Drones swarmed a military base for days. The Pentagon still doesn’t know why.
Posted by SirLadthe1st@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 76 comments
Posted by SirLadthe1st@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 76 comments
QwertzOne@reddit
I hope that one day we will learn what all that UFO stuff was really about. I wonder, if it's just some form of misinformation or is it actually legit and we live in illusion, but we can't look behind the curtain.
Universe is strange place, when we start to think about consciousness, time and quantum physics. We don't really know much about this place. We don't even know what actually makes us conscious. We just accept that there has to be some scientfic answer to that, but that's not the case.
Some time ago, some airport in China had to be temporarily close, because some UAP was observed there for hours and it seems like a lot more events like that happen and there's never good explaination. It's always reported as weather balloon or some other excuse.
CinnamonCharles@reddit
That is a false dichotomy, there are more options than those you propose.
Ironshallows@reddit
I couldn't tell you when the last time I heard of UFO's or alien adbuctions, I mean, when was the last time you saw major UFO reports on any kind of regular basis? was it before smart phones and the internet became ubiquitious? I would say it's close to 50% drop, not like in the 60's through 80's.
eightNote@reddit
Pretty recently.
It's still the same old "people aren't familiar with what's actually going on, and aren't interested in learning/investigating it, therefore, it must be aliens"
But now it's less of a red scare where the secondary answer is either "it's Soviet tech" or "it's our tech" or... The real alien abductions - the CIA having fun with psychedelics on unsuspecting civilian victims
big_cock_lach@reddit
It’s more realistic to look inside than outside. While it’s nearly 100% certain there’s life elsewhere even in our galaxy, the probability of that life detecting and travelling to us is very different.
Meanwhile, many UFO sitings can be tracked back to us. During WW2 the Nazis (and many other major countries) were experimenting with various ways to build planes. It was still a new technology at the time with a lot of development, and one of the big inventions the Nazis came up with were fighter jets, a technology still used today. However, something else they famously experimented with was flying saucers. After they lost the war, the allies took a lot of their wartime research and begun replicating it to develop their own technologies, especially considering the Cold War at the time meaning they all wanted to continue developing weapons. As a result, they experimented with a lot of flying saucers and all the UFO sitings in the 1950s and 1960s were all just experimental aircraft.
There is likely a similar logical explanation to this as well. Global tensions have been rising for a while. Global superpowers are at their closest to coming to war for a long time as well, with plenty of other areas of tension existing as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if each side had a bunch of experimental stealth drones that are currently undetectable with modern technology. A lot of these sitings could simply be surveillance programmes getting intel on each other’s military bases for war.
QwertzOne@reddit
In terms of our current knowledge that's probably correct, but right now we also started to develop AI. For some people it doesn't look like much, but it's already used to support scientific discovery. Eventually we may reach AGI/ASI and it will increase our scientific progress in nonlinear way, maybe it will be exponential. We're progressing faster as humanity, most of our progress was made in just last 200 years.
For me it's entirely possible that indeed that's all us, but from what year? What if these sightings are observations of some remnants of ancient civilization that is related in some way to us? What if, there's more behind quantum teleportation and some forms of life can use some form of wormholes? We can talk about spacetime or entropy, but does every lifeform experiences life like we do? It's our way of describing universe, because that's something that we can experience, observe and communicate to others due to way we're biologically built.
It's all speculation, because not much is officially confirmed. Some high ranking officers testify about UAP, but it's possible that knowledge about it is just very segmented and secret, so they may simple not be aware that what they observed is just some highly secret program of some country. That's why I hope that some day maybe we will know more, because today all they tell us is that's just some drone or balloon, but there might be some people that know more about it.
eightNote@reddit
They tell us it's a drone or a balloon because it's almost certainly a drone or balloon.
It's not going to be from some ancient society, because they'd have burned all the coal(and we'd see a similar spike in CO2 in the ice records as we have now), and the coal came from a one time event in the earth's development.
We also find what the ancient societies stuff looks like, and generally it's buried in dirt, or if you go further back in time, dirt and also ocean, and it doesn't have the glasses and plastics that last for 10k+ years. We don't see bands of plastic-like stuff in sedentary layers either, which our civilization will leave behind.
