“Drones”

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Here in rural KY.

Bring it :emoji_laughing:

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I worked as a technician on the U.S. Navy Deep Drone unmanned submersible and in addition to aircraft disaster recovery, we also worked test ordinance recovery. Most people arent aware, but not only do we have hydrophone and other sensor arrays spider-legging out from coastlines, we also have undersea military training and testing locations (mostly where the sea is clearer). The military does exorcises in these ranges...ships, subs, aircraft and I'm sure now more advanced drones (my story is roughly turn of 1990). They launched target drones like you describe, except these were under water.

The weapons were supposed to near miss the drones but sometimes collided (these were drones built on torpedo platforms designed to act and sound like Soviet subs, etc.). When they collided, both the drone could not be maneuvered back to the base ship/boat but also the weapon (a torpedo for instance) could not blow its flotation device for the recovery ships to gaff and lift onboard.

We were sent in to recover them thousands of feet down on the sea floor. These were secret operations in the sense that nothing was ever broadcast about them, but some people, even the Soviets (this was going on during the collapse of the Soviet Union) knew something was going on. The island residents where these ranges were could see the activity and our very unusual looking sub system on deck when we came to port and sometimes the weapons and drones we recovered right there on deck, sometimes tarped but one could surmise the shape.
Pretty cool job.

We now live not far from a submarine base that the US Navy has maintained in landlocked Idaho since 1946. It's their Acoustic Development Research Center, in Bayview Idaho, on the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille.

https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/589

Before buying a home on nearby Hayden Lake, we had actually looked at one on the steep hill directly above the base. The deck looked down on a whole lot of security...

The base is where the navy does advanced sonar research and development, using a fleet thought to consist of 7 reduced-size (though still big!) subs, thought to be unmanned. The lake is 1150 feet deep, over 40 miles long, and very quiet, especially at night when the recreational boat traffic essentially stops. Plus, when the 'secret' base was expanding during the Cold War, I can just imagine Navy brass thinking: 'Lets see the Soviets try and get a spy trawler in here!'

During WWII, the Farragut Naval Training Station outside of Bayview trained almost 300,000 sailers in the 30 months it was operational. I presume many of those Idaho-trained sailors had never seen an ocean until they were deployed. Farragut is now a very cool 4,000 acre state park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farragut_Naval_Training_Station
 
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.......Ok now we know.....per the White House Pres Conf today....... "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized the drones to fly for “research” and were “not the enemy.” ......someone should do a FOIA through the FAA to find out the peticulars.....However, these were likely mapping drones or a new type of sensing drone they were testing and then some recreation drones also jumped in.
 
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.......Ok now we know.....per the White House Pres Conf today....... "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized the drones to fly for “research” and were “not the enemy.” ......someone should do a FOIA through the FAA to find out the peticulars.....However, these were likely mapping drones or a new type of sensing drone they were testing and then some recreation drones also jumped in.
Maybe so, but if so, why did the deny their existence to begin with? And then after their existence was obvious they spun a big yarn about what they actually were? So why in the world did they not just say at the beginning that they were “research” drone? Why the lies?
 
Probably just testing new aerial SIGINT/ELINT/IMINT/PHOTINT etc....

Just what we need, more Government surveillance of Americans on American soil.....
 
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I have yet to find a conspiracy theorist who also has thorough experience as a project manager. Trying to get twelve people on the same page is hard enough. Involving hundreds, across multiple agencies, while also maintaining secrecy? I feel like any successfully secret government projects remained so only because those groups tasked with uncovering the evidence were plagued by similar dysfunction.

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Maybe so, but if so, why did the deny their existence to begin with? And then after their existence was obvious they spun a big yarn about what they actually were? So why in the world did they not just say at the beginning that they were “research” drone? Why the lies?
All good questions, All I know is out of all the pics I saw they were LIDAR mapping drones and as mentioned previously, my company has experience running them at night for various reasons....IE clearer mapping site, air space conflicts, or shear area needed to be collected in a time frame.....
 
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.......Ok now we know.....per the White House Pres Conf today....... "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized the drones to fly for “research” and were “not the enemy.” ......someone should do a FOIA through the FAA to find out the peticulars.....However, these were likely mapping drones or a new type of sensing drone they were testing and then some recreation drones also jumped in.
I lean tinfoil hat but I believe if this were the case they'd have said it far sooner.
 
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.......Ok now we know.....per the White House Pres Conf today....... "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized the drones to fly for “research” and were “not the enemy.” ......someone should do a FOIA through the FAA to find out the peticulars.....However, these were likely mapping drones or a new type of sensing drone they were testing and then some recreation drones also jumped in.
Woot! Posted exactly at 4:20.
 
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Great deal on LEM Grinders!

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