U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ), who posted to his X (formerly known as Twitter) account Friday a video he took of swarms of mysterious drones that have been spotted nightly during the past few weeks, said he was increasingly concerned about the unexplained phenomenon.
Kim, who joined local police in rural Clinton Township, New Jersey, 36 miles north of Trenton, said he spotted small clusters of two to four drones a number of times throughout the evening.
“We often saw about 5-7 lights at a time that were low and not associated with aircraft we could see on the tracker app,” Kim said, noting that the group used a flight tracker app to distinguish the drones from airplanes. “Some hovered while others moved across the horizon.”
Last night I went out with local police to spot drone flying over New Jersey, here’s what I saw. We drove to Round Valley Reservoir and the officer pointed to lights moving low over the tree line. Sometimes they were solid white light, others flashed of red and green.THREAD pic.twitter.com/ly7kUUDWDn
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) December 13, 2024
Kim said police have tried to get close to the drones using helicopters, but when approached, the drones would turn off their lights and go dark, echoing a statement by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy on Monday.
“This has gone on for weeks,” Kim wrote. “It’s hard to understand how with the technology we have we aren’t able to track these devices to determine origin, and this makes me much more concerned about our capabilities more broadly when it comes to drone detection and countermeasures.”
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses are pushing back against government claims that the drones pose no threat to communities or infrastructure. The growing story has spread to New York, Maryland, and Connecticut, where officials are demanding answers, while new reports of “car-sized” UFOs were registered in California and parts of Europe.
“Why is no one talking about the incident that caused an evac helicopter to not be able to pick up a patient due to these drones being in the way of where the helicopter had to go, and made the helicopter turn around and not be able to get the patient?” New Jersey resident Roseann Stanley said on X. “Yet they are saying these drones have not caused any problems. That is a huge problem.”
On November 26, a medical helicopter heading to an accident in Branchburg Township in Somerset County was unable to pick up an injured patient due to drones hovering near the landing zone, according to a report by New Jersey media outlet NJ.com.
Hundreds of drones were first spotted in mid-November flying over New Jersey; eyewitnesses have reported seeing convoys of drones almost every night since then and have described the crafts, in some cases, as being as big as the hood of a car, and performing in more sophisticated ways than off-the-shelf, consumer-oriented drones.
Though the mysterious objects have been reported in the vicinity of a number of New Jersey-based military installations, with speculation about their provenance ranging from aliens from outer space to Iranian spycraft, Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters on Wednesday that no government facilities have been threatened by the drones.
White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said during a press conference on Thursday that “while there is no known malicious activity occurring, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight a gap in authorities.”
Kirby argued for new legislation that will better “identify and mitigate any potential threats to airports or other critical infrastructure, and so that state and local authorities are provided all the tools that they need to respond to such threats as well.”
Needless to say, many people believe the whole thing is much ado about nothing, and probably a stunt of some kind.
“I think these are just normal drones,” Joseph Steinberg, a local resident, told Decrypt. “My daughter saw a large one, I went outside with her and we looked, but it was hard to judge the size.”
“The first problem in situations like this is that beyond the initial drone sightings, you quickly get an overwhelming number of reports of things that aren’t drones,” Grant James, the CEO of San Diego-based drone detection software company SkySafe, told Decrypt. “When I look at these videos, the vast majority—99 out of 100—aren’t drones. They’re aircraft, helicopters, satellites.”
As Grant explained, the flood of recent drone reports in New Jersey reveals two issues. First, people rarely observe the night sky, and mistake normal air traffic—flashing lights, moving objects—for something unusual. Second, judging the size and distance in the sky is difficult.
While Grant did not attribute these ongoing sightings to a growing hysteria, he did caution that copycats are likely at work, trying to capitalize on the public’s fear and interest.
“When a story like this gets attention, it draws more people in—some flying drones to look for others, and some just flying them to mess with people,” he said. “People are now seeing these drones in San Diego and the videos that were shown, it’s just standard air traffic going into the San Diego Airport.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
