Off the cuff that does not look very aerodynamic. Maybe a thermal shot would reveal more shape. Where did these shots come from?
Now we've got "SUV-sized" drones over the eastern US
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It’s the state police AW139 that is chasing the drones.
martinbayer
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These drones seem to move deliberately at a slow pace, so high(ish) speed aerodynamics are likely not a primary consideration, but I completely agree with you that the lack of publicly available IR/multi-spectral imagery is indeed puzzling.
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I've taken a look at the video and the location it was shot at (that the guy that took it luckily included in its description).
I'm sincerely inclined to think that it's just a normal aircraft coming in to land at Newark.
The "drone" appears to be stationary (more on this later) but oriented parallel to the motion of the car (car moving from east to west on Route 24).
This location is very close to the one used to conduct arrivals for runway 11 at Newark.
Regarding the "hovering" part (for both the first video and the one at the 3 minute mark), when travelling in the opposite direction to the one in which an aircraft is landing, it creates the illusion of the aircraft being stationary in the sky:
For the record, I do believe there might be drones flying around, but so far 99% of the videos I've seen are just aircraft and helicopters and a good dose of mass hysteria.
I find much more interesting and compelling, reports from trained observers of objects/lights that display anomalous properties, like the following one:
What about General Mark Kelly, head of Air Force air combat command. Was he just confused about landing lights too??
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Can't open that link, my browser flags it as an unsafe connection.
I assume you are referencing the drone incursions over Langley and other sensitive sites? That's why I said "99% of the videos I've seen are just aircraft and helicopters and a good dose of mass hysteria".
Do I believe that there are drones conducting ISTAR over US and NATO sites of strategic importance? Absolutely yes.
Do I believe that all the videos and pictures and testimonies shared about those drones flying up and down NJ and other places are drones? Absolutely not, because 99% of what I've seen so far, is easily explainable as aircraft and helicopters.
Like in all cases of mass hysteria, most people see what they want to see. The video above is one such example: the people in the car are not stupid, the guy that posted the video did a great job with his description and noting down the position and time of the sighting.
But...it's just an aircraft landing at Newark.
A man with a hammer sees everything as a nail.
A man looking for drones will see everything as a drone.
A governor confused Orion's Belt with drones, I mean...this has more to do with sociology and psychology than defense.
As I said, yes I'm sure there are drones flying around a few sites, but not as many as people believe there are. And we should certainly not expect any government to be honest about them. As long as there is plausible deniability for an easy off-ramp to avoid taking meaningful (and unpopular) measures, nobody is going to come forward saying "yes, it's xyz doing such and such".
Various agencies most probably already know what's going on and what they can do about the issue and they are not going to talk about it in public. For what we know, it could even be a Red Cell playing around...
But the maxim is that if anything can be dismissed to avoid taking blame or action, it will.
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Ok, I traced that url you linked back to Reddit's r/SpecialAccess and saw you were making a reference to the Langley incursions. My point stands: I do believe there are drones that are conducting surveillance around Airbases etc., but I also think that most people are plainly confused about what they see and are a bit paranoid, thus reporting way more sightings than there really are.
Don't take it as an offense, but this for example:
This is quite clearly a commercial airliner with 2 engines under the wings (see the ring of the left engine):
It's just that a picture in low resolution is not that easy to interpret correctly.
If it were in HD, it would probably look something like this:
With the engine on the right wing illuminated on the side facing towards the fuselage, and the engine on the left wing in darkness on the side facing the photographer (again, see the ring on left engine? Pretty much the same as above).
Don't take it as an offense, but this for example:
This is quite clearly a commercial airliner with 2 engines under the wings (see the ring of the left engine):
It's just that a picture in low resolution is not that easy to interpret correctly.
If it were in HD, it would probably look something like this:
With the engine on the right wing illuminated on the side facing towards the fuselage, and the engine on the left wing in darkness on the side facing the photographer (again, see the ring on left engine? Pretty much the same as above).
