Officials baffled by reports of large numbers of drones in Ozark County
Residents of Ozark County have recently reported multiple sightings of drones hovering over their homes and in various rural areas across the area, raising questions about their purpose and origin.
The reports mostly describe the drones as operating during nighttime hours, with some being unusually large and behaving in ways that have left residents uneasy.
The reports have flooded in from a variety of people in various parts of the county, including many well-respected community members who are not known for making outlandish claims or sharing false information.
One such respected community member is Amy Padgett, who lives near the Missouri-Arkansas line off J Highway. She shared her startling experience with the Times last week following a Dec. 11 sighting of as many as two dozen drones flying above her house for at least a couple hours.
“My husband and I both saw them,” Padgett said. “We saw a Facebook post where some local people were saying there are a ton of drones outside. That’s when we walked outside and saw at least 25 hovering over our house.”
Padgett described the drones as unusually large. “They were really big for a drone—at least a full arm’s length wide for the body, and then the wings extended from there,” she said. “Some of them had lights—red and green with some white. The lights were round and on the bottom of the drones.
Some had no lights, but you could tell they were flying above because you could see them block the stars from view as they moved. Some were going at what I would call a slow ‘fly-by’ speed, others were hovering and others were moving side to side, back and forth across the area.
“Some came down lower and then would go back up higher. The lowest were just above the treetops, but others were further up. We could hear the fan-like motor running on the lower ones. This would have been somewhere about 9-10 p.m. [on Dec. 11]. They were out there for several hours, even when we went to sleep around 11. I didn’t see anything the next morning.”
Deeply concerned about the unusual activity, Padgett promptly reported the sighting to the Ozark County Sheriff’s Department, the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Sheriff Cass Martin confirmed Padgett contacted him directly.
“She said, ‘I’ve got 25 drones going over my house,’” Sheriff Martin recalled. “I called the Highway Patrol to see if they had any calls or had heard anything at the state level. They hadn’t received any calls. The Ozark County Sheriff’s Department and the Missouri State Highway Patrol canvassed the county looking for the reported drones, but we didn’t see anything we were able to confirm was a drone.”
Sheriff Martin noted that OCSD Administrative Assistant Curtis Ledbetter checked the FAA logs for the reported time frame.
“There were only two planes going over,” he said. “As of right now, I have no idea at all what people were seeing.”
Eddie Thomas of the Missouri State Highway Patrol shared a similar experience. “I’ve heard the same [reports] personally, but Troop G has had zero calls regarding drones,” Thomas said. “I was outside around 10:40 p.m. looking myself, but all I saw was clear, dark skies, a few jets and stars everywhere.”
Another family who lives near the Missouri-Arkansas line off Highway 101 also reported seeing the strange objects after reading a Facebook post from a neighbor urging them to go outside and look.
“I’m guessing it all started around 9 o’clock, and they were there until after 11 —every one of them was still there,” the man said. He described seeing at least 10 hovering above his house.
“They were super high. Most of them were barely moving, mostly stationary, but some were moving all over,” he said, explaining that he used binoculars to get a better look. “I thought about getting my drone and flying it up to see what it would show, but I worried it might get shot down.”
He asked to remain unnamed, for fear that community members would think he was “crazy,” a concern a lot of people shared when first reports of the sightings started coming in; however, as more and more people have shared their own personal experiences with seeing the objects, others have made a point to go outside at night and look up at the sky, and the claims have become even more widespread.
On a Times Facebook post asking readers to share their experiences, more than 288 people commented with many sharing their own experiences of drone sightings in Ozark County.
Among those commenting that they also saw the drones was Michele Strain and Elsie Strain of the Howard’s Ridge/Clarkridge area; Catrina Hawkins and Jane Squires of north of Gainesville; Brooke Cotter, Jean Guffey, Cassidy LeAnn, Angie Lamb and Stephanie Guffey of the Bakersfield area; Beverly Rodgers of Vanzant; Andrea Jenkins near the Ozark-Douglas Counties line; Alyssa Ehrhart and Carrie Belt Minge of Caulfield; HJ Steckman in South Fork; and Jenna Mostert of Zanoni.
