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Game of Drones: “Watch the Skies!”

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

“As you all know, you just can’t believe everything you see and hear, can you?” –Jimi Hendrix, EXP

“Never believe anything until it is officially denied.” —Anonymous

New Jersey (“The Garden State”) has since mid-November been the site of a rash of drone sightings[1]. Here is a handy map:

That’s rather a lot of sitings, and in a short space of time. The drone story — and the intense local reaction — finally bubbled up this week to the opinion havers (Spectator, “What should we believe about New Jersey’s drones?“; The Atlantic, “What’s Going On With Those Drones Over New Jersey?“) and the What-We-Knowers (CNN, “What we know about the mysterious drones reported over the East Coast“; BBC, “What we know about the mysterious drones buzzing over New Jersey“; Associated Press, “Mystery drone sightings keep happening in New Jersey. Here’s what we know (and don’t know)”). As you can see, the drones are a complete “mystery” which, I suppose, makes it worthwhile to cover the story. Anyhow, who doesn’t like a good yarn about drones, or UFOs, or UAPs, or whatever they are?

In this essay, I will first outline the early sightings in New Jersey (i.e., before everybody and their siblings got into the act). I will then present the four most reasonable theories of the case that I have encountered, followed by the official reactions, unaddressed puzzle pieces, the usual suspects (like aliens), and conclude.

The Sightings Begin

USA Today provides an excellent drone sightings timeline, from which I excerpt five events:

Nov 18:

Witness accounts begin spotting several large drones in New Jersey measuring around 6 feet in diameter at night usually between dusk to 11 p.m, according to the Asbury Park Press…

The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey says patrolmen from law enforcement spotted the drones. The prosecutor’s office says the several agencies, including federal and state law enforcement partners, would “coordinate, monitor, and investigate the drone activity.”

Nov 22:

The FAA issues the first of two temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drones over the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey through Dec. 6. A second one was later issued on Dec. 4, extending the restriction through Dec. 20. The FAA told USA TODAY the move came “at the request of federal security partners.”

Nov. 25:

The FAA issues a temporary flight restriction over the Picatinny Arsenal Military Base in Morris County, New Jersey effective through Dec. 26.

Nov 26:

A medevac helicopter is prevented from picking up an injured car crash victim at the Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg, New Jersey, because drones were spotted in the area, a school spokesperson told USA TODAY on Dec. 4.

Dec 11:

A New Jersey closed-door briefing about the drones is held at State Police headquarters, where lawmakers are told that investigators have been unable to electronically detect the drones despite the frequent sightings.

November 18: Here is the Morris County Prosecutor Office’s statement from their Facebook account:

\

November 26: Here is the episode of the Medevac helicopter, from NJ.com:

[A] medevac helicopter was unable to pick up a seriously injured patient last week due to drones hovering near the landing zone, a security official said.

The medical helicopter was headed to an accident in Branchburg Township in Somerset County on Nov. 26, local officials said.

Two security guards from Raritan Valley Community College closed roads around the scene of the crash, in preparation for the medevac to land and take an accident victim to the hospital, said Brian Serge, supervisor of security at the public college.

The captain of the fire department contacted the college’s security office at 6:54 p.m., canceling the request for a helicopter landing zone due to drones flying in the area, Serge said.

‘We never found out what the actual drones were,’ Serge said. ‘It’s kind of a mystery. We were asking around about that, but nobody knew anything.’

Some of the reporting on this story calls the medevac drone “SUV-sized,” and that some drones are big is supported by other sources (here, here, here). Whether this particular drone was SUV-sized is not clear to me, although it seems likely: “State Police later confirmed the landing zone was moved to a different location due to the ‘due to the presence of unmanned aircraft in the immediate area.'” Typically, one would not call a normal-sized drone an “aircraft,” let alone a hobbyist’s drone[2]. I focus on this episode because it seems to have the best potential witnesses. It should not be that hard to run down what the unnamed captain of the fire department detected, although (see below) “nobody knew anything” does seem a little odd.

December 11: Here New Jersey State Represenative Dawn Fantasia (!!) summarizes the state of play after the state police briefing:

tl;dr: “We know nothing.” Seems odd. Especially given the possibility of serious injury or death due to the diversion of a medevac helicopter; after all, the possibility of cerebral hypoxia following an automobile accident is why we have medical helicopters.

Now let’s look at some theories.

Theory #1: What Drones?

From Andrew McCarthy (the astrophotographer, not the National Review legal affairs columnist):

And:

For example:

See reader-added context (1):

See reader-added context (2):

So, in strong form, there are no drones. All the sightings are planes (or planets). However, I don’t think McCarthy gives an account of the SUV-sized drones. In weaker form: I haven’t done serious investigation, but from the coverage, it seems to me that the SUV-sized drones are early in the coverage, and the bright lights in the sky drones are later; those are all planes.

