They’re baaaaack.
The mysterious, SUV-sized drones flying over New Jersey and New York have returned.
A brief lull in activity that coincided with flight restrictions imposed by the feds has ended, now that the Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ban.
And the mysterious unmanned aircraft aren’t just plaguing the Big Apple and the Garden State.
“We’ve received over 100 reports in the past three weeks that mention drones across the US,” Enigma Labs spokesperson Christine Kim said, citing the company’s user-generated figures.
“We created our live active drone map in December to help the public and investigators track drone sightings in the tri-state.”
New Jersey remains a hotbed of drone activity, Kim claimed. The New York-based company’s “unidentified anomalous phenomena”-cataloging iPhone app and interactive map received a total of 22,000 sightings in 2024, with most concentrated in the Northeast.
“We’ve been getting more and more reports, including a surge of them last week,” Kim said, with 28 reports, including one of a floating, color-shifting object over Hoboken on Jan. 14.
Enigma Labs relies on user-submitted information and began tracking sightings in late November when mysterious flying objects began generating fear and panic in the Garden State and around the country,
Since then, it’s received 650 reports of drone sightings in the US, with 154 coming in January alone — including recent sightings in Hoboken and Stockton, N.J.
Over 50% of reports to Enigma described the objects as “hovering” or staying airborne for extended periods of time, while 25% indicated objects were observed moving in swarms of five or more.
The uptick came after sightings plummeted by 43% following the FAA flight restrictions imposed on Dec. 18, Kim said.
On that same day, Enigma received nearly 50 sightings. A week later, only four sightings were reported.
The restrictions were lifted Jan. 17, and since then, Enigma’s received 22 reports of sightings.
So far in all of January, Enigma’s documented more than 150 reported sightings.
Federal officials in December dismissed the sightings as misidentified planes approaching the area’s airports.
Kim said the Enigma Labs app will be available for Android phones via the Google Play store next month. In the meantime, the company launched a hotline: 1-833-SAW-A-UFO.
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