What started with a drone sighting over a military installation in New Jersey last November quickly grew into a national craze about mysterious objects in the sky. Social media was flooded with videos and images purporting to show drones. Politicians weighed in. Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFRs) were imposed over dozens of power facilities. The so-called Jersey Drone phenomenon became such a big deal that the FBI launched a hotline for people to report what they had seen, with only a small fraction of some 5,000 sightings deemed worthy of further investigation.
The FBI told us on Thursday that the investigation is still ongoing, but declined to offer any details about whether any suspects were uncovered or any drones recovered.
There were also government operations and different things that had already gotten approval through the FAA. And you have commercial operations, those that are making deliveries or test bed situations that also had approval with the FAA, so those are the ones that are flying around. I highly doubt that there weren’t, in that big mix of drones, some foreign adversary that was taking advantage and trying to find information or video. We see probing regularly from foreign adversaries over sensitive sites like bases. So there was a true mixture of all that. And I think what caused a lot of the – for lack of a better term – hysteria was a poor response by the government to address the public’s fear and considerations. Poor communication between inter-agencies. The FAA, talking to the government to explain which aircraft were authorized or not authorized.
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