We're at a much more special and dangerous time as humans on earth than you're giving us credit for. And looking out at the universe, were pretty unique within our light one, too, though we haven't figured out how to endanger more than our own habitat yet
uncleawesome@reddit
More likely is it is domestic stealth drones and they are just screwing with other bases and branches just because they can.
ExoticCard@reddit
The thing about this is that they aren't very stealth. They have some bright lights. There's a whole WSJ article about them.
Old_Wallaby_7461@reddit
These are just little hexacopters/quadcopters.
Air defense coverage inside the US is bad and has been bad for 30 years now. There's not much to track little targets over the country.
BrainFukler@reddit
Any photographs to prove that these are quadcopters?
Psychological-Rip291@reddit
20ft long and 100mph doesn't scream quadcopter to me, feels more like a proper unmanned plane similar to a predator etc
ExoticCard@reddit
Some interesting footage from Langley from around the same time on r/UFOs.
Unmanned planes don't vanish and wouldn't have bright lights on them if they were on a stealthy mission over sensitive sites.
Dionyzoz@reddit
its a LED kite most likely
spikejonze14@reddit
You don’t think the united states airforce could figure that one out?
eightNote@reddit
The US Airforce isn't going to tell people what they know or how they figured it out unless somebody forces them to.
Dionyzoz@reddit
that vid isnt what the airforce saw and is talking about
SirLadthe1st@reddit (OP)
Here too https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1bk9xta/langley_afb_event_video/
pants_mcgee@reddit
There is very little need for the U.S. to have static air defense inside the country. Just sending up an interceptor is enough for all but the most critical potential targets.
lefboop@reddit
I wouldn't be so sure. I can imagine China employing submarines carrying drones to strike random stuff in the US. Targets could be numerous and small to the point where it's not feasible for the US to defend anything effectively.
Hit some important stuff like power plants, and you just deal a somewhat massive hit to the US.
PUfelix85@reddit
I honestly see this as the future of naval warfare. Aircraft carriers are going to be obsoleted by submarines carrying drone swarms. Some of those drones will be surface drone, some will be subsurface, and others will be airborne. Over time, the maned subs will take on a command role and there will be swarms of larger subs patrolling with smaller swarms of drones to attack and defend themselves.
eightNote@reddit
Controllingg drones from underwater isn't going to work. The sub would have to surface.
Water is real real good at blocking all kinds of electromagnetic waves, they could pop up like a buoy with a think cable and an antenna, but they won't be able to avoid something at the surface
Hyndis@reddit
Thats called a torpedo and those have been used since prior to WW1, over a century ago. During WW2 torpedoes began to have guidance systems in them. Today they have very advanced guidance systems.
PUfelix85@reddit
I mean that they will be like swarms of smaller submarines and not just a one shot objects like a torpedo.
pants_mcgee@reddit
They’d launch cruise missiles, not drones. Drones would be used by Chinese agents within the U.S.
Also this scenario would be full out war between the U.S. and China, which changes the equation drastically. Anything you think China could do to the U.S., the U.S. could do to China tenfold.
TimeGrownOld@reddit
You gonna scramble jets for quadcopters? Maybe shoot down a $3k balloon with a $30k missile?
J-E-S-S-E-@reddit
30k? Where’s you pull that cheap number from? More like 1-2 million
speleothems@reddit
The drones were chased by 8 F-16s and a NASA imaging plane was sent to fly over them
TimeGrownOld@reddit
And how effective are F-16's at hovering?
speleothems@reddit
They weren't hovering.
https://archive.is/gf4oX
TimeGrownOld@reddit
You need to specify what instruments these measurements were taken with. As is the case with the 2004 USS Nimitz incident, the likely case is that the recordings are decoys
greyetch@reddit
If they're doing surveillance over a military instillation? Absolutely.
TimeGrownOld@reddit
How is a jet traveling at jet speeds going to be effective against a hovering quadcopter? Are missiles a cost effective measure?
