(Daily Caller News Foundation) — Unidentified drones are in the air across large swaths of the country, but Americans nationwide are in the dark as to who is controlling them and for what purpose.
Americans started reporting mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey in mid-November, with more sightings reported in the weeks since in the skies of New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere. Government officials are facing pressure from the public for answers, but they have yet to offer anything resembling a coherent and comprehensive explanation as to what is actually happening.
The government’s apparent refusal to provide straight answers is fueling speculation as to what the drones may be doing and for whom, with theories ranging from an aerial incursion from a hostile nation—not unlike the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental U.S. in 2023—to a quiet effort to locate missing radioactive material along the East Coast. Michael Melham, the mayor of Belleville, New Jersey, connected the drones to an unspecified “threat that came in through Port Newark” and suggested that missing radioactive substance may have something to do with the sightings.
During the spy balloon incident, the administration refused to shoot down or otherwise confront the aircraft as it drifted over sensitive locations until it made its way across the U.S. and over the Atlantic Ocean beyond the North Carolina coastline. The Biden administration decided to let the balloon run its course and block its intelligence-gathering capabilities in the meantime, but senior U.S. officials subsequently told NBC News in April 2023 that the vessel was able to gather information about sensitive sites and transmit it back to Beijing anyway.
Drone sightings have been reported in civilian areas, and the Biden administration is not providing answers despite sightings in the vicinity of sensitive areas like President-elect Donald Trump’s New Jersey golf club and the Picatinny Arsenal. The Picatinny Arsenal is a military installation that “leads in the research, development, acquisition and lifecycle management of advanced conventional weapon systems and ammunition,” according to the Department of Defense (DOD).
Sightings have also been reported near Naval Weapons Station Earle, another New Jersey military installation, and Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The Pentagon claimed it is “not necessarily seeing any connection” to reported sightings elsewhere in the country.
U.S. officials are reportedly sending drone detection equipment to New Jersey, and Connecticut State Police have also mobilized detection technology to get to the bottom of reported sightings over the state’s skies. In New York City on Friday, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said that drones have been spotted near crucial infrastructure like major bridges, Port Liberty New York and a military installation.
Fossella urged government officials to “be honest with the American people and treat them like adults” in the Friday presser.
Reported drone activity also led to the closure of runways at New York’s Stewart International Airport for approximately one hour on Friday evening.
“We want answers, but the response I’m getting is we don’t know whose drones these are,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Tuesday. “I was with the NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, he said that these drones have been reported over military sites, military bases. I would not think those are friendly. I would think those are adversarial.”
“We need to identify who is behind these drones,” McCaul said. “My judgment based on my experience is that those that are over our military sites are adversarial and most likely are coming from the People’s Republic of China.”
John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesman, appeared Friday on Fox News to explain that the drones do not pose any apparent security risk, but he also conceded that the federal government did not have an explanation for all of the sightings.
The FBI, Federal Aviation Administration, DoD and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a joint statement Tuesday to provide the public with context and an appeal to stay calm.
“Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the statement reads. “We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.
“Additionally, there have been a limited number of visual sightings of drones over military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere, including within restricted air space,” the statement said. “Such sightings near or over DoD installations are not new. DoD takes unauthorized access over its airspace seriously and coordinates closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, as appropriate. Local commanders are actively engaged to ensure there are appropriate detection and mitigation measures in place.”
President Joe Biden also directly addressed the drone sightings when questioned by reporters, downplaying any potential dangers.
“Nothing nefarious apparently, but they’re checking it all out,” Biden told the press this week. “We’re following this closely, but so far, no sense of danger.”
Meanwhile, members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed Tuesday to learn more about what is—or isn’t—going on in America’s skies. Roll Call reported after the briefing concluded that lawmakers in attendance generally agreed that there is nothing nefarious taking place in the skies, as most of the reported drone sightings apparently turned out to be false alarms or misidentifications.
The Pentagon told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Wednesday that it had no additional information to provide beyond what Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a Tuesday briefing in which he stuck to the Biden administration’s line about the drones and who may be piloting them. The FBI declined to provide any additional comment beyond what is included in the multi-agency joint statement.
However, Trump himself said Monday that the Biden administration “knows what is happening” with respect to the unexplained sightings and that the government would be “better off” if they leveled with the public. House Speaker Mike Johnson, for his part, called upon the Biden administration Wednesday to “do its job” and inform people about what is going on given that “people are not buying the answers” provided so far.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
This article was originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
