By Alex Miller and Tom Howell Jr. – The Washington Times – Sunday, December 15, 2024
New Jersey leaders are not buying the Biden administration’s explanation that most of the drones reported swarming the state’s coastline in recent weeks are regular aircraft, saying that’s a demeaning answer given what residents have seen with their own eyes.
Gov. Phil Murphy has urged President Biden to get personally involved, while members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation say the feds are straining credulity by ruling out nefarious intent or foreign control even as they can’t say who is really flying the aircraft and why.
“This has gone on for weeks,” Sen. Andy Kim said on social media after spending an evening observing the skies himself. “It’s hard to understand how with the technology we have we aren’t able to track these devices to determine origin and this makes me much more concerned about our capabilities more broadly when it comes to drone detection and countermeasures.”
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, called on Homeland Security to deploy new drone detection technology in New Jersey and New York to try to get to the bottom of what’s going on.
“What we need right now is data,” he said in a statement Sunday. “The briefings I have had tell me there is no evidence that this is a government or foreign activity, and so, we have to answer the logical of question of: who?”
Residents for roughly a month have reported seeing the unexplained craft in the skies. Descriptions vary widely but some are said to be as large as a motor vehicle and to be more sophisticated than what’s commercially available, both in terms of maneuverability and capability.
The reports have captivated — and in some cases frightened — Americans, and sparked sightings in other East Coast states.
Federal officials have done little to help.
On Tuesday, a senior FBI official told Congress the drones were “concerning.” Two days later the FBI and Homeland Security released a statement flatly ruling out any danger and suggesting many of the sightings were actually airplanes or other normal aircraft that were mistaken for drones.
On Saturday officials struck an intermediate tone.
“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 Pentagon official said in a briefing with reporters Saturday. “But you know, I just got to simply tell you we don’t know, we have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin.”
The FBI launched an investigation into the sightings days after reports began spreading and set up a tip line that has so far received 5,000 calls. An official from the agency said that of those calls, 100 tips have turned into credible leads. An FBI official said that there has been a “slight overreaction” but that the agency is still seriously investigating the phenomena.
“I don’t want to cause alarm and panic, right? But we can’t ignore the sightings that have been there, and we are concerned about those just as much as anybody else is,” the FBI official said.
“The elusive maneuvering of these drones … suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they have been deployed to test our defense capabilities, or worse, by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia or China or Iran or North Korea,” Mr. Smith said. “I mean, they have the capability, and they certainly have the motive.”
Sam Morris, the Republican mayor of Mine Hill in Morris County, said last week’s denials were “condescending” and “incredibly insulting.”
He said residents are intrigued and using night-vision goggles or naked eyes to try and spot drones from their homes or around town. Mr. Morris said he’s seen them with his own eyes, including from his municipal complex in Mine Hill.
He said residents are confused as to how drones were able to fly over nearby Picatinny Arsenal, a major Army research facility.
“I’m to the point now of frustration with this I want to see the FAA boots on the ground looking into this,” Mr. Morris said. “To my knowledge, there have been no in-person efforts that way.”
Mr. Murphy has said some of the drones appear to be larger and more sophisticated than what’s commercially available. Defense officials have said they’re not responsible, and other government officials have said no federal agency is flying them.
