Drones over NJ: What do ATC and other professionals say?

[Edward Current]

Last night I did a search for "air traffic control +drones" plus variations on that string, hoping to turn up an interview or statement by an air traffic controller — any air traffic controller really, but hopefully one who works in the region — regarding the "drones" over New Jersey. I found nothing whatsoever.

Shouldn't an air traffic controller have some light to shed on this topic?

According to Googlopedia, an SUV-size drone should show up on ATC radar:

I mentioned ATC to a random person on Twitter, and as always seems to be the case when one confronts an evidence-challenged belief directly, he was forced to escalate to a possible conspiracy to silence these civilian experts:

Assuming this is a valid train of thought, is there anything we at Metabunk can do to reach out to ATC at Newark International Airport? Given the intense media attention on New Jersey for weeks now, It strikes me as really odd if no reporter has actually asked a local air traffic controller whether they've seen anything unexpected.

And what about pilots flying into Newark? Have they seen anything unusual?

It seems the only local authorities doing interviews are sheriffs, state police, lawmakers, and whatnot...rather than professionals who routinely deal with things flying through the air.

 

[Mendel]

Any individual traffic controller could only state what happened in their sector during their shift. What you're looking for is FAA statements.

Article:

DHS, FBI, FAA & DoD Joint Statement on Ongoing Response to Reported Drone Sightings

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks with approximately 100 leads generated, and the federal government is supporting state and local officials in investigating these reports. Consistent with each of our unique missions and authorities, we are quickly working to prioritize and follow these leads. We have sent advanced detection technology to the region. And we have sent trained visual observers.

Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones. We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.

Source: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/dhs-fbi-faa-dod-joint-statement-ongoing-response-reported-drone-sightings

(excerpted)

 

[Mendel]

This was published yesterday (excerpted):

Article:

More and more people are using drones, which means more people are noticing them in the sky. The FAA gets a lot of questions when people spot drones in their communities so we're answering some of the most common ones about drone use and safety.

Does the FAA look into reports of drone sightings?
The FAA investigates all reports of unsafe operations. However, you don't need specific authorization from the FAA to fly drones in most locations.

Can you shoot down drones above your property?
No. It's illegal under federal law to shoot at an aircraft. A private citizen shooting at any aircraft – including unmanned aircraft – poses a significant safety hazard. An unmanned aircraft hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air. Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in a civil penalty from the FAA and/or criminal charges from federal, state or local law enforcement.

Source: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/what-know-about-drones

 

[Mendel]

Source: https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/1869729427250364576


FAA twitter graphic of typical drone and aircraft altitudes

 

[Edward Current]

Of course. The problem however is that if you're a believer, believer-adjacent, or believer-potential, you are going to write off a sweeping FAA statement as the "official story" by a big bad government that routinely lies...just like these same people have written off the FBI/DHS/White House statements. You know the drill.

I think it would help these people, as well as neutral onlookers who are generally skeptical of the government, if they heard from individuals on the job rather than a giant faceless government entity. What are these professionals saying to each other at work? Do they think all of this is silly? ATC radar gets recorded — is there any talk about something anomalous that was recorded on someone else's shift? Have they been told anything by their Federal employer? Have any Men In Black come into the tower recently?

To me there's a big difference between "there is no threat, signed, the government" and a dude on TV saying, "We see pelicans sometimes. I've been doing this for 15 years and there's no way that something that size would escape our attention."

As always, we're dealing with perceptions here, not facts, and folks who are perhaps less than rational.

 

[Ann K]

As always, we're dealing with perceptions here, not facts, and folks who are perhaps less than rational.

That "less than rational", of course, makes it difficult to give them rational explanations.

 

[JMartJr]

I think it would help these people, as well as neutral onlookers who are generally skeptical of the government, if they heard from individuals on the job rather than a giant faceless government entity.

It would be nice to think so -- but, e.g., THIS POST ABOVE, individuals on the job who disagree with the exciting bunk narrative are instantly assumed to be shills for the giant faceless government entities, or the like.

Were I an ATC employee, I'm not sure I'd want to stick my neck out on this, however silly I thought it was. That said, it could not hurt to make the effort to reach out -- the fact that we are not hearing from them in the media may mean they have not been asked, may mean they are not interested in stepping into all this, may mean they were asked and said "nothing there" and so were not put on the news -- or some combination.

 

[Edward Current]

That "less than rational", of course, makes it difficult to give them rational explanations.

My point is that some rational explanations are more palatable than others, across a broad swath of the rationality spectrum.

Sadly we've reached a point in our society where a written statement put out by a government entity can actually make matters worse. The government made a statement, so they must be hiding something!

I don't believe that's true in the case of individuals being interviewed, though. The general trend seems to be that an individual giving an account of their personal experience is more credible than a powerful entity releasing a written statement.

