Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
So, setting aside this claim that there’s no line of sight, my bet is these guys have not kept up with what quadcopters and hexacopters can do: here’s one video from 6 days ago showing really unnatural acceleration, changing direction in ways that make you say “UFO” [0] - check out the other videos on the channel, there’s another one six months ago hitting 234mph [1] - granted these are LiPo with short dwell times but other larger heavier models can go 90 minutes… so somebody out there has something custom and is having fun freaking out cops and militaries. I’d say next time instead of trying to chase it they start sweeping for radio transmissions… if they’re not already programmed to autonomously play cat and mouse with police helicopters XD
What you say is absolutely true about quadrocopters and octocopters. It is much less true about fixed wing drones.
You don’t have to go all the way to a Global Hawk to get reasonable carrying capacity. Even hobby sized stuff could be used for this reasonably well. Parts are easy to acquire, they are easy to conceal, you can launch them with a catapult like setup, they can drop off their load and fly back autonomously.
I bet that it is already happening or at least there are smugglers experimenting with the tech.
This had me thinking about homemade disposable rockets. Either use them for cargo, or attach one to a strong enough glider, so that it can reach the desired area, release the glider (that can use maps + GPS and sensors to land safely) then proceed for a while fooling whoever would follow its heat trail.
Not that I wanted to become a drug smuggler, just brainstorming. We will need all that stuff when the next reptilian invasion occurs:^)
It was a hybrid fixed wing drone that could carry 150Kg.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvwmv/look-at-this-huge-dru...
In the case of the mule, the carry weight is relative to shit.
A few weeks ago there was a news article on how drug cartels were using cheap Chinese VTOL drones to smuggle drugs across the Mediterranean between Morocco and Spain.
https://english.elpais.com/spain/2021-07-15/spanish-police-s...
Hell I live in a Western country and people are getting assassinated for just 10000 euro. Plenty of desperate losers out there to exploit for crime cartels.
There's also been severe availability issues with the DJI gear.
But +1 humanity’s fucked, don’t Google Slaughterbots but maybe Google how to build an EMP, it’s easier than you think.
Sounds like a good way to get on a list.
"Our company mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002077843786.html
But you want to shield the parts which do not directly need to receive rf signals, like the mainboard.
Problem is you’re fighting path loss which is exponential with distance, whereas the power of your emitter is scaling linearly.
No, EM radiation power decays quadratic with the distance, not exponentially.
The idea they are not human controlled is absurd.
They handle like nothing else. There is literally nothing else to compare them to so they seem almost alien. You could dive bomb a gate yourself after maybe 10 hours of practice in a simulator.
Of course the first time you try you won't even be able to keep the drone in the air but really quickly the controls become second nature.
The irony is the guys at the park were most likely not even great pilots. Look up Mr Steele on youtube if you want to watch someone do really inhuman stuff.
Even top of the DJI drones (which are not exactly freestyle/racy) would top out at around 30 minutes.
Not implying aliens, but I wish we had that kind of battery technology in my Nazgul5, if it's a drone they've seen.
Which means the drone may not have been as fast/manœuvrerabke as it looks.
It would explain the crazy Camera tracking skills.
Per youtube comments. Impressive!
A (relatively) simple solution would be to use something with more dense power source, maybe fuel. RC enthusiast use fueled engines routinely, it isn't something special. There are various types of advanced fueled engines for RC use from traditional 2-4 stroke miniaturized engines to turbofans.
They are not very common on small quadcopters because of lack of response. Quadcopters depend on an onboard controller for fast corrections and for this to work you need a motor that can react very fast and precisely. A liquid fuel engine in a craft that does frequent changes in direction of g forces is not an easy thing to control precisely.
But this could be easily remedied by making this at least partly hybrid (use engine to charge small battery and use this to power additional motors to improve response to help stability and maneuvers).
There are also non-hybrid quads, but again, none of them can deliver the performance observed by these pilots: https://www.mydronelab.com/blog/gas-powered-quadcopter.html
I said in another comment that my bet is on an RC plane. A fixed wing is much more likely to achieve that kind of speed with the endurance. Considering that the pilots didn't provide a good visual description I think it's the safest bet. I'm not going to worry about how it might be possible to make a quad that can do this when an obviously feasible solution is staring us in the face.
