The FBI isn’t happy to admit that a “highly modified drone” buzzing around controlled airspace in Tucson, Arizona, evaded helicopters of both Customs and Border Protection and the Tucson Police Department’s Air Support Unit. The War Zone has a bunch of interesting new details to report about the mysterious drone which authorities encountered and tracked on the night of February 9, 2021.
Significant details revealed
According to the experts, some new accounts add fairly significant details to the mystery drone chase over the skies of Tucson, Arizona in February. We now know that it was “first seen in the airspace adjacent to, or even over, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and later flew through the base’s confines.” That makes national security guys nervous.
Especially when there is a “growing number” of “unknown drones flying at night being interested in critical energy infrastructure in Arizona.” For instance, the Nuclear Regulatory commission called what happened over the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation Station near Phoenix last September “drone-a-palooza,” but that incident remains unexplained.
One thing is certain. The hardware discovered when a CBP helicopter almost crashed into it was not an ordinary off-the-shelf hobby drone. It did some things the experts are wondering about. Details provided note that around 10:30 PM, the Customs and Border Protection encountered a “highly modified drone in controlled airspace.” They reported it as a near miss. It didn’t show up on radar at all. That’s when another “helicopter operated by the Tucson Police Department’s Air Support Unit was called in to help track and potentially identify the drone.”
A “source with direct knowledge of the incident” insists that the drone was “highly unlikely to be battery-powered based on the altitude, distance, and speed at which it flew.” Not only that, it was “equipped with high-tech sensors, such as an infrared camera, to operate at night.” Officials are convinced that it’s “only logical that it was looking towards” the Davis Monthan Air Force Base “flight line,” based on its location.
The new details show that when first spotted, the drone was hovering near a complex of fuel tanks west of Runway 12. “The description of the drone’s initial observed location would appear to match the location of a terminal owned by Kinder Morgan, an energy company that operates fuel pipelines and other energy infrastructure.”
Around “40% of all natural gas flows through Kinder Morgan’s pipes.” The feds wanted help from the public and they got it. One user on JetCareers had all the dirt.
The chase was on
The informed citizen details that it was spotted just east of the Tucson airport at about 1,200 feet off the ground, headed east. “It passed about 30′ away co-altitude with a police helicopter flying the opposite direction.” The cop said “WTF?” and turned around.
“Helo made a 180 turn to give chase. The quad copter was described as approximately 5 feet long by about 3 feet wide, with a single green flashing LED light.” The pilot later noted it couldn’t be seen at all on night vision even when he was looking straight at it. The green LED was all they could see in visual.
The drone started surveillance on the Air Force Base but neither the tower at the civil airport or the military base could detect it. The fresh details relate that the drone operator “apparently realized by this time that the drone was being followed, because it then proceeded northwest at high speed and climbing, with the helo and another LE helo in trail.”
With police and border patrol in hot pursuit, the “copter began to climb and flew out of the TUS area about 50 miles to the northwest of town into the middle of nowhere desert.” Near Marana. That’s a really spooky place to Chemtrail watchers. Rumors abound that is where retired commercial jets and active military planes get the refit to spray climate control chemicals. Allegedly.
The observation details note that the drone was last spotted “climbing through 14,000′ and into the undercast, where it disappeared.” The choppers hung around waiting for the battery to run down. “The helos remained in VMC [Visual Meteorological Conditions] obviously, and one hung around for about an hour, to see if it would reappear descending, or if there was any vehicles driving through the middle of nowhere as either the operator or someone to potentially recover it.
Neither appeared.” Sources have confirmed the radar track of the Tucson Police Department helicopter which chased the drone but there is no record of the drone on radar at all. “Whatever the drone was, it had enough power to evade two helicopters, each capable of 150-180 mph.”