A plethora of planes, helicopters, and 3 big doppler radar domes.
I guarantee the air force were tracking it, probably because it's their baby. The only reason we even heard about it is the police reports, and they weren't in the loop.
The Air Force is not guaranteed to disclose what they do to the local cops, and might use them as a training exercise in fact.
While it is certainly possible it’s military, I’d say it’s not as likely as you would think. Consider:
1. This drone does not fit the description of any known DOD drone, so you should assume it’s classified. The DOD is meticulous about only flying classified aircraft in restricted airspace where they can prevent prying eyes and inadvertent attention. Tucson is not immediately close to any of the usual hotspots for classified aircraft (Area 51 for example).
2. The article describes the drone buzzing the original CBP chopper as well as flying an orbit around the police helicopter. It is reasonable to suggest that a collision between the drone and either of those helicopters would be fatal for the pilot. No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.
3. Classified and unclassified aircraft are not just operated by a dude that hops into a plane or sits down at a drone console. They’re planned out. They’re also not operated in a vacuum. If your scenario of a classified drone operating in this airspace were true, and the drone was picked up by a friendly chopper, the operator would most likely immediately land safely and have someone reach out to the pilots and let them know not to mess with the aircraft. They would certainly not go rogue and risk a major accident or fatality.
4. I consider it highly unlikely the DOD would ever use other agency resources to unwittingly run training Ops. That seems like a career-ending move.
I can't speak for the whole of DOD but there is serious consideration that goes into training flights, with respect to not violating any local laws and especially not fucking with local agencies. It would be unfathomable for this kind of thing to happen in a military training or testing exercise without a serious cascade of errors. Also, I would have to imagine that any supervisor involved would have immediately contacted the civilian agency involved to say "it's us, please back off."
I think it’s worth looking into a possible involvement of naval pilots, as sometimes even the best of the best write cheques their body can’t cash or buzz the tower without clearance.
Surely when the Camp Pendleton Ospreys fly within a literal stones throw of my house or just above the beach on their training routes they are violating every reasonable airspace law there is. LAPD police helicopters don't even fly as low as some of these osprey or other obnoxiously loud military helicopter over LA.
Or they thought they had a stealthy little bird the locals wouldn't ever see, and got busted.
Being full of human beings out military is fallible.
>Also, I would have to imagine that any supervisor involved would have immediately contacted the civilian agency involved to say "it's us, please back off."
I would imagine them doing no such thing. Most of the nuclear program wasn't disclosed to anyone until Kodak discovered it on their own.
Our military has a host of secrets and everyone in it does their sincere best to keep them, particularly when ordered to.
>would have immediately contacted the civilian agency involved to say "it's us, please back off."
If the civilian agencies - or any entity really - doesn't have "need to know", they won't be told a thing. Based on this thing escaping, they don't need to know anything at all.
Do you have hard evidence that the "fallible military" would deliberately confuse and frighten a civilian pilot, or that such incidents are common enough to make this a plausible explanation?
FWIW I upvoted you for contributing to the conversation but...
>1. This drone does not fit the description of any known DOD drone, so you should assume it’s classified.
I wouldn't. And I've held a secret clearance. Not fitting any "known" DoD drone means absolutely nothing.
>The DOD is meticulous about only flying classified aircraft in restricted airspace where they can prevent prying eyes and inadvertent attention.
Except for when they aren't.
>3. Classified and unclassified aircraft are not just operated by a dude that hops into a plane or sits down at a drone console. They’re planned out. They’re also not operated in a vacuum. If your scenario of a classified drone operating in this airspace were true, and the drone was picked up by a friendly chopper, the operator would most likely immediately land safely and have someone reach out to the pilots and let them know not to mess with the aircraft.
You can always spot a layman talking about this when they talk about things as "classified" or "unclassified". Classified what is the relevant question. Confidential? Secret? Top Secret? ???
>4. I consider it highly unlikely the DOD would ever use other agency resources to unwittingly run training Ops.
It's a good simulation of what a similarly advanced country might have on hand. The US, China, and Russia routinely conduct "response time" checks by putting a proverbial toe in each other's airspace to test response times and responses in general. The idea that they would never do it with American organizations is presumptuous. Our respective militaries pay close attention it when it happens but aren't particularly alarmed by it because it's not rare.
I'm not going to debate you line by line other than to say that I have worked these programs, am working one now, and you would be surprised how mundane and scripted they are. There are no tests like you describe, that is bullshit.
Would you? Because NDAs are about not talking about something, not just not confirming. By denying some statements you'd probably still violate an NDA.
true but in the case of 'Not fitting any "known" DoD drone means absolutely nothing.' I found that text enough to pinpoint the logical error in the original argument, to wit, every DoD drone was at some point unknown and thus not recognizable as such - whether or not such drones had any particular security clearance attached to them.
