White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby listens to a question from a reporter on the mystery drones during a news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Dec. 12, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/TNS)
WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service) — The Pentagon has shipped anti-drone technology to an area of New Jersey located where sightings of mysterious aircraft have set residents on edge and drawn accusations that the federal government isn’t taking the incidents seriously.
The Defense Department provided equipment capable of detecting drones and disabling them, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said at a briefing on Thursday. He added that the equipment includes a system called DroneBuster, a hand-held jammer used by the Army and Marines.
“The majority of that capability has deployed, the rest should be arriving very shortly, if not imminently,” Ryder said. He had said earlier that much of the equipment would be sent to Picatinny Arsenal, a military research and production facility in Morris County.
Ryder has said the government had no involvement in the drone flights, which have confounded officials in New York and New Jersey and prompted arguments that the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough or taking the matter seriously. Most of the aircraft, he has said, are most likely commercial or hobbyist drones. On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned drone flights over nearly two dozen areas of New Jersey.
The reports reports include nighttime sightings of drones as large as 6 feet in diameter that “operate in a coordinated manner” and travel with their lights switched off, Dawn Fantasia, a New Jersey assemblywoman, posted to X last week after being briefed by local law enforcement.
Witnesses have said they’ve seen several low-hanging drones at once in the night sky, some of which hover in one spot.
President-elect Donald Trump has called for the government to provide answers or shoot the drones down. He’s said, without citing evidence, that the American military knew where the devices originated.
More than 1 million drones are registered to fly in the U.S., with around 8,500 in flight on any given day, a vast majority of which are recreational or hobbyist used for architectural, engineering, farming or law enforcement purposes, according to Ryder.
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