US Officials Say Many 'Mystery' Drones Are Just Airplanes

Amid an interagency investigation into a surge of alleged drone sightings across New Jersey, New York and other nearby states, U.S. officials have assessed that the vast majority of reports were actually linked to routine air traffic.

"Obviously, we are taking this incredibly seriously," one senior official of President Joe Biden's administration told reporters during a press call on Saturday. "At this point, we have not identified any basis for believing that there's any criminal activity involved, that there's any national security threat, that there's any particular public safety threat, or that there is a malicious foreign actor involved in these drones."

The senior official added: "At least some portion of what has been reported to be drones have on further inquiry turned out to be manned aircraft that were lawfully in the airspace and that is not uncommon for people to see things that appear to be drones that turn out not to be drones."

Around 5,000 tips have been received via a national tip line established due to widespread calls for answers among civilians and local authorities in the midst of the uptick in sightings that began last month, an FBI official told reporters on the Saturday press call. Of these tips, however, the FBI official said that "less than 100 leads have been generated and deemed worthy of further investigative activity."

While the investigation was initially opened due to reports of pilots identifying unidentified unmanned aerial systems (UAS), the FBI official said that "most of the reports of UAS have originated from the ground, with very, very few reports of UAS activity from pilots of manned aircraft."

Radar analysis conducted at U.S. military installations monitoring the situation have since "determined all large fixed-wing reported sightings have been manned aircraft," the FBI official said.

Officials also said that efforts to compare the trajectory of such sightings with standard air traffic emanating from some of busiest airports in New Jersey and New York resulted in a solid match.

"Overlaying the visual sightings reported to the FBI with approach patterns for Newark Liberty, JFK and LaGuardia airports, the density of reported sightings matches the approach patterns for these very busy airports, with flights coming in throughout the night," the FBI official said. "This modeling is indicative of manned aviation being quite often mistaken for unmanned aviation or UAS."

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official backed these findings as well, saying "we're confident that many of the reported drone sightings are, in fact, manned aircraft being misidentified as drones."

U.S. officials have for years warned of the potential threat posed by drones being operated for nefarious purposes by both state and non-state actors.

The latest update by the Biden administration comes as local officials, including the governors of New Jersey and New York sought help from the federal government in getting to the bottom of the drone sighting epidemic.

But frustration has mounted, as evidenced over incidents such as the closure of an upstate New York airport due to reports of alleged UAS flying nearby.

Some area politicians, such as New Jersey Assemblyman Erik Peterson, have claimed that the federal government is "lying to us," arguing that the supposed unmanned craft were moving in a way that airplanes could not and flew too silently to be a helicopter.

Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella came to similar conclusion, asserting that "they are either lying incompetent or they're both," during a press conference Friday.

Others, including President-elect Donald Trump, have called for more drastic measures.

"Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday. "Can this really be happening without our government's knowledge. I don't think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!"

While officials stated on the call Saturday that no threats have yet been detected to national or public security, they emphasized that the investigation remains ongoing, and some questions remain unanswered.

A Pentagon official confirmed that sightings have been reported by "highly trained security personnel" near military installations such as Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Stations Earle, both located in New Jersey, a phenomenon that predates the current stream of reports.

"We have no new intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor, or that they had malicious intent, but I just got to simply tell you, we don't know," the Pentagon official said.