Mysterious sightings of alleged drones over New Jersey, New York and other eastern states have sparked outcry from officials and residents even as the federal government has attempted to reassure the public and emphasize that it has no evidence that there is any threat to public safety. But the lack of definitive information about the phenomena, coupled with the lack of public trust in institutions and the viral spread of claims on social media, has created a furor.
In a joint statement released Monday, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense said that after closely examining the technical data and citizen tips, officials had concluded that "the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones."
"We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast," the statement reads. Officials added that they are supporting state and local authorities with advanced detection technology and trained visual observers.
Such "carefully worded" statements from government officials are unlikely to assuage concerns from Americans, Thomas Warrick, a former DHS deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy, told Salon in an interview. The last decade of political turmoil, fueled in part by conspiracy theories and coming after revelations about secret government aircraft like the U-2 spy plane, have combined to create "a perfect storm of mistrust and suspicion," he said.
"The odds are, five years from now, someone will write a retrospective of, 'Wasn't that silly? We were all worried about this,'" said Warrick, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and director of the Future of DHS Project at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. "But right now, the anxiety that people are expressing is real. All the governments in question need to be both more active and more forthcoming to try to address these problems."
Residents of New Jersey, including former elected officials, first reported seeing clusters of lights, believed to be drones, hovering over their properties and other populated areas around the state about a month ago, according to CBS News. Those largely nighttime, possible sightings have since expanded to at least a half dozen other states, including New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Last week, drone activity briefly closed runways at the Stewart International Airport in New York and shut down the air operations of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for nearly four hours.
The number of reported sightings has also exploded, with an FBI official telling reporters over the weekend that the bureau has received 5,000 tips since the first sighting in New Jersey on Nov. 18, though fewer than 100 have spawned leads "deemed worthy of further investigative activity."
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Monday that the Biden administration has not identified "anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risks over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast,” according to CNN. Kirby echoed the agency assessments of the sightings and said none of the 100 tips appear nefarious.
“I can’t rule out the fact that we might find some sort of illegal or criminal activity, some nefarious activity, [but] all I can do is tell you that right now we see none of that,” Kirby said.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a Sunday appearance on ABC News "This Week" that the federal government is "deploying additional resources, personnel" and technology to assist New Jersey state police in investigating the drone, or unmanned aircraft systems, sightings. He confirmed that some of the reported sightings are drones while noting that some are "manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones."
"It is our job to be vigilant," he said. "If there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity we will communicate with the American public accordingly. Right now we are not aware of any."
A Defense Department spokesperson has confirmed that drones had been spotted over two military installations, Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, in New Jersey. That official added, however, that such sightings are not a new issue for the agency.
The department spokesperson told reporters they have been unable to determine who is responsible for flying the drones but reiterated that they have no indication that a foreign adversary is involved.
"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," the spokesperson said. "But ... we don't know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin." The spokesperson also called the activity "irresponsible" and said that the department is "just as frustrated" by it.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder reiterated Monday that drones flying near or over U.S. military installations would not unsual and that the vast majority "pose no physical threat to our forces or impact our operations." Concerning activity, he said, occurs far less frequently, and if the department determines that such activity is malign, commanders take appropriate action to "mitigate and counter these unmanned systems."
"To be clear," Ryder said, "we'll continue to do everything possible to investigate reports of concerning activity. But given how many drones are lawfully in our skies every day, we need to be careful to avoid assuming malintent or malicious behavior."
On Monday, an FBI spokesperson told Salon that the bureau had no additional comment or information to provide at this time. The DHS declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the DOD referred Salon to transcripts of a Saturday press call with federal officials and Ryder's Monday press briefing. The White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Javed Ali, a former DHS and FBI official now teaching national security law at the University of Michigan, said that — reading between the lines in their early statements — federal authorities "really can't explain the phenomena either."
Government officials "never have perfect information," he told Salon, and often have to wrestle with how and when to come forward to the public with more information. Striking that balance is difficult, he said, "because the minute you say something, facts could change. Then you'd be accused of lying to the public or you're not being truthful, and that's never really the case."
Contrary to the conspiracy theories currently en vogue, the least likely explanation for the drone sightings is aliens; second to that is that they come from some "hostile foreign power," Warrick said, noting that the federal agencies monitor hostile foreign actors "very carefully" and don't allow them to "get away with" such activity for "very long."
The more likely explanations for most of the sightings, he said, are airplanes, helicopters and other aircraft that "aren't nefarious and that are well known." From there, officials are still confident that the remaining truly unidentified cases, which are down to an "irreducible minimum," do not constitute threats to the public.
Warrick said government agencies need to do more to outline their plan for addressing the public's concerns.
"They also, by the way, ought to be more constructive in telling the public what they can do," Warrick added. "One of the things that we in the counterterrorism world learned is it's not enough to tell people there is or is not a threat. You also need to tell people, 'Here's how you can help.' Most people will be constructive."
Over the last week, officials have ramped up demands for the Biden administration to share more information about the possible drone activity. In a letter to President Biden posted to social media last week, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy urged the government to direct more resources toward demystifying the increased alleged drone activity, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urged Congress to pass legislation strengthening the federal government's ability to regulate the use of drones.
Adding fuel to the fire has been the number of current and former public officials who have claimed to have seen drones.
Ex-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan claimed over the weekend that he "personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation's capital). I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes," starting around 9:45 p.m. ET Thursday night. He also called the federal response to the possible drone activity "entirely unacceptable."
Social media users, however, were quick to note that some of the lights Hogan recorded appeared to be stars in the Orion constellation.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, on Monday posted a screenshot that claimed a drone — shown strapped to a flatbed trailer — had crashed into a beach and was being hauled to an undisclosed location for further investigation. Social media users quickly identified the object in the screenshot as a replica or prop TIE fighter spaceship from the Star Wars franchise.
Nonetheless, Mastriano used the image to stoke fear.
"It is inconceivable that the federal government has no answers nor has taken any action to get to the bottom of the unidentified drones," Mastriano wrote, lamenting the "fecklessness" of the Biden administration.
Other public figures who have shared false information have later issued corrections.
Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., for example, last week posted a video of what he and local law enforcement suspected was drone activity above a New Jersey park. In a lengthy social media thread, however, he later clarified that "with the help of civilian pilots and others able to do deeper analysis," he and others had "concluded that most of the possible drone sightings that were pointed out to me were almost certainly planes."
"I share this because this is the kind of analysis we need but are not getting from the federal government to explain this situation," Kim wrote Saturday. "FAA experts have much more experience/resources to identify aircraft. Instead I'm left to draw on civilian support and public apps."
Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor of political science who specializes in national security affairs and political violence, told Salon in a phone interview that the bigger issue the government is facing amid the purported drone sightings is in eroding public trust.
"In the absence of good information, there will be many people [who'll] simply fill in the blanks with bad information, and there's no real way to stop that," Pape said, calling on the federal government to deploy advanced satellite technology, not often used in these scenarios, to track and monitor the possible drones in an effort to assuage concerns.
Pape also warned of the positive correlation between conspiracy thinking driven by deep distrust of American institutions and support for political violence.
Nearly a month of possible drone sightings and hardly any answers, he argued, is "causing this pattern of the erosion of public trust in this issue of national security."
"That void is almost surely being filled with conspiracy theories, and that is not good for our security," he said. "That's why I say this is really worth the government's time to clear up."
