9 ms·

People would do well to keep in mind the episode of drone hysteria which happened at Gatwick airport in 2018. Hundreds of sightings were reported over a period

by rozab 2y ago

People would do well to keep in mind the episode of drone hysteria which happened at Gatwick airport in 2018. Hundreds of sightings were reported over a period of several days, shutting down the airport completely. It was a massive media event, camera crews from every outlet were at the airport, but none ever photographed a drone. None of the radar systems at the airport, nor the military anti-drone systems sent later on, ever picked up anything. In this article, a professional drone photographer describes mistaking a helicopter for a drone: > But when he opened up the image on his computer, ready to send to his editors, he realised he’d made a mistake. The image did not show a drone. It was a helicopter hovering 10 miles away; between the darkness and the distance, his eyes had played a trick on him. “If I’m making a mistake – and I fly drones two or three times a week – then God help us, because others will have no idea,” he said. He called police to retract his reported sighting. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-of-the-gatwick-drone https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-...

left-struck 2y ago
>Professional Drone photographer Please tell me that’s someone who takes photos using drones not photos of drones - for a living
- Out_of_Characte 2y ago
  Some people have the most bizarre hobbies. From photographing bigfoot to ufo's or planespotters. I dont intend to understand all of them but photographing drones might be one of the more moral ones in this century. Just imagine drones filming your living room, or military installations like feared in the article. Having someone record such incidents is appreciated.
  - left-struck 2y ago
    Oh yeah I totally get having a niche hobby. I’ve personally considered starting a collection of photos of modified 90s Japanese cars. I take photos all the time of my cat with a “pro” camera but that doesn’t make me a professional cat photographer. Now if I were making money from it on the other hand… I would be amazed if there’s enough of a demand for drone photos to support someone
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  Probably. At least, I know that job definitely exists.
ninininino 2y ago
Have you been following this news story at all? There are probably hundreds of video clips on social media depicting the same craft. So I'm not sure what the relevancy is of your story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9rrkYGAUU&list=RDNSOT9rrkYGAUU&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9rrkYGAUU&list=RDNSOT9rrkY... 3 minutes and 7 seconds in this video is a good example of what these typically appear as. But yes it's most likely a US military drone exercise or active operation (have seen conjecture about a search for something, testing drone capabilities in a noisy RF environment.
- monkeynotes 2y ago
  At 3:07 I see an airliner with FAA navigation lights, wings, and a fuselage. How are people not seeing that?
- jerf 2y ago
  The military theory doesn't fit to me on the grounds that at this point they should be just admitting it. They're calling more attention to the drones than they would if they would just say "yup, those are ours". You don't hide things by parading them around in front of people. They've got all sorts of places to secretly fly things and all the permits they need to create whatever RF environment they want in the process. The military has had all sorts of secret aircraft over the years and they never test them by loitering around civilian areas for weeks at a time making damned sure thousands of people can get photographs and turn it into a national story. There's plenty of things like photos of the stealth aircraft that people accidentally caught and didn't realize what they were until years later when the relevant aircraft become public knowledge, but those were generally obtained despite the precautions taken, not because they were cruising around in major cities in broad daylight. The fact that this is still one of the best theories I've got despite everything I just said is a sign of how weird this situation is.
  - unsupp0rted 2y ago
    The next question after "yup those are ours" is "then why are they there", and they might not wish to answer that one.
jerf 2y ago
The real story here is the apparent... and I use this term very, very deliberately... fecklessness of all the relevant authorities. Apparently... again, a deliberate choice... nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability, or something like that. I'm not sure what the problem is, exactly, and that is in some sense now the dominant problem. How can there be no clue by now? Your sort of post is relevant in the first few days of the story. But if this was the case, with all this attention on it, it should already have been determined. But authorities aren't even floating this as a theory. Basically all they're doing is shooting down (pun somewhat intended) every theory. That there is this much confusion, days later, is itself now the most important aspect of the story. And we're getting up to where there are international consequences to this sort of issue, too. If we can't figure out what these drones are in a week, how can we be trusted to defend Taiwan or other allies in a world where "drone swarm" is slowly but quite steadily moving its way up to the #1 most likely attack vector? At some point it stops mattering if maybe it is just helicopters miles away being misidentified, at some point that becomes even worse in some ways than other answers, as it gets hard to claim we're going to be totally awesome at defending you against drone swarms if we can't even figure out in less than two weeks whether or not there are drones in our own airspace. I don't know what's going on and am not pushing any particular theory. I've got a lot of things in my probability matrix but none of them particularly make any sense at all, which means I'm missing something critical. (Which is hardly a surprise.)
- pjc50 2y ago
  > nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability Well .. SNAFU? This is basically what I'd expect. In these kind of cases there's a steady stream of crank reports from the public which are 100% false positives. The authorities will have a process for routing all the UFO reports to someone who sends out form letters and otherwise ignores them. The actual airspace protection is done by radar and whatever the US calls "QRA". There's no suggestion or evidence of any damage, so this ranks as a much lower threat than all sorts of other things like celebrity CEO assassins. In order of decreasing likeliness: - nothing there - just regular commercial aircraft - weird aircraft, but classified, hence the blank response from authorities - eccentric hobbyist or intentional faker - aliens - foreign drones
tigerBL00D 2y ago
I would not write this.off as hysteria. It's important to consider motivation of potential actors. Every advanced rocket guidance system uses cameras to zero in on its targets during the final approach. You can't rely on GPS at that point. To do a good job you need to know what your target looks like and high resolution drone imagery helps a lot.
- exitb 2y ago
  Why put lights on the drones? Why not map during the day?
  - pc86 2y ago
    Could be multi-phase testing? Easily-acquired lighted drones in one phase, dark drones in a future phase?
  - theodric 2y ago
    My theory was that assuming these are some kind of adversary drone, they seem to have read and understood the law and are making some effort to remain within its bounds so that 4th Amendment and other relevant protections apply to them. That means operating at the legally-allowed altitude, running navigation lights, etc...but then somehow deciding not to run the required ADS-B ID that would, in theory, give away who they are and allow their comings and goings to be tracked. Causing a collision with another plane that might then fall onto a residential neighborhood is a great way to get the entire weight of the government to come down on you, have the remains of your craft picked apart, and have your cover thoroughly blown. Don't mess with the NTSB! I realize this theory has holes, but it's what I've got, and I feel like it's making more effort at explanation than e.g. the retired Air Force Major-General who was quoted as saying "they're flying with lights on, they're flying where people will see them; that tells me... there's nothing nefarious about it, or we're dealing with the world's dumbest terrorist."[1] As to why they don't fly during the day: it seems that they don't want to be seen, and have been observed to "go dark" when confronted.[2] Incidentally, that's also what "The Angry Astronaut" said in his video posted on 1 Dec [3] about the craft he attempted to chase down in the United Kingdom next to the Lakenheath US Air Force installation-- well before this behavior was reported in the USA. [1] https://youtu.be/qpFz-SPCSJc?t=50 https://youtu.be/qpFz-SPCSJc?t=50 [2] https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-new-jersey-drones-go-dark-when-spotted-governor-1998470 https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-new-jersey-drones-go-dark-w... [3] https://youtu.be/1yglSSzP8Qk?t=331 https://youtu.be/1yglSSzP8Qk?t=331