I never said you did.
But still. This still doesn't solve why it wasn't visible on thermal and would still be an extraordinary drone doing all these things.
Don’t rule out autonomous.
- Helo pilots felt that it was intentionally staying nearby as it came very close on multiple occasions and did not seem to be trying to evade. They had visual contact most of the time but sometimes had a hard time tracking it against the city lights.
- Pilots initially describe it as a quadcopter but become skeptical of that due to the performance. No one ever gets a very good look at it to confirm.
- It's described early on as having a dim green light. A green light on the drone would be odd for a position light (they did seem to see it from multiple angles) but it seems like a lot of drones have nonstandard lighting.
- CBP pilots say that it is hard to see on night vision goggles and has a low heat signature. NVGs are not necessarily any better than human vision for discriminating dim lights in the city due to dynamic range, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything. The fact that they couldn't seem to pick it out on the thermal camera might mean something interesting if you looked at different drone types.
- The drone was first described as being at about 4k feet and climbing, to around 12k. That's pretty damn high for anything small.
- I don't hear the controller indicating that they had it on radar at any point, the altitudes are all estimates by the helo pilots.
- Pilots felt that it was not being controlled from the ground due to the large distance it covered, beyond line of sight from any one point. By my estimations it covered over 20 miles during the course of the recording. Given the terrain, that it passed over decently high ridges, I don't think it's a sure thing that it was not being controlled from the ground but it would be surprising.
- The CBP helicopter had a hard time getting it on their camera due to its rapid climbing (the cameras on these helicopters are usually under the nose and can't point up very much) and maneuvering that they seemed to feel was intentionally evasive of tracking. But it sounds like they may have successfully captured it on camera at times.
- The speed bit is confusing as no one ever tries to estimate it directly, I think because the drone was seldom flying straight. The article's suggestion that it did 105 knots in airspeed is not unjustified but also not a sure thing. It was definitely somewhere in the 100kts range though, I'd say, based on the difficulty the helicopters had in pursuing it.
- Both helicopters hit their endurance limit as the drone disappeared into clouds. One helicopter was able to stay airborne later and dwelled for a time hoping to see an operator or recovery team on the ground.
- The TPD pilot, speaking after the fact, seemed confident it was not the size of a light aircraft but appreciably smaller.
My analysis:
- Perhaps the most extraordinary thing, I think to the pilots as well, was the way it was maneuvering in such close range to the two helicopters. It suggested not just recklessness but also excellent situational awareness, the kind of thing I have a hard time believing an operator on the ground or by FPV could achieve. It suggests that the operator had help from a targeting system of some kind, whether based on open-source radar/TIS-B/ADS-B or radar on the drone. Visually tracking aircraft over a city at night is already notoriously difficult, even more so by camera, and this thing was coming within 100 feet abeam the helicopters and often flying between them.
- The altitude and speed demonstrated by the drone make me think it's fixed-wing rather than rotor, and fairly powerful. The endurance suggests fuel, not electric. Probably turbine powered.
- It's not at all surprising that a CBP and TPD aircraft were tracking it despite the proximity to the AFB. Most HN users seem to really overestimate the level of security at most military installations, there probably weren't any Air Force acft up at the time or even pilots readily available. Most of the time stuff like this happens at AF bases the response you get is force protection standing in their truck beds with binoculars, not some elaborate air defense operation. Law enforcement conducts far more patrol activity over cities than the military does, and getting an Air Force aircraft in the air would have taken long enough it probably wouldn't have mattered. These kinds of drone incidents are considered more of a civilian matter than a military one anyway as it's almost always just idiots messing around.
- The CBP aircraft at least and probably the TPD helicopter as well will have fairly sophisticated camera packages including thermal. I'm not totally clear on whether or not either of them got useful footage but you hear in the after-action call that the FAA is requesting all the video TPD has. The cameras on these helicopters are designed for tracking things on the ground, not moving fast in the air, so it's unsurprising that they had a hard time capturing it.
- It doesn't mean much that it doesn't seem to have been tracked on radar. Primary radar doesn't consistently detect light aircraft at those altitudes, and this thing was much smaller. In general the US does not have a capability to reliably detect non-cooperative small aircraft, it's just way too expensive to build that out.
