Who is flying drones over New Jersey, Pennsylvania and now possibly Maryland? That is the question that many who have seen the aircraft are wondering and now the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon have weighed in.
Morris County, New Jersey, Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia said that she and other officials were briefed by Homeland Security, adding that the drones don’t seem to be flown by hobbyists, The Associated Press reported.
The aircraft were first spotted on Nov. 18, the FAA said, according to CNN.
The drones, some of which are up to 6 feet in diameter, are flying at night, and are flying in a way that appears to be trying to avoid detection. Sometimes they were flying with the lights switched off, Fantasia said.
They were seen flying near the Picatinny Arsenal, a military research and manufacturing facility, and President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster property.
There is currently a drone ban over those two properties, The New York Times reported.
Coast Guard Lt. Luke Pinneo said “multiple low-altitude aircraft were observed in vicinity of one of our vessels near Island Beach State Park” after reports that a dozen drones followed a Coast Guard lifeboat “in close pursuit” near Barnegat Light and Island Beach State Park.
West Milford Mayor Michelle Dale said there were 60 drones flying over reservoirs in the area, CNN reported.
Drones are legal in the state for recreational and commercial uses. Operators must be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and the devices are subject to flight restrictions and regulations, the AP reported.
Officials said that what may have appeared to be drones were actually planes or that a single drone was seen in more than one location.
But, residents in New Jersey who have seen them said they sometimes fly in clusters, CNN reported.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said they don’t appear to be a threat to public safety.
“Is it frustrating to have no answers? Is it frustrating to not have a source for these things? Yes,” Murphy told WBGO.
Murphy confirmed that there were nearly 50 sightings one night this past weekend, The New York Times reported.
Rep. Jeff Drew (R-N.J.) said they were from an Iranian “mothership” that was stationed off the East Coast of the U.S., a theory deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh quickly shot down.
“There is not any truth to that,” Singh said, according to CNN. “There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”
The FBI also said they didn’t know where the drones were coming from or where they were going.
“We just don’t know, and that’s the concerning part,” Robert Wheeler, assistant director of the FBI Critical Incident Response Group told Congress on Tuesday, the Times reported.
Despite not knowing much about them, Wheeler too says they don’t seem to be a threat to safety. The FBI is investigating, however.
If they prove to be a threat, the DHS can take steps “to counter credible threats from unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to the safety or security of a covered facility or asset,” according to a DHS handout shared by Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali, ABC News reported.
Ghassali said, “The message conveyed [by the DHS] was that there is no credible threat, yet they are flying over critical infrastructure, and their point of origin and destination remain unidentified. They will eventually find out but for now, we don’t know anything else.”
New Jersey state Sen. Holly Schepisi called what the DHS was doing “abysmal.”
“[It] actually made me feel less confident in our federal government’s reaction to this issue rather than more,” Schepisi said in a statement, according to ABC News. “For the federal government to not dedicate every defense resource needed to identify the origin and purpose of these drones in the most densely populated state in the nation is inexplicable and completely unacceptable.”
While isolated to New Jersey and the surrounding areas, there were additional drone sightings in Bowie, Maryland, WRC reported. Autumn Stasulli had been talking with her sister about the drones in the Garden State when Stasulli saw three to five drones flying over her home in Bowie.
“It was very unsettling afterwards, because I’m like ‘Oh my goodness. It’s happening here in Bowie, Maryland,’” Stasulli told WRC. “Why Bowie? Bowie is such a quiet, quiet town.”
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