The Aurora News article About strange Drifter fleets and mysterious data vaults offers a summary of the recent Drifter sightings, along with an overview of the collected trinary vault data.
In short: main Drifter sightings have been in Caldari space & Minmatar space for reasons unknown. So far Amarr have been ignored in their visits, which could be explained by historic reasons. A full list of all known damaged Drifter fleet sightings can be found in the article.
A curious note is that when their shield systems failed, corrupted trinary data vaults were recovered from their wreckage.
The last sighting in Jolevier (gallente space) also saw a change of doctrine, as their damaged battleships are now escorted by undamaged Drifter cruisers.
The article also provides a full list of all retrieved corrupted trinary data vaults, with links to the raw data and to the images reconstructed from it by ARC.
Regarding the recovered trinary data, they show more insight on what likely has caused the damaged Drifter battleships to venture in our space: unknown ships firing red beams from srtange orb-like weaponsystems/powersources.
The location is unknown, but the size & spread of the rocks seem to indicate it’s occurring in a shattered system, location unknown (if it is in Anoikis, then the system has not yet been discovered)
Recently, capsuleer Avio Yaken noticed a structure on the edge of one of the images. There’s too little shown to make a guess to whom it belongs, but recovering more data could help in identifying the system, if we know it at all.
And of course, there’s the recent appearance of the Drifter cruisers, likely deployed in a response to these unidentifed ships, as the Drifters never bothered with them in all the years of capsuleer/Drifter engagements.
Not much is known, but various capsuleers & organisations are already on the case to research them in more detail
The main source of information remains [ARC] Large and heavily damaged Drifter fleet encountered in Hive complex, but the size of the thread makes it unwieldy to recheck older data/sightings and makes it hard to go through for newcomers.
Do note that currently there are hardly any answers, just more mysteries piled on top of the mystery that the Drifters themselves are.
For info and discussion about the Drifter cruisers, you can go here: [ARC] Vigilant Tyrannos cruiser identified, Observatories further damaged
For a full overview of Drifters & related phenomenons, this is a good location: [ARC] Drifter Crisis history repository
I like to thank ARC and everyone else who is investigating the Drifter activity & is helping in decoding the data vaults for their efforts. It is thanks to the efforts these people I was able to publish above article for everyone’s convenience.
The published summary is helpful for a quick glance of what we know at this point regarding the damaged Drifter fleets & the recovered corrupted trinary data vaults.