NYPD recovers massive drone found abandoned in Brooklyn

Police have recovered a massive drone that appears to have been abandoned at the Brooklyn Naval Yard.

A photo obtained by The Post shows an NYPD officer holding up the unwieldy aircraft, whose fuselage appears to be more than 5 feet in diameter.

Sources said officers responded to an email tip alerting them to the presence of the drone, which they found on the sidewalk on Fifth Street between Market Street and Morris Avenue.

While officers were investigating, a passerby said he worked in the building that houses the drone maker’s headquarters – he identified him as Amogy, Inc., a sustainable energy startup working to use ammonia as a renewable fuel source use, also for air vehicles.

According to sources, Amogy CEO Seonghoon Woo later confirmed that the drone was his company’s property and said it was placed on the sidewalk after a company party about a month ago.

Woo said the drone was inoperable and was at its location for more than a month before police recovered it, sources said.

The NYPD dispatched an Emergency Services truck to separate the drone’s nitrogen components to ensure it was safe for transport before transporting it to the 88th Precinct for safekeeping.

An Amogy spokesperson told the Post via email that the drone was used in a demonstration of its clean energy technology three years ago and has been on display outside the company’s headquarters ever since.

“NYPD took possession of it for a short period of time. Amogy fully cooperated with the NYPD and the drone has since been returned to the company after the NYPD determined the drone did not pose a threat,” the spokesperson said.

Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of counterterrorism and intelligence, told reporters at an independent briefing that despite drone mania sweeping New York and New Jersey last month, the perceived increase in sightings may be due to the power of suggestion.

“What we’ve seen over the last few days here in the city has been, quite frankly, pretty normal in terms of the actual drone activity that we see every day,” she said, noting that there are around The Big Apple has 2,000 drone flights per week.

“You have a really big increase in news coverage, but not a big increase in actual drone detections, which makes sense – all people see on the news are drone sightings everywhere.”

She said the department had a similar conversation last week after the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, where threats against company CEOs suddenly seemed commonplace — but with one key difference.

“There is actually a real increase in threats, not just an increase in reports,” she said.