Posted on 12/28/2019 6:15:18 AM PST by cowpoke
See previous post: Mysterious drones flying nighttime patterns over northeast Colorado leave local law enforcement stumped
Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Nestor said he received a report from a rancher who spotted five to 10 drones flying 200 feet in the air in a grid pattern around 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
That rancher lives adjacent to a wind energy farm which stretches for miles. The Federal Aviation Administration limits drones to daytime operations from one half hour before sunrise to one half hour after sunset.
When asked if the FAA has detected any drones in the area, and whether anyone has applied for a waiver to fly at night, FAA public affairs representative Rick Breitenfeldt said, "I checked. No FAA drone reports in Colorado matching this location or description."
Area residents are now wondering why anyone would be flying at night unless they didn't want to be detected.
"The biggest problem I have is were a rural county and people get very concerned when large aircraft are flying over their property," Nestor said.
Drone squadrons have also been reported recently in Washington, Phillips and Yuma Counties. Some residents wonder if the drones are being used to scope out an area for more wind energy farms.
Joseph Vencel, who works in the Peetz (Logan County) area, speculated that the drones may have infrared devices onboard.
"In my business, we do solar farms, and they use infrared to see how hot the panels are getting," he said. "Maybe they're looking for illegal grows, and are checking to see which buildings are getting hot and which ones are not."
"It is kind of scary because out where I live, there are many people who have private planes," he said. "You never know when one is going to take off, and if theyre big drones, that could be a danger."...MORE
The goal for the RFI is to discover whether industry can deliver a full-stack search and rescue drone swarm that can self-pilot, detect humans and other targets and stream data and video back to a central location. The potential solicitation would also look for companies or teams that can provide algorithms, machine training processes and data to supplement that provided by the government.
The ideal result would be a contract with several vendors that together could provide the capability to fly to a predetermined location/area, find people and manmade objectsthrough onboard edge processingand cue analysts to look at detections sent via a datalink to a control station, according to the RFI. Sensors shall be able to stream full motion video to an analyst station during the day or night; though, the system will not normally be streaming as the AI will be monitoring the imagery instead of a person.
The system has to have enough edge processing power to enable the AI to fly, detect and monitor without any human intervention, while also being able to stream live video to an operator and allow that human to take control of the drones, if needed...MORE
We see this as developing an ecosystem to have investment in areas that the Department of Defense thinks are particularly critical for providing capabilities to the warfighter, but also translate many times into commercial products, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord said at a Pentagon press briefing on acquisitions priorities Dec. 10. And I think you know that DJI flooded the market with low-cost quadcopters particularly, which eroded our industrial base and really altered the landscape for the U.S. government and for the small drone industry. What we want to do is reinvigorate that.
Lord repeatedly heard the need for systems that detect small, hobbyist-style drones as she traveled to air bases in Qatar, Iraq and Afghanistan through the course of the year. Though many services and agencies have looked into such tech, the department named the Army as the executive agent for counter-UAS.
The department already hosted an event to kickstart U.S. investment into the field dominated by foreign companies. Last month, Defense partnered with Texas A&M University for a Drone Venture Day to showcase national security-related work from 39 U.S. UAS and counter-UAS manufacturers and 12 trusted capital providers. Those capital partners came from what Lord called clean moneysmall businesses that started with U.S.government funds at universities and labs...MORE
The rule, the culmination of years of work by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), will create a system that allows law enforcement and the government to track drones throughout the sky, distinguishing between licensed aircraft vehicles and those that are suspicious or potentially threatening. It is a vital step toward creating an air traffic management system for these devices in the sky, therefore allowing widespread commercial drone delivery with the government's blessing. The FAA is asking all drones to comply with the new rule within three years. The agency is also asking for public comments. The remote identification rule proposed on Thursday has been referred to as a system to create "virtual drone license plates." A drone industry trade group on Thursday raised concerns about the three-year timeline, which pushes off their ability to mainstream drone delivery for another several years. "Our main concern is the implementation period, which is needlessly up to 3 years," said Commercial Drone Alliance Executive Director Lisa Ellman in a statement. "Until remote ID is implemented, the American public will be deprived of many of the vast safety, humanitarian and efficiency benefits of commercial drones." "We need implementation yesterday, not 3 years from now," she said...MORE
Maj. Jeffrey Entine, flying an F-16C with the 85th Flight Test Squadron, shot a rocket at a test drone near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, Dec. 19, according to a statement from the service. The stated purpose of the test was to demonstrate shooting a small drone at low altitudes, and it appears to have been a success.
