Swarms of dozens of large, sometimes car-sized drones have traversed eight New Jersey counties on a nightly basis for nearly a month now ― and political leaders there are calling for answers.
State Sen. Jon Bramnick on Monday urged the state to implement a limited state of emergency “until the public receives an explanation” for the flights. As part of the emergency declaration, Bramnick said, all drone flights should be banned.
Last week, Gov. Phil Murphy met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, along with other senior state officials, to discuss the flights.
While he couldn’t say what’s behind the activity, Murphy did say that federal and state law enforcement is “actively monitoring the situation,” and that “there is no known threat to the public at this time.”
One of the drones grounded a medevac helicopter that needed to airlift an injured patient to a nearby hospital.
Murphy described the craft as “very sophisticated” during a Monday press conference. “The minute you get eyes on them, they go dark,” he said.
“We’re obviously most concerned about sensitive targets and sensitive critical infrastructure,” he said. “We’ve got military assets. We’ve got utility assets. We’ve got the president-elect, one of his homes here. This is something we’re taking deadly seriously.”
New Jersey resident Phil Doyle told NBC New York he’s seen dozens of the drones, describing them as the size of his dining room table.
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“One goes over and then another. It’s not two or three a night, it’s 30 or 50 a night,” he said. Doyle added that he’s seen them in the vicinity of Picatinny Arsenal, a U.S. Army installation that conducts weapons systems research and development.
One family told Fox News they followed a drone in their car and that their car’s clock changed time when it hovered overhead. The clock returned to normal once they drove away.
The FBI, the New Jersey State Police and the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness have all been collecting information on the flights since at least last week. But the mystery remains.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have many answers, and we don’t want to guess or hypothesize about what’s going on,” FBI spokeswoman Amy J. Thoreson told NJ.com. “We are doing all we can to figure it out.”