by rozab 2y ago

left-struck 2y ago

>Professional Drone photographer Please tell me that’s someone who takes photos using drones not photos of drones - for a living

Out_of_Characte 2y ago
Some people have the most bizarre hobbies. From photographing bigfoot to ufo's or planespotters. I dont intend to understand all of them but photographing drones might be one of the more moral ones in this century. Just imagine drones filming your living room, or military installations like feared in the article. Having someone record such incidents is appreciated.
- left-struck 2y ago
  Oh yeah I totally get having a niche hobby. I’ve personally considered starting a collection of photos of modified 90s Japanese cars. I take photos all the time of my cat with a “pro” camera but that doesn’t make me a professional cat photographer. Now if I were making money from it on the other hand… I would be amazed if there’s enough of a demand for drone photos to support someone
andrewflnr 2y ago
Probably. At least, I know that job definitely exists.

ninininino 2y ago

Have you been following this news story at all? There are probably hundreds of video clips on social media depicting the same craft. So I'm not sure what the relevancy is of your story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9rrkYGAUU&list=RDNSOT9rrkYGAUU&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9rrkYGAUU&list=RDNSOT9rrkY... 3 minutes and 7 seconds in this video is a good example of what these typically appear as. But yes it's most likely a US military drone exercise or active operation (have seen conjecture about a search for something, testing drone capabilities in a noisy RF environment.

monkeynotes 2y ago
At 3:07 I see an airliner with FAA navigation lights, wings, and a fuselage. How are people not seeing that?
jerf 2y ago
The military theory doesn't fit to me on the grounds that at this point they should be just admitting it. They're calling more attention to the drones than they would if they would just say "yup, those are ours". You don't hide things by parading them around in front of people. They've got all sorts of places to secretly fly things and all the permits they need to create whatever RF environment they want in the process. The military has had all sorts of secret aircraft over the years and they never test them by loitering around civilian areas for weeks at a time making damned sure thousands of people can get photographs and turn it into a national story. There's plenty of things like photos of the stealth aircraft that people accidentally caught and didn't realize what they were until years later when the relevant aircraft become public knowledge, but those were generally obtained despite the precautions taken, not because they were cruising around in major cities in broad daylight. The fact that this is still one of the best theories I've got despite everything I just said is a sign of how weird this situation is.
- unsupp0rted 2y ago
  The next question after "yup those are ours" is "then why are they there", and they might not wish to answer that one.

