‘Something strange is going on’: Americans lose it over mystery drone sightings
Strange lights have been spotted across American skies for weeks on end – and now, the panic is well and truly spreading across the nation.
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Panicked citizens across New Jersey and the US East Coast are scouring the night skies. Strange lights can be glimpsed through the clouds. And that must mean trouble.
For more than a month, social media has been buzzing with footage of drones buzzing over houses, high-powered beams of light moving across the horizon, and bright specks sitting motionless high in the sky.
What are these mysterious objects?
A secret government black op?
Iranians? (Or Russians or Chinese?)
Aliens?
President-elect Donald Trump has waded into the controversy.
“Mystery Drone Sightings all over the country,” he proclaimed on his social media platform Truth Social.
“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!!!”
High-profile Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took up the theme: “I’ll shoot the drones down myself along with every other red-blooded freedom-loving American.”
Some rattled but public-minded citizens are now doing just that.
US commercial, military and police pilots are reporting being bombarded with high-powered, handheld laser pointers.
Officials from the US military’s Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst told US media that 15 of its aircraft and helicopters had been struck since December 7.
One has been forced to seek medical treatment for temporary blindness.
Images of misidentified illegal aliens are flooding social media.
The landing lights of commercial aircraft and helicopters – even the planet Venus and the star constellation Orion – are being offered as evidence of unidentified invaders.
It’s an atmosphere of hysteria America has experienced before.
In February 1942, searchlights stationed around the city of Los Angeles lit up the night sky. Citizens raced to air defence shelters and civil defence posts. Anti-aircraft artillery quickly followed, pumping 1433 cannon shells into the clouds. The hour-long “Battle of LA” shot nothing down, though some houses were damaged by dud shells falling back to earth.
Eventually, investigators pinned the event on overwhelming fear caused by the destruction of the US fleet at Pearl Harbor just weeks earlier, the fear of impending Japanese invasion – and a nightly release of meteorological balloons for the daily weather forecast.
Leading from the front
“Our military knows … something strange is going on,” Mr Trump said during a media briefing from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida earlier this week.
He steps into the office of President at the White House later next month.
He also says he had to cancel a trip to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey due to fears for his safety.
A helicopter intercepted a drone near the green on the weekend.
“They’re very close to Bedminster,” Mr Trump said.
“I think I won’t spend the weekend in Bedminster. I decided to cancel my trip.”
Mr Trump believes it’s a government conspiracy.
“For some reason, they don’t want to comment,” he said.
“If it’s the enemy, they’d blast out, even if they were late, they’d blast it. Something strange is going on, and for some reason, they don’t want to tell the people, and they should.”
Mr Trump is not the only voice of authority calling for the government – and citizens – to take direct action.
Federal members of Congress and New York and New Jersey state officials have taken to social media with their demands. Some have posted images including the planet Venus and even a Star Wars Tie Fighter as evidence of their fears.
“Why can’t we bag at least one drone and get to the bottom of this?” New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith demanded at a news conference.
“Why can’t we even track a suspect drone to its origin? Have we so little control over our airspace?”
Mr Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Republican Mike Waltz, has waded into the fray.
Those red circles, 21 of them, represent new TFR’s over NJ… Temporary Flight Restrictions. Allegedly banning aircraft from flying over power / energy generation sites or transmission sites. Defense Department doing press briefing shortly.
— Scott Anthony (@RadarOps) December 19, 2024
Att: @0ctoberReignzpic.twitter.com/becnfc8iBV
“Americans are finding it hard to believe we can’t figure out where these are coming from,” he said in an interview.
“It’s pointing to gaps in our capabilities and in our ability to clamp down on what’s going on here. And we need to get to the bottom of it.”
New Jersey Democrat Congressman Mikie Sherrill agreed. She’s called for combat-capable US military Reaper drones to be deployed along with air defence radars and weaponry.
But New Jersey Republican Brian Bergen sounded a note of caution.
“I have seen bullets fly through the sky,” he told local media.
“That’s not a great idea to do over the United States. We shouldn’t be shooting things down right now. Things should not be shot out of the sky. That is a very dangerous thing to do.”
War of the words
A spirit of competition has sprung up among social media communities insisting their particular theory is correct.
Celebrities have waded into the fray. As have elected officials and commercial executives.