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Reminds me of the WW1 airship hyseria and the WW2 panic on the west coast in the days following the Us entry to the war.
What baffles me is that if you are trying to spy on people, it would seem prudent not to light up your spy craft like a Christmas Tree.
Of course, Sky Net might have become sentient and is trying to figure out how to deal with the carbon-based infestation.
What baffles me is that if you are trying to spy on people, it would seem prudent not to light up your spy craft like a Christmas Tree.
Of course, Sky Net might have become sentient and is trying to figure out how to deal with the carbon-based infestation.
It is safe, it is a web page mirror of the Wall street Journal article about the drone incursion at Langley.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.
Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors.
For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.
The last 30 days have been a ridiculous barrage of drone incursions here and at NATO bases, not to mention military installations right there in New Jersey like Picatinny arsenal. This is not a nothing burger.
While it is fair that the public will make mistakes with what they see, some will, but not all of them. I think to "venus" or "swampgas" them as a whole is not the right thing to do. The media is doing a gigantic disservice by not telling people to cross reference what they see with apps like flight radar 24 or flight aware.
FighterJock
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This whole thing reminds me of the spy balloon episode. The USAF should do what they did to the balloon and shoot one down, then wait and see what the response is.
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Well no, that's not very rational at all.
For example, in that video there is a clip of congressman from the intelligence committee stating that:
- We know very little about them
- It's the not Chinese or Iranians
- We could easily recover the drones
Eliminating the "Chinese or Iranians" is not really rational without more information than we have now. We can't rule out anything with the very little information collected so far.
If we can "easily recover" the drones, why not start there? Recover a few of them. That would provide information that would better inform *rational* decisions. And this is exactly what the authorities in NJ are asking the federal government to do - provide assistance in tracking and recovering the drones.
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The media has made a big deal of drones supposedly loitering over "sensitive areas" in NJ. In many cases they are getting their geography wrong. I have seen the media, websites, Reddit, etc. claim that Picatinny was being overflown by drones that were several counties away. And frankly Picatinny isn't all that sensitive. Most of what happens there is indoors and not observable from the air at night.
While Picatinny has certainly had drones fly over it, the degree of the incursion does not match the overhyped reporting in the media, etc.
I've also seen claims they have intruded on sensitive infrastructure (power stations, etc). It's important to keep in mind that NJ is densely populated. If something is flying from point A to point B in NJ, chances are it's going to fly over a power station or water treatment plant unless it's being flown in a manned to explicitly avoid them.
The following is NOT a real Top Secret conversation.
So, what do we tell the people in New Jersey?
We tell them nothing.
But doesn't the public have a right to know?
No.
Why not?
Look, you're new here. These are top secret aircraft that you're not cleared to know about. The Chinese and Russians can't know anything either, got it?
OK, OK, I get it.
Besides, if we release anything, and I mean the tiniest detail, those guys on that UK site are going to blab about it.
Oh. Right. Can't have that.
Look, we're just going to stall everybody. Form a committee. You know, the usual. The media will stop talking about it.
What if they don't stop?
We'll hit them with a stop order. You know, national security and all that.
Good idea.
So, what do we tell the people in New Jersey?
We tell them nothing.
But doesn't the public have a right to know?
No.
Why not?
Look, you're new here. These are top secret aircraft that you're not cleared to know about. The Chinese and Russians can't know anything either, got it?
OK, OK, I get it.
Besides, if we release anything, and I mean the tiniest detail, those guys on that UK site are going to blab about it.
Oh. Right. Can't have that.
Look, we're just going to stall everybody. Form a committee. You know, the usual. The media will stop talking about it.
What if they don't stop?
We'll hit them with a stop order. You know, national security and all that.
Good idea.
Chuck Schumer requests drone detection system for New York, New Jersey as mysterious devices litter the skies
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urged federal legislators to pass a law that would grant states more authority to deal with drones directly.
www.nbcnews.com
These were probably US platforms and if they were not, we would be taking them down, not one fighter aircraft to my knowledge was launched for intercept but also with this current, outgoing administration which seems to be very inept at all levels, who knows. We also have classified platforms flying all the time in CONUS and abroad globally and even if the public gets a look the USG denies what the public had seen, been going on for decades, nothing new here.
