The mysterious New Jersey drama has kickstarted a long-overdue discussion about drones

• Drone sightings across the US have captivated many Americans and sparked widespread speculation.
• The sightings have also put a spotlight on airspace management strategies in the US.
• Experts say the focus should be on improved regulation and countermeasures instead of hysteria.

A recent wave of mysterious drone sightings across the US has, to a certain extent, kick-started a long-overdue discussion on drone technology and airspace management.

These drone sightings have captured national attention, and the public is now paying more attention to drone activity near US military bases. Federal agencies are talking to the public about drone issues. And there’s more public discussion of congressional legislation to boost federal authority as the government says it’s hamstrung in its ability to respond to drone threats.

“There’s a fundamental notion that drones present a very, very new expanded type of threat,” Doug Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Business Insider, noting that the US largely lacks “the tactics and the procedures to deal with this.”

Birkey said many people are “overplaying” the mystery behind the latest drone sightings. But the resulting buzz is driving conversations about counterstrategies and systems that “should have happened a long time ago.”

Officials from the White House, FBI, DHS, DoD, and the FAA have urged Congress to “enact counter-UAS legislation when it reconvenes that would help extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities to identify and mitigate any threat that may emerge.” This has been a recurring topic in press briefings in recent weeks.

“The good news is that technology largely exists” to address the challenges presented by drone tech, Birkey said. “We just have to get serious about going after it and then having the procedures down to be smart about it.”

The latest drone drama

In mid-November, unidentified aircraft were first seen flying over New Jersey. They drew national attention as reported sightings extended to Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, among other states, this month.

It wasn’t until worry and wild speculation about the drones reached a fever pitch that agencies began a more organized effort to communicate. In the initial absence, others filled the void with conspiracy theories, a major one being that the drones were launched from an Iranian drone mothership off the US East Coast.

The federal government has shot many of these assertions down, saying they’re not of foreign origin and not a threat.

The White House, FBI, Homeland Security, Pentagon, and FAA have said that all the evidence available indicates the drone sightings are a mixture of “lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones.”

Though not nefarious, US officials said they “recognize the concern among many communities” and the “irresponsible” nature of the drone activity near restricted airspace and infrastructure, including military bases and civilian airports.

Things have “sort of moved to a point of hysteria,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, the director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. She said that “the public has gotten really agitated because of the perceived novelty of drones or the danger associated with them.”

She said “people seeing drones everywhere” are “starting to conflate just normal air traffic and anything in the sky and assuming that something nefarious or strange is happening.”

But even as the government has attempted to quell concerns, skepticism remains, leading some to push for greater clarity on this issue so that drones can be discussed rationally.

William Austin, a drone expert and president of Warren County Community College, said the federal government needs to be clear with the public in this situation.

He wrote in a recent op-ed that “the public needs clear, authoritative communication: there is no credible evidence of large drones operating over New Jersey,”

Austin argued in his article that “the drone industry has too much to offer — cutting-edge technology, job creation, and life-saving applications — to be derailed by myths.” He said, “We need facts, not speculation.”

Drones are becoming prolific

Surging interest and investment in new drone tech have catalyzed rapid advancements, transforming the technology at an unprecedented pace in recent years.

Increasing competition in the global market is making drones more accessible, affordable, and user-friendly, expanding their use beyond traditional military and defense applications to sectors like agriculture, logistics, and recreation.

“It’s part of the changing technological landscape that extends beyond just the military,” Pettyjohn said. “It’s not just the realm of the government anymore to have really sophisticated capabilities. It’s just part of everyday society.”

Commercial and civilian drones only began to emerge in the early 2000s, leaving the general public largely unaccustomed to encountering them in their daily lives.

The high-profile Chinese spy balloon incident last year that ended with it being shot down by a US fighter jet spotlighted aerial surveillance as a potential threat to public safety and national security. Terrorist and insurgent operations, as well as the widespread use of drone warfare in Ukraine, have also heightened fears regarding their possible weaponization.

And there are real risks, regardless of whether drone activity is malicious. As drone technology proliferates further, activities around military bases and airfields are becoming a “huge problem” for the US, Mark Cancian, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired US Marine Corps colonel, recently told BI.

A US military base in Ohio briefly closed its airspace after small drones were spotted in the area, and the runways at a New York airport were also briefly shut down due to nearby drone activity.

Sociologist and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci wrote that the hysteria and drama of the recent drone situation aside, “unauthorized drones are a problem, and there does need to be better regulation and technology to deal with them. Let’s hear about that, then, rather than this mindless dangerous panic.”