So somehow people are seeing these widespread, commercially available aircraft flying around their town and the most plausible explanation they can come up with is international espionage?
What 'commercially available' aircraft can operate for at least 6 - 7 hours, sized up to 6 feet, not always detectable by FLIR, evade detection by helicopters, don't always use lights, have a range of at least 15 miles, are not obeying FAA line of sight regulations for night flights (all per the statewide briefing provided to NJ legislators yesterday: https://x.com/DawnFantasia_NJ/status/1866896860578717994) , and are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/live/gSIKXMt4qHk?si=HafZLJzX8lUqQvrd...) to not originate in the US or any other nation?
What extra-terrestrial amazon.com or Weyland-Yutani intergalactic commerce do you have access to haha? :)
Also, videos of the 'drones' show them hovering for long periods, so they're not conventional fixed wing craft. I think local officials should put together some investigative task forces using local scientists, engineers and commercial providers that have access to good electronic intelligence surveillance capabilities and get more data so we can see more and know more about this.
> are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday to not originate in the US or any other nation
To be clear, they stated that “these are not US military drones”, and that they have no evidence that they are from a foreign entity or adversary, which is very different from what I interpreted you as saying.
Why would one believe that US intelligence agencies have no information about extensive reports of drone activity near military installations? Given that this has been happening for a couple weeks now, and the military has said “these are not a threat”, the clearly more plausible explanation is that they know what these are, and they aren’t saying.
This is what the military does when they are testing classified military technology. “It’s not ours. It’s not the enemy’s. It’s not a threat. Nothing to see here.”
You'd hope they'd have sensors and analysis capable of forming some conclusions, such as tracing the drones to a origin point, or classifying based on signature, etc.
They've haven't provided much and there's a lot of questions unanswered, but they've said unequivocally what they think the origin is not.
For clarity the exact words the Pentagon staff in the video used are:
"at this time we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary...these are not US military drones"
I guess "US commercial drones" is the gap or intersection of the relevant Venn diagrams, but that doesn't make sense. Why would you test them over a military base?
I think we can apply some Gaussian blur and assume the statement is an approximate fit to the meaning by remembering that: this was a statement provided by a human in real time, ad libbing in response to a press question. They didn't spend hours drafting it to elucidate all possible logical connections and deftly conceal the unstated meaning by crafting some inference puzzle. Hahaha! :)
Communication between people is successful miscommunication. It's not an API - remember that, engineer! :)
Not "military" drones seems very very open to interpretation. Is DARPA Military? Or is military being used in a generic sense of the dictionary definition vs. the US government budgetary definition?
If anduril, for instance, sends the US military some new drones to try out, it is not technically a false statement for the military to say they aren’t military drones.
confirmed that jesus has returned as an alien to bring about the apocalypse.
but uhh, the most standard thing is that its some weather balloon put up by an undergrad student
who isnt aware of the relevant regulations theyre supposed to be following and whod really prefer to ask forgiveness than permission
Basically yeah, there's some room for interpretation, but the key thing is the exact words the Pentagon spokesmen used are:
"at this time we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary...these are not US military drones"
The linked video starts at the relevant timestamp.
"are assessed by the Pentagon yesterday... to not originate in the US or any other nation" = "the Pentagon claims to actively know that the drones aren't from any publicly-known line of drone models"
Well that's not exactly what they said. Here's the transcript:
"at this time we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary...these are not US military drones"
Right but how would you know how the other person interpreted it? What you said is not what I said. What I said is just a paraphrase of the Pentagon statement. How is it very different hahaha? :)
Honestly you can drive down the Gowanus expressway any day of the week in NYC and see these mysterious large drones somehow sitting up in the air for HOURS, silently. You can see their lights as they hover, if you are coming from the tunnel to the verazzano bridge. What kind of battery tech do they have! Who flies them??
At times like this it's helpful to use a simple, three point framework: [1] What do we know? [2] What is noise? [3] What is the boring explanation?
