SAN DIEGO, Calif. — A suspected drone that was circling around downtown San Diego and Coronado early Tuesday morning was actually a manned airplane, Harbor Police confirmed to ABC 10News.
The ABC 10News Breaking News Tracker captured video of the plane and a police helicopter chasing after it Tuesday.
Police started investigating after getting multiple 911 calls from residents concerned about a drone doing big circles in the San Diego Bay toward the airport after midnight.
"Not sure if you're able to help us out. We're attempting to locate the operator of a drone,” a police dispatcher said as the aircraft flashed in the sky.
Drone operator and former Air Force aircraft accident investigator Rich Martindell said, “Clearly, it was an airplane, not a drone,” after watching a video of the plane.
He said the light pattern on the aircraft made it clear to him that it was a light single-engine aircraft.
Most consumer drones have two green lights and two red lights, Martindell said.
“And a regular aircraft has got a red and a green light, one on each wing and a white light on a tail and then a flashing white light usually," he said.
Retired FBI special agent Rob D’Amico said federal agencies use planes like the one spotted above San Diego for surveillance and noted they can stay airborne for hours, unlike most drones.
“What I looked at was what I normally saw when we were doing drug surveillance or surveillance against mobsters is very light, quiet airplanes flown by one person watching somebody,” said D'Amico, who was in charge of the FBI's counter-drone unit.
He said it’s easy to mistake a plane for a drone at night and wondered if it was registered under a name that could have stumped local authorities.
“A government plane may have some type of covert name associated with it,” D'Amico, who now runs Sierra One Consulting, which specializes in airspace security, said.
The DEA told ABC 10News that the plane doesn't belong to the agency.
Lawmakers receive classified briefing
D'Amico believes relaxed rules from the FAA allowing drones to be flown at night by hobbyists without a waiver is partly to blame for the increase in mysterious drone sightings across the country.
On Tuesday, some lawmakers in Washington got a three-hour classified briefing on the drone sightings.
The meeting comes as the FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks. Some have occurred over military bases.
“We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast,” the FBI said in a joint statement Tuesday with the Department of Homeland Security and FAA.
President-elect Donald Trump suggested mysterious drones should be shot down on his Truth Social platform last Friday.
D'Amico said law enforcement can “jam” a drone and get it out of the sky but warned against such a move.
“Shooting down a drone is the most dangerous thing you can do. One, with all the misidentification, you could be shooting at a manned aircraft and you don't know. Two, if it is a drone and you hit it, it could fall and kill somebody," he said.
