[Thomas] Uh, Travis, we got Matt and Brian from Sky Elements here.
-Hi. -Hey.
[Travis] We planned a really ambitious new experiment with the team from Sky Elements Drone Shows.
You know, this is one of those experiments that we’ve been anticipating for quite some time, because more recently, we’ve seen the potential for magnetic anomalies high above the triangle.
Yes. Yep, absolutely.
-[Preston] Drones are up. -[Travis] Several weeks ago, Sky Elements flew a swarm of 100 drones at the triangle up to the legal maximum altitude of 1,000 feet.
And between 750 and that 1,000-foot level, a huge electromagnetic anomaly of some kind made the drones go haywire and spin out of control.
What’s even more strange is that this thing is also right at the center of the bubble, which we believe has a maximum height of about 2,000 feet.
Now, we want to see if this electromagnetic anomaly might extend even higher than 1,000 feet.
Other experiments in the past suggested that there could be additional electromagnetic anomalies as high as 3,500 feet.
So, Sky Elements has gone out of their way to help us scan not only inside the bubble but much higher above it.
Uh, could you go through the launch plan?
Yeah, so we got a ten-by-ten grid: 100 drones, about five feet in between each drone.
They’re all gonna take off at once, kind of traverse over to the triangle.
We’re hoping to go much higher this time, go up to the 4,000-foot range.
-That would be great. -[Erik] Yeah, perfect, perfect.
That’s ideal.
That’s the highest any drone swarm has ever had legal clearance to fly.
Not just on Skinwalker Ranch.
We’re talking the entire United States.
So, kudos to Sky Elements.
[Thomas] So, you guys are good to go, then?
-[Ellis] Yes, sir. -Okay.
Hey, Travis, you copy?
[Travis] Yeah, Erik. Go ahead.
The word on the ground is we’re gonna do a test, and, uh, we’ll let you know, uh, what’s happening as we see it.
I am in position.
-Have at it. -All right, guys. -[Thomas] Okay.
-[Erik] Let’s hit it. -[Thomas] Let’s get to work.
You’re good to go, guys.
-All right. -All right, let’s do it.
[Ellis] Ten seconds to launch.
Four, three, two, one.
Drones are up.
Taking off.
[Brian] FPV is up.
[Travis] Brian Woodward is also flying his camera-equipped FPV drone with the swarm to closely monitor it for anything strange all the way up to 4,000 feet.
So, they’re at 2,500.
-[Ellis] Whoa, whoa. -[Brian] Whoa, dude.
What the heck?
What is…
[laughs] Dude. Dude. What?
It’s like something took my drone and just, like, threw it back 100 feet.
-Did you see that? -Yep.
That doesn’t seem right.
Whoa. They fell.
-What are they doing? -[Travis] They’re falling.
-[Travis] Look out. -One falling, one falling!
[Thomas] Drones coming down! Drones coming down!
-[Kaleb] Take cover. -Get in the vehicles!
-[Thomas] Get in the vehicles! -Take cover.
-Gary, come on. -[Travis] Look out.
-They are falling, guys. -[Brian] Oh, my gosh.
-[Erik] Whoa, whoa, whoa. -[Matt] One falling, -one falling. -[Erik] Holy crap.
[Ellis] Do we know how many are still up?
-[Thomas] Can you see them? -[Matt] Yep, right there, -right above us. -Okay.
All right, what’s the status?
[Matt] I see all four down.
They’re all down, they’re all down.
Is everybody okay? It looks like they hit right on top of you.
Drones are on the ground, Travis, everybody’s okay.
[Travis] It was strange enough when the drones had communication issues between 750 and 1,000 feet.
But what in the heck did they fly up into above 3,000 feet that made them lose all power and drop dead out of the sky?
Was it an even higher concentration of electromagnetic energy?
And if so, what’s causing it?
Pulling up the logs here.
[Ellis] The drones we’ve checked so far disarmed -at the same altitude… -Mm-hmm.
…which was at 3,271 feet.
Okay.
As if something disarmed the drones.
[Thomas] You mean, like, they just shut themselves off?
-Yes. -Mm-hmm.
So, did something…
…tamper with the flight?
It appears that way.
Yeah, I think we’re willing to send up four more drones…
-Yeah. -…to the 4,000 to kind of see if we can get better results this time, but obviously, with what we just saw, we need to make sure everybody’s safe, so we’ll need to make sure that everybody just kind of has some cover over their head and i-is in a safe position -to fly the drones again. -Yeah.
If those four go well, we can kind of talk about -continuing with the larger scale. -[Thomas] Okay.
We’ll make sure that everybody’s aware.
Ready to rock.
-Okay. Uh, drones are going up. -[Ellis] Five, four, three, two, one.
Drones are hot.
All right, they are approaching that 3,000.
When it turns yellow, it will be at that 3,000-foot mark.
