FIRST ON FOX: Dozens of drones that traipsed over Langley Air Force base in late 2023 revealed an astonishing oversight: Military officials did not believe they had the authority to shoot down the unmanned vehicles over the U.S. homeland. 

A new bipartisan bill, known as the COUNTER Act, seeks to rectify that, offering more bases the opportunity to become a "covered facility," or one that has the authority to shoot down drones that encroach on their airspace. 

The new bill has broad bipartisan and bicameral support, giving it a greater chance of becoming law. It’s led by Armed Services Committee members Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in the Senate, and companion legislation is being introduced by August Pfluger, R-Texas, and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., in the House. 

Currently, only half of the 360 domestic U.S. bases are considered "covered facilities" that are allowed to engage with unidentified drones. The legislation expands the narrow definition of a covered facility under current statute to allow all military facilities that have a well-defined perimeter to apply for approval that allows them to engage with drones. 

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The legislation also stipulates that the secretary of defense delegate authority to combatant commanders to engage drone attacks, cutting down on time to get approval through the chain of command in emergency situations. 

"Leaving American military facilities vulnerable to drone incursions puts our service members, the general public and our national security at risk," Cotton said. 

For more than two weeks in December 2023, a swarm of mystery drones flew into restricted airspace over Langley, home to key national security facilities and the F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. 

Lack of a standard protocol for such incursions left Langley officials unsure of what to do, other than allow the 20-foot-long drones to hover near their classified facilities. 

To this day, the Pentagon has said little about the incidents, other than to confirm that they occurred. Whether it knows where the drones came from or what they were doing is unclear.

"As commercial drones become more commonplace, we must ensure that they are not being used to share sensitive information with our adversaries, to conduct attacks against our service members, or otherwise pose a threat to our national security," Gillibrand said. 

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As defense-minded lawmakers sought more answers, Langley officials referred them to the FBI, who referred them to Northern Command, who referred them to local law enforcement, a congressional source told Fox News Digital last year. 

Gen. Gregory Guillot, chief of Northern Command (NORCOM) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), said in February that there were over 350 unauthorized drone detections over military bases last year. 

"The primary threat I see for them in the way they’ve been operating is detection and perhaps surveillance of sensitive capabilities on our installations," he said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "There were 350 detections reported last year on military installations, and that was 350 over a total of 100 different installations of all types and levels of security."

A surge in mysterious drone activity over New Jersey late last year and early this year prompted mass confusion. 

Guillot said that regulations on UAV countermeasures created "significant vulnerabilities that have been exploited by known and unknown actors."

He advocated for what the new legislation would do: expand Section 130i of Title 10, which pertains to the protection of  "certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft."

"I would propose and advocate for expansion of 130i [authorities] to include all military installations, not just covered installations," Guillot said during the hearing. "I’d also like to see the range expanded to slightly beyond the installation, so they don’t have to wait for the threat to get over the installation before they can address it, because many of these systems can use side looking or slant range, and so they could … surveil the base from outside the perimeter. And under the current authorities, we can’t address that."

A new report warns that NATO is unprepared for modern digital warfare. Without stronger leadership, especially from the U.S., the alliance could face serious security risks.

The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) released a study showing that many NATO members are failing to modernize their military data systems.

Although NATO leaders talk about the importance of secure and shared cloud infrastructure, most countries still store critical military information in local servers that are vulnerable to cyberattacks.

The report calls data the "currency of warfare" and urges NATO to improve how it stores and shares military information.

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At the moment, most NATO countries are building separate national cloud systems. France uses Thales, Germany uses Arvato, and Italy is working with Leonardo to develop sovereign defense cloud services, according to the CEPA report Defend in the Cloud: Boost NATO Data Resilience.

The U.S. has its own approach, using Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle to build a sovereign cloud for the Department of Defense, as noted in the same CEPA report.

This fragmented setup is creating major problems. The CEPA report explains that many of these national systems are not interoperable, which makes it difficult for NATO allies to share intelligence or respond rapidly in times of crisis.

Although 22 NATO members have pledged to build shared cloud capabilities, progress has been slow. CEPA describes a gap between what leaders promise and what is actually getting done, and the process remains slow and overly bureaucratic.

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Some of the hesitation stems from political tensions. 

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has reinforced his long-standing position that NATO members must meet their defense spending commitments. 

In early 2025, Trump proposed raising the target above the current 2% benchmark and stated publicly that the U.S. would only defend NATO allies who meet what he considers their "fair share" of the burden.

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At the same time, Trump has taken credit for strengthening the alliance by pushing European governments to boost their defense budgets. 

In March, he pointed to what he called "hundreds of billions of dollars" in new allied defense spending as proof that his pressure was effective. His administration continues to engage in high-level NATO meetings and has publicly affirmed support for the alliance’s core mission.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has worked to reassure European partners. During an April meeting with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, he stated that the U.S. is "as active in NATO as it has ever been," pushing back on claims that the administration is disengaging.

According to statements published by the State Department and reported by Reuters, Rubio emphasized that Trump is not opposed to NATO itself, but to an alliance that is under-prepared or underfunded.

Rubio is also playing a central role in U.S. efforts to broker peace in Ukraine. In early 2025, he led direct talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia and presented Trump’s terms for a possible ceasefire, according to official State Department readouts and contemporaneous reporting by Reuters and other outlets.

Rubio has emphasized that Ukraine and European allies will remain closely involved in the process. After a pause in U.S. aid earlier this year, he announced that military support would resume once Kyiv signaled agreement with the proposed framework for peace.

Meanwhile, NATO continues to provide assistance to Ukraine through a trust fund valued at nearly $1 billion. This figure is based on NATO’s own reporting on its Comprehensive Assistance Package, as cited in CEPA’s April report.

The alliance is also coordinating training and equipment donations, but the CEPA report makes it clear that efforts are being slowed by a lack of secure data sharing.

The report points to Estonia as a model for digital resilience. Estonia backs up its government data in Luxembourg through a "data embassy" system, ensuring it remains protected even if local systems are attacked. NATO, according to CEPA, should encourage similar strategies across the alliance.

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According to CEPA, the U.S. is best positioned to lead the way, with Trump and Rubio already taking the necessary steps to push NATO in the right direction.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.

