Simple reason for more drones in New Jersey - FAA made it easier to get waivers to fly drones over people - based on new drone safety recommendations - most reports followed up are of lawful use
- explanation given by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
Just come across an explanation for the timing of the drones, by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Change in FAA guidelines making it easier to get a waiver to fly a drone over people
He says many are because of a change by the FAA in September 2023 which made it much easier for drone operators to get waivers to fly their drones over places where there are people both in daytime and at night.
Since then to get a waiver, your drone needs
Rotor guards to protect anyone they fall on from scratches
a flashing light bright enough to be seen from at least 3 miles away.
a bluetooth ID it broadcasts all the time - most drones do nowadays and it is easy to get a device to stick on it to broadcast an ID.
larger drones need a parachute which automatically deploys if they fall from the sky.
If you do those things and answer various other questions correctly you automatically get a waiver to fly over people.
The law hasn't changed, but they have added these new guidelines. They used to only approve 3% of waiver requests. Now since Sept 2023 they approve any drone if they answer those questions properly.
So gradually more and more people got these waivers and can now fly drones over people, day and night.
So it’s partly:
people are misidentifying planes and helicopters as drones
more people are flying drones over people.
Official joint statement from DHS, FBI, FAA and DoD - most are aircraft or drones flown legally - a few strayed over military restricted space - this is nothing new and they were dealt with accordingly
We now have an official joint statement by the DHS, FBI, FAA and DoD about the drones.
Many are aircraft including small planes and helicopters. Others are drones. These include law enforcement drones. All flying legally. A few did fly over military facilities and within restricted air space, which is nothing new and they were dealt with accordingly. Some reports were stars.
RED TEXT:
… we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones
… Additionally, there have been a limited number of visual sightings of drones over military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere, including within restricted air space. Such sightings near or over DoD installations are not new
… Local commanders are actively engaged to ensure there are appropriate detection and mitigation measures in place.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTED TEXT:
There are more than one million drones lawfully registered with the FAA in the United States and there are thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones lawfully in the sky on any given day …
… FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks with approximately 100 leads generated, and the federal government is supporting state and local officials in investigating these reports
…We have sent advanced detection technology to the region. And we have sent trained visual observers.
. DHS, FBI, FAA & DoD Joint Statement on Ongoing Response to Reported Drone Sightings
These endless meetings and theories about the drones are rather silly.
All this talk about shooting them out of the sky - but most of the "drones" turn out to be planes, or helicopters, or drones that are being flown legally.
There are over 1 million licensed drones in the USA. There are over 9,000 of them flown every day.
More about the FAA making it easier to get a waiver to fly drones over people
So, as they said before, a lot of them are just misidentified aircraft. But some are drones flying over people. Out of over 300 million people in the USA, they have over a million drones registered. And those can be flown anywhere and won't be tracked by the FAA.
This is a video about the change to make it easier to get waivers to fly over people - day or night:
And more about it here (video embedded in the page)
Here is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas interviewed by ABC talking about this change and how it increased the numbers of drones flying over people.
QUOTE STARTS
Let's bring in Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us this morning.
Can you clear up the confusion here?
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Absolutely, George, and thank you very much for having me.
There's no question that people are seeing drones. And I want to assure the American public that we, in the federal government, have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology, to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.
Some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones. Some are manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones. And we do see duplicative reporting.
But there's no question that drones are being sighted.
Let me set the record straight here, George. There are thousands of drones flown every day in the United States, recreational drones, commercial drones. That is the reality, and in September of 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, changed the rules so that drones could fly at night. And that may be one of the reasons why now people are seeing more drones than they did before, especially from dawn to dusk [he must mean dusk to dawn]. And so that is the reality.
But I want to assure the American public that we are on it. We are working in close coordination with state and local authorities. And it is critical, as we all have said for a number of years that we need from Congress additional authorities to address the drone situation. Our authorities currently are limited, and they are set to expire. We need them extended and expanded.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What exactly do you need?
MAYORKAS: We want state and local authorities to also have the ability to counter drone activity under federal supervision. That is one important element that we have requested, and we've heard it echoed by the state and local officials themselves.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, President-elect Trump has put out a post on this. I want to put it up on the screen right now. He says, “mystery drone sightings all over the country. Can this really be happening without our government's knowledge? I don't think so. Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down.”
Your response?
MAYORKAS: Well, we are aware of the drone sightings, as I – as I've said. I think there are more than 8,000 drones flown every day in the United States. With respect to the ability to incapacitate those drones, we are limited in our authorities. We have certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security that can do that, and outside our department, but we need those authorities expanded as well.
[they can take down a drone by jamming them not by shooting them]
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are there any legitimate national security concerns here? For example, have you seen any evidence at all, especially in these recent sightings in the northeast, of any kind of foreign involvement?
MAYORKAS: We have not seen any foreign – we know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the northeast. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter, the Department of Homeland Security, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the lead.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But there have been concerns in the past. In fact, a Chinese national was arrested in California this week, allegedly for flying a drone over Vandenberg Air Force Base. Last year you had drone flights over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, over a nuclear facility in Nevada.
So, what is the national security concern right now?
MAYORKAS: Well, when a drone is flown over restricted air space, we act very, very swiftly. And, in fact, when an individual in California flew a drone over restricted air space, that individual was identified, apprehended and is being charged by federal authorities. And so we act as swiftly as possible when an individual does fly a drone over restricted air space and violates the rules.
You know there are, George, more than 1 million drones registered in the United States.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's an awful lot. But bottom line you're saying Americans have nothing to worry about?