Long-range radar is a really hard problem, the working models are so expensive than the USAF and FAA struggle to afford to install them, and the military has a long history of being, uh, optimistic about the capabilities of their radar equipment when talking to the public. Saying they can detect a softball over the horizon and then failing to detect a widebody jet at seven yards is pretty much the history of the Missile Defense Agency in a nutshell.
For air space surveillance purposes, the FAA and USAF share their radar network, because neither can really afford to have their own. The radars are bespoke, mostly built by Raytheon, and replaced very infrequently (many are hitting 30 years old) due to the high cost. They struggle with detecting light aircraft and anything below 15k feet or so, which is why we need to use secondary radar for ATC purposes. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it), this is basically the only general airspace surveillance measure in the US short of getting a fighter in the air to use its targeting radar.
The economics of primary surveillance radars is strange. Reliable service (the war on nines), robust filtering of false alarm (even tough multi-sensor ATC trackers have made huge strides...) more and more requirements on the 'high speed + maneuvering' kinematics (replace mil psr radars in some missions) and in the 'slow or static small rcs' (drones mostly but also helps). Processing latency is getting squeezed to 'almost impossible with COTS HW' levels and regulatory requirements only increase like mad. But you're only selling & installing what, at most 100 a year? Good luck recouping any R&D.
The entry in such a market is hard too, as ATC operators are conservative as hell, and Chesterton's fence tends to be respected a bit religiously by customers.
You're not going to see those targets with long range military surveillance radars either, maybe in the first 10-20kms, maybe. That is the actual problem with drones. Easy to build, very hard to detect with actual infrastructure. Whomever finds a way to track them on the 'cheap' is gonna make a buck. Even if you made actual, existing radars, able to track them (which would be a tall-order) it won't be on the whole range and it won't be reliable, because some of those things maneuver like crazy. Say good bye to your clean 2d/3d-with-realistic-aerodynamics Kalman filters and say hi to very high rates of false alarm...
An interesting mystery.
Here's the updated design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPc578CV-78
Put a modern drone camera and nav system in one of these, and it's not hard to make longer range flights and do what someone did in Tucson. You can stay up longer if you're not trying for the R/C aircraft speed record.
Also note the resemblance to the "flying pyramids" sighted near a U.S. Navy ship in 2019.
Yeah definitely not a jet powered one.
And while you are at it also find me a car that: can go 300 mph, 3 seconds 0-60, 1000 mile range, has all the safety features of a Volvo, costs $5000 to build.
Oh FFS. There's a lot of real estate on the ground where an operator could have been sitting and flying the thing with a high-powered FPV rig. FPV systems don't require satellites, and you can put a basic one together for less than $1000.
> the mystery craft was essentially playing with them by repeatedly positioning itself directly above their helicopters’ rotors, some 1,000 feet above them
> the drone maintained a speed of 75 knots in a 30-knot headwind
Can they do all of this for under $1k?
Yes, it can be easily done for under $1k. This is not $1k for the drone, just for making whatever drone FPV capable, if that's what you were misunderstanding.
You'll notice I used the word "basic" above to imply a starter or hobbyist capability.
Someone playing with tech that someone else is paying for though?
I just don't think private drone is the angle here. More likely to be an experimental agency thing, and someone flying a work gadget they haven't personally paid for, IMO.
Messing with the armed forces or police seemed to be part of growing up as a teenage boy for some of my friends. (I was tempted to write rite of passage here but that would imply that it happened once for each.)
Of course they like me wasn't too well of so it was all about illegal fireworks, sneaking, swimming or canoeing into military or naval bases etc.
No doubt in my mind they could have tried something similar to this if they were young today and had the tech skills and money for it.
IMO, either the story as reported has been exaggerated in many dimensions (altitude above the chopper, size of drone, time in the air, distance before landing) or it's something from the air force base that's not commercially available.
And yes, you are right that I'm only talking about young people playing games with police/military and I don't have any idea if this is feasible or not.
All kinds of exciting things can get people into serious trouble but they still do it. For example, drifting and street racing expensive cars at night. Some even taunt the police. Here's a good series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clf-KhniImw
In my mind flying a remote controlled drone over an air base seems way less risky than hitting the streets in a car.
