The Magical Drones

Mercy be, grab the Christmas tree! Maybe we are being invaded by the Iranians, Chinese, or body snatchers – and maybe…not. How our human minds swirl and conceive, worry and fret, believe and beget – monsters under the bed, Martians, and zoom-zoom things. What is it? It’s a bird, a plane, Superman! No, beyond Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, it’s a magical, mystery drone!

Okay, we have had some fun, now let’s pull back on the reigns, shall we? We have grown men and women, tired of hearing again that Trump won, looking for distractions, U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Andy Kim (D-NJ) are panicking, surely we are being invaded (finally).

Actually, not quite. Still, let’s enjoy the ride, revel together in their panic, and hear them out. These U.S. Senators – Gillibrand, Schumer, Booker, and Kim – demand the FBI explain “unattributable” drones. Imagine four Democrats suddenly putting pressure on the FBI. It’s enough to make you cry.

They say it is a huge mystery, forgetting no one cared a twit about Chinese balloons drifting over U.S. military facilities, our Mensa president doing nothing, just letting those balloons collect data.

No, now we have a real basis for public panic: hobbyists and undocumented aliens – lights. Stir the fire, send up sparks, panic the public, and distract away! Actually, sorry to burst your balloon, but these terrible drones are likely…nothing at all.

Fact: In New Jersey, Maryland, and Connecticut, citizens report loud, whirling, floating drones, red and green navigation lights, strangely FAA compliant – based on regs issued in 2024.

Question: Do you think the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, or drug cartels would make their drones loud, make sure you see them, and equip them with FAA-compliant red and green lights?

Fact: In the US, most drones are unregistered. Still, we have 388,838 registered recreational drones, big, and small, and many are fitted with lights. We have 390,027 commercial drones, fitted with Christmasy lights – with businesses hoping to have drone drop packages in your driveway.

Question: If big drones and small were a genuine threat, do you think they would stay up for long? They each have an infrared footprint, are tracked in the electromagnetic spectrum, and operators also likely trackable. Does that sound like a plan for terror, crime, or anonymity?

Fact: While 400,000 drone pilots are registered, most are not; they never bother. While a million certificates exist for recreational pilots with multiple drones, more “pilots” just ignore the regs.

Question: If you had a booming commercial industry in flashing shoes, or mobile phones, or model airplanes, maybe model rockets, and you saw one, two, then a dozen, would you panic?

Fact: US businesses, hoping to sell new technologies to the US military and allies, test tens of thousands of technologies a year, 13,000 US businesses holding ITAR licenses, a complex process for getting permission to test and sell such technology, led by the State Department.

Question: Do you think, in an era of cost-cutting, entrepreneurship, public and private drone constellation shows – some breathtaking, others frightening – drones are not everywhere?

Fact: This 10 billion dollar industry has hundreds of big US competitors, 60 standout companies, thousands of drones up daily, and lots are unregulated and highly innovative. “Vibrant” is a word used for the US drone industry, and rightly so.

Question: If you saw thousands of snowflakes falling and awoke to a pile of snow, would you infer the snow came up through the ground, or – using some logic – it fell all night? If you found a drone in the sky, would you say it was from Mars, China, Iran, or something closer to home?

All this drone mania reminds me how human we all are, how subject to wild imagining, suddenly sure these drones will invade, only to find, rather shamefacedly, it’s all a bunch of old Kool-Aid.

In 1938, just about this time of year, a bright young imaginer named Orson Wells let loose his radio show “War of the Worlds,” written by H.G. Wells. Like these drones, he hatched hysteria.

It began like this: “We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.” Arresting, magical, terrifying, and untrue.

He was brilliant, and got us worried about nothing, while – rather sadly – a genuine concern was brewing and spreading in Europe, one that would soon deeply affect us all. Distracted, we missed it.

Bottom line: These drones are an unregulated nuisance, irritating distraction, their operators in need of being collared, but they are not likely foreign, radical, hidden, or magical, not worth much thought – except that drones need regulation, as planes once did. More important are other things, closer to home, under the tree. Alert: Do watch for a random sleigh and flying reindeer!

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).