Military ‘frustrated’ with mysterious drone activity in New Jersey
The Defense Department doesn’t know who has been flying drones recently near its military installations in New Jersey, and the Pentagon is “frustrated” by this type of activity, according to a senior official.
In recent days and weeks, there have been thousands of reports and tips about drone sightings in New Jersey as well as other states. Law enforcement agencies have been investigating the reports. In many cases officials believe that manned aircraft were misidentified as unmanned aerial systems. However, there have been instances of mysterious drone activity over New Jersey, including recently at two U.S. military facilities, federal officials told reporters during a background call Saturday afternoon.
“We have had confirmed sightings at Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle,” a Defense Department official said on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the organizers of the briefing.
“They’re all visual, but they are by our highly trained security personnel. This is not a new issue for us. We’ve, you know, had to deal with drone incursions over our bases for quite a time now. It’s something that we routinely respond to in each and every case. When reporting is cited, we have electronic means to detect and respond, and we train our security personnel to identify, categorize and then employ their equipment to deny the drone use over our bases,” the official said. “In December, we have had sightings over Picatinny and Naval Weapons Station Earle.”
The official did not disclose what specific equipment was employed in these cases or the results of the actions.
On Thursday, a public affairs official at Naval Weapons Station Earle told DefenseScoop that certain personnel based at the Naval weapons hub remain “prepared to respond to any potential risks, leveraging robust security measures and advanced detection capabilities.”
During Saturday’s call, the Defense Department official said the U.S. military wasn’t sure who the drone operators were or what their intent was.
“To date, we have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent. But I just got to simply tell you we don’t know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or the points of origin. We have very limited authorities when it comes to moving off base. We have to coordinate with local and as well as federal law enforcement to try and locate these persons and where they’re launching from to either cite them or, you know, execute law enforcement activities that we, you know, we are restricted from doing off base. So we simply don’t know,” the official told reporters.
The Defense Department is “significantly restricted” from conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities in the United States, they noted.
“So we don’t have the same capabilities and the same methods that we would employ in other locations outside of the homeland to determine points of origin and identify very quickly where these operators are located, and then respond to that location. We just can’t do that here in the homeland. We have to coordinate with law enforcement to try to do that, which we are doing. And we do that on a routine basis at nearly all of our locations. We have good relationships and excellent coordination, and we respond quickly to try to identify them. But the main point is to deter the activity using some of our electronic means that can respond to most of these small commercial systems and deny them access to the airspace over our bases,” the official said.
They reiterated that defense officials don’t know if the operators of the drones that appeared at the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle earlier this month had malicious or criminal intent.
“But I will tell you that it is irresponsible. And you know, here on the military side, we are just as frustrated with, you know, with the irresponsible nature of this activity,” the official said.