CEPA's report can be reviewed here.

The Pentagon's procurement system has kept American forces stocked with some of the most iconic military hardware in history – from the battle-hardened Humvee to the cutting-edge Apache helicopter. But according to the Army's top technology officer, it's also trapped in a cycle of outdated thinking and bloated paperwork that could hinder the U.S. in the next great-power conflict.

"We still have just over 100,000 Humvees," Alex Miller, the Army’s Chief Technology Officer, told Fox News Digital, speaking about the legacy vehicle first introduced in the 1980s. "Even though during the global War on Terror, we saw the threat change."

Miller pointed to roadside bombs, or IEDs, which devastated troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a turning point. "There were lots of reports that if a Humvee rolled over an IED, it just was not a good situation for soldiers," he said.

Still, the Army continued buying Humvees, even as it rushed to field more survivable vehicles like MRAPs and Strykers. That, Miller said, highlights the larger issue: not a single acquisition failure, but a systemwide problem in how the military does business.

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"We’re playing by the same post-Cold War rules that told us if you have a requirement, you’re going to keep on buying it," Miller said. "Because the requirements process and the acquisition process and the fielding process sort of never changed, we find ourselves in this conundrum where we still have just over 100,000 Humvees."

Despite introducing newer vehicles like the JLTV – designed to replace the Humvee with better armor and mobility – Miller says the rapid pace of technological change and emerging threats have left even those newer systems at risk of becoming obsolete.

"Even though we continue to buy them and have them in the budget," he said, "that might not be the right answer either."

Miller laid out the Army's plans to solve a decades-long issue at the Pentagon, bringing new weapons systems from the proposal stage to the battlefront before technology renders them outdated – just as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a new memo directing an overhaul of the Army's acquisitions process. 

"To build a leaner, more lethal force, the Army must transform at an accelerated pace by divesting outdated, redundant, and inefficient programs, as well as restructuring headquarters and acquisition systems," Hegseth wrote. 

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Miller warned that some of the Army’s marquee weapons platforms may not be suited for the battlefields of the future.

"Ukraine has not asked for a single Apache," he noted. "Our Apaches are a great platform. It's amazing. But ... looking at more unmanned systems is probably the way to go."

He also raised questions about the utility of legacy artillery platforms like the Paladin howitzer. Although artillery is dominating the war in Ukraine, the Army is stockpiling more Paladins largely to meet a "minimum sustainment rate" — not because commanders are asking for them.

That kind of bureaucratic inertia, Miller suggested, is exactly what needs to be upended.

In an effort to modernize more rapidly, the Army is now slashing red tape and rewriting regulations. Under a new initiative called "Transforming in Contact," Army leaders have sent requirement writers into the field to live and train alongside soldiers, gathering real-time feedback instead of drafting 300-page documents back in Washington.

"Rather than trying to define what types of things they need, how about we just listen to them for a change?" Miller said. "We started that last year … and that has been wildly successful."

Units heading to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Johnson, Louisiana next week will be equipped with some of the most advanced gear in the Army, including autonomous infantry vehicles built with Silicon Valley partners, advanced battery tech and hundreds of drones.

"All because our leadership just said, go do the right thing, rather than trying to check boxes," Miller said.

Now, according to Miller, the requirements documentation for things like next-generation unmanned aerial vehicles has been whittled down from between 200 and 300 pages to 10. 

In other cases, modernization isn't always necessary, according to Abigail Blanco, defense expert and professor at the University of Tampa. 

Up until a few years ago when it was finally retired, one of the primary reconnaissance systems in the War on Terror was the RQ-4 Global Hawk. 

The RQ-4 had an impressive payload capacity of 3,000 pounds and advanced reconnaissance capabilities - at an enormous cost. Each one was originally slated to cost $20 million but wound up costing $220 million per unit. 

"If you look at reports from the Air Force, they repeatedly stated that instead of the [RQ-4], they preferred the U-2 spy plane, which, to be clear, is a relic in military terms. It's from the Cold War period. And so it's not always clear that the modernization piece is desirable."

Some lawmakers and defense officials initially resisted the Army’s push to streamline systems. 

"The OSD comptroller pushed back really hard. Some parts of the Hill pushed back really hard," Miller said. "But we ran a really aggressive ground game.… We’re not asking for more money. We’re asking to spend taxpayer dollars better."

The problem, according to Blanco, is Congress has long continued to budget for equipment way beyond its point of usefulness. 

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"If you are an elected representative and your district manufactures Humvees or tanks, you have a really strong vested interest in ensuring that that technology continues to be produced, regardless whether or not it's operationally necessary."

In the end, Miller said, acquisition reform isn’t about cutting corners – it’s about keeping pace with an adversary who doesn’t care about red tape.

"The environment, the threat, and the reality change so fast," he said. "We have permission to just be ruthless about working with commercial entities ... and figuring out what can we get in the hands of soldiers faster."

"Mind-boggling" is the word Space Force Gen. Chance Saltzman used to describe China’s explosive advances in space as he warned the U.S. is on a path to losing its dominance in orbit.

Testifying before the bipartisan U.S.-China Commission on Thursday, Saltzman said China is "heavily investing" in both ground-based and space-based weapons designed to disable enemy satellites, including kinetic strikes, radio-frequency jamming and directed energy weapons.

The U.S., meanwhile, is "resource limited" and still weighing "which ones we could get the most utility out of," he said.

The general’s testimony came as Congress weighs how to counter growing Chinese aggression in space and whether the Space Force has the tools to keep pace. China increased its military spending by 7% this year, stockpiling anti-satellite missiles and claiming to possess directed energy weapons that use concentrated energy beams to jam satellite signals.

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There’s also a risk if China were to destroy a satellite in orbit, an action that could trigger a global catastrophe, Saltzman warned, pointing to lingering debris from Russia’s 2021 anti-satellite missile test and China’s 2007 test, which continue to threaten spacecraft safety.

China’s space-based targeting capabilities have "grown most impressively" in recent years, Saltzman said, with hundreds of satellites now dedicated to tracking U.S. assets in orbit. That expansion has given the Space Force a "new mission set": to deny China the ability to surveil American satellites in real time.

