While official reports of terrifying drone-like UFOs emerged over the holidays, New Jersey residents are still coming forward with bizarre encounters.
For example, two witnesses in Manalapan Township videotaped a bus-sized black triangular UFO that they saw “performing a high-g (force) maneuver over a residential area just days before Christmas.”
The sighting, which lasted at least a minute, ended with the object zooming “in the general direction of McGuire (Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst)” – fitting with an ongoing pattern of ‘drone’ UFO raids on US bases in in recent years.
Another skywatcher from New Jersey recorded what they described as a classic “flying saucer” with an “aura or haze around an object” just three miles off the coast of Atlantic City.
And even more Garden State witnesses now say they saw as many as 20 to 30 drones this Wednesday evening, which were “kind of floating and all looked like miniature airplanes,” in an account on Facebook. “Very disturbing,” said one witness.
Some experts attribute the decline in official reports to law enforcement to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) expanded ban on drone flights in the tri-state area.
But others, including former FBI counter-drone unit chief Rob D’Amico, believe most of the sightings were mistakes and “hysteria” to begin with, suggesting the decline may be nothing more than a case of the ‘mystery drone’. break fever.
“I really think 90 percent of these sightings are manned aircraft,” D’Amico said. “People have never looked up at the sky to notice how busy it is.”
Two witnesses in Manalapan, NJ, photographed a 200- to 500-foot-long black triangular UFO that they saw “performing a high-g (force) maneuver over a residential area several days before Christmas.”
“When you look at them and the landing lights and the navigation lights and how they fly,” D’Amico argued in an interview with NJ Spotlight‘they are manned aircraft.’
But local eyewitnesses are unconvinced by the dismissive claims of past and present federal investigators, with many acknowledging that the strange craft resembles traditional aircraft.
Rich Vellucci reported seeing a large drone buzzing above his in-laws in Somerset this Christmas.
He shared the details online, saying it flew lower than the average plane and was the size of a private jet.
Somerset is located about 30 miles south of Newark Airport, where tons of planes fly in and out from all parts of the world.
His account of strange behavior by somewhat conventional-looking objects echoes last Wednesday evening’s account of a driver, Richie Sougstad, who saw about 20 to 30 drones while driving home through northern New Jersey.
Sougstad described the drones as stationary, except for two.
“One was moving slowly, about 20 miles per hour, the other just shot into the atmosphere and disappeared from view,” he shared online.
But the other twenty or so, he explained“Looked like mini planes, but they were definitely bigger than my pickup.”
“I thought the strange thing was that they were floating like a helicopter, but in silence,” he said.
On December 21, 2024 around 7:10 PM, a witness in Atlantic City told NUFORC that they had documented “a strange flying saucer” that “seemed to vibrate and change shape, but always returned to its original disk shape” (still image from the witnesses video submission above)
The two Manalapan witnesses who saw a 25-50 foot “black triangle” UFO from just over 1,300 feet above them along County Route 527 described the craft as “silent” despite flying as “fast” they initially thought that it was a jet plane. above their second photo to NUFORC)
Experts have said that many of the drone sightings were actually manned aircraft, as shown in this image
Stories of more exotic-looking drones or UFOs spotted over New Jersey in recent weeks, as reported to the nonprofit National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), have also curiously adhered to the same “bus-sized” dimensions.
The two Manalapan witnesses who saw a 25-50 foot ‘black triangle’ UFO just over 400 meters above them described the craft as ‘silent’ despite it flying so ‘fast’ they initially thought it was a jet aircraft was.
“Took a screenshot of the video and you can just make out a dark triangle slanting around each of the three lights,” one of the two anonymous NUFORC witnesses reported this.
The witness said a friend claimed the sightings may have been a TR-3B: the legendary and yet unconfirmed ‘Black Manta’ anti-gravity spy plane, said to have been made by US defense contractor Northrop in the early 1990s.
The black triangle was spotted over County Route 527 on December 18, 2024 around 7:30 PM ET.
Three days later, on December 21 around 7:10 PM in Atlantic City, a witness told NUFORC that they documented’a strange flying saucer’ that ‘seemed to vibrate and change shape, but always returned to the original disk shape.’
Shortly after this flying disc took off, the witness said that during the apparent chase he was followed by a “red/pink light” the size of a basketball that flew past “at high speed, flashing randomly and leaving a reddish trail in the sky ‘.
But the witness was only able to send the video of the first UFO to NUFORC.
Newly elected New Jersey Senator Andy Kim told the audience that while the number of sightings reported to law enforcement has decreased, federal and local investigators are still working on the approximately 100 cases that merit investigation.
“The DHS (Department of Homeland Security) showed me in detail the tools they have in NJ for drone detection, including thermal sensors, drone-specific radar, radio frequency kits and visual monitors,” Senator Kim told his constituents just before Christmas.
And even government experts who have criticized the “media frenzy” and “conspiracy theories” surrounding the alleged drone sightings have said in recent weeks that some worst-case scenarios cannot yet be ruled out.
The former head of the Pentagon’s UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, published an op-ed in Scientific American On Friday, the risk was raised that “foreign or domestic bad actors” would investigate US defense.
“Operators could test the boundaries of legal activity, or in military language conduct or explore battlespace preparation,” Dr. Kirkpatrick wrote.
‘They could fly commercial drones, complete with lights, to test the reactions of both the public and the government. As long as they fly within legal airspace, within legal boundaries, they can push those boundaries and measure the response.”
The now-retired government physicist added that this response time data could one day be used for “attack planning, illegal drug delivery, or other malicious intent.”
Dr. Kirkpatrick added a few other possibilities, including the chance that the drones’ operators “could deliberately use them to cause madness, hysteria and panic.”