Droning On In New Jersey

In an era of weird stories, one of the weirdest is the story of the mysterious drone swarms of New Jersey. For the past several weeks, baffling drones have been sighted around sensitive locations in New Jersey and there is no public explanation of who is flying them or why.

Starting on November 18, mysterious drones have been spotted at night over a multitude of central New Jersey counties. Although concentrated over New Jersey, the sightings range as far west as Philadelphia and as far east as Staten Island. The drones have been reported lurking near military bases, emergency communications centers, and police stations as well as other infrastructure that includes highways, railroads, and powerlines. They have also been reported near residential neighborhoods and Donald Trump’s golf resort in Bedminster.

The worrisome drones are not the small quad-copters that are often associated with private drone flights. These mysterious vehicles are often reported to be the size of cars and seem to operate in coordinated swarms. While recreational drones are cheap and plentiful, the technology to fly large drones in coordinated fleets is not.

The drones often fly with their lights off and appear to be able to avoid detection by normal methods. The delightfully named Dawn Fantasia, a Republican state assemblywoman, posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter that “helicopters and radio frequencies,” presumably referring to attempted interceptions and radar, had been unable to identify the drones. In one reported incident, a dozen drones allegedly followed a Coast Guard motorized lifeboat.

Although the airspace around New York and New Jersey is some of the busiest airspace in the world, large parts of New Jersey airspace don’t require contact with air traffic control. Away from airports, airspace below 400 feet above the ground (AGL) is often uncontrolled (Class G airspace). Even above that altitude, much of the state is covered by Class E, i.e. general controlled, airspace that permits visual flights without contacting ATC.

Even so, drones and their pilots still have to abide by Federal Aviation Regulations. These rules include operating with lights at night and using a transponder to identify location and altitude on radar. Drones larger than 0.55 pounds (250 grams) must have a remote ID, and drone flights outside of uncontrolled airspace and designated zones must comply with LAANC, the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability, a sort of flight planning and coordination tool. The mystery drones don’t seem to be following these rules.

It is not necessarily illegal to overly military bases. In my day job, I often fly over military bases, but I do so on a clearance and not at low altitude. I also remain outside of Restricted Areas that are active or “hot” in aviation parlance. Rules are often different for drone flying, however, and the Department of Defense has banned drone flying on all its installations. In the case of many drones, the software won’t allow the aircraft to fly within areas where drone flight is prohibited.

So far, if anyone knows who or what is behind the drone infestation, they aren’t talking. In my view, there are a limited number of suspects in the case.

For many, the prime suspect is the federal government. Pramod Abichandani, an associate professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology’s School of Applied Engineering and an expert on drone swarms, told the Asbury Park Press, “If I were to list all the options of who this could be, the very first obvious thing is it has something to do with the military, the US military.”

But a motive is lacking for the US government to terrorize the mid-Atlantic with mysterious drone fleets. The government would have no reason to snoop on its own bases and other American infrastructure sites. If the mission was to surveil civilians in the area, there are much more unobtrusive ways to do so. The New Jersey suburbs also seem like a poor choice for testing new drones when areas like Edwards and Nellis AFBs and the Tonopah Test Range are far from prying eyes.

It also does not follow that the government would mount an operation that makes it look incompetent and incapable of defending the country. Governments typically try to project calm and competence rather than stirring up fear unless there is a specific reason to stoke anxiety such as trying to pass legislation relating to illegal immigration or climate change. There seems to be no such agenda here.

While various branches of the government and military do operate a variety of drones, the commander of the Picatinny Arsenal, the base where the drones were first sighted, has denied that the drones are related to his base, and the FBI, Pentagon, and Department of Homeland Security appear to have no answers. However, the dismissive nature of government spokesmen who say that there is no credible threat at the same time they admit they have no answers leaves a lot of questions in itself.

If the drones don’t belong to our government, it’s possible that they belong to a different one. It makes sense that a hostile government might be snooping around military bases and other sensitive areas, and just a few days ago, a Chinese citizen was arrested for flying a drone over Vandenberg AFB in California.

