The New Jersey Drone Fiasco

The combination of advanced drone technology and mass hysteria has proven to be an interesting mixture.

I have been following the drone incursions since 2018 when the Gatwick Airport drone incident occurred, which turned out to be rather elusive and extremely effective when it comes to disrupting the successful flow of civilian infrastructure and mobility. Because I’ve always been a UFO guy and more generally a nerd for mysterious phenomena of all kinds, I was interested in this story because of the difficulty that law enforcement and the military had trying to locate, identify, and apprehend the people behind the drones. Actually, to this day the operators of the drones over Gatwick remain unidentified.

However, that incident was an omen of sorts: all one had to do to disrupt the second largest airport in the U.K. and disrupt the travel of tens of thousands of people was to simply put a drone in the sky, and that’s it. In an age of asymmetric and hybrid warfare, incidents like this was the writing on the wall of what was to come.

A bit over one year later, throughout December 2019 and January 2020, more mystery drones appeared over Colorado and Nebraska. This time, though, the drones were much larger, and were said to have come in numbers.

Throughout those months, residents of northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska began reporting fleets of mysterious drones flying in precise grid formations at night. They were described as large, with six-foot wingspans and blinking lights. Witnesses also described them as moving silently in groups of up to 19, flying similarly to how LIDAR scanning aircrafts might fly. The drones were said to hover or fly at altitudes between 200 and 500 feet. At first, local sheriffs dismissed the idea that hobbyists could be responsible, citing the advanced coordination of the flights. In January 2020, the FAA, FBI, and U.S. Air Force joined the investigation and held a major interagency meeting to search for any clues that may shed some light on who was operating the drones.

Despite deploying surveillance aircraft, authorities were unable to identify the drones’ operators. By the end of January, sightings tapered off, and officials attributed the incidents to misidentified stars, planets, commercial aircraft, or small hobbyist drones. Naturally, that conclusion failed to convince many who witnessed the deliberate and highly organized maneuvers firsthand.

There have been hundreds of drone incursions on a much smaller scale throughout the years spanning 2014-present, and most of them we never hear about. This is because, in almost all of those cases, the operators of the drones are swiftly identified and apprehended. With the Gatwick and Colorado/Nebraska drones, however, those garnered much more attention given the mystery around their origins, and the significant disruptions they caused (especially with Gatwick).

The drone threat would only escalate from this point on, because the problem would soon become larger in scope and begin directly affecting restricted military airspaces on U.S. military bases both at home and abroad.

In December 2023, Langley Air Force Base in Virginia were visited by several drones in a swarm over the course of two weeks maneuvering near the base’s perimeter. Witnesses describe the drones as flying in coordinated formations at low altitudes, sometimes synchronizing their movements, and other times flying independently of one another. Given the sensitivity of the facility, a full scale investigation was launched. Like the Gatwick and Colorado/Nebraska, however, attempts to identify and intercept the drones—and their operators—were unsuccessful. It has been one year since that incident, and those operators still remain a mystery. In fact, it wasn’t until a few months ago that any mainstream outlet even touched that story, despite the vast implications it had for U.S. National Security.

You can watch the raw footage of the Langley AFB drone incident below (skip to 6:00). The footage was recorded by a local resident that was out fishing when he suddenly noticed a swarm of drones flying over him and into the restricted airspace above the base. This video is particularly ominous, especially when the cameraman zooms out to reveal just how many of them are able to hang up there over such a sensitive site with ease.

Like the previous cases, efforts were made to identify the operators, and those failed, as I just stated. What I find most interesting about the Langley case, though, is that repeated attempts to identify them also failed, despite the fact that the swarms were happening over a period of two weeks. In other words, the U.S. Air Force was apparently unable to neutralize these drones or prevent them from flying over their base not just once, but repeatedly—nearly ever night—for 14 days.

To the reasonable person that is even casually familiar with drone technology, the military’s inability to hone in on their origin doesn’t make sense. Drones have a limited battery life, and they also have a max distance they can be away from the operators remotely controlling them. For consumer drones that anybody can buy, that distance ceiling is far less than military drone hardware. Still, though, they had to be launching and returning to and from somewhere, and one would imagine that all it would take is a U.S. aircraft being sent up to simply follow the drones back to wherever they’re coming from. Instead, what we got with Langley was this weird struggle to do any of that. Even more intriguing is the fact that the base had to call in a specialized NASA plane used for certain types of surveillance to assist on the case.

