U.S. military drone footage reveals civilian 'dummy targets' - But is all as it seems?

'Apparently the Air Force is using fishing boats and vacationers as a simulated enemy, dummy targets.'

The Daily Beast blogger Kenneth Lipp was randomly searching Shodan, a search engine users can use to locate specific computers connected to the internet, when he happened upon U.S. drone footage.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - As described in his blog, he discovered footage captured by a U.S. MO-1 Predator drone circling Choctawhatchee Bay in the Gulf of Mexico.

The footage was streaming from a site that read, "Welcome to FMV [full motion video]!"

Three agency logos appeared beside the welcome: the National Reconnaissance Office, the Aerospace Data Facility-East and the Washington Innovation Center of the Combat Information Center.

He googled the drone's location, which was listed as 16REU7110768761. to reveal it was based in Florida's Choctawhatchee Bay, near the Eglin Air Force Base.

The footage, from Ranger1, appeared to Lipp to be remotely piloted and was following civilian fishing boats and vacationers, leading him to believe they were "simulated enemy, dummy targets."

He admitted he couldn't find any tests in the area to be documented or announced, but did notice there is a special Temporary Flight Restriction for the airspace later in May for a counter-UAV exercise.

Lipp was simply stating his opinions, but Daily Mail ran with it anyway, claiming the allegedly live footage was "accidentally" streamed on the internet.

According to Motherboard, NRO spokeswoman Loretta DeSio said she wasn't immediately familiar with the footage and said she would look into it, but did not respond by the deadline.

The Air Force routinely flies in the area, which makes DeSio's response believable but still, many are left wondering if the footage was truly live and accidental.

Scott Swanson, a former AF Predator operator, admitted the feed looked legitimate. He explained: "The graphics overlay looks like an updated Predator-type feed but could be any of the modern [electro-optical or infrared] systems."

Swanson also commented on the NRO, saying the organization doesn't usually release drone test footage.

"Seems strange for me that this would appear on an NRO feed," he stated.

Lipp admitted the feed did not appear live, which implies it wasn't an accident and there is no evidence of clearance levels necessary to access it.

Journalist Sean Gallagher from Ars Techna did some digging and revealed a stream named "DPSCaravan," allegedly referencing the Cessna Caravan used by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies for surveillance flights, revealed the same Web video interface.

An analysis of the site and another similar source linked the footage to a military exercise from February.

Some more research revealed the streaming sites running the servers responsible for the footage were owned by Aviture, a geospatial intelligence software company providing services to the Department of Defense and other government and commercial customers.

The FMV sites are believed to be prototype or demo pages created on public servers without web addresses. They are not classified, but Ars Techna believes they aren't "intended for public viewing."

They've reached out to Aviture and the NGA for more information but have yet to receive a response.

As for the drone footage, the sites hosting it have been taken down following a Twitter uproar.

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