U.S. law enforcement authorities are trying to confirm what New Jersey residents are seeing and where they’re coming from — or whether it’s drones, rather than normal planes, flying normal routes, that people are misidentifying.
Large drones have become a huge topic of conversation in New Jersey, in the United States: residents have reported seeing drones the size of small cars flying at night; authorities are not sure if they are seeing something unusual or if they are actually drones.
But even if they are something else, large drones exist. And they could have a wide range of potential uses for hobbyists, commercial or military users, according to unmanned aircraft experts.
“There are so many uses for these devices. It’s almost limitless,” Ryan Wallace, associate professor of aeronautical engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told CNN.
Drone sightings?
Law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, are still trying to confirm what exactly New Jersey residents are seeing and where they are coming from — or whether it is drones, rather than normal planes, flying normal routes, that people are identifying. mistakenly.
“We have reports from the public and law enforcement going back several weeks,” the FBI’s Newark office said on December 3.
New Jersey residents have reported seeing drones flying overhead, sometimes in groups. Sightings have been recorded in Morris and Somerset counties, according to local authorities. Both are located in the New York metropolitan area.
But the sightings weren’t just among concerned residents. The US Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, says one of its agents found the drones.
The Department of Homeland Security and White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Thursday that many of the reported sightings are actually “manned aircraft” operating legally. And experts assured CNN that objects in “sighting” videos they analyzed appeared to be planes.
The White House also assured that “there is no evidence at this time” that the mysterious sightings “pose a threat to national or public security or have a connection to the outside world”.
Still, New Jersey residents are frustrated by the lack of clear answers about what they are seeing.
“You see red and green lights flashing on corners. The plane changes direction, goes from 90 to 270 degrees, flies in different directions,” a New Jersey resident tells CNN. “And planes obviously can’t do that.”
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy acknowledged that he is also pressing the federal government for more information. In a post on X, Murphy admitted that he spoke with US Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall “to discuss concerns about the federal government’s response.”
Today I spoke with Liz Sherwood-Randall, White House Homeland Security Advisor, to discuss my concerns over the federal government’s response to recent drone sightings in NJ.
I’ll continue to press the federal government, including the , for answers on behalf of the public.
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy)
Uses of drones
Most people are familiar with the smaller drones that hobbyists use for photography. In theory, an amateur could also buy or build a larger drone.
“The wings are not something that adds a lot of volume in terms of mass to the drone, they are actually the lightest parts of the drone,” explains Pramod Abichandani, director of the Advanced Air Mobility Laboratory at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “Even when it’s a multirotor drone, like a quadcopter… the extensions on that quadcopter are basically carbon fiber rods, super light.”
Weight is important because special – and more unusual – approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is required to fly drones that weigh more than 55 pounds (about 24kg), according to William Austin, president from Warren Community College in New Jersey, who studied unmanned aircraft and started the school’s drone program.
Amateurs would also have to be willing to shell out a lot of money for such large drones, which can cost tens of thousands of euros, according to experts.
Most of the time, large drones are used for commercial or military purposes. They can be used, for example, in agriculture to inspect or spray fields. Or in infrastructures to assess the condition of roads and buildings or for cartography. (However, for these uses, the drones would almost certainly be flying during the day and not at night, when the New Jersey sightings are said to have occurred).
Some law enforcement agencies have begun using drones for search and rescue, although they do not necessarily need large drones for this purpose.
Some larger and heavier drones have also been used for commercial transportation in order to make deliveries. “It’s not very common, but it’s not unheard of either,” says Wallace.
The military can use large drones equipped with all kinds of sensors — from powerful traditional cameras to infrared sensors — for surveillance.
And in the coming years, Americans will start to see even bigger, more powerful drones flying around, warns Austin, like those made by the Chinese company EHang to transport people.
But for now, he says, “you’re not likely to see them here, because you have to go through a lot of FAA permitting steps.” “There are so few people with those kinds of credentials that the FAA would know very quickly who was flying a drone. of this type in national airspace”.
