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.

Yes, but "similar" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, grouping together drones and UAVs of widely differing sizes and capabilities when you look at the available footage.

RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, and RAF Feltwell reported drones/UAVs in their vicinities last month.

Drones have been detected and shot down (I think) in Suffolk/Essex in the past month.

I don't think there's a credible report of a drone being downed. A MOP reported seeing something they thought looked a bit like a drone being shot down near RAF Mildenhall. But the whole account reads a bit like a MN post.

www.edp24.co.uk/news/24764922.beck-row-woman-says-saw-drone-shot-raf-mildenhall/

Agree with the above, there are zero credible reports of drones being shot down in the UK and as far as Mildenhall went interestingly (maybe) once the news cycle moved on reports ceased - similar time scale to the Gatwick affair….

"Oh go have another glass of wine mom" 😂

The Pentagon has said that these are not drones coming from a foreign entity or adversary and that they are not US military. You'd have to imagine they are from another US sanctioned body (or say US military contractors) or they wouldn't be letting them so close to US military installations.

Woo woo.

news.sky.com/story/drones-spotted-over-three-us-air-bases-in-uk-13261011

Here's the story. Yes not sure any were downed.

This is utter nonsense, obviously. Just posting before going to bed but really... I think all of this is just to up our sense of hypervigilence.

You don't have to do much but to threaten something is enough. It's quite clearly our own boys and gals trying out new kit. I don't think Iran has launched a submarine mothership off the coast of New Jersey, that would be silly. The sparkplugs would get wet on the the craft.

I agree it's mist likely US tech (hence the pentagons it's not 'US military' instead of 'not ours'. But I don't think anyone was claiming Iran submarines? The 'motherships' reference is to their 2 drone carrier ships - but I think both of those are currently in the gulf somewhere (one recently in the Indian Ocean). I agree that the thought of one of them being undetected off the coast of NJ is far fetched, but i think the claims need to be considered in context of the general level of distrust in the US and all the media attention on Iran assassination attempts on Trump pre the election (with potential paranoia around the current admin turning a blind eye).

I'm down at our shore house right now and it's all anyone's talking about and they've been really easy for everyone to spot. My personal opinion is that the most obvious answer is that it's US sanctioned and run. Or it's Google/Amazon/other tech giant. If it were Iran or Russia, they wouldn't be happily flying around the Jersey shore.

If it was US military in some form or other surely there’d be some sort of reassuring statement, instead of the “we don’t know what they are” that came from the NJ governor? Unless this is a deliberate tactic to scare people.

I can see that adversary drones pose a tricky situation as acknowledging that is basically a declaration of war.

ET drones I can get behind. The world is a crazy place right now, I’m sure there are loads of us with ET on our bingo cards. Only half joking here. The timing with the hearings at congress and admissions that there are UAPs is interesting, but could easily lead back to point 1, and this is a deliberate faked scenario to scare people, but why?

At this point in time I think a little green man invasion may be preferable to the little orange man getting back into power in January.

There are definitely still cases of video of aircraft being used in the media as evidence of drones…the UKs Guardian had a piece with such in it yesterday.

Maybe one thing to bear in mind is that now this is all nicely monetized, certainly by some in the media and it’s nicely politicized as it can be used as a stick to bash anyone in the outgoing administration.

This might be of interest, a bit of a take on a rush of drone sightings in the US from about four years ago..

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/phantom-drone-scare-recent-sightings-in-midwest-mass-hysteria-can-be-ruled-out/

More reports, is it all a hoax?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14189169/putin-spies-mayhem-invading-british-skies-drones.html

Haven't read the article as I shudder to think what the media will do with this story

but my thoughts- US government running some experiments but don't want to say that

some sightings will be people's imaginations. That's about it really.

a pp commented "why would they want to scare people". I'm too jaded to answer that but I imagine most people think the same, that it's just US government.

There's a couple of people I've seen on YouTube who normally post different type of content who have footage of the drones. One of them is a Christian mommy homesteader who saw some in October and didn't post about them until she saw the NJ ones.

