TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) — A U.S. senator has called for mysterious drones spotted flying at night over sensitive areas in New Jersey and other parts of the Mid-Atlantic region to be “shot down, if necessary,” even as it remains unclear who owns the unmanned aircraft.
“We should be doing some very urgent intelligence analysis and take them out of the skies, especially if they’re flying over airports or military bases,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday, as concerns about the drones spread across Capitol Hill.
People in the New York region are also concerned that the drones may be sharing airspace with commercial airlines, he said, demanding more transparency from the Biden administration.
The White House said Thursday that a review of the reported sightings shows that many of them are actually manned aircraft being flown lawfully. White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said there were no reported sightings in any restricted airspace. He said the U.S. Coast Guard has not uncovered any foreign involvement from coastal vessels.
“We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus,” Kirby said, echoing statements from the Pentagon and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh has said they are not U.S. military drones.
In a joint statement issued Thursday afternoon, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said they and their federal partners, in close coordination with the New Jersey State Police, “continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate this situation and confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings.”
The agencies said they have not corroborated any of the reported sightings with electronic detection, and that reviews of available images appear to show many of the reported drones are actually manned aircraft.
“There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space,” according to the statement.
The drones appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio, according to a state lawmaker briefed Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security.
The number of sightings has increased in recent days, though officials say many of the objects seen may have been planes rather than drones. It’s also possible that a single drone has been reported more than once.
The worry stems partly from the flying objects initially being spotted near the Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.
In a post on the social media platform X, Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia described the drones as up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) in diameter and sometimes traveling with their lights switched off.
Drones are legal in New Jersey for recreational and commercial use but are subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions. Operators must be FAA certified.
Most, but not all, of the drones spotted in New Jersey appeared to be larger than those typically used by hobbyists.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said he was frustrated by the lack of transparency, saying it could help spread fear and misinformation.
“We should know what’s going on over our skies,” he said Thursday.
John Duesler, president of the Pennsylvania Drone Association, said witnesses may be confused about what they are seeing, especially in the dark, and noted it’s hard to know the size of the drones or how close they might be.
“There are certainly big drones, such as agricultural drones, but typically they are not the type you see flying around in urban or suburban spaces,” Duesler said Thursday.
Duesler said the drones — and those flying them — likely cannot evade detection.
“They will leave a radio frequency footprint, they all leave a signature," he said. "We will find out what kind of drones they were, who was flying them and where they were flying them.”
Fantasia, a Morris County Republican, was among several lawmakers who met with state police and Homeland Security officials to discuss the sightings from the New York City area across New Jersey and westward into parts of Pennsylvania, including over Philadelphia. It is unknown at this time whether the sightings are related.
Duesler said the public wants to know what's going on.
“I hope (the government agencies) will come out with more information about this to ease our fears. But this could just be the acts of rogue drone operators, it’s not an ‘invasion’ as some reports have called it,” Duesler said. “I am concerned about this it but not alarmed by it.”
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Associated Press reporters Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and reporter Darlene Superville and videojournalists Serkan Gurbuz and Nathan Ellgren in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.