Theory #2: Testing at Picatinny Arsenal

Picatinny Arsenal, NJ (“Joint Center of Excellence in Lethality“) does develop drones. There are two NOTAMs up in New Jersey, one for Picatinny Arsenal on November 25:

(A NOTAM, says the FAA, is a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMs), a notice containing information essential to personnel concerned with flight operations but not known far enough in advance to be publicized by other means.”) Here is the full version of the NOTAM:

So, the theory is that the drone are coming from Picatinny Arsenal drone testing. But I don’t think that matches the timeline, where we have the first burst of official actiity on November 18, and the NOTAM following a week after. Indeed, it seems more likely that Picatinny Arsenal got the NOTAM issued to protect its own airspace from the myterious drones, whose source it did not, for some reason, know.

Theory #3: A Search for Radioactive Material

The drones could be HPGe (High Purity Germanium) drones (strong form) searching for a dirty bomb, or (weak form) practicing such a search:

HPGe drones are indeed large. From Applied Radiation and Isotopes (2023): “[A] spectrometric monitoring system based on High-Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector carried by powerful unmanned helicopter has been developed. The presented unmanned aerial spectrometric system is reliable and heavy-duty.” And: “High payload capacity – Total weight of the detector and the holder is approx. 20 kg. (There are a “cryocooler” involved, but I can’t find its weight.) This theory is why I harped on SUV-sized drones. From Popular Science:

“When you see something of this capacity, you wonder why it would be needed [and] what they are doing. It implies a heavy payload,” retired four-star general Barry McCaffrey told NBC News on December 8th.

This theory explains why. Here is a drone manufacturer supporting this theory, in addition arguing that drones flying close to the ground[3] supports the idea of a search for radiation:

Since an actual search for a dirty bomb is the worst case scenario, I’ll place Walter Kirn’s delphic utterance here:

So, I have to say that this theory looks like the best one, based on the facts presented so far. It gives an account of the size, the low-to-the-ground flights, and of course (whether strong or weak form) the secrecy. It would sure be nice if we knew whether any of the SUV-sized drones had cryocoolers and horn antennas hanging off ’em, especially in the Raritan Valley Community College incident.

Theory #4: A “Classified Exercise”

From the New York Post, “Ex-CIA staffer offers ‘unsettling’ theory behind drones as feds dismiss concerns as ‘overreaction'”:

Former [ha ha] CIA operations officer Laura Ballman pressed the federal government to be more transparent about the mysterious drone sightings, theorizing that the disturbing phenomena might be part of a “classified exercise” mounted by the Biden Administration, during an interview with Fox News Live on Saturday.

“Now in terms of who is behind this, deducing the statements that have been made by John Kirby, who has said that these objects are not operating illegally coupled with the several op-eds that have been [planted] out the last 24 hours about the need to look at our detection systems, makes me think, perhaps, this is actually a classified exercise to test either evasion technology or detection technology in urban areas,” Ballman said.

(The Daily Mail has the same story.)

So, “detect” what? Well, see above. This looks to me like a modified limited hangout, based on “A Search for Radioactive Material” (weak form). I can’t imagine officialdom will take Ballman up on this; public opinion would, I think, immediately convert the weak form in the strong form, and rapidly depopulate the New York area. Best, I think, to gut it out and then bury it, as so much else has been buried.

The Official Reactions

From the U.S. Department of Defense:

During an on-background telephone call today, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration and the Joint Staff provided comment and answered questions from reporters about the drone sightings.

Right now, the FBI, DHS, FAA and DOD have been unable to determine who is responsible for flying the drones, and there’s no indication that there are adversary nations involved.

“To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent,” the spokesperson said. “But … we don’t know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin.”

I will tell you that it is irresponsible. Here on the military side, we are just as frustrated with the irresponsible nature of this activity.”

That’s an interesting list of alphabet agencies. But hardly exhaustive. (I mean, “on the military side.” Something’s going on with the other side, then?) The President-elect:

Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country. Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!”

So, Trump is, I think, saying that the dog did not bark in the night… But note the extreme, even exaggerated reluctance of the military to get involved in any way (no matter what Representative Fantasia might wish). So who does the shooting?

Unaddressed Puzzle Pieces

Here are some unaddressed issues. Some theories can give an account of them, others cannot:

Source. From the Asbury Park Press:

Despite weeks of investigation, New Jersey authorities still don’t know where the mystery drones are coming from, who’s operating them, or where they are taking off or landing from, state lawmakers were told at a closed-door briefing on the drones Wednesday.

Tracking. Again from Lt. Ryan Graves on FOX:

“We have some of the most sophisticated radar systems on the Eastern seaboard. We should, with great certainty, know exactly where these objects are, where they’re going and where they’re setting down if they are. So, either these things have the ability to counter those technologies, or we’re simply lying about what’s happening.”

