Fig. 1 Supposed UFO drone
here's been hysteria all week about fleets of “drones”
supposedly flying over New Jersey. It's now spread to Philadelphia.
Where's the outrage, people ask. Why hasn't the military shot one down
yet to examine it? People are demanding that these drones be shot down
and examined, or at least disabled with high-powered microwave energy
weapons. Some are volunteering.
Maybe one or two of them are actual drones. It's even possible some of them are from a foreign power studying our military bases. But every single picture I've seen published so far is clearly an airplane. Fox News has a picture of “multiple large drones” in New Jersey that's quite obviously a picture of an ordinary helicopter. If the news media don't stop fanning hysteria about “drones,” somebody is going to shoot down a commercial airplane.
Fig. 2 Supposed UFO drone
At right are some pictures published in the UK Daily Mail. They're not the only ones doing this, but they're showing the most detailed video clips. What they're showing are NOT DRONES.
Fig. 1 shows a “drone” that is supposed to resemble a central object with three legs. In fact it's a typical jet airplane with swept wings, photographed from below as it flies in the direction toward the top of the frame. The red splotch is the red strobe on the underside of most commercial jets. Fig. 2 is a frame grab of a video of another “drone” with flashing lights traveling from right to left. Although it might look like a top-shaped drone or even a Tic-Tac, it is clearly another commercial aircraft imaged from below.
Honestly, has no one ever photographed an airplane at night before? I see these things all the time. Fig. 3 is a time exposure of the sky taken with a telescope. The picture was ruined by a commercial airplane flying directly overhead. It shows a large red “star” that appears in some images and not in others. These are red strobes on the underside of airplanes, which flash at one-second intervals. They're surrounded by a halo or a red area caused by reflections off the fuselage. Long time-exposures of the night sky commonly show many trails of red and white dashed lines going in many directions. If the plane has its landing lights on, there could be four or more solid lines.
Fig. 3 Airplane ruining a shot of a star field. Airplane trails appear as two parallel strings of beads due to the 1 per second wing strobe. The red center beacon strobe looks like a fuzzy star
A commercial airliner typically begins its approach at 3000 feet and travels almost horizontally, at about three degrees, starting several miles from the airport. It starts its landing at 1.3 Vs0, where Vs0 is stall speed in landing configuration and depends on the airplane. There's not much room for error: knocking out an engine at that speed would create a big problem. Whether or not a firearm could hit an object at that height and speed, attempting to do so would be reckless endangerment—a major felony that would get you sent to prison.
Airplanes at night can be almost unrecognizable. Time exposures show a classic string of red dots, but short exposures can be hard to interpret. Fig. 4 shows a FedEx cargo plane traveling from right to left as it approaches an airport behind the trees. The large white blob on the left is their landing lights. Unlike the “drone” images above, this one really was photographed from the side and not from underneath.
Fig. 5 is a time exposure of the Andromeda galaxy that was ruined by an object flying overhead that was identified as “another god-damned airplane.” The large white dots are from the plane's beacon.
Fig. 4 FedEx plane approaching an airport . . . or harbinger of alien armageddon? Better use UPS next time just to be safe
One explanation for this hysteria is that it's a product of the stress from the Covid era. Two years of stress and anxiety, added to the cytokine-induced stress experienced by those contracting the disease, has taken a severe toll on people's ability to make sound judgments. People also feel leaderless because no one in government has enough credibility to convince them that these items really are what is claimed. It's reminiscent of the prewar Orson Welles Martian invasion panic. And despite people's claims now that they weren't taken in by the Covid hysteria, the same thing is happening again with drones.
The US military probably knows most of them are not drones. Military experts at tech websites certainly know it. Anyone who's ever done astrophotography absolutely knows it. Shoot one down, and you could regret it for a long time.
Update, Dec. 14 2024 The Mail has weighed in again on drones, producing this doozy of a sentence:
On Friday night, Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said his police department sent up a drone then disappeared into thin air.
Fig. 5 An airplane ruining a shot of Andromeda
All jokes about police departments being abducted by UFOs aside, this is serious. DM also shows a video of people shooting at some unidentified object in the sky, maybe a drone and maybe a small airplane. President-elect Trump must show more leadership and tell people to calm down and not to shoot randomly at things in the sky.
Update, Dec. 15 2024 People are now posting videos of motion artifacts and out-of-focus stars and planets, claiming they're “glowing orbs” and part of some conspiracy. It's great that people are finally looking at the sky, but this is sheer lunacy. They won't be able to shoot down Venus, Sirius, or Jupiter (which is exceptionally bright this month and well worth observing), but it's unbelievable that people have to be told how dangerous it is to shoot randomly into the air.
The drone story is rapidly being taken over by some very unreliable observers. The right, and especially Trump, need to dissociate themselves from all this ASAP. The news media could be trying to set up Trump again by tying him to them. Certainly no one, least of all Trump, should encourage people to shoot at 'drones.'
dec 13 2024, 3:26 am. updated dec 14 2024, 6:26 pm. last updated dec 15 2024, 6:59 am
