Drone sightings in New Jersey and even California: What is really going on?
For weeks, people in several states, including California, have reported seeing drone-like objects flying across the night sky in clusters.
Concern over the sightings reached new highs in recent days, prompting some officials to urge calm.
But there still remain many unanswered questions about why people seem to be seeing so many drones, and if this is an uncommon occurrence, what is going on?
Here is what we know.
Officials downplay concerns
Federal officials said over the weekend that the multiple drone sightings over New Jersey and other states are “in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones.”
On Saturday, officials said in a White House statement that there isn’t any evidence of illegal activity or foreign involvement.
“At this point, we have not identified any basis for believing that there’s any criminal activity involved, that there’s any national security threat, that there’s any particular public safety threat or that there’s a malicious foreign actor involved in these drones,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said during a briefing.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy urged the public Monday morning to “calm down” and stressed that there isn’t “evidence of anything nefarious here.”
Murphy declined to specify details of the federal investigation into the sightings but said there are “very sophisticated systems” that “come with really sophisticated individuals” to figure out what’s happening.
New Jersey is epicenter
Reports about drones in the skies have been building for three weeks. New Jersey has been the epicenter of the sightings, along with some nearby states.
California has seen some reports but far fewer than on the East Coast.
On Nov. 18, there were multiple reports of drones operating at night made through the New Jersey Suspicious Activity Report System, officials said. The FBI opened an investigation into the sightings two days later.
By Dec. 3, the FBI network had established 800 tip lines in order to free up the 911 call centers that were getting reports about the drones. About 5,000 tips have been received through the national tip line and fewer than 100 leads have been deemed worthy of further investigation.
Through visual observation teams throughout New Jersey, FBI officials have “determined all large fixed-wing reported sightings have been manned aircraft.” The sightings also appear to match the approach patterns for Newark-Liberty, John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
“This modeling is indicative of manned aviation being quite often mistaken for unmanned aviation or UAS,” they said.
Homeland Security officials said they also “determined that there is no evidence to date of any foreign-based involvement in sending drones ashore from marine vessels in the area.”
Officials added Monday their checks found most to be smaller fixed-wing planes and hobbyist drones.
View from Southern California
Southern California residents have also taken part in the national surge in drone-spotting.
On social media, viral videos from Temecula and Riverside appeared to show groups of lighted objects hovering in the sky.
Damon Angel, a music producer in Temecula, posted several videos on Instagram showing what he classified as suspicious lights from an elevated road.
In a subsequent video, he said he hoped his videos of the suspected drones — which drew millions of views online — would help to bring attention to the issue. Another video, from a TikTok user in Riverside, claimed to show several unidentified objects in the sky.
FAA reminds about drone rules
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration released guidelines on drones that detailed their use. “More and more people are using drones, which means more people are noticing them in the sky,” the FAA guidance read.
The FAA stressed that it’s legal to fly a drone in most locations in the U.S. during the day and night as long as they remain below 400 feet, avoid other aircraft and don’t cause a hazard to any people or property.
Two temporary flight restrictions have been put in place for Picatinny Arsenal, a military base in New Jersey, and Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.
The Picatinny Arsenal restriction spans 2 nautical miles and 2,000 feet and will expire Dec. 26. The Trump golf course restriction has a 1-nautical-mile, 1,000-foot restriction that expires Dec. 20.
President-elect Donald Trump weighed in at a news conference on Monday. “The government knows what is happening,” he said. “Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. And for some reason, they don’t want to comment.”
Murphy and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have urged Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act, which would renew federal authority to investigate and track drones and give state authorities the power to create their own drone mitigation program.
