Mysterious Drones flying over New Jersey and other places including the UK.

[KnopkaPixie]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/nyregion/new-jersey-drones.html

What to make of this?

Apparently military grade drones have been spotted flying around the New Jersey skies at night in a decidedly unstealthy fashion.

Also reports have come in from the UK and Europe that similar craft have been observed in the airspace above military bases.

Are they trying out new kit in preparation for world war three? Is the Russians? Is it aliens? Is it too many beers on the back porch?

It seems that the New Jersey drones knocked it off on the day of Thanksgiving, which suggests to me that they were US military in origin.

Unless that's exactly what that dastardly Putin would want us to think, Captain Blackadder!

Or the aliens come in peace and stopped invading for a day as a mark of respect for local traditions.

Bizarre

I've linked this because Charlie has helpfully edited out the 42 or so minutes of dead air that was on the original Associated Press version. It's getting very strange.

For balance you might want a read of these two articles, the first one in part discusses the possible influence Social Media can have on these sort of events:

https://eu.northjersey.com/story/news/2024/12/06/nj-drone-sightings-video-social-media-bigger-picture/76800935007/

and this one, in which two drone users discuss the topic:

https://eu.northjersey.com/story/news/2024/12/04/drones-over-new-jersey-recent-sightings-experts-planes/76769158007/

Also this whole episode has been much discussed on some specialist forums (aviation related) and the overwhelming general opinion is there’s a very high probability what is being seen and often shown in MSM and SM are fixed wing aircraft or helicopters.

One problem now however is that the authorities, having gone high profile with something like this, with pleas for witnesses etc, will now find it very difficult to ramp things down again and maybe even say “err, actually we were all slightly mistaken”…

If you look back to the Gatwick debacle in 2018 the local police went to massive lengths to try and find somebody, pretty much anybody, to blame for flying a drone, even to the point of holding a couple of local and innocent model aircraft enthusiasts in custody for I think over 24 hours.

Some of the local feds in the Gatwick case are never going to admit that whole episode was highly likely a case of over reaction and that there may never have been a drone at all.

If it was a helicopter or a drone why wouldn't the authorities say that??

They're saying they don't know what they are.

This is the CIA/FBI/Police/army

You think if it was helicopters and domestic drones there would be all these interviews with them saying 'no idea'?

They'd be like 'it's helicopters-

There is a secret department where they employ people to come up with new ways to give people information so they can come up with endless conspiracies, it saves the people who lack intelligence from wandering the streets in a daze and gives them something to focus on

If it was a helicopter or a drone why wouldn't the authorities say that??
They're saying they don't know what they are

Well, from what I’ve seen politicians really don’t like committing themselves without proof one way or another….and TBH given the quality of a lot of the videos it would be very hard to tie in a track with, for example commercial traffic going into Newark or any of the other local airports so certainly a “don’t know” would be an honest answer, at least in some cases.

I suppose Army/CIA is maybe an attractive theory to some but if they are up to sneaky stuff why would they fly around with lights on?

…and BTW as far as the more esoteric theories go on any on the half decent videos it’s fairly clear the lighting configuration (position of red vs green vs the whites, various) is match with international aviation standards….so either the alien theories are bust or our visitors have done some research and are remarkably law abiding.

"military grade" 😂

Well…..where to start.

Not sure about the talking head (I’ll come back to him) but the ciearest “drone” shown in that piece, the one at about 55 seconds in that video is clearly a small airliner, probably a 737.

It’s flying left to right, (the green light position light is one clue), standard airliner strobes, looks like wing illumination lights are on and there’s some spillover from landing lights visible on the forward fuselage. Oh, and the vertical stabilizer (fin) is clearly visible, illuminated by the logo lights and appears to be orange, which possibly means it’s a Southwest Airlines aircraft, they are a regular into some of the New York area airports…

All the other snippets are so poor quality it’s a “don’t know”, as in I can’t identify for certain but they could very easily be aircraft…

That’s not the first instance of the MSM transmitting frankly easily very debunked videos, so I can only assume they don’t mind keeping the story going.

Oh, the only thing I might agree with the talking head on is this might just be the work of one or two enthusiasts, but I know what my money still is.

If it's a plane why did the FBI not say so instead of saying they don't know what it is? The whole thing is beyond weird.

He's not impressed

@notimagain "If you look back to the Gatwick debacle in 2018 the local police went to massive lengths to try and find somebody, pretty much anybody, to blame for flying a drone, even to the point of holding a couple of local and innocent model aircraft enthusiasts in custody for I think over 24 hours."

yes and what really threw me was I don't think there was any official information about the sighting. The whole airport got closed down because somebody thought they saw something? I don't know what the conclusion was there. But I also never understood what happened really. When the airport first closed, I thought air traffic control must've seen something.