I think point 4 was argued against with some actual reasoning.
>No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.
While I agree with your general sentiments, I vehemently disagree with that point. I have no doubt there are endless undocumented instances, but here's a pretty major public one:
> This drone does not fit the description of any known DOD drone, so you should assume it’s classified. The DOD is meticulous about only flying classified aircraft in restricted airspace
I think the most likely explanation is somewhere between. Plenty of private companies work on tech that is then sold to the DOD and classified (and they continue to produce for the military), but before it is released it is not technically classified.
> The article describes the drone buzzing the original CBP chopper as well as flying an orbit around the police helicopter. It is reasonable to suggest that a collision between the drone and either of those helicopters would be fatal for the pilot. No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.
Because CBP encourages assholes, while the military usually kicks them out (at least if they're assholes to civilians). One of the two values discipline, and it's not CBP.
Tucson may not be close to any of the major suspects for classified aircraft, but it is close to a major hub for drones. Fort Huachuca and Libby airfield where the US does most of its drone training are less than 60 miles away.
Nope. The Air Force doesn't conduct unauthorized UAV flights in civilian airspace. They're paranoid about causing an embarrassing incident that gets a general hauled in to Congress for questioning.
Testing occurs with a manufacturer before it reaches unit level. No program manager or contract pilot is going to risk his ticket or the program integrity to do a test like this. Or worst of all, not get paid because of a program deviation or black mark.
Once a vehicle reaches unit level it is typically in inventory with somewhat mundane and scripted test patterns for personnel to stay sharp.
The guy saying he has (had?) a secret clearance and they do testing "except when they don't" want to follow the rules is watching too much Netflix.
All major US cities are close to USAF bases. "use them as a training exercise" is ludicrous. The last thing a secret aircraft program needs is involvement from officers in public safety, whose job it is to publicize these events. You don't want your secret aircraft known to the public.
A "boneyard" with three doppler radar stations with diameters close to half of a B-52's wingspan. They saw this UAV the whole time it was in their airspace or I have a bridge to sell you.
Yep, there's a museum there that'll take you on a bus tour of the boneyard (or at least, it did like 15 years ago or so when I was there).
You can see a bunch of (I think) B-52's with their tails chopped off. Iirc, they did that to comply with arms reduction treaties with what was the Soviet Union. They left them out in the desert like that so that spy satellites (and now Google maps) can spot them and verify that, yes, those planes were really destroyed.
The article doesn't say there is no video evidence. Seems like at least two separate helicopters saw and pursued it. The FBI have enough evidence to describe its size. They may have video they aren't sharing. Odd thing to make up.
Not that I believe these click garantueed UFO stories, but the other day I was trying to take a pic of butterflies literally 3 feet away and I barely got anything more than a smudge.
Just saying quite hard taking pics of moving objects even though cameras are quite good...
Police had IR cameras yet could not pickup it's heat signature yet they were chasing a green light for the duration and speed only possible for jet propelled craft.
Agreed. But for a completely different reason. This drone "violated restricted airspaces – including those of an Air Force base", not to mention the involvement of the CBP and local law enforcement, but I don't see any mention of the military being involved in the chase OR investigation.
It's not like it would be the first time a military (or even the US military, probably) hid info from their civilian counterparts.
(Of course, a much less cynical explanation is some sort of drug smuggling. How much batteries and drugs could you fit on a ~15sqft quadcopter?)
What happens if a cop dies or causes harm to civilians while trying to chase a military UAV while being used as unwitting training material? This won't fly well morally
this kind of wishful cheerleading feels more appropriate during an avengers movie. its equally plausible two local cops are just making up tall tales to justify getting a little wild during a certification flight in the event the locals lodge a complaint about the noise.
I'm not clear why it is assumed this is a "drone." From the article, it sounds like all that could be identified was a single green light. This seems like a classic UFO/UAP. Maybe it was a drone, but I don't see the evidence to make that conclusion based on this article.
The article links a number of other sources. The device was described as a 5 ft x 3 ft quad copter -- standard drone arrangement, but larger. But too small to be manned.
By the contemporary, common use of the word, drone fits. Someone made a large scale version if the story is accurate.
Where did you get 5x3 ft quadcopter? I only found an FBI interviewee saying it was 4-6 feet diameter and unknown if it was quad or hex configuration. If they couldn't count the propellers, I wouldn't be confident they saw any propellers at all. Maybe it was fixed wing, for instance.
I mean, it's an unmanned aircraft of some sort, and unmanned aircraft are typically called drones. What difference are you suggesting between "drone" and "UFO/UAP" in this context?
Drone pretty clearly implies to me "a craft piloted remotely by a human." A UFO/UAP is an aerial phenomenon we can't currently identify. It could be a human piloted craft, it could be something else yet to be determined.
