Tucson copter cop says mysterious, ‘sophisticated’ super-drone ‘like no other’

https://dronedj.com/2021/06/23/update-tucson-copter-cop-says-mysterious-sophisticated-super-drone-like-no-other/

by elijahparker • 5 years ago

150 126 5 years ago

Are there any consumer drones with a flight time of over an hour? (An hour+ of high-performance flight at that).

grp000• 5 years ago

Blog comments are mentioning the fact that one of the choppers had to refuel, maybe a testament to how energetic the chase was, but maybe it was already low at that point. That, and the fact that there is an AFB there points to a military drone.

gpm• 5 years ago

Not exactly consumer, but Anduril sells a drone that claims to be capable of that (100 minutes +)

https://www.anduril.com/ghost

anon946• 5 years ago

Depends on how you define "consumer", but hybrid drones can fly a long time: https://www.quaternium.com/ .

rtkwe• 5 years ago

There are prosumer gas powered ones coming out. My guess is it could be a version of this NASA project that can hover and then transition to winged flight. It's unclear how good of a look they got at it.

https://www.nasa.gov/langley/ten-engine-electric-plane-compl...

neom• 5 years ago

If it's performing maneuvers as complex as described, it must be heavily computer assisted or computer controlled, so you'd presumably need sensors, computer, etc, that adds a lot of weight. On top of that, the speeds they describe coupled with the wind they said it was fighting, it would need to be very well built. Given all the factors, I think it would probably have to be extremly extremly advance.

DuskStar• 5 years ago

Sensors and computers aren't meaningfully different for a 5' quadrotor vs a 5" micro. Same physics, same control loop.

pillefitz2• 5 years ago

Sensors and computers weigh next to nothing. Every piece of cheap plastic commonly used for building quadcopters fulfills your criterion of being 'very well built'. Nothing about your description makes a drone 'extremely advanced'. Just a hobby project of some random guy/gal.

jcims3• 5 years ago

Computers are 100% required for motor coordination and other low level flight details with a multirotor uav, but in terms of piloting the aircraft a typical human brain is quite capable with practice.

https://youtu.be/SldJIisWFmE

himinlomax2• 5 years ago

It's nearly trivially easy to build one, though not necessarily cheap. Just replace the battery pack with an engine, generator and fuel. It may be necessary to use a turbine engine to meet requirements, hence not cheap, but for flight control you just need to use free open source software firmware (Ardupilot?) that has long been freely available and tweak it.

jfrunyon3• 5 years ago

I think it's highly unlikely that this was a "consumer" drone. (But there are definitely "professional" drones that have longer flight times)

Erik8162• 5 years ago

I'm not clear why it is assumed this is a "drone." From the article, it sounds like all that could be identified was a single green light. This seems like a classic UFO/UAP. Maybe it was a drone, but I don't see the evidence to make that conclusion based on this article.

defaultname2• 5 years ago

The article links a number of other sources. The device was described as a 5 ft x 3 ft quad copter -- standard drone arrangement, but larger. But too small to be manned.

By the contemporary, common use of the word, drone fits. Someone made a large scale version if the story is accurate.

exporectomy4• 5 years ago

Where did you get 5x3 ft quadcopter? I only found an FBI interviewee saying it was 4-6 feet diameter and unknown if it was quad or hex configuration. If they couldn't count the propellers, I wouldn't be confident they saw any propellers at all. Maybe it was fixed wing, for instance.

D13Fd2• 5 years ago

I mean, it's an unmanned aircraft of some sort, and unmanned aircraft are typically called drones. What difference are you suggesting between "drone" and "UFO/UAP" in this context?

Erik8162• 5 years ago

Drone pretty clearly implies to me "a craft piloted remotely by a human." A UFO/UAP is an aerial phenomenon we can't currently identify. It could be a human piloted craft, it could be something else yet to be determined.

taneq• 5 years ago

Because if you say you saw a drone you get believed, but if you say you saw a UFO you get treated like a crank?

stjohnswarts• 5 years ago

I think it's because people simply don't believe there are non-human build "ufo's" flying around out there. This leads to the military being the most likely source if locals can't explain.

NaturalPhallacy7• 5 years ago

99% chance it's an air force UAV.

