New Jersey Drones are a nothingburger - no need to tell air traffic control about low flying drones of any size - except near airports - so long as you are licensed and keep to the rules
You won't be tracked - just as the FBI and CIA don't track private cars or bicycles - you have reasonable expectation of privacy
Most people don't know that anyone with the appropriate license can fly anywhere below 10,000 feet without a responder so long as they keep away from the approach paths to the larger airfields.
They are just required to have anti-collision flashing lights at night.
They do NOT have to notify the FBI or police or Sheriff and Air Traffic Control won’t know about them either.
The FAA don’t track them and the FBI don’t know where they are.
Class G airspace
- uncontrolled
- govern free
FAA don’t track aircraft or drones in class G airspace near the ground.No transponders. No Air Traffic Control.
Class G airspace:
So long as you keep to the rules - and have a license - you can fly a plane or drone of any size anywhere in Class G at any time.
No need to notify anyone flying visually at up to 238 mph below 10,000 feet.FAA graphic from: Class Golf Airspace
I am not sure what is legal, can’t find the information about whether legally the FBI can track drones in class G airspace and for how long they can do so. But for sure they don’t, the FBI and FAA don’t know where the drones are.
Sorry in first draft of this I said they just can’t track anyone as an invasion of privacy without a warrant. But it’s more subtle. The law is very complex.
In any case whether they can or can’t, they don’t.
The Pentagon say that it is a matter of local law enforcement. These are not military drones and there is no evidence that they are anything to do with foreign adversaries.
That wouldn’t make sense anyway. If some foreign adversary wanted to spy secretly on military installations, why use big drones with flashing anti-collision lights and navigation lights? It doesn't make much sense as an idea.
QUOTE STARTS
Q. Sabrina can you tell me what the Pentagon is doing to address this issue of drone sightings over New Jersey near sensitive installations, the FBI is involved, what is the Pentagon doing?
Sure, we are aware of those drone sightings that have been reported. At this time, we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or are the work of an adversary. We are going to continue to monitor what is happening but at no point were our military installations threatened.
Can you rule out that these are military drones?
These are not US military drones. Again this is being investigated by local law enforcement. Our initial assessment here is that these are not drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or adversary.
. Avi M 🛸🇮🇳🕉️ (@AvirupM42) on X
Transcript: Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh Holds a Press Briefing
Why the FAA doesn’t know who is flying where in Class G airspace
Modern drones broadcast their ID over bluetooth over short distances. But they don’t need to have transponders unless they fly really high.
FAA could use those ids to figure out who you are if you fly over restricted air space but won’t be interested if you are flying in unrestricted space.
See Is the FAA Tracking Your Drone?
The government isn't doing anything about them because the drones aren't doing anything illegal. None of them are flying in restricted air space - they are flying in places drones are permitted to fly. This video may help. Did you know Walmart do drone deliveries? They might shoot down someone's delivery drone along with whatever they were delivering.
The FBI say they haven't had any reports of drones in restricted airspace - they are all in public air space where anyone is permitted to fly.
They can't shoot them down.
That is a crime, it is a federal offence to shoot down a harmless commercial drone.
. Here’s what you shouldn’t do about those unidentified drones over New Jersey: Shoot them
This is what the FBI say:
QUOTE STARTS
We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus. The FBI, DHS and our federal partners, in close coordination with the New Jersey State Police, continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate this situation and confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings.
“Historically, we have experienced cases of mistaken identity, where reported drones are, in fact, manned aircraft or facilities. We are supporting local law enforcement in New Jersey with numerous detection methods but have not corroborated any of the reported visual sightings with electronic detection. To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully. There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space.
“We take seriously the threat that can be posed by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which is why law enforcement and other agencies continue to support New Jersey and investigate the reports. To be clear, they have uncovered no such malicious activity or intent at this stage. While there is no known malicious activity occurring in New Jersey, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight the insufficiency of current authorities."
. joint-dhs-fbi-statement-on-reports-of-drones-in-new-jersey
Can the FBI keep track of your drone without a warrant?
Sorry not sure of the answer here yet, I got it mixed up in my first draft of this article.
Here is an example Supreme Court case where they found that the Government action of attaching a GPS device to a suspect's SUV was unconstitutional and needed a warrant.
. U.S. Supreme Court Extends Constitution to GPS Tracking
On the other hand it is permitted to fly over someone’s property and notice they are growing marijuana plants without a warrant. See: Aerial Surveillance doctrine.