Funding. From the Asbury Park Press:

“What concerns us is that there has to be a lot of financial backing behind the drones,” Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy told the Asbury Park Press. “That and the fact that nobody has seen them land or take off.”

Night Flight. From NJ.com, Mendham resident Nancy Read:

“It’s strange. They’re out there for hours, never during the day.”

The Usual Suspects

Of course, Iran or China.

So, we can’t find that out in a month, and then shoot them down?

Conclusion

“Watch the skies!” comes from the final lines of The Thing from Another World (1951). I suppose I should have included the aliens under the usual suspects, but I just couldn’t go there. Mentally, I had that quote misfiled under Orson Wells’s The War of the Worlds, tagged “Mass Hysteria.”[4] But since I can’t give an account of how Covid infection got normalized during an ongoing pandemic, I’m reluctant to psychologize anything anymore. That said, it’s clear we have a population under stress and in distress.

Loss of privacy. New York Times:

The day after Thanksgiving, Susan and Lorelai Woodruff saw approximately 10 brightly lit objects banking and turning quickly in the night sky above their home in Elsinboro, in southern New Jersey.

Every night since, they say, the objects have been back, emitting a strange, humming whir and flashing red, green and white[5].

“I think it’s like an invasion,” said Lorelai Woodruff, 52. “I feel like our privacy is kind of invaded.”

Loss of trust. FOX (!):

We are a low-trust society. The lack of transparency is almost worse than the drones.

Loss of hope. New York Times:

“The thing that really feels unsettling is just like, is this always going to be like this?” Ms. Dunbar said, adding that she feared for her family’s privacy, not knowing what surveillance capabilities the drones might have.

“I’m not a conspiracist by any means,” she said, “but I don’t love the idea of massive drones patrolling where I live.”

Constant gaslighting. NJ.com:

So goes life in New Jersey after federal officials on Thursday largely rejected the reported drone sightings, leaving some in the Garden State feeling gaslighted, infuriated or downright unmoored as they trekked on their own quest for answers.

Additional theories welcome!

NOTES

[1] One theory of the case is that in reality no drones have been spotted at all, so when I, as an agnostic, write “drone,” I mean “purative drone.”

[2] Here is an SUV-sized sighting on December 5:

During another press conference, Evesham, NJ, chief of police Walt Miller confirmed between four and eight drones also flew in the area between roughly 8:00PM and 11:00PM on December 5th.

“These weren’t the normal drones that somebody would purchase and use,” Miller said, who also likened them to “as large as an SUV” and capable of flying in wind conditions smaller vehicles couldn’t otherwise handle. At times the drones hovered in place, although Miller stated law enforcement couldn’t identify if they did so over critical infrastructure sites.

[3] That the drones flew close to the ground puzzled one pilot. From FOX: “Former F-18 U.S. Navy fighter pilot Lt. Ryan Graves [said] ‘”There’s zero benefit, all risk for operating these things so close to the ground, especially if it’s some type of classified equipment.'” But search for radioactivity use case refutes Graves.

[4] From 404 Media:

The calls about the mystery drones lighting up the night sky were sporadic at first. Then they came daily, from all over the state. A multi-agency task force was convened. The FBI got involved. So did the military. The local news reported on a “band of large drones” hovering over the state that came out most nights. The sightings became national news. People theorized that they were classified government aircraft, or foreign spies. Some people wondered whether they were aliens.

This was not New Jersey this month, where drone sightings have caused a mass panic and involvement from local officials all the way up to the White House. It was Colorado in December, 2019 and January, 2020. Months passed, and Colorado’s mystery drones turned out not to be mysterious at all. Authorities eventually determined that some of the “drones” were SpaceX Starlink satellites. Others were regular passenger aircraft approaching the airport, and many “were visually confirmed to be hobbyist drones by law enforcement” and which were not breaking any laws. Some were absolutely nothing and were chalked up to people perceiving lights because of atmospheric conditions. In other cases, law enforcement started to fly their own drones to investigate the supposed mystery drones, creating the possibility of further “mystery drone” sightings, according to public records released after the initial mass panic.

[5] Coincidentally or not, red, green, and white are the standard colors for external lights on commercial aircraft.

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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67 comments

  1. Carolinian

    New Jersey was where the Martians landed in the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Not saying there’s a connection but….

    Seriously though don’t all motorized aircraft make quite a lot of distinctive noise? Craig Murray said he could hear the Israeli drones flying around Beirut.

    So even in the dark identification shouldn’t be that hard unless they are very high up or they are indeed Martians.

    1. katiebird

      I was wondering if the SUV sized “drones” could be Chinooks … but then remembered that they almost make the earth quake when they fly over our house.