For [1], we know there are likely _some_ drones. We know drones are a very hot topic for defense at the moment and that countries are heavily investing in this area. We know that these systems need very heavy testing for coordination, surveillance, etc. and we know that other countries have conducted these in urban areas. We also know that these drones have been seen often nearby military installations. We know that our government is claiming to have no idea what these are, but has declared them safe and does not intend to take them out. We know that Ukraine (backed by the US) has used drones pretty successfully against Russia. We know that Israel has used drones successfully against targets across the region. We also know that the US is deploying pretty heavily in PACOM, and we can see that there are a wide array of large value contracts regarding drones being handed out to defense contractors.
For [2], there is SO much noise. A congressman immediately blaming Iran (a country an entire ocean away that is incurring heavy regional losses). The news and mass hysteria online that it's aliens. People confusing helicopters and planes for drones, but with just enough actual drone footage in the mix to false flag. Pretty much everyone looking at the skies which will greatly increase incidence. Just enough counter culture online that these are kids drones, regular planes, helicopters. Lots of varying narratives coming from different branches of military and law enforcement.
That's all very interesting, but if you subtract [2] from [1] you get a very boring explanation, [3] that these are likely our own drones being tested. I've seen this boring explanation get dismissed as technically the US has testing sites, but these are typically for bombs, and drones are best utilized in populated areas or for surveillance (both of which are hard to test in the desert). I also see dismissals of this as "the military would have said something by now," but they have: they've declared these "safe." If they were testing out new functionality on cutting edge tech they wouldn't admit to it, no matter how many likes a tweet gets or how many videos get posted online.
There is also no way a state government, governor, or law enforcement would know about this (yeah, even the FBI) because drone programs in the US are coordinated by intelligence agencies that are very secretive and don't like to share information among themselves.
The problem with the "secret testing over civilian areas" idea is that it's self-contradicting.
So you think the military and intelligence has technology that is so secret they won't admit to it, but they're so uninterested in protecting that they're testing them willy nilly over populated areas??
The other contradiction is risk: so you have an aerial technology test and you do it over US civilian populations and military bases over long periods in large numbers, not caring about risk of an object crashing, nor of triggering a mistaken response or misinterpretation by US or another nation, and without a NOTAM to protect aircraft?
None of that scans.
The other point is this is not limited to New Jersey and the United Kingdom.
> So you think the military and intelligence has technology that is so secret they won't admit to it, but they're so uninterested in protecting that they're testing them willy nilly over populated areas??
The explicit purpose of most advances in drone technology over the last ~20 years is not to be the biggest baddest weapon in the sky, but to be a hard to catch camera that sees everything and knows everything. That is also the biggest drone program that I am aware of and the explicit purpose of Maven.
> The other contradiction is risk: so you have an aerial technology test and you do it over US civilian populations and military bases over long periods in large numbers, not caring about risk of an object crashing, nor of triggering a mistaken response or misinterpretation by US or another nation, and without a NOTAM to protect aircraft?
The latter part of your question is the answer to the former. If we conduct tests abroad, we risk a response or the tech getting stolen. We need somewhere to test it, so we test it here. There is pretty low risk of these crashing, and civilians would not have the technology needed to down these drones (this capability would be pretty thoroughly tested in unpopulated areas).
We do issue NOTAMs when drones are in airspace, these are low flying and so do not warrant any notice.
That's fair about NOTAM's if they are low flying, how do you know they're low flying?
Your answer sounds official. Is this an official answer from someone in the military or IC? You say "these drones" - do you know unequivocally what they are?
How does the purpose of the Maven drone program you mention resolve the contradiction of testing a classified program that cannot be acknowledged, over civilian areas willy nilly? What is the purpose of a secret surveillance platform that is now an international news story? That goes against how such platforms are protected. So many contradictions.
These were also spotted in the UK over multiple bases (RAF Lakenheath, etc). Even if this were a test of our own technology, there's a lot of risk, and a lot of unknown and concern among officials who are in the dark, which creates more risk. It does not scan.
