99% chance it's an air force UAV.<p>Look at the nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force base: <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/search/Davis-Monthan+Air+Force+Base/@32.1671006,-110.8603368,2593m/data=!3m1!1e3" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/search/Davis-Monthan+Air+Force+B...</a><p>A plethora of planes, helicopters, and 3 big doppler radar domes.<p>I guarantee the air force were tracking it, probably because it's their baby. The only reason we even heard about it is the police reports, and they weren't in the loop.<p>The Air Force is not guaranteed to disclose what they do to the local cops, and might use them as a training exercise in fact.
I'm not clear why it is assumed this is a "drone." From the article, it sounds like all that could be identified was a single green light. This seems like a classic UFO/UAP. Maybe it was a drone, but I don't see the evidence to make that conclusion based on this article.
The only thing interesting about this is the flight time. Everything else is trivially achievable with a custom build from parts one can order over the Internet. 150mph multirotor, 300mph fixed wing, control and video link range of 100km.<p>Not particularly relevant but fun to watch: a purpose built, turbine-powered rc aircraft flying at 450mph and executing turns that would probably kill a human pilot.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/DPGDAZyQ44k?t=150" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/DPGDAZyQ44k?t=150</a><p>Onboard: <a href="https://youtu.be/H74rXkQBeR4" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/H74rXkQBeR4</a>
I moved to Tucson temporarily during the pandemic. One night walking to get groceries my girlfriend and I saw a very low flying drone with a single green light underneath. It was moving far faster than I’d ever seen a drone, very low over our head and went far into the distance. Couldn’t hear it at all. The speed must have been at or above 100mph, it was almost unbelievable how quick it went.
Remarkably similar to a 1975 case [0], which was regarded as one of the most credibly unexplainable UFO cases prior to information coming out about the Nimitz incident in 2017.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ufo-nearcollision-with-army-helicopter-40-years-ago_n_4119987" rel="nofollow">https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ufo-nearcollision-with-army-h...</a>
Generation Kill, Evan Wright<p>"As for the lights that the Marines saw six kilometers away, Shoup believes they were actually seeing lights from a town seventeen kilometers distant. They had misread the lights of a distant city as headlamps from a much closer convoy. Shoup attributes the perception that these headlamps appeared to be moving to a phenomenon called “autokinesis.” He explains,
“When you stare at lights long enough in the dark, it looks like they are moving. That’s autokinesis.” What it boils down to is that under clear skies, in open terrain with almost no vegetation, the Marines don’t have a clue what’s out there beyond the perimeter. Even with the best optics and surveillance assets in the world, no one knows what happened to nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs and missiles dropped a few kilometers outside the encampment."
I live near that area and had heard and seen a drone above my house in the very early morning before dawn a month ago.<p>I first heard a sound like a swarm of bees overhead but looked up to see the drone.<p>It took off southbound at a high rate of speed in the same flight path that the police helicopters use.<p>I have no idea if this is related but I thought it was very odd for a drone to be flying at that time over a heavily populated area near the University of Arizona.
It sounds to me like the city of Tucson and CBP didn't know how to deal with this. I mean chasing a light unmanned drone in a fully manned helicopter is of course going to end up with the kind of silly antics they talk about (the drone flying circles around it).<p>I wonder how effective an rf jammer would have been.
As one of the blog comments suggests, and seems likely from what I've read about it, a lot of the description fits the Northrop-Grumman Bat[0].
One has to wonder why a drone purportedly available exclusively to the military flies such a risky mission...<p>[0] <a href="https://www.northropgrumman.com/wp-content/uploads/BAT_Datasheet.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.northropgrumman.com/wp-content/uploads/BAT_Datas...</a>
It's worth noting that in the last years of the 19th century, when airship and zeppelin technology was just starting its first steps of development, many people throughout the United States reported numerous cases of phantom airship sightings. Much later, at the dawn of development or at least interest in rocketry and space travel technology in the late 1940's and then 50's, some of the first modern UFO sighting waves really captured public attention. Now, we have cases like this, but in the context of drone technologies, with the mysterious objects being seen having capabilities that appear to be a certain margin beyond what's known to be currently available. All three periods share some odd similarities.
If it was fixed wing, it could be pure electric. Zipline’s drones have similar capability. If it’s a quad copter (or similar), batteries wouldn’t last long enough and so it’s burning a fuel of some sort.