Those Mount Washington drones explained, probably - it was a couple of tests

UPDATE: Here's my story - with a grudging Union-Leader acknowledgement (sigh).

One of the annoyances of the news business is getting leap-frogged on your own story, as happened to me today. Regular readers, all three of you, will recall that I've written a couple of times about myterious reports of military drones at Mount Washington that nobody could explain. Yesterday afternoon as I was leaving the office, a spokesman for the NH Army National Guard, who had been as stumped as I was, called to say that he confirmed that tests were run in Lyman, NH during two periods of 2009 by the Navy Special Operations Command.

I was going to follow up today.

However, today's Union-Leader newspaper has a story saying the drone reports were 2010 tests done on Mount Washington by Special Operations Command, which oversees the SOC's for all the services. They also got statements from some Congressmen/Senate offices - who didn't call me back last week, darn them - that the tests wouldn't be repeated. These involved small, hand-launched drones called Wasp and Raven, as I had mentioned.

There is some discrepancy here, since Lyman is well outside the White Mountain National Forest and the years are different, but the general information is in agreement: Despite the listing of NH as being some sort of mystery drone base, we were just the site of a couple of drone tests.

Allegedly, anyway.