Which is not far from Aberdeen, where they test a ton of very secret stuff, like nerve gas, ENIAC, agent orange, and LSD, because it's the HQ of ATEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Test_and_Ev...

As I mentioned in another comment, police departments have been using drones for around 10 years. That's not to mention all the other professional and amateur use. I personally know at least a handful of people who regularly fly theirs. Most major metro areas are going to have drones flying all over the place. So what I'm saying is...why is this interesting?

From the videos, these don't look like traditional photography drones, they are much larger. My money is on eVTOL aircraft. There are hundreds of companies developing them and most are completely unknown to the public.

One of them is probably intensifying their testing program and doesn't want news to leak out too early.

We would watch 5-7 of them take off and fly the exact same route. They weren’t police drones. They’re training.

Edit: my $dayjob is unmanned vehicles

If it were above board government use, wouldn't it be apparent?

AH-64 Apache helicopters sound similar to most every other turbine engine helicopter. I doubt that you could distinguish between them, especially not at any distance.

> I doubt that you could distinguish between them

Do you think that is is possible that someone can? Just not me? Or literally impossible? I would also encourage you not to make assumptions about the background of a random person on the internet.

> especially not at any distance

They fly over our home.

My dad can identify fighter aircraft by engine sound alone, he is/was just really really into military aircraft. He gave me a CD once of mp3s of just the sound of jets flying by. To me, it was just a headache generator hah.

I don't doubt for one second you can identify an Apache by sound.

I guess I would say why are people concerned about this? I’d be much more concerned about ones without navigation lights.

It's a social contagion of panic.

Blurry video clips trend on social media > local news talks about it > people report to state and local government > national news talks about it > people report to national agencies > national agencies shrug > people say it must be aliens, Iranians, or the CIA.

A few thousand people might have seen a drone, but a few million people saw a politician going on national television claiming there's an Iranian mothership off the coast.

That's what I'm saying. Drones are so common that you can buy them at Walmart, and I would be willing to bet that people reporting large drones are just not able to properly judge scale in the sky. What's next, people panicking because they are seeing cars driving around the streets?

I didn’t mean to imply I’m concerned, quite the opposite. Like mentioned, this has been happing for half a decade in my world.