Maybe not for under $1k. But under any price? Is it physically possible? Yes.
We're not talking about a hobbyist guy in his garage here. We're talking about either US Military accidentally caught in a game of cat and mouse with local law enforcement, or more likely: drug cartels.
Both organizations operate heavily in the southwestern US, clandestinely without the need or desire to inform local law enforcement of their operations, and have practically unlimited budgets to accomplish their goals.
The real goal of a press release like this is to drum up a little FUD to take up to the governor and secure more funding, maybe even get your local precinct another helicopter, a cool drone, or a task force. And hell, maybe that's what they legitimately need here.
This is a real UAV that is military grade.
It was either the actual military (it was first discovered just outside of an AirForce base) or a drug cartel that got their hands on a drone. Military Grade drones are pretty available at this point to any group with enough means (money). For example the Elbit Hermes 450[1] is a long-endurance tactical drone that has been sold to many countries outside of the big militaries. For example Georgia (the country), Azerbaijan, North Macedonia, The Philippines, Zambia, Botswana, Thailand, and even Mexico, Brazil, Columbia. Columbia bought a ton of drones from Elbit in the range of "tens of millions of dollars". The benefit of the Hermes 450 is the cost, it is supposed to cost only around $1M, which makes it very affordable for countries without massive military budgets like the US. I don't think it is a stretch that a drug cartel bought one ($1M is a small price to pay if it can save a single $10M drug run from being captured), or that they bought it from another country like Georgia or Columbia.
They are satellite controlled and have a 20 hours flight time, meaning it could have easily flown from a long ways away.
Oh and even the US Customs and Border Patrol own two of these same drones. Which I find also interesting.
These helicopter pilots were either chasing a drug cartel drone like this or a USAF drone. Because they first spotted it nearby the Air Force base, it seems to me that most likely it was actually an Air Force drone (most likly a MQ-1 Predator drone) that was conducting a training simulation near the base when it was discovered by the helo pilots. Then it just proceeded to play around with them. The one pilot talked about how it would fly in front of the helicopter and then maneuver to get behind it and follow it, staying in the helicopter's shadow. That sounds like a military move. I bet this whole thing started off as a training mission and then went off course and they decided to train on the helicopter pilots. They even said that the average speed of the drone was an estimated 70 knots. Well the MQ-1 UAV has a cruising speed of... surprise, surprise... 70 knots!
4g towers transmit downward to users in the city below them. They do not transmit upward.
That is why if you leave you phone turned on during a commercial flight, it will stop working after take off anyway. The towers don't send signal upward. You might still collect some residual signal for a little bit if you are near a tower and directly above it for a thousand feet or so, but not at 14,000 ft.
This couldn't be done with a 3g/4g/5g/LTE modem.
This is a strawman argument. While technically yes it is true that an FPV drone can be put together for $1,000. But such a drone would not have the characteristics described in the observations.
A drone with capabilities matching the observations could certainly NOT be put together for $1,000. In fact, it would rival the capabilities of American military drones like the MQ-1 and MQ-9 which cost $10M and $28M respectively. These collective observations are why the two trained and experience pilots, who understand flight mechanics and capabilities, are so dumbfounded by what they saw.
The assumption made by the pilot suggesting that it must be satellite controlled is actually a valid conclusion. The pilots followed this drone from TUS area all the way to 50 miles outside of town, up to an elevation of 14,000 ft. Not only did they cover that distance, but they crossed over a mountain range. They were outside of the airport's radio range which is only transmitting low fidelity audio from one of the tallest towers in the area at presumably a ton of power (electricity...wattage) behind the transmission.
So for a line of sight transmitter we would need a low latency, high fidelity transmission capable of those distances. This MIGHT be possible physically, but not practically. The pilot of the drone would certaintly require a massive tower with a ton of power more powerful than the airport has. They would need to be doing it at a higher frequency (which degrades even faster over distance). This type of transmission would HAVE to come from a tower and it would require FCC licensing to transmit on the power and/or frequency required to make this happen (if its even possible to begin with, which I doubt). I am not even addressing the absurd claim that this could be built for $1,000. It simply can't. Full stop. I am addressing the actual capabilities, even if money were no object. This type of thing (if it were possible, which I don't think it is), would require significant infrastructure. This isn't somebody with a FPV they built off a video they watched on YouTube.
