The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued a joint statement on Thursday suggesting that the drone sightings in areas like New Jersey do not pose a national security threat based on current evidence.
“We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus,” the statement said.
The two organizations said that they will be working closely with local and state police to “confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings.”
The statement further noted that some drone sightings in the past have been cases of mistaken identity or may have been manned aircraft.
We are supporting local law enforcement in New Jersey with numerous detection methods but have not corroborated any of the reported visual sightings with electronic detection. To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft, operating lawfully. There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space.
We take seriously the threat that can be posed by unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which is why law enforcement and other agencies continue to support New Jersey and investigate the reports. To be clear, they have uncovered no such malicious activity or intent at this stage. While there is no known malicious activity occurring in New Jersey, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight the insufficiency of current authorities.
As Breitbart News reported on Thursday, the Pentagon denied claims that alleged drone sightings over areas like New Jersey are foreign-controlled while also denying they are controlled by the U.S. military.
“The Pentagon has stated that the mystery drones flying over parts of New Jersey and the northeast U.S. in recent weeks are not controlled by the U.S. military but also not believed to be controlled by foreign entities,” noted the report. “Despite these claims, the Pentagon can’t say just who actually is in control of the drones causing havoc and concern along the Atlantic coast.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) had previously suggested the drones were launched from an Iranian “mothership” off the U.S. coast, but the Pentagon also denied those claims.
“At this time, we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary,” said Sabrina Singh, spokeswoman for the Pentagon. “We’re going to continue to monitor what is happening, but at no point were our installations threatened when this activity was occurring.”
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