Other reports are posted to many local residents’ personal Facebook pages, casting the net of sightings over Romance, Wasola, Dora, Mountain Home, Arkansas, West Plains and much of the surrounding area. Many say they’ve tried to take photos, but without specialized nighttime photography equipment, their cell phone cameras aren’t adequate for the distance and darkness - and the result has been an unidentifiable dot of color on a black sky.
Speculation about the drones’ purpose has been widespread. One Facebook commenter suggested that they might be related to feral hog detection and eradication. The Times contacted Randall Roy with the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Ozark Regional Office to weigh in on the reports of as many as 25 drones in the sky last week and continued reports of drones across the area.
“No idea what they may have been seeing,” Roy said. “MDC and USDA do have a few drones they use for feral hog detection, but less than half of that amount probably. And I am unaware of any feral hog populations in the Caulfield/Bakersfield area [where many of the drone reports came from]. Furthermore, we are required to get signed permission from any landowner we fly a drone over... I’m pretty confident it wasn’t MDC.”
Local authorities have received similar speculation that the objects might be Starlink satellites, but residents and officials have pointed out discrepancies.
“The reports we’ve heard say that the green and red lights don’t match what you’d see with satellites,” Sheriff Martin said. Padgett agreed that there was no way it was Starlink she was seeing, as the satellites usually present themselves in a line of bright white lights across the sky. “Some were in a line, but they were all at varying heights,” she said.
“Certain constellations were brighter that night, but I think this has got to be a man-made flying machine. I don’t think it was constellations,” the sheriff said.
The sheriff also addressed concerns about how to handle future sightings, especially after some social media users suggested shooting down the drones.
“Don’t shoot them down. For one, it’s illegal,” he said. “But also, without knowing what might be on the drones, or if they’re carrying some kind of substance, like a chemical agent, shooting the aircraft down could cause a substance to spread to a large area. I’m not saying they are, and I don’t want to scare anyone or make the situation worse, but it’s just unclear at this point what these are and from where.”
Instead, the sheriff encouraged residents to report sightings directly to his department by dialing 417-679-4633.
“Let us know where you’re seeing it so we can at least monitor it,” he said. “Then we can contact the FAA or anybody that surveys the skies to find out what this is.”
Martin noted the rapid rise in drone use in recent years.
“Within the last couple of years, drones have become a huge thing, and it’s really hard to monitor,” he said. “Anyone can go to Walmart or Amazon, and right out of the box, you can fly them. I think it’s a real mess for the government.”
As reports continue to pour in, authorities are working to identify the objects and address residents’ concerns.
“People did see something,” Sheriff Martin said. “We are seeking to know what that something was.”
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Editor’s note: Since mid-November, numerous drone sightings have been reported along the U.S. east coast, particularly in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and surrounding states. These reports have raised public concern and prompted investigations by federal and state authorities.
In a joint statement made Monday, the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigations and Department of Defense gave this response:
“There are more than one million drones lawfully registered with the FAA in the United States and there are thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones lawfully in the sky on any given day. With the technology landscape evolving, we expect that number to increase over time.
“FBI has received tips of more than 5,000 reported drone sightings in the last few weeks with approximately 100 leads generated, and the federal government is supporting state and local officials in investigating these reports. Consistent with each of our unique missions and authorities, we are quickly working to prioritize and follow these leads. We have sent advanced detection technology to the region. And we have sent trained visual observers.
“Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and stars mistakenly reported as drones. 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.
“That said, we recognize the concern among many communities. We continue to support state and local authorities with advanced detection technology and support of law enforcement. We urge Congress to enact counter-UAS legislation when it reconvenes that would extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities to identify and mitigate any threat that may emerge.
“Additionally, there have been a limited number of visual sightings of drones over military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere, including within restricted air space. Such sightings near or over DoD installations are not new. DoD takes unauthorized access over its airspace seriously and coordinates closely with federal, state and local law enforcement authorities, as appropriate. Local commanders are actively engaged to ensure there are appropriate detection and mitigation measures in place.”