> I myself saw a drone, and tried to paint it as a plane or helicopter at first, but it was too close to the ground (seemed a few hundred feet up at most), had the mismatched light pattern characteristic of trans-wing drones, and moved too slowly for other types of aircraft. And most damningly it didn’t make any noise audible from the ground, something not even stealth bombers can accomplish.
That’s exactly what you would expect from a regular airplane though. You can’t accurately differentiate „low and slow“ vs „high and fast“ at night. And quiet operation is what high flying planes seem to do regularly.
You can gauge rough distance/height pretty well by the angles and relative distances between the nav lights. If it is was high enough to be silent, it was at least 10x the size of a 747.
That’s exactly what you would expect from a regular airplane though. You can’t accurately differentiate „low and slow“ vs „high and fast“ at night. And quiet operation is what high flying planes seem to do regularly.