So then we get to the conclusion... how do you communicate with something at these distances and elevations? Satellite. This isn't possible for line of sight. At the $1,000 pricepoint or any other pricepoint.
There are a lot of other claims, such as the fact that it was outmaneuvering the helicopters. It had no thermal profile. But it had the ability to outlast the helicopters in flight time. It also was able to fly up to 14,000 feet which is actually another impressive feat for a smaller aircraft. I suspect it was fixed wing in order to accomplish these elevations and endurance.
Really this type of drone doesn't sound like something a civilian would be capable of building, it sounds like it matches the capabilities of a military grade UAV. Since it was first discovered near the AirForce base, I wouldn't discount the fact that it was a military UAV on a training exercise that just decided to harmlessly fool around with the helicopters after it was discovered.
I think what they were chasing was an MQ-1 UAV (popularly known as "The Predator"). The military is mostly replacing these now with the newer MQ-9 (Reaper), so it is common for the military to send all the shiny new equipment overseas to fight in wars and the older ones come back to the states to be used as training equipment. The helicopter pilots estimated that the drone they followed was averaging 75-80 mph. This is actually a peculiar speed because it is faster than a quadcopter is capable of, but even an old high-wing Cessna would fly closer to 100mph. But surprise surprise the MQ-1 has a cruise speed of 80 mph. The MQ-1 can also climb to 25,000 ft. It is operated by aviation fuel (so it can fly for hours), but has a low thermal profile (to avoid Surface to Air missiles). It also switches between satellite transmission for general flight and line-of-sight transmission for take-off and landings.
That's just my theory, but I think they were chasing a $10M MQ-1 military UAV. Not a $1,000 FPV someone built off a Youtube video. Everything just seems to point to that. It matches the capabilities perfectly. I can't think of anything cheaper that could do what the helicopter pilots observed. The drone should have been flying with full aviation lighting since they were flying in American airspace, but maybe they had turned off those because they were simulating a night strike training mission.
If the cartels aren't already using autonomous subs, it seems surprising.
>The number of narcosubs—boats modified to minimize their profile while shuttling drugs, has exploded nearly tenfold in the past decade.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-seas-suddenly-swimming-drug-2...
The portion above water is designed to be low enough to be hidden by waves but is still above the surface so using GPS wouldn't be an issue.
Neither do most narco“subs”, which are mostly semi-submersible.
If it kept to a low profile, it wouldn't even matter if it was slightly above water.
https://english.elpais.com/spain/2021-07-15/spanish-police-s...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mexicos-cartels-are-usin...
P.S. you can buy the drone in the first article for a few 1000’s $ on Alibaba…
You have any links?
A tweet from Spanish police with a video of the compartment[1].
A Vice article about the same drone[2]. At the end it says, "Police found seven drones, each with load capacities of between four and 25kg," which puts the biggest at 1/6th the capacity of this one. Allegedly.
For perspective, the Aerolite-103, a single-seat ultralight aircraft with a maximum fuel+pilot+cargo takeoff weight of 147kg and a wingspan of 8.18m[3].
Of course, it's not like police would over hype[4] a drug bust[5].
[0] https://www.avinc.com/uas/jump-20
[1] https://twitter.com/policia/status/1414875097752653826?s=20
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/dyvwmv/look-at-this-huge-dru...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aero-Works_Aerolite_103
[4] https://www.buzzfeed.com/aliciabarron/people-are-totally-und...
[5] https://www.metro.us/nypd-makes-the-most-pathetic-drug-bust-...
1.) competing against the economics of standard delivery vehicles
2.) Ref: law/liability. At scale you're possibly violating airspace of people's property and, while I don't expect people in non-rural areas to start using them for skeet practice in general, I would expect lots of complaints to the government if they become annoying.
There is no such thing in the United States. All airspace is under federal jurisdiction, and the only agency with rule making authority is the FAA.
https://aerocorner.com/blog/drone-over-private-property/
I probably won't shoot down a delivery drone though I may file a complaint. But if a drone starts poking around at low altitude over my property, it will definitely be skeet shooting practice time (on a rural property).
