More Drones!

The video above shows that at least some much-needed humor is coming into the public conversation about the New Jersey drones. It makes one point, although not necessarily the most important one, that politicians are exploiting the panic, and in fact stirring up more of it, in order to get support for new intrusive legislation that has nothing to do with any perceived problem. At 0:42:

Nobody knows where these things are from! I mean, it's all over the news!

You know how all through Covid and all the lies about Trump, you were telling me the news is nothing but propaganda?

Yeah.

And now you're believing the news?

More serious, and a little more to the point, is the video below from commentator and podcaster Bill Whittle. It starts with a reference I've already made, to the October 30, 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of H G Wells's War of the Worlds, that is "infamous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was taking place". (There's a New Jersey connection there, too -- the breaking news style of the drama claimed to be observing the invasion in Grovers Mill, NJ, a real place near Princeton. The mill still exists but has been converted to condos,)

At 0:44, he says,

Part of what we're seeing with the drone story over New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast, part of it is mass hysteria, and the reason I can say that with some confidence is I've seen a number of pieces of video showing the drones over New Jersey, and they are without question regular airplanes.

I'm a professional pilot. The rules for the lighting markings on airplanes are clear. It's a green light on the right wing, red light on the left wing, white light on the tail, white light on the top, and I've seen any number of videos of the so-called drones that are clearly airplanes.

Occasionally it'll go in and out of focus, and then this point of light will turn into a glowing sphere which is also, you know, not a UFO, it's simply the thing out of focus. . .

This is exactly the wording that the spokespeople from the White House, DOD, FBI, CIA, FAA, etc etc have not been using for the past several weeks. Instead, they keep talking about "no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat" blah blah blah, but they never simply explain what nearly all of the sightings explicitly are, commercial airliners in normal landing patterns, mostly at Newark.

The discussion in the video goes on to ask, "Why do people see UFOs? Because they want to." As I've said, I'm a member of a Facebook group devoted to a New Jersey town where I lived as a kid, and now, instead of reminiscing about Mr Foley's antics in junior high school English class, they're posting about drones.

Here's what I saw over Main Street yesterday evening. [short video of plane at night showing landing and navigation lights]

Yes, I saw that too, about 5:30. Behind the grocery.

I just don't know what's going on. This is so disturbing.

A plane landing on runway 5 at Morristown (MMU). Get real.

What the heck is going on? Its getting so weird!

There are voices of sanity now and then, but everyone just ignores them and talks about how upset they are -- and the politicians and bureaucrats feed it. For instance,

Federal authorities are taking action against the mysterious drones seen flying over New Jersey and several other East Coast states.

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a ban on most drones over nearly two dozen towns, including cities from Camden to Bayonne, Edison, Harrison and Jersey City. The ban will be in effect until Jan. 17.

The FAA order says no unmanned aircraft can operate below 400 feet within one nautical mile of the airspace specified in each town.

Except that the "drones" the New Jerseyites are seeing are commercial jets, they aren't drones at all, they're flying at altitudes well over 400 feet, but because it's dark, people think they're much lower. The bottom line is going to be that they'll keep seeing "drones" over Main Street and won't know why the government doesn't shoot them down.

I've kinda got to go along with the first video above, the bureaucrats and politcians want to keep this going. Another queation for me, though, continues to be why the phenomenon continues to be limited to New Jersey. The sense I have from the Facebook posts I see is that the New Jerseyites feel they're ahead of the curve, in on something big; it makes them feel like they belong to a special group, that they're important.