The CEO of recruitment firm Saxon Aerospace, John Ferguson, speculates the lights may be drones seeking hazardous substances. Flying low is a clue, he adds in a viral TikTok video.
“If they are flying that low, they’re trying to smell something on the ground.”
Belleville, New Jersey mayor Michael Melham has embraced a variation of the theme.
“My point is, they are flying in a grid-like pattern, in my opinion, sniffing for something,” Mr Melham said.
“There is an alert that’s out right now that radioactive material in New Jersey has gone missing on December 2. There was a shipment that arrived at its destination. The container was damaged and was empty.”
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission had earlier alerted that a medical PET cancer-scanning device had been “lost in transit” in the area.
Older conspiracy theories are also surging back into popularity.
Project Blue Beam was proposed by Canadian Serge Monast in the 1990s as a plot by “global elites” to use holographic technology to project a simulated alien invasion into the sky as an excuse to establish a world government. Controversial podcaster Alex Jones is among a surge of celebrities seizing on the idea to win social media engagement.
Then former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan shared a video online showing what he says were dozens of large drones in the sky”.
Last night, beginning at around 9:45 pm, I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation’s capital). I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes.
— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) December 13, 2024
Like… pic.twitter.com/Ipx8ctLmhs
A clued-up meteorologist, however, identified the formation “with immense respect”, writing “Mr Governor, this is the constellation ‘Orion’.”
With immense respect, Mr. governor, this is the constellation "Orion."
— Matthew Cappucci (@MatthewCappucci) December 14, 2024
It's made up of stars between 244 and 1,344 light years away. The stars will be in a similar place tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/e2DTbelcjn
Buried among it all is speculation by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who suggests a recent change in Federal Aviation laws that allows drones to fly at night may be behind the increased sightings.
The internet, however, doesn’t buy that argument.
And while New York and London tend to be the centre of most alien invasion scenarios, even high-profile science communicator Neil DeGrasse Tyson embraced the concept of a new drop zone.
“You don’t think aliens would have good reason to visit New Jersey? What if they want to go to the beach or the diner or the mall?” he quipped in an interview.
“Where else can you get a spray tan, your ears pierced, a slice of pizza, a Yankee candle that smells like pizza, and a bejewelled handbag that says ‘Diva’ on it? Only in a mall in New Jersey, baby!”
Reality bites
Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace is one of several government voices suspicious of the government response to the “crisis”.
“My concern is, if it’s not craft from outer space – because I think that has to be on the table, that has to be an option – is it our technology? Or is it Russia, or Iran or China? Is there someone who’s winning the arms race, and are we behind?” Mace queried during an interview.
“We deserve to have some answers here, because people are scared, and a lot of congressional officers are hearing from people, they’re writing in with their concerns when they’re seeing these drones.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says it has looked into more than 5000 sighting reports since the start of the month. It adds that less than 100 warranted further investigation.
The US Department of Defence (DoD) released a statement attributing many sightings to lawful commercial and law enforcement drone flights. Others were identified as hobbyists. And a significant proportion had been “misidentifications” of aircraft and “celestial objects”.
But it added in a separate release that “there have been a limited number of visual sightings of drones over military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere, including within restricted air space”.
“Such sightings near or over DoD installations are not new,” the statement reads.
“DoD takes unauthorised access over its airspace seriously and coordinates closely with federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, as appropriate.”
Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Major General Pat Ryder told reporters it was possible drones could be a security risk.
“Typically, when we detect them, we attempt to classify them and take appropriate measures,” he said.
“Is it possible that some of those are surveillance? Absolutely. Can you make that assumption in every case? Not necessarily so.”
Ryder said more than a million drones were registered in the US, and that about 8500 of these were flying on any given day.
“The vast majority of these drones are going to probably be recreational or hobbyist,” he added.
“They’re going to be commercial drones used in things like architecture, engineering, farming or they could be used for law enforcement.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adds it continues “to assess there is no public safety threat relating to the reported drone sightings”.
“In co-ordination with the FAA and our critical infrastructure partners who requested temporary flight restrictions over their facilities, out of an abundance of caution, the FAA has issued temporary flight restrictions over some critical infrastructure facilities in New Jersey,” the DHS says.
But concern over potential surveillance and sabotage uses of drones is real.
A drone was used to attack a Pennsylvania power substation in 2020. Cables were dropped across high-voltage wires in an attempt to short out the local network.
Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social
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