MAYORKAS: Look, it is our job to be vigilant in the federal government with our state and local partners on behalf of the American public. And we can assure their safety by reason of that vigilance. We've deployed personnel, technology, and if there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the American public accordingly.
Right now, we are not aware of any. If we become aware of any, we will communicate accordingly and take appropriate action.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says [added bullet points]
"We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of
lawful commercial drones,
hobbyist drones and
law enforcement drones, as well as
manned fixed-wing aircraft,
helicopters and even
stars that were mistakenly reported as drones," Kirby told reporters.
"We have not identified anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risk."
The assessment was made by law enforcement officials "having closely examined the data, having closely looked at the tips and collated them the best we can from concerned citizens," Kirby said.
The “alien orbs” are just out of focus points of light such as satellites or stars
The "orbs" are mostly small bright objects like stars and satellites that people zoom in on with cameras with high zoom for the first time in their life trying to focus close up on a star. They then see a fuzzy patch which may have a strange appearance and they don't try to do the same experiment with other small bright distant things but immediately upload a video with the result and claim it's an alien.
See this frame:
from this video:
The satellites include flaring starlink satellites. They criss cross because they are in different orbits. They brighten as the sun catches them and then they disappear as they cross over into Earth's shadow higher in the sky. Since they are in a low orbit they cross over into the shadow quickly..
An individual satellite just looks like a moving bright light which appears just above the horizon, brightens then fades and abruptly vanishes.
Starlink Flares Can Fool Anyone — Even Airline Pilots
That explains the “aliens” that they claim fly out of the sea and then vanish.
Another one is a row of 60 such
QUOTE It was not a bird nor a plane. The unidentified flying object which many people described as a strange beaming light in the Algarve night sky on Monday (November 11) was in fact a row of 60 Starlink satellites which were launched into orbit from a Falcon 9 rocket that took off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA.
There are lots of bright things in the sky. Satellites are very common nowadays. Stars of course and planets which are bright and move only slowly from day to day so look stationary like stars. Planes, helicopters, drones of many sorts and sizes. Spotlights pointed upwards that shine on the clouds.
All that happened is that people who rarely look at the sky are responding to the claim of UFOs by looking upwards and photographing and seeing things that are there all the time anyway.
There are more now than there used to be, so someone who looks up for the first time in a few years will see many more satellites and drones than there used to be. Even in the last year there are many more drones that fly above people in the USA because of a change in how easy it is to get permission to fly a drone over people as I just explained.
So amongst those some are small points of light such as stars or satellites and when they zoom in they go blurry but not as people expect, rather in this way with structure within the blur such as dots and lines.
They have never tried focusing on a small pinpoint of light before, and think they have spotted an alien spaceship.
Then of course you get the fakes. Others copy these videos and add other embellishments to make it look like the orbs are shooting down drones or whatever.
Trump’s remark like the silly things he said about immigrants eating dogs and cats - he can’t have got the official briefing or he’d have said
As for Trump’s various remarks, claiming the government is hiding something, he is just saying silly things like when he claimed Haitian immigrants in Springfield were eating cats and dogs.
It was the same thing, no reported instances of anyone alleged of eating a cat or dog reported to the police in Springfield.
In this new video, he is more relaxed and less defensive because he is now the elected president. But he was just as serious before as now.
Remember he often said silly things in his first term like his claim you can cure COVID by injecting bleach which he backtracked on.
He is a former star of "The Apprentice" and knows how to get media attention and capture the camera. Right now he may also be doing it to put a spoke in the wheel of the last few weeks lame duck period of Biden's presidency.
But we need to get used to him saying silly things.
In this video he claims the government know what the drones are and aren’t telling us.
But at the end he is asked at the end
"Have you received any intelligence briefing on the drones"
Trump says
"I don't want to comment on that".
This response makes no sense. To see why, imagine if Biden had said the same thing.
Like imagine if someone asked Biden
"Did you get an intelligence briefing on the drones"
and he said
"I don't want to comment on that"
- how bizarre would that be? Very bizarre. If this came from Biden people would wonder if he was in his right mind.
But Trump somehow says it in a way that leads to people not looking closely at what he just said.
Trump has been getting the same security briefings as Biden since he became president elect.
So if he'd said "yes" nobody would blink an eyelid.
Can you think of any previous instance of a president or president elect asked if he got an intelligence briefing on something who responded saying he doesn't want to comment? It makes NO SENSE. It is just deflecting.
So how could it be that he didn’t get an intelligence briefing?
This is just a guess of how it could come about: Perhaps someone came up to his door with a stack of papers and said "Here is your intelligence briefing on the drones" and he said "Can't be bothered, go away" or some such.
Then that frees him up to spread conspiracy theories about the drones since he doesn't have any facts to bother about.
Anyway whatever the reason you certainly shouldn’t put any weight on what he says there.
See also
.
TEXT ON GRAPHIC
Why drones can’t detect plutonium or uranium
You can’t even detect Cobalt 60 at 200 meters
used as a gamma ray source
Plutonium is FAR less radioactive
Drones_can't_detect_plutonium_or_uranium.png
graphic from: S096980432200094X
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
Also
TEXT ON GRAPHIC: New Jersey senator Andy Kim with help of pilots identified “drones” reported by the public as planes and shared his detailed analysis online. He did this for just one location he visited with the police.
The FBI say MANY of the sightings they investigated were lawfully operated planes.
Andy Kim calls on the Federal officials to share their analyses with the public to help them understand better - like he did.
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