(Has anyone posted this yet?)
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I guess the army doesn't know a drone from a plane then? the following comes from the DOD.
_We have had confirmed sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle," the spokesperson said
"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." _
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4002374/joint-staff-addresses-drones-over-new-jersey-military-installations/
It's not explicitly stated, but my read is they get normal consumer-style quadcopters regularly, and this is simply a continuation of that. Perhaps an increase because people are now trying to explicitly spy on the military.
The public drone sightings, on the other hand, definitely don't seem to be consumer quadcopters. They mostly look suspiciously like 737s, V-22s, or out of focus stars.
Is that a new development? You'd never know the Cold War had been a thing for half a century.
Sorry, could have been clearer. I was talking about random dumb civilians.
Quadcopters have been buzzing military bases for years, basically since they became available to the public.
With all this PR about drones and people sometimes blaming the military, the number of dumb civilians thinking about 'spying' on military bases will be on the rise.
Counterpoint: Civilians get arrested all the time for flying FPV drones and similar over military bases. See this article for an example: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/11/chinese-citizen-arrested-after-allegedly-flying-drone-taking-photos-of-space-force-base.html
This is the US military we're talking about. They have the capabilities to know exactly what's above their base's airspace and have still chosen to do nothing. This implies that most of the drones are military controlled.
They may be making a PR decision to issue warnings rather than actually arrest people.
I don't see anything in the article that suggests they know drones have gone above their bases but not been identified or dealt with.
I think the reference to not being able to identify everything is in reference to civilian reports.
They have no clue by their own admission.
To claim that what amounts to a literal UFO might belong to a hostile actor just because you don't know that it doesn't is irresponsible at best, scaremongering jingoism at worst.
Crazy how you can have a budget in the trillions for national security but "Idk, maybe their not unfriendly? We need another six months to look into it" is the best our top military brass can come up with.
Really makes you think about how easy 9/11 was to pull off.
It's like trying to disprove Bigfoot. Someone comes to you with a shaky, out of focus video with no audio, time, date, or precise location.
I can't prove it's not bigfoot. That doesn't mean I think it is Bigfoot, or that you should think so.
If you have good video and know where it was shot from and can cross-reference that with aircraft trackers? Then maybe they can do a good investigation. There's been a few of those where it turns out to pretty obviously be a helicopter, a V-22, or just a 737.
Especially since it's rather hard to judge scale on airborne things some distance away.
I mean, its trivial to prove something isn't Bigfoot on the grounds that Bigfoot Isn't Real. That's just Hitchens's Razor. The burden of proof is on the person presenting the claim, not the one refuting it.
A bunch of the sightings have literally just been stars in the night sky.
Shifting the burden of proof doesn't disprove the claim. You can look at a picture and call someone an idiot for believing it's bigfoot/a drone, but still not be able to swear that there is no way it could possibly be a drone.
It eliminates the concern. NASA isn't setting it's launch schedule against the possibility of a vessel colliding with Russell's Tea Pot, because there's simply no evidence it exists.
If I hand you a blank piece of paper and tell you it's a photograph of a Yeti, you aren't obligated to prove I'm wrong.
Exactly. The military isn't obligated to look at every single picture and tell you that it's not a drone. But if they don't do that, they can't say "we have looked at every single picture and confirmed there are no suspicious drones".
The military is rightly refusing to prove a negative.