As you may have almost certainly heard, New Jersey has recently become the epicenter of aerial-object obsession, some might say panic. Mysterious drones, or planes, or maybe extraterrestrial spycraft depending on your view, seem to have been lighting up the night sky for the past month, and theories about their purposes and origins abound.
“I think it’s like — they’re, like, trying to see what’s going on with the public,” one woman speculated on television. “It’s almost like a census. I don’t know, is that a weird conspiracy theory?”
It was no weirder than competing theories. Last week Representative Jefferson Van Drew, a Republican congressman whose district includes the Jersey Shore, maintained that the drones were being sent from an “Iranian mother ship” operating off the East Coast. In a four-minute address to his constituents posted on YouTube, he described drones “the size of minivans” that were clearly “not the work of a backyard hobbyist.” The Pentagon finally weighed in; there was no Iranian mother ship parked in the vicinity of Cape May (or anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard).
In an interview with the local Fox station in Philadelphia, Maj. Gen. James Poss, who retired from the Air Force and is now a consultant and intelligence expert, offered his own take. “I would bet you that it is probably what we call — and I apologize for a long, clunky name — electronic vertical takeoff and landing aircraft,” he said. “The popular name for them is flying cars.”
The initial response from federal officials has had a “nothing to see here” quality, which served only to frustrate politicians from both parties, who have been demanding answers. The F.B.I. cautiously acknowledged “without a doubt” that unmanned aircraft had been flying over New Jersey and that this was “irresponsible,” but that explanation seemed insufficient.
On Tuesday, a briefing with a Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, began with a discussion of a defense partnership between the United States and Qatar, the importance of a cease-fire in Gaza and the presidential transition, but the attention of the reporters in the room was clearly focused elsewhere. Inevitably, after a question about Syria came another fanciful one: “I know you’re hoping for a drone question,” the reporter said, after several had already been posed, “so let me oblige you.”