Yet Saltzman warned the U.S. is falling behind. The Space Force budget has shrunk in absolute terms, even as space becomes an increasingly contested military domain. Lawmakers, he said, still operate with an "out of sight, out of mind" mindset.

"It’s just still a low priority in terms of the policy regime," Saltzman said. "The modern battlefield has to account for the space domain. If we can’t continue to protect our use of the domain – and we can’t deny an adversary – that’s going to be tied to the military objectives in any of the other domains.

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"I believe we have more missions unfunded than funded," Saltzman said, adding that Space Force still lacks the size and capabilities needed to carry out its expanding responsibilities.

The U.S., for example, does not have an operational quantum satellite, but China does. Quantum satellites can enable ultra-secure communications and advanced navigational technologies.

China’s investment in space-based tech for long-range precision strikes and reusable launch vehicles "represent an inflection point in space access that may result in China overtaking U.S. leadership," Saltzman said.

Just weeks ago, Space Force Vice Chief of Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein revealed that China has been practicing satellite "dogfighting," a sign of its growing ability to conduct complex operations in orbit.

Space Force has observed "five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control," he said.

"That’s what we call dogfighting in space," Guetlein said. "They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to conduct on-orbit operations from one satellite to another."

President Donald Trump promised that ‘bad things’ would happen to Iran if the regime does not come to the table for nuclear negotiations. 

"My big preference is that we work it out with Iran, but if we don’t work it out, bad things are gonna happen to Iran," the president said Friday. 

Iran is enriching uranium to 60%, just shy of the 90% weapons-grade. Experts say it could have a nuclear weapon within weeks if it were to take the final steps to building one. 

In response to U.S. sanctions threats, Iran showed off a sprawling underground tunnel system replete with missiles, launchers, engines and other advanced weapons. 

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A video released this week by state media shows two Iranian military leaders, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri and IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, riding in a vehicle through long, weapons-packed tunnels that Tehran has dubbed "Missile City." 

The 85-second clip, which has not been independently verified, is set to menacing music and suggests that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps stands ready to respond to threats of an attack from the U.S. and Israel. 

"Iran’s ballistic missile force remains the largest in the Middle East," said Behnam Taleblu, fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "This is all part of the regime’s deterrent strategy to cement the idea of any conflict with Tehran being a costly and protracted one." 

The move comes as U.S. is bolstering its forces in the Middle East. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently sent a second aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy’s USS Carl Vinson, to join the USS Harry S. Truman‘s carrier strike group, whose deployment was also extended. 

The U.S. also recently deployed two B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, a warning to Iran and Yemen's Houthi militia. The planes are capable of carrying 30,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs and are now situated within range of Iran. 

Weeks ago, Trump wrote a letter to Iran urging the regime to engage in talks on its nuclear program. 

Kamal Kharazi, the top foreign policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Thursday that the regime would engage in "indirect" talks, according to local news reports.

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"The Islamic Republic has not closed all the doors and is willing to begin indirect negotiations with the United States." 

"Our policy is to not negotiate directly while there is maximum pressure policy and threats of military strikes," foreign minister Abbas Aragchi explained. "But indirect negotiations can take place as they have in the past."

If talks falter, the U.S. and Israel have floated the possibility of targeted strikes on underground nuclear facilities. 

In recent weeks, the Trump administration launched a series of offensive attacks on the Houthis in Yemen to send a message to Tehran, which supports them. 

"Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN," Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. 

"Iran has played 'the innocent victim' of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control," he continued. "They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, "Intelligence.'" 

Regent's all-electric boat-plane hybrid project got a major boost from the government this week. 

The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab extended its collaboration with Regent with an estimated $10 million contract on Wednesday, following the successful completion of a $4.75 million contract. 

This new phase of testing will focus on examining its seaglider's capabilities on medical evacuation missions. 

For CEO Billy Thalheimer, a new era of global conflict centered on the Indo-Pacific represents a "reversion to World War II-style tactics," and the needs of the Pentagon will be once again focused on maritime operations instead of desert warfare like the war on terror in the Middle East. 

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Thalheimer said Regent identified the "capability gap" in the logistics of moving troops and supplies between island chains in the Indo-Pacific. 

"We want something affordable and mass-produced. We do not have enough boats, the nation is working on our shipbuilding capabilities, we want something easy to operate and easy to crew, because it currently takes two years to train a pilot," he said. 

The seaglider travels up to 180 miles at up to 180mph speed. It can take off and land on water, "eliminating the need for vulnerable runway infrastructure," according to the company. 

The aircraft is all-electric, which Thalheimer says makes it easier to refuel anywhere there is electricity, rather than having to transport in gas. 

"You think about a gallon of fuel today, you know, $6. If we're buying it in the U.S., which can go to 100 to $150 when it's delivered to those, disparate island chains," he said. 

Regent’s Viceroy, which holds 12 passengers with a 65-foot wingspan, completed a successful sea test on Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay earlier this month. 

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Regent's "float, foil, fly" motto describes the flight path of the seaglider: First, it floats on the ocean's surface, then as it picks up speed it "foils," meaning it gliders over the water's surface with wing-like structures known as hydrofoils, which then retract as it lifts into the air. 

The vehicle leverages "ground effect," avoiding the turbulence of the sky by hovering just around 30 feet in the air.

The glider’s earth-hugging flight path is also designed to avoid enemy radar.

"There's this great opportunity to fly below radar, but really above sonar in this hard-to-see space."

One key mission Regent hopes to fulfill is medical evacuations, given the quick turn-around its seagliders can have from floating on the sea near a port to flying. 

Regent has submitted its design basis agreement (DBA) to the Coast Guard for its Viceroy seaglider to the Coast Guard and expects approval next year. 

"We are incredibly proud to extend our collaboration with the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and continue to validate how REGENT’s high-speed, low-signature, low-cost seagliders will enable defense missions," said Tom Huntley, VP of Government Relations and Defense at REGENT. "The second phase of our agreement will demonstrate their use cases for contested logistics operations in the maritime domain, fulfilling a critical national security need."

The company has garnered over $90 million in investment from investors including 8090 Industries, Founders Fund, Japan Airlines and Lockheed Martin.