A New Jersey congressman, Jeff Van Drew (R) has claimed on Fox News that the New Jersey drones were launched from an Iranian “mothership… off the east coast of the United States.” Government spokesmen have said there is “no evidence” for this claim but admit that they don’t have an answer.

The mystery is deepened by the fact that no one seems to know where the drones are coming from. The sheriff of Ocean County, New Jersey reported that no one has seen the drones take off or land. Drones the size of cars should be fairly difficult to conceal and would require a decent amount of space to take off and land. In our society filled with mobile phones, Ring doorbells, and a plethora of other cameras, it is strange that no details of the launch and recovery of the drones have been reported.

The absence of the drones from radar is not as strange. Air traffic control radars rely primarily on transponders to track aircraft and relay data. While the Northeast Corridor is well covered by ATC radar, air defense radars that are designed to pick up “skin paints” are probably fewer and farther between. They are also more likely to be pointing out from the coast rather than inward towards the Jersey marshes. The Gothamist reported this week that the federal government is deploying a specialized radar system to New Jersey to watch for the drones.

I think that there may be more than one answer to the mystery. While it is possible that a secretive government agency is operating the drones without telling the other federal hands what it is doing, that still would not give an explanation for why.

I think it is far more likely that at least some of the drones are being operated by a foreign power. My three prime suspects are Russia, Iran, and China.

But there are still questions about the motive. As with federal surveillance, espionage with drones is somewhat counterproductive because it is too obvious. You never know the best spies were ever there, and that is definitely not the case with these drones. It would be far easier to use satellites or ground-based observers to get much of the information that can be obtained from drones, especially flying at night.

An alternative explanation is that the drone operators want us to know they are there. They want to sow chaos and fear. They want to warn us that they are capable of launching large-scale drone attacks on our most vulnerable areas. If that’s the case, it probably isn’t Iran, which would probably have launched the attack already, but is more likely Russia or China.

I think that some of the drone sightings are copycats as well. Civilian drone operators may not know or care about the rules and some may want to join in the fun of causing hysteria.

And some of the reports are probably just that: hysteria. There have been numerous cases of mass psychoses throughout history, and at least some of the drone sightings are likely to be imaginary or misidentifications. There are enough photos and videos to prove that something is there, but quite a few of the “drone” videos that I saw online were pretty obviously conventional manned airplanes and helicopters.

On Thursday, White House spokesman John Kirby said that there is currently no evidence that the drones “pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.” Kirby went on to say that the sightings are under investigation but that neither federal, state, nor local authorities have been able to “corroborate any of the reported visual sightings.”

He added that “many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully” and “there are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace.”

It may well be that authorities already know more than what they are telling about the UFO drones, but the government does need to get a handle on the situation. At least some of the drones seem to be operating unlawfully and in a careless or threatening manner. Last week, a medical helicopter had to divert to a different landing site while responding to a car crash in Branchburg because of the presence of drones.

Whether they are hostile or not, drone swarms can present a threat to aerial navigation. There are already a handful of incidents in which drones either collided with manned aircraft or caused accidents as aircraft pilots tried to avoid the drone.

Some have suggested shooting down the mystery drones, but this could endanger civilians in the area and may not yield much information about who is flying the unmanned vehicles. If the drone is not totally destroyed, its parts would likely be “sanitized” if it is being operated by a hostile power.

Some might be tempted to take air defense into their own hands, but USA Today helpfully points out that it is against federal law for private citizens to attempt to shoot down aircraft, including mystery drones. Firing guns into the air may also violate local laws and ordinances.

And remember that bullets that go up must come down. Somewhere.

If you want to help solve the mystery, the government is asking for information regarding the drones. If you have pictures, video, or other information regarding the unidentified drones, you should call the FBI hotline at 1-800-225-5324 or submit your information through the FBI tip website at https://tips.fbi.gov/home.

The truth is out there.