December 27, 2024
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US drone panic reflects UFO overreaction
We need less noise about everyday drones and more vigilance against drones near airports and other restricted airspace.

Valentyn Semenov/Alamy Stock Photo
The drone sightings that were spotted in New Jersey in December and spread across the United States certainly look familiar. So has the associated media frenzy, culminating in memes and conspiracy theories about so-called “mystery drones.” This episode bears eerie similarities to the UFO phenomenon, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), which has proliferated in recent years and led to significant attention and legislation in Congress.
In a sense, this is progress. The reason this occurrence looks so familiar is because such drone sightings have previously been identified as UAPs. It was only after years of concerted efforts in education and transparency from U.S. Department of Defense officials that UAP sightings legitimately evolved into common drone identification. This is not to say that drone sightings are less of a concern, but fortunately drone sightings can be addressed without contagion from the UFO community and related conspiracies.
Unfortunately, our response was equally irrational.
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A New Jersey congressman accused federal officials of “lying” about drones on CNN. The president-elect suggested, “Shoot them down!!!” This goes without saying and is almost (almost, unfortunately) a bad idea. So is wasting resources investigating meaningless concepts about Iran and, once again, advanced technology related to aliens. Calls to shoot down the object not only have obvious safety concerns, but have also been criticized by Congress and White House, citing concerns for civilian safety after accidents involving Chinese high-altitude balloons and other balloons. I do not recall the House restricting such attacks on U.S. territory.
There are a few things I want to clarify regarding drone sightings. First, many sightings remain misinterpreted regarding manned aircraft and satellites such as Starlink. Actual drone sightings fall into two classes: those in restricted airspace and those in legal airspace. Restricted airspace exists around national security areas such as airports, air force bases, and naval bases. Most reported sightings fall into the latter category, where the public perceives them as a nuisance but is assessed as not posing an immediate national security or flight safety risk.
One fact that many people tend to overlook, or at least not immediately justify, is that these drones come with lights. The presence of lights on a variety of flying objects, including drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs), is a fact I often mentioned in my previous job, when I led a Department of Defense office that investigated UAP sightings. is. Drone lights are for collision avoidance. These are safety features. Flying your drone with lights on will ensure visibility. To avoid being noticed, operators will turn off or disable the lights. In September 2023, the FAA changed its rules to allow drones to fly this way at night, which may be a factor in the increase in sightings. But the public and elected officials continue to believe that the lights in the sky are scary, especially when people mistake manned planes for drones.
Congressional officials and their unfortunate source of information, social media, continue to make baseless claims that drone technology far exceeds U.S. capabilities. The most recent example is the claim that a drone was flown from an Iranian mothership off the coast of the United States and demonstrated a battery life of seven to eight hours. That impressive claim requires evidence that the drone originated from an Iranian ship and was continuously tracked to a U.S. city. There are no such tracks. A more reasonable explanation is that it originated from a carrier close to the sighting location, i.e. within the country.
However, some drone operations are not without malicious intent.
Several hypotheses (aside from mistaken identity) may explain these drones in legal airspace. They may be academics, professionals, or hobbyist domestic operators researching new technologies. YouTube is full of drone footage from amateur photographers around the world. It is very plausible to fly in urban environments, in legal airspace, for photography, or for research such as high-resolution thermal or pollution measurements. Or commercial. As the industry advances drone technology for delivery, remote sensing, and communications, an increase in commercial activity is inevitable.
Even more concerning is the possibility that operators are exploring the limits of legal operations and conducting and investigating battlespace preparations in military terms. Bad actors, foreign or domestic, may be flying commercial drones equipped with lights to test the reaction of both the public and government. As long as you’re flying within legal airspace and within legal limits, you can push those limits and measure their reactions. Information about reactions and responses could easily feed back into some type of attack plan, illegal drug delivery, or other malicious intent.
Finally, operators may be using them intentionally to cause frenzy, hysteria, and panic. It might be for personal gain (like claiming to have an anti-UAV solution to sell), or it might be promoting something similar to another History Channel series about aliens.
As with the UAP problem, there is little evidence to support or rule out these hypotheses. Like UAPs, not all drones can be described in the same way. This makes it difficult from a national security perspective to distinguish between benign and potentially heinous sightings. Remembering the lessons of the ongoing war in Ukraine, we do not want to get caught up in intelligence operations or technological surprises.
On the other hand, sightings in clearly restricted airspace usually have a more obvious intent. These can range from the benign to the nefarious, but usually revolve around seeing things you wouldn’t normally be allowed to. Whether this is a military aircraft, a civilian airport, or an operation, these clearly identified drones and balloons carrying payloads pose not only security risks but also flight safety risks. A single small quadcopter will be sucked into a civilian jet engine, with a tragic end.
The proliferation of drone technology in commercial, recreational, scientific, and military applications is clearly disrupting the world around us. Our laws and regulations have created an enabling environment for legal drone use. So it’s no surprise that drones are taking to the skies and on the rise. But we are once again faced with more extraordinary claims, public demands for transparency, unsubstantiated accusations of hiding the truth, and more legislation about empty mysteries instead of a rational scientific approach to investigations. We have a parliamentary request for . Sound familiar?
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.