The information environment state and federal officials have cultivated around this phenomenon is sub-optimal.
It’s probably no exaggeration to say that most residents of northern New Jersey have either seen or know personally someone who has seen multiple large drones operating low overhead since at least mid November. I speak from personal experience when I say that Garden Staters’ text message threads are replete with first-hand accounts of the phenomenon. Everyone is talking about it, and they have been for weeks. But state and local government officials have struggled to explain what locals are seeing — when they even deign to acknowledge the evidence of their constituents’ eyes — leading to immense frustration among New Jersey residents and lawmakers alike. Belatedly, the federal government has finally stepped in with an explanation for these disturbing occurrences: It’s nothing.
“We have not been able to, and neither have state or local law enforcement authorities, corroborate any of the reported visual sightings,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday. “To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully.”
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security jointly echoed Kirby’s dismissal. “We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus,” their statement read. “Historically, we have experienced cases of mistaken identity, where reported drones are, in fact, manned aircraft or facilities.” Indeed, “it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully.”
That is doubtlessly true, to at least some extent. Over almost a month in which the only people talking about the multiple, independently operated, passenger vehicle-sized drones whizzing about semi-nightly were their eyewitnesses, speculation ran rampant. Surely, some sightings were cases of misclassification. But the off-hand rejection of the phenomenon from Biden administration officials fails to account for the volume of visual evidence New Jerseyans have been providing. That evidence does not appear to indicate that residents are only seeing the commercial fixed-wing and rotary vehicles to which they’re already accustomed.
To be fair to the administration, its officials have been careful to couch their statements to avoid drawing definitive conclusions about the nature of these vehicles. They’ve swatted down only the most scandalizing allegations, like Representative Jeff Van Drew’s claim that the drones are Iranian in origin and are being launched from an offshore “mothership.” Kirby maintains that the vehicles pose no known threat to national security, and Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh notes that “there is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there is no so-called ‘mothership’ launching drones toward the United States.
Well, that’s good. It is, however, cold comfort given the paucity of information from official sources about what these vehicles are and who is operating them. Even if these devices are fewer in number than speculative accounts of their appearances suggest and don’t represent a prelude to foreign invasion, they still represent a potential threat to commercial aircraft. The truly inexplicable drone sightings suggest these vehicles are operating in violation of Federal Aviation Regulations, flying too low and outside the line of sight of their operator. Not only is this part of New Jersey home to sensitive military and civilian infrastructure, it’s also within the airspace of the president-elect’s Bedminster golf club. Even if there is a banal explanation for the sudden drone bloom, they are operating in unsafe ways over sensitive areas.
That might explain why even the president’s party isn’t buying the official explanation. “Some of these drones have been observed maneuvering near critical infrastructure and sensitive locations, including reservoirs and military installations,” an open letter authored by New York and New Jersey senators Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Andy Kim read. “In addition to potential privacy concerns raised by these aerial systems, we are also especially concerned about how these drones may harm public safety, especially given recent reports that a medevac helicopter was prevented from transporting a seriously injured patient for care because of the presence of these drones.” In response to these senators’ concerns, Kirby stood by his claim that there were “no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace.”
The information environment state and federal officials have cultivated around this phenomenon is sub-optimal. The vacuum of information is being filled with provocative conjecture. The government will have to stop telling the American people only what these vehicles are not and make plain precisely what they are — and soon. As the increasingly mainstream chatter about taking these drones down by indiscriminate force suggests, the locals are getting restless.