    2. MaureenO

      Some comments from my cousin who saw them in Freehold, NJ. He works in IT. What he saw were not planes and could tell from the altitude and the sound, he took some pictures but it is just four lights, bright enough to make the body of the craft impossible to make out. He thought this might be the intention of the drones flying with lights on, blinding both eyesight and cameras from identification.

      I am telling him about the dirty bomb scenario since that makes sense to me. If the military is not worried about the drones, that makes me worried. He can work from anywhere so I hope he can leave.

  2. JB

    The HPGe drone for detecting nuclear materials is a fascinating suggestion – because ever since reading The Fourth Protocol, it’s been blindingly obvious to me that the most likely way to win a nuclear war is to smuggle in nuclear weapons to the enemy state(s).

    No missiles, no warning, (potentially) no Mutually Assured Destruction. It’s one of the least talked about and most exceedingly dangerous things about nuclear weapons.

    So, can these drones/detectors find hidden nuclear weapons? The absence of that ability, could certainly be one of the most fatal vulnerabilities any nuclear power (or other potential target nation) can have.

    1. GM

      That theory makes zero sense given that the drones are flying at night with lights turned on in a very visible way.

      If they were looking for something like this, it would be done in the most concealed way possible.

      But otherwise you are 100% correct — smuggled nukes is the nightmare scenario.

      Given the US having no real control over its borders, that is a very real possibility. They don’t even have to be smuggled for a decapitation strike on the coasts (where most things of value are concentrated) — shipping containers just lying around in the ports will do the job perfectly fine. You can put a lot of megatons in one of those.

      But the exact same thing applies to Russia too, of course…

      1. begob

        I guess solar radiation would interfere with particle sensors, so detection has to take place at night, when navigation lights are necessary.

      2. Polar Socialist

        If the Russian “Kazbek” command and control system of Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces goes offline (a.k.a. decapitation strike), “Perimetr” system takes over, and automatically deduces if a de-capitation strike has occurred and if affirmative, launches Russian retaliatory strike.

        It was build in the 90’s, and it’ supposed to be activated only during a crisis, but some say it has been active since 2009. The purpose is to make it less probable that the humans make a too hasty decision for retaliatory strike, because the system gives Russia more time to figure out if the perceived threat is real.

        Of course, with NATO today pushing possible nuclear missiles to Ukraine and Finland that time will still be hair-trigger short.

      3. Lambert Strether Post author

        > That theory makes zero sense given that the drones are flying at night with lights turned on in a very visible way.

        I simply reported the theories, but now let my give my view, a combination of Theories #1 and #3.

        It’s important to disentangle the two classes of drones, conveniently lumped together in the press coverage.

        There are the SUV-sized drones (that size to bear the weight of the HPGe). These fly at night to conceal anything distinctive, like the cryocoolers and horn antennas. They fly close to the ground to detect radiation. I have not run down all the references, but what I can say is that I do not recall a story that reported the SUV drones being lit up; if they are, it would be to avoid collisions. This is theory #3. These drones are real.

        Then there are the “bright lights in the sky” drones. These drones are not real; they are planes, per Theory #1. The bright lights are the results of FAA regulation.

        So the trigger or index was the SUVs, reported simply as “drones.” That triggered a secondary explosion or wave of bright lights in the sky drone sightings, something like a moral panic. This panic has now been transformed into a tertiary explosion by opportunists like Schumer and Mayorkas (as well as the UFO community making bank in the green room).

        If I am right, reports of Theory #3 SUV-sized drowns will die down, one way or another, and we will only get Theory #1 reports.

      4. mrsyk

        If they were looking for something like this, it would be done in the most concealed way possible.
        If I were in charge I would be searching in the most effective way possible.

        1. IEL

          What about the desire to avoid panic? That seems like a reasonable secondary objective, especially since panicked behavior could make for a chaotic environment and make the search more difficult.

      5. MaureenO

        That theory makes zero sense given that the drones are flying at night with lights turned on in a very visible way.

        My cousin had the gerat insight that flying with the lights on makes it much harder to identify these at night. Imaging standing on a stage with the lights blasting at you and trying to pick out a face from the crowd.

        That the drones are US Drones, either looking for, or preparing for the aftermath of a dirty bomb, makes sense to me.

    2. IowanX

      I waited for my wife to get home to double check, but about 2 weeks ago ago they announced they were doing low level helicopter flights over DC to check for radiation. Can’t find the announcement, but she and I both remember hearing about it.

      Another data point. Take from it what you will.

    1. johnherbiehancock

      yeah, that’s my thought as well. Whether there were any actual unidentified drones or not, various agencies all have incentives to milk this story for everything they can.

      I also saw some speculation it’s serving to push more legitimate news stories off the front page… the obvious candidate is Luigi Mangione’s situation & story, but others think this serves to distract the public from some of Biden’s truly atrocious & inexplicable recent pardons.