A couple of points about the sort of image shown in the intro to the DM that @ReginaVanilla has shared a couple of posts back (to try and keep this even half short I’m not going to mention some of the images within the article itself).

Firstly there are four major, seriously busy airports within about a twenty or thirty miles of each other close to Manhattan… JFK and Newark are the probably the best known to Brits but you’ve also got La Guardia (mostly domestic) and Teterboro (mostly business jets)…I’ve piloted aircraft in and out of a couple of those airports and can testify that the airspace around New York itself and a big chunk of NJ is extremely busy (anyone that doubts that can do a fact check for themselves by looking at flight radar or one of the other tracking sites).

Secondly it’s standard practice in the airline world to display landing lights day and night (and at night logo lights, and some operators also stick white wing illumination lights on) when below 10,000 feet when arriving and departing from an airport. That’s done to aid conspicuity and also hopefully help avoid birdstrikes.

It’s worth being aware landing lights are directional and very powerful, you can often see traffic 50-100 miles away on a clear night if those lights are on and pointing roughly in your direction.

Go to Heathrow any clear night when it’s busy and look in the appropriate direction and you can often see five or maybe six white lights in the sky - that’s the landing lights from aircraft strung out coming down the approach…that’s just the one airport. Going in or out of the previously mentioned New York area airports some clear nights there are lights pretty much everywhere due to there being multiple airports/traffic patterns.

So judged on what I’ve seen in that part of the world I’d suggest one strong possibility is that the DM or whoever generated that image has done is draw red rings around aircraft lights…but I accept that idea might not be in keeping with the popular mood.

👽

@JaneJeffer

Sadly that “News Nation” report is a real shocker.

Firstly looks to me as if the Governor filmed landing lights of two aircraft at long range…he says he checked one of the flight trackers but I wonder if he checked out on the correct azimuth as far as perhaps fifty plus miles (the sort of distance you can see those lights) or did he only check traffic close in?

As for the roving reporter….at about 3 min “If you look real close it looks like a fixed wing aircraft but “ ….

Well that’s because it is you dolt!!! But it’s hard to judge range at night and he provided a classic example of somebody falling for the big/small cow phenomenon and states it was only something like 6 feet across.

For completeness If you actually look hard at the object he is talking about it is traveling right to left (the appropriate coloured navigation light is visible), the landing lights are on (wing root and possibly taxi lights on nose) and it looks like the wing illumination lights are also on because the right engine nacelle is clearly visible…..it’s a (full sized) aircraft.

One really major problem with unraveling this now is that the MSM are simply scatter gunning the airwaves with images that patently are or probably are aircraft, but (as in this video) are saying they are drones.…

That in turn means some of the general public might go out tomorrow night, spot stuff that looks just like they have seen on the TV…..and so claim they’ve seen drones.

It’s possible some form of feedback loop has got going and that might be one reason for any increase in people saying they are seeing drones.

A example of not drones at LHR.

I’m not suggesting watching the whole thing but a good example is at 3H 07m 14 secs, 3 aircraft coming down finals - and there will have been at least 2 or 3 other aircraft hidden in the cloud behind…The aircraft are all in a single line with roughly 3 miles separation between each one

Perception is helped by things like the image being in focus, the observer being close to the aircraft in the final stages and the fact there are objects of roughly known size in foreground (e.g. lamp standards)…

Hi, swinging in from AIBU at the suggestion of another lovely poster.

Am intrigued by the whole thing, whatever it is.

Interesting audio of multiple pilots spotting UFOs over Oregon in real time on Dec 8:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qAKWau8Yv3s

That is intriguing - thank you for sharing.

Curiouser and curiouser!!

@Begsthequestion

Interesting but as a point of info regarding one siting: The “it’s on TCAS” comment used in the youtube title and in reference to an object at about 3 minutes in is a bit of an odd one.

To be visible “On TCAS” means, by the nature of how the TCAS system on aircraft work, that whatever is being watched is equipped with a bit of electronic kit called a transponder, so in that encounter either the alien were are flying around with a transponder fitted to their craft or what was being watched was a conventional aircraft……

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_system