Hundreds Reported Mystery Drones Over Colorado. Investigators Couldn’t Find Them

Just before Christmas 2019, people in northeastern Colorado began seeing strange lights over the farmland after dark. Witnesses described aircraft much larger than the little drones people flew in their backyards. Some appeared alone, while others moved together across the open countryside.

Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott said as many as 17 were showing up around 7 p.m. and staying in the area until about 10. They seemed to follow a pattern, crossing one section of farmland before moving to another. To the people watching, it looked as though somebody was searching for something.

Deputies Tried to Follow the Lights

The sightings soon spread beyond Phillips County and across the borders into Nebraska and Kansas. People started going outside in the evenings to watch, and local sheriff’s offices were getting calls from residents who wanted answers. But some of the strangest accounts came from officers who went looking themselves.

On December 30, Morgan County Sheriff’s Sergeant Vince Iovinella was on patrol as reports came in about objects with flashing red and white lights. He said the objects sometimes moved quickly and sometimes appeared to hover. Deputies tried following them in their vehicles but couldn’t keep up.

Iovinella estimated that as many as 30 objects might have been moving around the county that night. The number was surprising enough, but officers in neighboring states were describing something even more unusual.

In Nebraska, a Chase County deputy reported seeing 30 to 50 smaller objects moving around a much larger one. According to the account forwarded to the FAA, the bigger object appeared to remain in the same place for hours. The deputy called it a "mothership."

Near Oakley, Kansas, a Highway Patrol trooper described a bright, stationary light surrounded by roughly 10 to 15 smaller lights. He tried looking at one of the objects through night-vision equipment, but said its lights made it difficult to get a clear view.

They Went Looking for an Operator

Surveying farmland or inspecting pipelines seemed like reasonable possibilities. Large drones can be used for that kind of work, and the wide-open plains offered plenty of space to fly. Authorities contacted drone companies, pipeline operators, colleges and government agencies to see whether anybody had a project underway.

They also asked military officials, including U.S. Northern Command and F.E. Warren Air Force Base. Those inquiries didn’t identify an operation that matched the activity people were describing.

By January 6, more than 70 federal, state and local officials had gathered in Brush, Colorado. Representatives from the FAA, FBI and law enforcement agreed to work together to find out what was happening. They were dealing with sightings spread across a large rural area, often with little more than a few lights to follow.

At one point, the Phillips County Sheriff’s Office even asked residents to watch for a possible vehicle that might be controlling the aircraft from the ground. The request was later withdrawn, and officials didn’t announce that they’d located such a vehicle. If someone was coordinating the flights, investigators still didn’t know where that person was operating from.

Colorado Sent a Plane to Search

The state brought in one of its Multi-Mission Aircraft, a plane usually used to help with wildfires and other emergencies. It carried sensors that could detect heat and communicate with officers on the ground. When a sighting came in, the crews could search the area from above while patrol cars checked below.

On January 6, the aircraft spent 4.8 hours over northeastern Colorado. Officers responded to the reports that came in during the flight, but the search found none of the large groups of drones people had been describing. Even with extra eyes in the sky, there was no confirmed sighting of the supposed fleet.

Four Reports Had No Answer

By January 13, Colorado’s information center had received 90 reports going back to late November. During a week of active field operations, investigators examined 23 of them. Most were identified as familiar objects or weather conditions, but four remained unexplained.

Those four were cases in which law enforcement officers confirmed seeing an object or light without being able to identify it. Across the larger investigation, officers also confirmed 14 individual hobby drones, none of which established the reported pattern of large aircraft moving together. The state found no confirmed illegal drone activity and reduced its field operations.

Months later, FAA emails released through public-records requests gave a closer look at the investigation. They showed officials contacting potential operators and sharing reports from deputies and troopers across state lines.

FAA administrator Steve Dickson was following the story, too. In a December email, he joked that a few years earlier people would have called the objects UFOs. His chief of staff replied, "Yep! Now everything is a drone!"

On January 10, drone maker DJI offered to send equipment that could help identify any of its drones in the area.

By the time the offer came in, reports of the nightly formations were already fading.