A rash of unexplained drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey has left locals rattled and sent US officials scrambling for answers.
Breathless local news reports have amplified the anxious sky-gazing and wild speculation — interspersing blurry, dark clips from social media with irate locals calling for action.
For weeks now, the distinctive blinking lights and whirling rotors of large uncrewed aerial vehicles have been spotted across the state west of New York.
Photo: AP
However, military brass, elected representatives and investigators have been unable to explain the recurring UFO phenomenon.
Sam Lugo, 23, who works in the Club Studio gym in New Jersey’s Bergen county, one of the corners of the state that has seen several drone sightings, called the reports “crazy.”
“It’s pretty concerning they were sighted ... without explanation. It can be alarming,” he said.
Officials, including the governor, have called on people not to be alarmed, but have not yet offered an explanation for the aerial activity.
“I’ve seen them every night since Thanksgiving, they’re smaller than my Jeep,” Gus Seretis wrote on X.
Thanksgiving Day was on Nov. 28.
“They hover just about tree height or a little higher,” Seretis added, describing them as like aircraft too small for a pilot and vowing to “shoot at one if it comes low enough.”
New Jersey Representative Chris Smith on Tuesday wrote to the Pentagon demanding answers.
“There have been numerous instances of unmanned aerial systems flying over New Jersey, including in close proximity to sensitive sites and critical infrastructure, to include military installations located in my district,” he wrote to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Smith said he had been told that more than a dozen drones pursued a US Coast Guard lifeboat over the weekend.
The lawmaker then spent “hours” monitoring the night sky with the sheriff of Ocean County, the location of a number of sightings, Smith’s office said.
The Pentagon said that the objects are not “US military drones.”
“Our initial assessment is that this is not the work of a foreign adversary or a foreign entity,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said.
Singh also rejected claims by US Representative Jeff van Drew on Fox News that Iran was behind the spate of sightings.
“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States, and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States,” she said.
New Jersey native Joseph Boutros, 21, said he had seen the reports of drone activity on social media, “but I’ve not seen them myself.”
“It’s not something that worries me as long as they aren’t carrying weapons,” the suited local said as he collected takeout from a Bergen county strip mall as night fell.
In the cloudy skies above, the only aerial vehicles with flashing lights were passenger jets on approach to New Jersey’s Newark airport.
The FBI told reporter it was aware of the sightings “in multiple locations over the past several weeks” and said it was working with other agencies on the issue.
However, the agency would not confirm reports of a crisis meeting between government departments over the mounting concern.
Witnesses said that the unexplained aerial objects are larger than those commonly used by drone enthusiasts.
“I don’t want to get abducted or anything like that,” Lugo said with a smile.
In other news, a Chinese citizen has been charged with flying a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California where he is alleged to have recorded images of the military facility, the US Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
Zhou Yinpiao (周應標), 39, was arrested as he readied to board a flight to China from San Francisco, authorities said.
“This defendant allegedly flew a drone over a military base and took photos of the base’s layout, which is against the law,” US Attorney Martin Estrada said. “The security of our nation is of paramount importance and my office will continue to promote the safety of our nation’s military personnel and facilities.”
Charging documents said that detection systems at Vandenberg tracked a drone as it flew about a 1.6km above the facility late last month.
Security personnel at the base, which is the launch site for space missions — including SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets — as well as missile tests, traced the drone to a nearby public park where they allegedly found Zhou with the device concealed in his jacket.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
RSS