Then, one year later, U.S. Air Force Bases located in the U.K.—RAF Lakenheath, nearby RAF Mildenhall, and others—were targeted by a series of drone incursions once again. This past November, over the course of Thanksgiving week, military personnel and witnesses reported drones operating within restricted airspace, flying unusually close to runways and critical infrastructure. Observers noted the drones exhibited advanced maneuvering capabilities, hovering and darting in erratic patterns before vanishing into the darkness, making detection and interception efforts difficult. Security protocols were immediately tightened, and British and American officials launched joint investigations, but once again, no definitive source or operator was identified.

Things with the Lakenheath incident get even more mysterious, though.

An aviation enthusiast and plane watcher from the area, a channel called Liberty Wings U.K., was among the first to get high definition footage of these drones, as he was usually out in that area filming military air traffic as it arrives and departs at the various bases. What was unique about this incident and did not happen for any of the previous incidents, however, was the fact that he live streamed the entire event night after night as the incursions unfolded. He also played military comms over the live stream as well.

In one of the streams, personnel on the base could be heard saying that “multiple UAVs were seen taking off from the fields to the North”. Despite this information, and despite the repeated nightly visitations, the military was unable to identify the identities of the operators or where they were even coming from. It wasn’t for lack of trying, either; I spent that entire week obsessively watching them send up fighter jets and surveillance aircraft on the flight radar. The aircrafts I was watching on the radar at home here in New York were visible on the livestream of Liberty Wing's, and also footage taken by residents that live in the area. These videos showed the drones clearly engaging in evasive maneuvers, while the same aircrafts I was watching on radar circled above. Fighter jets dispatched to intercept and follow them flew with extinguished lights, which was unusual.

In one of the live streams, Liberty Wings was accosted by security personnel from the base, and the stream abruptly ends. Shortly after that, his entire channel disappears from Youtube, and his Gmail accounts allegedly become compromised.

Now, just one month later, we have the New Jersey drones. And what a mess that story is.

The New Jersey Drones

About two weeks ago, New Jersey residents began to report very large drones flying at low altitudes over the densely populated state. They were described as being the size of cars, and they apparently fly in packs, similar to the Colorado/Nebraska mystery drones. This case also resembles the Colorado and Nebraska flap in that the drones being seen in New Jersey are apparently fixed-wing aircraft, and resemble conventional flight traffic.

This is where things get messy, though.

Unlike all of the previous cases, this story had a fire lit under its ass. In just a few days, the story has become a nationwide headline, dominating the news cycle and resulting in major investigations across the entire spectrum of Government, Military, and commercial aviation. The FBI is involved, the FAA has made statements, local and state police have put out bulletins about the drones, the Department of Homeland Security is in the mix. Guidelines have been released on how to properly report them, and what not to do should one of them fall out of the sky. Some officials are advising residents not to approach any downed drone without a hazmat suit. Fear and anxiety is growing, and the anger among local and state representatives is growing day by day as they are consistently told by the Pentagon that they have no information to provide about the drones, don’t know whose they are, but are not a threat.

Obviously, that’s a bullshit statement. If you do not know what something is or where it comes from, especially drones the size of freakin’ SUVs flying in packs above densely populated areas at low altitude, then it is impossible to say for certain that they pose no threat.

Cleary, somebody knows more than what’s currently being reported.

Here’s the thing though: this story has grown so massive that it appears that hysteria has now taken the wheel. While I have seen compelling footage of the supposed drones in New Jersey (and I do believe there are some drones over the state, or were at some time), the footage that comes to dominate social media and capturing widespread attention through mainstream media outlets have turned out to be, more often then not, videos of conventional air traffic.

This whole thing has turned into a fucking circus, with the entire narrative around the mystery composed of misidentification after misidentification, which then gains traction online, and then becomes the new (false) “face” of the phenomenon.