The law in between is complex. See: Warrantless Government Drone Surveillance: A Challenge to the Fourth Amendment
So it's not about whether they could or not. Perhaps with military radar systems and with large computer databases and spy satellites with infrared vision they could follow all the drones and where they take off from and where they land and have a live map of the position of every farmer's drone and hobbyist's drone and pilot and remote controlled aircraft in the country.
But they wouldn’t do this unless someone was suspected of criminal activity and depending on what they did they might well need warrants. I am not sure what the law is here - and it seems also to be still developing. Sorry in first draft of this blog post I said they would need warrants to follow the drones, not sure they do but the law is complex, for sure in practice they wouldn’t without some reason to suspect them of a crime etc.
Slow flying planes and drones can fly anywhere in Class G airspace avoiding collisions visually - but must carry flashing strobe lights at night visible from 3 miles away
You can just fly visually at speeds of over 200 miles per hour either as a pilot or piloting a drone. And they rely on vision to detect each other and avoid crashes.
It's not much different from driving a private car except you are not limited to the roads.
Drones are equipped with lights, they are required to be equipped with anti-collision strobe lights by the FAA. They also have lights to light up the scene or to make it easier for the drone pilot to judge where the drone is for search and rescue and such like.
This is about drone lights. Complete Guide to Drone Lights
Drones can optionally have position lights if it helps the drone operator work out the orientation, but they are not required if they have other ways to know which way it's flying.:
QUOTE Position lights are the red, green, and white lights used to determine orientation of the aircraft. The FAA said in the preamble, 'Position lighting might assist a remote pilot in meeting the applicable visual line-of-sight requirements in § 107.31(a), such as knowing the unmanned aircraft's location, attitude, altitude, and direction of flight. However, this rule does not require position lighting because it is not the only means by which a remote pilot could meet these requirements. Although position lighting is not necessary for safe operation, a remote pilot may use position lighting if he or she determines it would be the best solution for safe operation.'
. How to fly your drone at night. (Section 107.29 Operation at Night.)
Some of these stories are about controlled space like airports / military airports etc
In those cases, it's usually recreational hobbyists who don't know the rules or didn't bother to check if there was an airfield nearby.
They aren't a threat. The Pentagon say that they see no need to investigate and leave it up to local police, see no evidence of any foreign involvement and it's not their own drones.
Anyone with a suitable license can fly any drone of any size freely anywhere in Class G air space just like you can walk anywhere in a National Park
You don’t own the air space above your home, it’s like a National Park, anyone can fly through it at any time in any direction.
What most people don't seem ot realize and the stories don't explain is that anyone with a suitable license can fly anywhere in class G airspace without a transponder and at speeds of over 200 miles per hour. There is no size limit. A hobbyist could fly a thirteenth scale model of a Boeing 747 over your home for instance 🙂.
Screenshot from:
But commercial drones can be far larger than that and of course the ones that have pilots on board are as large as small planes.
That includes commercial drones often for construction or farming, hobbyists, amateur pilots, etc. There are few restrictions, they can fly over private property below 400 feet, you don't own the sky above your home.
They can't fly over crowds or close to the president or other public figures, for public figures:
QUOTE No person may operate an aircraft over or in the vicinity of any area to be visited or traveled by the President, the Vice President, or other public figures contrary to the restrictions established by the FAA and published in a NOTAM.
Section 5. Flight Restrictions in the Proximity of the Presidential and Other Parties
And as we saw, and they can't fly into the approach paths to airports.
Anywhere else and it would be an invasion of privacy for the Pentagon or FBI to even track you if you are doing nothing wrong.
And no they are NOT trying to spy on Trump or assassinate him.
If you stop and think for a moment, if someone was secretly trying to spy on Trump or to assassinate him, would they fly a drone with flashing strobe lights following the FAA regulations to ensure everyone can see it from at least 3 miles away?
They are absurd ideas by people who don't have the most basic understanding of the topic.
And how is a drone operator supposed to spy on Trump when there are NOTAMS preventing drones from flying whenever he is nearby?
These stories pop up from time to time and there isn't much the local police can do short of going to the expense of patrolling with helicopters as a patrol car can't keep up. Just hope whoever is responsible notices the news and lets them know what they are doing which would be sure to be harmless and law abiding.
There are no laws being broken unless they fly in restricted areas.
But the New Jersey drones don’t seem even to be flying in controlled space, as far as I can tell the reports are just about drones in Class G airspace.
Drones are widely used for instance by farmers to monitor crops - or for construction works
There are many stories like this in the USA as well as other parts of the world where drones are widely available.
