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So, are these airplane-type drones? Or the multi-prop helicopter things?
Never seen any here, but when we went to Syracuse last June I saw some Predator-type drones flying around a few times over the city. Big ones. Didn't think much about it, see a lot of military stuff flying around there.
Disclosure: I haven't had a chance to read more than the first page of this stuff yet.
But since this is a lot of info, I was provided a link by a friend to this: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-drone-mystery
Published July 15, 2020
Covid killed them off.
It looks like there is a relative consensus on the description which matches well what some saw here. - 6x6 with rotors and wings, flying large grid patterns.
The only bit of "new news" is that there's a lot of consensus about a bigger "mother ship" possibly with a bright light that would hover in place for hours in some kind of proximity to the drones. Anyone see that?
Well based on the descriptions, it doesn't sound like hobbyists. Sounds like it's either military (which they deny) or an OGA (who of course won't be talking about it).
My guess would be the "mothership" is a tx/rx base station with more power to send data longer distances and the drones themselves are sending their info back to it AND/OR they are being controlled from a connection to the larger one, assuming they don't have a pre-programmed flight pattern.
My logic engine agrees.Quote:
Originally Posted by CS1983
(not that it matters) [Coffee]
I think it was the NNSA. The wing commander of FE Warren was transferred to the NNSA recently. She was given a star too. The geeks of Los Alamos get presented a problem and this probably their answer to drones interfering with our ICBM's. Personally I would just have the security forces armed with long barrel shotguns. Goose guns. The problem is the agencies sometimes wear their heart on their sleeve...read all about it on their home page. Between the lines.
https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/national...administration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...ature=emb_logo
And, if they are not working on a spoked network concept, but mesh, they *could* send info to each other to ultimately be sent by whichever one was closest to the "mothership".Quote:
Originally Posted by CS1983
So if they have a (for example) 1km tx/rx max distance, and there are 10 smaller ones, so long as they all are within 1km of the next .... back to the one which is closest to the mothership, they could cover a pretty good swath of ground.
Essentially a mesh network.
Covid-19 was to keep us inside so we wouldn't see the drones, right? [Sarcasm2]
When that didn't work, they unleashed the bears!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gman
If it's testing for drone defense but the drones are meshed and anything but fully autonomous it doesn't make sense to me. The best defense for drones would appear to be signal jamming, which we already possess the technology for. Unless somehow the child drones have very high gain, very directional antennas that they can keep perfectly aligned with equally directional antennas on the mothership or something *shrug*. Even then, I never was a sig guy so that might be easily jammed too.
If they were developing defenses for autonomous drones, it might make slightly more sense. At any rate, the reliable and very large grid patterns also doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the "drone defense" category. Everything is possible, ofc.
I almost wonder it's some kind of mission to prototype sensor technology (military or private) in the direction of ground-penetrating radar or something, that they clearly cannot do on the up and up in either circumstance; whether the technology soon becomes public or not, flights over 20 miles of farmlands would have all sorts of constitutional issues with any kind of ground-penetrating sensory. So, maybe they just did it and played dumb.
And if that theory is correct, certain assets that others have lost in lakes over the years might be floating all over the place. [mop]
There was no sign of a mothership when I saw them. The drones I saw were traveling parallel to Kipling in the opposite direction as me. If there was a mothership that had to stay within a certain distance as them, I suspect it would have been visible.Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxtArt
My best guess, as I said initially, was some sort of mapping. Mapping is the only reason for the steady pattern and staggered formation that I can think of that makes sense.
Or, the local defense contractors testing just capabilities. Maybe that's more likely since they were flying over nothing in particular.
Haha!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gman
Another possibility I just considered is they may not all be from one source. E.g. some kind of DARPA type of competition that has clearances attached (or whatever)... Obviously hard to speculate but it's also strange how distributed this was across several states. Some claim to have observed the "mothership" landing at a Nebraska airport, and lots of reports of seeing it with the drones in Nebraska, but it seems lacking over here.Quote:
Originally Posted by hollohas
I hadn't thought of that. That theory makes sense to me. Especially with the varied descriptions.
Birds aren't real...but drones are. He specifically mentions sightings over Colorado in 2019.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4Wf_vvdHLOs
I used to work on this equipment. They are testing this system against drones. Since I can't afford a jammer, I prefer a long barrel shotgun and a bandolier of shells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_countermeasure
I tend to think that it's us. We gotta R&D the good stuff somewhere, right?
You are right. Real world testing. Only way to get real results.Quote:
Originally Posted by battlemidget