-3,000. -3,000. -3,000.
-[Thomas] Whoa! -[Matt] Oh, shoot. -[Kaleb] Uh-oh.
-[Thomas] Flashing. -[Erik] All right, what’s going on?
Everything disconnected at 3,000 feet.
Coming down. Everybody in!
[Thomas] All right, they’re coming down!
[Travis] They just started blinking.
-What was that about? -In here. In-in here.
They’re blacked out, Travis. They’re coming down.
[Royston] They’re flying that way.
And one’s hovering.
[Thomas] They’re coming down towards you, Travis.
[Kaleb] East field. East field.
[Royston] Three, I got three of them.
-We have eyes on… -[Ellis] All four are down.
They are all on the ground.
[Brian] Dang. That was crazy.
From my perspective, looking at the console, it seemed to be right around the same altitude that they disarmed again.
I mean, for lack of a better term, it’s almost like somebody slapped the drones out of the sky, right when they crossed the 3,271 feet.
Yeah. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here.
[Thomas] There’s no way we’re getting a hundred drones -up tonight. -For sure.
I say we just, uh, we call it.
[Pete] What a night.
[Travis] Hey, how you all doing?
Better than some of the drones…
-from this… -[Kaleb] Yeah. -Oh, yeah, man.
[Royston] If you remember, just moments before the drones fell, there were problems with that FPV drone.
Brian yelled, “Hey, something just pushed my drone,” and you, you remember that?
-Yeah. -And it looked like his drone, like, moved.
I mean, it literally looked like something grabbed it and threw it.
Now, I caught that moment in Meta-Frame.
Uh, let me bring that up.
So, what we’re looking at here is a sky-facing camera.
We’re actually looking up through one of our antennas at the triangle.
We’re looking at these lights.
We’re looking at the four drones.
And this is the FPV drone just before that push that you described.
So, we’re looking up at the apex.
And here’s the push.
-[Royston chuckles] Oh. -[Travis] Wow.
-Now that’s crazy. -[Kaleb] Yeah.
[Erik] Let’s look at the moment the drones fell out of the sky.
I want to show you a different video looking straight up from near the command center.
This is really zoomed in.
This is a great view of the four drones and the FPV drone -there in the upper right. -[Travis] Mm-hmm.
[Erik] I’ll just play through it.
-Flash. -[Travis] Now, look. Did you see them?
-Look. Look at that. -[Thomas] What the…?
[Travis] It looks like they’re moving sideways first.
Then they take off superfast.
-[Kaleb] And then they just slow down. -Oh, look.
-[Thomas] Now they’re coming down. -[Travis] Look, it’s tumbling. One’s tumbling.
What the heck?
[Travis] Kind of matches what Brian said about the FPV drone suddenly going, like, 100 feet.
-[Kaleb] Like they got pushed. -Like something pushed him o-out of the way, like 100 foot in one direction.
[Royston] Did they all get pushed -just the same way as his? -[Travis] The same…
-whatever that phenomenon is. -We’ll have to factor that -and see. -Yeah.
[Travis] If these drones were just turned off by some kill command, we’d have expected to see them fall straight down.
But instead, they look like they veer off to the south and then drop straight down.
What’s really curious is how the FPV drone, which only has a camera, was pushed away from that area, but the other drones, which have magnetometers for identifying electromagnetic energy, were overridden by something.
It’s almost like they were shut off to stop them from collecting data at that 3,200-foot mark.
It sounds nuts, but could that be what really happened?
And if so, what’s up there?
Do we have a different angle of the same moment -that we can that compare it to? -Sure.
[Erik] I have one more view from a Meta-Frame time-lapse.
Now, what we’re looking at here, this camera is positioned south of the triangle, angled up at that airspace.
Four drones go up.
It only looks like one because they’re so close together.
-[Travis] Oh, wow, look at that. -[Thomas] Oh…
[chuckles] [Erik] Let’s take a look at that again.
We’ll frame-advance this.
-Now, did you, did you notice– -[Travis] Hey, whoa, whoa, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
-[Erik] Look up there. -Look at that.
[Erik] Right here.
-[Thomas] Flash, possibly? -[Travis] Yeah, there’s a flash right by them.
What was that flash?
[Erik] Let’s dive in on this.
-What is this? -[Kaleb] Yeah.
[Erik] Let’s see here.
[Travis] It’s only there for one frame?
-[Erik] Yeah. Now keep in mind, this is… -[Travis] Time-lapse.
-[Erik] …a time-lapse. -[Kaleb] Mm-hmm.
[Travis] But what the hell is it?
We get this blink, the drones get to the spot…
then the drones fall.
-Wow. -[Thomas] Mm-hmm.
That’s so odd, man.
Could this flash of light Erik captured on the enhanced video be what caused the drones to drop out of the sky?
If so, what the heck is it?
And where did it come from?
