Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, warned on Saturday that the recent drone sightings over the Garden State are “a very considerable danger.”
The mystery drones have been spotted in recent weeks across New Jersey and neighboring states, prompting concern among residents and lawmakers and launching investigations by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The FBI says that it has received over 5,000 tips related to the drone sightings, with most of the purported observations occurring at night. Of these tips, however, the FBI official said that “less than 100 leads have been generated and deemed worthy of further investigative activity.”
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a joint statement on Thursday that there was “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”
Speaking at a news conference in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, on Saturday, Smith addressed the drone sightings, calling them “a very considerable danger” as he called on federal agencies to investigate more.
“This crisis really is the ultimate wake-up call to threats posed by potentially hostile drones…I’ve written Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking the Pentagon to authorize the use of force to down one or more of these unmanned threats to uncover the mystery…This is not the time to trivialize or dismiss a threat,” the congressman said.
In addition, Smith said he’s working on legislation to give state and local authorities more power to track and potentially bring down aerial drones.
Newsweek has reached out to DHS and the Department of Defense via email for comment.
This is not the first time lawmakers have called on federal agencies to investigate the issue.
In a letter to President Joe Biden requesting more federal resources to investigate the matter, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said that since November 18 state police have been receiving reports of UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] sightings in New Jersey’s airspace. Murphy said in the letter dated Thursday that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas briefed his administration and the state’s congressional delegation “on actions the agency would take to learn more about the reported UAS activity.”
Mayorkas said on Friday during a CNN appearance that he has been in contact with Murphy every day and the DHS has its “state-of-the-art technology” and experts on the ground in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, in its most recent update officials stated on a press call on Saturday that no threats have yet been detected to national or public security, emphasizing that the investigation remains ongoing and that some questions remain unanswered.
“Obviously, we are taking this incredibly seriously,” one senior official of Biden’s administration told reporters during a press call on Saturday. “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 is a malicious foreign actor involved in these drones.”
While the investigation was initially opened due to reports of pilots identifying unidentified UAS’s, the FBI official said that “most of the reports of UAS have originated from the ground, with very, very few reports of UAS activity from pilots of manned aircraft.”
Radar analysis conducted at U.S. military installations monitoring the situation have since “determined all large fixed-wing reported sightings have been manned aircraft,” the FBI official said.
Officials also said that efforts to compare the trajectory of such sightings with standard air traffic emanating from some of busiest airports in New Jersey and New York resulted in a solid match.
“Overlaying the visual sightings reported to the FBI with approach patterns for Newark Liberty, JFK and LaGuardia airports, the density of reported sightings matches the approach patterns for these very busy airports, with flights coming in throughout the night,” the FBI official said. “This modeling is indicative of manned aviation being quite often mistaken for unmanned aviation or UAS.”
A DHS official backed these findings as well, saying “we’re confident that many of the reported drone sightings are, in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones.”
However, frustration has continued to mount, as evidenced over incidents such as the closure of an upstate New York airport due to reports of alleged UAS flying nearby.
Some area politicians, such as New Jersey Assemblyman Erik Peterson, have also claimed that the federal government is “lying to us,” arguing that the supposed unmanned craft were moving in a way that airplanes could not and flew too silently to be a helicopter.
“They’re lying to us. First, they say you’re not seeing what you’re seeing. There’s nothing here, nothing here to be seen. And then they tell us that they don’t know what it is. They don’t know what’s happening. It’s all a lie,” Peterson said.
On Friday night, President-elect Donald Trump spoke out in favor of shooting down the mysterious drones if necessary, while suggesting that the Biden administration was withholding information about the sightings.
“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge. I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!! DJT.”
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