UPDATED 1-8-2020~~COLORADO DROHNE ALERT,CALIFORNIA AND VIRGINIA,

'Weird and concerning': Mystery drone sightings continue in Colorado, into Nebraska Authorities in Lincoln, Washington and Sedgwick counties say they, too, are stumped by clusters of aircraft;SQ;SEE MY LATEST ALERT 



“Weird and concerning”: Mystery drone sightings continue in Colorado, into Nebraska
Authorities in Lincoln, Washington and Sedgwick counties say they, too, are stumped by clusters of aircraft
By SAM TABACHNIK | stabachnik@denverpost.com | The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: December 27, 2019 at 5:30 pm | UPDATED: December 28, 2019 at 1:11 pm


Mysterious drone sightings have been reported in three more rural counties in the northeast corner of Colorado and at least one county in Nebraska as local law enforcement officials and residents remain clueless as to what’s flying above them at night.
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Sheriffs in three more Colorado counties, including Sedgwick County, seen here in a 2014 photo, have received reports of clusters of mystery drones flying at night.
The sheriffs of Lincoln, Washington and Sedgwick counties told The Denver Post on Friday that their offices have been getting calls this week about the unknown winged devices, days after initial reports out of Phillips and Yuma counties caused a national stir.
Local and national authorities say they have no idea who is operating the groups of large drones, reported to have 6-foot wingspans and spend the nighttime hours flying in grid-like patterns.
While the powers that be have no answers, the mystery aircraft have inspired a wide range of theories online. It has to be the work of a Mexican drug cartel, one commenter on The Post’s website said. No, no — it’s obviously aliens from a far-off galaxy, another replied. Perhaps it’s the History Channel looking for lost cities, or ranchers trying to track their cows, others theorized.
Thus far, however, all anyone can do is guess.
Sedgwick County Sheriff Carlton Britton said residents have been calling his office consistently since Dec. 17, reporting six to 10 drones at a time. The calls mirror those in Phillips County: The clusters of drones hover or cruise through the area between 7 and 10 p.m., flying several hundred feet in the air.
Britton said he has seen them himself — lights of an unknown color flickering from overhead.
“Oh, yeah,” the sheriff said with a chuckle, “there’s a lot of conspiracy theories floating in Sedgwick County right now.”
Britton has been batting ideas around with Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott, trying to determine if any laws are being broken. As it stands right now, he said, it’s all above board — even if it’s a bit disconcerting.
“We have no idea at this point,” Britton said. “No leads and no thoughts. It’s just an odd phenomenon.”
Britton said he has spoken with a sheriff’s deputy in neighboring Deuel County, Neb., who has been chasing drones in his state the past few days. The Deuel County sheriff could not be reached Friday to comment.
Washington County Sheriff Jon Stivers has heard reports from his constituents of six drones at a time to 30.
“It’s both weird and concerning,” Stivers said. “It would be kind of nice to know what they’re doing.”

Lincoln County Sheriff Tom Nestor said he received the first report of a drone sighting in his jurisdiction Thursday night. He expects the conspiracy theorists to run wild, but Nastor said he’s most concerned with the drones colliding midair with planes from Limon’s airport or helicopters used in emergency situations.
The sheriffs said they have gotten nothing from the Federal Aviation Authority, and Elliot previously told The Post that the Air Force has denied involvement. The FAA also told The Post this week that it had no information on the mystery flyers. Neither did the Drug Enforcement Administration nor the U.S. Army Forces Command.

Local sheriff’s offices had been inundated with questions, including whether people are allowed to shoot the drones out of the sky.
“That’s not advisable,” Stivers said, indicating that it could break federal law.
The sheriffs instead recommended that residents call their offices with any more information. The Washington and Lincoln county sheriff’s offices have posted notices on Facebook asking residents to report sightings of the drones.
“I would love for someone to break it wide open,” Nestor said. “I don’t know what it is, but I would like it not to be in my county.”

twitter.com/Aviation_Intel
The sparse expanses of Northeast Colorado have become ground zero for a bizarre mystery surrounding sightings of nighttime coordinated flights of groups of drones. From roughly 7 pm to 10 pm every night last week, an estimated 17 drones with six-foot spans have flown "grid patterns" over Phillips County and near its border with neighboring Yuma County, according to Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott. The drones operate at a few hundred feet in the air and were brightly lit with strobing colored and white lights, leaving local residents and those driving through the area baffled. 