People seeing UFOs are notorious for imposing their prejudices onto what they think they see. If they don't give an objective description of their observation but rather a conclusion like "drone" or "6 feet" (how did they estimate size without knowing speed or distance?), then it's not worth much.
I think it's because people simply don't believe there are non-human build "ufo's" flying around out there. This leads to the military being the most likely source if locals can't explain.
The only thing interesting about this is the flight time. Everything else is trivially achievable with a custom build from parts one can order over the Internet. 150mph multirotor, 300mph fixed wing, control and video link range of 100km.
Not particularly relevant but fun to watch: a purpose built, turbine-powered rc aircraft flying at 450mph and executing turns that would probably kill a human pilot.
I moved to Tucson temporarily during the pandemic. One night walking to get groceries my girlfriend and I saw a very low flying drone with a single green light underneath. It was moving far faster than I’d ever seen a drone, very low over our head and went far into the distance. Couldn’t hear it at all. The speed must have been at or above 100mph, it was almost unbelievable how quick it went.
You didn’t hear it at all? Why do you call it a drone, because it had the typical four struts of a commercial drone? What color was it? How many feet above the ground would you say it was? Did it maneuver at all to avoid buildings as it flew?
You would definitely hear it at 100ft and 100mph. I race drones and they are LOUD. If it's some DoD tech then maybe they figured out how to make it near silent but it'd have to be some real state of the art prop design.
Remarkably similar to a 1975 case [0], which was regarded as one of the most credibly unexplainable UFO cases prior to information coming out about the Nimitz incident in 2017.
Could you point to this explanation? The various explanations that I have encountered use a combination of ridicule and a disregarding of multiple-sensors multiple-observers and instead only talk about camera failures, sensor failures, human eye-sight failures and vision phenomenon.
> You're saying the military is unable to distinguish lense glare from an actual object.
I'm not saying that. I know they can, and I claim they're withholding the relevant data and their real conclusions on purpose, because they want this to be a story.
My current belief is that those three videos are primarily technology demonstrators, released purposefully by the US military, in order to show off in front of foreign powers. For example, the GOFAST video is the one where data overlaid on the image + basic geometry tells you they're tracking a bird, but the subtext of that video is that US fighter planes can track a bird-sized object, from 6 kilometers away, while flying half the speed of sound. This is what Russian and Chinese militaries see when watching that video.
I haven't followed all the official comments on this thoroughly, but IIRC, what we have is, confirmation these videos are real, information that the military wants pilots to be more eager to come forward when they see something unusual, and that some information has been given to some people in the Congress. You mention "Multiple systems, radar", but I've only heard it being said they "saw something" - no actual details have been released, as far as I know.
So there's that, plus a bunch of people recounting their experiences and thoughts in front of cameras; the snippets I've seen look like the usual bullshit that is aired on US cable - I don't trust that at all, because since when anything trustworthy was first revealed in one of those places? Other than that, there's a few people making lots of money playing this up as bona fide alien encounter - they are the ones that drive publicity for this topic.
(And to answer the possible questions about why the US would want to show off superior capabilities - ever since nuclear-tipped ICBMs became a thing, it's in the interest of all nuclear powers to stay in lockstep wrt. their military capabilities, lest one of the party decides they're so far behind their only chance for survival is a preemptive nuclear strike.)
Why would the US fabricate fake UFO videos to send to Russian/ Chinese militaries a message that is, as you imply, perfectly clear? They're the only recipients of the message, they understand it well, and nobody else cares about it. So why don't they just say it plain and openly?
So your explanation implies multiple conspiracies mixed with sensor errors, lying or actually crazy pilots, and a general pretension of being clueless, to send a message of having some advanced technology you could easily publish about in a military tech journal?
This explanation disregards that the gimbal was observed across aircraft and across sensors. The Aircraft were chasing something that the ships too "saw" (using dissimilar technologies).
OK. I didn't know there were multiple observations of it. I only heard about the explanation of lens-flare type effect that rotated with the gimballing camera to make it look like the object was rotating.
No. All of the "explanations" latch onto trying to prove the rotating object is lense glare, while ignoring the entire context of why the video was released, that it was indeed a capture of an unidentified craft.
No, the Gimbal video isn't even related to the Nimitz incident. There is significantly less contextual data available for the USS Roosevelt incident or the other east coast incident released in 2017 (labeled GoFast). The GoFast video is the only one that can be reasonably explained as parallax around a slower moving, conventional object, given the lack of additional context.
Making definitive claims about the Nimitz incident means you have a lot more reading to do.
It’s literally not similar in any way besides taking place in the air. I mean what are you thinking? This drone is described as traveling at a speed of 100 mph and the ufo in your link is described as accelerating faster than the laws of physics might allow.
