Well, the source of the lights as such isn't mysterious; everybody who has seen and reported them agrees they are drones. They have been spotted over the past couple of weeks in a few counties in rural extreme northeastern Colorado, and most recently into Nebraska as well.
The mystery is, whose drones?
They seem to appear fairly consistently between 7 and 10 PM, in groups of eight to ten, and are not your typical toy quadcopter; reportedly they have wingspans of up to six feet. Interestingly, according to the linked news report, the drones also feature navigation lighting - something which, so far as I am aware, the FAA does not require on recreational drones (though of course I could be wrong).
The size of the drones, to me, precludes some kind of airshow or aerial demonstration practice (light-show drones tend to by tiny and fly in much larger swarms besides); but the size and the lighting also, to me, makes it unlikely to be some private individual or amateur group, making me lean toward some kind of commercial or industrial testing or application.
To me, the situation is troubling. Obviously you have the issue of the ubiquitous yokels, who view "drones" as invariably evil and intrusive and want to solve the intrusion with their favored tool-of-first-resort for defendin' thur proppity (i.e., guns); since these drones are rather large and feature navigation lighting like real airplanes do, the possibility of a dangerous or deadly mistake is self-evident.
Additionally - and equally troubling, in my opinion - is the mention in the news report that police are unable to find out who the drones belong to; nobody has come forward in response to the incidents making national news, and the drones fly too fast for anyone who spots them from the ground to be able to successfully track them to their landing site.
It has been mentioned that none of the reported sightings so far has seemed to indicate any illegal behavior by the drone operators, and it might be easy to simply say "then there's no need for police to know who they are"; but I disagree with that. The fact that no laws appear to have been violated yet is purely happenstance; in the case that laws are observed being violated, the police should be able to find out who the responsible parties are without too much trouble. The drones are being operated in public, in full view of the public, so there are no "right to privacy" considerations to counterbalance the public's right-to-know.
The Denver Post reports that the FAA has proposed a rule requiring most drones to emit a radio signal that can be received by law enforcement agencies and checked against the licensed operator database to identify a drone's owner. In other words, a sort of a transponder. To me, this sounds like a reasonable and intelligent rule.
The mystery is, whose drones?
They seem to appear fairly consistently between 7 and 10 PM, in groups of eight to ten, and are not your typical toy quadcopter; reportedly they have wingspans of up to six feet. Interestingly, according to the linked news report, the drones also feature navigation lighting - something which, so far as I am aware, the FAA does not require on recreational drones (though of course I could be wrong).
The size of the drones, to me, precludes some kind of airshow or aerial demonstration practice (light-show drones tend to by tiny and fly in much larger swarms besides); but the size and the lighting also, to me, makes it unlikely to be some private individual or amateur group, making me lean toward some kind of commercial or industrial testing or application.
To me, the situation is troubling. Obviously you have the issue of the ubiquitous yokels, who view "drones" as invariably evil and intrusive and want to solve the intrusion with their favored tool-of-first-resort for defendin' thur proppity (i.e., guns); since these drones are rather large and feature navigation lighting like real airplanes do, the possibility of a dangerous or deadly mistake is self-evident.
Additionally - and equally troubling, in my opinion - is the mention in the news report that police are unable to find out who the drones belong to; nobody has come forward in response to the incidents making national news, and the drones fly too fast for anyone who spots them from the ground to be able to successfully track them to their landing site.
It has been mentioned that none of the reported sightings so far has seemed to indicate any illegal behavior by the drone operators, and it might be easy to simply say "then there's no need for police to know who they are"; but I disagree with that. The fact that no laws appear to have been violated yet is purely happenstance; in the case that laws are observed being violated, the police should be able to find out who the responsible parties are without too much trouble. The drones are being operated in public, in full view of the public, so there are no "right to privacy" considerations to counterbalance the public's right-to-know.
The Denver Post reports that the FAA has proposed a rule requiring most drones to emit a radio signal that can be received by law enforcement agencies and checked against the licensed operator database to identify a drone's owner. In other words, a sort of a transponder. To me, this sounds like a reasonable and intelligent rule.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2MM9pKM
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