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The Denver Post was first to report on the string of strange sightings. Local law enforcement, the FAA, DEA, U.S. Army, and the Air Force have said they have no idea what these aircraft are or who they belong to.    
The Denver Post writes: 
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The sheriff’s office can’t explain where the drones are coming from or who is flying them. The estimated size and number of drones makes it unlikely that they’re being flown by hobbyists, Undersheriff William Myers said.

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On Friday, Myers said he watched eight of the large drones flying along the Yuma County border near the intersection of U.S. 385 and County Road 54. At the same time, a single drone hovered about 25 miles away over the town of Paoli — it didn’t move all night, just hovered over the town — and eight more drones flew over Haxtun, about 10 miles down the road from Paoli, Myers said.
“Overhead they were probably doing 30, 40 mph,” he said. “They weren’t racing or flying around with speed.”
One resident who spotted a drone last week gave chase, Elliott said, driving behind it at about 50 mph, but lost the drone when he ran out of gas in Washington County.
The machines fly too high to be heard from the ground but can be seen by their strobing white lights along with red, blue and green lights, Myers said.
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“The way Colorado law is written, none of the statutes fit for harassment or trespassing,” Myers said. “Colorado hasn’t gotten on board with identifying the airspace around your property as the actual premises, so we don’t have anything we could charge.”
The FAA does have rules for drones that weigh less than 55 pounds and requires such aircraft to be flown during daylight hours, within sight of the pilot, no higher than 400 feet above the ground, and not over people, among other rules. However, pilots can apply for and receive waivers from the FAA that exempts the pilots from many of those rules.
It’s also not clear whether the drones over Phillips and Yuma counties would be governed by those regulations. A drone the size of the ones spotted over the counties likely would weigh more than 55 pounds, Moss said. That means the drone operator would be flying commercially and would likely need to be a “manned aviator” — an actual pilot, Moss said.
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Elliott said Monday that the sheriff’s office has received nine calls about the drones since last week. He said residents no longer need to call to report a simple sighting of the drones.
“We just want to know if one lands, if we can get our hands on it, or if they see someone operating them, that’s what we’re looking for now,” he said. “We know they exist.”

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I think people will wonder why there is no video that we know of these sightings. Most amateur video shot of lights in the sky at night has very little value, but regardless, you have to remember that this is happening in very sparsely populated areas after dark. If it was occurring near an urban area, I think the lack of video would be a bit troubling, but in this case, I don't find it to be, especially considering the level of law enforcement knowledge of these events.
People seeing lights in the sky that they don't understand the origin of happens often, but this case seems far more consistent over a short timespan than something that could be easily blown off. Once again, the fact that law enforcement is well aware of it and discussing it as fact is also telling. This all begs the question, what is going on in this remote section of Colorado?
Based strictly on the descriptions conveyed, it sounds like someone or some group is testing a broad-area surveillance capability with lower-end autonomous drones. This could include something as simple as having a group fly a series of planned routes and return with the information gathered via autopilot. By doing so, a group of small, relatively inexpensive drones can cover a large area quickly instead of single, far more expensive assets that could take more time and offer less redundancy. Such a capability could be used for search and rescue, mapping, and general intelligence gathering. This also doesn't require man-in-the-loop control that would necessitate line-of-sight connectivity. Still, it is really flat terrain with endless farmland in the area where the sightings occurred, which means line-of-sight connectivity could be maximized, especially with the help of a large aerial or small tower, but the grid pattern nature of these flights that the Sheriff describes point to a coordinated and automated flight plan for the drones.
The airspace where this is occurring is peculiarly desolate, as well, making it ideally suited for such a task, but the flights are not legally occurring, which makes the whole affair quite suspicious. The fact that the activity is happening after sundown is even more intriguing and adds to the notion that whoever is doing this knows it is outside the bounds of FAA regulations. 
In addition, it would be very challenging to trace these aircraft back to their place of origin or point of flight termination. The drones could fly the majority of their missions with lights on and turn them off during launch and recovery. With very little ambient light, they would be all but undetectable to the naked eye. Also, remember that drones this size can takeoff from very small areas, so it's not like a runway is needed or anything like that. As such, they can originate from nearly anywhere.


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This is basically the area where the sightings are occurring. It's largely uncontrolled airspace with a very sparse population.


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Here you can see the relationship of the area of activity in relation to Denver and nearby Nebraska.

