[abuani]

And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not commercial airlines. I live in NJ was very skeptical of this at first, but after seeing the same patterns 5 nights in a row for aircrafts not going towards Newark, I really have a hard time believing it is simply airlines.

[murderfs]

I believe the other 3 pictures are this helicopter: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ab19fa&lat=39.865&lon=-...

Image 8 is too blurry to make out, but it's probably also a plane.

[sandos]

I would agree with that! It matches the curvature of the fuselage in one point, and there is an image with faintly visible nav lights on this page:

https://www.anthelionhelicopters.com/flight-training/add-on-...

which matches the images as well, with the green light bright, so its likely flying head-on in the picture.

[Aeolun]

Sure, I’m not saying there’s nothing, but there’s clearly some component of hysteria.

[abuani]

Oh, very much so some elements of mass hysteria. It took the better part of two weeks for authorities to recognize it, then it was "nothing to see here", then FBI is investigating. It sucks that one of our state representatives is out their claiming it's Iran and stoking further tensions.

My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our military would have already taken them down. It's hard to imagine we'd let this go on for many weeks without a response. But it's also hard to imagine military testing so obviously over public space. So who knows lol

[llamaimperative]

> My personal feeling is if it was enemy drones, our military would have already taken them down

I think you overestimate a few things here… the military isn’t constantly monitoring all airspace across the country for drone-sized objects and shooting things down if they don’t recognize them.

Perhaps they should be as we enter this brave new world of drone-everything, but they don’t right now.

[abuani]

NJ has some of the leading research centers for the US military, our new president's second estate, and critical infrastructure for telecommunications. Reportedly drones were flying close to all of these spots. I would fully expect our military to be monitoring these parts of the country for drone-sized objects given how effective they have been in waging our wars the past 20 years. So yeah, it's a massive intelligence failure if these are combatant drones.

[llamaimperative]

I don't disagree with any of this. Obviously drones are an extremely real intelligence and actual security threat that we clearly don't know how to handle.

[dylan604]

ahem, our president-elect. he is not the new president, yet.

[vaxman]

20 years lol Off by a factor of 2.5x, but your expectation is reasonable --so is having a Defense Secretary that tells his staff when he's checking into the hospital for a serious medical condition and an airspace that doesn't allow balloons to get within range of broadcasting firmware updates to ESP32s.

https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...

[ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7]

> Abichandani has no idea as of now whether the drones over New Jersey are swarming drones.

Then this article goes on to speculate about scary things.

[obmelvin]

The military isn’t allowed to shoot down drones in the US. There was a WSJ story last month about drones flying over Langley for 2 weeks. All the general could do is stand on the roof and watch

[ANewFormation]

Yeah they can only shoot down unidentified weather balloons.

[bee_rider]

IIRC there were multiple instances of the balloons and the one they shot down was intentionally shot down in a relatively safe area.

[ericjmorey]

He's the one that got elected as a Democratic candidate and switched to the Republican party about a month after he was elected.

[_Wintermute]

Reminds me of the hysteria we had about drones shutting down an airport in the UK, with loads of reported sightings yet no evidence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident

[hersko]

It's not hysteria if UFOs start showing up en-masse and then people start thinking everything in the sky is a UFO. It just means people are more likely to attribute lights in the night sky to this new phenomenon. Of course there will be false positives, but it does not mean the underlying issue exists.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Everything in the sky is a UFO until it's identified.

[motorest]

> And those other 4 out of 10 are very clearly not commercial airlines.

Cool, so a simple cursory glance of these mysterious phenomena is enough to immediately call bullshit on 60% of the claims.

That's a heck of a false positive rate, given the fact that this happens before any verification takes place.

If at least 60% of the claims given the same credibility are outright rejected without any effort, what does it say about the claims and those who make them?

[ricksunny]

There is supposed to be an elemwent of 'mimicry' on the part of the Phenomenon. Kelleher in his work with AAWSAP was the most vocal in studying & concluding that aspect:

https://www.rdrnews.com/opinion/columnists/drones-mimicry-an...

[lxgr]

I'm very sorry, as it's probably a perfectly respectable local news source, but: Did you just link a Roswell newspaper article on UFOs? :)

[wbl]

Which ones clearly aren't that or a police helicopter?

[toofy]

why hasn’t someone got decent pictures to back this up after five nights?

[roflyear]

The drones only operate at night and it's hard taking good pictures at night with phones (or even nice cameras) - try to take a picture of the moon, which isn't moving, is brighter, etc.. you can tell it's the moon but it's a lot quality picture.

[Aeolun]

Drones are a lot closer than the moon. I’m fairly certain my middle of the line camera can do better than what I see on that article.

[roflyear]

Why argue online? Just try to take a picture outside of a streetlight, or something, in a dark area. You'll see what I mean.

[gloflo]

Drones are small while the moon is far away.

[mp05]

Stop believing your lying eyes for they deceive you.

Here, read this, it will calm your nerves.

[bee_rider]

Most of us have not actually seen these things. We’ve just seen social media posts about them.