For the better part of a month mysterious drones have been sighted near and over American military installations, airports and other sensitive areas, such as President Trump’s Bedminster, NJ golf resort and a nuclear power plant.
What are they, who is operating them and where they came from remains a mystery according to the Biden administration, but we’re not buying their play dumb act.
The intrusions have gotten so bad that they shut down the runways of Stewart International Airport Friday night, prompting New York’s Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul to demand the feds step in.
“This has gone too far,” Hochul said in a terse statement Saturday, in which she noted the runway of the Orange County facility was shut down for an hour because of the unidentified aircraft.
Stewart Airport services both commercial and military flights and is adjacent to a New York Air National Guard base, where the 105th Airlift Wing is stationed.
The New York Post reported the unidentified drones — which have been hovering over New Jersey for nearly a month and have been seen in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts — were also recently spotted flying over LaGuardia International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.
Most of the sightings, including those by Coast Guardsmen and local police officers, have occurred over New Jersey, prompting one fed-up New Jersey sheriff to try and track the mystery drones swarming the skies above his county — but they “easily” evaded the effort.
The Ocean County Sheriff’s office sent its own “industrial grade” drone into the air Thursday in a bid to follow one of 50 unmanned aerial vehicles a local cop saw “coming off the ocean,” Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said according to a report in the New York Post.
Congressman Jeff Van Drew (NJ-2) claims Iran has stationed a "mothership" off the U.S. East Coast, reportedly launching the drones now flying over New Jersey. Although Rep. Van Drew offered no specifics this is plausible and well within the known aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s military leadership.
Back in August Military Watch Magazine reported Iranian media published the first clear footage of the country’s first aircraft carrier, the Shahid Bagheri, which is set to facilitate forward drone operations by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Referred to as a “forward base ship,” the warship features an angled flight deck and ski jump launch system similar to those on Russian Kuznetsov Class and British Queen Elizabeth Class carriers. Iran has been able to build the carrier on a very low budget by converting a commercial container ship, the Perarin, into a carrier.
However, Business Insider reports open source satellite images show Iran's drone carriers are nowhere near the United States.
That, of course, does not mean that Iranian or Red Chinese drones are not being brought within striking distance of the United States by less obvious means, such as a commercial ship, which would require no flight deck to launch a vertical takeoff drone.
While most of the media attention has focused on the New York – New Jersey area drone intrusions they have not been limited to the New York metropolitan area.
FOX News reported former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland has said that he personally witnessed "dozens of large drones" flying above his home in Davidsonville, Maryland, on Thursday evening as the mystery surrounding the various unexplained sightings continues.
"Last night, beginning at around 9:45 pm, I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation’s capital)," Hogan wrote on X Friday. "I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes."
The former governor said he does not know if these drone sightings are evidence of a threat to public safety or national security, but he called out the federal government for a "complete lack of transparency" in the face of Americans' concerns.
However, experienced stargazers quickly pointed out that no anomalous objects are apparent in the Governor's video, as the lights in the sky are recognizably the constellation Orion. From this you can determine, noted X community notes, that the bright lights behind the trees are the stars Sirius and Procyon.
While citizen journalists and other observers have apparently knocked down a plausible source of the drone intrusions and even some of the sightings which at first appeared credible, the federal government, which allegedly controls all airspace over the United States has remained strangely evasive.
Biden White House national security spokesman John Kirby dismissed concerns about the drones, saying in a White House briefing, "Using very sophisticated electronic detection technologies provided by federal authorities, we have not been able to, and neither have state or local law enforcement authorities, corroborate any of the reported visual sightings," he said. "To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully. The United States Coast Guard is providing support to the state of New Jersey, and has confirmed that there is no evidence of any foreign-based involvement from coastal vessels. And importantly, there are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace."
In other words, “nothing to see here folks, move along now.” But New Jersey citizens and lawmakers aren’t buying Kirby’s dismissal of their concerns.
And another New Jersey lawmaker was even more blunt. New Jersey Assemblymember Brian Bergen (R) responded to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby’s remarks about the increase in unidentified drones flying over the state, calling him an “idiot” and a “fool.”
“That guy is an idiot. That I can tell you right now,” Bergen, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot, said Thursday evening in an interview on Fox News.
The commander of the Picatinny Arsenal military research base in New Jersey told media that the drones are not related to any military activity by the base. "While the source and cause of these aircraft operating in our area remain unknown, we can confirm that they are not the result of any Picatinny Arsenal-related activities,” he said.
After a meeting with the Department of Homeland Security, Montvale, NJ Mayor Mike Ghassali said the drones were not DHS-related but are also not hobbyist drones.
"The message conveyed was that there is no credible threat, yet they are flying over critical infrastructure, and their point of origin and destination remain unidentified," he said in a statement. "They will eventually find out but for now, we don't know anything else."
New Jersey state Senator Holly Schepisi, who attended the same meeting, said it “actually made me feel less confident in our federal government's reaction to this issue rather than more. For the federal government to not dedicate every defense resource needed to identify the origin and purpose of these drones in the most densely populated state in the nation is inexplicable and completely unacceptable."
As Kirby seemingly brushed off concerns, telling reporters last Thursday that the drones are “manned aircraft” that are “being operated lawfully” analysts have been forced to carefully parse everything the Biden administration has said – and not said – about the intrusions.
The Biden administration’s nonchalant, almost cavalier, dismissals of the concerns about the unidentified drones remind us of someone who is in on a joke but doesn’t want to admit it.
We don’t buy Biden’s “we don’t know what they are, but they are no threat” claim. One key “tell” is the representation that the drones are “being operated lawfully” which suggests that the White House knows who is operating them but isn’t saying.
Why not?
Probably because it is the federal government itself that is operating the drones for ends that are either not “lawful” or are for purposes so frightening they can’t trust even their political allies, like the Governors and Senators of New Jersey and New York, to be briefed on them.
The Capitol Switchboard is (202-224-3121), we urge CHQ readers and friends to call their Senators and Representative TODAY to demand they obtain full transparency and accountability from the Biden administration -- tell them to ask the Joe Biden White House "what do they know and when did they know it" about the unidentified drones flying over America.
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