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New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters
- jackric 5y agoAny chance it was bat related?
- hluska 5y agoAccording to the description “The quad copter was described as approximately 5 feet long by about 3 feet wide, with a single green flashing LED light.”
- Wistar 5y agoOdd that the creators of the drone bothered with a flashing light.
- devmor 5y agoThat's the one detail of the story that leads me to believe it may have been some rich idiot that didn't know the legality of what they were doing. Also entirely possible they used some stock parts and just didn't realize the LED was there.
- tablespoon 5y ago> Also entirely possible they used some stock parts and just didn't realize the LED was there. I only think an amateur would make that kind of mistake. If it was from a hostile power with any kind of competence, I think they would have extensively tested it in simulated operational conditions. If they didn't notice the light when they initially built it, they would have probably noticed it during testing.
- devmor 5y agoYou overestimate the human ability to account for all conditions. For example, perhaps they did all of their testing in the middle of bright sunlight and simply did not see it?
- imglorp 5y agoI think that's the clue. This could simply be mischief with an off-the shelf, gasoline, quad copter with upgraded long range radios. Flashing green strobe would be an FAA navigation light -- if viewed from the other side you would see a flashing red. All of the natsec and domestic spying theories would be nullified by the thing having nav lights. https://droneswatch.org/gas-powered-drone/ https://droneswatch.org/gas-powered-drone/
- anticristi 5y agoI can imagine the conversation in an evil war room: "We are doing illegal stuff, but still, let's not go as low as to remove the flashing light. We have morals!" :))
- anonAndOn 5y agoGreen is close to the center of the visible light spectrum. If somebody wanted to track it visually from a great distance, (perhaps from a nearby mountain?) this would make it easier to spot. This would be beneficial for a two person team. The drone operator watching the video feed and a spotter providing positions of pursuit aircraft.
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoCloser to Batman dimensions (Michael Keaton)
- mcphage 5y agoIf it was Batman, it would have a black LED.
- stronglikedan 5y agoBat mobile?
- hluska 5y agoOh geez, it took me almost 24 hours to get the joke.
- aliasEli 5y agoIt was night, it seems pretty unlikely that anyone could make any good observations of the size or shape. When someone points a green laser at some clouds you will observe an object with a green light.
- hluska 5y agoI didn’t understand the comment I replied to and was trying to say “that’s a big bat.” Pop culture references go over my head more than they likely should.
- ericbarrett 5y agoIs there any conclusion to reach here (assuming this report is correct) besides a hostile entity scouting U.S. infrastructure? See also: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/drones-swarmed-u-s-warships-are-still-unidentified-navy-chief-n1263115 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/drones-swarmed-u-s-wars...
- kasey_junk 5y agoUS testing it’s own drones against known defenses?
- Jenk 5y agoYes. A (secret?) US military project testing drone surveillance on unwitting US navy assets.
- showerst 5y agoCould be any number of defense contractors, military, or LEO recklessly testing out a high end drone, then breaking the rules to avoid consequences. Is there any intelligence that a drone that size could provide that you couldn't get from a combination of satellites and just driving around a decent camera? It seems really risky for a foreign adversary for limited gain.
- jvanderbot 5y agoRight, this is why I'm confused. There's no play by any sufficiently advanced adversary that makes sense. Except domestic terrorism. A fairly rich / savvy domestic actor with bad intent might be interested in seeing if they can fly about with a fast / large drone. Prior to, you know, equipping that drone with something bad.
- gpm 5y agoWhy domestic? The US isn't lacking in international adversaries that would be interested in the ability to execute low cost attacks against critical infrastructure. If it was domestic terrorists it seems likely they would have seized the opportunity to do damage immediately instead of showing their hand like this. An "advanced persistent threat" (such as a foreign country) to borrow from the computer security world seems more likely to take this sort of "test but don't actually damage anything" approach.
- drzhnn 5y agoHighly modified weather balloon, obviously.
- fmakunbound 5y agoGood thing the drone was fitted with the FAA-required GPS reporting and registration ID transponders.
- mumblemumble 5y agoRealistically, those are probably still useful in situations like this, because the authorities can more easily filter out compliant air traffic when they're trying to monitor/investigate something like this. Without it, they'd need to find the needle in a much bigger haystack.
