[walrus01]

Under what circumstances and motivations, exactly, do you think that unlicensed and illegal (clearly not FAA Part 107 compliant) drone operators would be motivated to put blinking white, red and green lights on their mystery drones? Why would they do that?

If you're doing to build a drone to fly at night and do clearly illegal things you're going to make the thing matte black and have no lights on it whatsoever.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Or disguise them as birds.

https://www.newsweek.com/china-shows-new-drones-disguised-bi...

[mmooss]

> blinking white, red and green lights

I feel like I've seen a lot of that this time of year ...

[op00to]

What’s not part 107 compliant? All the activity I’ve heard was fully legal.

[walrus01]

For starters, you need special waivers from the faa to fly at night. If any such waivers existed, I am sure the FAA would have told the news media who are hyping up this story.

[15155]

This has not been the case for years.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/operations_over...

[walrus01]

I was referring specifically to BVLOS operations at night. It's doubtful if there are any nearby operators of these craft that they're within legit LOS. Combination of BVLOS and night operations is presently only found in very special circumstances and test ranges like at Pendleton.

Of the number of operators who have active BVLOS waivers I am aware of, such as for powerline, pipeline survey and delivery operations, very few or none are trying to also operate at night.

[ddtaylor]

It would allow for different configurations to make identification harder. It's very easy to only operate at night and swap out the color and pattern of the lights constantly. Almost every photo device would capture the light pattern the attacker WANTS them to capture. High quality equipment could get better pictures, but such equipment is often not rolling 24/7 or easy to point at a drone moving fast.