WASHINGTON – As public concern has escalated about drones flying in the skies over New Jersey and other East Coast states, the White House wants Congress to pass legislation that would give federal, state and local governments more authority to control drones suits flying in the US. airspace.
“We need better authorities to deal with that growing ecosystem of drones in American airspace,” John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said in an interview on NBC’s TODAY show on Tuesday.
Gaps exist among federal, state and local government agencies in addressing drones, Kirby said.
“Congress has to get us through this,” he said.
Kirby sought to reassure the public that the Biden administration is dealing with the increase in reported drones, saying the federal government has conducted an analysis of the drones in recent days.
“Our assessment leads us to conclude that these are lawful and lawful aviation activities, manned and unmanned drones and civil or commercial aircraft,” he said. “We know there is no threat to national security. We know there is no threat to public safety at this time.”
Kirby also said White House officials are as “open and transparent with the American people as we can be.”
In a separate interview Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Kirby said President Joe Biden is calling for a bipartisan commission to investigate the issue.
‘We have proposed legislation. “It hasn’t gone anywhere on Capitol Hill, but we do need additional authorities,” he said.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee will receive a closed-door briefing on the drone sightings on Tuesday, according to two sources familiar with the plan. Officials from the FBI, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence will provide the briefing at 2:00 PM ET.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to use special drone technology, specifically Robin Radar Systems’ “360-degree technology,” to tackle drones in the Northeast.
Schumer said he will also push for a measure to broaden the rights of state and local law enforcement agencies to use equipment to detect unmanned aerial devices. The bill was proposed last year by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., with a bipartisan companion bill introduced in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is one of the sponsors and proposed the measure before he was elected to his leadership post. Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., are calling on Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-Y, to include the legislation in the government funding bill that Congress is expected to pass before the holidays.
The Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration and FBI said in a joint statement Monday that there did not appear to be anything nefarious about the drones.
“After carefully examining technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we have concluded that sightings to date include a combination of legal commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and wrongly stars. reported as drones,” the federal agencies said. “We have not observed anything abnormal and do not assess the activities to date as a risk to national security or public safety over civil airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast.”
The statement said the FBI has received more than 5,000 tips in recent weeks and about 100 of them required further investigation.
The FAA requires drones to be registered with the agency and has more than 1 million in its system, but experts have said it’s not clear that everyone meets the requirement.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
