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Looks like the dominant explanation is that some adversary is using (relatively) cheap drones to get data on the sensitivity of US Naval radar systems: https://

Looks like the dominant explanation is that some adversary is using (relatively) cheap drones to get data on the sensitivity of US Naval radar systems: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones... They don't even have to be all that high-tech; the US was doing similar things in the 1960s.

giantandroids 5y ago
The radio operator reported one moving at 138 knots which is approx 160mph. The DRL RacerX has recorded speeds over 163.5 mp getting a guiness world record, although this was indoors.
- leoedin 5y ago
  That's an indoor speed record for a quadcopter. If you're designing a drone system for maritime operation it would make far more sense to be fixed wing (maybe with some sort of VTOL or STOL capability) - the efficiencies are just so much higher. Once you go to fixed wing, 138 knots is pretty simple. Just look at the list of unmanned aerial vehicles - it's big and dominated by fixed wing aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicl...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dokem 5y ago
  The military has been using drones since before quad copters. Anything long range is not going to be a quad, but something like a small plane. I'd imagine 'drone' in military lingo still mostly refers to fixed wing craft.
tristanj 5y ago
That article completely ignores the eyewitness testimony from the navy pilots of the Tic Tac incident where they visually identify that the Tic Tac: 1) can hover a few meters above the ocean without generating rotor downwash 2) can accelerate away at 100+g Both of those rule out any known drone or helicopter. David Fravor, one of the pilots, explains this in an interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E
- newsclues 5y ago
  The us navy pilots were using imaging sensors to track those UFOs, so it’s possible that what they saw on their displays wasn’t UFOs.
  - tristanj 5y ago
    No, the pilots saw the tictac with their own eyes. I recommend you watch the interview.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Of... FLIR
- DennisP 5y ago
  If reports like that accurate and it's a human adversary, we might as well shut down our military, it won't do any good anyway.
  - captainredbeard 5y ago
    Wrong - the enemy might not have enough of them and we haven’t tried shooting them yet AFAICT.
- bob33212 5y ago
  So there are really two options here. Either the instruments used to detect #1 and #2 are reporting inaccurate data, OR technology far beyond what the public knows about exists and has only been seen under circumstances where no one had a high resolution camera to get a detailed picture. #2 seems unlikely because the availably of high resolution cameras has gone up a ton in the past 10 years ( cell phones / satelites ), but a clear picture of a UFO has not shown up.
  - 5y ago
runawaybottle 5y ago
Where is the drone ship? Does a submarine emerge and launch these things in the middle of the ocean? Edit: Listen, the US Defense department knows what these are. They are just soft letting China and Russia know that this was cute.
- newsclues 5y ago
  Cargo, fishing ships or submarines.
- meowface 5y ago
  There've been multiple reports of pilots reporting that they saw some sort of movement and frothing beneath the surface of the ocean - as if there were some sort of vehicle there, they specified. They then reported seeing whatever was under the water seemingly suddenly shoot up at high velocity. I wonder if those reports could potentially be consistent with a submersible craft launching drones. Maybe such a craft could even be... "catapulting"?... or otherwise giving the drones an initial boost, too, combined with self-propulsion, which could perhaps make them fly from the surface faster than they could with self-propulsion alone. (Obviously this is all pure uninformed speculation on my part and could be total nonsense. And one would think one of these hypothetical submersible crafts would've likely been detected at least once, given the US Navy was operating in the vicinity on multiple occasions.)
  - captainredbeard 5y ago
    Finding stuff in the sea isn’t very easy. You need to be surprisingly close.
    - meowface 5y ago
      Is this also true with sonar and whatever other SIGINT capabilities the modern Navy would have? I could certainly buy it going undetected - in Commander Fravor's case, the tic tac incident occurred a pretty far distance away from their training area, I believe. But I would also think the Navy would the best available technology and techniques to detect what would probably have to be a foreign submersible in their waters, and that if this were routinely happening they'd likely end up detecting it eventually through some means. Or if it were one of their own skunkworks crafts, they'd probably figure that out afterwards. (I know very little about this field, though.) Or even if they did fail to ever detect it beyond a few eye witness reports from pilots, I'd think this would be at/near the top of their list of plausible theories. If this is indeed an explanation for some of the incidents, I could believe that they have in fact identified it and are doing some kind of psyop/deception operation, perhaps to confuse or signal to a foreign power.
flohofwoe 5y ago
This Warzone story is also interesting, because it contains actual logs and emails released under FOIA. Those are much less sensationalist than the OP story: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39913/multiple-destroyers-were-swarmed-by-mysterious-drones-off-california-over-numerous-nights https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39913/multiple-destroy...
- koheripbal 5y ago
  One of the counterintuitive drawbacks of advancing technology is that it will become harder and harder to demonstrate that an ET UFO is actually ET and not some advanced classified gov't object.
  - taneq 5y ago
    Will it, though? I'd have thought advancing technology would advance both sides (creating odd new flying objects, and identifying the same)? These days everyone's carrying a high rez high frame rate camera in their pocket, back in the 50s we relied on eyewitness accounts. Edit: Whoops, sorry for the necro. I have to watch out better for old tabs...
  - antonvs 5y ago
    That's not a real drawback, except in the minds of people who are projecting their ET fantasies onto the real world.
- thu2111 5y ago
  Is that less sensationalist? It seems they're reporting exactly the same things just using different types of recorded data. Neither article attempts to speculate on what kind of object might be capable of causing such data, nor who might control it.
JustSomeNobody 5y ago
Why can't it be OUR military testing classified tech against OUR very best systems? If our best can't tell what it is, nobody can.
- dplavery92 5y ago
  It seems unlikely in that situation that the Pentagon would declassify any of the instrument videos. Then again, it's weird that they've done that in any scenario.
  - JustSomeNobody 5y ago
    True, but maybe they feel the need to posture?
meowface 5y ago
It seems pretty crazy that the Pentagon would be completely befuddled and would have absolutely no clue that these are just foreign drones, though, no? That's what the article seems to be arguing. To me it would seem much more likely that the top brass know or strongly suspect they're indeed drones invading our airspace but are acting like they're unexplained phenomena as part of some sort of psyop/deception/intelligence/adversary-signaling stratagem. I'm not sure what the motive would be, there, but that sounds more plausible than random speculators online having more inference ability than the entire US military. Even if you assume the height of institutional incompetence, surely someone among the most powerful military in history would propose such a theory.
flowerlad 5y ago
But the objects are able to fly 11,000 miles-per-hour, able to turn instantly, with no wings, no propulsion and no exhaust, disappear instantly and go into the ocean. What kind of "cheap drone" can do that?
runawaybottle 5y ago
Or the drones are a simple way of messing up all targeting systems. If you ever made a Carrier fleet in Starcraft 1 (where massing units was a thing), the swarm of carrier drones would force the enemy units to target those little thing instead of the main units.