Look at the nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force base: https://www.google.com/maps/search/Davis-Monthan+Air+Force+B...

A plethora of planes, helicopters, and 3 big doppler radar domes.

I guarantee the air force were tracking it, probably because it's their baby. The only reason we even heard about it is the police reports, and they weren't in the loop.

The Air Force is not guaranteed to disclose what they do to the local cops, and might use them as a training exercise in fact.

nimbius• 5 years ago

this kind of wishful cheerleading feels more appropriate during an avengers movie. its equally plausible two local cops are just making up tall tales to justify getting a little wild during a certification flight in the event the locals lodge a complaint about the noise.

bostonsre• 5 years ago

There were two helicopters from separate organizations that were both chasing it.

ojbyrne• 5 years ago

It doesn’t completely disprove your theory, but that base is a well-known boneyard: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_boneyard

elihu• 5 years ago

Yep, there's a museum there that'll take you on a bus tour of the boneyard (or at least, it did like 15 years ago or so when I was there).

You can see a bunch of (I think) B-52's with their tails chopped off. Iirc, they did that to comply with arms reduction treaties with what was the Soviet Union. They left them out in the desert like that so that spy satellites (and now Google maps) can spot them and verify that, yes, those planes were really destroyed.

NaturalPhallacy7• 5 years ago

A "boneyard" with three doppler radar stations with diameters close to half of a B-52's wingspan. They saw this UAV the whole time it was in their airspace or I have a bridge to sell you.

himinlomax2• 5 years ago

Is it a boneyard, or is it just a boneyard?

ianhawes• 5 years ago

While it is certainly possible it’s military, I’d say it’s not as likely as you would think. Consider:

1. This drone does not fit the description of any known DOD drone, so you should assume it’s classified. The DOD is meticulous about only flying classified aircraft in restricted airspace where they can prevent prying eyes and inadvertent attention. Tucson is not immediately close to any of the usual hotspots for classified aircraft (Area 51 for example).

2. The article describes the drone buzzing the original CBP chopper as well as flying an orbit around the police helicopter. It is reasonable to suggest that a collision between the drone and either of those helicopters would be fatal for the pilot. No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.

3. Classified and unclassified aircraft are not just operated by a dude that hops into a plane or sits down at a drone console. They’re planned out. They’re also not operated in a vacuum. If your scenario of a classified drone operating in this airspace were true, and the drone was picked up by a friendly chopper, the operator would most likely immediately land safely and have someone reach out to the pilots and let them know not to mess with the aircraft. They would certainly not go rogue and risk a major accident or fatality.

4. I consider it highly unlikely the DOD would ever use other agency resources to unwittingly run training Ops. That seems like a career-ending move.

v0x• 5 years ago

I can't speak for the whole of DOD but there is serious consideration that goes into training flights, with respect to not violating any local laws and especially not fucking with local agencies. It would be unfathomable for this kind of thing to happen in a military training or testing exercise without a serious cascade of errors. Also, I would have to imagine that any supervisor involved would have immediately contacted the civilian agency involved to say "it's us, please back off."

Bdkbb• 5 years ago

No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario

That depends fully on what type of military pilots you know.

jjcon• 5 years ago

This drone does not fit the description of any known DOD drone, so you should assume it’s classified. The DOD is meticulous about only flying classified aircraft in restricted airspace

I think the most likely explanation is somewhere between. Plenty of private companies work on tech that is then sold to the DOD and classified (and they continue to produce for the military), but before it is released it is not technically classified.

notional• 5 years ago

The article describes the drone buzzing the original CBP chopper as well as flying an orbit around the police helicopter. It is reasonable to suggest that a collision between the drone and either of those helicopters would be fatal for the pilot. No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.

Here's a video of CPB buzzing a crowd in a helicopter kicking up rocks at them. This happened 2 weeks ago. https://twitter.com/i/status/1401952522319843329

The idea of idiot pilots doing asshole things to other people is par for the course. No reason why this couldn't be military assholes either.

tw04• 5 years ago

No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.

While I agree with your general sentiments, I vehemently disagree with that point. I have no doubt there are endless undocumented instances, but here's a pretty major public one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_cras...

fooker• 5 years ago

Tucson is very close to the border though.

NaturalPhallacy7• 5 years ago

FWIW I upvoted you for contributing to the conversation but...