I read the first one too. The problem with these anecdotes is that none of them rule out that the injuries were caused by a bullet on a shallow trajectory, with velocity much greater than terminal velocity. The only evidence is that no one heard a shot, but this is not convincing.
Nevertheless, there is a potential for serious injury and nobody should be shooting into the air for fun.
As long as you pay property tax your property is really owned by Uncle Sam.
It's the kind of living only the most dedicated can afford to do. Everyone else simply pays city/county taxes and assume the problem is going to get sorted.
I was told that I own my land and everything up to “the sky”. Granted, for practical purposes this means that if a neighbors tree over hangs my plat I have the right to trim it up across my property line.
Any legal beagles able to chime in?
To make matters confusing, there are "air rights," but those have to do with zoning and how tall a building can be made. Nothing to do with flying.
https://www.budk.com/12-Gauge-Skynet-Drone-Defense--3-Pack-3...
> Clearly people have some rights to the space over their property.
According to the federal government, they do not.
> Case law isn't well established but, outside of airport landing rights, the consensus seems to be something like 400 feet which is in general uncontrolled airspace
Incidentally, 400’ is the maximum height a UAS may fly under 14 USC 107 without special authorization.
> But if a drone starts poking around at low altitude over my property, it will definitely be skeet shooting practice time (on a rural property)
As “drones” are considered aircraft under federal law, shooting at them is a federal crime:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoglia/2016/04/13/faa-confi...
Anyways, after talking to a lawyer and learning about FAA regulation I decided it was too much work.
The short version is a drone with line of sight can fly under x' (think it was 600). Over that it must have first person cameras, and is technically an aircraft so it must be flown by a licensed pilot and get FAA clearance... but you can't drop a taco from 600', and you can't go below 600' without the operator having line of sight.
- Have a licensed pilot fly the tacos remotely above 600’ to the delivery address.
- Fly in a holding pattern at 600’ until the user indicates in your app they’re available to receive delivery.
- Pass off control so the user (who has LOS) becomes the operator and uses your app to maneuver the drone down to drop the taco and then back up to 600’ where it returns to the remote pilot’s control.
It would probably be a really expensive taco delivery but I think I’d pay a premium for a taco if I got to pilot a drone for a minute?
The biggest problem is that drones are effectively flying lawnmowers.
They are increasingly using flight tracker tools to check and see if privately contracted aerial SIGINT services to local/state/federal government are orbiting overhead.
One exceptional day he seemed to be coordinating receipt of some large shipment, and he started freaking out about some truck driver not being where he was supposed to be who apparently had a tail to monitor his whereabouts.
Over the phone with the tail, quite loudly despite being on public display, he instructed the tail to "deploy the kite". Once deployed, he monitored a video+audio feed on his laptop from what must have been a kite surveillance drone. From the feed he seemed to discover the driver was on the phone arguing with his wife, and apparently this was the reason for pulling over.
Based on this experience I'm under the impression gangs are definitely already using drones. You probably don't hear much about it, because they're being successful.
That seems like it would be really entertaining, at least until he figures out you're paying close attention.
Up until that day I had no idea what he was dealing, but he was obviously a drug dealer; every week a cadre of scummy looking people would meet him in the cafe and give him their burner phones, he'd toss the phones into his backpack and give them all new ones.
This story has way more ridiculousness to it, especially from that particular day... maybe for another time.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S...
[1] http://www.hisutton.com/Largest-Narco-Submarines-Compared.ht...
> ATTEMPTED TO CAPTURE CAMERA FOOTAGE BUT UNABLE
I assume it's slightly harder than duct-taping a smartphone to a helicopter, but I'm still confused at how the military does not, by now, have high-fidelity panoramic video recordings figured out. They've had fifty years of UFOs nonsense and they still can't film the airspace around them in panoramic HD on command?
(Also, to whoever was torturing helicopter pilots by hovering above their rotors, that's just mean. Be nice. Yes, you're superior, but don't put their lives at risk to show it.)
EDIT: I read the article and somehow took away military, which is wrong. They're not military, so I can be a little more forgiving. But not much. Hit button to start recording video 60 seconds ago should be standard aviation equipment in the time of drones.
