Table of Contents
TOFor the first time in mid-November, the mysterious lights were seen flickering in the night skies over New Jersey. Then, they spread. Reports of glowing flying objects were recorded in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Passersby in Virginia Beach said they saw a plane “unlike any other they have ever seen.” Sightings have now come from as far away as Louisiana, Florida and Arizona. People across America are looking up.
No one seems to know for sure where these enigmatic flying objects come from or who controls them. But several lawmakers and much of the general public seem determined on one answer: a swarm of drones.
“The American people deserve answers about what the hell is going on,” said Rep. Pat Ryan, D-New York. said Tuesday. “We have a serious national security problem.”
Representative Chris Smith, Republican of New Jersey, raised even more alarms on Saturday, attributing the drones’ “elusive maneuvers” to the “great sophistication of military power,” perhaps that of Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned drone flights in some parts of New Jersey for a month.
Stop being scared, experts say
Drone and national security experts tell people to calm down. They say they are taking the matter seriously and there is little to worry about. What appears to be happening in New Jersey right now is a perfect storm that has coalesced around a lack of concrete information, confusion about what drones actually look like in night skies, and a contagion effect.
“In my experience, it was very, very common for objects in the night sky, such as manned aircraft, planets and even satellites or the International Space Station, to be mistaken for a drone at night,” said retired FBI special agent Tom Adams. . on the agency’s counter-drone aircraft team, he said.
A group of federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense, issued a joint statement On Tuesday they said they had examined tips from concerned citizens and assessed the sightings to be a combination of legal drones, planes, helicopters and “stars mistakenly reported as drones.”
Nothing about the sightings should cause alarm, the agencies said.
“We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess that the activity to date presents a risk to national security or public safety over civil airspace in New Jersey or other northeastern states,” they added.
Drone panic transforms normal planes into drones
People began reporting drones in the skies over northern New Jersey just before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest tourist times of the year in the United States. People said that the aerial objects seemed to be floating in formation and returned night after night.
“We’re all completely nervous,” said local resident Julie Shavalier. NBC News in early December, saying he repeatedly saw the lights floating in the sky until dawn. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
More people in the Northeast began going outside after dark and looking at the sky, and more alleged drone sightings piled up. The FBI said it has achieved more than 5,000 reports during the last few weeks; only about 100 required further investigation. The New York City Police Department said it received 120 calls last weekend, more than in the entire month of November.
The timing of the sightings coincides with Air traffic delays at nearby Newark Airport.which can lead to longer in-air holding patterns and a bustling holiday season in a region packed with airports. What many people in New Jersey are actually seeing are those aircraft holding patterns, said Will Austin, president of Warren County Community College, which specializes in drone training programs.
“Much like that old saying: ‘To a hammer, the whole world is a nail.’ Well, in New Jersey right now… to the person on the ground looking intently at the sky, every light is a drone,” Austin said.
Retired FBI agent Adams agreed. He is now the director of public safety for DroneShield, which provides anti-drone defense systems.
“With some hysteria, I think there’s some misidentification of those types of activities as ‘Hey, here comes a swarm of drones’ or ‘There’s a swarm of drones flying over the ocean,’ when it’s just a bunch of planes stacked up.” . until landing at JFK (airport),” Adams said.
Lack of night vision exacerbates the problem
Night skies can be deceiving, many drone experts say. In the dark, there is an optical illusion that makes it difficult to tell if an object is close or far away.
“I spent 30 years flying a helicopter in the Navy,” said John Slaughter, director of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research and Operations Center at the University of Maryland. “And I’ll tell you, if you’re 100 meters away or 40 miles away, you don’t know how far away you are.”
“People see lights in the night sky; that’s the only fact we really know,” he said.
Slaughter said people will likely still see drones, but massive swarms are not being reported. About 1 million drones are registered with the FAA nationwide, and on a typical day, about 8,500 are in flight. according to the Department of Defense.
Drones and airplanes can have the same combinations of red, green and white light systems, making them difficult to distinguish at night, especially without distance indication.
after newsletter promotion
Reduce fear around drones
Last weekend, drones were seen floating near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Authorities said the base was not affected, but they closed airspace for nearly four hours. This also happened at Boston’s Logan Airport, which ended in arrest of two menand at Steward Airfield in New York.
Federal law enforcement officials have maintained they are taking drone sightings seriously, but have offered little information about what exactly is happening, frustrating local lawmakers and residents.
“Security officials always walk a fine line between offering too much information, which could highlight vulnerabilities, and too little, which can stoke undue fear,” said Brett Feddersen, chair of the U.S. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Working Group. Security Industry Association. “I believe the US government initially underestimated public concern and did not provide correct information.”
Feddersen said he has improved in recent days. The FAA temporarily suspended all drones in some parts of New Jersey and created a section on “what to know about drones.” page. Federal agencies have held press conferences and published statements describing what they are doing to track the drones. And Homeland Security said it had deployed advanced drone detection radar in New Jersey, according to the New York Timesand he still hasn’t found anything out of the ordinary.
“The vast majority of these drones will likely be recreational or hobbyist,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary. on tuesday. Some may be involved in evil activities, he continued, “but for the vast majority that is not the case.”
Slaughter, of the University of Maryland, said that in the drone world, people talk about threats with “the three Cs.”
“There are the clueless, the careless and the criminals,” Slaughter said. “The vast majority don’t even know that they are doing something wrong: that’s what they have no idea about. “Then you have a group of people who understand that they’re doing something bad and they just don’t care… And then you have this small, small group of people who are doing something criminal, dropping contraband into a prison, that kind of thing.”
How to actually detect a drone
One way to differentiate between a drone and an airplane is how they fly, Slaughter said. The drones people see are known as multicopters, which have multiple rotors that allow them to take off and land vertically and make quick, tight turns.
“Airplanes can’t do that,” Slaughter said. “They move in a very smooth, straight and constant way.”
James McDanolds, a drone expert who teaches at the Sonoran Desert Institute, said there are apps, such as Drone Scanner, that are useful for identifying drones. He advises people to check them before calling the police.
Other apps like Flightradar24 show nearby planes. McDanolds said he was driving in northeastern Pennsylvania last week and thought he saw a drone. Stopped and checked Flightradar24. No planes appeared immediately. After studying the flying object, he concluded that it was probably a drone.
“People are definitely seeing drones,” McDanolds said. “But by verifying those tools … it helps decrease a lot of calls that come to law enforcement that may have just been a manned aircraft.”
Don’t shoot at drones
As security officials tried to calm concerns, Donald Trump weighed in on the drone drama last week. “Can this really be happening without our government knowing?” he wrote in Social Truth. “I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them!!!”
Other elected officials, including Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, and Jeff Van Drew, the Republican representative from New Jersey, have also called for drones be knocked down.
Drone experts say it’s a bad idea. Not only is it illegal, but it could put the public at risk of falling debris. Austin, of Warren County Community College, said if someone was involved in nefarious acts, they probably wouldn’t turn on the drone’s lights.
“I’m going to go completely dark and probably paint my drone black,” he said. “You’ll never know I’m out there.”
Austin says the fact that airports have been closed due to drone sightings is actually a good sign. It means that the FAA detected something that was violating controlled airspace and took it seriously enough to temporarily ground the planes. He says if swarms of drones were really close to sensitive locations, the public would know.
“I feel sorry for the people at the FAA,” Austin said. “They have created the safest airspace in American history, but like everyone else, there can be no negatives.”