      Could be either or. Or why not both?

    2. David Johnston

      No I don’t think it is, but I bet it’s a classified federal experiment of some sort, judging from the difference between the puzzled confirmation of local officials and the gaslighting of the federal ones. The interesting bit, and another clue, is that these things are huge but can’t be picked up by radar. The Americans are behind in several key areas of military tech, but their drone and submersible tech is still top notch, and historically they have had no problems using their own citizenry as guinea pigs.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Simply more pablum to preoccupy the brain-damaged masses.

      Seems like a roundabout and effortful way for the ruling class to go, rather than just relying on industry standard tropes and narratives (sports; celebrities). I’m all for realism about ruling class motives and actions, but way too much cynical posturing is easy and lazy. Also, IMNSHO “masses” is simply incoherent as a concept.

  5. GM

    One thing that makes this very puzzling is the lights.

    The drones are behaving as if they want to be seen, on purpose.

    Look at Gerans flying towards their targets in Ukraine, or Ukrainian Foxbats in the other direction. No lights. In fact, serious effort is invested in making them as invisible as possible, because old school anti-aircraft guns are the best way to combat them, and those need a direct line of sight. The Gerans have a black-painted variant for nighttime strikes and another paint job that makes them less visible during the day.

    Reconnaissance drones also never fly with bright lights on.

    Lights are not necessary for kamikaze drones and they are not necessary for reconnaissance drones either.

    And as far as it is known, the drones that have been stalking various military objects in Europe for quite some time now did not emit these lights. Thus everyone has been assuming those are being flown by Russian agents on the ground and it is NATO’s inept air defense’s inability to take them out that keeps them coming back again and again.

    So what is going on the last month is quite different.

    If they were testing drones, they would not be doing it with bright lights on at night. Because again, there is no real-world mission in which drones would be flying with lights on. Also, the expanding geography might indicate mass panic and widespread misidentification, but if the reports are correct, that alone makes it less likely that this is some kind of governmental or private testing program. Presumably that would be restricted to a few locations.

    Similar considerations apply to the theory that they are sniffing for nukes. If the government is looking for smuggled nukes waiting to explode, the last thing they would want is to attract attention to that fact. And whatever aircraft they use for that purpose would have zero need for shining brightly in the sky at night anyway — you don’t detected nukes with visible light.

    So again, whoever/whatever is behind this, assuming the phenomenon is real, likely wants to be seen and talked about. I have no answers beyond that, but any real answer will have to account for it.

    1. DJG, Reality Czar

      Thank you, GM. First, I’m going to be persnickety. We are not talking about “theories.” We are talking about a lot of flimsy opinions not backed up by facts. Let’s call this phenomenon the Gladys Kravitz Idea of Drones.

      What I like about your post is that you give counter-arguments that are indeed valid. You apply Ockham’s razor — let’s not multiply causes.

      Also, as Lambert notes, the normal colors of lighting for commercial aircraft are red, green, and white.

      I noted this quote: “Every night since, they say, the objects have been back, emitting a strange, humming whir and flashing red, green and white[5].”

      Writing from the Undisclosed Region of Italy, I will note that the Italian tricolore is red, white, and green. Coinkydink? I suspect that these apparitions are goodwill offerings from Italy celebrating the spaghetti harvest.

      Your important conclusion: “So again, whoever/whatever is behind this, assuming the phenomenon is real, likely wants to be seen and talked about. I have no answers beyond that, but any real answer will have to account for it.”

      As distinguished correspondent ambrit noted the other day, people see in the heavens what the culture has conditioned them to see in the heavens. If Venerable Bede were in New Jersey, he’d see dragons.

      In Northern Italy, during the middle ages and into the baroque, people regularly saw the Wild Hunt. The benandanti in the Friuli and the Veneto participated in aerial battles, at night (!), against evildoers who threatened the crops. Sometimes, people claimed that the neighbor ladies were using potions to go flying across the sky, which meant that said neighbor ladies would be dragged in by the Inquisition.

      As Lambert Strether notes, the U.S. population is under stress. The culture is under stress.

      I’d say that much of U.S. culture suffers from stagnation brought about by too much money in all the wrong places (the Democratic National Committee, e.g.) and too many neoliberal fantasies about money. And when those fantasies turn into panics about drones?

      After all, during the late-1940s and 1950s, a panicky time, people were finding secret documents in pumpkin patches….

      1. Lambert Strether Post author

        > We are not talking about “theories.” We are talking about a lot of flimsy opinions not backed up by facts.

        Sadly, no. See sense 5 from the OED.

        I recall a usage example from Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, although I do not have it to hand just now.

        Also, I find “not backed up by facts” curious. I certainly tried to add as many facts to the mix as I could find; see especially the discussion under Theory #1.

