Name: Drone expert explains what he thinks is behind drone sightings
Uploaded: 2026-01-17T01:04:57.000Z
Duration: 10 min 22 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Today, people in the New York metro area are reporting a growing number of drone sightings in their communities following a wave of mysterious drone appearances in the skies over New Jersey.

This is sparking significant concern among residents and local and state leaders.

The White House and the FBI says there is no evidence that the drones pose a national security threat or have a foreign connection, but

So so far, there are no explanations as to what they are, where they're coming from, or who is launching them.

For weeks now, the drones have been spotted over homes, critical infrastructure, and sensitive government sites.

Today, frustrated lawmakers have gone from asking questions to demanding answers.

New Jersey can't become the Wild west of drone activity.

No state can become the Wild west of drone activity.

I've made this very clear to the FBI, to Homeland Security and the faa, the agencies chiefly responsible for monitoring drone activity.

They must immediately disclose more information to the public.

It's totally and completely unacceptable that you have all this drone activity going on that people are seeing with their own eyes.

The fact that the federal agencies responsible for briefing the public have not come forward in a clear way is unacceptable.

There has to be some explanation to the public for all this increased activity, and

Let's discuss these mysterious drones with former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Tom Adams.

He actually helped Pioneer the FBI's counter drone program, used to respond to threats from unmanned aircraft.

Thank you so much for being with us, Tom.

First off, what do you think is behind these drones?

Do you think it's more likely to be some kind of concerted surveillance effort, an issue of misidentification or copycats?

I think we're looking at a few different things.

First, I do believe that there are probably some legitimate visual drone sightings by alert residents and law enforcement in New Jersey.

Now, what these drones may be doing, if they're nefarious or not, we don't know they are or not, following FAA rules and regulations, that's up for debate.

I think we're probably seeing some copycat drones flying up in the air with all the media attention.

And I do also agree with the DOJ or the FBI and DHS assessment that some of these blinking lights in the sky are actually crude aircraft that are navigating the airspace.

During many operations that I was involved with, as well as investigations into suspected drone sightings and critical infrastructure, it was common for things like planets Believe it or not, low Earth orbit satellites and crewed aircraft to sometimes be misidentified.

But I think the big point here that we're seeing is that the vulnerability is being demonstrated that current federal laws and regulations really limit the types of tools and technologies that owners and operators of critical infrastructure can deploy, as well as state and local law enforcement.

So we haven't had any meaningful counter UAS legislation since 2018.

So I think we're well past due for lawmakers in Congress to get to work and to shore up some of those vulnerabilities that we have.

first, I'm curious about how officials can make the determination that there isn't a public safety threat if they don't actually know whether some of these drones may be nefarious or not or conducting nefarious activity.

So you can't look at a drone or a blinking light in the sky and really determine whether it is or is not a threat.

I think that some of these suspected sightings, when you look at some of the videos, they look like smaller drones or they potentially look like crewed aircraft that may be landing at nearby airports mean that that area and corridor of the east coast is full of aircraft flying up and down the east coast to major airports into Europe and beyond.

So, you know, aside from any specific threat information or specific identification of drones or where they may be coming from, I don't think you can really say that they're a threat.

So I think there's still a lot of information gathering to be done so we can get some definitive answers.

So talk to us about these federal laws and regulations that are currently in place that make it more difficult, that hamper efforts to figure out what this is or what specifically do you think needs to change?

Well, there's a couple big things that need to change.

There's a Senate bill that came out a couple of years ago, Senate Bill 1631, and

It was based on the Biden National Action plan for Canada.

There's two big things that I think can really impact this is.

One is that owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as well as public safety agencies, should be able to start to use a wide variety of drone detection technologies, including some RF detection technologies that would otherwise be illegal for them to use, so that they can gather relevant information from those signals to determine where the pilot is, where the drone is, drone telemetry information, things like that.

The other piece that needs to happen is right now state and local law enforcement don't have any authorities when appropriate.

And you know, to use they don't have any ability to use any drone defeat technologies.

And, you know, the DHS and DOJ have been deploying these types of technologies hundreds of times since 2018 very successfully.

So it's time to start evolving our laws so that we can successfully protect our critical infrastructure.

So I just want to clarify a point you just made.

Would you say that you agree with Congressman Gottheimer, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, the soundbite that we just played.

He was on CNN this morning talking about local officials being given the authority in certain circumstances to shoot drones out of the sky.

Well, right now, current federal law, and

when I'm speaking of current federal law, I'm speaking of the Preventing Emerging Threats act of 2018.

That law specifically does not provide DOJ or DHS the authority to delegate that authority to any other entity.

So right now, current federal laws are really handcuffing our federal agencies.

So that's why we really need to expand our laws to allow for this type of activity under the right supervision and training.

Tom Adams, we have to leave the conversation there.

Joining us now is CNN Chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller.

So look, obviously we don't have exact confirmation on where these things are coming from.

I just wonder what your take is on what we're seeing right now and sort of how people should be approaching what we're seeing.

Well, it's a bit of a mystery in that it has been remarkably persistent, meaning authorities in New Jersey tell me that they have had reports and sightings every single night except Thanksgiving, which is interesting.

But the possibilities are foreign actors gathering intelligence possibly on military locations.

If you recall, you know, almost two years ago, we had that Chinese military balloon that crossed across the United States with camera equipment and high resolution equipment on board.

Could it be drone enthusiasts who are playing some kind of aerial game?

Could it be US Government doing a Red Team exercise against air bases to test their response to drone incursions?

Right now what the White House is saying is that they have no evidence to believe it's a threat to public safety or aviation, no evidence to say that it is foreign, but

And I think that gap is what's left people a little bit concerned over what's going on.

And there is a military installation in the area, Picatinny Arsenal in northern New Jersey.

And I talked to one of their people yesterday, and

they told me they had sightings, confirmed sighting, as they described it, back on November 13th.

Are you surprised that either the government at the state level, local or even federal, hasn't come out with a reason as to why these drone sightings are happening?

We had a very similar set of incidents late in 2023 that the government acknowledged only in 2024 down around Norfolk, Virginia, over the.

coincidentally, yesterday the Justice Department announced federal charges against a Chinese national who was arrested in Santa Barbara county for launching a drone over a space force base which was taking pictures.

And in their search warrants, they found out he had been researching the base and researching the rules and talking to other people about could he jailbreak the drone to make it fly higher and be less detectable as it went over the base.

So, you know, we know that there are people who do surveillance on military locations.

We also know that there are drone enthusiasts who fly all over the place.

You've got 110 mayors in New Jersey and a lot of people who have sightings.