Fleets of drones doing grid patterns over areas of Colorado

Some big tells in the article

• they fly just high enough that they cannot be heard. This is what they do and I've seen this countless times. With the high definition cameras they have, height is not a problem. And, they are difficult to spot, as at even 200 feet above the ground, they are nearly invisible, which makes drones ideal for surveillance work and scanning.
• the cops "don't know a thing about it." That's a lie. They are told it's US work and to act stupid if the matter becomes exposed. Law Enforcement routinely obeys without questions govt intel services. 
• doing grid patterns is known as "box surveillance" in spy circles. Nothing is missed, all is seen. You get it.
• The fact that once each grid is scanned, they move to the next grid plot. These drones are PROGRAMMED for their flight patterns, as govt drones - as used by the military and the CIA/NSA can and often are, preprogrammed for their flights, way points, etc. This is a spy operation also known as reconnaissance or recce.
• 40 mph is moving along quite fast especially for a drone. These are no hobbyist birds, because their crappy batteries would drain out quite fast. No, this is govt issue, or GI. The fact they stay up for hours at this speed confirms it.
• Even if one came down and you were able to snag it, they have onboard GPS and the bad guys - law enforcement of some kind - would be on top of you pretty fast. GPS have their own, long term batteries separate from those powering the engines. Like a watch battery, they shout out for years.
• Where I used to live, feds and cops and agency assets would practice in the Santa Clara riverbed, spying on homes and hovering outside of bedroom windows of residents around Sand Canyon. I even confronted one of these guys, who was pretending to be an electrical contractor. He had two drones that were like nothing any hobbyist could buy. And an ankle holster gun, which was quite obvious.
• That the Denver Post ran a cover story essentially saying they are doing nothing wrong and therefore are not break the law shows you the CIA runs the MSM in our times.
• These are spy birds. Flown into the evening (against the law, FAA), coverup by media and sheriffs, and a make you go to sleep article, nothing to see here. The fact this was published at all by them, is so that when others see them, they will remember the article and blather on about how "nothing to see here, move along." This is your final tell...the coverup. 

Don Bradley

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Several of large, non-government drones have been flying in what the Denver Post describes as a 'nighttime search pattern' over northeast Colorado.

Master drone above other drones doing grid box patterns

With estimated wingspans of six-feet, the aircraft have been covering 25-square-mile plots of Phillips and Yuma counties every night between 7 - 10 p.m. for around a week, Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said Monday, adding that they have received nine calls about the drones since last week. 

"They’ve been doing a grid search, a grid pattern," he said "They fly one square and then they fly another square.

Nobody knows who's flying them
Several agencies, including the sheriff's office, the Army, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), say they have no knowledge of the mysterious aircraft or who is operating them, however Undersheriff William Meyers suggested that "The estimated size and number of drones makes it unlikely that they’re being flown by hobbyists."

Drone pilots aren't required to submit flight plans unless planning to operate in controlled airspace, such as an airport.

UAV and Drone Solutions monitoring aircraft (via AOPA.org)

Meyers says he watched eight of the large drones flying along the Yuma County border, while a single drone was spotted simultaneously hovering around 25 miles away over the town of Paoli. According to the report "it didn't move all night, just hovered over the town," while eight more drones flew 10 miles away over the town of Haxtun, Meyers added.
"Overhead they were probably doing 30, 40 mph," he said. "They weren’t racing or flying around with speed."

One resident who spotted a drone last week gave chase, Elliott said, driving behind it at about 50 mph, but lost the drone when he ran out of gas in Washington County.

The machines fly too high to be heard from the ground but can be seen by their strobing white lights along with red, blue and green lights, Myers said.
Myers suspects the drones might be operated by a private company, although the machines haven’t targeted any obvious landmarks or features — sometimes they fly over towns, other times over empty fields.
“They do not seem to be malicious,” Elliott said. “They don’t seem to be doing anything that would indicate criminal activity.” -Denver Post

Denver-based commercial photographer Vic Moss, a drone pilot and owner of an online drone school (Drone U), said on Monday he thinks either a company or government agency is behind the flights.