A key geospatial intelligence firm on Tuesday announced a new product that can operate drones even in areas where the GPS signal has been jammed - cutting through modern defenses in the age of unmanned vehicular warfare. 

The war between Russia and Ukraine presented a unique problem: each military had learned how to jam the other's GPS signals, meaning their drones would be flying blind. This prompted the latest innovation from Maxar Intelligence, a drone-guiding technology that does not rely on satellite signals from space. 

Now, Maxar, a global satellite imagery and geospatial intelligence provider, has the capability to counter GPS-jamming technology through its Raptor system. 

"We’re giving the drones a 3D map, allowing them to use that 3D map of the world to compare it to the video feed and position themselves," Peter Wilczynski, chief product officer at Maxar, told Fox News Digital. 

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The company’s new camera-based recognition software, Raptor, allows drones to navigate and identify ground coordinates in contested regions where Global Positioning System (GPS) signals have been cut or remote areas where they do not exist. 

Raptor can be installed to use a drone’s existing camera and Maxar’s 90 million-plus square kilometer of global 3D terrain data to helps the platform navigate terrain and extract ground coordinates. 

While other prototypes of terrain-based positioning preceded Raptor, Maxar believes it has the largest global collection of high-resolution terrain. "We’re able to get the accuracy down to the best you can without GPS," said Wilczynski. 

The software builds off a 3D representation of the terrain it glides over, able to provide an accurate picture at night and at altitudes of 120 meters. 

"This is really the seminal thing that the Ukraine war did for battlefield technology," Wilczynski said.

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Around the world nations have been developing their GPS signal-jamming technologies to fend off autonomous vehicle attacks. Much of Ukraine is GPS-denied, as are large swaths in Europe and the Middle East. Experts believe that one of the first things China would do if it were to invade Taiwan would be to cut off the GPS signal to isolate the island. 

Maxar's data has been key for Ukraine in fending off Russia – when the U.S. cut off intelligence-sharing, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s forces lost access to Maxar’s tracking of the movement of Russian troops and ability to assess damage. 

"From a military planning perspective, the assumption going forward is that in any conflict, GPS is not going to be a reliable positioning system anymore," Wilczynski said

In the western hemisphere, GPS jamming has been used by drug traffickers to evade detection and other organized criminal operations. 

America's GPS, once considered cutting-edge, is now at risk of becoming outdated as Chinese, Russian and European systems modernize. 

The Pentagon, together with Space Force and Army, have in recent years been scrambling in search of alternatives for when GPS signal is unavailable on the battlefield. The issue has become acutely pressing as adversaries like China and Russia develop their anti-satellite capabilities. 

The threat is not contained to far-off conflict zones but also everyday life in the U.S.: financial systems, emergency services and air traffic could all face dire emergencies without access to their satellite systems. 

Maxar plans to employ its Raptor technology for both commercial and defense purposes as nations across the globe search for a cutting-edge alternative to GPS signal.

Forty years after President Ronald Reagan first conceived the idea, defense industry leaders say the technology is finally advanced enough to build an invisible protective dome of space-based radars, missile interceptors and laser weapons over the United States.

President Donald Trump, infatuated by the Iron Dome missile defense system over Israel, first ordered the Defense Department to begin drawing up plans for a U.S. version, the "Golden Dome," in January. 

But Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey, so a dome of protection could prove far more daunting for the much larger land mass of the U.S. And the threats to Israel usually come from its neighbors, who use short-range weapons. America's foes — North Korea, Iran, Russia and China — are half a world away and armed with intercontinental ballistics missiles (ICBMs) and hypersonics, all factors that make the project more challenging for a nation on the size and scale of the U.S.

So questions remain. Will the Golden Dome encompass the entire country, including Hawaii, Alaska and U.S. military bases in locations like Guam? Would it be able to protect against short-range missiles, long-range missiles, unmanned and manned aircraft? 

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Answers may come at least in part at the end of the month, when the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget present a funding plan for the project to the White House. But defense industry leaders say the technology exists to make a Golden Dome a reality. 

"​In our view, it has to kind of be a layered system. Because, you know, shooting a UAV, for example, is very different than shooting a hypersonic vehicle or hypersonic weapon," Raytheon president Phil Jasper told Fox News Digital. His aerospace company, a major U.S. defense contractor, manufactures the Patriot missile system, Javelin anti-tank missiles and a variety of radar and air defense systems.

The U.S. already employs a layered missile defense system known as the Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) System that uses radar to detect incoming missiles and fire off interceptors. 

It has technology like the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery to intercept ballistic missiles and the Patriot to intercept cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and aircraft. But the country only has seven active THAAD batteries deployed globally, with an eighth expected to become operational this year. 

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Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein said weeks ago that building a Golden Dome will require a Manhattan Project-level whole-of-government approach from the Missile Defense Agency, Air Force, Army, Navy, Space Force, Coast Guard and more. 

Defense contractors, some of whom have believed a Golden Dome-like project was on the horizon for years, say the protection zone may start around major cities like New York and Washington, D.C., or sensitive military sites before expanding to protect the entire homeland. 

"What I'm understanding [the goal] really is to protect the entire U.S. It is to put a dome around the homeland," said Edward Zoiss, president of space and airborne systems for L3Harris Technologies.

Jasper predicted some of these defensive measures could be installed rapidly, as soon as 2026. 

"What the administration has laid out is that building block approach that you can start to protect certain areas, at times, certain regions, and build that out as you continue to produce these systems. And they can continue to come off of production lines," he said.  

BlueHalo CEO Jonathan Moneymaker said the dome would be "less of a technology problem" and more of an organizational structure challenge. 

"The full potential of all of those capabilities working in conjunction with each other, at that scale, there's definitely some new elements there," Moneymaker said.

John Clark, Lockheed’s vice president of technology and strategic innovation, said the plan will require the Pentagon to "think about what it has on the shelf." 

"There are systems that sit today in the Air National Guard or in our current local defense infrastructure domestically. Those could actually be deployed inside of the U.S," he said. 

Clark noted that deploying defense infrastructure at home would "draw down our current inventory for conflict in the greater world." But he suggested that anything pulled out of an Army base today could be backfilled at a later date for global use.