1. This drone does not fit the description of any known DOD drone, so you should assume it’s classified.

I wouldn't. And I've held a secret clearance. Not fitting any "known" DoD drone means absolutely nothing.

The DOD is meticulous about only flying classified aircraft in restricted airspace where they can prevent prying eyes and inadvertent attention.

Except for when they aren't.

3. Classified and unclassified aircraft are not just operated by a dude that hops into a plane or sits down at a drone console. They’re planned out. They’re also not operated in a vacuum. If your scenario of a classified drone operating in this airspace were true, and the drone was picked up by a friendly chopper, the operator would most likely immediately land safely and have someone reach out to the pilots and let them know not to mess with the aircraft.

You can always spot a layman talking about this when they talk about things as "classified" or "unclassified". Classified what is the relevant question. Confidential? Secret? Top Secret? ???

4. I consider it highly unlikely the DOD would ever use other agency resources to unwittingly run training Ops.

It's a good simulation of what a similarly advanced country might have on hand. The US, China, and Russia routinely conduct "response time" checks by putting a proverbial toe in each other's airspace to test response times and responses in general. The idea that they would never do it with American organizations is presumptuous. Our respective militaries pay close attention it when it happens but aren't particularly alarmed by it because it's not rare.

baybal22• 5 years ago

While it is certainly possible it’s military, I’d say it’s not as likely as you would think. Consider:

Whose military?

Lots of US military bases in Arizona, certainly spies must be everywhere there.

AlotOfReading• 5 years ago

Tucson may not be close to any of the major suspects for classified aircraft, but it is close to a major hub for drones. Fort Huachuca and Libby airfield where the US does most of its drone training are less than 60 miles away.

lultimouomo• 5 years ago

No military pilot I know would ever create the type of risky scenario as described here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_cras...

20 dead, pilot destroyed a videotape filmed from the plane during the crash.

antattack2• 5 years ago

100% chance it's made up since there's no video evidence. These days nothing happens w/o someone filming.

Nobi7• 5 years ago

Not that I believe these click garantueed UFO stories, but the other day I was trying to take a pic of butterflies literally 3 feet away and I barely got anything more than a smudge.

Just saying quite hard taking pics of moving objects even though cameras are quite good...

ALittleLight• 5 years ago

The article doesn't say there is no video evidence. Seems like at least two separate helicopters saw and pursued it. The FBI have enough evidence to describe its size. They may have video they aren't sharing. Odd thing to make up.

carabiner2• 5 years ago

All major US cities are close to USAF bases. "use them as a training exercise" is ludicrous. The last thing a secret aircraft program needs is involvement from officers in public safety, whose job it is to publicize these events. You don't want your secret aircraft known to the public.

nradov2• 5 years ago

Nope. The Air Force doesn't conduct unauthorized UAV flights in civilian airspace. They're paranoid about causing an embarrassing incident that gets a general hauled in to Congress for questioning.

NaturalPhallacy7• 5 years ago

And the NSA does not spy on Americans.

asdff3• 5 years ago

No way congress would do that if the matter is top secret

heyflyguy2• 5 years ago

Wish I could upvote this 100 times.

Testing occurs with a manufacturer before it reaches unit level. No program manager or contract pilot is going to risk his ticket or the program integrity to do a test like this. Or worst of all, not get paid because of a program deviation or black mark.

Once a vehicle reaches unit level it is typically in inventory with somewhat mundane and scripted test patterns for personnel to stay sharp.

The guy saying he has (had?) a secret clearance and they do testing "except when they don't" want to follow the rules is watching too much Netflix.

baybal22• 5 years ago

99% chance it's an air force UAV.
Look at the nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force base

The question is whose air force UAV?

jfrunyon3• 5 years ago

Agreed. But for a completely different reason. This drone "violated restricted airspaces – including those of an Air Force base", not to mention the involvement of the CBP and local law enforcement, but I don't see any mention of the military being involved in the chase OR investigation.

It's not like it would be the first time a military (or even the US military, probably) hid info from their civilian counterparts.

