“We have had confirmed sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle,” the spokesperson said. “This is not a new issue for us. We’ve had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to in each and every case when reporting is cited.”
It’s not explicitly stated, but my read is they get normal consumer-style quadcopters regularly, and this is simply a continuation of that. Perhaps an increase because people are now trying to explicitly spy on the military.
The public drone sightings, on the other hand, definitely don’t seem to be consumer quadcopters. They mostly look suspiciously like 737s, V-22s, or out of focus stars.
Sorry, could have been clearer. I was talking about random dumb civilians.
Quadcopters have been buzzing military bases for years, basically since they became available to the public.
With all this PR about drones and people sometimes blaming the military, the number of dumb civilians thinking about ‘spying’ on military bases will be on the rise.
This is the US military we’re talking about. They have the capabilities to know exactly what’s above their base’s airspace and have still chosen to do nothing. This implies that most of the drones are military controlled.
It’s not explicitly stated, but my read is they get normal consumer-style quadcopters regularly, and this is simply a continuation of that. Perhaps an increase because people are now trying to explicitly spy on the military.
The public drone sightings, on the other hand, definitely don’t seem to be consumer quadcopters. They mostly look suspiciously like 737s, V-22s, or out of focus stars.
Is that a new development? You’d never know the Cold War had been a thing for half a century.
Sorry, could have been clearer. I was talking about random dumb civilians.
Quadcopters have been buzzing military bases for years, basically since they became available to the public.
With all this PR about drones and people sometimes blaming the military, the number of dumb civilians thinking about ‘spying’ on military bases will be on the rise.
Counterpoint: Civilians get arrested all the time for flying FPV drones and similar over military bases. See this article for an example: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/11/chinese-citizen-arrested-after-allegedly-flying-drone-taking-photos-of-space-force-base.html
This is the US military we’re talking about. They have the capabilities to know exactly what’s above their base’s airspace and have still chosen to do nothing. This implies that most of the drones are military controlled.
They may be making a PR decision to issue warnings rather than actually arrest people.
I don’t see anything in the article that suggests they know drones have gone above their bases but not been identified or dealt with.
I think the reference to not being able to identify everything is in reference to civilian reports.