Amid frustration from senior lawmakers of both parties over confusion about sightings of drones in New Jersey and throughout the Northeast, the White House, the Pentagon and the governor of New Jersey said on Monday the drones spotted in recent weeks pose no threat and can largely be attributed to lawful commercial, law enforcement and civilian hobbyist drones.

Many of the reported sightings, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on a press call on Monday afternoon, were actually “manned, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones.”

What You Need To Know

  • The White House, the Pentagon and the governor of New Jersey said on Monday the drones spotted in recent weeks pose no threat and can largely be attributed to lawful commercial, law enforcement and civilian hobbyist drones
  • Many of the reported sightings were actually “manned, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones,” a senior White House official said
  • The FBI received around 5,000 reports, found roughly 100 merited follow-up investigations and concluded none of the reported sightings were “anything anomalous” nor did any pose “any national security or public safety risk”
  • Drone-detecting devices deployed in New Jersey in the past week have found “little to no evidence” of anything nefarious or threatening, Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday
  • There are more than one million drones “lawfully registered” with the Federal Aviation Administration and that thousands of legally-operated drones are in the sky over the United States “on any given day”

Kirby said the FBI received around 5,000 reports, found roughly 100 merited follow-up investigations and concluded none of the reported sightings were “anything anomalous” nor did any pose “any national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast.”

He emphasized that there are more than one million drones “lawfully registered” with the Federal Aviation Administration and that thousands of legally-operated drones are in the sky over the United States “on any given day.”

“I want to stress again, our assessment at this stage is that the activity represents commercial, hobbyist [and/or] law enforcement drones, all operating legally and lawfully. And/or civilian aviation aircraft," Kirby said. 

Drone-detecting devices deployed in New Jersey in the past week have found “little to no evidence” of anything nefarious or threatening, Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday.

Murphy told reporters in Trenton that there were 12 sightings of suspected drones in the state on Saturday and one on Sunday. He declined to go into detail about the detection equipment, but said it was powerful enough to disable the drones, although he added that is not legal on U.S. soil.

Murphy, a Democrat, echoed calls by state officials elsewhere for Congress to allow them to deal with drones. Nearly all the power now rests with the federal government.

"It is extraordinary to me that, that a nation as great as ours and as powerful as ours has the deficiencies that we have now seen in living color as it relates to drone incursions,” Murphy said.

Federal officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have repeatedly said there are no signs that any drone operators have shown bad intent, nor is there evidence of foreign involvement.

But that hasn't reassured everyone. Conspiracy theories about foreign actors, the U.S. government and the “deep state,” abound online, while elected officials concerned about threats to military bases, airports and other locations have increased their calls for federal officials to act.

The skeptics include President-elect Donald Trump, who suggested Monday that "the government knows what is happening.”

“Our military knows and our president knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” Trump said on Monday. He refused to say whether he had been briefed on the drone sightings.

New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat, told The Associated Press that officials could do a better job helping the public to understand what is going on, especially when people wrongly conclude they are seeing unmanned aircraft.

But Kim said he’s heard no supporting evidence for the president-elect's statement that information is being withheld and that a lack of faith in institutions is playing a key part in the saga.

“Nothing that I’m seeing, nothing that I’ve engaged in gives me any impression of that nature. But like, I get it, some people won’t believe me, right? Because that’s the level of distrust that we face,” Kim said.

Over the past two days, New York and Pennsylvania officials have also requested drone-detecting equipment from federal officials.

At a media briefing on Monday, the Pentagon's press secretary, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said defense officials have seen no indication that the drones flying over multiple locations in the U.S. are being controlled by a foreign country.

Ryder said that while military bases overseas can use surveillance methods that quickly address the origin of drones, that power is limited in U.S. airspace because of domestic surveillance laws. He said most drones are operated through either radio frequency transmissions or satellite-guided GPS navigation, which can provide information about the operators. If they're not controlled by those methods, that's another clue, he said.

More suspected drone sightings over the weekend led to a temporary airspace shutdown at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, for about four hours late Friday into Saturday, and the arrests of two men in Boston accused of flying a drone “dangerously close” to Logan International Airport.