(Of course, a much less cynical explanation is some sort of drug smuggling. How much batteries and drugs could you fit on a ~15sqft quadcopter?)

ithkuil• 5 years ago

What happens if a cop dies or causes harm to civilians while trying to chase a military UAV while being used as unwitting training material? This won't fly well morally

wydfre• 5 years ago

But I thought the local cops were always notified of test exercises. /s

aaron695• 5 years ago

Generation Kill, Evan Wright

"As for the lights that the Marines saw six kilometers away, Shoup believes they were actually seeing lights from a town seventeen kilometers distant. They had misread the lights of a distant city as headlamps from a much closer convoy. Shoup attributes the perception that these headlamps appeared to be moving to a phenomenon called “autokinesis.” He explains, “When you stare at lights long enough in the dark, it looks like they are moving. That’s autokinesis.” What it boils down to is that under clear skies, in open terrain with almost no vegetation, the Marines don’t have a clue what’s out there beyond the perimeter. Even with the best optics and surveillance assets in the world, no one knows what happened to nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs and missiles dropped a few kilometers outside the encampment."

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA• 5 years ago

Off topic, but I was very surprised to learn how faithful the HBO series was to Wright’s book that I went one level deeper and read Nathaniel Fick’s book, “One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Fick’s description of events fit pretty well with Generation Kill. You don’t see that very often.

nwienert3• 5 years ago

I moved to Tucson temporarily during the pandemic. One night walking to get groceries my girlfriend and I saw a very low flying drone with a single green light underneath. It was moving far faster than I’d ever seen a drone, very low over our head and went far into the distance. Couldn’t hear it at all. The speed must have been at or above 100mph, it was almost unbelievable how quick it went.

mistrial9• 5 years ago

NASCAR warmups trials, except for drones.. humans are dangerous, and proud of it

seaorg2• 5 years ago

You didn’t hear it at all? Why do you call it a drone, because it had the typical four struts of a commercial drone? What color was it? How many feet above the ground would you say it was? Did it maneuver at all to avoid buildings as it flew?

nwienert3• 5 years ago

It was high enough, maybe 60-100ft that it could have been quiet and we just didn’t hear. It was off to the left a little as well.

I say drone only because it seemed about that size, didn’t see it beyond the general shape and darker color unfortunately.

tiahura• 5 years ago

Could you tell whether it was a quad or some other form factor?

jbay808• 5 years ago

Could it have been a spot from a green laser pointer traversing the clouds, or something like that?

Gravityloss• 5 years ago

My thoughts exactly. A single green point light...

lend0003• 5 years ago

Remarkably similar to a 1975 case [0], which was regarded as one of the most credibly unexplainable UFO cases prior to information coming out about the Nimitz incident in 2017.

[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ufo-nearcollision-with-army-h...

seaorg2• 5 years ago

It’s literally not similar in any way besides taking place in the air. I mean what are you thinking? This drone is described as traveling at a speed of 100 mph and the ufo in your link is described as accelerating faster than the laws of physics might allow.

lend0003• 5 years ago

Perhaps you didn't read either link? Both involve an unidentified object closing in on a helicopter at some point, stopping and hovering, a green light being the primary visual, and then the object leaving the helicopter and eventually disappearing.

exporectomy4• 5 years ago

The Nimitz "Gimbal" UFO has been explained. I don't think you can count it as unexplainable.

solarengineer2• 5 years ago

Could you point to this explanation? The various explanations that I have encountered use a combination of ridicule and a disregarding of multiple-sensors multiple-observers and instead only talk about camera failures, sensor failures, human eye-sight failures and vision phenomenon.

stevenhuang3• 5 years ago

No. All of the "explanations" latch onto trying to prove the rotating object is lense glare, while ignoring the entire context of why the video was released, that it was indeed a capture of an unidentified craft.

The object(s) in question remain unexplained.

lend0003• 5 years ago

No, the Gimbal video isn't even related to the Nimitz incident. There is significantly less contextual data available for the USS Roosevelt incident or the other east coast incident released in 2017 (labeled GoFast). The GoFast video is the only one that can be reasonably explained as parallax around a slower moving, conventional object, given the lack of additional context.

Making definitive claims about the Nimitz incident means you have a lot more reading to do.

sjg007• 5 years ago

Maybe a Ham radio drone built by some enterprising UofA students?

seventytwo• 5 years ago

Cartel drone, maybe?

baggy_trough• 5 years ago

I like that idea, but why the green light then?

