In December, the United States was faced with, at first glance, a demo version of what Ukraine has been living with for almost three years. Dozens of drones are being recorded over residential areas, restricted access facilities, and critical US infrastructure. Federal agencies are calling for calm and assuring that there is currently no evidence of a threat to national security.
The Biden administration has not found “anything anomalous or that could pose a threat to national security or public safety in the airspace of New Jersey or other states in the Northeast,” assured John Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council. According to him, most of the incidents can be explained by legitimate activities: commercial or amateur drones, law enforcement drones, as well as manned aircraft, helicopters and even stars that were mistaken for drones. The FBI is reviewing about a hundred reports, but none of them appear suspicious, Kirby added. However, the story has already become known to the whole world.
24 Channel collected the main things about drone surveillance in the USA and the reaction of the American authorities to it.
How the US government reassures citizens and responds to drones
Despite the attempt to prevent panic, the federal authorities do not rule out that the drones spotted in America's skies could still be dangerous.
“We can't guarantee that we won't find something illegal in the future, but there are no signs of it at this time,” – remarked Kirby.
The situation forced the Pentagon to send drone detection and tracking systems to two military facilities in New Jersey – the Picatinny Arsenal Research Center in the north of the state and the Naval Weapons Station Earle in the central region of the state. According to military officials, drones have been spotted both near the Picatinny Arsenal, and over Donald Trump's golf course in Bedminster.< /p>
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already imposed temporary restrictions on flights over these areas. There have also been reports of drones entering the airspace of Naval Weapons Station Earle, although no direct threats have been recorded.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, commenting on the situation on the social network X, said that he had received a message from the FBI and promised full support to federal investigators.
- At the same time, similar drone activity led to the temporary closure of the runways of Stewart Airport in New York last Friday.
- Also, due to drone activity over the weekend, the airspace over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
- Base spokesman Bob Purtiman confirmed that the situation was being closely monitored. However, the Pentagon does not see a connection between these incidents and the events in New Jersey.
Thousands of drones fly in the skies of the United States every day, and this is not something unusual or necessarily criminal,
– Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder emphasized.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base plays a key role in cyber intelligence and threat monitoring. Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee is expecting a closed-door briefing on the drone situation in New Jersey as early as Tuesday.
How Trump reacted to the drones
President-elect Donald Trump also expressed concerns and asked a number of questions about the situation during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, December 16.
The government knows what's going on. Look, our military knows where they came from. If it's a garage, they can just go into that garage. They know where these drones came from and where they went, but for some reason they don't want to comment,
– Trump said.
When asked if he had received classified information about these incidents, Trump refused to answer.
On his Truth Social network, the president-elect called to shoot down drones:
Mysterious drones all over the country. Can this really happen without our government knowing? I don't think so! Let the public know about it, and immediately. Otherwise – shoot them down!!!
At the same time, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stressed on Monday that the administration is trying to be as open as possible: “We will not speculate or put forward hypotheses that we cannot confirm.”
The FBI and New Jersey State Police in a joint statement urged the public not to shoot at suspected drones, as it could be deadly if the target is mistaken for a manned aircraft. The statement also said that aircraft pilots are being targeted by lasers fired from the ground, mistaking them for drones.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there are about 792,000 registered drones in the country. They are almost evenly split between commercial and amateur use.
Drones are used in many industries, including photography, agriculture, and law enforcement.
Where drones have been filmed
Drones have been seen in the skies of at least six US states. These are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio. Meanwhile, arrests have already been made in Massachusetts and California related to drone flights near no-fly zones.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the first incidents began on November 18 in Morris County, New Jersey. Since then, drones have been observed every night, said New Jersey Assemblyman Paul Canitra, a Republican, in an interview with CNN. Local residents have repeatedly complained about unidentified aircraft hovering in the sky, sometimes moving in groups.
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New Jersey Democratic Senator Andy Kim posted a video on his X account purporting to show a group of drones over the Round Valley Reservoir on Thursday night. However, on Saturday, he admitted that most of the objects he mistook for drones were “almost certainly aircraft.” Federal officials investigating the incidents have held closed-door briefings for local authorities. Montvale Mayor Mike Gassali said the drones were likely coordinated and could last up to six hours. “This has gone too far,” he said. New York Governor Katie Gokul said Saturday, adding that last month she directed the New York Intelligence Center to actively investigate the incidents and cooperate with federal law enforcement.
On Sunday, Gokul announced the deployment of a state-of-the-art drone detection system in the state with federal support. However, the governor did not provide any details about the new system.
- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to implement special systems with 360-degree drone detection technology.
- The New York Police Department said on Friday that it had received numerous reports of drones in the past 24 hours and was investigating. Law enforcement officials stressed that there is no evidence of a threat to public safety at this time.
- Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella said that drones are often seen at night over critical sites, including Liberty Harbor, the Gotals and Verrazzano Narrows bridges, as well as Fort Wadsworth – one of the oldest military bases in the United States.
- Connecticut police announced Friday they were deploying a drone detection system to investigate unauthorized flights in the Fairfield County area.
- The governors of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Virginia also confirmed they were aware of the incidents and had their law enforcement agencies involved.
- In Massachusetts, two men were arrested Saturday night for trespassing after a drone flew “dangerously close” to Boston's Logan International Airport.
Meanwhile, in California, a Chinese citizen who is a permanent resident of the United States was charged last week with illegally using a drone to film a SpaceX rocket launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base. According to prosecutors, Yingpiao Zhou was arrested on December 9 at San Francisco Airport before his flight to China. He was charged with violating national defense-protected airspace and failing to register the drone.
What kind of drones are seen in the skies over the US and is there a trace of China
The FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) believe that most reports of drone sightings are cases of mistaken identity, when citizens mistake small, legal manned aircraft for drones.
Some of the objects may be commercial drones, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a comment to CNN in Friday.
FBI expert Tom Adams, a former head of special operations, suggested that the recent incidents could be the result of drone owners deliberately launching them after increased media attention.
From my own experience, when we have conducted operations or investigations near critical infrastructure, often gliders, manned aircraft or low-orbit satellites have been mistaken for drones at night,
– Adams said.
During a briefing on Saturday, an FBI representative confirmed that most of the objects recorded are actually manned aircraft that have been misidentified. He also added that flight paths near airports often coincide with reports of drones.
According to the FBI, the hotline received 5,000 calls, but only about 100 cases were deemed to require further investigation.
Speculation about a foreign footprint has been dismissed by the Pentagon. In particular, Defense Department spokeswoman Sabrina Singh denied Congressman Jeff Van Drew's claim about an Iranian “mothership” off the east coast of the United States.
This is absolutely false. There are no Iranian ships off our coast, and there is no “mothership” launching drones, – Singh stressed.
Despite assurances from officials that there was no security threat, the mayor of Belleville, New Jersey, Michael Melham, said that local police have been instructed to call in sappers and firefighters in protective suits if they find a downed drone.
“We just don't know what these objects are, so we're being cautious,” Melham explained.
There has been concern about the Chinese trail Congressman Raja Krishnamurthy, a Democrat from Illinois and the ranking member of the House China Subcommittee, told the Sunday Morning Futures program that he was concerned about the influx of Chinese-made drones into the United States. He said that even the US military is buying these drones “because they are cheap.”
Krishnamurthy said that China could gain access to drone data through a backdoor and eventually use it to spy on Americans “The problem is that we are essentially sacrificing national security for the ability to buy cheaper drones,” the congressman said.