Highlights from the 2015 Bethpage Memorial Day Drone Show at Jones Beach
Ryan Haney
After a long, suspenseful wait, the crowd of over 300,000 military aircraft enthusiasts breaks into wild hoots and hollers when they first hear the dull buzz of a single unmanned drone approaching from behind.
Due to an intelligence error concerning the event’s location, the unmanned drone spends the first hour and a half of the show performing for a nearby group of beached grey seals.
For one of its signature stunts, the unmanned drone “loiters” over the beach an altitude of 60,000 feet, performing continuous surveillance on captivated show go-ers for a record-breaking 32 hours.
The unmanned drone, armed with a t-shirt cannon, delivers prizes to twelve lucky raffle winners, 524 non-winners in the vicinity of the winners, and 967 people whose activities suggest that they might one day develop interest in entering next year’s raffle.
For the grande finale, moderate cloud coverage interrupts the unmanned drone’s communications, sending the $15 million craft plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean.