Amid an interagency investigation into a surge of alleged drone sightings across New Jersey, New York, and other nearby states, U.S. officials have assessed that the vast majority of reports were actually linked to routine air traffic.
According to a press call on Saturday, a senior official from President Joe Biden’s administration stated that “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.”
The investigation was initially opened due to reports of unidentified unmanned aerial systems (UAS), but 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 has determined that all large fixed-wing reported sightings have been manned aircraft. Officials also stated that efforts to compare the trajectory of sightings with standard air traffic emanating from busy airports in New Jersey and New York resulted in a solid match.
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official backed these findings, saying “we’re confident that many of the reported drone sightings are, in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones.”
The investigation has received over 5,000 tips, but less than 100 leads have been generated and deemed worthy of further investigation. Despite these findings, some local officials and politicians have expressed frustration and skepticism, with some claiming that the federal government is withholding information or downplaying the threat posed by the drones.
