Apparent drones spotted in the skies over New Jersey, some as big as six feet across, look to be operating in a coordinated manner not consistent with hobbyists, according to claims being made by state and local officials. They have also evaded attempts to detect and identify them definitively using helicopters and other sensors. Major questions remain about the reported sightings, which have occurred every day since November 18, as The War Zone was first to report on. The ongoing situation has become a national cause celebre that is skirting the line between hysteria and real national security concerns, as you can read about more in our past reporting here.
The New Jersey State Police (NJSP) hosted briefings at its headquarters for mayors and state lawmakers about the drone sightings yesterday. Other state and federal officials were also present, according to attendees. The FBI is currently leading the investigation into the current situation, but is coordinating with other entities, including NJSP, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness (OHSP), and the U.S. Coast Guard. It is also known that the U.S. military, through U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), has also been engaged on some level, but has not yet been asked to directly assist in responding to the sightings.
First Sightings: Reported on 11/18, with sightings occurring every night since then, from dusk until 11 PM (6–7 hours),” New Jersey Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia wrote in a lengthy post on X about what was briefed. “Frequency: Reports range from 4 to 180 sightings per night.”
It is important to note here that reported sightings do not necessarily mean something mysterious was actually spotted. As The War Zone has previously highlighted, much, if not all of the imagery purporting to show suspected drones flying over New Jersey, such as the picture in the social media post below, is actually of airliners and other normal aircraft that crisscross the state on a daily basis.
However, state and local authorities have spotted what they have assessed to be “large drones (up to 6 ft in diameter),” according to Assemblywoman Fantasia. They appear to “operate in a coordinated manner” and are “not identified as hobbyist drones,” she also said in her post on X.
Federal and state authorities have also categorically denied that the sightings over New Jersey have been of craft operated by government entities at any level, Michael Melham, Mayor of Belleville Township, said in a video he posted on Facebook about the “mayors-only” briefing he had attended. Whether or not they might be carrying any particular payload is currently unknown, he added.
“They operate in a coordinated manner. The lights are usually on and they’re blinking … but they do turn off at times, making it very difficult to detect. They appear to actually avoid detection by traditional methods,” according to Melham. “So when our helicopter, our state police helicopter, has gotten close, lights go off, and they go away. Makes it very, very difficult. We do not know and make and model. We don’t know anything else about them.”
“NJSP deployed helicopters … but could not detect drones, even with infrared cameras,” Assemblywoman Fantasia also wrote on X. “Suspended helicopter flights to investigate drones over safety concerns.”
“We have by far the most robust equipment is what the State Police told us. The detection equipment is up, but not detecting,” Mayor Melham said in his video update without elaborating on the systems in question. “We usually pick them up on local radar” he added.
The exact mix of capabilities that authorities are currently using to provide initial detection, and whether they are following up on individual reported sightings from the public, as well as how assets like helicopters have been tasked out in response, remain unclear. Considering nearly all the videos we have seen from civilians on the ground show mundane aircraft, they are not going to find anything once they arrive based on such reports.
Regardless, spotting and tracking small aerial objects using infrared video cameras on another flying platform can be challenging, especially for personnel who do not train to do so on a regular basis. This all recalls an incident The War Zone reported on in 2021 where what was described as a “highly modified drone” flying over Tucson, Arizona eluded a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter that was tracking it on their FLIR camera system.
Who may be operating the apparent drones or what their intentions remain unknown, but “one of the takeaways today was that these drones statewide are hovering and appearing to be surveilling New Jersey’s critical infrastructure,” Melham added. “It was told to us that they know where they’re at, they know where they’re hovering, how long they’re hovering,” but “we have no idea where they’re taking off from [and] … no idea where they’re landing.”
The infrastructure in question includes the U.S. Army’s Picatinny Arsenal, as well as reservoirs and nuclear power plants, according to Melham. He also mentioned the Trump National Golf Course at Bedminster. As The War Zone has previously reported, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) enacted separate Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) expressly prohibiting unauthorized drone flights around Picatinny and Bedminster in November. It is worth noting again here that Iran made a veiled threat to launch a drone strike against Trump while golfing back in 2021 and the regime in Tehran stands accused of actively plotting assassination attempts against him since then.
“Multiple low-altitude aircraft were observed in the vicinity of one of our vessels near Island Beach State Park, New Jersey,” the U.S. Coast Guard separately confirmed to The War Zone yesterday. “While no immediate threats or disruptions to operations were identified, the Coast Guard is assisting the FBI and state agencies to understand the type, origin, and intent of these aircraft and address potential risks to safety and security.”
Significant questions about what exactly is happening in the skies over New Jersey clearly remain. While Melham said the briefing he received was very transparent, he expressed concerns about the handling of the situation to date. Assemblywoman Fantasia and other attendees have made similar remarks.
“We learned that ‘no credible threat’ is kind of, almost legalese. In a legal sense, if there is a known threat that they are aware of and they know something is going to happen at a certain time with a certain object to a certain location, well that is deemed a credible threat,” Melham said. “If they don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s not necessarily a critical threat. It’s called a potential threat. So they are saying there is a threat potential, but they were saying that there are no credible threats.”
“They keep doubling down on, ‘There’s no threat,’ but they can’t find them and track them,” New Jersey State Senator Doug Steinhardt told the New York Post after one of the NJSP briefings yesterday. “When people are saying that there is no credible threat, I believe they are saying they don’t know if there is one. That’s concerning.”
This underscores the at best muddled messaging from federal and other authorities about the sightings, which has already prompted criticism and frustration. The lack of definitive information, or at times any new information, has contributed to increasingly fever-pitched statements about the situation. Exactly what quality of information and data local authorities are receiving or can generate themselves is also questionable. As The War Zone‘s editor-in-chief Tyler Rogoway wrote X yesterday:
“The mainstream media has no clue what they are talking about on this issue, none, and most outlets largely don’t seem to care. Local officials are very poor sources in terms of quality info on this issue. This is not a dig on them at all, it’s just there is not an in-house knowledge base there that understands it, just facets of it, not anywhere near a whole picture. This is a very complex issue with many technological facets. You don’t just call in a ‘drone guy’ and get briefed. We have ran into this issue many times. The U.S. gov messaging on this has been so absurdly poor and frankly dangerous… but that isn’t all that surprising. This has been the way it has been for years, but at least the denials have finally evaporated.”
At the same time, as we have repeatedly stressed, the sightings above New Jersey do highlight real and still growing concerns about drone threats to the U.S. homeland, as well as to military forces overseas. The War Zone has been leading coverage of worrisome drone incursions for years now, including breaking the news about incidents at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in December 2023, the Air Force’s Plant 42 advanced aerospace development hub in California this past fall, and U.S. facilities in the United Kingdom last month.
The U.S. military and the rest of the U.S. federal government continue to lag behind in responding to these threats, or even having coordinated ways to document and investigate sightings of what often blurs into the realm of what are now referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). There continues to be considerable evidence that many purported UAPs are actually drones or balloons, and that foreign actors may be using those craft to surveil or otherwise harass military forces and facilities, as well as critical civilian targets, in and around the United States.
“We don’t really want you to use 911. If you have a local non-emergency number for your local police department, please [use that] …,” Mayor Melham said in his video on Facebook. “If you do call 911 … just know that we will then be redirecting that to the FBI. When we redirect that to the FBI, all it really is is a QR code. We upload a report and we never hear anything again. That’s basically the way that they are logging these instances.”
Whatever is being seen in the skies above New Jersey, the situation continues to be of great interest and importance within the context of very real potential threats posed by drones that are only growing and the need for better mechanisms to address them.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com