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Other possible theories: - "Hacker in his garage" A highly qualified amateur who built/modded drones to play a prank or showcase his products to potential cust

Other possible theories: - "Hacker in his garage" A highly qualified amateur who built/modded drones to play a prank or showcase his products to potential customers. - The drones were launched from the coast by a secret Russian/Chinese military cell to test new technology and spook the US military.

King-Aaron 6y ago
Another possibility, that it's the same kind of aircraft that Cmd David Fravor's FA18 squadron intercepted several years ago... 'Tic Tacs'.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
  Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that these things are actually all that fast, or at least the ones popularized in Gimbal and Go-Fast. The trigonometry just doesn't work out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M
bigiain 6y ago
> "Hacker in his garage" I think that’s well within the bounds of possibility. I know at least 8 or 10 people who could pull this off if they tried, I’d give myself maybe a 70% chance of doing so on my own given a low-mid 5 figure budget. I’d suspect there are many many people on diydrones or rcgroups forums who could do it. Ardupilot, gps waypoint navigation remotely reset using satphone data/telemetry channels, initially guided using public ais coords of the ships. I’d probably go with a consumer grade fixed wing rc glider to get the range/duration required (that wouldn’t hover over the helipad, but would be much easier to get 90+ mins duration and 100+ mile range that a multi rotor). If I could get a non ais equipped boat near by I’d consider LoRa radios instead of a sat phone (which might end up leaving payment/identity/location data behind) but would have trouble getting much past 100km line of sight range. Also very low bandwidth at long range, so even sending back still images to use for setting new gps waypoints would be a challenge over LoRa. (For the record, I’m on the other side of the planet, and was at the time of these sightings too...)

King-Aaron 6y ago

Another possibility, that it's the same kind of aircraft that Cmd David Fravor's FA18 squadron intercepted several years ago... 'Tic Tacs'.

jonathankoren 6y ago
Perhaps, but I'm not convinced that these things are actually all that fast, or at least the ones popularized in Gimbal and Go-Fast. The trigonometry just doesn't work out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M

bigiain 6y ago

> "Hacker in his garage" I think that’s well within the bounds of possibility. I know at least 8 or 10 people who could pull this off if they tried, I’d give myself maybe a 70% chance of doing so on my own given a low-mid 5 figure budget. I’d suspect there are many many people on diydrones or rcgroups forums who could do it. Ardupilot, gps waypoint navigation remotely reset using satphone data/telemetry channels, initially guided using public ais coords of the ships. I’d probably go with a consumer grade fixed wing rc glider to get the range/duration required (that wouldn’t hover over the helipad, but would be much easier to get 90+ mins duration and 100+ mile range that a multi rotor). If I could get a non ais equipped boat near by I’d consider LoRa radios instead of a sat phone (which might end up leaving payment/identity/location data behind) but would have trouble getting much past 100km line of sight range. Also very low bandwidth at long range, so even sending back still images to use for setting new gps waypoints would be a challenge over LoRa. (For the record, I’m on the other side of the planet, and was at the time of these sightings too...)