There’s an urban legend going back many years about an early drone delivery system.
Following successful tests in America and various civilised European countries, a trial was developed for Australia. People were able to order small items – pizza, according to the story – to be delivered straight to their door or balcony courtesy of large drones that buzzed around like ungainly mechanical insects.
At this time, drones were rare and expensive, especially ones hefty enough to carry a family order.
Feeding into the American belief that Australia is an island outpost for the criminally inclined, the drones were, allegedly, quickly lured to apartment blocks. Then, as the drone approached its target, a blanket would be thrown from the balcony above.
Australians were capturing the drones for sport, or so goes the story.
As someone who spent a decade designing software for the retail industry, attempting to predict this sort of larrikin behaviour takes up most of our troubleshooting prowess. The question is not, ‘What might go wrong?’ It is, ‘Oh God, how much trauma is this piece of technology going to endure?’
Australia is the sort of country that would put a leash on those scary robot police dogs and take them out for a stroll.
It doesn’t matter if the urban legend is true, because it soon will be. Delivery drones are coming, even if they are more expensive than the bike-based system we currently have clogging up our cities.
I was reminded of this story while scrolling through the bizarre trending topic of mysterious drones flying around America.
New Jersey (ground zero), New York, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania… There are drone sightings everywhere.
While it is true that the first night of a drone frenzy might leave the most powerful military nation on Earth baffled, people find it unbelievable that the US military has no idea what’s going on over a month later.
Every blogger and their dog has a drone in America. They are used to provide aerial footage for all sorts of amateur content, everything from competitive eating videos to dog walking. Drones pose a serious risk to aircraft safety around airports, but also to things like helicopters. Rules governing the use of private drones, often by kids with no understanding of what’s happening in the sky above them, has led to a haphazard rush of laws.
If my choices for the current drone conspiracy theory are aliens or TikTok bloggers, I am going to err on the side of social media. They could be doing it for a laugh. Or perhaps it really is because the Federal Aviation Administration changed the rules allowing privately owned drones to be flown at night provided there are lights and basic training tests passed. Considering there is a fetish for drone photography at night, the presence of drones is not surprising.
Police have informed concerned residents that there is no threat to public safety. What they mean is they hope there is no threat to public safety, because if you don’t know what a thing is, you can’t guarantee that it’s safe.
House Speaker Mike Johnson shares the sentiment.
‘Look, I’m the Speaker of the House. I have the exact same frustrations that you do and all of us do. We don’t have the answers. The Administration is not providing them,’ said Johnson.
‘They just say, “Don’t worry about it, it’s not foreign entities, there’s not a vessel offshore doing this, and they’re not collecting any data…” Okay, then what is it?’
You couldn’t get a more vague answer if you asked Joe Biden.
The public are not happy with the shoulder-shrug approach of their government and are refusing to accept silence as a reply. Curiosity and concern over the drones has led to political leaders, including the New York Senator Chuck Schumer, demanding the release of ‘drone hunters’.
‘If the technology exists for a drone to make it up into the sky, there certainly is the technology that can track the craft with precision and determine what the heck is going on,’ said Senator Schumer.
‘We are asking the Department of Homeland Security to deploy special detection systems like the Robin, which use – not a linear line of sight, but a 360-degree technology – that has a much better chance of detecting these drones.’
If the government refuses to deploy drone hunters, the heavily-armed locals will start shooting them out of the sky.
My personal opinion? The government already knows what these drones are and where they are coming from. They are probably attempting to solve a security breach before they open the floodgates of truth.
The possibility remains that these might not be personal drones at all. Many reports say they are large, very large… Worse, clusters of drones have been reported by credible sources flying in proximity to military bases on multiple occasions. Of course, they could be part of a secret military operation and we’re not being told. Drones are the new weapon of war and who’s to say they are not being taken out on test runs?
Unfortunately the credibility of the 5,000-odd tips given to the FBI are difficult to check with many sightings being debunked as planes or aliens etc. Humans are also rubbish when it comes to judging the size of a flying object at night. As one report said, some of these tips are matching up neatly with airport flight patterns.
No one is saying the drones aren’t real, only that there are lots of lights in the sky.
Fox News reported that so far the drones have been connected to all sorts of things, including helicopters, aircraft, stars, and commercially available drones.
According the ABC News (the American version), the Boston Police Department has arrested two men for flying a drone close to the Logan International Airport with a third suspect escaping. How many more scallywags are out there piloting drones? Well, you’ve seen the internet. I’m betting it’s quite a few.
There are over a million drones on the FAA radar and thousands in the hands of hobbyists, which is far more than I thought. That’s a lot of people who might have a sense of humour.