    2. Martín

      Assuming these are US military drones looking for nukes, the last thing you would want is for one of these things colliding with another aircraft and falling out of the sky over NJ. Hence, lights.

      Yes, by having light on you create a slight panic and some conspiracy theories. But if one of these things falls to the ground, and people get cellphone footage of whatever’s left, that would confirm the conspiracy theory. And then you would get REAL panic, which would be way worse.

      2. Jams O'Donnell

        That sounds kind of far-fetched to me. “US military drones looking for nukes” – there is no logic behind this. Who would possess these ‘nukes’? How did they smuggle them into the country? if they were to do this, the obvious point is to get them at ports (or airports). How can a drone detect a nuke? Shielding of some kind would be a necessary part of the movement of such a device. Drones moving around at night would be a danger to any civilian traffic, lights or no lights – such traffic needs to be monitored by air traffic control – especially over high population areas. It’s nonsense.

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Reconnaissance drones also never fly with bright lights on.

      Again, in my view there are two classes of drones. The SUVs (real) and the bright lights (planes). Sloppy reporting — let’s be charitable — has muddied the waters here.

      1. Jams O'Donnell

        It’s pretty clear that there are (at least) two kinds of ‘UFO’ – or however you want to designate them. There are phenomena such as low orbit satellites, civilian aircraft, weather balloons, Chinese lanterns, (even ‘ball lightning’ which is, [I think], a not yet conclusively proven/accepted natural phenomenon) etc. which are mistaken by the easily excited as un-natural.

        There are also objects which are seen on USAF/USN ground and aircraft radars by trained observers, which exhibit capabilities far beyond present-day technology. These latter tie in with the theories postulated by such as Jaques Vallee, that they are typical of events reported throughout history as ‘fairy’ or similar phenomena, and are basically of some kind of psychic nature. I.e. they are not purely physical phenomena, but are in some way produced or at any rate perceived by the human brain without neccessarily having ‘real’ qualities. (As such they seem change in form as ‘civilisation’ devises new technologies. Why they show on radar is another question). Of course this is just a theory, but if it is accurate it may then be impossible to ever provide physical (scientific) proof, as science is not capable at present of researching such ideas.

    4. tyaresun

      According to the GenZs, St Luigi is all over tiktok and other social media. The powers that be are trying to give the posters something else to talk about.

      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        There could be a way to bring back the powers-that-be’s something-else-to-think-about back to Saint Luigi of the Adjustment. ” Gee — I wonder what Saint Luigi thinks about all these drones?”

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Something similar happened in the UK, around US bases, two weeks ago:

      In fact, I put that in Links. In retrospect, it struck me as a dry run of some sort. But that was so speculative I had to leave it on the cutting room floor.

  7. herman_sampson

    Local news in Indianapolis reports drone sightings.
    Gamma ray detectors (solid state, i.e. Ge) need to be cooled, either liquid nitrogen or Peltier (solid state, requiring electricity), so both would be heavy.
    Couldn’t the drones be “launched” from small airplanes and then descend lower than airplanes are allowed to go to do the detecting? It could be a means to distract or confuse civilians.

    1. wendigo

      There are portable detectors available that weigh around 6 kg with enough liquid nitrogen to run for a couple of hours.

      My W.A.G. is the larger ones contain several types of sensors besides radiation. Best to have them tested and operational before the inauguration.

  9. Bugs

    This would make a great X-Files episode. That drone company guy and Walter Kirn are shoo ins for guest stars.

  10. i just don't like the gravy

    No I don’t think it is, but I bet it’s a classified federal experiment of some sort

    What does it matter? We will never find out and forget about it in 3 months regardless.

    The government experimenting on its citizens isn’t even that new or exciting. Yawn. Get back to scrolling; looking behind the curtain isn’t for peasants.

  12. Paul Greenwood

    I can appreciate US worries about drones. Moscow seems to have been troubled by a plague of drones too.

    What is surprising is that no mention is made of drone sightings over USAF bases in England, nor with regard to drone sightings over German facilities.

    It seems to be quite a trend and soon there will be regular flight schedules no doubt.

    I thought DJI drones were no longer to be imported into USA ? Countering CCP Drones Act. ?

    (odd since Communist Party of China is “CPC” not “CCP”)

    https://www.faa.gov/uas

    Lot to choose from – 396,746
    Commercial Drones Registered

    https://www.faa.gov/air-taxis
    helicopter look-a-like

  13. Michael Fiorillo

    I always thought the quote saying not to believe anything until you hear the official denial was from journalist Claude Cockburn, father of journalists Alex, Andrew and Patrick. Alex wrote for the Village Voice and The National, and co-founded Counterpunch.

  14. Gregorio

    “The day after Thanksgiving, Susan and Lorelai Woodruff saw approximately 10 brightly lit objects banking and turning quickly in the night sky above their home in Elsinboro, in southern New Jersey.

