United States.New Jersey · a wave of drone sightings on the East Coast

The first public reports of large coordinated drones over New Jersey began in late November 2024. On December 10, in a congressional hearing, the FBI said it had received over 3,000 tips from the public and that some of the craft were described as "slightly larger than a commercially available drone, fixed wing as well as rotary". At that hearing Robert Wheeler, assistant director of its Critical Incident Response Group, acknowledged that the FBI did not yet attribute the flights to any individual or group; asked about the risk, he answered that nothing known led him to assert a threat, "but we just don't know, and that's the concerning part". By mid-December, thousands of sightings had been registered through civilian apps and reports to the FAA, with videos of lights moving at low altitude, mostly at night.

The reported overflights covered a wide zone: Picatinny Arsenal (a U.S. Army weapons research and development center), Naval Weapons Station Earle (a naval ammunition transfer terminal for the Atlantic fleet), the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear reactors operated by PSEG Nuclear, Governor Phil Murphy's residential property in Middletown Township, and urban areas of northern New Jersey and Long Island. The FAA went so far as to impose temporary flight restrictions over Picatinny Arsenal and over the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. Governor Murphy convened press conferences demanding federal explanations. Senator Andy Kim (who personally joined a nighttime police patrol to observe the phenomenon) and Senator Cory Booker (both of New Jersey) publicly pressed DHS and the FAA, including by letter to Secretaries Buttigieg and Mayorkas and Director Wray. DHS and the FBI investigated with the FAA, the Department of Defense and local police, and deployed additional electronic detection equipment.

DHS and the FBI held that most sightings were cases of "mistaken identity": the public confusing lawfully operating manned aircraft (planes on approach to busy airports like JFK, helicopters, and even stars and planets) with drones. On December 12, John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, said there was "no evidence at this time" that the sightings posed a threat or had "a foreign nexus"; that using "very sophisticated electronic detection technologies" neither federal nor state authorities had been able to "corroborate any of the reported visual sightings"; that many were actually manned aircraft operating lawfully; that the Coast Guard found no foreign involvement from coastal vessels, and that there were "no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace".

The joint statement of DHS, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense of December 16 assessed that the sightings included a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and stars mistakenly reported as drones, and said: "We have not identified anything anomalous". Several lawmakers and Governor Murphy himself publicly rejected the explanation as insufficient.

The Trump administration closed the matter its own way: on January 28, 2025 press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement from the president that, "after research and study", the drones flying over New Jersey in large numbers "were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons", many were hobbyists, it "got worse, due to curiosity" and "this was not the enemy". The study behind that statement was not published, nor was any forensic analysis of the drones, nor any identification of operators for the reported overflights near sensitive installations.

The sightings of November and December 2024 were reported over military and nuclear installations and a governor's residence, and led DHS, the FBI, the FAA and the Department of Defense to a joint investigation. The official explanation, which mixed lawful aircraft and misidentifications, was publicly disputed by New Jersey's governor and by two of the state's senators.

Who operated the drones seen near sensitive installations was left open: in December the FBI said it did not know, and the January explanation (drones authorized by the FAA) did not identify operators.