I don't really think you've provided answers that resolve these questions. I think it's legitimate that everybody has questions and there's a lot unknown. You seem to be saying you have the answers. Is that how you feel? Is that what you're saying?
All of the media sightings I have seen about these so far has been low flying. I don't deny that we have very high flying drones but I doubt they would be tested without NOTAMs (over CONUS).
> Your answer sounds official. Is this an official answer from someone in the military or IC?
Not official - I have not been part of the IC for about a year now. I can't talk about my background there without doxxing.
> How does the purpose of the Maven drone program you mention resolve the contradiction of testing a classified program that cannot be acknowledged, over civilian areas willy nilly?
I don't think I can answer this without doxxing or leaking, but there are a lot of public communications on MSS, its goals, what it involves, etc. and its recent expansions.
> These were also spotted in the UK over multiple bases (RAF Lakenheath, etc). Even if this were a test of our own technology, there's a lot of risk, and a lot of unknown and concern among officials who are in the dark, which creates more risk. It does not scan.
I haven't seen any reports of these; my gut reaction would be to suspect these are not drones and just regular aircraft. I wouldn't rule out drone tech (UK is in FVEY) but don't think it is likely.
I'm not saying it is necessarily ethical or a correct thing that these programs have such infrequent and limited oversight. I'm just quoting the reality (at least up to last year).
> You seem to be saying you have the answers. Is that how you feel? Is that what you're saying?
I'm just applying a framework that typically works for me and my existing knowledge of these programs. I'm not actively in the IC and can't definitely say I'm 100% right, but I don't see any other explanations at this point.
If you are looking for 100% answers there are probably entire chatrooms and threads dedicated to this on chatsurfer by now :)
100% answers? I'm the one asking the questions, you're the one who seems confident. I just wanted to understand from what basis your confidence arises.
I can't accept the blanket "trust us, we're the IC", because it's not credible. More so because how credibility has been surrendered by officials in IC on this topic through historical deception on UAP/UFO/NHI. Even more so when there's a motivation to lie to protect the secret that you don't control your skies, when that's your mandate.
There has to be a reckoning with truth if we hope to advance, and I actually see the Pentagon statement as +ve progress on that. In the larger context of this story, it's a bit of an acapella solo atop a harmony of voices from military saying "We don't control our airspace. There's unknown objects arising from non human intelligence." People include: Ryan Graves, Tim Gallaudet, Luis Elizondo, Chris Mellon, Jay Stratton, David Grusch, Karl Nell.
It's disappointing that with your IC "frameworks" you didn't even realistically consider "other explanations"; maybe such possible blindspots have been part of the problem institutionally, which is sad - because those are the ones who should be on top of it.
Or maybe you're just being a good soldier and still have NDAs, or never knew. Anyway, if you're interested I encourage you to go down that UFO/NHI rabbithole! Fascinating stuff. I bet you'd do great work on it, too, with you analytic skills. Give it a try maybe :)
There's plenty in this comment to get you started. So...go for it! :) And the UK stuff can be searched easily, for example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-air-force-drone-sightings-uk... and if you're keen on rabbitholing here's two more to suck you in :)
> So you think the military and intelligence has technology that is so secret they won't admit to it
It’s more like “does not have to disclose anything so chooses not to”.
When you are in the long game of keeping your information and intentions secret, you don’t reveal anything if you don’t have to. They do need to test low flying aircraft in populous areas. They don’t need to say anything about it.
It’s like when you’re a kid, and your friends are trying to get you to admit who you have a crush on. If you actually want to keep it secret, you have to provide the same response to every question they ask, otherwise you are revealing information. If you say “no” truthfully to some questions but then refuse to say “no” untruthfully to other questions, then they can just pepper you with enough questions to triangulate what they want to know. Or you can just say “no comment” to everything but people take that worse.
Fort Dix, which is an airforce base, is in New Jersey. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was them. There was an incident some years ago when a very strange supersonic noise blasted out from that area and the government was very quiet about it.