Zoiss, whose company, L3Harris Technologies, has already built satellites for the Missile Defense Agency that could be used for space-based radar systems for a Golden Dome, said the biggest challenge is missiles that no longer follow predictable paths. 

"If you go back to your high school physics class, if you understand the angle and trajectory of a bullet, you understand exactly where it's going to land because it follows a parabola," he said. 

"ICBMs followed parabola trajectories for decades. But a new class of highly maneuverable cruise weapons and hypersonic weapons now don't," he explained. "Their endpoint is uncertain. And our defensive systems in the U.S. now have to change to be more robust in order to track that weapon throughout its entire trajectory." 

Space-based radar will be the critical element of threats to the homeland in the future, according to Zoiss. 

"Our challenge is really long-range weapons. You know, it's weapons progressing large distances that are maneuvering around our current land-based and sea-based radar systems. So, if the weapons maneuver around those systems, that means our current architecture can't provide fire control ordnance. And, therefore, it has to be moved to space." 

The Golden Dome could draw on missile defense missions already in the works, like the National Capital Region Integrated Air Defense System, which is designed to protect Washington, D.C., from incoming threats and employs systems like the Norwegian National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS).

And it could look to other systems already in the works on a smaller scale. The Army is working on a new Iron Dome-like air defense system in Guam known as the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 system. And it is developing high-powered microwave systems that could knock entire drone swarms out of the sky. 

The Marine Corps is planning to field three mobile air defense systems this year, including a modified Iron Dome launcher. 

Other needs could be over-the-horizon radar, including filling blindspots in the Arctic region for low-flying missiles that hug the earth’s curvature to avoid detection. 

Guetlein said the nation would have to "break down the barriers" between Title 10 and Title 50 of the United States Code, the federal laws that govern the nation’s defense and clandestine operations.

"Without a doubt, our biggest challenge is going to be organizational behavior and culture to bring all the pieces together," Guetlein said.

Much of the funding is expected to be laid out in Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request to Congress, which the White House is working on. Even with initial funding, the project could take years to complete, and it won’t be cheap. 

Steven Morani, acting undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said Wednesday he was working with the private sector to address the "formidable" challenges of the project. 

"Consistent with protecting the homeland and per President Trump’s executive order, we’re working with the industrial base and supply chain challenges associated with standing up the Golden Dome," he said. 

Ukraine now has a cruise missile that can travel over 600 miles, far enough to reach Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy boasted over the weekend. 

"We have significant results," Zelenskyy said Saturday. "Long Neptune has been tested and successfully used in combat. A new Ukrainian missile, an accurate strike. The range is a thousand kilometers," or 620 miles. 

That puts Moscow within striking range. 

The missile has been in development for years. Battle watchers believe the combat success Zelenskyy referred to was a Friday strike on an oil refinery in Tuapse, Russia, some 300 miles from the front line. 

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The refinery is under 60 miles from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s sprawling cliffside palace on the Black Sea in Gelendzhik. 

The Neptune cruise missile was used in April 2022 to take out a flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. 

Zelenskyy recently pledged that Ukraine would produce 100,000 long-range munitions in 2025.

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Russia intercepted and destroyed several Ukrainian drones flying over Moscow on Friday, with some coming as close as just two miles away from the Kremlin, according to Russian officials. White House envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow last week.

The fresh attacks and new offensive weapons contradict the delicate ceasefire negotiations that will culminate in a phone call between President Donald Trump and Putin on Tuesday. 

Zelenskyy has already agreed to the terms of a 30-day ceasefire after meetings with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia. 

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"We'll be talking about land, we'll be talking about power plants, that's a big question. But I think we have a lot of it already discussed, very much, by both sides, Ukraine and Russia," Trump said of his call. 

Russia has not accepted the terms of the ceasefire and accelerated attacks on Ukraine after Zelenskyy said he would agree to it. 

Eastern European countries are eyeing an exit of the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines so they can place lethal underground bombs along their border to prevent Russia from invading, Fox News Digital has learned. 

Poland is expected to withdraw from the treaty, together with Lithuania and Estonia, multiple eastern European officials predicted. Latvia and Finland are considering the idea as well. 

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked the Ministry of Defense to initiate withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention "and possibly the Dublin Convention," referring to both the treaty governing anti-personnel landmines and the use of cluster munitions. 

Pressure among the Baltic States, together with Poland and Finland, has swelled in recent months to stop adhering to the Canada-brokered treaty as a way to bolster defenses at a time when the U.S. has said it will not offer Ukraine security guarantees to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from once again invading and pushing west.

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Lithuania pulled out of the treaty banning the use of cluster munitions recently, making it the first European Union nation to pull out of an international arms treaty. It's now expected to pull out of Ottawa as well.

Russia and Ukraine both use cluster munitions and anti-personnel landmines in the current war. 

Lithuanian National Security Committee Chairman Giedrimas Jeglinskas said that the "threat assessment has changed dramatically" since his nation joined the convention in 2003. Jeglinskas, who has led the charge to leave the treaty in Lithuania, said the nation had wanted to withdraw from the treaty for a long time, given it shares a border with Russian vassal state Belarus, but needed the agreement from other border nations, so Russia could not just "go around" Belarus and through Poland or Latvia. 

"We hold that Latvians and Estonians will move in the same direction," he said. 

Canada urged Eastern European states to remain in the treaty, but laid blame on Russia for their moves to withdraw. 

"Support for the convention and universal adherence remain a priority for Canada," Global Affairs office spokesperson Brittany Fletcher told Fox News Digital. 

"These debates are taking place as a result of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. Russia's actions in the region are forcing states to act out of necessity, not by choice," the office said. "While we understand the need to consider all options … such measures need to be balanced with the long-term impacts, including impacts on civilians."

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Finland, meanwhile, has asked for "a couple weeks more" to come to its own decision, according to the chairman. 

Estonia’s defense ministry said that its "military assessment has not changed" on the treaty. "At the same time, this is a wider political question, on which a decision has not been made in Estonia," according to a defense ministry official.  

Latvia, meanwhile, has to consider the 1,700 Canadian troops stationed within its borders as part of the withdrawal. 

