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Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Same Old Song - Different Verse?

In mid-December 2019 reports of clusters of up to 17 drones flying grid0like patterns across northeastern Colorado first emerged.  Then reports from Western and southwestern Nebraska and then northwestern Kansas by the early days of January 2020.

Drones -estimated at between 4-6 feet in wingspan - that no one could identify. The government, the military, various security agencies and private industry had no knowledge of them and did not know where they came from. 

They skimmed the boundary of legal presence - and with some one million plus drones registered with the FAA in the U.S. - these apparently were not among them.

Many headline lurkers (those who read only as deep as the headline) suggested hobby groups and imagined the drones as the one to two foot drone size favored by that group of persons. The costs alone limit the size for those wishing to use them as hobby equipment. When talking about 4-6 foot wingspan, then some serious dollars are involved. Who would have enough to send out groups of up to 17 at one time and possibly in multiple locations?

I heard one retired military individual say that this was like the whole UFO situation and now we have "drone hysteria."  I chuckled on hearing that one. A common thread, as I have written about before on this blog, was the tune cranked out by early government, military and media men about the "panic", the "hysteria", and the fear being created by the sightings of the "flying disks" and then later the "UFO's."   Oddly, the only real hysteria seemed to originate in the fevered imaginations of the government and military in response to people concerned, puzzled, and maybe a little nervous. The only hysteria and panic the news people reported was that spun by their wildly spun rhetoric to sell more papers.

Now, well, guess what? The Air Force might be behind it? Read Here. 


The great Halloween Prank of Orson Wells with his creative newscast portrayal of "The War of the Worlds" is often sited as an example of what might happen again and the utter chaos that reckless truth telling might engender.  The truth be told the impact of that event was more limited than news writers and gossips shared. Events and reactions were often limited to very small geographic areas and involved a limited number of people.  Forget the image of thousands fleeing the cities ala some 1950's Sci-Fic movie as the creeping monster slinks into the city center - it was never that.

The open exchange of information called for in the post 9/11 days has obviously been forgotten. When the Department of Defense said they did not know anything about  the drones.....well was that truth or just business as usual?


So, are the drones but another verse of the same old song of convince anyone who sees anything they are being hysterical and minimize all aspects to placate some panic reaction that will not happen.

I, for one, will be interested to see how this all unfolds.

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