FAA’s New Drone Task Force Hunts for ‘Command Vehicle’ After Mysterious Sightings

The Federal Aviation Administration announced this month that it will begin searching for a potential command vehicle and other relevant clues to explain recent sightings of drone clusters in the US states of Nebraska and Colorado over the past several weeks.

After weeks of reports and no leads, authorities in several counties of both Nebraska and Colorado have come together with the FAA’s task force to investigate sightings of dozens of drones in remote areas of the Great Plains states. 

The Denver Post reported that representatives from the FAA, FBI, US Army, Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, US Air Force Office of Special Investigations and a number of local law enforcement agencies were in attendance at the January 6 meeting. 

Colorado’s Phillips County Sheriff’s Office also posted about the Monday strategy meeting and noted that federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies could not confirm or deny whether the drones are “malicious.” 

“That’s something we can handle,” Captain Michaell Yowell of Colorado’s Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said of the potential command vehicle in an interview with the Denver Post. “That’s something on the ground. A drone 500 feet in the air, we can’t do much about that. A suspicious vehicle in the middle of a county road is something we absolutely can.”

Sheriff TC Combs of the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado said Monday that “the FAA appears to be baffled by the sightings” and that “they have no recourse planned as of now.” 

Locals in rural areas of Nebraska and Colorado have grown worried over the increase in nighttime drone sightings over the past few weeks, which have spawned fears ranging from Mexican drug cartel jobs to alien surveillance. 

Combs asserted in his Monday Facebook post that “at this time, no private entity or government agencies have claimed ownership or control the drones.” 

The FAA took another measure against drones on July 11, 2019 by subjecting a dozen “national security sensitive locations” to existing federal restrictions which banned unmanned aircraft systems from entering their airspace. 

Those concerned with potentially being mistaken for individuals conducting “malicious drone operations,” as the release put it, were advised to download the FAA’s iOS and Android-compatible “B4UFLY” app to receive information about restricted areas.

Sourse: sputniknews.com