- Ancapistani 5y agoI know you're being snarky, but those things are not required. Remote ID is still months/years away from being required - there isn't even a published specification yet, much less anything on the market that conforms to it. Whomever this was presumably broke many laws, but the things you mentioned aren't among them.
- grecy 5y ago> they believed the drone was highly unlikely to be battery-powered based on the altitude, distance, and speed at which it flew Does that mean it's gasoline powered? Do we have many details on gas powered drones ? i.e. the kind of range, altitude and speed they can achieve?
- klyrs 5y agoYou can buy jet engines for RC airplanes. A quick search shows that folks have clocked their RC jets at ~750km/h, about half the speed of sound.
- _Microft 5y agoWow, now that's impressive: https://youtu.be/DPGDAZyQ44k?t=139 https://youtu.be/DPGDAZyQ44k?t=139
- TchoBeer 5y agoOr is it nuclear powered?
- spoonjim 5y agoSeveral hobbyists have built them so I’m sure that commercial versions exist. They can’t really do any better than electric in altitude and speed (electric drones can get to 14,000 feet despite the article) but their endurance is measured in hours
- giantrobot 5y agoRC planes can hit speeds over 150mph with the fastest jet powered ones much faster. They can also have flight times of dozens of hours, a modified RC plane made a flight from Canada to Ireland [0]. Drones also don't need real-time control. They can fly a pre-programmed route or have minimal input and just be told to head to a way given waypoint (or series of them). A well positioned direction VHF or UHF can give a control channel from miles away especially if there's no need for real-time imagery. [0] https://amablog.modelaircraft.org/amamuseum/2017/03/29/transatlantic-model-flight-equipment/ https://amablog.modelaircraft.org/amamuseum/2017/03/29/trans...
- toss1 5y agoIt could be interesting that the 4-6 rotor configuration, range/time of around and hour and 50mi, and the 14,000ft+ performance strongly indicate a fuel-powered device, but that the night vision goggles couldn't see it. It didn't indicate if the NVGs were of the ambient-light-enhancing type or IR type. This probably tells us that the NVGs were the ambient-light-enhancing type as there would be very little ambient reflective light up there (considering it was last seen flying up into an overcast), and IR NVGs would probably pickup some image from the heat of the rotor motors even on a battery-only device, and any un-stealthed exhaust would glow like a spotlight. Still, it'd be good to know what device they were using. I also have to wonder why it flew so close to the police helicopter... and then over the AFB deep into a Class C airspace. Seems too deliberate, trying to get attention, not avoid it. I've been involved in designing & building gasoline-powered drones, and that range & flight time is very doable. But the performance indicates sophisticated control links and so this is very likely more than just a casual wealthy hobbyist idiot. The NatSec implications are very serious, and at least it appears that they're paying attention to it.
- bombcar 5y agoWould it be possible to have a gas-powered drone that has some amount of time it can run on batteries? I'm thinking similar to the old diesel submarines that would go on battery when they wanted to be stealthy.
- C19is20 5y agoGas, gas? Or American Freedom Juice cough?
- jonfw 5y agoThe least sophisticated way to engineer a drone like this would be to use a consumer grade heavy lift electric drone with an onboard generator and fuel source to charge the batteries
- toss1 5y agoYup, lightweight, high-powered gasoline engine, powering a generator, the output hooks into the regular battery and ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) loop. All the rest of the control is the same The benefit is the energy density of petrol is ~2500Wh/kg, vs about 250Wh/kg for Li-Ion batteries. This is significantly offset by the weight of the ICE engine & generator, but it is still enough to get very good flight times. It is enough to do using selected off-the-shelf components, but to get really outstanding results, everything needs to be optimized for excellent power-weight ratios. Two big ones in that space, going back-&-forth and beating each others' records are: Skyfront: www.skyfront.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXFoBUR_jqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXFoBUR_jqY Quaternium: https://www.quaternium.com/ https://www.quaternium.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvBjCejUmvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvBjCejUmvY And yes, at least the units we built had significant batteries in the loop. The main purpose was to be able to land if the ICE engine/generator failed, but also could be used for a less-noisy mode ("quiet mode" is a bit much for most multirotors, as the rotors themselves are quite noisy).
- NDizzle 5y agoWell this is kind of terrifying. It was only a matter of time, I guess.