jerf 2y ago

The real story here is the apparent... and I use this term very, very deliberately... fecklessness of all the relevant authorities. Apparently... again, a deliberate choice... nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability, or something like that. I'm not sure what the problem is, exactly, and that is in some sense now the dominant problem. How can there be no clue by now? Your sort of post is relevant in the first few days of the story. But if this was the case, with all this attention on it, it should already have been determined. But authorities aren't even floating this as a theory. Basically all they're doing is shooting down (pun somewhat intended) every theory. That there is this much confusion, days later, is itself now the most important aspect of the story. And we're getting up to where there are international consequences to this sort of issue, too. If we can't figure out what these drones are in a week, how can we be trusted to defend Taiwan or other allies in a world where "drone swarm" is slowly but quite steadily moving its way up to the #1 most likely attack vector? At some point it stops mattering if maybe it is just helicopters miles away being misidentified, at some point that becomes even worse in some ways than other answers, as it gets hard to claim we're going to be totally awesome at defending you against drone swarms if we can't even figure out in less than two weeks whether or not there are drones in our own airspace. I don't know what's going on and am not pushing any particular theory. I've got a lot of things in my probability matrix but none of them particularly make any sense at all, which means I'm missing something critical. (Which is hardly a surprise.)

pjc50 2y ago
> nobody has the authority to figure out what is going on, or nobody has the motivation, or nobody has the technical capability Well .. SNAFU? This is basically what I'd expect. In these kind of cases there's a steady stream of crank reports from the public which are 100% false positives. The authorities will have a process for routing all the UFO reports to someone who sends out form letters and otherwise ignores them. The actual airspace protection is done by radar and whatever the US calls "QRA". There's no suggestion or evidence of any damage, so this ranks as a much lower threat than all sorts of other things like celebrity CEO assassins. In order of decreasing likeliness: - nothing there - just regular commercial aircraft - weird aircraft, but classified, hence the blank response from authorities - eccentric hobbyist or intentional faker - aliens - foreign drones

tigerBL00D 2y ago

I would not write this.off as hysteria. It's important to consider motivation of potential actors. Every advanced rocket guidance system uses cameras to zero in on its targets during the final approach. You can't rely on GPS at that point. To do a good job you need to know what your target looks like and high resolution drone imagery helps a lot.

exitb 2y ago
Why put lights on the drones? Why not map during the day?
- pc86 2y ago
  Could be multi-phase testing? Easily-acquired lighted drones in one phase, dark drones in a future phase?
- theodric 2y ago
  My theory was that assuming these are some kind of adversary drone, they seem to have read and understood the law and are making some effort to remain within its bounds so that 4th Amendment and other relevant protections apply to them. That means operating at the legally-allowed altitude, running navigation lights, etc...but then somehow deciding not to run the required ADS-B ID that would, in theory, give away who they are and allow their comings and goings to be tracked. Causing a collision with another plane that might then fall onto a residential neighborhood is a great way to get the entire weight of the government to come down on you, have the remains of your craft picked apart, and have your cover thoroughly blown. Don't mess with the NTSB! I realize this theory has holes, but it's what I've got, and I feel like it's making more effort at explanation than e.g. the retired Air Force Major-General who was quoted as saying "they're flying with lights on, they're flying where people will see them; that tells me... there's nothing nefarious about it, or we're dealing with the world's dumbest terrorist."[1] As to why they don't fly during the day: it seems that they don't want to be seen, and have been observed to "go dark" when confronted.[2] Incidentally, that's also what "The Angry Astronaut" said in his video posted on 1 Dec [3] about the craft he attempted to chase down in the United Kingdom next to the Lakenheath US Air Force installation-- well before this behavior was reported in the USA. [1] https://youtu.be/qpFz-SPCSJc?t=50 https://youtu.be/qpFz-SPCSJc?t=50 [2] https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-new-jersey-drones-go-dark-when-spotted-governor-1998470 https://www.newsweek.com/mystery-new-jersey-drones-go-dark-w... [3] https://youtu.be/1yglSSzP8Qk?t=331 https://youtu.be/1yglSSzP8Qk?t=331