Military and law enforcement officials in the USA say there is nothing anomalous or concerning about the recent spate of reported drone sightings throughout the country’s eastern coast in recent weeks.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has received more than 5,000 tips from the public over the past several weeks regarding unknown drone-type aircraft. Many of the sightings have been concentrated around the state of New Jersey, with other reports from New York, Connecticut, Virginia and elsewhere.
Those regions all contain sensitive military and industrial sites, as well as major population centres and large commercial airports. Rampant – and largely unfounded – speculation on the internet about the nature of the objects has produced an increasingly wild series of explanations ranging from a secret Iranian “drone carrier” loitering offshore to extraterrestrial activity.
Less extraordinary answers have also been suggested, including Russian or Chinese espionage and classified development activity by US defence contractors.
However, the Pentagon now says most of the recent drone sighting reports can be attributed to normal commercial and private aviation activity.
“We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the US Department of Defense (DoD) said on 17 December.
The Pentagon notes there are more than 1 million unmanned aircraft lawfully registered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement platforms.
“With the technology landscape evolving, we expect that number to increase over time,” the DoD adds.
After deploying visual observers and what they describe as “advanced detection technology” to areas in the northeast, military and civil aviation authorities conclude there is no special risk to either the public or commercial air traffic.
“We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast,” the Pentagon says.
Emerging anecdotal evidence appears to at least partially support this conclusion.
Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan on 13 December posted a night time video to social media showing what he claimed was a cluster drones hovering over his residence outside the USA’s capital of Washington, DC. The objects turned out to be stars in the Orion constellation.
Washington meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, who files for the Washington Post and radio broadcaster NPR, in a 16 December post to social media site X noted a decrease in drone sightings corresponded with cloudy conditions over much of the eastern USA.
“That’s because clouds blocked airplanes, stars and planets from being visible from below,” he concludes.
Local officials had also jumped on the trend, deploying their own law enforcement resources to monitor airspace and rushing to condemn national authorities for their inaction.
“This has gone too far,” New York governor Kathy Hochul said on 14 December, after Stewart International airport in Upstate New York was briefly closed on 13 December due to nearby drone activity.
Hochul called upon lawmakers in Congress to strengthen oversight of drones and deployed New York state law enforcement to investigate the sightings.
The Pentagon acknowledges the “concern among many communities”, and in a rare display of political lobbying urged lawmakers in Washington to enact stronger uncrewed aircraft regulations that would “extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities”.
The nationwide hysteria harkens back to early 2023, when the incursion of a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon into US and Canadian airspace captivated the nation for several days.
That craft was destroyed by a missile shot from a US Air Force (USAF) Lockheed Martin F-22 stealth fighter, but only after it had drifted over a large swatch of the continental USA, including the region housing sensitive intercontinental ballistic missile silos and long-range bomber bases.
The DoD does acknowledge that some of the recent sightings did occur in the restricted airspace around military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere. However, the Pentagon says such sightings are “not new”.
Some criminal incidents have been documented, including two men arrested in Boston on 14 December for flying a personal drone “dangerously close” to the city’s Logan International airport, according to Boston police.
Federal authorities on 8 December separately arrested a Chinese citizen – who is also a legal permanent resident of the USA – for allegedly taking unauthorised drone footage of California’s Vandenburg Space Force Base.
Drones were also detected operating around three UK Royal Air Force bases in November, including RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Feltwell. Lakenheath is home to a USAF fighter wing, while Mildenhall hosts a US aerial refuelling wing.
The USAF has downplayed those incidents, saying there was no impact to base infrastructure or residents.
The UK Ministry of Defence says it takes the threat seriously and “maintains robust measures”, including counter-drone systems, at military installations, although it declines to disclose specifics.
