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Mysterious Drones Fly Night-Time Patterns Over North-East Colorado

maximus otter

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
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A band of large drones appears to be flying nighttime search patterns over northeast Colorado — and local authorities say they don’t know who’s behind the mysterious aircraft.

The drones, estimated to have six-foot wingspans, have been flying over Phillips and Yuma counties every night for about the last week, Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said Monday.

The drones stay about 200 feet to 300 feet in the air and fly steadily in squares of about 25 miles, he said. There are at least 17 drones; they emerge each night around 7 p.m. and disappear around 10 p.m., he said.

“They’ve been doing a grid search, a grid pattern,” he said. “They fly one square and then they fly another square.”

On Friday, [Undersheriff] Myers said he watched eight of the large drones flying along the Yuma County border near the intersection of U.S. 385 and County Road 54. At the same time, a single drone hovered about 25 miles away over the town of Paoli — it didn’t move all night, just hovered over the town — and eight more drones flew over Haxtun, about 10 miles down the road from Paoli, Myers said.

https://www.denverpost.com/2019/12/23/drones-mystery-colorado/

maximus otter
 
Hasn't anyone filmed them? OK it's night, but night-vision camera must be able to pick something up.. Is there an airforce base nearby?
 
Could be an air force traingng programme for drone pilots?
 
hunck said:
... Is there an airforce base nearby?
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The closest USAF base is Buckley AFB (a few miles east of Denver), circa 100 miles away.

Victory said:
Could be an air force traingng programme for drone pilots?
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Buckley AFB is associated with a variety of multi-service intelligence units, so it's conceivable they might be involved in some sort of drone exercise or training flights.
 
There's another possible explanation closer to the scene of the sightings.

Remote eastern Colorado has been the area in which grey- and black-market marijuana production has become a problem since Colorado passed Amendment 64 (legalizing pot) in 2012.

This local newspaper article concerning Phillips County law enforcement seeking grant funding to support fighting illegal marijuana farming:

https://www.holyokeenterprise.com/local/sheriff-pursues-grant-find-and-destroy-illegal-marijuana

... dates from 6 years after the amendment passed, which would make it approximately 1 year ago (2018).

The article mentions a proposal for the sheriff's department to obtain and use a drone in support of such operations.
 
It may be a mapping operation, producing hi-res aerial photography of an area.
Maybe for Google Maps or similar.
 
Mythopoeika said:
It may be a mapping operation, producing hi-res aerial photography of an area.
Maybe for Google Maps or similar.
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That's what it sounds like to me. The interesting bit is that these sightings are occurring at night - implying the drones are specifically scanning the countryside using infrared (etc.).

Night drone exercises training operators in IR-dependent missions would be consistent with the National Guard (or other) military drone units and ops circa 100 miles away.

I don't recall any of the news stories mentioning contact with the National Guard (as opposed to the Air Force or Army).
 
One additional note ... Multiple of the news accounts refer to a sighting in which a single drone was "hovering" over a community in the area.

Specific descriptions of the drones consistently state they were winged, which implies they weren't capable of hovering (in the strict sense).

I wonder whether the allusion to "hovering" derived from (a) journalistic sloppiness versus (b) a second type of drone operating in the area.
 
Hovering heavier-than-air drones that remain in the sky for hours on end can't happen using current technology. Two possibilities; a balloon (perhaps a Google Balloon) or simply a misidentified celestial object such as Venus). Or, of course, an alien spacecraft.
 
eburacum said:
Hovering heavier-than-air drones that remain in the sky for hours on end can't happen using current technology.
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There have been experiments along those lines. Solar powered, winged drones. Maybe this is a test of such a technology?
OK, the 'hovering' thing might be an issue.
 
I had a look at the area on google maps and there really doesn't seem to be much of interest there - small rural towns, lots of fields and that's about it. But then, if you read a lot of Jack Reacher books, that's exactly the out-of-the-way sort of place where dodgy goings-on happen.
 
eburacum said:
Hovering heavier-than-air drones that remain in the sky for hours on end can't happen using current technology. Two possibilities; a balloon (perhaps a Google Balloon) or simply a misidentified celestial object such as Venus). Or, of course, an alien spacecraft.
Click to expand...
Or... someone decided to use the old-school aviation idea of powered blimps. You can make it slightly heavier than air and it will take less power to keep it aloft.