I haven't been highside in almost a year now so I don't purport to know the actual operation behind this, BUT I would place my money on testing surveillance systems and on-device tracking modules. CDAO has been investing very publicly in these areas alongside the Maven program and TF Lima. They need a lot of good data on populated areas to make this work; they also can't risk testing this in warzones where a downed drone will both [1] leak advances in technology we have made since Reapers and [2] expose the on-device models they have in place. Could even be a vendor trying to evaluate their models; there is nothing particularly illegal about these drones.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Fort Dix, is in fact, Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst, or as the DOD has recently taken to calling it, JB MDL. Fort Dix is not an army base unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning tri-force base hosted by the Air Force and including units from all six service branches.
I feel like you already have decided that this is safe and then are using "boring" explanations to back that narrative. This is easy cause nothing bad has happened in a while so it's less cognitive dissonance to go with that narrative.
Have you even tried coming up with boring explanations on how this could be not safe?
Also why specifically boring explanations? Plenty of incidents have dramatic explanations. How do you know when to pick what? Is the idea most incidents have boring explanations? And what happens when there is a black swan and you fuck up because you only relied on boring explanations? Shouldn't you be doing some sort of probability distributions instead?
If the military proclaimed these drones safe and are not shooting them down like crazy, these drones are likely reasonably safe, and are not an enemy that the US military, arguably the top one in the world, would fight.
A possible bad explanation: the US military actually would love to shoot down these drones, but cannot, because e.g. they are known to contain smallpox virus, dangerous radioactive contaminants, etc. These would be released at the slightest attempt to sound alarms or interfere. Someone caught them unawares and is now enjoying impunity.
A worse version: the US military and/or government is complicit, actually overrun by aliens / reptiloids / crackpots, and is allowing an invasion.
Etc.
Which version looks more plausible, any of these, or that the US military is testing something that can fly, but keeps the lips tight?
A spokesperson said that there was no proven harm done or something to that effect, as i particularly noted this oddball statement for what it was.
Please do go back and confirm.
I also think that any threat actor would attempt to dampen down alarm. GIVEN Putins proclivity and capabilities in convincing a cerain percentage of decadent western nations (tm) populations of certain scenarios in world power mongering, i dont see a brazen foreign drone surveillance campaign as out of the question.
Mind you, i did not allege that this is such, but that dismissal of such is currently impossible and unwise.
I believe they very explicitly said they pose no threat and also explicitly ruled out foreign entities and adversaries.
I talked about this in another comment but Putin/Russia and Iran could never be contenders for this. If it was a foreign entity it would pretty much be limited to China in terms of capability & readiness.
Without referring to anything specific about this case, things usually have boring explanations because what makes an explanation boring is that it is expected and empirically likely.
“The most likely explanation is the most boring one” is practically a tautology, because “boring” practically means “likely” in regards to explanations of events.
The DoD has very publicly stated that these are safe; I know Americans have a lot of distrust in their military but when it comes to matters of national security and defense the intel community is more or less omniscient.
Knowing the current capabilities of the military, there is also no possibility that this is not safe and yet cannot be handled after this long, which kinda rules out any boring explanation.
When it comes to matters of UFOs, drones, and lights in the sky, it has only ever been a boring explanation. I think people want very much for it to be fantastical, but often times the boring reality is still very dramatic if you step back and consider we're talking about secret testing of highly advanced drones.
By the same definition every helicopter, plane, kid flying a drone, even car on the road is not “safe.”
It’s the same way I can call a system reliable when it is 3 9’s, but that doesn’t imply 100% guaranteed uptime. Or a statistician can reject a hypothesis that has a low enough p-value but still more than 0. Or how health systems and procedures are considered safe above a threshold, or how we consider condoms safe sex while understanding they are not 100% effective.
I’m finding it frustrating that when it comes to UFOs, people tend to isolate the most remote possibilities.
