[dTal]

Serious question - is there any actual evidence that there was ever a real drone? There are no available pictures of the supposed drone, which seems odd if it was 'buzzing the tower'. It also seems odd that it kept 'popping up' in random places, yet nobody managed to follow it with their own drone, or track it on radar. And now the police are arresting people with no connection to the incident and clearly still have no idea what was going on. The most parsimonious explanation would appear to me to be that somebody reported a drone once, possibly mistakenly, and once the extremely costly call had been made to shut down Gatwick, it snowballed into a mass hysteria / UFO sighting scenario, with everyone seeing 'drones' all over the place.

Of course, it's possible there is in fact ironclad evidence for the official story that we're not being told. But it seems to me there's lots of incentive for the police to share all they know, and huge incentives not to admit that it was all a cock-up.

[spuz]

You are not the only one questioning the existence of the drones: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/23/police-admit-may...

[dmix]

That article is paywalled but what about this bit of the parent article?

> "We are [..] carrying out a forensic examination of a damaged drone found near the perimeter of the airport.

Sounds like some evidence of at least one drone. But regardless this is still likely a culmination of panic over a potentially one-off sighting.

[RpFLCL]

With the lack of evidence, the media attention, and the nature of the incident, I have been wondering the same thing.

The cynic in me suspects that the result of this will be zero convictions, but legislation taking all but the smallest drones out of consumers hands.

[abstractbeliefs]

The police claim to have recovered a drone well correlated to where the army thinks the drone they dealt with crashed, yes.

We'll see what it amounts to.

[jstanley]

> is there any actual evidence that there was ever a real drone?

Yes: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1828378/Video-D...

[clay_the_ripper]

I was wondering the same thing. Given the amount of press this generated, I still haven’t seen a photo of one of the drones which seems odd. Has anyone seen a photo?

[TheOtherHobbes]

The official story makes no sense at all. Why announce that you have arrested a couple of people if you have no hard evidence against them?

Either this is all monumental incompetence, or the real story isn't being released.

Coincidentally, Birmingham airport was shut for a couple of hours today after an air traffic control failure.

If that's the end of the story, it's fair to assume there's no connection.

If there's a spate of air traffic control and/or other failures over the next few days, it's going to be hard not to wonder if something else is going on.

[megaremote]

> The official story makes no sense at all. Why announce that you have arrested a couple of people if you have no hard evidence against them?

For lots of reasons. To make it seem like they are making progress, to make it seem like it is safe to travelers, to assuage their bosses, pick one.

[rurban]

The "hard" evidence was that their neighbors saw them some month ago operating a drone in their backyard. So they called police. Who notified the press.

As suspected eco terrorist you would hardly operate from your backyard near the airport. But the brits do have surveillance cameras all over so they will find something sooner or later.

[xkcd-sucks]

Looks like few phone calls and twitter posts shut down an airport about as well as a drone. And the former strategy gets free amplification in the form of people misidentifying birds as drones

[MistahKoala]

Well... https://twitter.com/TomPugh212/status/1076874388761440260

[alecco]

Same account a little later https://twitter.com/TomPugh212/status/1076939198043746305

67 independent reports and a damaged drone near last sighting.