But if a civilian group pushed on this, we'd at least find out where the limits are before gov/military stopping it. Actually, UAPx went and tried to record with sensors off Catalina but I believe only for a week. Loeb's Galileo Project will likely place optical sensors near these hotspots but haven't seen any mention by them of sonar or acoustic monitoring.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/pentagon-relea...
You don't need to believe them but that's what's been publicly said.
Also, admitting that adversaries might be/are flying drones in US territory would be embarrassing domestically and internationally, and could cause a panic. Steeping it in mystery and hinting at "aliens" is silly and interesting enough to be a harmless spectacle.
I think we'd also be shocked at just how trivial some of the drones are that are able to evade defenses or detection. I suspect we're good at detecting airplane-sized targets, maybe even ICMB-sized targets, but we have little to detect and stop drone-sized targets that can fly at relatively low altitudes, can be launched from inside the US, are easily smuggled and assembled domestically, etc.
Reports of such sightings took place within restricted airspace, sometimes at sea and sometimes during training missions at sea. I imagine a close-up look at things from better vantage points could be valuable, especially if they're doing signals intelligence.
I also see it as power projection and tickling the dragon's tail. Russia and China both have histories of doing similar things with jets and warships. Russia has a history of doing this with jets[1], they recently had their jets come "within 5 feet" of US Navy planes[2], as well as doing the same with their navy[3][4]. China, too[5][6][7].
> Dick waving ruins the element of surprise and also invites an arms race, that you'd be a fool to play against the US military industrial complex.
Adversaries have a history of dick-waving, as does the US, and I don't think there's much of surprise in the fact that they're interested in espionage/psyops. IMO, that arms race started a long time ago, and our military puts out PR pieces about how they're using and developing drones for all types of applications. I don't think there's much risk with exposing advanced tech, either. I think Mick West did a good job at explaining the videos that are purported to show UAPs doing incredible things[8], and I don't believe those are actually highly advanced drones capable of bending the laws of physics.
The point of drones is that they are cheap, disposable and easy to mass produce, so I don't think any groundbreaking advances in tech are being deployed here. Also, using drones sends the message that for every 1 drone the US detects now, they could've easily sent thousands, or more, if they wanted to.
Ultimately, I think it's a mix of intelligence collecting and sending the message that they can get this close, they're watching and there's not much the US can do about it.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/14...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-aircraft-buzz-us-nav...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-warship-aggressiv...
[4] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730593184/u-s-navy-russian-wa...
[5] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-mili...
[6] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinese-j-15-fighters-...
[7] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/us-china-destroyers-...
That said, let’s speed this up. The Kraken is always in the last 5%, and C’thulhu is always the very last place you look.
Inverse survivorship bias: That's because you are no longer able to look elsewhere...
Falcon 1: confirming Falcon 2's visual, seeing the same thing... and my dead son from a decade ago... transmission dies
Falcon 2: Can't see nothing on the AV, wtf?
The problem is that at the moment pretty much the only technology available to map ocean floors at scale is sonar, which gets more imprecise with increasing depth. For individual SAR ops, robotic AUVs can be used such as in the search for the MH370 wreck, but as that effort has shown that doesn't scale well unless you can really narrow down the potential submergence site as was done with AF447.
At the core, the enemy is simple physics - the deeper the body of water, the less light penetrates down to the sea floor, and anything RF-based is out of the game as well.