What’s Going On With Those Drones Over New Jersey?

14.12.2024 02:34

TheAtlantic.com

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Recent mysterious sightings in our night sky cannot be written off as hallucinations, mass delusions, or hoaxes. Something is indeed happening. But what? For weeks, objects that appear to be drones have been spotted up and down the East Coast, primarily in New Jersey but also in New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Nearly every morning brings new photographic and video evidence of odd occurrences, in addition to fresh eyewitness testimony.

Here are the facts in their simplest form: Night after night, people are reportedly seeing large aerial machines moving slowly across the sky. Some of these aircraft appear to be as big as cars. Often, they fly solo; other times, they glide in pairs or in groups. They have reportedly hovered for up to six hours at a time. They also frequently fly at lower altitudes than small airplanes. Many videos appear to show a rhythmic, steady blinking—white, red, and green flashes. And then, just like that, the lights may vanish—especially if detected.

This is not the stuff of urban legend or internet conspiracy. Even government officials are demanding answers. Last night, Andy Kim, the Democratic senator-elect from New Jersey, ventured out to a reservoir with a local police officer, who had reportedly been spotting the drones nightly. Kim returned with his own video evidence, and shared multiple clips in a thread on X. “We often saw about 5-7 lights at a time that were low and not associated with aircraft we could see on the [flight] tracker app. Some hovered while others moved across the horizon,” Kim wrote. “We clearly saw several that would move horizontally and then immediately switch back in the opposite direction in maneuvers that plane can’t do.”

Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of Maryland, had a similar experience last night. “I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation’s capital),” Hogan wrote on X. He, too, shared visuals—and he articulated another knotty truth: “The public is growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with the complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the federal government.”

Earlier this week, Brian Bergen, a New Jersey state representative, walked out of a Department of Homeland Security briefing about the issue. “It was worthless,” he told a cable-news reporter. “It was the biggest amateur-hour presentation I’ve ever seen about anything. It was ridiculous. There were no answers.” Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey went so far as to send a letter to President Joe Biden about the issue: “I write with growing concern about reports of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in and around New Jersey airspace,” he said. “New Jersey residents deserve more concrete information about these UAS sightings and what is causing them.” Governor Kathy Hochul of New York said on X that her office is working with federal partners to investigate the sightings.

Yesterday, the DHS and the FBI released a joint statement specifically about the Jersey sightings: “We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public-safety threat or have a foreign nexus.” The statement went on to say that, contrary to reports, many of the reported sightings are of manned aircraft, and that there have been no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace.

These recent events are strikingly similar to other sightings earlier this year. As the independent journalist Matt Laslo has reported, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York was briefed in February on classified intelligence about unidentified craft near U.S.-military sites in Nevada, and in April, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona spoke about similar incidents at an Air Force outpost in his state. But those instances pale in comparison with the sustained presence of aerial oddities over Langley Air Force Base, in Virginia, last December—a development with profound defense implications, given the base’s proximity to the U.S. Capitol.

Notably, these crafts seem markedly different from the ones in the infamous videos from 2015. Those objects, which were spotted by Navy pilots, darted about with unbelievable speed and maneuvers that almost suggested an unknown technology or propulsion mechanism. The ones seen over the past few weeks seem more quotidian. One possibility is that all of these sightings can be traced back to drone hobbyists, though that’s far from guaranteed.

This morning, I spoke with my colleague Shane Harris, who covers national-security affairs and has written about unexplained aerial phenomena for years. He was struck by how many of these sightings have taken place in densely populated areas (the Northeast Corridor includes the highest concentrations of people in the United States) and noted that, accordingly, we are more likely to have a plethora of evidence, given that so many people have recording devices on them at all times. “That has led to an abundance of data—which is not to say it’s all good data,” Shane said. “The videos may be fuzzy, and it might not be clear exactly where they were shot.”

He told me that he interpreted the relative vagueness of the FBI and DHS comments to mean that they might actually not know what these things are. “They’re only going to say as much as they can stand behind, and they’re not going to try to wade too far into speculation, because they know where that leads,” he said. But the fact that government officials such as Kim and Hogan have explored the issue speaks to the growing fascination with this subject.

In an earlier era, if you were a “serious” person asking questions about strange happenings in the sky, you’d likely be mocked. The late Senator Harry Reid made a sustained effort to legitimize the broader topic of unidentified aerial phenomena, even after he retired. But at this point, curiosity about increased sightings is a logical reaction. Nobody is saying that the New Jersey drones are the products of aliens or our geopolitical enemies. The objects are simply unidentified. In other words: The truth is out there, and for now, we’re still waiting for it.

Related:

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Today’s News

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he has appointed his centrist ally François Bayrou as the next prime minister.
Representative Nancy Pelosi was injured and hospitalized while abroad in Luxembourg with a congressional delegation.
McKinsey & Company will pay $650 million to settle with the Justice Department over its work on opioids. A former senior partner has agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying internal company documents.

Dispatches

The Weekly Planet: Environmental internationalism is in its flop era, Zoë Schlanger writes. Every major international negotiation this year—over biodiversity, plastics, and climate—failed to meet its goals.
Atlantic Intelligence: Remember Sora? OpenAI’s most hyped bot since ChatGPT risks coming up short, Matteo Wong writes.
The Books Briefing: Solvej Balle’s series of novels brings up questions about physics, sustainability, and, yes, the meaning of life, Boris Kachka writes.

Explore all of our newsletters here.