Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Mystery drone sightings over New York, New Jersey leave Americans baffled

Dozens of reported drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey have alarmed lawmakers and local officials and left them searching for answers.

Gov. Phil Murphy said there were nearly 50 reported sightings in a single night over the weekend. And since mid-November, drones have been reported in at least 10 counties in New Jersey and in parts of New York City.

The Federal Aviation Administration has temporarily banned drones from flying over a New Jersey golf course owned by President-elect Donald Trump and from the skies over Picatinny Arsenal, an Army facility in Morris County.

Eleven drones have been spotted near the arsenal by security guards and police officers since Nov. 13, according to Timothy Rider, a public affairs specialist for the facility. Rider added that the “increased drone activity” was not the result of military operations related to the base.

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a news conference Thursday that federal authorities had not been able to corroborate any of the reported sightings above New Jersey or New York.

“To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully,” Kirby said.

A “thorough analysis” of pictures and videos and “very sophisticated electronic detection technologies provided by federal authorities” had not revealed any of the flying objects to be unauthorized drones, he added.

Still, Kirby said the spate of reports and public concern about them underscored the importance of systems to detect and deter drones. Such tools should be made available to state and local law enforcement officials, he said.

“And so we urge Congress to pass important legislation that will extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities so that we are better prepared to identify and mitigate any potential threats to airports or other critical infrastructure,” he said.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security will continue to investigate the reported sightings, he said, stressing that the reported sightings did not appear to pose a threat to public safety.

Even as officials assured the public they had nothing to fear, New Jersey residents have described the rash of sightings as unsettling. Social media forums dedicated to the “mystery” have accumulated thousands of posts. One Facebook group has more than 25,000 members who share videos and swap theories.

On Tuesday, Robert Wheeler, the assistant director of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, said in testimony to Congress that the bureau was “actively investigating” the sightings, and its field office in Newark, New Jersey, has urged anyone with relevant information to contact the FBI tip line.

At a briefing with state lawmakers Wednesday, the New Jersey State Police said it had observed what it believed to be unidentified drones in the skies over the state, according to state Rep. Brian Bergen, who was present. The police have tried to track the drones with helicopters, but such efforts have been halted because of safety concerns, he said.

Bergen, a Republican, said he left the briefing feeling more concerned, and with fewer answers, than when he arrived.

“What they told us was they know nothing, legitimately nothing,” he said. “Who’s doing it, what they’re doing? They know nothing.”

Jon Bramnick, a Republican state senator and candidate for governor, called Monday for a “limited state of emergency” that would ban all drones in New Jersey until authorities were able to provide more information.

In recent weeks, drone sightings have been reported in northern and southern New Jersey as well as in New York City above Staten Island and south Brooklyn.

US Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, asked the Federal Aviation Administration to impose flight restrictions where the sightings had been reported. The agency has not granted her request, and she said that other federal authorities had not been much help either.

“They said they are looking into it, but that’s just not good enough,” Malliotakis said. “The fact that these things are flying around and nobody seems to know what they are is very disturbing.”

The Morris County Sheriff’s Office, in northern New Jersey, has been hearing from concerned residents, but it does not have much more information than anyone else.

“Even us in law enforcement, we don’t know,” said Mark Chiarolanza, a public information officer for the sheriff’s office.

In Ocean County, New Jersey, the local sheriff’s office has been using its own drones to investigate nighttime sightings, hoping to determine where the objects land and what precisely they are. They have had little luck so far.

“We’re not getting good characteristics of the drone,” said Sgt. Kevin Fennessy, who leads the office’s drone unit. “We had one the other night that, as we’re watching it, it just shuts the lights off and it’s gone in pure darkness.”

From what he has seen so far, Fennessy thinks the objects are perhaps double the size of the drones in his fleet, flying at top speeds that are about 20 mph faster. Ocean County is near the flight path for airplanes landing at Kennedy Airport in New York, but Fennessy believes the objects are indeed drones, not planes, since they do not appear on flight tracking software.

Luís Figueiredo, a detective and drone specialist with the Elizabeth Police Department in New Jersey, said the descriptions of the sightings suggested that the drones were much larger and faster — and “a lot more sophisticated” — than those widely available to the public.

“Everybody is scratching their heads,” he said.

But Joshua Tan, a professor of physics and astronomy at LaGuardia Community College, explained that while some sightings could be drones, others might be the consequence of confirmation bias: After hearing reports, people might become newly attentive to objects in the night sky.

“People are just not familiar with what’s in the sky generally, because they’re just not normally looking up in the sky,” he said. “There are other things in the sky that have been in the sky at night for a long time — planes, helicopters, stars, planets — things that are very bright that people don’t necessarily know that they’re looking at.”