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White House national security communications adviser John Kirby maintained that the administration still lacks definitive answers about the nature of the reported drone sightings as public frustration intensifies.
“Many of the corroborated sightings turned out to be piloted aircraft. I didn’t say all of them, and what I said was that those are the ones we were able to corroborate,” Kirby said in “The Story.” “There are certainly some that we haven’t been able to, and we don’t know the answer, and I highly encourage people who are seeing these things and documenting them to share them as much as they can with the Department of Interior, Security and the FBI.”
DRONE MYSTERY: NEW JERSEY OWNERS THREATEN TO TAKE MATTER INTO THEIR OWN HANDS IF THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T ACT
In a Wednesday letter to Biden, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy asked the president for more federal resources to address drone sightings, noting that federal law limits the ability of state and local law enforcement to counter drones. .
“…it has become clear that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity,” Murphy wrote. “Continued reports of UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) activity have raised more questions than answers and caused conspiracy theories to surface on social media and other platforms.”
A map showing drone sightings in New Jersey.
Kirby addressed the possibility that the reported drone sightings could be linked to a private company, saying they “very well could be” commercially developed drones of some kind.
“Why don’t we know? I wish I could tell you exactly why we don’t have an answer here on the afternoon of December 13,” Kirby said. “But I can tell you that we are working very, very hard to find out, because we want to answer those questions the same way the people of New Jersey want answers.”
Kirby revealed that there was a conversation between agencies on Friday morning about the issue.
“Now we’ve decided to employ some additional technology in New Jersey and some additional personnel to try to get a better idea of what these things are,” he said.
New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Kanitra took a photo of what appears to be multiple drones floating in the sky over New Jersey on Thursday, December 13. (Paul Kanitra / “Fox News @ Night”)
Monmouth County, New Jersey, Sheriff Shaun Golden urged officials to declare a state of emergency over the drone sightings and issued a statement Wednesday night. The release included a heat map showing the density of drones detected in their county:
A heat map indicating drone activity in Monmouth County, New Jersey. (Courtesy: Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office)
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Rep. Chris Smith, R.N.J., whose district includes parts of Monmouth and Ocean counties, recounted spending Monday night on a beach where he spoke with several people, including a commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard. stationed at Barnegat Light.
According to the commander, a 47-foot Coast Guard vessel had been closely followed by more than a dozen drones the previous night.
Monmouth and Burlington counties are home to several military installations, including Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
On Thursday, Middletown, New Jersey, Mayor Tony Perry expressed “concern” to Fox News regarding drone sightings near the coastal Naval Weapons Station Earle site in his town, 14 miles north of the Colts Neck facility.
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“I’m not going to lie to you or the American people, and I’m not going to say we know something when we don’t,” Kirby said. “We would never, ever stoop to thinking that an American citizen is crazy or insane because of what they are seeing and documenting. We are taking that footage seriously and are doing the best we can to analyze it. And we encourage people to come forward if have additional sightings and images.”