giantandroids 5y ago

The radio operator reported one moving at 138 knots which is approx 160mph. The DRL RacerX has recorded speeds over 163.5 mp getting a guiness world record, although this was indoors.

leoedin 5y ago
That's an indoor speed record for a quadcopter. If you're designing a drone system for maritime operation it would make far more sense to be fixed wing (maybe with some sort of VTOL or STOL capability) - the efficiencies are just so much higher. Once you go to fixed wing, 138 knots is pretty simple. Just look at the list of unmanned aerial vehicles - it's big and dominated by fixed wing aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicl...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dokem 5y ago
The military has been using drones since before quad copters. Anything long range is not going to be a quad, but something like a small plane. I'd imagine 'drone' in military lingo still mostly refers to fixed wing craft.

tristanj 5y ago

That article completely ignores the eyewitness testimony from the navy pilots of the Tic Tac incident where they visually identify that the Tic Tac: 1) can hover a few meters above the ocean without generating rotor downwash 2) can accelerate away at 100+g Both of those rule out any known drone or helicopter. David Fravor, one of the pilots, explains this in an interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

newsclues 5y ago
The us navy pilots were using imaging sensors to track those UFOs, so it’s possible that what they saw on their displays wasn’t UFOs.
- tristanj 5y ago
  No, the pilots saw the tictac with their own eyes. I recommend you watch the interview.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Of... FLIR
DennisP 5y ago
If reports like that accurate and it's a human adversary, we might as well shut down our military, it won't do any good anyway.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  Wrong - the enemy might not have enough of them and we haven’t tried shooting them yet AFAICT.
bob33212 5y ago
So there are really two options here. Either the instruments used to detect #1 and #2 are reporting inaccurate data, OR technology far beyond what the public knows about exists and has only been seen under circumstances where no one had a high resolution camera to get a detailed picture. #2 seems unlikely because the availably of high resolution cameras has gone up a ton in the past 10 years ( cell phones / satelites ), but a clear picture of a UFO has not shown up.
- 5y ago

runawaybottle 5y ago

Where is the drone ship? Does a submarine emerge and launch these things in the middle of the ocean? Edit: Listen, the US Defense department knows what these are. They are just soft letting China and Russia know that this was cute.

