The same probably happens with blurry small aircraft in the scene. It'll "upscale" (i.e. draw in) all kinds of objects with what it thinks is most likely from the context, from its training set.
I can get an acceptable picture of the moon with my phone (at least when autofocus doesn't decide to do something stupid), yet also I can't get good pictures of birds in nearby trees or urban foxes on the other side of the road.
Phone can do night with just hand jitter ok, can't effectively compensate for target motion.
Probably not with a phone, but "affordable" full-frame MILC/DSLR cameras with 100-400mm or 600mm lenses exist and people have them. Much better chances.
Odd, one of those pictures clearly show either a regular RC helicopter, or a full-scale helicopter. You can see the boom and tail light clearly. And no sound associated with it? There are designs for "silent" blades. I mean theyre not silent, bud at least less noisy.
Even decently fast glass won’t do a good job of capturing drones at night unless there’s a significant amount of ambient light.
And telephoto lenses with the range you mention with fast apertures are not exactly cheap. A 600mm F/4 goes for $12-15K and is still not fast enough for shooting moving subjects in the dark.
I did find it odd when this news reporter said of the craft "it's really difficult to show you with our camera, so we have to show you with our phones." You'd think a broadcast-grade camera rig would be better than a smartphone at this.