Sure, an individual can be written off as being a government shill, or as someone "they got to." But that requires more mental heavy-lifting than dismissing a written statement by a major government entity. For many, lying is just something the government does, so if they said something, they must have been lying again.

It's now mainstream in the U.S. to see that the government has released a statement and assume they are lying or covering something up. It's still not mainstream (I hope) to assume that every Federal employee is a government shill engaged in a cover-up.

Let's not fall into the trap of reducing everyone to two categories: rational people who accept government statements at face value (whom we can help), and irrational people who think everyone is a paid shill (who cannot be helped). Lots of in between there.

 

[Duke]

And still no aircrew reports that I've seen.

 

[Resistor]

You can listen to real time ATC radio traffic here - Source: https://www.liveatc.net/ The site has an archive feature that you can search by airport identifier and date/time group to cross reference drone sightings with ATC and Pilot reporting - Source: https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php

Anyone can send a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FAA. This was done by an investigator for the December 2019 and early January 2020 Colorado drone incidents - Source: https://www.twz.com/34662/faa-documents-offer-unprecedented-look-into-colorado-drone-mystery "Over the past several months, Douglas D. Johnson, a volunteer researcher affiliated with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), has utilized the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain many hundreds of pages of emails and other pertinent documents from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other federal agencies regarding the mystery-drone flap and has made them available to The War Zone. In addition, hundreds of additional relevant pages have been located, but are still being processed by the FAA. The FAA is also currently withholding some key documents, citing FOIA exemptions. "

 

[Edward Current]

You can listen to real time ATC radio traffic here - Source: https://www.liveatc.net/ The site has an archive feature that you can search by airport identifier and date/time group to cross reference drone sightings with ATC and Pilot reporting - Source: https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php

Maybe some intrepid investigator will find a tape of giddy air traffic controllers saying "Whoa, what is that? Look at it go! It's rotating! My goshhhh!" Or maybe they will find 18-minute gaps in the tapes every so often, evidence of a cover-up?

 

[NorCal Dave]

You can listen to real time ATC radio traffic here - Source: https://www.liveatc.net/ The site has an archive feature that you can search by airport identifier and date/time group to cross reference drone sightings with ATC and Pilot reporting - Source: https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php

I believe there is a sub-culture or at least a group of enthusiasts, that do just this, listen to ATC traffic. I have some ATC type frequencies programed into my small handy-talky, but I'm too far from any useful transmissions. But, if there are people doing this in the New Jersy/New York area, and I would assume there are, then we should have heard from them by now. With the amount of drones being reported, and often in major flight paths, there should LOTS of encounters that these guys would have listen in too and maybe recorded.

"Over the past several months, Douglas D. Johnson, a volunteer researcher affiliated with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU), has utilized the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain many hundreds of pages of emails and other pertinent documents from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other federal agencies regarding the mystery-drone flap and has made them available to The War Zone.

And....?

Has he or anyone come up with anything pertinent? If the skys were/are full of hundreds of unauthorized drones, often reported to be in the middle of the take-off and landing patterns of the major New Jersy area airports, there must be some ATC information on this, right? Aborted landings, aborted take-offs, near misses, rerouting of aircraft to avoid all these drones.

Even if the government is engaged in a "cover up", there is still all the people that are onboard all these planes. I only fly a few times a year, my wife was usually flying once or twice a month for the last 5-8 years (obviously not during COVID) and in that time we've experienced 1 go-around and she has had a few re-routes due to weather. IF there were the vast number of drones that seems to be the central narrative, AND they are often operating right in the major flight paths, there would be reports from passengers about all the go-arounds and re-routed flights, despite the FAA covering it all up.

While there have been a very few drone aircraft encounters reported, it's nowhere near the number that should coincide with all the reported drones operating in major flight paths. Of course, this discrepancy is explained IF in fact the vast majority of reported drones in major flight paths are just normal manned commercial aircraft operating in their normal flight paths.

In addition, hundreds of additional relevant pages have been located, but are still being processed by the FAA. The FAA is also currently withholding some key documents, citing FOIA exemptions. "

I'm going out on a limb here and betting a donut with anyone, that 1: Not much will come of this search for ATC records, because there were in fact very few actual drones involved, and 2: When not much comes of this endeavor, it will be claimed that the evidence for the nefarious drones, like UFOs before them, is being withheld and covered up in the "key documents" the FAA is supposedly not releasing. Absence of evidence will be cited as evidence.

 

[FatPhil]

And....?

And who are "The War Zone"? The first googoo result for their top nob's name is:

To The Warzone creator Tyler Rogoway, the answer is obvious: the mysterious craft, and other military UFO sightings like them, are likely swarms of drones that belong to foreign adversaries, as detailed in a recent report for the site.

-- https://futurism.com/this-theory-could-explain-many-military-ufo-sightings
that's regarding Jeremy Corbell's pyramid-shaped UFOs (aka night vision bokeh to those with eyes). Clearly yet another true believer. Spouting yet another of the tropes.