coincidence if true.
If you are a spy trying to look at the activity or capture changes at a site, you probably aren't going to be flying on Thanksgiving since no work was done...
Do you have sources for these? Not challenging the assertions, but all I see in the news articles is vague un-attributed paraphrasing of statements. For example you say that the "FBI says they're rotary and fixed-wing drones"; the latest I saw from the FBI was what this article said; that they had lots of reports of sightings but no further information.
The pictures I've seen all look like blurry pictures of helicopters; also occasionally blurry "orbs". Does nobody have access to anything better than this? Is this even a real thing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ETJ2d0o3Zk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MPJydlIpfs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTotPeiMjlc
(CSPAN links would be better, but I've already spent way too much time on this.)
Would have put sources in if I'd realized I'd get this many views. I also might have mixed up what the Pentagon says vs the Press Secretary, but since they both answer to Joe, it shouldn't matter much.
The FBI said public reports and eyewitnesses said they're drones.
Yet there are dozens of other agencies that work with the Pentagon that aren’t military either.
These are likely part of an SCI program — either a real op or a training op. Very few people would know what’s going on, so most of the agencies commenting likely are being completely honest based on their own knowledge.
This is government.
FAA NOTAM FDC 4/1797 Restricts the airspace until 20 December.
If they were truly “unknown” then why would the NOTAM arbitrarily end on 20 Dec? If they were unknown, they’d have the NOTAM be indefinite until the situation were resolved.
This is the government clearly stating they can intercept unknown drones in the area.
> UAS OPR WHO DO NOT COMPLY WITH APPLICABLE AIRSPACE RESTRICTIONS ARE WARNED THAT PURSUANT TO 10 U.S.C.SECTION 130I AND 6 U.S.C.SECTION 124N, THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE(DOD), THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY(DHS) OR THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE(DOJ) MAY TAKE SECURITY ACTION THAT RESULTS IN THE INTERFERENCE, DISRUPTION, SEIZURE, DAMAGING, OR DESTRUCTION OF UNMANNED ACFT DEEMED TO POSE A CREDIBLE SAFETY OR SECURITY THREAT TO PROTECTED PERSONNEL, FAC, OR ASSETS.
They can potentially claim "our initial assessment was wrong" later, but IMO they could have done that anyway regardless of their word choice here.
The FBI simply repeated what public reports and eyewitness have said - a rather massive difference.
From a UFOlogy angle, America trying to start WWIII with Russia might have something to do with all this uptick in drone activity since there was a huge amount back in the 40s and 50s when we were also at the brink with the USSR.
Let me guess, it is parked in the "Bermuda Triangle".
It's easy to make theories when you are unburdened by evidence.
Consider the counter-factual. If indeed there are aliens here, and have been here for decades, why not centuries? Why haven't previous generations found them, and not known their true origin? How curious that these artifacts only started appearing in the space age, when if they had appeared previously they would have been attributed to a religious origin (and not only not suppressed, but shared widely as evidence for God.)
Note: if aliens are here then FTL travel is not only possible but common, and easy, and this would undermine a great deal of verified physics. To get around this you'd need a conspiracy across all physics research (a la the SF novel "The Three Body Problem"). I'd also add that if going to other planets was like sailing a ship, then we could expect (lazy, sloppy) tourists to come around who don't "toe the line" when it comes to staying hidden.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and without it all such claims can be safely ignored (and indeed, can and should negatively impact the people making them).
Read the link to "The Crowded Galaxy" theory for what's probably going on based on that testimony. It answers all your questions. There are probably millions of planets with life in the galaxy. We're not remarkable except with how hyper-violent and invasive our species is, which is why they're keeping an eye on us. We evolved here so we have the right to live here, but we don't have any rights to live anywhere else in the galaxy. Transforming is probably a ghastly notion to them.
David Grusch repeating second and thirdhand claims about alien conspiracies is not evidence that those claims are real, nor is investigating UAPs evidence of the existence of alien spacecraft. None of this is actually evidence if anything, it's literally the same non-evidence the UFO community has always believed in as a matter of faith, and insisted that everyone else take as proven, self-evident fact.
Looking forward to a spin off of ancient aliens on this haha Evidence smevidence! Aliens!
If fully manned Navy frigates and destroyers were vanishing without warning or explanation there is zero chance of keeping a lid on that. Way too many people involved, many of which are civilians.
https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science_in_science_f...
Element 115 wasn't a building material, it was supposed to exhibit antigravity properties under the right circumstances and was part how UFOs flew in such abnormal patterns.
> We enter the first order of business is checking for E115 then leaving the ship together to send it away.
Once again, E115 decays fully (multiple half-lifes, very little left) in mere seconds and is very radioactive.
That said, this only applies to the isotopes we've been able to synthesize so far. It’s not the definitive answer for all possible isotopes. Nuclear physics theories, particularly around the "island of stability," suggest there could be heavier isotopes of Element 115 with more favorable neutron-to-proton ratios. These isotopes might have significantly longer half-lives—potentially lasting seconds, minutes, or even days or weeks.
We simply haven’t discovered these isotopes yet. With better technology and experiments in the future, there’s a chance we might find longer-lived variants of Element 115, but for now, we can only speculate.
How does anyone know how big these are? I've heard reports like this:
1. They looks larger than normal drones. 2. The look like they are operating at a height greater than 400 ft AGL.
How do they know the height? If they don't know the height, they certainly don't know the size. If it looks large, it isn't very high.
If it is large and high, I would think they would get some radar contacts.
If these are heavier than 55 pounds, I think we'd see the FAA jumping all over it. I also don't see why any LE would announce that they are actively figuring it out as they'd want to keep the element of surprise and track the drone back to the operators.
> Why isn't anyone bringing them down?
Only federal authorities can do anything to aircraft. This is in the realm of the FAA.
> How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing whose they are?
What kind of threat are we worried about here that wasn't around yesterday (last year)?
> White House says they aren't foreign adversaries I don't think the military is going to reveal its methods and capabilities.
Politicians are PO'd that something about this doesn't add up: How can anyone know these aren't a threat without knowing whose they are? Why isn't anyone bringing them down? Where do they land? Is this similar to the Chinese spy balloon?
I've seen a huge number of theories by now, and not one of them actually fits.