newsclues 5y ago
Cargo, fishing ships or submarines.
meowface 5y ago
There've been multiple reports of pilots reporting that they saw some sort of movement and frothing beneath the surface of the ocean - as if there were some sort of vehicle there, they specified. They then reported seeing whatever was under the water seemingly suddenly shoot up at high velocity. I wonder if those reports could potentially be consistent with a submersible craft launching drones. Maybe such a craft could even be... "catapulting"?... or otherwise giving the drones an initial boost, too, combined with self-propulsion, which could perhaps make them fly from the surface faster than they could with self-propulsion alone. (Obviously this is all pure uninformed speculation on my part and could be total nonsense. And one would think one of these hypothetical submersible crafts would've likely been detected at least once, given the US Navy was operating in the vicinity on multiple occasions.)
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  Finding stuff in the sea isn’t very easy. You need to be surprisingly close.
  - meowface 5y ago
    Is this also true with sonar and whatever other SIGINT capabilities the modern Navy would have? I could certainly buy it going undetected - in Commander Fravor's case, the tic tac incident occurred a pretty far distance away from their training area, I believe. But I would also think the Navy would the best available technology and techniques to detect what would probably have to be a foreign submersible in their waters, and that if this were routinely happening they'd likely end up detecting it eventually through some means. Or if it were one of their own skunkworks crafts, they'd probably figure that out afterwards. (I know very little about this field, though.) Or even if they did fail to ever detect it beyond a few eye witness reports from pilots, I'd think this would be at/near the top of their list of plausible theories. If this is indeed an explanation for some of the incidents, I could believe that they have in fact identified it and are doing some kind of psyop/deception operation, perhaps to confuse or signal to a foreign power.

flohofwoe 5y ago

This Warzone story is also interesting, because it contains actual logs and emails released under FOIA. Those are much less sensationalist than the OP story: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39913/multiple-destroyers-were-swarmed-by-mysterious-drones-off-california-over-numerous-nights https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39913/multiple-destroy...

koheripbal 5y ago
One of the counterintuitive drawbacks of advancing technology is that it will become harder and harder to demonstrate that an ET UFO is actually ET and not some advanced classified gov't object.
- taneq 5y ago
  Will it, though? I'd have thought advancing technology would advance both sides (creating odd new flying objects, and identifying the same)? These days everyone's carrying a high rez high frame rate camera in their pocket, back in the 50s we relied on eyewitness accounts. Edit: Whoops, sorry for the necro. I have to watch out better for old tabs...
- antonvs 5y ago
  That's not a real drawback, except in the minds of people who are projecting their ET fantasies onto the real world.
thu2111 5y ago
Is that less sensationalist? It seems they're reporting exactly the same things just using different types of recorded data. Neither article attempts to speculate on what kind of object might be capable of causing such data, nor who might control it.

JustSomeNobody 5y ago

Why can't it be OUR military testing classified tech against OUR very best systems? If our best can't tell what it is, nobody can.

dplavery92 5y ago
It seems unlikely in that situation that the Pentagon would declassify any of the instrument videos. Then again, it's weird that they've done that in any scenario.
- JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  True, but maybe they feel the need to posture?

meowface 5y ago

It seems pretty crazy that the Pentagon would be completely befuddled and would have absolutely no clue that these are just foreign drones, though, no? That's what the article seems to be arguing. To me it would seem much more likely that the top brass know or strongly suspect they're indeed drones invading our airspace but are acting like they're unexplained phenomena as part of some sort of psyop/deception/intelligence/adversary-signaling stratagem. I'm not sure what the motive would be, there, but that sounds more plausible than random speculators online having more inference ability than the entire US military. Even if you assume the height of institutional incompetence, surely someone among the most powerful military in history would propose such a theory.

flowerlad 5y ago

But the objects are able to fly 11,000 miles-per-hour, able to turn instantly, with no wings, no propulsion and no exhaust, disappear instantly and go into the ocean. What kind of "cheap drone" can do that?

runawaybottle 5y ago

Or the drones are a simple way of messing up all targeting systems. If you ever made a Carrier fleet in Starcraft 1 (where massing units was a thing), the swarm of carrier drones would force the enemy units to target those little thing instead of the main units.