Finland began a report to assess the need and deterrent effect of anti-personnel land mines within its borders, which will be finalized in the spring and the Ministry of Defense will then make a recommendation to parliament on whether to leave, according to Finnish press counselor Riikka Hietajärvi.

Two other European officials said behind the scenes Finnish, Estonian and Latvian officials expressed an openness to the idea of leaving the treaty. 

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For Lithuania to withdraw, the president needs to notify his defense council and then propose the withdrawal to parliament, where it needs a 60% vote.

Jeglinskas said he expects such a vote would pass without widespread dissent. "There might be some lone voices expressing their concern, but it should pass without issue." 

As of now, 164 nations are party to the agreement. No EU country has ever left the Ottawa Treaty.

The United Nations holds that the "number of casualties has sharply declined" since the agreement and 40 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed. 

Tusk acknowledged that this is "not a pleasant" decision but insisted that Poland must consider its current security needs. "Anything that can strengthen Poland’s defense will be implemented. We will use all available options," he stated.

The U.S. is not party to the treaty and in November the Biden administration began supplying Ukraine with anti-personnel mines. 

Critics of landmines argue that they are indiscriminate and can instantly kill and maim civilians who step into the wrong area. 

"No matter what decision we make – and I think this decision is very, very clearly going towards withdrawal – it’s still a difficult decision," said Jeglinskas. "Just the situation … it just does not allow us the privilege to remain part of this coalition on anti-personnel mines, and it’s with a heavy heart, I would say that, that's unfortunate, but that's just the military reality." 

The Russian military has the supreme edge against any of its border states on their own, necessitating lethal deterrence like land mines, according to Hudson defense analyst Can Kasapoğlu.

"The Russian military has the upper hand over the Polish armed forces, and it has a gigantic, gigantic upper hand over the entire Baltic nations. So for these nations to keep being a part of the Ottawa treaty and and ditching the landmines, for the sake of some international image, it doesn't make sense." 

The anti-personnel mines would need to be combined with anti-tank mines and artillery and drones stationed along the border to effectively deter an enemy. "It forms a kill box that the Russians can't evade." 

He said that such mines have advanced to self-destruct after a set period of time so that the fallout does not last for generations like in wars past. 

The new movement comes as Europe has moved at a rapid-fire pace to account to take charge of its own defense since President Donald Trump took office and brought along his critiques of Europe and the NATO alliance. 

The European Union last week proposed an $841 billion plan to "rearm Europe," and defense leaders met in Paris this week to discuss how to offer Ukraine security guarantees after the war. 

Ukraine has agreed to the U.S.-brokered terms of a 30-day ceasefire, but Russia has said it is still reviewing the details. Overnight, Russia struck the Black Sea port of Odesa with missiles, killing four and damaging a grain vessel. 

President Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense project will require a whole-of-government effort on par with the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, according to a Space Force general. 

"This is on the order of magnitude of Manhattan Project, and it’s going to take concerted effort from the very top of our government. It's going to take a national will to bring all this together," Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, told a gathering of defense industry experts on Wednesday. 

The ‘Golden Dome’ idea stemmed from Israel's Iron Dome. With the help of the U.S., it employs an invisible boundary that triggers interceptors when short-range missiles are fired toward its territory. 

But the Golden Dome has proved a more daunting project for guarding the U.S., which is close to 500 times the size of Israel and would likely be threatened more by long-range than short-range missiles. 

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Guetlein said the project will require unprecedented cooperation across the defense and intelligence agencies. 

"We are in full planning mode," the official said at the National Security Innovation Base Summit hosted by the Ronald Reagan Institute. "We owe an answer back to the White House by the end of the month on what our thoughts are."

The Golden Dome would need to protect the U.S. from a range of threats – including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, advanced cruise missiles. Early detection would rely on space-based sensors that would trigger rapid-response missile interceptors. 

"It’s going to be a heavy lift across all the organizations that are going to be participating. And what we’ve got to really push back on are the organizational boundaries and the cultures that are going to try to slow us down or to prevent us from working together," Guetlein said. 

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is "really good at protection of the homeland from an ICBM," according to Guetlein, but they need the Space Force to build space capabilities, and the Air Force and Army to manage counter-drone systems. 

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The National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the U.S.’s spy satellites, also has space capabilities needed for homeland protection. 

Guetlein said the nation would have to "break down the barriers" between Title 10 and Title 50 of the United States Code, the federal laws that govern the nation’s defense and clandestine operations.

"Without a doubt, our biggest challenge is going to be organizational behavior and culture to bring all the pieces together," Guetlein said.

The Golden Dome would be a major step up from the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, which relies on missile interceptors stationed in Alaska and California designed to protect the homeland from a small number of ballistic missiles that could be fired from North Korea. 

Guetlein said Iran has provided a "real life example" in the Middle East, where U.S. forces helped thwart a barrage of missiles targeting Israel last year. 

Trump said during his address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday that he would be asking lawmakers to appropriate funds for the project. 

"My focus is on building the most powerful military of the future," Trump said. "As a first step, I'm asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art, 'Golden Dome' missile defense shield to protect our homeland – all made in the USA." 

The president claimed that Ronald Reagan had wanted to build such a system, but it wasn’t possible given the technology of the time. 

"Israel has it, other places have it, and the United States should have it, too," he said. "This is a very dangerous world. We should have it. We want to be protected. And we're going to protect our citizens like never before." 

A new high-powered microwave system that can knock swarms of drones out of the sky at once is going to "touch every aspect of warfare," according to Epirus founder, Joe Lonsdale. 

"It’s kind of like a Star Trek shield," Lonsdale, founder of Epirus and a co-founder of fast-rising defense technology company Palantir, explained of its Leonidas counter-drone system. "It’s able to turn them off from very far away." 

"This is going to touch every aspect of warfare over the next decade," he told Fox News Digital. "We can knock down some pretty advanced drones." 

Defense tech startup Epirus secured another $250 million in a Series D funding round, which was announced Wednesday, bringing its total venture funding to over $550 million. 

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Epirus’ Leonidas system is a ground-based, directed energy weapon that fires off an electromagnetic pulse to disable swarms of drones, or it can neutralize precision targets. The company aims to help the military shift away from a "1 to 1 mindset to a ‘1 to many’ way of thinking for short-range defense," according to CEO Andy Lowery. 