The reality is that an individual or small group with some resources can do this. It doesn't need to be a federal agency, the military, or some defense or aviation contractor. Although it all sounds relatively innocuous, it is possibly yet another sign of the potential threats small, commercially available unmanned aircraft pose. If the grid pattern reports are accurate and autonomous waypoint navigation is being used by these drones, it can be posited that similar basic concepts of operation were used in the game-changing attack on Saudi oil facilities in September. Furthermore, drones of this size can carry a relevant payload of deadly explosives instead of surveillance or electronic warfare gear. 17 drones flying at once that can surveil a broad area could be re-roled by a nefarious actor to strike 17 pinpoint fixed targets near-simultaneously, or swarm against a single high value one from multiple directions. 
This is the same drum I have been beating for years, and eventually, this threat will materialize in the continental United States as it has overseas. With that in mind, this type of event—which we will only see more of in the future—shouldn't be treated as just some interesting curiosity. There is no need to panic, but the mystery behind these aircraft should be solved and whoever is doing it should receive some sort of penalty for executing these types of operations outside of FAA regulations, even if there isn't a dark agenda behind the activity.
Some will say this is an overreaction, but those are probably the same people that laughed when some of us started warning of the potential threat of small drones being used unlawfully and for very negative purposes years ago. 
Regardless, a skyborne mystery is afoot in Colorado. It will be interesting to see if the flights continue and if the description of these sightings holds up. 
We will keep you updated as we find out more about these strange events. 
Update: 4:45pm PST—
It is worth noting that not far where these drones were sighted, F.E. Warren Air Force Base's intercontinental ballistic missile fields begin. Roughly 30 miles northwest of Haxtun. It is something to at least keep in mind as the story unfolds.


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Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com[/size]

GUESS THEY WILL WATCH CAHPUR SALES NEXT

https://www.sgtreport.com/2020/01/2020-just-began-and-weird-things-are-already-starting-to-happen-all-over-the-world/


2020 Just Began, And Weird Things Are Already Starting To Happen All Over The World

January 2, 2020


by Michael Snyder, End Of The American Dream:

Many of us are expecting 2020 to be a very unusual year, and it certainly didn’t take long for the weirdness to start.  In this article I am going to share several examples of this weirdness with you, and I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of what we are going to experience over the next 12 months.  We live at a time when the pace of change has reached at an exponential rate, and our society is literally coming apart at the seams all around us.  That makes this a perfect environment for weird stuff to happen, and that means that I will have no shortage of things to write about in the coming days.

I would like to start off by discussing the really bizarre phenomenon that is happening in the skies over Colorado and Nebraska right now.  According to the New York Times, hordes of sophisticated drones have been “flying in precise formations” over those two states at night and nobody knows where they are from…

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They come in the night: Drones — lots of them — flying in precise formations over the Colorado and Nebraska prairie.
Why are they there? Unclear.
“It’s creepy,” said Missy Blackman, who saw three drones hovering over her farm outside Palisade, Neb., on a recent evening, including one that lingered right above her house. “I have a lot of questions of why and what are they, and nobody seems to have any answers.”

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One or two unidentified drones is not a big deal, but we are talking about hundreds and potentially even thousands of drones that are operating in coordination with one another, and nobody has any idea who owns them.
According to the Denver Post, these very large drones “have 6-foot wingspans and spend the nighttime hours flying in grid-like patterns”…
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The sheriffs of Lincoln, Washington and Sedgwick counties told The Denver Post on Friday that their offices have been getting calls this week about the unknown winged devices, days after initial reports out of Phillips and Yuma counties caused a national stir.
Local and national authorities say they have no idea who is operating the groups of large drones, reported to have 6-foot wingspans and spend the nighttime hours flying in grid-like patterns.

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Needless to say, this phenomenon is freaking a lot of people out, and it is spawning all sorts of theories…
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While the powers that be have no answers, the mystery aircraft have inspired a wide range of theories online. It has to be the work of a Mexican drug cartel, one commenter on The Post’s website said. No, no — it’s obviously aliens from a far-off galaxy, another replied. Perhaps it’s the History Channel looking for lost cities, or ranchers trying to track their cows, others theorized.

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If you live in Colorado or Nebraska and you have seen these drones, please send me some photos.
I would like to get to the bottom of this, because this is extremely alarming.
On a lighter note, over in Washington state officers recently “spent 10 hours” digging out vehicles that had literally been engulfed by giant tumbleweeds…
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State troopers in Washington state spent 10 hours digging cars and a semi-truck out from under hills of tumbleweeds that flooded a road on New Year’s Eve in an event being dubbed “Tumblegeddon.”
Washington State Patrol Trooper Chris Thorson told USA TODAY on Tuesday that his district began receiving 911 calls around 6:30 p.m. local time about tumbleweeds blocking the roadway in an area about 20 miles west of Richland, one of the state’s Tri-Cities.

