What’s New
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, announced Monday that drone-detection systems deployed across the state last week uncovered “little to no evidence” of malicious activities, despite growing concerns over mysterious nighttime sightings of drones across the Northeast.
Why It Matters
Amid the rise in drone sightings, federal officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have repeatedly sought to calm public anxieties, affirming there’s no evidence of foreign involvement or ill intent behind the sightings.
“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” Mayorkas told ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But I want to assure the American public that we are on it. We are working in close coordination with state and local authorities.”
However, conspiracy theories have flourished online, ranging from foreign espionage to government cover-ups.
President-elect Donald Trump added fuel to speculation on Monday, cryptically suggesting that “the government knows what is happening.”
What To Know
Addressing reporters in Trenton, Murphy confirmed 12 reported sightings on Saturday and one on Sunday. While Murphy declined to go into detail about the detection equipment, he said it was powerful enough to disable the drones, although he added that is not legal on U.S. soil.
“It is extraordinary to me that, that a nation as great as ours and as powerful as ours has the deficiencies that we have now seen in living color as it relates to drone incursions,” Murphy said, echoing calls from state officials nationwide urging Congress to grant local governments greater authority over drone regulations.
What People Are Saying
Drone sightings have baffled residents and lawmakers across the region. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, referenced one report involving a drone marked “Frontier” as he acknowledged some sightings remain unexplained, calling for intensified scrutiny to safeguard airports and other critical infrastructure.
“One of the drone sightings had the word Frontier on the back, that it was an airline,” Lamont said to The Associated Press (AP). “But some of them are big and unexplained and we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Right now, what we do is we make sure that our security and airports are secure.”
One local observer, Christopher Stadulis, a drone hobbyist in New Jersey, described the aircraft to the AP as “huge” and unlike any commercial or private drones he’d ever seen.
“When you look at what I’m seeing with the naked eye, you can see it’s not a normal aircraft,” he said in a recent interview. “This and we don’t have this much traffic, you know, usually on any given night in this area. So it seems like definitely some of them are aircraft that we can’t explain what they are.”
Meanwhile, despite reassurances, officials in New York and Pennsylvania are ramping up their own investigations, requesting federal assistance to deploy state-of-the-art radar systems to trace the origins and motives of the flights.
Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said in a letter to Mayorkas on Monday, “It is imperative our communities in Pennsylvania are protected and questions on the presence of these drones are answered. State-of-the-art radar systems will provide insights into where these drones are deploying from and what the motives for their flights may be.”
Over the weekend, suspected drones temporarily disrupted airspace at Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and resulted in arrests in Boston for a drone allegedly flying too close to Logan International Airport.
In response, Democratic Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey introduced legislation demanding federal transparency and proposing a drone-specific air traffic control system.
“I believe the people I represent and, as I’ve been saying for some time now, the people in New Jersey and around the country deserve answers,” he said in a statement. “They deserve transparency from their government.”
What Happens Next
Federal Aviation Administration data reveals that over 8,000 drones are airborne on any given day in the U.S., with nearly 1 million registered nationwide. Defense officials, however, remain cautious about revealing classified capabilities used to trace drone origins.
At a media briefing on Monday, the Pentagon‘s press secretary, Air Force Major General Pat Ryder said defense officials have seen no indication that the drones flying over multiple locations in the U.S. are being controlled by a foreign country.
“So I’m kind of talking around it because I don’t necessarily want to get into talking classified capabilities, but the bottom line is that all of that gives us an idea that, hey, these are not foreign origin,” Ryder said.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
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