Drone swarms have been a key frontline tactic in the Russia-Ukraine war because most defense systems are designed to take out one unmanned vehicle at a time. Additionally, in the Middle East, the U.S. has been using multimillion-dollar missiles to shoot down Houthi drones that are built for around $2,000 or less. 

"Swarms of drones is where war is going, and currently you have swarms of drones that are very expensive and very difficult to stop," said Lonsdale. "It's not just drones, they're all sorts of different types of uses for this," he added, predicting that one day the technology might be deployed to freeze up planes in the sky and protect satellites. The technology has already been successful in Defense Department tests on boat motors and other electronics, according to the company.  

"This is just it's just going to touch every aspect of warfare in the next decade." 

Rep. Rob Wittman, vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, warned that the U.S. needs to "run to play catchup" with its adversaries in the counter-UAS space. 

"We are not doing what we need to do," he told Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the National Security Innovation Base Summit in Washington, D.C. "We have failed miserably at counter-UAS. We do okay in CENTCOM [Central Command], but … in places like Langley Air Force Base, we are not where we need to be." 

Dozens of drones hovered over Langley for over two weeks in 2023, and lawmakers say they still have not been provided with an explanation. 

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Epirus won a $66 million contract in 2023 to supply its Leonidas to the U.S. Army, and the technology is believed to be  in the testing phase by Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, according to comments that Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George made to Congress last year. 

The rapid rise of unmanned aerial vehicles in war has prompted a defensive race to develop systems to counter them, like high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves. 

"We have a lot of people who are, you know, coming into the [Defense Department]wanting to embrace new technologies," said Lonsdale. "They’re really excited about this." 

The defense entrepreneur suggested there is "tons of waste" in the Pentagon that could be repurposed for new technologies.

"There’s a ton of cronyism. We're seeing tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars you could pull out, depending [on] how aggressive you want to be. And these should be put into cutting-edge technologies that actually deter enemies."

Epirus was valued at $1.35 billion when it raised $200 million in Series C funding, but the company did not disclose its valuation for this round. 

The California-based company will use the new cash influx to expand into international and commercial markets and expand manufacturing in the U.S. 

The company is also planning to open a new simulation center in Oklahoma to train soldiers in counter-drone warfare. 

Unmanned sea drones are on the prowl to interdict drug smugglers in America's waters as part of a new Navy operation.  

The operation will test the Navy’s use of maritime drones, in its early stages, and apply lessons learned to missions all across the globe. 

Dubbed Operation Southern Spear, the Navy’s 4th Fleet will use "a heterogeneous mix of Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) to support the detection and monitoring of illicit trafficking while learning lessons for other theaters," a news release said on Monday. 

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As President Donald Trump shuts down the U.S. southern and northern borders, smugglers are expected to look for alternative routes to carry out their illegal trafficking business. Human and drug trafficking cartels have increasingly turned to the nation’s maritime borders to smuggle weapons, narcotics and people into the country.  

According to recent data, more illicit drugs were seized at sea by Customs and Border Patrol’s Air and Marine Operation (AMO) in 2023 – 304,000 pounds – than by land – 241,000 pounds. 

Southern Spear will operate as part of Joint Task Force South – a Defense Department task force made up of Navy, Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection, as well as 20 partner countries focused on counter-narcotics and maritime security in the Carribean, Central and South America. 

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Included in the operation are 20 high-endurance Saildrone Voyager unmanned surface vehicles, equipped with a newly upgraded sensor suite, according to the press release. The vehicles are 10 meters long and can surveil thousands of square miles of water per day to look for smugglers. 

The drones have already sailed the Persian Gulf under the Navy’s Hybrid Fleet Campaign and Project 33 and as part of Operation Windward Stack, operated by the 4th Fleet throughout 2024. They offer a 95% detection rate and are contractor owned and operated. This means that SailDrone operates the surveillance platform while the Defense Department purchases the data. 

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"As land borders become more secure, traffickers will exploit maritime pathways more than ever. We're honored to serve, providing autonomous around-the-clock maritime surveillance to help stop smugglers before they reach our shores," said Tom Alexander, Saildrone VP of government relations. 

Already, nearly 90% of cocaine is trafficked at sea, according to the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS). Cartels look to exploit gaps in surveillance coverage that the new mission will look to plug with maritime drones.  

Utilizing U.S. military might to disrupt the flow of human and drug trafficking at the southern border has been a top priority for Trump. 

Upon taking office, the president immediately sent an additional 1,500 troops and additional assets to the border. Over the weekend, the U.S. secured an agreement with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who will send 10,000 Mexican troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in exchange for a one-month delay in Trump’s threat of 25% tariffs on goods flowing in from Mexico. 

President Donald Trump said that the construction of an Iron Dome-like shield for the U.S. is a top priority for him on Monday, calling for "immediate" work to be done on the project before signing an executive order.

Trump made the remarks at a Republican dinner in Florida on Monday, while commending his recently-confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. After landing at Joint Base Andrews that night, he confirmed that he signed an executive order regarding the Iron Dome on the plane.

"Pete Hegseth, who's going to be great, by the way… I think he's going to be fantastic," Trump said at the event. "I know him very well. I think he's going to be fantastic."

"He's what we need, to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be able to protect Americans."

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The president added that Americans "protect other countries, but we don't protect ourselves." Trump also referenced that President Ronald Reagan was interested in the system during the Cold War, but Americans "didn't have the technology."

"And now we have phenomenal technology. You see that with Israel," Trump continued. "So I think the United States is entitled to that. And everything will be made right here in the USA 100%."

"We're going next to ensure that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world."

On Monday, the State Department said that a future Iron Dome is one of Hegseth's many priorities.

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"Other areas the secretary will study include reinstating troops that were pushed out because of COVID-19 vaccination mandates and developing an Iron Dome anti-missile system for the United States," the statement read.

This wasn't Trump's first mention of an Iron Dome for the U.S. At the Commander-In-Chief inaugural ball on Jan. 20., Trump said that the project was on his radar.

"We're also doing the Iron Dome all made in America," Trump said. "We're going to have a nice Iron Dome."

