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We've got mystery drones over New Jersey, mystery drones over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and even mystery drones over Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. What we don't have is any idea of whose drones they are or what they're doing — and Presidentish Joe Biden has shuffled into the fray, late and unreassuring as ever.
Asked by reporters Tuesday about the flying robo-pests, the foggy-brained lamest of ducks said, “Nothing nefarious, apparently, but they’re checking it all out.” He also said that authorities are “following this closely” but that there is “no sense of danger.”
Biden is perhaps half-right, which is about eight times more credit than I've ever given him before. Some of the drone hysteria is just that. Once the story broke, people started seeing drones in the sky when all that was really up there were commercial airliners, private planes, and a friendly Glarth-class exploration vessel from Planet N'Frnszh in the Gamma Quadrant.
I made up that last part. Probably.
Similar concerns over UFOs got so whipped up after World War II that the Air Force began Project Bluebook in 1952 to investigate. Bluebook ran until 1969 and found... not much. Or maybe the whole thing was a whitewash. UFO sightings became popular enough during the Conspiracy Theory '70s that we got "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on the big screen and "Project U.F.O." on the small screen for two glorious seasons.
And Another Thing: I'm willing to concede that "Project U.F.O." was probably dreck, but I was nine years old at the time and loved it. I also wish my old friend Jazz Shaw were still around to share his insights on UFOs — now called UAPs — but maybe someday I'll take a deep dive into those and take up his slack.
X's Community Notes do a great job of refuting the most outrageous claims, provided people can be bothered to read them.
BREAKING: Multiple reports of at least 10 LARGE DRONES hovering over LGA Airport in NYC Queens and surrounding areas.
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) December 13, 2024
To me it looks like airplanes? You decide.
Video by @yyeeaahhhboiii2 @FreedomNTV [email protected] to license pic.twitter.com/tBUxeYRMZ3
It's airplanes. Relax.
Except, that is, for the many genuine sightings that aren't airplanes or N'Frnszhian exploration ships.
I'm not a "Don't just stand there, do something!" guy, at least not when it comes to the government taking action, because nine times out of five, they make things worse. Still, the public needs either an open and honest accounting of what we do/don't know about the phenomenon, or we need to be told what's being done on our behalf.
President-elect Donald Trump isn't even back in office yet, but he still sounds more involved than Biden does. Trump chimed in earlier this week, "Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge," he posted on Truth Social. "I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!"
While I heartily endorse the sentiment, shooting down drones is easier said than done. It seems like a simple shotgun blast (provided you're in range) would get the job done, but as I recently learned, that isn't always the case. While commercial drones are relatively flimsy, military drones are often made of tougher materials.
This week, Defense Express reported on efforts by Swedish small-arms ammunition manufacturer Norma to develop a shotgun shell capable of taking down the FPV combat drones that have become ubiquitous in the Russo-Ukraine War. What they came up with is a 12-gauge shell they call AD-LER (Anti-Drone Long Effective Range).
"At first, Norma tested #8 shot, commonly used against civilian drones, with a pellet diameter of 2.25 mm," Defense Express reported. "However, it became apparent that a larger pellet size was necessary for FPV drones."
The creators ultimately selected #6 shot with a 2.75 mm diameter, which provided an optimal balance between shot dispersion and kinetic impact.
Then, to ensure that more energy is transferred, the manufacturer had to replace the traditional yet too-lightweight lead shot. Instead, Norma took a rich approach to solving this problem and opted for tungsten.
If New Jersey is indeed infested with drones from a rival like Russia or China, they could be combat-ready models and in need of special ammunition like Norma developed.
Granted, there's only one way to find out what the New Jersey drones are made of — so lock and load, I guess. But tungsten is expensive, some of those mystery drones are reportedly quite large, and everything fired out of a gun still has to land somewhere. Sadly, just "shoot them down" is easier said than done.
UPDATE: Right after I published, another story crossed my desk. "US has the tech to down Jersey drones—but not the policy, officials say."
One company that makes a directed-energy counter-drone weapon is offering to help. Epirus manufactures a solid-state, long-pulse, high-power microwave system dubbed Leonidas.
Its microwaves disrupt a drone’s internal electronic functioning, causing it to fall from the sky but remain otherwise intact for investigation. Its narrow beams keep it from affecting nearby communications or air traffic, company officials said, adding that it has performed well in Army evaluations.
“We're sitting on systems ready to go, ready to be deployed, ready to go to New Jersey, ready to go to Langley [Air Force base in Virginia], ready to go to any of these airfields and shoot down whatever is going overhead,” Epirus CEO Andy Lowery said Wednesday.
Well, what are we waiting for? Oh, right — January 20.
Now back to the column as originally published.
So that's the how, or what little there is of it so far. We still need to know the who.
