Sightings of unidentified flying craft continue to draw attention, alarm, and serious questions. Many of those questions are coming from elected officials in New Jersey who want the federal government to take more action. Yesterday afternoon, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement agencies “have not been able to corroborate any of the reported visual sightings.” He went on to say that officials have concluded “These are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully,” a statement that drew pushback from some of the reporters present.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and FAA head Michael Whitaker were sent a letter yesterday from high-powered members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, and Kirsten Gillibrand demanding a briefing on the “unmanned aircraft systems” or UAS, the latest acronym put forward to describe the objects. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said yesterday that the drones should be “shot down, if necessary.”
State and local officials don’t agree with Kirby’s claims…
New Jersey Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia described the objects as being up to six feet in diameter and sometimes traveling with their lights off.
Multiple posts on X show various videos of what the observers are calling drones or objects, including one who linked to a live beach camera at Seaside Beach, New Jersey. The poster claimed they were tracking flight data and that many of the objects appearing on the camera aren’t planes.
After John Kirby claimed that the majority of the sightings were of regular aircraft, New Jersey state Senator Brian Bergen said that Kirby “is a fool.“ Bergen is an ex-Apache helicopter pilot, and says what’s happening in the state is not normal air traffic.