Ever heard of submarines and ships. the Congressman said he heard from a good source there was an Iranian "mothership" on the East Coast. I guess you claim he's being lied to, or making it all up?
With everything intel-coded you can quickly figure out what is actually happening by applying the three point framework:
[1] What we know: Iran does not have a strong drone program, and it is almost impossible to get a ship that close to our shores without it being blown to literal bits by our 3 navy's.
[2] Noise: Congress has almost no insight into what the DoD does outside of hearings and oversight committees; Jeff Van Drew is on none of the committees that oversee any of our drone programs or space command, nor do these meet on a frequent enough cadence for them to have weighed in intel already. He's also a gun nut pro-lifer who has voted with Russian interests in the last two votes, and I doubt he would receive many markings or special briefings from intel agencies. The Pentagon (which currently directly oversees TF Lima, is where CDAO is based out of, and collaborates closely with SPACECOM) has also very publicly shot down these claims.
This release just links Iranian technology to UAVs used against Ukraine; they are nowhere near the capabilities of top military powers. The only country that can claim the #2 spot on the list is China.
To give you an idea of the comparison, Iranian drones are not even close capability wise to a Reaper. The Reaper is damn near EOL as it was developed in 2007(!) and is basically caveman technology compared to what we are currently running.
they are nowhere near the capabilities of top military powers
Russia is a top military power, and they use Iranian drones.
BTW, I didn't say they were number 2, I said they were battle tested unlike other top programs, like China'. Iran's drones are currently actively being used in two wars (vs Ukraine, vs Israel).
I don't think there are Iranian drones in NJ, but it isn't because they don't have a capable program. It's because it makes no sense.
Russia is not a top military power when it comes to technology, and probably not manpower after bleeding out in Ukraine.
There are plenty of advanced drone programs that are "battle tested." They are successful and so you do not hear about them :)
I maintain the Iranian drone program is incapable. They are very similar to the Ukrainian drones, botched together and little more than big model airplanes with explosives inside. They neither have the capability to get a ship onto our shores, nor to launch drones undetected, nor to pilot them undetected, nor to evade our defenses and intelligence network.
Whatever these drones are they're smart enough to vanish once we try to tail them. It's likely not simply Iranian tech. Remember China and Iran are allies, and sharing technology. If China wanted to prove something to the USA, they could easily let Iran do it, simply to cause less of an "International Incident" if the truth comes out of what's going on. My hunch is that it's a Chinese Technology Demonstration, and the "mothership" might be nothing more than a cargo container on a cargo ship. That would go totally unnoticed by our military sensor arrays.
"He made it up" certainly seems more likely than Iran, what, retrofitting one of their old Kilo class D/E subs to be a drone mothership that's just lurking off the coast?
How much time did he get on fox news? How many new followers on social media?
This is the game they are playing. The attention game. Just like the kid who misbehaves so people pay attention to him. This is what social media has done to our society.
But there's also a reason CNN (and most MSM) have lost all credibility. People finally realized which side has indeed been lying basically nonstop for the past 10 years.
I’ll admit that were I seeing such stories in my area, I’d be hard pressed not to hang some bit of a Halloween costume on a drone and send it around the neighbourhood.
Vernor Vinge called it Belief Circles. And in Rainbows End he tells a story of how to get them to stampede in one direction or another to suit anyones agenda. But on the flip side, once you create a herd of domesticated animals (side note: always useful to deeply understand how the process of animal domestication works), Stampedes can start from just one individual getting scared by their own shadow. To keep things from going out of control, the herd manager is then programmed (or "learns"), to get the herd to run in circles. They eventually get tired. And the story ends happily ever after.
Most of the coverage I saw online was from local affiliate stations. A deliberate attempt to alarm the public seems more likely than many of the theories offered.
When the Ukraine war started, there were drone sightings reported near the airport and some energy installations in Stockholm, Sweden. Then there suddenly were tons of sightings, everyone was talking about possible Russian drone operations. Many are still unexplained but a whole bunch turned out to be other things, birds, ambulance aircrafts. I think the consensus now is that there was just a few, non state, drone flights and the rest were just mass hysteria.