I’d agree with you that it’s weird…I’ve just been browsing and seen another YouTube Fox piece where the anchor showed footage she had taken of another “drone” going over her house. No “ifs”, or “perhaps”, it was “here is one over my house”….Problem was that on the few occasions the autofocus got things sharpened up you could see from the lights it was clearly a swept wing airliner at medium to low altitude. Neverthless the images got broadcast as part of her lead in to an interview without any qualifiers - that sort of behaviour from the MSM is really not helping informed debate and is adding to the weirdness

As for the FBI I suspect one problem for them might be, for example, if Mr Migs at 15 high street somewhere claims he saw a drone 100 yards away it’s going to be tough (but not impossible) to reconcile it with a 737 15 miles away going into, say, Newark, so it’ll get pencilled in as an unknown and the FBI have a lot of genuine “don’t knows”…I don’t envy them dealing with the politicians.

BTW I’m also not sure in the current climate I’d want to be the local elected politician who stood up and told their constituents that chances are they might well be mistaken in believing they are seeing drones…….so this might run and run until the next big news story breaks or people lose interest.

@EmeraldRoulette

Re Gatwick, the initial reports wasn’t from ATC, I’m not sure ATC or aircrew ever reported one, AFAIK all the eyewitness reports came from the general public/maybe airport ground staff….link to a literal long read about it, but FWIW last para:

”Most people with any interest in the Gatwick drone have already made their mind up. Either the initial sighting was a mistake, and subsequent sightings were the result of mass panic or confirmation bias, as proved by the technical unfeasibility of what was described. Or there was a drone, and the same technical challenges are evidence that it was an extremely sophisticated attack, one that we should be wary of dismissing.”

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/01/the-mystery-of-the-gatwick-drone

It's all getting a bit like this:

.

@notimagain Thank you - that article was really interesting. I was very puzzled at the time - because quite early on, people were saying it's possible there isn't really a drone and I thought how can they shut down the airport then...Surely either there was or there wasn't, was my thinking at the time.

I just thought the space around an airport would have more tracking I guess so someone could confirm or deny. Maybe I have inflated ideas of what the tech can do.

my mum had a friend working at the airport at the time - he also said to us that he thought witnesses were unreliable and that there had never been a drone. I suppose any risk like that is too massive to ignore so even if the sighting is unofficial, they've got to close down the airport.

Quite worrying that someone could disrupt the airport so easily. The thing about the share price strikes me as the most likely reason that someone might try!

I just thought the space around an airport would have more tracking I guess so someone could confirm or deny. Maybe I have inflated ideas of what the tech can do.

My knowledge is a bit dated, older style radars aren’t much use against small, slow moving objects especially near the ground, though I’m sure the technology has improved.

Heathrow has got a relatively modern ground movements radar for use in fog etc that can see really small stuff, but if it can see objects the scale of drones, don’t know.

I just thought the space around an airport would have more tracking I guess so someone could confirm or deny. Maybe I have inflated ideas of what the tech can do.

Most aircraft tracking is the planes themselves reporting their own position by radio. Airport radar gives some additional local coverage of aircraft movements and approaching weather, but small drones are likely to fall below the normal detection limits.

Thank you @notimagain for the knowledgeable posts!

@DogInATent

For info position reports by VHF is fairly uncommon these days, used in some circumstances but it’s increasingly rare.

Most airports have secondary surveillance radar which allows complete coverage of cooperating traffic, which has to be fitted with and using transponders (so that’s usually aircraft and some ground vehicles).

Problem in the context of the thread is any drones not wanting to cooperate simply won’t be transponder equipped and as you say will probably fall below the detection limits of any primary radar the airport has.

Thanks for this thread. I’ve just remembered I was going to watch the X files on all4 right from the first episode

They say there about the size of a car so unlikely to be privately owned.

I really must find better things to do but I spent about an hour late last night looking at some more of the images on some of the MSM, including UK outlets and the conclusion I personally reached was there’s stuff all chance of an objective debate until the MSM start applying due diligence to some of the stuff they are choosing to broadcast/publish…

As an example the UK’s Daily Mail was running a video supposedly taken in NJ.

Now for background/info/context the whole chunk of airspace over the eastern seaboard of the US, from Boston down to Washington and beyond, including over NJ is incredibly busy with airliner traffic at all altitudes, all brightly illuminated at night, especially at low altitude.

The video the DM chose to show all very breathless with comments such as..”there’s another drone……” but again the first set of flashing lights shown was clearly an airliner on approach somewhere…

That Daily Mail sequence film then cut to lights slightly out of focus flying overhead…”oh, look, that one is leaving a trail” says the camera holder….well an airliner cruising at highish altitude, which it could clearly be seen to be when in focus, tends to do that.

I don’t know if the MSM pays for these images but if they are paying much then they are getting poor value for money…then again all the interest generates clicks so maybe they don’t care…

The truth I’m sure is out there, in an effort to stay objective I’d say it’s clearly impossible to say there aren’t some drones being flown, but I’ve not seen any compelling images, certainly not in the output on widely available sources.

Now…really must get some work done today…..

I was thinking of transponders and ADS-B rather than VHF voice reporting of position. Both of which are "radio".

"Also reports have come in from the UK and Europe that similar craft have been observed in the airspace above military bases."

Have there really been reports of sightings outside of the US?