It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a UFO! It’s an Iranian mothership! It’s a radiation probe! Or maybe it’s really just a plane. The wave of alleged noctural drone sightings in New Jersey has led to some wild theories about what the mysterious lights in the sky could be.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R–N.J.) claimed that the drones were coming from an Iranian “mothership” in the Atlantic Ocean, then retracted his claim after the Pentagon denied it. (The Iranian navy does have a sort of aircraft carrier for drones—and publicly-available satellite imagery shows that it’s still sitting in the Persian Gulf.) The mayor of Belleville, New Jersey, claimed the drones were part of a secret search operation for missing radioactive material, although the materials have already been recovered. Rep. Nancy Mace (R–S.C.) even asked whether it could be aliens from outer space.
But there might be a simpler explanation. Gov. Phil Murphy has suggested that at least some of the sightings were just normal air traffic misidentified by over-eager drone spotters. Police documents obtained by Reason under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act back up that theory. A map of drone reports produced by the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office shows a dense concentration of sightings along the flight path of airliners leaving New York City.
The brightest spots on the map are around Monmouth Battlefield State Park and Keansburg Beach, which sit on a straight line extending northwards to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Monmouth Battlefield State Park is also next to Old Bridge Airport, a small airfield that houses a flight school. The aviation tracking app Flightradar24 shows that manned civilian aircraft regularly fly over the state park and beach, especially on flights from New York to southern cities, such as Atlanta and Miami.
At least some of the drone sightings have been proven to be normal planes. Sen. Andy Kim (D–N.J.) rode along with police on drone patrol in Hunterdon County in early December, then used Flightradar24 to show that “what was pointed out to me the other night as a possible drone flying near us” was just a small airplane. NewsNation aired footage on December 13 of “drones” in Ocean County that “looked like fixed wing aircraft.” The flying objects were, in fact, fixed-wing aircraft.
The NewsNation segment also showed the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office using its own drones to investigate the lights in the sky. Ironically, nobody bothered to ask whether those drones were the ones that local residents were calling in.
In other cases, there was nothing flying in the sky at all. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan posted a video on social media of “what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence.” The video actually showed the constellation Orion.
“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 aircrafts, helicopters, and even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told reporters on Monday.
Along with wasting government resources, the false alarms have created possible threats of violence to air traffic. The FBI and the New Jersey State Police issued a joint statement on Monday warning about “an increase in pilots of manned aircraft being hit in the eyes with lasers” and “concern with people possibly firing weapons at what they believe to be a UAS,” or unmanned aircraft system, after the drone sightings began. Needless to say, trying to blind or kill pilots is a serious crime.
It’s still not clear what, if anything, kicked off the drone panic to begin with. The first reports of mysterious drones came from guards at the Picatinny Arsenal, a weapons manufacturing facility in New Jersey, on November 13. The FBI and New Jersey State Police, issued a joint statement on December 3 asking for information on a “cluster of what look to be drones and a possible fixed wing aircraft” over the Raritan River, about 20 miles south of the arsenal.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began issuing temporary flight restrictions for areas near the Picatinny Arsenal and the Raritan River. Fox News and other media outlets began emphasizing that the restricted areas included President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course in Hunterdon County, which is halfway between the arsenal and the river. Trump himself said that he was avoiding Bedminster because of the alleged drones.
But just because the feds are concerned by alleged drone flights doesn’t mean those drones were part of a nefarious conspiracy. There are over 1 million civilian drones, 400,000 licensed commercial drone pilots, and 387,000 hobbyists registered with the FAA nationwide. And a few of them have been arrested or fined for breaking air traffic rules in restricted areas. In 2017, a New Jersey hobbyist accidentally crashed his drone into an Army helicopter after disobeying FAA orders.
There’s a real irony in the claims—endorsed by Rep. Debbie Dingell (D–Mich.) and Chris Smith (R–N.J.)—that the government is hiding something about the drones. Dingell and Smith are the government. The fear of drones was sparked by government agencies and encouraged by politicians. Only when the panic got out of hand, and started interfering with other government functions, did federal authorities start trying to throw cold water on it.
Still, the government never misses an opportunity to grow itself. Mace, in addition to speculating about aliens, also used the drone panic as a pitch for more military spending: “Is there someone who’s winning the arms race, and are we behind?” Sen. Gary Peters (D–Mich.) tried to use the drone panic to fast-track a longtime hobby horse of his, a bill that would give federal and local law enforcement more power to deal with drones. On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) blocked the bill from getting unanimous consent.
“This body must not rush to grant sweeping surveillance powers without proper consideration and debate by the committees of jurisdiction,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Why don’t we actually get to the truth of the matter of what actually exists and what the threat is before we propose legislation?”
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