Wistar• 5 years ago

It was transporting marijuana?

yarcob2• 5 years ago

So the operator can see it in the sky?

jfrunyon3• 5 years ago

Beacon for the operator? Light for the camera (particularly if the operator was like "crap, is that a helicopter right in front of it")? Reflection of the helicopter's starboard (green) position light? Reflection of a white light (searchlight?) off something on the drone (marijuana, green structural elements)?

mvanaltvorst• 5 years ago

That was my idea, turbine powered FPV drone to fly over the Mexican border (only ~150km).

jcims3• 5 years ago

Here’s a turbine fpv setup hitting 500kmh

https://youtu.be/TFYXiJ1NJTw

Robotbeat• 5 years ago

If it was fixed wing, it could be pure electric. Zipline’s drones have similar capability. If it’s a quad copter (or similar), batteries wouldn’t last long enough and so it’s burning a fuel of some sort.

trashcan_• 5 years ago

Seems unlikely to be a quadcopter given the 100mph airspeed it was capable of

kolinko• 5 years ago

Mavic FPV goes to 100mph in Manual mode.

Ancapistani2• 5 years ago

Nonsense - you can build a quad capable of that speed for ~$500.

It won’t have a flight time of more than a few minutes, though. For that, you’d need a fixed wing, or a non-lipo power source (like, say, hydrogen)

asperous• 5 years ago

It sounds to me like the city of Tucson and CBP didn't know how to deal with this. I mean chasing a light unmanned drone in a fully manned helicopter is of course going to end up with the kind of silly antics they talk about (the drone flying circles around it).

I wonder how effective an rf jammer would have been.

asdff3• 5 years ago

Police in the bird could have hit it with a shotgun too

cunthorpe2• 5 years ago

Yes, the let's shoot at things in the air over a populated area approach.

layoutIfNeeded• 5 years ago

Probably ayylmaos.

sloshnmosh• 5 years ago

I live near that area and had heard and seen a drone above my house in the very early morning before dawn a month ago.

I first heard a sound like a swarm of bees overhead but looked up to see the drone.

It took off southbound at a high rate of speed in the same flight path that the police helicopters use.

I have no idea if this is related but I thought it was very odd for a drone to be flying at that time over a heavily populated area near the University of Arizona.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

Cops fly drones at night because they're hard to see, but the drones can see in the dark.

Ancapistani2• 5 years ago

So do private drone pilots. I often fly my quadcopter at night.

anotheryou• 5 years ago

was it a quad copter or winged?

Animats• 5 years ago

The reported behavior suggests a fixed-wing drone, not a quadcopter. Especially the circling.

bserge• 5 years ago

Why not retractable wings quad/multirotor? Would have long flight time (especially with a gas engine) and be able to "disappear" by retracting the wings and speeding straight up or down.

jcims3• 5 years ago

The only thing interesting about this is the flight time. Everything else is trivially achievable with a custom build from parts one can order over the Internet. 150mph multirotor, 300mph fixed wing, control and video link range of 100km.

Not particularly relevant but fun to watch: a purpose built, turbine-powered rc aircraft flying at 450mph and executing turns that would probably kill a human pilot.

https://youtu.be/DPGDAZyQ44k?t=150

Onboard: https://youtu.be/H74rXkQBeR4

9dev• 5 years ago

As one of the blog comments suggests, and seems likely from what I've read about it, a lot of the description fits the Northrop-Grumman Bat[0]. One has to wonder why a drone purportedly available exclusively to the military flies such a risky mission...

[0] https://www.northropgrumman.com/wp-content/uploads/BAT_Datas...

helloworld11• 5 years ago

It's worth noting that in the last years of the 19th century, when airship and zeppelin technology was just starting its first steps of development, many people throughout the United States reported numerous cases of phantom airship sightings. Much later, at the dawn of development or at least interest in rocketry and space travel technology in the late 1940's and then 50's, some of the first modern UFO sighting waves really captured public attention. Now, we have cases like this, but in the context of drone technologies, with the mysterious objects being seen having capabilities that appear to be a certain margin beyond what's known to be currently available. All three periods share some odd similarities.

Tucson copter cop says mysterious, ‘sophisticated’ super-drone ‘like no other’

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