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That particular area of Washington state does have to deal with tumbleweeds, but Washington State Patrol Trooper Chris Thorson has never seen things anywhere close to this bad.  According to him, “a strange mixture of weather and circumstances” created just the right conditions for something like this to happen…
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“Visibility was bad, which caused cars to slow down,” he said. “When they stopped, the tumbleweeds were piling so fast, they just fully engulfed in minutes. It’s kind a strange mixture of weather and circumstances.
“I don’t know how to really explain it,” he added. “It’s just odd. It’s so odd because it doesn’t happen. Typically, 99 percent of the time, you can drive through tumbleweeds.”

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Meanwhile, down in southern Australia they are dealing with colossal wildfires that are unlike anything they have ever experienced before.  These fires are so massive that they are actually creating their own weather.  The thunderstorms that have been spawned as a result create even more fires, and embers are being pushed out by high winds over a very large area.  At one point, thousands of people were forced to take refuge along the beaches because the fire had cut off all other escape routes…
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Thousands of holidaymakers and locals were forced to flee to beaches in fire-ravaged southeast Australia Tuesday, as deadly blazes ripped through popular tourist areas and cut off several towns.
In fire-encircled seaside communities along a 200-kilometre (135-mile) strip of coast, terrified people — wrapped in blankets and make-shift facemasks — sought refuge near the water.

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As they covered their faces with anything that was available, they huddled along the shore under “an eerie orange sky” as they waited to see what would happen…
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Dozens of fires continue to burn out of control in the states of Victoria and New South Wales (NSW). Thousands more people were forced to evacuate their homes along the NSW coast on Tuesday, which is dotted with small beach towns popular with holiday-makers over the Christmas season.
In Batemans Bay, NSW, hundreds of families fled their homes Tuesday under an eerie orange sky. “It was like we were in hell,” vacationer Zoe Simmons told CNN. “We were all covered in ash.”

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Of course firefighters are doing all they can to battle these enormous blazes, and quite a few of them have already perished.
Read More @ EndOfTheAmericanDream.com[/size]

From Jan 6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJipEE-bqiI

https://www.westernjournal.com/development-drone-swarm-mystery-sheriff-releases-command-vehicle-description/




Development in Drone Swarm Mystery: Sheriff Releases 'Command Vehicle' Description

Sebastian Arning / EyeEm / Getty ImagesThe stock image above shows a large white van. (Sebastian Arning / EyeEm / Getty Images)

By Jared Harris
Published January 8, 2020 at 7:38am

Authorities working to crack the case of mysterious swarms of drones in the central United States are now taking a new approach — they’re searching for a command vehicle.
The Phillips County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado made the announcement Monday, revealing that the case now has its own task force comprised of local, state and federal officials.
“A strategy meeting was held today in Brush, Colorado with Federal, State and local law enforcement agencies regarding the drone issue,” the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook. “None of the agencies can confirm that the drones are malicious.”
“A task force has been organized and we are asking for your assistance. Specifically, we are looking for the command vehicle. We are looking for a closed box trailer with antennas or a large van that does not belong in the area.”

The theory is apparently that these drone swarms, which often appear at night and elude attempts to follow them to their source, are not being controlled by individual operators but rather by a sophisticated piece of hardware.


A box trailer or large van would be able to hold not only the drones, but also the equipment needed to communicate with and control the swarms.
Another law enforcement agency involved in the search said the command vehicle description is simply an educated guess.
communicate with and control the swarms
 


“The vehicle and trailer descriptions are based on pure speculation,” the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado wrote Tuesday on Facebook.

Despite a number of sightings in the past few weeks, authorities do not appear to be any closer to discovering who is behind the mysterious flights of machines.“It may be accurate; but there is no information, at this time, that supports it.”
Sheriff’s offices have urged an increasingly worried public to not shoot the drones, an act that could have unintended consequences if a bullet travels beyond the target.
Speculation about the drones’ operators ranges from a group of sophisticated pranksters to hostile foreign actors.
Drones of all types are now becoming a regular part of war and terrorism, with machines of all sizes being used for reconnaissance, combat and other military operations.
RELATED: Meet the Knifefish, the US Navy's New Cutting-Edge Drone Sub
A Reaper drone, on the larger and more heavily equipped end of the spectrum, was famously used last week to take out Iranian terror monger Qassem Soleimani.
The smaller size of the drones perplexing residents of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas virtually rules out any potential Hellfire missile strike.
If the unmanned aircraft continue to roam the night sky, it’s likely only a matter of time before officials discover their true purpose.
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