- throwaway4688 5y agoI am quite surprised we have not seen drones as instruments of terror yet.
- Retric 5y agoIt’s already common for nations to do so. For individuals missiles, bullets, or bombs etc are generally more efficient as very long range drones are still expensive and cheaper options exist at short ranges.
- bobthepanda 5y agoNot in the US, but it‘s happened. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37398/deadly-taliban-attack-on-governors-volleyball-playing-bodyguards-points-to-armed-drone-use https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37398/deadly-taliban-a...
- spoonjim 5y agoUm... do you know how the US military uses drones?
- colordrops 5y agoIsraelis have used them against protesting Palestinians with unidentified toxic gases.
- cbHXBY1D 5y agoPlus the US has illegally killed US citizens, like Anwar al-Awlaki, with drone strikes. Then a few years later they killed his 16 year old son with a drone and his 8 year old daughter in a commando raid. All Americans. [1] Or when the US has drone striked a wedding. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack/at-least-40-civilians-at-wedding-party-killed-during-nearby-u-s-backed-afghan-army-raid-idUSKBN1W80MI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack/at-lea...
- slver 5y agoYeah, they're supposed to shoot and bomb other people only.
- CapitalistCartr 5y agoWe have reached the tech level where individuals or a small group of enthusiasts can compete in the nation state arena. This is within that realm.
- 10000truths 5y agoWe always were in that realm. “Nation states” are not some god-like, invincible entity. They’re groups of people with a budget.
- pope_meat 5y agoSeeking friends with a budget for nuclear submarines, and hypersonic missiles. I personally got $5 on it.
- 10000truths 5y agoYou joke, but for a high enough price, I’m sure you can find someone willing to sell. ISIS didn’t manufacture their own missiles or guns.
- SahAssar 5y agoThey also didn't have nuclear submarines with hypersonic missiles.
- Workaccount2 5y agoI'll throw in $20 if I can be the periscope man
- pope_meat 5y agoI'll need a good periscope man, deal. Do you think they'll finance the sub with $25 down and two co-signers?
- openasocket 5y agoMy money is on a foreign hostile entity, but not for a scouting operation, this is an exercise in deterrence. This is someone who wanted to let the US know that they are capable of getting a high-end drone into the country and launch it near important civilian and military infrastructure. Which is also why they would affix it with a bright LED light, they wanted to get noticed and then show off its capabilities. It might sound counter-intuitive to outright tell your enemy what you are capable of, but that's exactly how deterrence works. Winning a war is good, but it's better to convince your opponent that they shouldn't start a fight in the first place. Which means your opponent needs to have some understanding of what you are capable of. If they don't, if you develop significant capabilities but keep them secret, your opponent may initiate hostilities with you, under the mistaken assumption that they could win. You don't give them everything, but you give them enough to make them concerned, and even better make them over estimate the size and scale of the threat. Done right, you can get an adversary to devote far more resources to counter your threat than you put into it, or more than is warranted.
- asdff 5y agoWhy not do it like the U.S. and just show off the weapon on soil with domestic press coverage and not risk a diplomatic incident? You don't have to show your whole hand, iirc when they showed the press the B2 they didn't let them see the rear of the plane.
- csa 5y ago> Why not do it like the U.S. and just show off the weapon on soil with domestic press coverage and not risk a diplomatic incident Because then you can’t probe unannounced/classified defensive abilities, strategies, and tactics.
- sandworm101 5y agoWell, the fact that the one helicopter it got close to was a police helicopter is too unlikely to be coincidence. Maybe the drone operator knew the police helicopter location. Maybe these were other cops doing something stupid with their new equipment.
- tyingq 5y agoThe flight track seems to show the police helicopter chasing it northwest at 60 knots for 20 minutes or so and not catching up. That's pretty impressive.
