Drone experts rule out US government experiment, unsure of other New Jersey drone phenomenon theories
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.
"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."
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."
