Federal officials sought to ease tensions but had no concrete answers for reporters about mysterious sightings of drone aircraft in New Jersey which have led to alleged sightings across the eastern seaboard.
Officials with several agencies explained that reviews of thousands of reports to tip lines, 911 centers and other sources revealed the vast majority of sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere to be cases of persons mistaking low-flying commercial aircraft conducting holding patterns around regional airports.
But they did acknowledge, however, that a handful of reports appeared to substantiate rumors of drone aircraft flying across the night sky in New Jersey. For those sightings, officials had no answers — beyond assurances that there was no evidence to support claims of foreign involvement.
“To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent,” a Department of Defense official said Saturday.
“But I just got to simply tell you, we don't know.”
An official with the Federal Aviation Administration noted that private drone flights are legal (within certain parameters) in the United States.
A senior official with President Joe Biden’s administration added that agencies had no indication that the sightings in New Jersey involved criminal acts.
“At this point, we have not identified any basis for believing that,” the Biden official said. “There's any criminal activity involved, that there's any national security threat, that there's any particular public safety threat, or that there's a malicious foreign actor involved in these drones.”
One FBI official didn’t rule out Americans’ response may be a “slight overreaction” to what is actually happening in the skies.
Lawmakers in Congress are likely to have some answers for the public later this week after the House Intelligence Committee receives a classified briefing on the matter.
To date, federal agencies have repeatedly issued assurances that the drone sightings, alleged or otherwise, are not the result of foreign activity but have not explained what they actually are.
And as some of those same officials have correctly pointed out, the void of silence from federal authorities regarding the true explanation for the phenomenon has opened a vacuum for disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed, without any evidence, that the drones were actually federally operated.
She gave no reason for why that would be or their supposed purpose, only giving her social media followers a vague sense of unease with the declaration: “It really is that bad.”
The government is in control of the drones and refuses to tell the American people what is going on.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 15, 2024
It really is that bad.
Democratic congressman Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, fired back that Greene’s assertion was incorrect.
“This is absolutely not true. And really irresponsible to say,” he wrote in response.
Himes told Fox News Sundaythat “there’s a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” and “the answer ‘we don’t know’ is not a good enough answer.”
WATCH: Rep Jim Himes @jahimes on growing bipartisan frustration over the federal government’s response to drone sightings. pic.twitter.com/7UR9DLPUzP
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) December 15, 2024
Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also sought to address the growing panic with his Sunday morning appearance on ABC’s This Week. But the secretary, like other oficials, had little to offer beyond promises to act and complaints of his own limited authority to investigate unidientified unmanned aircraft.
“Some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones. Some are manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones,” Mayorkas said. “But there’s no question that drones are being sighted.”
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security said last Thursday that federal authorities had no evidence of a “foreign nexus” for the drones allegedly spotted by residents of New Jersey.
“We take seriously the threat that can be posed by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which is why law enforcement and other agencies continue to support New Jersey and investigate the reports,” the agencies said in a statement.
“To be clear, they have uncovered no such malicious activity or intent at this stage,” they added. “While there is no known malicious activity occurring in New Jersey, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight the insufficiency of current authorities.”
But the criticism leveled at the agencies, including by Democrats, is of a failure to provide clear answers to the American public to mitigate a burgeoning panic.
Numerous state and local leaders have now written the Biden administration asking officials to take on a greater sense of urgency in the investigation into the drones, including New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for recently declassified radar technology to be deployed across New York and New Jersey that could help determine whether the objects are drones or birds, and then follow the objects back to where they came from.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal even suggested support for the government to try to “take them out” if it can’t explain where they’re coming from.
“We should be doing some very urgent intelligence analysis and take them out of the skies, especially if they’re flying over airports or military bases,” he said this week.