- sandworm101 5y agoThere are a few inconsistencies that lead me to not believe the numbers. >>It was last seen climbing through 14,000’ and into the undercast, where it disappeared. >>Department's helicopter was unable to observe the drone when looking through night vision goggles. If this was heading up to 14k while being chased by helicopters, it wasn't a battery-powered quad. A medium sized drone would have to be powered by IC to perform like that. If it was IC, or even high-powered batteries, it would have been hot enough to look like a flare under night vision goggles. Or, it didn't go to 14k. It sounds to me like the chase helo lost sight of it and assumed that was because it hit the clouds. The light was dim and the drone had a single flashing light. It is very difficult to judge distance to a single light in twilight. The helicopter could easily have misjudged the distance/altitude. I think the helicopter lost sight because the drone turned off the flashing light. Or maybe the drone lost power and fell. Either way, the chasing helicopter thought it had hit the cloud layer when it fact the drone might have been much lower. And 14k is 4k above where the police helicopter would have stopped climbing. Aircraft heading above 10k are going to want pressurization and/or oxygen masks. A cop helicopter won't go that high willingly. >>the fact that it outran two law enforcement helicopters is also concerning That doesn't mean much. Law enforcement helicopters are nothing special. A fast car or motorcycle can outrun a helicopter in a strait line. And cop helicopters aren't meant to enforce air rules. Every Cessna-172 can outrun a police helicopter. Heck, at night a Cesna-152 could probably evade them, especially if the helos are trying to obey the rules for flying near airports. Lastly, given the collision risk involved in "chasing" anything in the air, I'm surprised these helicopters were even allowed to give chase. If I were ATC and saw a cop helicopter chasing another smaller helicopter/drone over a populated area I would do my best to stop this before both crashed into a school.
- barrkel 5y agoIt's in the article: > A source with direct knowledge of the incident's details told The War Zone they believed the drone was highly unlikely to be battery-powered based on the altitude, distance, and speed at which it flew.
- sandworm101 5y ago
- rhacker 5y agoUm, is anyone else thinking how impossible this would be with current tech? 50 miles during one stretch. And on the helicopter that followed it, it logged 1.5 hours of flight time! The radio control tech must have been extremely tuned for that range. Maybe a vehicle was driving below it. I am picturing at least 5KWh battery that should weigh at least 75 pounds (total guestimation)
- oxymoran 5y agoHow is a “rich idiot” smart enough to build a cutting edge drone but dumb enough to accidentally fly it over an Air Force base? It doesn’t make any sense. If it’s a foreign entity, how do they get it to Arizona in the first place? Why risk starting a war to test out your drone? If China or Russia has this capability, you know damn well the US does too so showing off seems unlikely. And neither of these theories can identify a motive. Why would a rich idiot be flying near pipelines and air force bases to begin with. Why would a foreign country be doing a dry run so far from home at so much risk? The only possibilities that I find compelling are domestic terrorist, the US government itself, or something spooky.
- jwalton 5y ago> How is a “rich idiot” smart enough to build a cutting edge drone but dumb enough to accidentally fly it over an Air Force base? I think a lot of people here are vastly overestimating what is required to build an RC plane that would outrun a typical helicopter. Most ARF (almost-ready-to-fly - just add your radio and a batter pack) electric-ducted-fan model planes in the $400-$600 range would be able to hit 150-200km/h (see https://www.motionrc.com/collections/rc-jets/products/freewing-f-22-raptor-ultra-performance-8s-90mm-edf-jet-pnp https://www.motionrc.com/collections/rc-jets/products/freewi...). When you jump up to turbine power, it’s a little more expensive, but you should be able to get quite a bit faster. Head over to YouTube and you’ll see plenty of RC planes breaking the sound barrier. Add a FPV system with a low lux camera (see https://oscarliang.com/flying-fpv-at-night/ https://oscarliang.com/flying-fpv-at-night/) and you could fly this around at 10:30 at night (although there are not too many sane RC pilots who would wish to do such a thing.) This “advanced drone” could be built with entirely off the shelf components for a few grand.
