Colorado Nighttime Drone Swarm Mystery

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Night drone flights remain a mystery to Colorado authorities!

The purpose of recent nighttime drone flights over northeast Colorado has remained a mystery to authorities who are trying to learn the identities of the operators.

The drones have flown over Phillips and Yuma counties for the last week, the Denver Post reported Monday.

The Phillips County Sheriff’s Office cannot explain where the drones are coming from or who is flying them.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Army Forces Command said they do not have information about the aircraft.

The group of at least 17 drones have estimated wing spans of 6 feet (1.8 meters) and fly between 7 and 10 p.m., Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said.

The drones remain about 200 to 300 feet (61 to 91 meters) in the air and fly steadily in square patterns of about 25 miles (40 kilometers), Elliott said.

“They’ve been doing a grid search, a grid pattern,” Elliott said. “They fly one square and then they fly another square.”

Sounds to me like some private person or enterprise is doing real world testing of a new drone swarm AI, prolly one specifically created in tandem with the drones.

Four drones that size working together could carry quite a load, I bet. No idea what 17 (or more) of them could do… but now I’m thinking about it.

[cochrane]

South Park was the first with drone swarms.

The Magic Bush

[Joey_P]

I feel like if that happened in Florida, Florida Man would have hit them with a shotgun and ‘appropriated’ them before they were in the air for more than a few minutes.
In fact, same thing goes for the midwest or really anywhere that has a big hunting community and people have shotguns practically at an arms length at any given time.

[Beckdawrek]

The timber companies are using them in my neck of the woods. One scuttled in a tree here.

[Senegoid]

I wonder what those drones look like. The word “drone”, in the context of privately owned little aircraft, has usually been used to mean quadcopters or similar. But the description of 6-foot wing spans sounds like they are fixed-wing aircraft, like smallish airplanes. What are these? Do they hover?

Are they extraterrestrial? Are they looking for someone to abduct?

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@Senegoid

I wonder what those drones look like. The word “drone”, in the context of privately owned little aircraft, has usually been used to mean quadcopters or similar. But the description of 6-foot wing spans sounds like they are fixed-wing aircraft, like smallish airplanes. What are these? Do they hover?

Are they extraterrestrial? Are they looking for someone to abduct?

No. Merely probe. It’s a catch-and-release.