A New Airborne Threat to UAVs: Donald Trump and the Bedminster, NJ, Drones Spectral Attacks in the 2018 Election
The document indicates that DHS has been urging local agencies for months to scout for possible launch sites near and around critical assets, while offering a slew of recommendations designed to mitigate a threat that the agency insists is growing by the day. To help capture evidence of airborne threats and train police on how to handle downed drones, local officials have been told to make sure their cameras are positioned in the right places. Local agencies have been urged by the agency to generously deploy legal, anti-theft, drones that can detect and identify them.
The memo, first obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security, was circulated roughly three months before the recent flurry of alleged drone sightings along the East Coast—growing national interest in which has been driven in part by the government’s own nebulous response.
The memo says that violent extremists in the US are looking for ways to modify off-the-shelf drones to ferry dangerous targets, with major advancements in the area being propelled largely by experimentation on foreign battlefields.
In other words, exactly what you would expect when you look up at night in a densely populated area in the year 2024. The most boring answer is usually the one that’s most likely to be right.
The FBI, Pentagon, Homeland Security, and FAA released a statement yesterday that basically threw out all of the speculation. Their assessment: “a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”
First, he said he was canceling his trip to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, because drones were spotted there. The FAA had already issued temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drones from being flown over Bedminster as well as above the military installation. He claimed that the military found out where the drones took off. And in a social media post, he urged people to “shoot them down!!!”
It kind of feels like President-elect Donald Trump is the only one having fun with the drone sightings. In addition to trolling one of his favorite whipping boys, ex-NJ Governor Chris Christie, Trump is also totally in his element when he gets to spout inane bullshit about something on which nobody can agree what’s real and what’s not.
New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: wrong politicians: when do we stop talking about Iran? When Is the Pentagon unwilling to step up?
Melham is not technically incorrect. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did say some radioactive material went missing in a recent alert. But it misses an important context as the equipment used to calibrate the PET scans is cancer screening equipment. The amount that was asked was unlikely to cause permanent injury.
Melham pondered what they might be looking for. “Well, potentially, we’re aware of a threat that came into Port Newark. That may be radioactive material. There was, and there is, an alert that’s out right now that radioactive material in New Jersey has gone missing, on December 2nd.”
The Pentagon denied this, but Van Drew doubled down, slamming defense department officials for treating us like we’re “stupid” and withholding information about the drones. And fearing that his fearmongering about Iran was insufficiently fearful, he broadened the scope to include “China” and “somebody else.”
He walked the entire thing back in a very terse statement one day later. I guess Fox News did not have appearances for embarrassing mea culpas. He acknowledged that he had said on TV that the Iranian mothership was off the coast of the United States.
The New Jersey Drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: politicians wrong. The case of Belleville Mayor Michael Melham
The hysteria over drones gave politicians an opportunity to do dirty work. If Cuomo were still in office, you can see him operating the radar equipment in a flight tower while wearing a parka and headset.
Hogan reported some of the light he saw was from the constellation “Orion.” According to the community guidelines note appended to his retweet, the lights were from the constellation “Orion”. They have the stars Sirius and Procyon. But hey, at least he got some fresh air.
Belleville Mayor Michael Melham wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass. As mayor of a relatively small New Jersey suburb (population approximately 35,000), he knew he needed to use his preciously allotted five minutes on Fox 5 to say something that was going to get him noticed and generate some content. He had to raise the stakes.
Source: The New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: no one knows anything
Reply to “Comment on ‘The Iran Launched a Mothership that Contains the Drones'” by V.E. Van Drew
“I’m going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mothership that contains these drones,” Van Drew told Fox News. “It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America. They have launched drones.
Jeff Van Drew is a member of Congress from New Jersey, where the bulk of the sightings have taken place. He has access to high-level security briefings as a member of the House Judiciary Committee. He should know shit! But alas, he does not, as evidenced by his completely factless musings about the drones coming from an “Iranian mothership” anchored off the Jersey Shore.
Current and former elected leaders and government officials are spouting deranged nonsense regarding the drones.
The people who are supposed to be the ones with access to all the technology and equipment given to them by law enforcement budgets, and the ones who have security clearances and subpoena power, are the ones that most of us can only dream of. It’s worse than that because they think they know everything and are willing to speak their mind when they don’t.
No one knows anything. The cops don’t know anything. The feds sure don’t sound like they know anything. Everyone has a theory. Depending on your point of view, they could be a bunch of small planes, or a full-on alien invasion of our nation’s most consequential state.
