BM82557
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Happened to notice this at 06:20 EDT 08/24/2021, looks like out of Beale, wonder what they are watching --
MQ-4 over California
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It's my thought that Beale is a training base for drone pilots, and possibly an operational base for them as well. I'm seeing quite a bit of what you posted in the last months, and none of the U2s I used to see.
There is a large active forest fire in that area with over 700k acres burned. I presume they are using the monitoring equipment on the drone to test and or assist with monitoring. It is currently flying over another area now to the south where hotspots were detected.
Check out the GeoColor Animated Loop or Gif on this page to see the smoke from the fires in California and how they fill the central valley, as well as spread out over several states.
Sector Images: Pacific Southwest - NOAA / NESDIS / STAR
I see drones on ADSB Exchange occasionally. I agree, this may be a training filght with the big fire as a 'target of opportunity'. Seems to me I saw one in the same area, more or less, a week ago. You may note that CalFire has OV-10 Broncos over the fire on occasion too, and they are/were IR sniffers when they were painted green.
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