- EMM_386 5y agoI've always been curious if you can combine small turbine engines [1] with a drone to get something with some ridiculous performance aspects. I'm not an aerospace engineer so I don't know what something like this would look like, what the range/ceiling would be. But these are used on some crazy model aircraft. [1] https://www.pbsaerospace.com/small-turbine-engines https://www.pbsaerospace.com/small-turbine-engines
- MisterTea 5y agoI read through a lot of these UAV articles on thedrive.com and they all appear to really drum up the paranoia angle. I do see the threat for sure but the over the top hand waving interwoven with available solutions makes me wonder if this is a anti-UAV munitions marketing campaign. However, we do indeed have a problem. I can see a single drone hovering around a nuclear facility or military base as harmless bit of curiosity. But multiple UAVs hovering for an hour are certainly suspicious. The wonders of technology.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoMy guess is that was a VTOL with efficient aerodynamics or jet drone to loiter and power for racing-class activities. If it flies, something like https://fusionflight.com/jetquad/ https://fusionflight.com/jetquad/ could pull it off. Possibilities: 0. Rich, drone expert prankster, or startup showing-off to their buddies/customers "getting away with something" highly-illegal. 1. State actor demonstrating strength, vulnerabilities, and/or doing low-level recon. 2. Terrorists scouting targets and/or probing vulnerabilities. 3. Military demonstrating vulnerabilities for civilian awareness and corrective purposes.* 4. Military seeking budget for anti-drone.* 5. Military-Industrial Complex drumming-up business for anti-drone.* * Conspiracy theory-ish
- coddle-hark 5y agoI think 2. can be ruled out. It’s hard to imagine a terrorist group doing this considering the risk of getting caught. Much easier just to drive a truck into a crowd or something.
- deftnerd 5y agoI disagree. The truck going through the crowd model requires a sacrificial group member. In our country, the lack of terrorist group members makes their individual value higher. that makes an attack that has a higher capex cost more appealing, such as sacrificial drones. A swarm of two dozen drones costing less than $50k could foul all of a passenger airplane's engines within a few thousand feet of takeoff. The evidence would be pretty junked up and there is no easy way to trace it back to the controller while it's happening. No sacrificial terrorist cell member needed.
- aliasEli 5y agoSunset in Tucson at Feb 9 was at 18:04 [0]. The incident occurred at 22:30, so it was pretty dark. I could not find any weather reports for that day, but since it disappeared in the undercast it must have been cloudy. Because it had been dark for some time for some time, the air must have cooled of, and it is not unreasonable to assume that there were also some smaller clouds below 14,000 feet. It reportedly had a green flashing light, and because of the darkness it seems unlikely that they could could really see other details. The object could not be observed with night vision goggles which seems surprising since they are supposed to be more sensitive than the human eye. When you look at a bright colored light source you will experience afterimages [1]. When you are looking at a point source you will see these as tracks (with a complementary color) around the source. These tracks are caused by your eye movements. Under low-light circumstances your vision mainly depends on rods[2]. A green light with a wave length of 523 nm is pretty close to the optimal rod sensitivity that lies at 498 nm so your rods are pretty sensitive for this wavelength. Because the outputs of rods are interpreted as light vs dark, the afterimages of the rods will be interpreted as dark. > While this makes rods more sensitive to smaller amounts of light, > it also means that their ability to sense temporal changes, such as quickly changing images, is less accurate than that of cones.[2] This also implies that afterimages from rods last longer than those of cones. Afterimages follow the movement of your eyes. So if you focus on a new point, the afterimage will follow to the new point, so it can appear to move at a tremendous speed. In principle rods can detect a single photon[2]. Night vision goggles generally have optimal sensitivity in the near infra-red spectrum [3] so it is not very surprising that they failed to detect green light. The central part of our eyes contains few rods [2]. The effect of this is that when you try to focus on a faint light source it will seem to disappear. This is why you should always try to focus on a point close to a star but not on the star itself. If you forget to do this, you will observe that the light seems to flicker even when it is not. Humans are not very good at estimating the size of objects in the sky. The reason is pretty simple, if you do not know the distance between you and the object you cannot say anything about its size. In the air it is difficult to estimate the distances because there are no real points of reference. Also remember that it was dark. It's pretty simple to buy a green laser pointer [4]. If you point it at some cloud it will appear as a green object on that cloud. Due to afterimages, it will appear to be a dark object with a green light on it. When you point at a different cloud, it will look like the object moved from its first position to its second position. If you believe that both positions are far apart then you will also believe that the object moved at a very high speed. It is also very simple to make the object disappear by turning of your pointer. This seems to be a much simpler explanation than speculating about extremely powerful drones (or aliens). [0] https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/tucson?month=2 https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/tucson?month=2 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_cell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_cell [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared#Night_vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared#Night_vision [4] please use your favorite search engine or supplier P.S. I am a bit disappointed in most of the HN responses that assumed it was some kind of physical object without considering other possible causes.