Mystery drones seen over three US air bases in UK

I wasnt going to google that and ask about aircraft carriers in another thread at the same time :sweat_smile:

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I’ve recently produced a Project Servator presentation coin. :wink:

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This highlights the uselessness of the current Operator registering system, I can only speak of the UK system.

Any Tom, Dick or Harry can go out and buy a drone now and use it illegally without ever registering it and why would you register it if you were going to use it for illegal activities.

The current system here is to screw over true pilots and add to Gov coffers and that’s it.

If they really wanted to crack down then each potential UAV sale would need to have the purchaser checked prior to the sale & be registered at point of sale.

From a cyclical angle and poss verging on conspiracy, could also be the Yanks making mountain out of molehill to try and bring UK Gov on board with DJI ban, they do have form for using scare tactics, false flags etc… :joy:

Because that works well for uninsured and unlicensed drivers (and dangerous dogs too.)

The current setup definitely doesn’t work does it :wink:

Unlicensed cars, yeah a problem but just think about it.
If I was a nafarious type I could buy a car today for cash giving false info and drive it away.

If UAV truly are the issue that officials claim then make them difficult to purchase in the first place.

Just my opinion but what is wrong in checking purchaser details on a database prior to sale, seeing if they are registered with CAA as a first step and the UAV then shipped to the CAA registered address, all linked via UAV serial number.

Similar loopholes with vehicle & dangerous dogs could be closed similarly, without the shipping of course, if Gov really wanted to.

I as a law abiding citizen do not care if I have to wait for something as long as all checks were made before hand but right now I am paying to be registered and this registration means basically nothing.

Because I am registered I will not fly illegally but there is no onus to register at the moment especially if you intend illegal activity, so what is stopping these individuals from flying illegally, nothing!

As responsible pilots, we bear the brunt of scrutiny and the frowns of the gen pop when they see us.

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What about the home built market

Ebay/Facebook/bloke down the pub same goes for a drone, you used to have to give details when buying a TV in the good old days, I cant imagine thats even possible now

And at what cost, we currently foot the bill of the licensing system.

At least I am trying to come up with ideas mate, what are yours, eh :joy:

Why do you say that you doubt it’s possible now, we are more connected, surely simpler then.

Yeah, eBay, Facebook etc… but unless the sale was done via official channels it would stay in original purchasers name, that’s the point.

Already paying now and for what, hasn’t made a jot of difference has it and the closet is increasing year on year for no difference in ‘cover’

Educate the police/public for starters.

Stop the press running scandal headlines.

And seen as the majority of the fuckwits are using DJI off the shelf stuff bring back (a more reasoned and thought out version) of their Geo Fencing.

For what. Drones are not dangerous

There are no reports of death or serious injuries

Nearly all of the incidents with manned aircraft are false

Drones don’t take drugs into prisons, people do

Most of the ones flying today are 249g of plastic

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All very good points too.

And the geo fencing option, easy and immediate to implement for drones that use that system.

Homebuilds are always going to be tricky to tackle.

Have fun with the press though, shit sells papers.

What are your thoughts on the remote id system if implemented here?

Easily spoofed and they’ve got to be on top of you.

They can’t even stop the majority of self acclaimed ‘sensible’ flyers going bvlos :man_shrugging:

I can’t even stop going BVLOS, and I’m trying the best I can!

Let’s assume for now that the East Anglian drones were drones and not starlings. ‘Swarms’ of them have been reported close to the base perimeters, so we are postulating (I’ll wipe it up later, don’t worry) that a significant number of pilots are flying a significant number of drones but cannot be detected. And since they cannot be detected they cannot be brought to book.

But the increased security and monitoring of the base perimeters that they have caused has been effective in stopping their activity, because we have heard of no repetition since the original incidents. Apart from a possible at Fairford, a long drive away, they haven’t botherered elsewhere either.

So, what sort of drones could they have been flying? Presumably not DJI hobby drones, which transmit flight data to the company, who will presumbly make it available to the authorities concerned even if one of them is the United States. And one may as well discount other hobby drones, which either have similar tech aboard or are cheapo toys. Self builds? Possibly, but how would you get enough together for a ‘swarm’ while concealing the activity of what would be a large group of pilots in a quiet rural backwater that is at the same time subject to intense security monitoring and patrolling?

Given that we’ve temporarily discounted the darling starlings, this leaves hostile covert action, Russian spooks. Also possible, and these guys can operate the drones from bunkers thousands of miles away; moreover, the drones are likely to be military-grade and able to jam electronic detection. Now, this is serious, and if proven, ramps up the sabre-rattling and posturing considerably (but do we know that ‘our’ drones are not similarly checking out Russian bases, and have been more successful at evading notice. Trust me, if the Russians had detected them they’d be shouting from the rooftops about it, with Vladimir shouting loudest!).

