My son has seen me arguing with folks on Twitter and the local FB community page about The Great Jersey Drone Flap of 2024, so maybe it is time I wrapped this all up for the sake of my own sanity and productivity.

Perhaps, years from now, there will be a great book about how Biden fooled the American people with drones/aliens/etc. However, I’m reasonably confident that the drone flap, as initially presented, was a combination of misidentified conventional aircraft with natural phenomena.

Here’s a good collection of tweets highlighting the “best of” examples cited:

https://x.com/SteveSkojec/status/1867286811103338612

Our smartphones are fooling us, as digital zoom is introducing a new type of drone story (and even zooming with a conventional camera on a single light source causes weird effects). I do not have a screenshot handy, but there is one short clip out there of an orb transforming into a “drone.” In reality, the camera was focused deep on what appears to be an airliner’s running light before re-focusing onto a still-blurry image of the plane.

That said, there is an entire subgenre of images out there of celestial objects being mistaken for a drone.

Are there Bad Drones?

Yes. Of course, there are. It is easy to get caught in a rhetorical trap here. Yes, people with drones do bad things. People also fly them illegally. In fact, as the New Jersey flap was unfolding, a Chinese national was arrested for having flown a drone over the Vandenberg Space Force Base.

But the crux of the claim is that there are drones the size of an SUV flying over Monmouth County, New Jersey.

That has yet to be demonstrated.

In fact, as NY Post reporter Steven Greenstreet has shown, the pattern of sightings seems to fit the flight path of normal air traffic.

End of the Flap? Never!

I thought all of this ended on Friday, December 13, when the White House and Homeland Security both released statements that, as far as they can tell, no drones were involved in the flap, and the major examples cited were of conventional aircraft.

Of course, soon after, the former Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, beclowns himself by posting a statement calling for greater transparency in and deeper federal investigations of these drone sightings after himself spotting a flotilla of drones hanging menacingly in the sky.

It turns out, fairly clearly, that he was taking a picture of the constellation Orion.

https://x.com/GovLarryHogan/status/1867608947525386534

Are the Russians to blame?

In brief, because this is unfolding as I type on 9am, Monday, Dec. 16…a number of right-leaning bloggers (TheGatewayPundit), and a few, frankly, pro-Kremlin outlets (ZeroHedge) are beginning to push this theory that the drones (which don’t actually exist in this flap, remember) are really there searching for a lost Ukrainian nuclear device. (Or, depending how the story is told, an American nuclear device sent to Ukraine.)

Mind you, the first Trump Administration donated tens of thousands of CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) detection devices to local law enforcement, not to mention whatever the feds have.

Secondly, the US has demonstrated CBRN-detecting drones almost a decade ago, most the size of a Lockheed Indago, and not the size of a Buick.

Thirdly, if they are doing this in secret, why do they keep the drones’ lights on?

Watch the Skies!

So, in summary, this is a classic UFO flap for the smartphone age. I’ve said this on Twitter, and I’ll say it again — the old Skeptical saying lamented the lack of UFO pictures even though everyone carries a smartphone with them. Now we learn, through pocket-scuffed lenses and digital compression, every smartphone is now a UFO-generating device.

What’s the harm? This past weekend, the kind and gentle people of Jenkintown were posting hysterically about passing drones and government lies. While it is great fun, this fearmongering and conspiratorial thinking erodes the bonds of civic life, widening the fracture between the people and their fellows that plenty of others will exploit (I’m looking at you, Zerohedge!).

I’m not saying blindly follow the government, heaven’s no! What’s the fun in that?

But I will say, is that you can’t base your life on what amounts to gossip.

Alright, enough for now. I really wish I was in a position to have cataloged all the twists and turns better, but there you go. Someone will write a book about all this.