While small drone may call to mind hobbyist quadcopters or the tactical drones used by infantry, the target drone in question was a BQM-167, a kind of drone specifically designed as an aerial target. With a length of 20 feet tip-to-tail and a maximum gross takeoff weight of over 2,000 lbs, the BQM-167 is small only in relation to the jet fighter that shot it down.
Confusing target drones for hobbyist quadcopters is full circle for military terminology. For decades, the most popular use of drone in military circles was as a collective term for flying aerial targets. Training human pilots and gunners on simple moving targets is a long-standing practice; before she was Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jeane Dougherty assembled aerial targets for the Radioplane company during World War II.
What is novel about the recent shoot-down by Entine is that non-target drones, which date back at least as far as World War I, are now a regular part of military operations and civilian life. Air Force pilots shooting down drones outside of combat is an expected practice. While shooting down plane-sized drones in combat is expected, using a whole anti-air missile on a smaller, cheaper target would be overkill...MORE
Also see:
Drone drops package over Queensland prison wall on Christmas Day
Israel Develops New Laser System to Shoot Down Gazas Explosive Balloons, Drones
Eye in the Sky: What to know about OSHAs use of drones during inspections
Militants Attempt Attack on Syrian Airfield in Hama With Drones Reports
In violence-hit areas, UP police have eye in the sky drones
Posters, drones keep fearful locals indoors
Shropshire farmer becomes first person to train sheep to associate drone with food
Drone shepherds who watch their flocks at height
All of the above links are from the last week, most are from the last two days. This one, though, is from October and is of great interest to me:
The decision comes months after agency officials approved purchases of aircraft built by DJI, a Chinese firm that many national security experts see as a potential conduit for government espionage. When authorizing the procurements, the agency took multiple technical precautions to ensure DJI couldnt access the data collected through the aircraft.
The order to ground Chinese drones wouldnt apply to aircraft the agency is currently using for emergency purposes, such as fighting wildfires, search and rescue, and dealing with natural disasters that may threaten life or property, Interior spokesperson Melissa Brown said in a statement to Nextgov.
In May, the Homeland Security Department warned companies their data could be at risk if they use Chinese drones, and the Army previously banned soldiers from using any unmanned aircraft manufactured by DJI. Over the past three years, Interior has increasingly turned to unmanned aircraft to survey federal lands, monitor wildlife, respond to natural disasters and conduct other critical operations. The tech offers the agency an inexpensive, efficient way to manage the 500 million acres of land under its purview, and by 2025, officials expect to more than triple their annual drone missions.
At the end of 2018, only 13% of the nearly 600 drones in Interiors fleet were manufactured by DJI. But as the agency looked to significantly scale up its operations in the years ahead...MORE
The Department of Interior has 600 drones? Fox news reports the number as 800. Whether it is 600 or 800, what is Interior doing with that huge number of drones? Is your flock being watched by Interior pilots? We will explore this in another post.
Note: It is much easier on the eyes if you read directly from THE WESTERNER
The fifth trumpet of Revelation?
We’ve got a lot of catching up to do on drones.
The Chinese have taken it to the point of using thousands of LED illuminated drones to simulate a fireworks show.
Here’s a youtube example at the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09txhca2PsQ
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Possibly the most unreadable format Ive ever seen.
George Orwell, really Eric Blair, would have loved this
Flying drones are mobile Telescreens.
It's somewhat analogous to a practice we used to employ in the IT world called “shut it off and see who screams.” This was to determine who was using some user accounts on the network that appeared to be superfluous. We would disable the account, and very quickly would find out if someone was using it.
Excellent material but layout is unusually poor.
Improving layout would bring in tons more people.
Thanks! I appreciate the update.
For those with difficulties with the FR formatting, there may be a lesson there. Read the Westerner directly. And do it every day. You may be missing a lot more than format. :-)
Ahhhh 10-4. Thank you.
Never seen Q posts?
I would suspect some deep state/political forces behind it.
You can buy shot gun shells that have nets in them made just for that reason.
New sport to ensue drone trapping 10 bag limit.
That post sort of Droned on and on about drones.
That scene was ... enlightening.
Yes, it sure did LOL...but that was the purpose, to cover all the news on drones over the last 48 hours. If a person is not interested in the government’s use of these vehicles, then I’m it went on and on...
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