A few nights ago, the police were dispatched to Round Valley Reservoir after somebody reported a drone falling out of the sky and landing in the woods in the area. A police helicopter promptly showed up and did circles over the area for close to an hour, spotlight and all. I watched it unfold on the radar. Shortly after this incident, I logged on to Reddit and X for updates, and I see videos of the fucking helicopter circulating as if it’s footage of a drone.

I feel like I’m losing my mind.

As the misidentification videos became more and more prevalent, rather than those debunked video clips contributing to the neutralization of the story (and thus the panic and anxiety around it), it has had the opposite effect: government officials have simply seized upon these videos to escalate the narrative around their potential danger further. It’s disorienting, and the noise has grown to such a point where it’s almost impossible to even remember what sighting or video even sparked this fiasco to begin with.

Right now, the theories that currently dominate social media and Reddit are as follows:

1. The drones are ours, and they’re looking for something

   1. Nuclear bomb, dirty bomb, biological weapon, stuff like that

2. The drones are ours, and they’re engaged in an exercise that is classified

3. The drones are actually Aliens, engaging in “mimicry” to take the form of conventional aircrafts

4. The entire thing is a product of mass hysteria

5. The drones are coming from over the ocean and are deployed by an Iranian mothership that releases them (although the Pentagon quickly clarified that there is no substance to those claims)

6. The drones are from an adversary like China

7. The drones are a fabricated crisis to pass through a piece of anti-drone/UAS legislation that was put forth in June 2024, and expires on December 20th, 2024

As it stands right now, I personally believe the answer to this is a mixture of #7 and #4. I believe what we’re seeing here is a fabricated crisis designed to speedrun anti-UAS legislation, and leap over the bureaucratic hurdles that would ordinarily take forever to transcend under normal circumstances (where our skies aren’t allegedly filled with unknown car-sized drones flying in packs at low altitudes). I believe that hysteria has largely taken over, and officials in the government and the military are jumping onto the hype regardless of the misidentifications and hysteria for this purpose, and to also appear in a favorable light to their constituents. They may believe (or even know) that much of this is bullshit, but they’re forced to act on their fears because the optics of not doing so would be devastating to them.

I came up with this theory quite awhile ago, shortly after the sightings first began. This was before I even realized that there was anti-UAS legislation that was put forth mere months before the drone incidents over Lakenheath and New Jersey. In my opinion, the timing of this bill—the fact that it was put forth in June and expires five days from now—is too convenient to be ignored. Given how vulnerable our country truly is to drone incursions (as I reported in a previous article here on Substack), this makes complete sense to me.

However, how does one go about securing our airspace and providing anti-UAS capabilities to federal agencies nationwide without it taking several years to cut through the red tape and bureaucratic hurdles to get it done?

You fabricate a crisis, scare the pants off of everybody, and force-feed the unnerving reality of our vulnerability to every sitting government and military official, and thousands upon thousands of average citizens who have never looked up at the sky at all until now. You obscure your involvement in the activities, while simultaneously leveraging classic psyop and disinformation tactics online to construct a narrative around the reality of the drone presence, regardless of whether they are actually there or not. You make sure every single piece of footage goes viral, even if you know the video is a misidentification of standard aircrafts.

You conduct public hearings to discuss the dangers of drones and how vulnerable we are to them. You talk about the yearly budget that is allotted to agencies like the FBI, and how their current anti-UAS budget is far too low to combat the new age of warfare we have entered. You increase their budget. You place new restrictions on all sorts of drone activity. New limitations are drawn out. New permissions are drafted and then required.

And all of it is done without shedding a single drop of blood, or perhaps even without a legitimate threat at all. Unlike 9/11, which was supposedly an event that “caught us off guard” and had the result of awakening us to the terror threat at home and abroad, this artificial crisis is victimless, but still achieves a similar degree of legislative changes as a result of it.

Think about how much of the heavy lifting our information ecosystem online did to perpetuating the Covid-19 pandemic. There’s a reason people joked about how the pandemic would disappear if people would simply turn their TVs off. Obviously that’s an overstatement because there truly was a virus going around, but by simply amplifying the digital presence of people who say it’s the worst thing in the world, you generate the fear and panic that’s required to push through whatever legislation or restrictions you want for whatever reason. Mandatory vaccinations, immunity passports, and so on.

