The East coast is lighting up.
Branching Out
The mysterious "car-sized" drones plaguing the skies of New Jersey since last month have now been spotted in the Big Apple.
Additional sightings of the apparent UFOs were reported in the Empire State on Sunday night, with residents of Brooklyn saying they saw around a dozen drones flying over the New York City borough before crossing over to Staten Island.
There, residents say they witnessed the drones, too. Reports also indicate that some sightings have recently been made in Philadelphia.
As the sightings seem to spread across the tri-state area, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a statement to the media about the ongoing situation — and it sounds like its investigators are totally stumped.
"We understand the concern, and we are doing all we can to figure out what's going on," a spokesperson for the FBI Newark Field Office, which is leading the investigation, told PIX11 last Wednesday. "We truly don't have much information to provide at the moment."
Drones are officially in Brooklyn! In Bay Ridge approx 11pm-11:15pm, 10+ DRONES? Some had a little blinking white dot and as 1 or 2 flew away with green/yellow/red lights, the white dot ones turned on green/yellow/red lights then flew away. One drone actually shut all of its… pic.twitter.com/5zhkjpV8me
— Diane Atkins ✝️🙏🏻🇺🇸 (@DianeAtkins) December 9, 2024
Aerial Aces
With New Jersey as the epicenter, the drone sightings began in mid-November and quickly spread to ten or so counties, mostly in the northern regions of the state.
The drones have frequently been described as around the size of a car, flying in coordinated patterns and exhibiting blinking lights that have been reported to sometimes inexplicably go dark.
The sightings have quickly become the subject of national attention as authorities have been unable to determine what the drones are and who or what is responsible for them, if indeed any single entity is.
They've also resulted in some very real consequences. The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned flying drones over president-elect Donald Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, as well as a military base in a nearby county.
It's not all fun and games, either: the drones also reportedly prevented a medevac helicopter from reaching the scene of a severe car crash in late November.
In the Dark
Nevertheless, authorities insist that the drones pose no immediate threat to the public. It's undeniable, though, that the spell of sightings is extremely bizarre — if not unsettling to some — and expose local and federal law enforcement's inability to control airspace against the growing popularity of unmanned aircraft.
The frustration at the lack of progress made by federal agencies was on display during a congressional hearing on Tuesday, USA Today reports, in which several House Representatives grilled the FBI's assistant director of the Critical Incident Response Group Robert Wheeler Jr.
"You're telling me we don't know what the hell these drones in New Jersey are?" U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas) asked Wheeler, as quoted by USA.
"That's correct," the FBI man replied.
"That's crazy," Gonzalez said. "That's madness."
More on UFOs: FBI Baffled by Mysterious "Car-Sized Drones" Circling Over New Jersey
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