Traditional media is also involved, I've overheard Fox News hosts definitively state we're under invasion, blame Biden for it, and explain why Trump will fix it.
The Guardian is publication reporting the information. If you click the link at the top, open the website, and read the article, you will see who is quoted as making the claims.
The quotes seem to indicate that they don't care about drones. The context surrounding the quotes is all The Guardian's.
He emphasized there was “no known threat to the public at this time”.
Etc...
Then quotes of one word end quote two words not quoted, then a few more quoted words. Or a sentence that's clearly drawn without context.
Typical modern reporting. The people being quoted don't have the time to care if they were lied about.
So, yes, if you click the link, you'll see who is quoted making the claims, but there is no reason to think that they actually made those claims. Only that those people don't care enough to stop their workday and refute every piece of media trash with their name in it that probably didn't even make it to their desk.
A graduate student in Minnesota flew to a naval base in Virginia, used a consumer drone to photograph the area, then attempted to board a flight to China before he was caught by authorities.
His defense was that he was a fan of boats and drones, and as his lawyer said:
“If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known”
New Jersey is essentially one big sensitive site. Between Picatinny Arsenal, Joint Base McGuire-Dix, NWS Earle, and all the other smaller sites, you’re about 15 miles away from any one site and if you’re near civilization you’re much closer. Add in other sensitive sites like power stations and reservoirs, and the entire state is “sensitive”. This smacks hard of manipulation and agitation. 99% of the sitings shared with me have been airplanes.
Which models? What are the specific dimensions? I assume if you're confident they're widespread, commercially available, you know what kind of aircraft we're dealing with. I'd hope you can help me demystify further what's going on in the controlled airspace near military installations.
There was also a lot of drone sightings reported last week in Britain of similar fear, drones near a US military base somewhere in UK, think it was also in the Guardian.
Of course the government can control the weather, what are you on about:
> In the United States, cloud seeding is used to increase precipitation in areas experiencing drought, to reduce the size of hailstones that form in thunderstorms, and to reduce the amount of fog in and around airports. In the summer of 1948, the usually humid city of Alexandria, Louisiana, under Mayor Carl B. Close, seeded a cloud with dry ice at the municipal airport during a drought; quickly 0.85 inches (22 mm) of rain fell.[77]
> Major ski resorts occasionally use cloud seeding to induce snowfall. Eleven western states and one Canadian province (Alberta) had ongoing weather modification operational programs in 2012.[78] In 2006, an $8.8 million project began in Wyoming to examine cloud seeding's effects on snowfall over Wyoming's Medicine Bow, Sierra Madre, and Wind River mountain ranges.[79]
> In Oregon, Portland General Electric used Hood River seeding to produce snow for hydro power in 1974-1975. The results were substantial, but caused an undue burden on the locals, who experienced overpowering rainfall, causing street collapses and mudslides. PGE discontinued its seeding practices the next year.[80]
> In 1978, the U.S. signed the Environmental Modification Convention, which bans the use of weather modification for hostile purposes.[81]
> As of 2022, seven agencies in California are conducting cloud seeding operations using silver iodide, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which began employing the technique in 1969 to increase the water supply to its hydroelectric power plants, and reported that it results in "an average of 3 to 10% increase in [Sierra Nevada] snowpack".[82]
I literally agree with the second sentence. Humans control fire. If we can make it rain whenever we want we also control the weather. If they didn't they wouldn't need laws preventing them from overdoing it.
I mean there were 12 drones following a Coast Guard lifeboat. Doubt the Coastguard crew mass hysteria'd themselves into thinking 12 nearby 737s were following their boat (unless they just raided some Colombian drug submarine prior to coming into port).
And the official government response is super odd. Police were following a drone (that is totally safe we are told) then called the helicopter back because he felt unsafe. But the drones are safe (except if you are a police helicopter?).
