Federal offense.
One golf rangefinder can detect distances at up to 1500 yards. “We want answers from the government or we’ll shoot them down”, demonstrates poor risk assessment and limited scientific imagination in my view.
Jesus Christ.
Do people literally never go outside and look up?
(that’s the constellation Orion, for people that literally never go outside and look up)
Larry Hogan sees drones hovering at Maryland home after similar incidents in New Jersey, New York
There’s a great quote in the article:
The only thing we know is that they’re perfectly harmless! 
Seems apropos
If any of them were shooting stars, they’d look like they were hovering if they were headed right for you. Until they bonked you on the head, that is.
I’m not entirely sure if this is humour or not.
A fixed light in the sky, brighter than any star, about the same size as Venus, is probably a planet. Two bright planets are visible in the sky at the moment (Venus and Jupiter), and I’ve seen a few instances where these have been filmed as drones. Unfortunately laser rangefinders don’t work very well for determining the range to planets.
(It’s humor.)
According to this video from last year the Navy has been testing a PteroDynamics VTOL drone that can hover and also fly like a plane. It can be used to transport packages between land and sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEV2SaghqXY
That whooshing noise was not a drone passing over your head.
Is some of this the result of people looking at the night sky for perhaps the first time in their lives? (I remember having a conversation with someone who didn’t realize that it’s possible to see the moon during the day. I think some think it’s only visible at night.)
The Winter Sky is the easiest to learn, and I was familiar with it by the age of twelve. Jupiter is up there too ATM. Anyone reporting UAPs, UFOs, or drones, should try to recognise at least the Winter constellations, and the planets (although I admit I’ve misidentified Mercury as a plane before now- a brilliant little planet, but rarely seen).
All I can say is that if the aliens are here to save us, I wish they’d hurry up. If they’re here to obliterate us, better get on with that, too.
I, for one, welcome our new drone overlords!
In Hogan’s case (Davidsonville, MD), that’s 20-25 miles south of BWI and even closer to Joint Base Andrews. National in basically DC isn’t much further and I’m sure one can see planes heading to/from Dulles west of DC in VA. That doesn’t even take the two nearby small airports (Lee and Freeway; maybe 5 miles either in east or west direction from Davidsonville) into account.
Five possibilities, all of which are probably true in different ways
1/ People are misidentifying distant commercial aircraft, and on occasion military aircraft or police/emergency services. This accounts for about 90% of the videos I’ve seen.
2/ People are misidentifying stars and planets; Jupiter is just above Orion at the moment, so several of the brightest celestial objects are gathered together in the same sector of the sky. Venus is up there too, just after sunset.
3/ People are sending up their own drones to look for the intruders - no idea if this strategy works, but I haven’t seen any relevant clips filmed from drones yet.
4/ The US (and UK) military are actively testing their own drones, and anti-drone measures, probably because of heightened world tension. An anti-drone laser was tested successfully in the UK recently; I hope they never use this system against a misidentified commercial airliner.
5/ Some people are flying drones mischievously to cause havoc - this may include some actual espionage, but I suspect that is rare, especially now when everyone is out there looking for drones.
I am convinced there are zero ‘car-sized drones’ up there, and no aliens, either.
Also, I read somewhere in all the breathless reporting about how drones were over some reservoir, so clearly Shenanigans! But looking at our local reservoir’s satellite image (the Quabbin) the resolution is surely enough to plan whatever nefarious deeds one has in mind.
Zoom way in and I’d say those you can count the rocks on the shore basketball sized and larger.
Okay, now Friday night we have…
Drone activity in New York shut down runways at Stewart Airfield, governor says - CBS New York
“Last night, the runways at Stewart Airfield were shut down for approximately one hour due to drone activity in the airspace. This has gone too far,” Hochul said in a statement released Saturday morning.
…
Hochul’s statement Saturday also called on federal lawmakers to pass a law strengthening the Federal Aviation Administration’s oversight of drones:“In mid-November, I directed the New York State Intelligence Center to actively investigate drone sightings and coordinate with federal law enforcement to address this issue, and those efforts are ongoing. But in order to allow state law enforcement to work on this issue, I am now calling on Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act. This bill would reform legal authorities to counter-UAS and strengthen the FAA’s oversight of drones, and would extend counter-UAS activities to select state and local law enforcement agencies.”
“Extending these powers to New York State and our peers is essential. Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden Administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people.”
This looks to me more like your “conventional” disruptive a-hole type systems vandalism akin to the lasering of aircraft in the pattern a couple years back. And it COULD be Bad Actors testing the vulnerabilities of the system, you can’t discard that.
Yeah, you likely have got it there, a little bit of one and the other. The unfamiliar is not necessarily abnormal and the abnormal is not necessarily a threat.
Seems a lot of the confusion here is that yes, there may be a problems with just asshats with drones, or sure, Bad Actors acting badly for their purposes, which in turn gets intensified by People Finally Looking Up and noticing there’s traffic and phenomena in the sky they’re unfamiliar with and adding reports that just don’t help – but then instead of a measured following up on what is actually happening get the distraction of having to respond to the people saying it’s the size of an SUV or it’s from an Iranian mothership that somehow the Navy and Coast Guard have failed to see.
(One would think that by now the relevant authorities would know that just saying “oh, there’s nothing to see here” does not satisfy the public. Give some sort of explanation of why you’re not worried.)
I was just out in the backyard with the dog, and Logan is only a few miles away so I often see planes taking off and landing at relatively low altitude. I just saw one, and really wanted to take a photo and go online and make a “OMG! The drones are over Boston now!” post.
Except the only social media I’m on is LinkedIn.
The drones are not only breaking the laws of New Jersey, they are breaking the laws of thermodynamics-- they “give off no heat”.
(Look at the linked video on Twitter late in the article.)
In the name of Eris, don’t do that!
Every ‘drone sent up by the Sheriff’s office’ creates a dozen new sightings.