    Every night since, they say, the objects have been back, emitting a strange, humming whir and flashing red, green and white[5].”

    It’s certainly considerate of whoever is behind these mysterious drones to make sure they are fully compliant with FAA regulations.

  15. FreeMarketApologist

    I’m not remembering which of our older science fiction writers (one of the more dystopian ones?) had a nasty little short story about a neighborhood that regularly had drones flying over it and commanding people to do various things, and making life difficult for anybody who wanted to be outdoors. People are really going to hate their new aerial masters.

    Or maybe it’s just this guy testing out the newest version of his product (URL says it all):

    https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/dog-poop-drone-cleans-up-the-yard-so-you-dont-have-to/

  18. Adam1

    Regarding the HPGe hypothesis, given the number of sightings can’t we deduce that those doing the looking do not have more than a large general area of where the device might be? If that’s the case you’d expect some pattern of searching to be noticeable along with the sightings. Unless I’ve missed that in the reporting I can’t say I’ve heard that.

    1. cfraenkel

      You would search in a pattern perhaps, but there’s no reason not to shuffle the search cell order. Particularly if you cared about opsec and didn’t want to make it obvious what you were doing. As purely conjecture, what if Theory #3 was the case, and you couldn’t rule out that your target of interest was hiding in a truck?

  20. Ben Panga

    I’m convinced this is about manufacturing consent.

    The outcome of this flap:

    1. Changes in regulations to allow drone defence in the homeland.
    2. Much fear-mongering about the drone threat from China.
    3. The “realization” that the current procurement model with the Big 5 defence contractors making exquisite white elephants is unable to offer a solution
    4. Only Palantir has the ability to do this. No one else is even close to them. They will be aided by Anduril
    5. Anduril is also Thiel backed and is aiming to be a Tesla of weapons. It is very closely linked to Palantir. They have some dope weapons and drones but there real product is battle AI
    6. Inside the military there have been competitions with Anduril networked drones destroying the Big 5 teams. They see the writing in the wall.
    7. These two companies, backed by the same Silicon Valley VCs that rode into the White House last month are successfully winning the military budget.

    The two billionaire Founders are Thiel at Palantir and Luckey Palmer at Anduril. He’s the guy who made the Oculus Rift headset as an 18 year old. Got rich selling it to Facebook. In 2017 he got pushed out of Facebook due to his outspoken support for Trump. A few weeks later he started Anduril with Thiel.

    Now still just 32 he wants to create a huge weapons manufacturing production based on the Tesla model. Gigantic flexible system. Modular components. All focused on China. Just need the institutional power to upend the current Big 5.

    His sister married Matt Gaetz a couple of years ago. JD Vance was one of the founding investors.

    —–

    From within gov/military:

    There are enough who see how the Big 5 need to go. Since 2017 there has been focus on the drone threat under guise of UFOs. All the outspoken political players in talking about UFO disclosure (Schumer, Gillibrand, Rubio, Garcia, Luna, Mace, Gaetz) are now demanding new regulations and powers to “shoot them down”. UFOs are forgotten!

    —

    The drones themselves?

    The Feds have said: non gov/military and non-foreign. They aren’t that bothered. The drones aren’t clearly even breaking the law. They do seem to be more sophisticated than commercial drones. They play hide and seek guided by AI and human jockeys. Seemingly can’t be jammed by local police. Probably 50-100 total.

    Clearly they are being allowed to cause a flap to show the inadequacy of the current system. The need for drone defence!

    Coincidentally, during the Army Navy football game attended by Trump, sponsored by Palantir, an ad ran. It was for Palantir drone defence!

    I really recommend you watch the 30sec ad. It only aired that one time. It’s the pitch to the military rank and file. It’s terrifying and awesome and I suspect the near future.

    —

    I’ve been obsessing over the question “why would Chuck Schumer be pushing UFO stuff?” for a couple of years. I think I have an answer.

    I can give links for any part of the above. I strongly recommend checking out Luckey Palmer.. He and Thiel have achieved something audacious and a bit terrifying.

    1. Ben Panga

      I should add: Anduril is offering a much better product at a fraction of the cost. It’s very much a win for military planners

    2. pjay

      I don’t know about the specific actors, but some version of this theory is what I tend to believe as well. Clearly this story has been spread far and wide (my wife has had dozens of videos fed to her facebook account and it’s been hyped on the national news every night). And while I have no technical expertise, I find the idea that our military can’t track slow-moving SUV-size drones ridiculous. Especially telling is the nonchalance of federal officials. “Don’t worry, nothing to see here folks, no evidence of any danger” when clearly someone wants us to see these things. The only thing more irritating is when some noted scientist steps up to pat us all on the head and tell us the same thing. Has Michael Shermer and our official Skeptics weighed in yet?