But, again, there are objections to this idea. They are described as ‘small’ drones, so how have they managed to get here from Russia? Launched from a Russion merchant ship legally about it’s business in the North Sea? Launched from an aircraft? A submarine? Or secret squirrels on the ground locally, in which case we’re back at the heavily monitored country lane problem. Launched from the back of a van?

None of this makes sense to me, but then, neither did quadratic equations, and the fault there was with me and not the quadratic equations…

Still think it’s starlings, but I’m wavering a bit on that point. If it is, nobody concerned is ever going to admit it, just too embarrassing!

Set it to 20m in the app

Your previous posts seems to put a heavy emphasises on it being the Russians. Unless you have access to the most sensitive levels of the Security Services, I’d keep an open mind. This could be absolutely anyone, if it is indeed drones at all!

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I’m a cold war baby, Hants, brought up in an era when ‘a certain power’ was referred to a lot. Back in Victorian times this was unequivocally the French, possibly changing to the Germans in the first half of the 20th century, but in the 50s and the 60s it only ever meant one thing.

My father came out with a rather relevant (still relevant now, for that matter) comment when I was about 15, so that would have been 1967; ‘They are all our friends. Russia is a friend with a loaded pistol to our head, and America is a friend with a fist clenched firmly around our bollocks’.

The Squeeze, fine girl that she is, is Polish, a child of Soviet Communism (which, incidentally, she has a lot of praise for, having had a pretty good childhood out of it), and objects to me referrring to Poland as being in Eastern Europe. She quite rightly regards it as being Central Europe, in fact her childhood home in Silesia is almost dead centre, and points out that our ‘Eastern Europe’ concept comes from it being part of the Eastern Bloc, the other side of the Iron Curtain. She says you’ve got to be east of the Dneiper to be in Eastern Europe.

Discounting the starlings, there’s only the Russians left. I can’t see the point of any terrorist enemy bothering with these bases, their targets are more likely to be civilian, and crowded. They might attack barracks, I suppose, but a town centre is a much softer and more effective target, sadly.

I certainly won’t be taking any field intelligence advice from you at any point. But thanks anyway. :+1:

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Probably wise, as I probably won’t be offering any.

This story is so much Gatwick 2.0, I’m open minded to there having been some incident to kick this all off, but there just really isn’t evidence and every NIMBY is filming normal air traffic on mobile phones and the fact the USAF investigators are looking for evidence from NIMBYs kind of suggests this is another farce.

Anyway it’s bugged me that much I had to make this whole event into a movie trailer for Top Gun: Lakenheath…

Enjoy!

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Thing is, nobody’s gonna come out and state that it was starlings after all the fuss and expense, because it’ll make them look incompetent and paranoid (and there may be a reason for this). The best we got in the aftermath of the Gatwick notadrone was a grudging acceptance from various authorities that there might not have been a drone in the first place. ISTR Surrey Police have still not accepted this.

This time we’re up against the military, who are secretive at the best of times (for good reason), and the Americans, who won’t be minded to give explanations to anybody. They’ll claim to be ‘monitoring’ or ‘investigating’ but can’t give details for operational security reasons, and let the panic die down in the hope that it’ll all go away, which it will sooner or later. And they’ll stick to whatever story they are hiding behind come hell or high water, irrespective of what ever evidence might become available, because in this day and age more than any other, if a statement is repeated often enough it becomes The Truth irrespective of facts or evidence. I’d sooner trust the government than the military to admit to a mistake.

I’m quite confident due to today’s current political stage and events, that these drones are of a hostile origin, all we have to do is look at the Salisbury incident, and other one alike to understand the free movement of people coming to and from the UK, and if course go undetected, in my eyes Russian intelligence seems to have freedom of movement in the UK, obviously under the guise as any normal Tom Dick or Harry, it really doesn’t surprise me that some people posing as normal tourists with ill intentions has the right of movement to carry out these intelligence gathering, especially when the movement of warheads was kind of capped in 1958, and since recently that cap was lifted, and also since then the increase of warhead’s in the UK has increased too from the US, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that these drones are gathering intel on bases, after all the Russians hardly have any satellites , the can’t fly in UK airspace, nor sail through British waters either, so to me it really narrows the narrative down to this conclusion.
The USAF have admitted the drones they have encountered are not of recreational use drones, so these drones are of larger scale, and with quite advanced equipped too.