Widespread attention over alleged drone sightings across the country is largely due to misidentification, and the objects in the sky are often not nefarious, according to Pentagon officials and aviation experts, even as U.S. military bases sound alarms about detecting them in their airspace.
Those experts told Military.com on Monday that many of the alleged drone sightings in New Jersey and other states — often being shared widely on social media — are either not unmanned aircraft at all or are simply commercial or hobbyist craft.
The sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere, which so far remained unconfirmed, have triggered widespread concern and demands from lawmakers as well as state and local officials for an explanation. But Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, told reporters Monday that roughly a million drones are registered in the U.S. and some 8,000 fly every day, most of which are not cause for concern.
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“It’s not that unusual to see drones in the sky, nor is it an indication of malicious activity or any public safety threat, and so the same applies to drones flown near U.S. military installations; some fly near or over our bases from time to time,” Ryder said. “That in itself is not unusual, and the vast majority pose no physical threat to our forces or impact our operations.”
Weeks of the alleged sightings of drones and growing posts on social media have led to public outcry and brought pressure on New Jersey lawmakers and other government officials to respond to the growing chorus of concerns. President-elect Donald Trump claimed to reporters on Monday that the government knows what’s happening, and “they know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don’t want to comment.”
Jamey Jacob, the executive director of the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education and an Oklahoma State University professor, told Military.com in an interview Monday that, while there are legitimate worries about drones over U.S. bases, many of the reported sightings by the public are misinformed.
“I generally believe, based on what I’ve seen, that there’s a lot of misidentification going on, particularly on the Eastern Seaboard scenarios where people don’t have the ability to determine the sense of scale for something in the air, particularly at night, where all you see are the lights,” Jacob said. “I think this is kind of the first instance of this really flaring up to such a large degree, and largely driven by social media and the inability to determine what’s real and what’s not.”
But Jacob said there’s a difference between the barrage of public drone sightings and the national security concerns raised by U.S. military bases.
Fears about the drones grew after officials at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey confirmed 11 sightings last month. It came around the same time that U.S. bases in the U.K. spotted unmanned aircraft flying in their airspace, Military.com reported.
Also, Military.com reported that, earlier this month, federal officials announced charges against a Chinese citizen who allegedly flew his drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and took pictures. On Friday, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio closed its airspace for several hours due to unidentified drones being detected at and near the installation, Bob Purtiman, a spokesman for the 88th Air Base Wing, told Military.com on Monday.
“I can confirm that small unmanned aerial systems were spotted in the vicinity of and over Wright-Patterson AFB between 13-14 December,” Purtiman said. “To date, installation leaders have determined that none of the incursions impacted base residents, facilities, or assets.”
Ryder told reporters he doesn’t see any connection between the situation in New Jersey and the reported drones at Wright-Patterson.
The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported Monday that drones had also been spotted at Ramstein Air Base in Germany earlier this month.
Jacob told Military.com that seeing a drone in public and military officials raising the alarm over seeing an unknown aircraft at a base are two different concerns — but neither is uncommon.
“We do have a legitimate concern about drones as a threat, particularly with military installations, and that includes both the threat of attack as well as the threat of just surveillance,” Jacob said, adding, “I think most of these instances are careless actors, rather than those trying to pose a legitimate threat, but it also shows what kind of holes we currently have in our security system.”
The U.S. government has limited abilities to respond when a drone is seen near a military base, Ryder told reporters, saying, “The intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that we can employ outside the homeland aren’t capabilities we can necessarily employ inside the homeland.”
Some of the sightings remain unexplained and are still concerning to the military. Last year, swarms of drones were spotted near Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
“The concerning drone activity that we’ve talked about in the past — like at Langley — that is much more unusual,” Ryder said.
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