'We don't know what these drones are, where they come from, so we followed one, then we... just stopped following it'.
That's not the normal Police/Sheriff response, no.
There are multiple New Jersey state government officials that attended this government hearing retelling that the Police/Sheriff said a Police helicopter did just stop following the unknown drone because 'the Police/Sheriff felt unsafe'.
> There are multiple New Jersey state government officials that attended this government hearing retelling that the Police/Sheriff said a Police helicopter did just stop following the unknown drone because 'the Police/Sheriff felt unsafe'.
Sorry I don't have Twitter and didn't save the link. Believe the one was a female New Jersey elected official. I suggest you start with looking up responses of officials from the meeting today if you don't believe this Assemblyman.
To be fair helicopters are held aloft by man's engineering hubris and blatantly flaunting gravity. Taking a drone to the tail rotor may not be entirely healthy to the crew of the chopper.
Oh, my understanding was that they manage to fly because they’re so ugly that the ground wants nothing to do with them and pushes them away. I stand corrected :D
Helis have to get out of the vicinity of drones all the time, it's a safety thing. If a drone suddenly flies into heli rotor, what do you think happens?
Somebody died near where I live because LifeFlight aborted after a drone was spotted by the heli. Firefighters abort flights for drones too, it's really serious.
> And the official government response is super odd. Police were following a drone (that is totally safe we are told) then called the helicopter back because he felt unsafe. But the drones are safe (except if you are a police helicopter?).
A misguided drone flying into a helicopter does seem unsafe. Just because something isn’t a threat to a ground pedestrian does not mean it can’t be a threat to a whirlybird.
The actual quote from the Coast Guard says they saw some drones but they weren't a threat. The Congressman is that one that says the Coast Guard says they were followed by drones.
It was Biden HIMSELF who originally said giving Long Rang Missiles, Tanks, and American Fighter Jets to Ukraine would start WWIII. lol. So your quip carries very little weight.
Oh, here, I'll make you feel better. Go check sub of the alien/ufo subreddits. Literally you'll see comments that amount to "my life sucks and is boring, this would be exciting even if bad".
No. Only about 64% of all American voters participated in the election - the rest stayed home. Of those, Trump actually got just under half of the popular vote, albeit by an extremely slim margin of about 48%.
"Voters" doesn't always mean "eligible voters". "Those who cast votes in the election under discussion" seems a reasonable sense of the term in this context.
You are correct that he got the plurality and not the majority of the popular vote.
It is obviously not true that only 64% of voters who cast votes in the 2024 election cast votes in the 2024 election, so some meaning slipped here, somewhere.
I'm having a hard time imagining how you'd accurately measure who a non-voter would have voted for. Like how would you verify if someone is even eligible to vote? Lots of Americans (Eg green card holders, kids, felons) can't vote. Also 2% is way smaller than the Lizardman’s Constant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
It isn't pointless pedantry. The claim was that "a bit over half of all American voters" voted for Trump. This is simply factually untrue, as nowhere near all American voters even voted.
>I'm having a hard time imagining how you'd accurately measure who a non-voter would have voted for.
No claims are being made about the hypothetical votes by non-voters, so whether and how that metric can be measured isn't relevant to the claim being made, which is about people who actually voted. This is measured through a count of the actual votes tallied by state.
>Like how would you verify if someone is even eligible to vote?
Every state has their own methods to determine voting eligibility. This isn't relevant to the claim being made, as the set of "all American voters" is presumed to be equal to the set of "all eligible American voters."
>Lots of Americans (Eg green card holders, kids, felons) can't vote.
Individuals who cannot vote are also not relevant to the claim made, which is about the set of people who actually did vote, and what fraction of the entire electorate they represented.
Yeah the avg person in the US is in a state of complete terror because grades better than C's in high school make you an uncool nerd. Imagine thinking everything is made of magic and people who try to explain basic science are trying to lie to you with confusing gotcha arguments. We are absolutely cooked.
Wow.