The videos i saw ostensibly showed what looked like rear fixed wing aircraft, like a small f-16 or something. But you could only make out that detail from the lights, which can be configured however you want to configure them to look, so, technically, it could be a large quadcopter (or octa, or hex) with lights affixed that make it look like a fixed wing aircraft.

none of the videos i saw had sound from the drone to verify fixed wing or "copter".

regarding night flights, FLIR would work better for certain things at night ;-)

> FLIR would work better for certain things at night ;-)

At those distances and with typical thermal imager resolutions, the zoom lens required would cost more than a cheap car..

when i say FLIR i mean the things that militaries use, not the little doodad you plug into a cellphone or a handheld device with a screen and a camera. I was under the impression these things loitered much longer than any commercial quadcopter or normal battery powered aircraft. if my understanding is correct, that leaves two options - a glider, which is weight constrained so probably just a gopro or two, or a fueled aircraft, in which case, FLIR makes sense because that's a decent platform.

the reports were "flying around for hours" but that could be exaggeration and it flew a pattern several times over a couple of hours but was landing to swap batteries or whatever. IDK. I think this is all much ado about nothing.

Nope, it would cost more than an expensive car.

The only openly available price I've seen for such things is from China, and then it's $80k. The Teledyne FLIR stuff is probably quite a bit more expensive.