Reality took my faith in humanity behind the woodshed, beat it to death with a shovel, and then buried it in an unmarked grave.
Unless they’re near an airport taking off or landing they any plane is probably too high to shoot with an ordinary gun; however, what goes up must come down & the yabbos may very well end up hitting a neighbor or passerby when their bullet returns to earth.
It’s almost time for the annual NYE PSA - please don’t shoot your guns in the air at midnight; people die that way.
Maybe the thread title should be changed? Strange things afoot in Oregon now.
Wait a minute, this article quotes an Oregon pilot as saying
… one of the lights was going in circles in a “corkscrew pattern” and showed up on his aircraft’s collision avoidance system.
IANAP but my understanding is that the CAS system depends on the target aircraft actively sending out a signal telling other aircraft where it is. A drone that doesn’t send out such a signal can’t be detected by the CAS. That’s pretty considerate of these mystery drones to help us detect where they are.
This article raises questions.
Military installations have access to CUAS (Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems) that can detect the Remote IDs that registered civilian drones are required to have unless flying in strictly defined areas. So if drones are buzzing military sites and they can’t ID the owners/operators, it suggests illegal activity of some kind and not accidental overflights by innocent, law-abiding drone operators.
Whatever high tech security systems are available I will assume they are at NWS Earle. The Navy won’t say there are nukes there but there are nukes there. There is a secured train track that goes from Earle to a long pier in Raritan Bay where Navy ships reload munitions. Security at Earle is no joke.
I am betting heavily on he “mass hysteria” option. This despite the fact my wife says she saw one.
That is a big ‘if’. No-one HAS mentioned confirmed detections by CUAS, almost certainly because these have not happened.
I suspect strongly that there are no enemy drones at these military installations, and all they have are sightings by military personnel of the same kind of misinterpreted distant aircraft that everyone else is seeing and filming. Military personnel appear to be surprisingly at identifying distant aircraft, if the recent Congress hearings are anything to go by.
Possibly - just possibly - some of these drones have been sent up by concerned citizens, trying to catch a glimpse of the mysterious intruders; these civilian drones should be fairly small and susceptible to anti-drone measures; but the chances of swarms of car-sized drones sent up by Chinese or Russian or North Korean spies is very small indeed.
Incidentally, I’ve seen Senator Kim’s videos, and former Gov. Hogan’s videos, and they both seem to show conventional aircraft in the distance. These clips were filmed looking directly towards locations with significant conventional aircraft activity.
It’s 5:29 pm. There are cops in front of my house because of the waterline work. I walked outside to move my car and there was a drone in the night sky… fixed ands still. There are no bright stars in that section of the sky. I pointed out to the cop. He laughed.
I moved my car around the block to get a better parking spot. Now he’s out of his car, talking on the radio. He’s laughing to somebody ( he’s not being serious ).
“I couldn’t hit that. It’s too far away and too small.”
I said “Don’t even try; what goes up must come down.”
He suggested it’s Amazon testing a delivery service. Might be.
At this point I’m 99% certain that people are seeing Starlink satellites, regular airplanes, and other normal aerial phenomena and are losing their shit and imagining drones the size of SUVs fifteen feet above their rooftops.
Once I am declared God Emperor of the world, nobody will be allowed on the internet unless they can demonstrate a knowledge of how to apply Occam’s Razor.
People who don’t usually even look at the night sky are just freaking out now that they are looking up and seeing things. Starlink satellites, normal small aircraft traffic, etc. Maybe we should send up fighter aircraft to shoot down the planet Venus too.
Somebody in Oregon just reported Starlinks travelling faster than any plane could! Must be them drones.
Pilots report mysterious lights over Oregon as drone sightings baffle New Jersey
I do not believe that these mysterios drones even exist, drones the size of an SUV, moving faster than possible, that the US Defense command cannot identify. Our military knows, they just aren’t commenting so as not to call people stupid. Probably sell a few more UFO books for the people exploiting a minor news story.
I totally discount the “car size” or “SUV size” attribute that is being reported. People are surprisingly bad at reporting the size of objects in the sky; not just the absolute size (which is pretty much impossible to judge) but even the angular size. Even among us Straight Dope readers (surely among the most sophisticated observers available), I posted a poll here last year asking about the angular diameter of the Moon, and only 8% answered correctly. 90% reported it bigger than it actually is, with more than a third reporting it more than 7 times wider than it is. And the Moon sits still and is available for multiple long term viewings during your entire life, unlike a drone which may be visible once, for a few seconds or minutes.
This should end well.
When does he take control of the Jewish Space Laser system?
Here in rural Virginia, the locals are all worked up about supposed spy drones that have recently been spotted. Apparently someone is trying to steal their secrets to incest and type 2 diabetes.
I thought it was illegal to shoot at aircraft, even if it’s a drone?
Looks like they already stole their common sense.
And cattle mutilations. Won’t someone think of the cattle?!
Two weeks ago I saw a fixed light in the sky. It was near the moon and it was brighter than any star I’ve ever seen. I know it wasn’t a satellite because it wasn’t moving. It can be hard to estimate size at a distance, but I would say it was easily over 100 meters wide, approximately the width of Venus.