Dozens of reported drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey have concerned lawmakers and local officials and left them searching for answers.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy said there were nearly 50 reported sightings in a single night over the weekend. And since mid-November, drones have been reported in at least 10 counties in New Jersey and in parts of New York City.
The Federal Aviation Administration has temporarily banned drones from flying over a New Jersey golf course owned by President-elect Donald J. Trump and from the skies over Picatinny Arsenal, an Army facility in Morris County.
Eleven drones have been spotted near the arsenal by security guards and police officers since Nov. 13, according to Timothy Rider, a public affairs specialist for the facility. Mr. Rider added that the “increased drone activity” was not the result of military operations related to the base.
The F.B.I. cannot explain the sightings and has not been able to identify where the reported drones are coming from, or going. “We just don’t know, and that’s the concerning part,” Robert Wheeler, the assistant director of the bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group, said in testimony to Congress on Tuesday.
But Mr. Wheeler said that the authorities had no reason to believe that sightings posed a threat to public safety. Mr. Murphy said the same thing last Thursday.
Even as officials assured the public they had nothing to fear, New Jersey residents have described the rash of sightings as unsettling. Social media forums dedicated to the “mystery” have accumulated thousands of posts. One Facebook group has more than 25,000 members who share videos and swap theories.
The F.B.I. is “actively investigating” the sightings, Mr. Wheeler said on Tuesday, and its Newark field office has urged anyone with relevant information to contact the bureau’s tip line. But after nearly a month of reports, many local leaders and law enforcement officers have been frustrated by the lack of communication from federal investigators.
At a briefing with state lawmakers on Wednesday, the New Jersey State Police said it had observed what it believed to be unidentified drones in the skies over the state, according to Brian Bergen, a state assemblyman who was present. The police have tried to track the drones with helicopters, but such efforts have been halted because of safety concerns, he said.
Mr. Bergen, a Republican, said he left the briefing feeling more concerned, and with fewer answers, than when he arrived.
“What they told us was they know nothing, legitimately nothing,” he said. “Who’s doing it, what they’re doing? They know nothing.”
At the briefing, which Governor Murphy did not attend, officials reiterated that the sightings did not pose a public safety threat and cautioned that some witnesses were probably mistaking commercial airplanes for drones, according to a person familiar with what was discussed.
Jon Bramnick, a Republican state senator and candidate for governor, called on Monday for a “limited state of emergency” that would ban all drones in New Jersey until authorities were able to provide more information.
In recent weeks, drone sightings have been reported in northern and southern New Jersey and in the skies above Staten Island and south Brooklyn in New York City.
Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican congresswoman who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, asked the Federal Aviation Administration to impose flight restrictions where the sightings had been reported. The agency has not granted her request, and she said that other federal authorities had not been much help either.
“They said they are looking into it, but that’s just not good enough,” Ms. Malliotakis said. “The fact that these things are flying around and nobody seems to know what they are is very disturbing.”
The Morris County Sheriff’s Office, in northern New Jersey, has been hearing from concerned residents, but it doesn’t have much more information than anyone else.
“Even us in law enforcement, we don’t know,” said Mark Chiarolanza, a public information officer for the office.
In Ocean County farther south, the local Sheriff’s Office has been using its own drones to investigate nighttime sightings, hoping to determine where the objects land and what precisely they are. They’ve had little luck so far.
“We’re not getting good characteristics of the drone,” said Sgt. Kevin Fennessy, who leads the office’s drone unit. “We had one the other night that, as we’re watching it, it just shuts the lights off and it’s gone in pure darkness.”
From what he has seen so far, Sergeant Fennessy thinks the objects are perhaps double the size of the drones in his fleet, flying at top speeds that are around 20 miles per hour faster. Ocean County is near the flight path for airplanes landing at Kennedy Airport in Queens, but Mr. Fennessy believes the objects are indeed drones, not planes, since they don’t appear on flight tracking software.
Luís Figueiredo, a detective and drone specialist with the Elizabeth Police Department in New Jersey, said the descriptions of the sightings suggested that the drones were much larger and faster — and “a lot more sophisticated” — than those widely available to the public.
Joshua Tan, a professor of physics and astronomy at LaGuardia Community College, explained that while some sightings could be drones, others might be the consequence of confirmation bias: After hearing reports, people may become newly attentive to objects in the night sky.
“People are just not familiar with what’s in the sky generally, because they’re just not normally looking up in the sky,” he said. “There are other things in the sky that have been in the sky at night for a long time — planes, helicopters, stars, planets — things that are very bright that people don’t necessarily know that they’re looking at.”
Mr. Figueiredo remained stumped, he said.
“Everybody is scratching their heads.”
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