LEFT4Sp00ning@reddit
Counterpoint: sending an F-22 to take out one little drone is incredibly US-coded and it would be super funny
TimeGrownOld@reddit
Lmao agreed; and I would totally watch that video
braiam@reddit
They are going for the booze man!
pants_mcgee@reddit
If it becomes a credible security issue they will quietly deploy electronic countermeasures, like they did when some dumbass landed their drone on the White House lawn. They probably already have.
The military isn’t going to blast shit out of the sky when there is pretty much zero military threat to anything within the United States. They will assess and observe and plan/deploy countermeasures where appropriate.
ThrillSurgeon@reddit
The Pentagon has no idea.
Relative_Business_81@reddit
No they were not quadcopters. Some were described as being 20ft in size and moving over 100 miles an hour. Sound more like strange fixed wing drones, especially since they “sounded like lawnmowers”
uncleawesome@reddit
Sounds more like a surveillance drone to me
Relative_Business_81@reddit
From what military analysts said they appear to be some kind of advanced civilian craft created to “cause a disturbance”. I’m not sure what they are but they seem to be pretty ballsy
Future-Physics-1924@reddit
test
Aoshie@reddit
God is a time-travelling astronaut
Wierd657@reddit
Space-time in more than 3 dimensions to be precise.
WatzUpzPeepz@reddit
I’m sure 90%+ of the sightings have very mundane explanations, but the idea that even 1 in a million are some extremely rare weather or physics phenomenon (never even mind aliens) is really exciting.
frizzykid@reddit
It's kind of wild to me how a drone can fly detected in prohibited airspace and not be taken down through radio wave disruption. You have to assume they'd try it because if it was a perceived threat, best way to figure out where it came from is to get ahold of the drone
Zugzwang522@reddit
Drones have proven to be extremely cost effective tools that we simply don’t have a widely adopted counter for. I don’t think western military minds expected them to be as effective as they currently are proving to be. They’ll come up with something eventually but it’ll take time and will likely be way too expensive and complicated.
Robjec@reddit
We have been working on counters for over a decade. Both signal scrambling and physically damaging the drones.
The war in Ukraine just happened to come at a time where using drone became cheap but the cheap counters aren't finished.
That doesn't mean no one was working on it or took it seriously.
eightNote@reddit
We haven't granted them 2A protections yet though, which would be best for making them ubiquitous enough to have practiced, working, cost effective countermeasures
_163@reddit
It's quite possible that laser weapons will be used to defend against drones in future, we've already seen recently a number of developments with working prototypes of these.
Cheaper to fire a laser than the drones cost to produce, so should be an effective counter once they are ready for more widespread use.
TinyTowel@reddit
They didn't. Non kinetic effects don't just jam the one thing you're targeting. So getting authority to use NKE in the US is not easy to do, even for the USAF.
/source: me who dealt with this
Ivanow@reddit
What? I have seen Ukrainians use some kind of a weapon, where you aim it at a drone, press the trigger, and drone just fell out from the sky - it uses directional antenna, so nothing nearby was affected.
18093029422466690581@reddit
I think he means they are capable of doing that but it's hard to get authorization. Don't think there's much air traffic over Ukraine at the moment
eightNote@reddit
Eg. The drone might fall on and injure somebody not on the base
JFK-FDR@reddit
Were those drones 4000’ high, or >500’ high?
frizzykid@reddit
Alright admittedly hadn't considered there being other things in the air that could be effected that need to be there. I appreciate the context.
Faruhoinguh@reddit
*affected
ExoticCard@reddit
We have a defense budget that is larger than the next 10 countries combined.
These better be UFOs.
TimeGrownOld@reddit
Agree with the sentiment but when adjusted for purchase power parity our defense spending is roughly equal to China and Russia combined. Which makes sense. The 'next 10 countries' is often repeated but a good way to tell if someone knows what they're talking about (or not).
Aoshie@reddit
And how much of that money can the Pentagon not account for???
Call me crazy, but I'm not too sure all our defense budget goes entirely to national defense!
Firm-Constant8560@reddit
Don't need radio comms if you can use a line of sight laser, or have an on-board system that's operating independently.
