An FBI investigation into thousands of reported drone sightings around New Jersey late last year has uncovered no suspects or recovered any drones, a spokesperson told us. In addition, scores of temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) imposed by the FAA on drone flights over sensitive facilities throughout the region have expired.
Meanwhile, on his first day back in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump repeated his vow that his new administration would provide more details about the spate of drone sightings in the northeast that The War Zone was the first to report. They garnered massive media coverage and caused a low-level panic among some residents.
“I would like to find out what it is and tell the people,” Trump said Monday in response to a question of whether he would use his powers to tell the American public more about the drone incursions. “In fact, I would like to do that.”
Trump asked Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, to find and share more details.
“Can we find out what that was?” Trump asked her. “Susie, why don’t we find out immediately?”
The president then expressed his own curiosity about the incursions.
“I can’t imagine it’s an enemy, or people would have gotten blown up all over. Maybe they were testing things? I don’t know why they wouldn’t have said what it was.”
As we have previously reported, often confusing legal and regulatory hurdles limit how and when counter-drone systems of any kind can be used in the United States. Concerns about risks of collateral damage resulting from the use of anti-drone capabilities are another huge factor. As a result, the U.S. military isn’t currently allowed to field kinetic and directed energy capabilities, such as laser and high-power microwave weapons, surface-to-air interceptors, and gun systems, for defending domestic bases and other critical infrastructure from rapidly growing and evolving drone threats. Instead, the focus is on electronic warfare and cyber warfare, and other ‘soft-kill’ options, at least for the time being. Even these capabilities are in limited use and are only even effective against a relatively narrow set of drone types.
However, one of the scores of Executive Orders Trump signed on Monday – declaring a national emergency at the border with Mexico – called for the Secretary of Transportation and the Federal Communications Commission to “consider waiving all applicable Federal Aviation Administration and Federal Communications Commission regulations or policies, respectively, that restrict the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to counter unmanned aerial systems within 5 miles of the southern border.”
Trump’s comments about drone disclosures on Monday followed his earlier pledges to get to the bottom of a situation that the Biden administration deemed not to be a threat to national security or public safety and had no foreign nexus.
“I’m going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration,” Trump told a room of Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month. “Because I think it’s ridiculous that they are not telling you about what is going on with the drones.”
For Trump, the issue of mystery drones flying overhead is personal. His golf club in Bedminster was one of the scores of locations that reported them.
“They had a lot of them flying over Bedminster, which was interesting,” Trump explained on Monday.
The incursions weren’t Trump’s first drone concerns. In January 2021, an image highly suggestive of a drone targeting him on a golf course in a “vengeance” strike in retaliation for the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani led Twitter to ban an account for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the time. The U.S. military killed Soleimani in a drone strike in Iraq in January 2020, which had already prompted public threats from Iranian officials, including against Trump specifically.
The ongoing FBI investigation into the drone incursions has produced few publicly known results. In addition to finding no suspects, no drones have been recovered.
“It’s not unusual in a case like this not to have a suspect,” FBI spokesperson Amy Thoreson explained, adding that there has been a “significant decrease” in reported sightings.
In December, the FBI stated that there were more than 5,000 reports of mystery drones, with only about 100 deemed worthy of further investigation.
“If anyone sees anything, they can report it,” she stated.
TWZ has reviewed many video and images taken by citizens who reported seeing the drones. We have seen no proof of any widespread drone incursions throughout the state, with the vast majority of material in circulation claiming to show drones actually depicting standard aircraft or, in a very limited quantity, common hobbyist drones.
After the public outcry over the drone sightings, the FAA issued scores of Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) warning operators away from flying drones largely over power facilities in New Jersey. Not long after, these expanded to New York. Some 22 installations were initially put under TFR in the former and a whopping 68 in the latter. This number grew further not long after. It is not clear what intelligence, if any, led to this action. In addition, TFRs were imposed over Picatinny Arsenal and the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster among other locations. All but the one over Bedminster expired and were not renewed. The one over Bedminster was extended through Jan 31. The club was under regular TFRs, especially during Trump’s time in office whenever he was present there.
Drone operators who do not comply with the restrictions over Bedminster are warned that the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice “may take security action that results in the interference, disruption, seizure, damaging or destruction of unmanned aircraft deemed to pose a credible safety or security threat to protected personnel, facilities or assets.”
We reached out to the FAA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about why the TFRs were allowed to expire and whether new ones or permanent bans would be issued.
“Drones are prohibited from flying over designated national security-sensitive facilities,” an FAA spokesperson told us on Tuesday, adding the administration maintains a map of restricted security-sensitive airspace. The spokesman deferred additional questions about whether any of the expired TFRs will be renewed to DHS, which has yet to respond to several queries. We will update this story with any pertinent information provided.
The TFR over Picatinny was replaced by a “permanent National Security UAS Flight Restriction,” garrison commander, Lt. Col. Craig A. Bonham II, told us on Tuesday. There were 11 confirmed incursions over Picatinny between Nov. 13 and Dec. 6 and six unconfirmed, a facility spokesman added.
It is unclear at the moment if Trump’s directive to his chief of staff also includes finding and sharing new details about the drone incursions over Langley Air Force Base, that we were first to report. Many other military installations in the Continental United States, like Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, have also been subjected to drones of unknown origin intruding over their airspace, as had the Air Force’s Plant 42 advanced aerospace development hub in California this past fall. The War Zone was the first to report all those incidents. There were also drone incursions over U.S. bases in the United Kingdom in November that we were also the first to report. The last of those took place on Nov. 26, a spokesperson for the 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath told us.
While the number of drone sightings, which once reached a fever pitch, have greatly diminished, Trump has signaled that the issue will not fade away under his watch.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com