While a nation-state actor like China, Russia, or even Iran all seem likely culprits, they're far from the only possibilities.
I have a theory — more of a hypothesis, really — based on not much more than my gut and too many years spent jealously eyeing those tinfoil hats. It came to me when I sat down with Bill Whittle and Scott Ott yesterday for Bill's "Attack of the Drones" Right Angle segment. As Bill introduced the topic, my mind almost immediately traveled back in time (no Glarth-class ship necessary) to 1980 and my favorite Alan Arkin movie, "Simon."
Arkin plays Simon Mendelssohn, a New York psychology professor hired by the mysterious Institute for Advanced Concepts for his work on sensory deprivation. Very trendy stuff in the late '70s/early '80s. But IAC didn't really want Simon for his work. The scientists there were bored, enjoyed essentially unlimited funding and zero supervision, and had taken to global pranks instead of research.
At a meeting early in the film, the IAC guys decide that we see UFOs and aliens because we want to believe they're real, so why not give us what we want? They lock Simon in his sensory deprivation tank for a week until his brain turns to pudding, then reprogram him into believing he's an alien visitor. Hilarity ensues if you're into that kind of thing. Most of the movie's satirical references are dated but still serve up laughs for folks who remember the Dark Times of the Jimmy Carter administration.
Since then, technology has radically reduced the cost of pulling off large-scale pranks. These days, a lavishly funded top-secret think tank is hardly needed to put on the kind of show they're watching now on the Jersey shore.
Anyone from a hostile power to a bored millionaire to a rogue civil servant could figure out multiple ways to generate enough hysteria to get people to imagine hostile warbots when they see Boeing airliners making ordinary landings at Newark. There are plenty of people with the correct motives. The means are so easy to come by that you might not even need to be a millionaire to afford it.
If you're on a zero-dollar budget, all you need to do is get a few 4chan types interested, and they'll take care of the rest gratis. 4chan convinced enough people that the "OK" sign was racist that by now it probably is — and all they used was memes. Imagine what a few dozen of them could do with commercially available drones.
Prankster-level drone scares courtesy of 4chan or the IAC aside, drones are proven deadly and becoming deadlier almost daily.
Euromaidan reported Tuesday on a groundbreaking event that happened in the Russo-Ukraine War earlier this month. A Ukraine national guard brigade announced it just conducted what is believed to be "the first fully robotic operation against Russian forces on the Kharkiv front" involving "unprecedented numbers of robotic and unmanned systems."
According to the report, the robo-assault involved "drones for mining and demining, kamikaze drones, and mobile turrets — as well as various types of UAVs, such as heavy multirotor 'bombers,' surveillance drones, and FPV drones."
The 13th "Khartiia" Brigade's chief of staff, Colonel Maksym Holubok, explained, "Our goal was to save soldiers’ lives by replacing them on the battlefield with robotic or unmanned systems wherever possible." Holubok went on to explain that putting together the first-ever all-robot operation "required detailed planning, constant pursuit of new engineering solutions, and fostering a culture of innovation within the brigade."
Details of the battle are scarce, but the brigade has advanced in its sector over the last two weeks and claims to have eliminated between 140-150 Russian soldiers.
The most difficult part of doing something for the first time is figuring out how to do it. The men of the Khartiia Brigade have done just that, and others — in the Ukraine Army, Russia, China, here, and around the world — will quickly follow suit. What took untold numbers of man-hours to plan and conduct in December of this year will likely be largely automated in December of 2025.
But Kartiia's mission wasn't just to conduct an automated attack on Russian forces. Another goal "was to understand Russia’s response to such actions, which, [Holubok] says, was successfully achieved."
If the mysterious New Jersey drones are Chinese or Russian, you can bet that they're learning more than just what they can detect with their high-tech sensors. This is from a piece I wrote last year on the Chinese spy balloon that spent so much time over two Air Force bases:
Apparently, the Chinese spy balloon included a remote-controlled self-destruct device that Beijing either chose not to or could not use because of some malfunction. I’d bet against a malfunction. Why would Beijing choose to destroy its own spy balloon, when it was busy expertly performing two missions? The first mission, of course, was a leisurely tour of American military bases. The second mission was publicly humiliating the dithering Presidentish Joe Biden.
If I had to guess, the second mission — while not its primary job — revealed far more about America’s readiness than anything it saw or heard over Malmstrom or Whiteman Air Force.
Trump also said on Monday, "Our military knows, and our president knows, and for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense." I'm in full agreement with Trump. If Washington doesn't know exactly, they still know enough to give us more than vague assurances.
For all I know, the drones truly are just a prank. But if not, if they are controlled by a hostile foreign power, then we're being tested again — and still found wanting.
Except by the N'Frnszhians, that is. Turns out they love those New Jersey pork rolls.
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