The police helicopters have very nice stabilized cameras but they're on the bottom (can't look upward more than a small amount) and hard to aim at things moving in the air. It seems like the drone was intentionally maneuvering to be difficult to track with a camera... the pilots both report it hovering around 1k feet directly above them, which is pretty much the place that it's least likely the helicopter would be able to image it.
In previous discussions about terrestrial origins, either it's a hobbyist, an industry professional, a criminal, a terrorist, black ops domestic military, or a foreign state actor. I don't see 70+ minute flights without the resources of a state actor, foreign or domestic.
Another possibility is such stories are concocted to throw shade on drones to legitimize FAA's overreach and/or police-industrial complex wants to sell new toys to counter whatever this supposedly was.
night vision systems are , most typically, very low-light sensitive cameras that occasionally have specific-wavelength illuminators -- they aren't generally thermal cameras.
I tend to think something with a run-time like that is liquid fuel based, too.
It's likely they had thermal cameras available. There is a lot of video of police helicopters using thermal imaging to track people they are chasing.
The audio I linked to makes me think they tried to use it but couldn't see the object.
It's more likely there were multiple drones swapping in and out.
In the report[1] they explicitly list it has as a rotocraft with an unknown (-1) number of rotors. They also list the UAS type as "quadcopter". At one point in the article they describe it as "hovering"
[1] https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/the-drive-cms-content-sta...
We should be long past the point of uncritically believing everything police claim.
They also made visual contact with the light on the underside of the drone: "From what I can tell just from its position light, you know, I would have to imagine it was larger than a quadcopter"
Military primary radar, like the one that picked up MH370, obviously can.
But I don't think any of those are designed for really accurate altitude measurements. That job is usually done with targeting radar which (at the expense of not being able to see multiple targets) can lock a single target and get it's exact position.
1. Gas engine would allow for >1 hour flight times
2. Flight management systems like Ardupilot means it could have been flying a pre-planned mission with little/no real time control. The helicopter pilots may have been mistaken thinking that it was reacting to them at all.
3. Or maybe it was reacting: two way radio links are nearly trivial with low enough bandwidths. The controllers could have been monitoring the ATC picture and had the RC plane also reporting telemetry. When the police helicopter got close they may have inserted waypoints into the flight path of the RC plane to make it fly away.
There are thousands of serious RC hobbyists in the USA alone that could make something like this. Most of them follow the rules, but I wouldn't put it past a drug cartel to pay/coerce someone to make one for them. Maybe foreign spies, but I think that's unlikely considering Davis-Monthan AFB doesn't have any interesting research or test units. The Chinese wouldn't smuggle in a RC plane to watch A-10s or F-16s training in a MOA.
It baffles me how narrow minded people can become once the mainstream technology is ubiquitous on every corner, it's like thinking of other possibilities is a hard wall. If I would do that with a drone I would use analog transmission using a Yagi antenna with a good reflector and I could definitely steer the drone more than 30 Km away from it:
https://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/0...
Unless it is a state actor it i LEO is very tough ( until starlink anyway), GEO latency can't handle video calls latencies, not sure if they can handle like you describe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1qiZ_L8wX4
with some context:
https://www.openminds.tv/leaked-ufo-video-captured-by-homela...
https://www.ufo-timeline.com/aguadilla-puerto-rico-uap/
Probably a bird, but interesting anyway.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42021/radio-transmissi...
The orbital velocity of Venus is 35.0 km/s so pretty quick, but no real manoeuvrability.
The solar system it's within is 200 kilometers per second. But it's all relative so that's being silly. I guess this is it, a relatively slow looking planet looking like it's going fast from the observer who's moving and missing a frame of reference. The way we move through space is pretty interesting, Earth doesn't go in circles, controversially called a Vortex, a frames of reference thing again - http://rhysy.net/solar-system-vortex.html
But if you are into real life drones ISIS have been working on pulse jet ones based on US hobbyists, but no success so far, dam real life bit, but still pretty interesting - https://www.conflictarm.com/reports/procurement-networks-beh...
But no way am I downloading that pdf
You should learn Tor
And a sand box program like Sandboxie
If you are worried about tracking (like the PDF pinging back with a zero day) you'll have to look at Sandboxie's internet restrictions.
Or use something like Tails which does everything.
I won't link these because you need to do your own research to find what you want.
Give it a shot if it's easy. You could sell a ton of them.