Perhaps you didn't read either link? Both involve an unidentified object closing in on a helicopter at some point, stopping and hovering, a green light being the primary visual, and then the object leaving the helicopter and eventually disappearing.
"As for the lights that the Marines saw six kilometers away, Shoup believes they were actually seeing lights from a town seventeen kilometers distant. They had misread the lights of a distant city as headlamps from a much closer convoy. Shoup attributes the perception that these headlamps appeared to be moving to a phenomenon called “autokinesis.” He explains,
“When you stare at lights long enough in the dark, it looks like they are moving. That’s autokinesis.” What it boils down to is that under clear skies, in open terrain with almost no vegetation, the Marines don’t have a clue what’s out there beyond the perimeter. Even with the best optics and surveillance assets in the world, no one knows what happened to nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs and missiles dropped a few kilometers outside the encampment."
Off topic, but I was very surprised to learn how faithful the HBO series was to Wright’s book that I went one level deeper and read Nathaniel Fick’s book, “One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Fick’s description of events fit pretty well with Generation Kill. You don’t see that very often.
I live near that area and had heard and seen a drone above my house in the very early morning before dawn a month ago.
I first heard a sound like a swarm of bees overhead but looked up to see the drone.
It took off southbound at a high rate of speed in the same flight path that the police helicopters use.
I have no idea if this is related but I thought it was very odd for a drone to be flying at that time over a heavily populated area near the University of Arizona.
It sounds to me like the city of Tucson and CBP didn't know how to deal with this. I mean chasing a light unmanned drone in a fully manned helicopter is of course going to end up with the kind of silly antics they talk about (the drone flying circles around it).
I wonder how effective an rf jammer would have been.
There are prosumer gas powered ones coming out. My guess is it could be a version of this NASA project that can hover and then transition to winged flight. It's unclear how good of a look they got at it.
Blog comments are mentioning the fact that one of the choppers had to refuel, maybe a testament to how energetic the chase was, but maybe it was already low at that point. That, and the fact that there is an AFB there points to a military drone.
If it's performing maneuvers as complex as described, it must be heavily computer assisted or computer controlled, so you'd presumably need sensors, computer, etc, that adds a lot of weight. On top of that, the speeds they describe coupled with the wind they said it was fighting, it would need to be very well built. Given all the factors, I think it would probably have to be extremly extremly advance.
Computers are 100% required for motor coordination and other low level flight details with a multirotor uav, but in terms of piloting the aircraft a typical human brain is quite capable with practice.
Sensors and computers weigh next to nothing. Every piece of cheap plastic commonly used for building quadcopters fulfills your criterion of being 'very well built'. Nothing about your description makes a drone 'extremely advanced'. Just a hobby project of some random guy/gal.
It's nearly trivially easy to build one, though not necessarily cheap. Just replace the battery pack with an engine, generator and fuel. It may be necessary to use a turbine engine to meet requirements, hence not cheap, but for flight control you just need to use free open source software firmware (Ardupilot?) that has long been freely available and tweak it.
As one of the blog comments suggests, and seems likely from what I've read about it, a lot of the description fits the Northrop-Grumman Bat[0].
One has to wonder why a drone purportedly available exclusively to the military flies such a risky mission...
It's worth noting that in the last years of the 19th century, when airship and zeppelin technology was just starting its first steps of development, many people throughout the United States reported numerous cases of phantom airship sightings. Much later, at the dawn of development or at least interest in rocketry and space travel technology in the late 1940's and then 50's, some of the first modern UFO sighting waves really captured public attention. Now, we have cases like this, but in the context of drone technologies, with the mysterious objects being seen having capabilities that appear to be a certain margin beyond what's known to be currently available. All three periods share some odd similarities.
Why not retractable wings quad/multirotor? Would have long flight time (especially with a gas engine) and be able to "disappear" by retracting the wings and speeding straight up or down.
If it was fixed wing, it could be pure electric. Zipline’s drones have similar capability. If it’s a quad copter (or similar), batteries wouldn’t last long enough and so it’s burning a fuel of some sort.
Beacon for the operator? Light for the camera (particularly if the operator was like "crap, is that a helicopter right in front of it")? Reflection of the helicopter's starboard (green) position light? Reflection of a white light (searchlight?) off something on the drone (marijuana, green structural elements)?
Look at the nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force base: https://www.google.com/maps/search/Davis-Monthan+Air+Force+B...
A plethora of planes, helicopters, and 3 big doppler radar domes.
I guarantee the air force were tracking it, probably because it's their baby. The only reason we even heard about it is the police reports, and they weren't in the loop.
The Air Force is not guaranteed to disclose what they do to the local cops, and might use them as a training exercise in fact.