Drones.
No word better embraces current mania, as the skies are teeming with swarms of unidentified flying objects that appear and disappear at will. From radiation-hunting drones searching for long-lost nuclear bombs to holo-drones readying Project Bluebeam, drone sightings are the talk of the nation, so much so the word “drone” has replaced “Donald Trump” in Google’s search rankings.
The Department of Homeland (in)Security and the FBI have looked to downplay the sightings to alleviate public panic, saying that observers are unequivocally misidentifying airplanes, helicopters, and stars as UAVs—the feds believe an educated person cannot differentiate a hovering drone from Sirius A.
“We’ve not corroborated a single sighting. We’ve seen 5,000 reports. What we have are unskilled observers and a lot of conspiratorial thinking,” the FBI has said of the sightings.
However, White Hats say they are certainly able to tell the difference between a basketball and car-size drone and an Airbus A320. So, they scoffed at the feds’ dismissive rationale when a three dazzling drones buzzed White Hat headquarters at Camp Pendleton last week.
At approximately 3:00 a.m. on December 14, guards posted at Fallbrook and Las Pulgas Gates—access points along Interstate 15—spotted three stationary, luminous objects half a mile offshore at an altitude of 1,000 feet asl.
“It was a best guess,” a Pendleton source told Real Raw News. “No flights were airborne at that hour, and no landings were scheduled. Four Marines saw the same objects in the sky.”
He added that the alternating amber, red, and purple lights loitered silently for several minutes and then moved toward the shoreline, their altitude increasing and decreasing at random intervals.
The sentries, our source said, contacted Marine Air Control Group 38, which manages air traffic navigation, integration, and coordination, to ask whether they, too, saw the anomalous craft encroaching on restricted airspace. The Air Control commander confirmed the sighting and said she had already informed base security.
“While they were watching the drones go dark, lights went out. There was nothing on the radar either. Just a dark sky. It was perplexing.
A minute later, they reappeared, this time directly above the highly classified Naval Weapons Center on the east side of Pendleton.
Our source said base security personnel tried to jam the drones but were unsuccessful. The spherical craft, each the circumference of five basketballs, had four whisper-quiet propellers attached to four arms protruding from the surface. Further attempts to jam the drones’ telemetry provoked an unexpected response: They became veritable beacons of dazzling, kaleidoscopic light. Their brilliance, our source said, captivated those looking skyward but alarmed Pendleton’s leadership, who debated whether to shoot them down.
“We know they weren’t ours, meaning US military hardware. What did we know? Were they surveillance drones? For all we knew, they could’ve had explosives or chemicals inside. I know it sounds out of this world, but those pulsing lights seemed to hypnotize anyone looking up for too long—a hypnotic trance,” our source said.
The glowing orbs warranted closer inspection, and White Hats sent an AH-1Z Viper gunship airborne to assess the threat. As the chopper approached and achieved co-altitude (2500’) with the drones, its instruments went haywire. The drones retreated, flitting west beyond Pendelton’s perimeter and back over the Pacific, their lights dimming.
At that point the Viper pilots opened fire with the gunship’s lethal 20mm rotary cannon; the shells shredded two of the three orbs, sending debris tumbling to the ocean, while the third drone inexplicably disappeared and presumably escaped unharmed.
“We don’t know if they were autonomous or piloted remotely. It was an incursion. They weren’t hobbyist drones, that’s for damn sure. If we recover wreckage, we’ll share more info,” our source said in closing.