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If you are going to make the claim that they are Russian or Chinese drones, please explain how they flew all the way to the US coast and then hung out for hours
by oxymoran 5y ago
If you are going to make the claim that they are Russian or Chinese drones, please explain how they flew all the way to the US coast and then hung out for hours. That sort of fuel life is less believable than aliens.
- pc86 5y agoI'm paywalled from the article but it's pretty well known that both Russian and China have subs close to, or even in, US territorial waters on a fairly regular basis.
- jamestimmins 5y agoDo you know why they do this? Outside of wartime, I don’t see an obvious benefit.
- teilo 5y agoWere you alive during the cold war? That's what I think this is. A kind of cold war against a terrestrial foe, in this case one with superior technology.
- JulianMorrison 5y agoThey don't count on being "outside of wartime" when they need them. Also, for the big powers, it's really always wartime. Some times are just colder than others.
- dsr_ 5y agoHow do you know your super-quiet sub is undetectable by the most likely adversary? You send in the super-quiet sub on a series of probes, each time getting closer, until there's contact and possibly an incident. Now you know how good the adversary is!
- Tarq0n 5y agoTapping undersea cables is a major use of submarines in peacetime.
- maxqin1 5y agoCouldn't these drones be drifting in orbit until ready for operation? No fuel would be required until after reentry. Info beamed back to the "mother ship."
- capableweb 5y agoLaunch them from small naval vessels (or submarines maybe?) that don't show up on radar, a la Millennium Challenge 2002
- teilo 5y agoThis is what I generally see happening any time these things come up. A dismissive half-answer that does not address the physical requirements of the phenomenon. I am not in the "it's aliens" crowd. But I am also not shutting down half my brain so as to ignore the the materials science and exotic energy requirements that would be necessary to reproduce these phenomena. I am a strong proponent of Occam's Razor. But in order to use Occam's Razor, you have to account for all observations, not dismiss half of them. As to their being drones: almost certainly. And that's actually the scariest thought. If they are, in fact, hypersonic drones (whatever the origin), then we are in deep shit.
- gfodor 5y agoGiven that in a century or two it seems possible we would be incentivized and capable enough to cobble together intergalactic autonomous probes to blanket the galaxy and prevent any external civilization from wiping us all out, it seems most likely to me we should expect to find such a system already exists first.
- ericmay 5y agoBetter yet - why aren't people claiming or thinking hard that these are U.S. drones and capabilities? Maybe they're showing them off to Russia and China?