Imagine you’re sitting on your porch one night, sipping a cold brew, and you see some lights in the distance on your street. They blink, and appear to be moving. They come closer, then the light source turns suddenly and the lights disappear from view. The lights return from another street, and then they stop, just far enough away you can’t see a car, just lights. You’d wonder, “what sort of damn fool is driving like that?” You get out your million watt, survival, combat spot/flashlight, point it toward the lights, and turn it on. The target lights go dark just as suddenly. You jump up and start walking toward where you last saw the lights, but they’re not there. You see them in the distance, speeding away. “Crazy kids,” you mutter and return to your beer.
The next night you see the lights again, only this time you’re sure it’s a car. And it certainly is acting suspicious. It drives around your neighborhood, avoiding any people out on the streets, but seems to back track and turn around randomly in people’s driveways. Lights on, then suddenly off. You call the police, and they seem dismissive. “Yes, we have other calls from your neighborhood. What exactly do you want us to do? It’s legal to drive in your neighborhood. While the car’s lights are weird, they don’t violate any laws. You can turn around in anybody’s driveway, as long as you don’t stop and stay or block it. When we patrolled, we never caught the car driving without lights, speeding, or doing anything else illegal.”
Which is what we face today in America’s drone hysteria.
There are over one million registered drones in the United States, and their distribution largely mirrors the population (more in cities and suburbs, less in rural areas). Until 2023, it was illegal to fly them at night, but now it is legal. They have altitude restrictions (400 ft.), so they don’t interfere with commercial aircraft, and restrictions over certain airspace. Two drone enthusiasts were just arrested for violating the airspace restrictions over Boston’s Logan International Airport. But it is not illegal to fly a drone near a restricted airspace. And it is easy to fly near restricted airspace: if you Google up a map of US military facilities and critical infrastructure (power plants, pipelines, bridges, etc), you’ll see most of the populated areas of the country are full of such space. Believe it or not, private homes are not restricted airspace.
So what’s been happening in New Jersey (among other places) that can’t be explained by a batch of bad THC brownies?
One theory is the always popular space alien visitors. One can never rule it out completely, but there are problems with this explanation. First off, these aliens conquered the physical challenges of light-speed travel, but once they got here, they only have big, clunky drones with flashing lights to investigate us? Maybe this is an interplanetary Amazon run, so they could buy stuff (like drones) here?
The second theory is the just-as-popular secret government agency program. See they’re testing it over New Jersey, because the American suburbs are exactly the kind of environment they expect to be operating in when fighting China. Or maybe Al Qaeda. No, definitely the Houthis. Anyway, why test your secret program with bright flashing lights announcing “hey, this isn’t a secret!”
DHS Secretary Mayorkas demonstrated his usual level of candor and sophistication when he pointed out that some of these drone sightings were in fact commercial aircraft. Which is undoubtedly true. But which begs several questions: how many were commercial aircraft, and what about the others?
Eyewitnesses swear the drones could not be aircraft, as they conducted maneuvers no aircraft is capable of. Of course, that also cuts against the special government program or alien hypotheses, since most people are aware of how sophisticated commercial drones already are today.
A third explanation is more mundane: a stupid government program. Somebody low-down in the bureaucracy got funding for some drones, started testing them without getting higher level approval, and now they don’t want to come out and admit they’ve caused a panic. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (Hanlon’s razor)
And the fourth theory is drone enthusiasts doing what they like and enjoying the notoriety. One cannot discount some people’s need to be noticed, and if this is the case, they are getting way more than their fifteen minutes of fame. Did it start with maybe one or two enthusiasts, then catch fire? Was it coordinated? Doesn’t really matter, as long as they don’t break the law.
I have heard more than one conservative-type talking head ask why we can’t just shoot down the drones. I will write this slowly so such opinion-ators can understand: in America, we don’t just shoot people or things because they look suspicious. Actually, we do, but we regret that greatly. Anyway, the drone-downers were the same people going absolutely bananas when the Biden administration wanted to hire armed IRS agents. What, now it’s ok that DHS is shotgunning the sky?
And best of all: it will take about three milliseconds for the airline pilots of the world to refuse to fly in the United States if we ever start shooting into the sky. When I was in the Army, we practiced air defense, and we could never understand when our Air Force pilot brethren would insist we stop shooting before they flew through the area. The Army view was “big sky, little bullet.” The pilots didn’t buy it. There’s a reason no commercial aircraft fly near war zones, and if the US ever starts shooting down drones, that’s what we would have.
You’ve read this far, so you probably would care what I think. I tend to go primarily with drone operators getting their jollies. And a lot of mis-identification. The question I keep asking is, “why do people care?” As in, what do they think is going to happen? Do they think the drones are spying on them (you’re not that interesting, trust me, and everything you do is already available on social media or your phone)? If you came from planet Remulak, would you really choose New Jersey to visit on vacation?
If the government were secretly spraying some kind of radiation or anti-radiation mist (a very specific allegation out there), would it use bright flashing lights? Or would drone enthusiasts really be so narcissistic as to cause a panic just to get some attention?
I know which one makes the most sense to me. So have a beer, enjoy the show. If you get really annoyed, get a slingshot. If you do shoot one down, that would make a great social media story.