There’s a difference between “I fear for our country and our future” vs. this one being notably dumb. There have been some way stupider ones in the past.
To be honest, I’ve rather enjoyed this instance of mass hysteria. Why?
a) I sort of participated in it upthread (post 19), before it became clear that a lot of these sightings involved things-other-than-drones. My great-grandfather heard the War of the Worlds broadcast live (and didn’t bite at all); I’m happy to have participated in this latest historical event.
b) Unlike past instances of mass hysteria, there’s a serious policy angle to it not yet widely understood. Drones are advancing in capabilities and could very well upend military strategy, terrorism, and the assassination market. Noah Smith (again):
Six years later, I watched my vision come true. In the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan used drones — purchased cheaply and easily from Turkey and Israel — to crush the vaunted Armenian army in a short space of time. Armenian troops were renowned as masters of infantry warfare and heavy weaponry, but their tanks, missile launchers, artillery, and transport vehicles were sitting ducks for their foes’ cheap disposable drones. No matter how well they concealed their vehicles, the drones could easily spot and destroy them. You can see the incredible toll catalogued at the blog Oryx, with full documentation of each destroyed vehicle.
This should be as big a wakeup call as the Battle of Taranto or the firebombing of Guernica. Drones have changed warfare.
Entertaining and sobering 8 minute short sci-fi film Slaughterbots (2017) covering the terrorism angle. Wiki article about the film.
People are reacting to a legitimately creepy and disturbing technological development in panicy and ineffectual manner, but it’s still interesting.
We have the Pres elect suggesting they should be shot down. If that doesn’t make you fear for our country and our future (he’s part of both of those), not sure what I can say.
Not exactly the same thing, but many of the claims of cell phone surveillance are borderline mass hysteria. “Google popped up an advertisement about that thing I was just talking about”, etc. When in reality they’re mostly just coincidence or some simpler form of ad targeting. But of course cell phones are sophisticated surveillance platforms and can easily be used in that manner.
I agree that there are some interesting things going on, and that the current hysteria is a panicky response to a trend that’s actually real. A little less convinced that a Slaughterbots future is possible, but we’ll definitely see some drone terrorism in the coming years, and as you cite, drone warfare is already happening.
A few months ago, a detention officer where I work reported to me that a drone was flying around our building. I went outside, but did not spot the drone. I walked across the parking lot to the highway department loading dock, where a worker was using a laptop. I asked if he had seen the drone. He told me he was flying it - it was a county Geographic Information System drone. He said that the detention center has a geofence that prevents drones from flying over it, so they have to fly around to get to the other side and keep going. I asked, “What’s a geofence?” He said modern drones’ GPS navigation systems will not allow them to get within a certain distance of the detention center’s GPS coordinates. That was all new information to me.
If my little county juvenile detention center’s GPS coordinates are included in the geofence no-fly list for drone navigation systems, I would think every airport or military base would also be included. How then do drones fly so close to airports and military bases that they present a problem? Are people using drones that predate GPS navigation, or are they hacking the drones’ systems to get them to ignore the listings for no-fly GPS coordinates (aka geofences)?
Also a few months ago, I watched a crop-duster drone working on the corn field by my house. Although the body of the drone was not as big as a car, it’s wingspan (bladespan?) certainly extended way past the footprint of the pickup truck it was landing on to refill its sprayer tanks. It was the biggest drone I have seen in person.
I’ve no idea what people are actually doing, but it’s trivial to build your own drone, running only open-source software that doesn’t contain any geofencing or otherwise. You can just buy all the required components from hobby shops.
Is that it? The title has also been ringing some bell for me - an album title? A movie? But I can’t place it.
Moon Over Parma.
And now we have the FAA seemingly csving to fearmongers, banning drones in a number of N.J. counties and warning of “deadly force” that could be used against violators.
Not sure how “deadly force” could be used against unmanned aircraft. Are some of these drones crewed by sociopathic guinea pigs?
Note that the FAA simultaneously said “…the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones”.
Talk about mixed messages.
The simple answer is that there are no real drones flying near airbases or airports. All the drones now being spotted near airfields and other restricted spaces are misidentifications of distant aircraft, stars, planets, or even (in one case) the lights on top of a fixed radio mast.
Perhaps there were some true spy drones in the early days of this flap, but since the intense media interest developed, any real spy would be keeping well away from restricted space.
One of the most interesting cases in the early days was a hobbyist who was flying illuminated LED kites near Langley AFB in Virginia. This one person caused a number of sightings, but there are no geolocation inhibitors than can defend against kites.
It’s a song. The link goes to a YouTube of it.
Whether or not it’s real is still up for debate. https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1486
Sorry, I wasn’t asking what that was, I was trying to figure out what was pinging my own cultural radar.
But there are kite eating trees…
Bullets Over Broadway. That’s what I was thinking of.
This is from the US Army:
Since 2016, most U.S. manufactured drones have been modified to return to a pilot if they fly too close to military installations.
That certainly implies a geofence and GPS. My drone is old and does not have GPS. Most do these days, but not the cheaper ones. However, I’d imagine if you had GPS you could disable it someway fairly easily. I know the California man that was arrested for drone activity had disabled the 400-foot limitation on his drone (he fly his drone about 1,200 feet to take photos - “messaged with another person about hacking his drone to allow it to fly higher than it could otherwise”).
[This part of my post is for everyone]
Which now makes me want to know why are drones banned in certain areas in the first place. It seems obvious, but maybe my obvious is different than someone else’s and I just want to make sure it’s clear for me:
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We don’t know if your drone is a dangerous drone (has a bomb) or you’re just having fun with a normal drone and don’t realize there is a base/restricted area here. We take no chances.
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We don’t want you to take photographs of our location/activity.
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The normal drone itself is a physical problem. Like a bird at an airport can be a problem for the plane, or the drone fails and falls out of the sky onto us.
Anything else?
Late: To be clear, I’m not talking about the hysteria going on now, just real reasons for real problems. There does seem to be a reckoning of drones becoming common but the problem unknown/ignored. Like cars first appearing on roads that were meant for walking/horses. At some point it had to be seriously dealt with. It’s not just a one-off hobby for a few people, but a new way of life.
Man, you’re not kidding, either. The local Next Door posts are getting crazier and crazier, with each video of an obvious airplane posted.
Hey, it can happen!
(Jalopnik article about thousands of drones falling out of the sky in China during a light show.)
Variations on those two reasons are why we don’t want drones flying over a juvenile detention center.
- Any jail, prison or detention center wants to prevent drones from dropping contraband (drugs, cell phones, weapons, etc.) into their outside recreation areas.
- Juvenile detention centers don’t want drones taking pictures of the teenagers when they are outside playing basketball or whatever - they still have some expectation of privacy or confidentiality.
Drones could probably also watch for inmates in an outside rec area to flash hand signs as a means of communicating with people on the outside.
That’s wonderful and exactly the kind of response I was hoping for. I had no idea. With that, I imagine there are dozens of those types of reasonable and real concerns with drones for many facilities/areas. And like me, people just have no idea.
I imagine this ends with dedicated places you can fly drones. Feels like the wild west right now. Or rather, instead of flying a drone everywhere but here or there, you can only fly here or there.