Until we have a pic of one of the drones there's not a whole lot of thing we can rule out.
 
Another possibility is a kite of some sort.
kite-lantern1.jpg
 
This new item indicates the drone sightings have now expended to 2 additional counties. This now makes 4 counties above which the drones have been observed and reported.

Mysterious drones have now been spotted in 2 more rural Colorado counties

Drones have been spotted flying in patterns above Phillips, Lincoln, Yuma and Washington counties in eastern Colorado.

“We have no indication who the drones belong to,” Stivers said. “… We’re just trying to find out who’s doing this and why they’re doing it.”

The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday on Facebook it has also seen at least one drone. Sheriff Tom Nestor told 9NEWS his county only received one report – far fewer than the surrounding jurisdictions. ...

“It is concerning because you know, one of the reports I had last night was that the drone is way bigger than 6 [feet]; it sounds like a small jet engine when it’s flying,” Stivers said. “These are not drones that people in our county can just buy.” ...
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SOURCE: https://www.9news.com/article/news/...orado/73-e6a9c96e-ec29-4887-8271-799036684d21
 
The latest news item cited in the preceding post included a map of the Colorado counties over which these mystery drones have been sighted.

CO-Drones-Counties-191227.jpg

​
The colored areas represent the 4 counties. They seem to outline a general vector or path leading back toward Denver and Colorado Springs (i.e., the locations of Buckley AFB and / or Fort Carson).

This would seem to bolster the original suspicion the drones represent some sort of military- or intelligence-related training or exercise activity.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The latest news item cited in the preceding post included a map of the Colorado counties over which these mystery drones have been sighted.

The colored areas represent the 4 counties. They seem to outline a general vector or path leading back toward Denver and Colorado Springs (i.e., the locations of Buckley AFB and / or Fort Carson).

This would seem to bolster the original suspicion the drones represent some sort of military- or intelligence-related training or exercise activity.
Click to expand...

If you follow the path in the opposite direction it leads towards Offut Airforce Base outside Omaha Nebraska.
 
Bigphoot2 said:
If you follow the path in the opposite direction it leads towards Offut Airforce Base outside Omaha Nebraska.
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The drones wouldn't be operating out of Offutt. In any case, Offutt is more than twice as far away as the central Colorado military facilities.
 
More astounding, indeed, than the possibility that these might be phantom drones – occupying an uncertain or mutable position between ¿real? and ¿imaginary? – is the absence of any suggestion of this possibility in this thread up to this point. As if experiencing is so poor – and so utterly polarised – as to allow of only two mutually exclusive possibilities: absolutely real or absolutely unreal.

If our existence is an organism, in which all phenomena are continuous, dreams cannot be utterly different, in the view of continuity, from occurences that are said to be real.
–– Guess Who?
 
Latest developments
FAA Issues Ruling and Begins Investigation of Mysterious Giant Drones in Colorado and Nebraska
Paul SeaburnJanuary 2, 2020
Finally! After a week of stories about mysterious giant drones flying in formation over parts of northeastern Colorado and across the border into Nebraska, with numerous eyewitness accounts from law enforcement agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration has made two announcements. First, the agency issued a proposed rule change requiring most drones to be easily identifiable remotely. Second, the FAA announced it is working with law enforcement in the five counties reporting the giant drones in a concerted effort to identify the owner and their purpose. Great news or too little too late?

etc
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https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2020...erious-giant-drones-in-colorado-and-nebraska/
 
LED drone .. I don't think this is fake, I used to own a LED Frisbee that did something similar but not as impressive as this .. skip to about 8:20 ..

 
Has anyone said these drones are illegal? I have no problem with changes to law if something like this starts causing problems, but if they're legal now, why is this being seen as some kind of mild threat? It looks like a good excuse to push overreaching remote ID law.
 
ChasFink said:
Has anyone said these drones are illegal? I have no problem with changes to law if something like this starts causing problems, but if they're legal now, why is this being seen as some kind of mild threat? It looks like a good excuse to push overreaching remote ID law.
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Most all the news items I've seen (that mention flight specifics at all) indicate the drones are operating in accordance with relevant state and federal regulations. The most specific descriptions I've seen claim they are staying at least 200 - 300 feet away from any building / residence (horizontally) and are flying at a minimum estimated altitude of circa 400 feet.

The FAA's remote ID regulations have been in the works for a lot longer than these mysterious nightly overflights have been reported.
 
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