If it's in some remote rural area or anywhere in uncontrolled space it's likely to be commercial operations. There is more and more of that going on, with the low cost of drones, and the high resolution images they can now take. Photographing your crops from the air is a very low cost efficient way of checking on them without having to get out and look at all your fields on foot in the often large US farms. They can detect individual missing plants for replanting. From one company that provides these services, they can monitor
Stand Count [the software can count individual plants]
Canopy Cover
Plant Stress
Weed Analysis
Plant Vigor
Water Logging.
See Crop Monitoring from: Crop Production with Agremo AI
Farmers can do this by flying drones in a fixed pattern to get an aerial ultra high resolution photograph of your farm.
They would know the rules so wouldn't fly in controlled air space which is why they are unlikely to be the operators if it is in controlled air space without ATC authorization.
This is increasingly popular as drones get easier to operate and lower cost and more useful to farmers -and there are large numbers of drones like this flying about over US fields every day..
They can also use them for crop dusting, and they are also used for commercial photograph from the air for construction projects, monitoring how it is progressing and so on.
Also farmer hobbyists photgraphing their farms from the air for artistic reasons. See:
. Photos of My Farm Using a Mavic Pro Drone from DJI
They are hard to track. They fly low, often just a few hundred feet above the ground or less, often won't show up on commercial flight radar, are hard to follow - and most flights don't need authorization from the Air Traffic Control (ATC).
No authorization is needed for drones or indeed planes of any size, if they fly in Class G air space. That includes any low flight not in the flight path of any airport, typically slower planes flying visually.
You are limited to a speed of 250 knots if flying below 10,000 feet. That's 288 miles per hour or 463 kilometers per hour. If you fly above 10,000 feet you need to have a transponder so other planes can spot you from a distance but below that, the slow flying planes rely on spotting each other visually.
So that can include mapping drones and aircraft and crop monitoring and crop dusting planes and drones, photographing construction work in progress, recreational pilots, essentially any commerical activity and recreational activity that happens at a low level.
So you don't need to tell anyone where you are going, and commercial jets can't even detect you if you fly below 10,000 feet so long as you keep away from the approaches to airports. This means that the local sherrif also doesn't know about your flight.
Most of the stories like this turn out to be normal activity in Class G airspace. They are not required to let anyone know about it so the local police and sherrif may well not know what's going on and then the public get concerned so then they have to chase up just to answer questions from the public but it can be hard to find out because some of the drones fly quite fast and then they land in some remote place, maybe off the road too, say a farmer's house, and a police car on the ground is limited to driving on the roads.
They can be piloted by humans or remotely operated drones which may be quite large. And the drone operators often have absolutely no idea that anyone is running news storiers about their drones.
This for example is a company that helps farmers who want to repeatedly photograph their farmland from the air using drones for crop monitoring.
Another one Drone Mapping: How Aerial Surveys Are Revolutionising Industries | Carrot
It's especially easy to fly small drones of 55 lbs or less, down to half a pound. Very small drones don't need any license. The small drones do require a license but it is easy to get. . small-unmanned-aircraft-systems-uas-regulations-part-107 Small drones of 55 lbs or less
Larger ones need a license as a drone pilot or as a human pilot if they are flown by an on board human pilot. But many do have those licenses and again the local sherrif won't have a clue who they are and why they are flying.
And at 238 miles per hour max speed, there is no way that the local police in police cars can keep up with them with car chases. It would take expensive aerial chases to find out who they are.
They are doing nothing wrong and if anyone does spot them land they will likely find they land in a farm. Or just by some vehicles where people are doing a survey for a construction company or other client.
So the mystery may never be solved.
Not aliens - with not much advanced technology they could fly drones as small as insects or smaller and if they want to be hidden wouldn’t use FAA recommended strobe lights - and if they want to be seen they surely wouldn’t do first contact like this
No way they are aliens. Aliens would have the technology to be completely invisible if they wanted to do aerial surveys with technology not that far ahead of what we have now. After all insects can fly long distances without a refuel and have decent vision - so surely with technology a century or so ahead of what we have now they could do it with observation drones the size of insects or possibly even smaller probably just "smart dust".
We are nowhere near that capability yet, insects way out perform our best technology, but some day we surely have it in the future. So aliens with technology advanced enough to get here likely have it already. Also they could evolve to our level of civilization at any time in at least the last 10 billion years so the chance they are at exactly our level of development and not evne a few millenia more advanced is vanishingly small. If there are aliens here they likely have been here since at least the ice ages, probably far longer or if they got here in response to our radio signals then they must be so close they surely popped over on many previous occasions.
BLOG: Why it makes sense for aliens to be kind - and more so the more advanced their civilization
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