The White House reiterated Monday that there is no national security threat from the drones seen across the Northeast, and that they are “legally and lawfully” in the sky.
“Our assessment at this stage is that the activity represents commercial, hobbyist, or law enforcement drones, all operating legally and lawfully,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday.
He said there are more than 1 million drones registered with the Federal Aviation Administration, and that there are “thousands of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones in the sky on any given day.”
“That is the ecosystem that we are dealing with and it is legal,” he said.
Mr. Kirby said the FBI has received roughly 5,000 tips of drone sightings in and around New Jersey, and that only about 100 of them required follow-up.
He said the federal government is aiding state and local law enforcement officials in investigating these reports.
“We have not identified anything anomalous or any national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the Northeast,” he said. Mr. Kirby later said if there was actually a national security threat, he would say so.
He also said he couldn’t explain the recent uptick in sightings, but that many of them are “duplicative” and some are just “manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and even stars.”
He called on Congress to do more to help and said when Congress reconvenes in January after the holiday break, the White House will call for a bipartisan task force to look into “congestion in the skies and to help set appropriate rules to address the public’s concerns.”
When asked about President-elect Donald Trump’s comment earlier Monday asserting the Biden administration knows more about the drones then they’re letting on, Mr. Kirby denied it.
“I would say that we are making a very good-faith effort to be as open and direct with all of you and with the American people as we can and that will continue,” he said. “That will continue all throughout the coming days. There’s absolutely no effort to be anything other than upfront as we can be.”
“Now, what we’re not going to do is speculate, and we’re not going to hypothesize, we’re not going to provide content that we can’t be sure is accurate,” he said. “I recognize that some of the criticism over the last few days has been that we haven’t said more of what we know because we didn’t have as much information as we do now after a few more days of extra resources, extra personnel, extra analysis.”