      I don’t know whether the intent is simply distraction, or preparation for yet another expansion of our national security apparatus. Could be both. Regardless, we are being lied to again, as always.

    1. Antoine LeDada

      Consiracy theorizing here: Biden in a few days announces an alien invasion, declares martial law and stays in power.
      All right, back to my first cup of tea.

    1. pjay

      Well, experts like “astrophotographer” Andrew McCarthy tell us that we actually need to look up more. However, if we see something unusual we’d better leave our explanations to the experts – like Andrew McCarthy. Which to me sounds a lot like “don’t look up.” Probably just me.

  23. MicaT

    Someone needs to explain to me if anyone is using these drones for secret purposes why they have lights on them?
    Why make them visible? That makes absolutely no sense.
    And why just after dark until 6-11 when most people are up vs 1-3 am when most are asleep?
    As far as I can tell no one says they can hear them?

    Most of the videos I’ve seen ( I’m sure not all) are aircraft. Green(left) and red ( right)and white blinking lights are aircraft.
    Or landing lights. And again there are many flight tracking apps that track in real time and even helicopter’s including emergency helicopters.
    Drones, don’t have transponders so no, not tracked yet.

    Formation flying is a relatively new thing with drones. It could explain that some company is practicing this at night. Hence the lights so they can record the formation.

    And 1 other thing. 1 explanation is probably not going to suffice. I’m guessing there are multiple different unrelated things going on.

    One discussion was they couldn’t record any heat signatures. Battery based would have a very low heat signature as well as lower sound vs gasoline powered.

    Be afraid, be very afraid

  25. Rabbit

    NJ picked out for special attention?
    Everybody wants to be a victim. How else can they get attention? They must be really important for the drones to pick them.
    First it was Iranian mothership, spy drones. Now it’s dirty bomb drones. A lot of unproven claims being made.
    New FAA rules are coming up in Congress. Who wants to bet they have stricter drone regulations? Coincidence? No because the new rules were written months ago.
    They walk around all their lives never looking up and then somebody notices there’s lights in the sky.
    BTW, it’s legal to fly drones at night with nav lights and the weight limit is 55 lbs.

  26. MicaT

    Maybe I missed it in the article or comments but no mention of drone rules.
    Class G airspace is 400’ max height
    B,c,d,e is required FAA prior approval.

    400’ isn’t all that high and I would expect you would be able to hear the prop at night. If these are gasoline powered then the engine is usually easy to hear that too. If these are copter types, they usually are battery/electric powered and you could probably hear the rotors. No thermal signature with battery.

    Here is the link to the faa rules with a sub link to chapter 14 in the pilots handbook for more information.

    https://www.nifc.gov/drones/blm/FAA%20Part%20107%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

  27. Rip Van Winkle

    Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space meets Iranian False Flag in U.S. No flying paper plates or hubcaps this time. When all else fails they take you to war.

  28. Glen

    Scanning for radioactive materials is more common than most people would suspect. All of the goods shipped to America are supposed to be scanned. Here’s one of the companies that makes systems for doing this scanning:

    RADIATION DETECTION PRODUCTS https://www.rapiscan-ase.com/radiation-detection-products

    I don’t know why it would suddenly be compelling to have to mount detectors on a drone, and then fly them around at night when it’s just as easy to use existing assets from the National Nuclear Security Administration, or the almost brand new helicopters they just bought that are at Joint Base Andrews:

    NNSA gets new helicopters to support radiological security across the nation
    https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-gets-new-helicopters-support-radiological-security-across-nation

    I don’t doubt AT ALL that there are drones flying around under the control of or as directed by the US government, but I have no idea what they’re doing other than scaring people. I had always assumed most drone testing for the US military was done at Creech Air Force Base:

    Creech Air Force Base

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

    1. ChrisPacific

      The theory was that they were doing it to test how people would react if they deployed them without it being publicly known – for example, if they received a dirty bomb threat and hadn’t told the public about it.

      I don’t find this particularly credible, mainly because they lack a proper control group for such an experiment. Observing how people behave when the government is lying to them is not difficult. To do a proper comparison, you’d need to also observe how people behave when the government is being transparent and telling them the truth. Good luck with that one.

      1. Glen

        The public IS NEVER told about dirty bomb threats:

        How America’s Secret Nuke Police Hunted For Dirty Bombs in the 1970s
        https://gizmodo.com/how-americas-secret-nuke-police-hunted-for-dirty-bombs-1794628693

        I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess at how many times the NEST team gets deployed, but it aint NEVER:

        Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/nuclear-emergency-support-team-nest

        They’ve been doing this stuff for fifty years. How many times did you see them reported on the news every night?

  29. Wukchumni

    Very intriguing stuff in regards to Area 50.99, seems to be a perfect diversion to get our minds off of bigger fish to fly, but its above my play grade to contemplate.

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