TRENTON, NJ – New technology is being used for more information after the spike in drone sightings in New Jersey and beyond.
Governor Phil Murphy says he has gotten a firsthand look at the federal government’s latest drone detection hardware deployed to monitor New Jersey’s skies. He said they haven’t found anything yet, and he does asked a lot of questions about it.
“This is 24/7. I can’t walk out that door and not have someone stop me and say, ‘Tell me what’s going on with the drones,'” Murphy said Monday. “There may be some suspicious activity as we stand here today. But there is little to no evidence of that at this time.”
Despite drone sightings near military bases and airportsOfficials say there is no known threat to the public.
Watchung, NJ Mayor Ronald Jubin captured blurry videos of what he described as large drones outside his home. He is disappointed with the lack of information from the state and federal government since the drone phenomenon started.
“It seems like they are out almost every night,” he said. “If we don’t have answers, it leads to conspiracy questions. If we know, we’re all conspiring. So I always say: is it a conspiracy or is it incompetence? I don’t want to be tagged with either. ”
Trump on drones
President-elect Donald Trump said Monday that he believes the FBI knows more about the drones than they are letting on.
“Our military knows it, and our president knows it, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense. I can’t imagine it being the enemy because it was the enemy, they would shoot it out,” Trump said.
Officials said many of the reported drone sightings appear to actually be manned aircraft. They say there are also copycats who take to the air for fun.
Murphy said the recent drone activity is a wake-up call that the U.S. must do better when it comes to protecting the homeland from drone incursions.
FBI warns public against use of lasers
The FBI office in Newark and the New Jersey State Police warned people that more and more pilots of manned aircraft are being hit by lasers from people on the ground who think they are pointing at drones.
“There are many different websites and mobile applications that the public can access through various government agencies and private companies that show flight paths for manned aircraft, satellites in Earth’s orbit, and stars and planets visible on any given night that can help determine whether people see UAS or something else,” the FBI said in a statement.
NYPD on drones
In New York City, Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, spoke out.
There is a lot of public concern and issues surrounding this topic. It’s about reassuring the public.
“You have a very strong increase in reporting, but not a large increase in actual drone detections, which makes sense. All people see on the news are drone sightings everywhere, so we are getting a lot of misattributed activity,” said Weiner. “We have a lot of commercially available hobby drones that are regularly flown around the city. In some context, we had about 120 911/311 calls this weekend, which is a lot more than in the entire month of November. So people are really reporting drones -activity.”
On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is asking for this the Department of Homeland Security deploys a detection system specialized in tracking drones.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has said Congress should pass a bill to give New York the authority to track, track and possibly destroy drones. However, that bill has stalled in committees.
Says the FBI it has received about 5,000 tips about the plane sightingsand of these, less than 100 clues were deemed worthy of further investigation.
