Joint Staff Addresses Drones Over New Jersey Military Installations > US Department of Defense > Department of Defense News

In recent weeks, a number of drones have been spotted over New Jersey, prompting concern and thousands of phone calls to report them. Some of these drones have even been observed over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, both in New Jersey.

During a behind-the-scenes phone call today, officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration and Joint Staff provided comments and answered questions from reporters about the drone sightings.

A spokesman for the Joint Staff acknowledged that there had been sightings of drones over two military installations in New Jersey, but said such sightings are typical.

“We have had confirmed sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle,” the spokesman said. “This is not a new issue for us. We’ve had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite some time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to on a case-by-case basis when reporting is cited.”

The spokesman said that military installations have the means to detect and respond to such drones, and that security personnel are trained to identify, categorize and use these tools to prevent drones from flying unauthorized over US military bases.

As of now, the FBI, DHS, FAA, and DOD have not been able to determine who is responsible for flying the drones, and there is no indication that adversary nations are involved.

“To date, we have no intelligence or observations to suggest that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent,” the spokesman said. “But … we don’t know. We haven’t been able to locate or identify the operators or the places of origin.”

The spokesman said the military has “limited authority” when it comes to conducting investigations out of US military installations and is also prohibited from conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations in the US that could be used to determine the origin of who who can fly the drones. But the spokesman also said those military installations have good relationships with local law enforcement, which can conduct investigations of the installation.

“We have to coordinate with law enforcement to try to do that, which we are doing,” the spokesman said. “And we do that routinely in almost all of our locations. We have good relationships and excellent coordination, and we respond quickly to try to identify them.”

The spokesman also said the department is frustrated by the drones’ appearance.

“The main point is to deter the activity by using some of our electronic means that can respond to most of these small commercial systems and deny them access to the airspace above our bases,” the spokesman said. “We don’t know what the activity is. We don’t know … if it’s criminal. But I will tell you it’s irresponsible. Here on the military side, we’re equally frustrated by the irresponsible nature of this activity.”