BullpupRafale
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There is nothing rational nor logical about this whole affair about supposed "foreign drones".
A lot of these supposed sighting and pictures end up being regular passenger or cargo jet aircraft.
A lot of these supposed sighting and pictures end up being regular passenger or cargo jet aircraft.
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They're not going to shoot anything down over populated areas.
In these times, you never know.
BullpupRafale
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Shoot down which, the BA-609 that people thought was drone? The A220 on final? Venus?
Project Blue Book tried that in the 1950s. It was a big fail then too.
That is not ABC news, that is some idiot out of high school photographing with his iphone, that has no idea what the hell bokeh means.
The smoking lamp is lit—gather around boys and have a look at this recognition chart:
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hf2hvr/new_jersey_guide_to_aircraft_identification/
“Coach? Where’s the one labeled “swamp gas?”
That is all…dismissed!
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1hf2hvr/new_jersey_guide_to_aircraft_identification/
“Coach? Where’s the one labeled “swamp gas?”
That is all…dismissed!
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Dilandu
I'm dissatisfied, which means, I exist.
Quite true. I once observed a near-perfect "flying saucer" when I rode a car near Vnukovo airport. It was, of course, merely a jet liner taking off from behind the trees, but the illusion was perfect; the wings and hull were visible from behind at such angle, that they created an impression of flying disk with central bulge. And the motion of the car (which moved almost at right angle to the airstrip) created the illusion that "saucer" is gliding sideway over treetops.
Dilandu
I'm dissatisfied, which means, I exist.
According to Murphy's law, the one they would shoot down would be a civilian small plane which transponder malfunctioned exactly at the wrong moment...
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The problem with that is that the runway 11 approach is rarely, rarely visible from that location because of terrain. The aircraft would have to be way high above glideslope.
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Very true, not many private jets have a stand alone engine on the wing. Twin-fan airliners on the other hand...
I wonder what they would make of these?
Chris (having flashbacks to 1990s reports of Black Star sightings)
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All of those are actually somewhat common in the areas where the activity has been (except the Starship, though there were a couple around in the late 80s / early 90s). Northern NJ has a lot of corporate aviation, both fixed wing and helicopters. AT&T, Exxon, Allied Signal, Nestle, etc. are all based in that area and have their own fleets.
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I'm surprised nobody has had a potshot at them, given that the average US town is festooned with assault rifles and 50-cals to deter home intruders....
If it takes 17 days to recon an airbase/sensitive area with massive drones then it seems a pretty crappy way to collect intel to me.
If it takes 17 days to recon an airbase/sensitive area with massive drones then it seems a pretty crappy way to collect intel to me.
This time—they’ll send the Men-In-Plaid.
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Measuring the distance between the site of the recording and the threshold of runway 11 at Newark, I get 40.75 km (25.32 miles).
Average landing speeds for a 737 are between 220 and 260 km/h (136 and 161 mph).
That distance should be covered in between 11 to 9 minutes at a constant speed.
If I understand the ILS chart for runway 11, that point should be somewhere a bit further out from JARIT:
And, again, If I'm reading it correctly, it calls for an aircraft intercepting the ILS glideslope to be at 1600ft high, which is roughly 488m high, some 9,5 nautical miles (17,6 km or 11 miles) from the threshold.
Now, I can't tell exactly at what altitude the aircraft in the video is flying at, but it's very much compatible with what I'm seeing.
Same with looking at some videos of night landings at Newark on Youtube (albeit with the perspective being from the aircraft rather than from the ground).
I don't see particular obstacles for terrain either when checking with Google Earth. People on the ground should easily be able to see an aircraft flying at that low altitude.
For me, there is nothing out of the ordinary with what has been recorded in this specific video.