To my memory; these things have been repeatedly popping up in the southern US; Arizona and Texas.
Maybe not for under $1k. But under any price? Is it physically possible? Yes.
We're not talking about a hobbyist guy in his garage here. We're talking about either US Military accidentally caught in a game of cat and mouse with local law enforcement, or more likely: drug cartels.
Both organizations operate heavily in the southwestern US, clandestinely without the need or desire to inform local law enforcement of their operations, and have practically unlimited budgets to accomplish their goals.
The real goal of a press release like this is to drum up a little FUD to take up to the governor and secure more funding, maybe even get your local precinct another helicopter, a cool drone, or a task force. And hell, maybe that's what they legitimately need here.
This was my conclusion too. This isn't a hobbyist. This isn't even a rogue professional drone pilot that flies drones for Hollywood movies or something.
This is a real UAV that is military grade.
It was either the actual military (it was first discovered just outside of an AirForce base) or a drug cartel that got their hands on a drone. Military Grade drones are pretty available at this point to any group with enough means (money). For example the Elbit Hermes 450[1] is a long-endurance tactical drone that has been sold to many countries outside of the big militaries. For example Georgia (the country), Azerbaijan, North Macedonia, The Philippines, Zambia, Botswana, Thailand, and even Mexico, Brazil, Columbia. Columbia bought a ton of drones from Elbit in the range of "tens of millions of dollars". The benefit of the Hermes 450 is the cost, it is supposed to cost only around $1M, which makes it very affordable for countries without massive military budgets like the US. I don't think it is a stretch that a drug cartel bought one ($1M is a small price to pay if it can save a single $10M drug run from being captured), or that they bought it from another country like Georgia or Columbia.
They are satellite controlled and have a 20 hours flight time, meaning it could have easily flown from a long ways away.
Oh and even the US Customs and Border Patrol own two of these same drones. Which I find also interesting.
These helicopter pilots were either chasing a drug cartel drone like this or a USAF drone. Because they first spotted it nearby the Air Force base, it seems to me that most likely it was actually an Air Force drone (most likly a MQ-1 Predator drone) that was conducting a training simulation near the base when it was discovered by the helo pilots. Then it just proceeded to play around with them. The one pilot talked about how it would fly in front of the helicopter and then maneuver to get behind it and follow it, staying in the helicopter's shadow. That sounds like a military move. I bet this whole thing started off as a training mission and then went off course and they decided to train on the helicopter pilots. They even said that the average speed of the drone was an estimated 70 knots. Well the MQ-1 UAV has a cruising speed of... surprise, surprise... 70 knots!
Agree with your analysis here. I don’t think this could be military otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing a press release and release of audio under freedom of information. If this was under serious investigation doubt we wouldn’t of seen the audio released as well. My bet would be the helicopter pilots got overexcited and the FAA is comfortable this is just advanced hobbyist equipment.
Maybe not for under $1k. But under any price? Is it physically possible? Yes.
We're not talking about a hobbyist guy in his garage here. We're talking about either US Military accidentally caught in a game of cat and mouse with local law enforcement, or more likely: drug cartels.
Both organizations operate heavily in the southwestern US, clandestinely without the need or desire to inform local law enforcement of their operations, and have practically unlimited budgets to accomplish their goals.
The real goal of a press release like this is to drum up a little FUD to take up to the governor and secure more funding, maybe even get your local precinct another helicopter, a cool drone, or a task force. And hell, maybe that's what they legitimately need here.