As drone sightings spread across East Coast, federal officials still don’t know much: NPR

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, seen at a White House press briefing in October, said Sunday that the Biden administration remains “vigilant” in investigating the drone sightings.

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As the mystery grows surrounding the drones flying over New Jersey, the calls from puzzled residents to authorities about the flying machines are growing. Reports of drone sightings have spread from New Jersey to other states, including Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Connecticut and Ohio.

Federal authorities have repeated assurances on Sunday that the drones are not a security threat. But they still don’t know where they come from or who is responsible.

Meanwhile, some state and federal officials urged Congress to pass expanded legislation that would give federal authorities greater resources to mitigate risks from drones.

Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News’ This week on Sunday that the federal government has deployed additional resources, including personnel and technology, to help the New Jersey State Police address drone sightings and that the Biden administration remains “vigilant” in investigating the drone sightings.

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” he added, but noted that some of the recent sightings on the East Coast are likely to be manned aircraft or duplicate sightings.

He called on Congress to act quickly to extend and expand the current anti-drone authorities — authorized in the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2018 — which are set to expire on Dec. 20. The law enables the Homeland Security and Justice Departments to use advanced detection technologies to identify, track and mitigate drones.

“It’s critical, as we’ve all said for a number of years, that we need additional authority from Congress to address the drone situation,” Mayorkas said in the ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos.

A joint congressional subcommittee hearing held last week centered on -one bipartite bill — called the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety and Reauthorization Act — that would expand federal drone countermeasures, such as strengthening the FAA’s drone oversight powers.

The federal government is also sending a drone detection system to New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Sunday.

“I’m grateful for the support, but we need more,” she said on X. By passing the Counter-UAS legislation, she said in a separate statement“will give New York and our peers the authority and resources necessary to respond to circumstances that we face today.”

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke Fox News Sunday“There are a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now.”

“‘We don’t know’ is not a good enough answer,” he said, citing what he said is a lack of information from federal agencies.

Drone activity over the weekend forced a pause in air traffic in at least two states. New York Stewart International Airport’s runways are closed for an hour Friday night after the FAA reported drone sightings in the area, a spokesman confirmed.

In Ohio, there was a temporary closure of the airspace over Wright Patterson Air Force Base between Friday night and Saturday morning after “small unmanned aerial systems were detected near and above” the base, base spokesman Bob Purtiman told NPR member station WVXU.

During a call with reporters on Saturday, a Pentagon spokesman acknowledged that there had also been sightings of drones over two military installations in New Jersey, at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, but said such sightings are typical.

“This is not a new issue for us,” the Joint Staff spokesman said, according to the Pentagon’s news service. “We’ve had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite some time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to in every instance when reporting is cited.”

Still unclear who is responsible for drone activity

The military maintained over the weekend that there was no evidence of foreign adversary involvement.

“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 Pentagon 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 also said the drones are frustrating the Defense Department, adding that the military has “limited authority” to investigate outside US military installations and is also prohibited from conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations that could help determine the origin of the drones.

“We don’t know what the activity is,” the Pentagon news service quoted the spokesman as saying. “We don’t know … if it’s criminal. But I will tell you it’s irresponsible.”