There were odd drone sightings over New Jersey and elsewhere toward the end of "the" Biden's term. The public was basically told, "No Worries." But it's still a mystery.
https://www.nj.com/news/2025/10/remember-all-those-drones-in-nj-skies-the-mystery-just-got-weirder.html
===========
A Few Things I Learned About Drones (mostly reassuring)
• Day v Night — Optical surveillance and mapping generally require daylight; reasons for drones flying at night would likely involve sensors looking for something else: thermal/infrared temperature differences, such as non-dispersive gas leaks; radioactivity, possibly a missing nuclear warhead (more in endnote)
• Range — current standard battery life limits long-range drones; gas engines can go farther but are also noisier. Launching from an offshore ship is possible, but highly wasteful use of power to send and return. Heavy payloads (including weight of fuel) would reduce flight time, and therefore limit range. When government spokespersons say "no evidence the drones are dangerous" you can "guess" they mean no dangerous payloads; data collecting surveillance always has an element of the unknown.
• FAA regulations on Navigation Lights and Altitude — lights indicate FAA compliance (if a drone did not have lights after dark, it would be a reason to assume nefarious intent). Flying above 400 feet would trigger more regulatory and licensing permissions and rules. It would be "bad public relations" to take down a drone that was FAA compliant. But flying below 400' is low enough to "sniff."
• FCC regulations on communication — Antenna configurations vary and are proportional to range of data collection. [Using 1 watt for FAA compliance, higher wattages require additional authorization,] "typically" a 360° non-directional antenna is good for hundreds of feet, a forward-faced antenna may reach multiple yards, a narrow directional may be a few miles, but for a drone to fly much further than that from its controller requires using a tracking system. That means if a drone is flying more than "teen-miles," its instructions are being relayed through another device.
> Endnote: Going back to the Reagan era ("Mr. Gorbachev, Take down that wall!") During the fall of the Soviet Union, 80 nuclear warheads went missing from Ukraine... Not going there with this post, but more recently, Obama/Biden era, a whistleblower informed the current administration that one of those was leaving Europe headed for the US.