"We have a number of drone companies here in Colorado, and they’re very innovative," said Moss, adding "So maybe they’re testing something of theirs out in that area because it is very rural. But everyone that I know of, they coordinate all that stuff with local authorities to prevent this very situation. They all very much want people to understand drones and not cause this kind of hysteria."

Moss suggests that the grid pattern may indicate some type of mapping or searching operation, adding that perhaps they are flying at night in order to use infrared cameras - which are sometimes used to examine crops.

He also says that the pilots are unlikely to be breaking any laws, as "The way Colorado law is written, none of the statutes fit for harassment or trespassing."
n on board with identifying the airspace around your property as the actual premises, so we don’t have anything we could charge." 

The FAA does say that drones weighing under 55 lbs must be flown during daylight hours, within sight of the pilot, under 400 feet, and not directly over people. Pilots can apply for waivers.

It’s also not clear whether the drones over Phillips and Yuma counties would be governed by those regulations. A drone the size of the ones spotted over the counties likely would weigh more than 55 pounds, Moss said. That means the drone operator would be flying commercially and would likely need to be a “manned aviator” — an actual pilot, Moss said.

Chuck Adams, CEO of 1Up Aerial Drone Services in Golden, said that he wasn’t sure who might be flying the drones, but said his company does offer “drone defense” systems that can help people on the ground discover where drones are being flown from. -Denver Post

"It’s something we put up with radio frequency and acoustics, and you can tell where the operator is and where the drones are," said Adams. "We can’t take them out of the sky, but we can give awareness."

And according to Sheriff Elliott, people can stop calling about the drones.
"We just want to know if one lands, if we can get our hands on it, or if they see someone operating them, that’s what we’re looking for now," he said. "We know they exist."


FROM THE INTERNET
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My best guess is that since these are flying at night in a mapping pattern so they must be using IR, then they are probably scouting for underground cache's of weapons and bullion.  This part of the state is fairly heavily loaded to us militia / survival types, so I'm sure the liberal elites that plan to use CO as their escape bunker want to know what they will be dealing with from the deplorable locals.
Using IR at night you can scan a good 6 to 8 feet underground and pick up anomalies like concentrations of metals or food storage pretty easily.
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 There are defensive drones which pursue and drop catch nets over unknown drones, then fly them both to a predetermined location. I'd go that route.
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 There needs to be a stand your ground law for non military / non US / non-police drones.  And Mil - US - Police drones need to have specific markings / lights that make them easy to identify and enormous fines / jail time for those that make their drones look like official drones

It's my understanding that the air above your property is yours until you reach FAA space and then it's US space up into space and beyond. Correct me if I'm wrong.  That would mean that these drones are trespassing on private property
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"Mil - US - Police drones need" they would need a warrant at the least to inspect your property legally. But then again, those that would operate drone care less about the law or the oath they swore.
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 The FAA would know who's drone that it belongs to.  FAA requirements are, any drone over 250 grams in weight must be registered, and cannot fly above 400 feet, and the operator must not allow the drone to get beyond his line of sight.  If it is a drone that is flying higher than this, or covering large swaths of land, then you can rest assured, its a government operated drone.
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If they don't know who is flying them, how do they know they are not government drones?
Because the government said so?
Sure,  you can trust them to tell you the truth  . . . !
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 As an FPV and LoS pilot it's unusual that someone's flying at night but there would be no story here if those flying them left the blinking LEDs off and didn't want to be detected.  Above 200ft you won't hear an electric motor. These are spy drones.
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The area is being scanned by either the military or intel. These are spy drones. The flight characteristics tell us so. And, doing sequential grid patterns means they are looking not for people, but for guns and gold.