"Popeye" How to Use Weather to Hide from Drones

[Music] nowadays people are really concerned about government surveillance with drones on u.s soil and now that covid has been a great vehicle from which to promote totalitarian and orwellian restrictions these concerns aren't exactly unwarranted so we get a lot of questions regarding how to evade drones so in this video we will cover one of the most important methods for evading aerial surveillance and this technique is codenamed popeye contrary to popular belief aerial surveillance platforms such as drones cannot magically see through clouds there are most certainly technologies out there such as synthetic aperture radar that can see through all weather conditions but it's not going to be a technology capable of streaming video as we know it most of the time when we see footage from a drone camera on the internet we're either looking at electro-optical footage or infrared footage electro-optical imagery and footage is by far the most common and despite its fancy sounding name it's basically just a normal video camera albeit with a really good image sensor and a powerful zoom lens and infrared footage is mostly what we know as flir flir is actually the name of the company that mak eally good image sensor and a powerful zoom lens and infrared footage is mostly what we know as flir flir is actually the name of the company that makes most of the sensors for the government but it's also an acronym for the technology forward-looking infrared the sensors that detect heat and display this as an image now a lot of aerial surveillance platforms have a lot of cool features such as fusion technology that will allow the operator to overlay infrared imagery on top of say a night vision image this is pretty cool and so much of a force multiplier that it's impossible to truly fathom but all of this technology has a critical flaw it cannot see through clouds despite all of the trillions of tax dollars spent on drone and sensor technology there currently is not a way to stream a live video feed through clouds there are efforts being made in this arena however such as the rapidly under development swear or shortwave infrared sensors these sensors can't totally see through a several thousand foot thick cloud layer but it can certainly see through a lot more moisture in the air than traditional platforms but these sensors are extremely expensive require special maintenance and ainly see through a lot more moisture in the air than traditional platforms but these sensors are extremely expensive require special maintenance and are generally not fielded just yet on most of the us military surveillance platforms with the exception of like cia drones and small fixed-wing birds so for the most part clouds are a drone sensor operator's worst nightmare and even today weather is a primary factor for the cancellation of the overwhelming majority of military operations worldwide most military operations have a certain go no-go criteria for launching and one of the most important criteria is whether or not cloud cover will prohibit the sensor operator from seeing the ground of course this varies from agency to agency but roughly speaking this criteria is 20 cloud cover in other words if the sensor operator cannot clearly see the ground eighty percent of the time we reach what's called popeye or the point in which a sensor operator can no longer reliably see the ground of course this is simply a code word that can be different in various military units but most of the time the word popeye is used because it is a direct tongue-in-cheek reference to operation popeye whi ferent in various military units but most of the time the word popeye is used because it is a direct tongue-in-cheek reference to operation popeye which was a clandestine and illegal military weather modification program carried out by the us air force from 1967 until 1972 with a goal of seeding clouds and creating a harsher monsoon season in vietnam and since the u.s military is pretty big on history and heritage and also considering that most aerial surveillance operators and doctrine originates from the us air force the term popeye is largely used to describe the point in time that cloud cover gets too thick to continue the mission so what does this mean for us and how can a person take advantage of this in order to avoid aerial surveillance well we can certainly take a page out of our adversaries books the taliban al qaeda isis and countless other groups have been aware of this for decades and as such most insurgents in the middle east tend to conduct operations like moving supplies out in the open when the sky is overcast the taliban for instance knows very well that u.s forces will not conduct operations when the skies are overcast so they tend to breathe easy when the weathe iban for instance knows very well that u.s forces will not conduct operations when the skies are overcast so they tend to breathe easy when the weather is bad but one must be mindful of the fact that drones can fly below clouds so for instance if your drone normally flies at say 35 000 feet and you have a cloud ceiling below it at say 25 000 feet well the drone operator can simply fly below the clouds and fly at 20 000 feet now this varies widely by the type of drone that's being used as well as other environmental factors the high flying drones like predators and global hawks cannot fly below a certain altitude because their fuel efficiency suffers plus they can be seen with the unaided eye at a certain altitude that varies with the environmental conditions also most drones in the world cannot fly in the rain so if it's raining a drone obviously cannot fly below the clouds that the rain is falling from so there are a lot of caveats to this one and one can see how this gets to be a really complex topic really quickly but in places like afghanistan this is really easy insurgents and civilians alike can look at a certain mountaintop that they can see from their village which they kno e afghanistan this is really easy insurgents and civilians alike can look at a certain mountaintop that they can see from their village which they know the altitude of and they can say oh okay that mountaintop is covered with a cloud layer today so that means there won't be any drone strikes or us military operations today so i'm safe it gets a bit trickier in the us when you don't have a reference for what level the clouds are at but we will have a separate tutorial on how to determine cloud levels in a separate video so taking in this fire hose of information we can develop a good rule of thumb that if a cloud ceiling is at about ten thousand feet aerial surveillance operations are unlikely this is because most high-flying drones can't really fly below ten thousand feet for that long and if they do they can easily be seen with the naked eye and drones like the rq7 shadow that really only fly below ten thousand feet well those are called the flying lawn mower for a reason they're really easy to see and hear we can also keep in the back of our minds that high winds and precipitation in the form of rain is very prohibitive to not just drones but other aerial platforms as well there' ck of our minds that high winds and precipitation in the form of rain is very prohibitive to not just drones but other aerial platforms as well there's a reason that we call it charlie's weather this is sure charlie's weather insurgents have always thrived in poor weather conditions and while helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft can fly in the rain it's not ideal for the fixed-wing assets rain reduces visibility for the drones it causes them to fall out of the sky and for helicopters flying in the rain is dangerous so avoiding aerial surveillance is as simple as realizing the weather conditions that restrict aerial surveillance and taking advantage of those conditions to plan your operations when you know that there won't be an eye in the sky [Music] you