The Republican leader also referenced the plan on the campaign trail in 2024.

"By next term we will build a great Iron Dome over our country," Trump said during a West Palm Beach event on June 14. "We deserve a dome…it's a missile defense shield, and it'll all be made in America."

President Biden announced the names of the newest aircraft carriers that will join the U.S. Navy: USS William J. Clinton and USS George W. Bush.

The carriers, named after former President Bill Clinton and former President George W. Bush, will begin construction in the "years ahead" as part of the latest class of aircraft carriers, according to the White House.

"When I personally delivered the news to Bill and George, they were deeply humbled," Biden said in a statement Monday. "Each knows firsthand the weight of the responsibilities that come with being Commander-in-Chief.  And both know well our duty to support the families and loved ones who wait and worry for the safe return of their servicemember."

The Navy currently has 11 operational aircraft carriers, some of which are nearly 50 years old and will be retired in upcoming years. Of these carriers, eight bear the names of former presidents: USS George Washington, USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Harry S. Truman, USS Ronald Reagan, USS George W. Bush, and USS Gerald R. Ford.

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the future carriers Clinton and Bush will "serve as lasting tributes to each leader’s legacy in service of the United States."

"Aircraft carriers are the centerpiece of America’s naval forces, and they ensure that the United States can project power and deliver combat capability anytime, anywhere in defense of our democracy," Austin said in a statement Monday.

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"Like their namesakes, these two future carriers, and the crews who sail them, will work to safeguard our national security, remind us of our history, and inspire others to serve our great republic," Austin said.

The future carriers Clinton and Bush are part of the Ford-class carriers to join the fleet.

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These newest carriers are outfitted with more than 20 new technologies in comparison to the previous, Nimitz-class carriers that the Navy started using in 1975. Technology upgrades include a new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, known as EMALS, that launches aircraft from the ship electronically, rather than using steam-powered equipment.

President-elect Donald Trump previously called for a 12-carrier Navy during his first term as president in 2017 and has signaled interest recently in possibly expanding the sea service’s force in his second term as well.

"We’re going to be announcing some things that are going to be very good having to do with the Navy," Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt this month. "We need ships. We have to get ships. And you know, everybody said, ‘Oh, we’ll build them.’ We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready."

Drone experts have little idea what the dozens of drone sightings over New Jersey could be, but have ruled out the possibility that they might be the work of a classified government program. 

They say the lack of a clear image or any residual hardware makes it difficult to make any guesses. 

"Until something is found, it’s really difficult to say," said Brett Velicovich, Fox News contributor and CEO of Expert Drones. "We haven’t seen any clear images."

The drone sightings were first reported nearly a month ago – on Nov. 18 – and have been spotted every night from about dusk until around 11 p.m.

The drones are "six feet in diameter," fly in a coordinated way with their lights off and "appear to avoid detection by traditional methods," according to New Jersey state Rep. Dawn Fantasia, who relayed a briefing given by law enforcement. Reports have ranged from four to 180 sightings per night, throughout New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

With little information on their origin from law enforcement, public speculation has run wild. 

Velicovich poured cold water on the idea that the drones could be part of a classified government test – one theory circulated to explain the lack of information shared with the public. 

"I find it hard to believe," said Velicovich. "Maybe it started that way, and now people think everything they see is a drone . . . . I’ve seen a lot of images that look like planes. 

But he said that when he worked on classified drone projects, the protocol was always to inform local police. 

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"There's a reason why we test stuff in Area 51 or all these remote locations, so that you don't have to cause public hysteria. And then when we would test stuff in cities, we would always, whenever we do secret exercises in cities, we would always inform the local police." 

Stacie Pettyjohn, drone expert with the Center for New American Security, agreed. "They would be doing it on a military base or a testing facility. And you know, they're not overflying sort of sensitive industrial locations, like they have been in New Jersey." 

Both experts agreed that what could have started off as drones may now have developed into a public panic, where everything in the air is assumed to be a drone. They said it could also be photographic drones looking to pick up images of the drone phenomenon, adding to the panic. 

"People are gonna start to see what they expect to see," said Pettyjohn. 

"No one has shown me a clear photograph of a drone," said Velicovich. 

"Either it's just overblown right now, and everything in the air is a drone, or, you've got a lot of planes in the area that are probably trying to pick up, take photographs and detect stuff and see what's really going on."

The FBI, in a statement, suggested that many of the drone sightings had turned out to be planes.

"We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security  or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus," a joint FBI and Department of Homeland Security statement said Thursday. 

"We are supporting local law enforcement in New Jersey with numerous detection methods but have not corroborated any of the reported visual sightings with electronic detection. To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully. There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace."

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The FBI revealed this week its budget for counter-drone technology is a mere $500,000 per year. 

Earlier this week, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., said that the drones may be linked to an Iranian "mothership," a theory that prompted the Pentagon to say that it had seen no evidence the drones could have come from a U.S. adversary. 

Velicovich said he "isn’t sold" that the drones are foreign in origin, but U.S. adversaries would have the capability to be behind the occurrences. 

"If we go with the theory that it's foreign, China, Russia, Iran, they all have systems that can travel over large amounts of terrain, over oceans and and carry other drones with it. So that's not the difficult thing that's happening every single day right now in countries like Ukraine." 

Pettyjohn assumed that the drones would need to be operated by someone within the U.S. 

"I would assume that it's someone who's here locally, which may be a spy, which may be a nefarious actor, but that they're they're individuals on the ground, and it's just easier to blend in and difficult to identify who they are and where they are with these rather innocuous systems," she said. 

"They can be in the air probably on the order of, like, five hours or so, or less, and a lot of them, it's way less than that. And that just means that they have to be someone probably physically here, [who] is flying them." 

China expert Gordon Chang mused that the drones could be an adversary merely looking to offer a form of distraction. 

If it were intended as an attack, "you wouldn't put on this big display over the course of days . . . with these very large objects and flashing lights. You're not going to advertise a drone attack on the U.S.," Chang said. 

"I think that they're trying to attract our attention, distract us from something that's happening elsewhere," he said. "So, I worry about what is going on that we're not paying attention to because of the drones."