I would guess the latter as laser comms do create detectable backscatter in an atmosphere.
ExoticCard@reddit
This is from the original WSJ article:
"Over 17 days, the drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back. Some shone small lights, making them look like a constellation moving in the night sky—or a science-fiction movie, Kelly said, “‘Close Encounters at Langley.’” They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley, he said, were unlike any past incursion."
"They were much smaller than military aircraft and didn’t always show up on radar. Military personnel had to recalibrate their radar systems, which were set to ignore anything that resembled a bird."
"Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon’s UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond."
I think UAP/UFO sightings are increasing. It is a phenomenon that is being noticed worldwide, though everyone has been assuring the world "It's just due to increased detection", like China:
China military uses AI to track rapidly increasing UFOs | South China Morning Post
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3136078/china-military-uses-ai-track-rapidly-increasing-ufos
There has also been quite some rustling in Congress about UAP too, whistleblowers and the UAP Disclosure act (Seriously, just read the draft of the bill, it's science fiction proposed as reality by Mike Schumer and Rubio)
That's why they're not shooting these down, they can't do anything to them. The pictures of them look pretty wild, they're 20ft long with vibrant lights. Hardly a covert object.
Hyndis@reddit
The drones were detected, its just that the military didn't regard them as a serious enough and immediate enough threat to shoot them.
Why? Because if the military starts shooting live ordinance in the air over Newport (the big city next to the air base), that ordinance will come down somewhere. Bullets and/or missile fragments raining down in unpredictable locations isn't something you want.
The nearby cities and residential neighborhoods also allow for the drones to be launched and recovered while being difficult to find. They could be launched from anyone's backyard, and there's a lot of nearby backyards to the air base.
Hammer_of_Ludd@reddit
The area in general is very busy between hospitals, ports, and airports so it's no surprise.
Hammer_of_Ludd@reddit
So either aliens have broken the laws of physics to get here and are dicking around or someone got some pretty cool drones. Wonder what it could be.
TimeGrownOld@reddit
Check out Tyler Rogaway's great reporting on the 2004 and 2015 USS sightings. TLDR: most likely drones and fancy electronic warfare. A good giveaway is that aliens likely don't give a fuck about specific military technologies... but our adversaries most certainly do.
Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They’re UFOs
greyetch@reddit
Massive buzz kill.
Probably correct.
Financial-Chicken843@reddit
All the ppl on the twz article r saying its chinese sleeper agents flying dji drones lol.
Theyre so stupid.
PandaCheese2016@reddit
20 feet long? That sounds more like RC scale model to me.
If it’s so easy to breach base “drone defense” without being traced what the fuck are they spending defense budget on?
RandomErrer@reddit
Given what we're seeing in Ukraine you'd think there'd already be anti-drone systems installed at critical bases. If these drones are visible to the human eye then they can be targeted with a high-power laser system and knocked out of the air.
funwithtentacles@reddit
They mention looking at it at the end of the article... a year later, but sheesh!
My first thought was how a secure military airbase has no net-drones or jammers for this sort of thing, and how the heck did it take them a year to even start looking into this sort of thing?!
Firm-Constant8560@reddit
A jammer does nothing if there's nothing to jam. On board smart systems or line of sight laser comms would solve that problem.
Tbh i seriously doubt the info in this article is complete (compared to what is actually known) - this feels like counterinteligence.
funwithtentacles@reddit
It definitely feels like there is a good chunk missing here...
The story as is just makes very little sense...
TinyTowel@reddit
Some of the sightings were 737s, legit. Untrained spotters were deployed (non aircrew, NVGs and a radio) to try to see more. Didn't really manifest after that.
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We've found 57 sources (so far) that are covering this story including:
Russia Today [🇷🇺-affiliated] (Leans Right): "Mysterious drones circled US military bases – WSJ"
WION (Center): "White House and Pentagon puzzled after swarm of mystery drones hover over US military base for 17 days"
NDTV (Leans Left): "Mysterious Drones Swarmed US Military Bases For 17 Days, Pentagon Was Not Able To Stop Them: Report"
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