Here's a link to the anti-UAS legislation I am talking about. It’s H.R.8610 - the “Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act”:

A few days ago, the Department of Justice published a report entitled “Safeguarding the Homeland from Unmanned Aerial Systems” which discussed the ongoing drone incursions over New Jersey, sharing their findings, their thoughts, and suggestions on how to handle these incursions in the future.

Here’s the report:

The key points of this report fit nearly every single dimension of the legislation I mentioned above, ranging from addressing current gaps in authority, proposing legislative expansion by empowering SLTT law enforcement (which authorizes state and local entities to use federally approved detection technologies and mitigation measures), extending federal protections (which enhances the protection of airports and critical infrastructure), and establishing streamlined coordination (improving inter-agency cooperation and mutual support).

However, the most curious part of the report is the excerpt below, which reads as follows:

“Best Case: Conceivably, this kind of depressing scenario can be avoided through a well-managed artificial crisis. Historical examples, such as the famous sinking of the Ostfriesland, show that it is sometimes possible to break entrenched paradigms by publicly demonstrating the current system’s vulnerabilities. When understood by the right audiences, these demonstrations can shift doctrine development and tactical training in new and constructive ways—preferably before the lessons are learned the hard way."

All of this makes too much sense for me to simply ignore.

Still, though, that doesn’t answer everything, and it still doesn’t get us closer to figuring out whether or not there truly are car-sized drones flying over New Jersey, or if this whole thing was a psyop designed to stimulate radical changes in anti-UAS capabilities through the sheer and panic that is generated as a result of the mere suggestion that such things are happening.

I still struggle with this theory a bit, though. For one, I don’t see why people are having such a difficult time envisioning such things happening, whether it by an adversary or the U.S. military/intelligence apparatus. They’re just drones, after all. Sure, it’s very unusual for secret drone technology to be flown over major cities in fleets, but at the end of the day, they’re still drones - it’s bound to happen eventually given the state of modern warfare. However, on the other hand, I can’t blame the people who are frothing at the mouth and calling the entire thing bullshit, and the product of mass hysteria. It’s not like we haven’t seen this level of hysteria before (see: Covid).

The question is this: are there drones, or aren’t there drones?

Like many things, I believe the answer could lie somewhere in the middle of those two options. If we are to go with my hypothesis as the most likely explanation, we could reasonably state that maybe there truly were drones at one time, but then the digital contagion aspect took the wheel from there and did the work for them. Perhaps there was no need to continuously fly them over the state anymore being as people are apparently unable to tell the difference between Boeing airliners and large drones. If that’s true, those people were doing the legwork for them.

At the same time, there are trained observers, military men, and all sorts of people in positions of power and authority that have reported seeing them. For example, the Coast Guard ship that claimed to have been followed by multiple drones. Could they have possibly misidentified such things? My gut tells me no, they couldn’t. They more than likely experienced exactly what they said they experienced.

Something still doesn’t feel right about this theory for me, although it feels more right than any other theory floating around out there right now. The two aspects of this story that I’m stuck in that make me think there really are drones being flown over NJ are:

1. The drone incidents at Gatwick, Langley AFB, RAF Lakenheath (and 4 other bases in the vicinity), Colorado/Nebraska Mystery Drones, etc - there is historical precedent for similar incidents, which bolsters the reality of physical drones flying over NJ

2. The fact that New Jersey residents, although not trained observers, know when there is an unusual amount of activity in the sky above the homes they’ve lived in forever

That is a sentiment I continue to see over and over again, and honestly, it’s compelling. I am not a trained observer, and am prone to misidentifications just like anybody else. However, even a mouth breathing sleepwalker would notice if they stepped outside and suddenly saw their skies lit up with the blinking lights of aircrafts that have never shown up in numbers like that before, or flown at such low altitudes above their homes. People who barely look at the sky would notice if there was suddenly a massive uptick in aerial activity above their towns.

And it is for that reason I remain open to the idea that there really are drones being flown over the state of New Jersey, and even tend to lean toward that being a definite. But as time goes on and more misidentifications gain virality, I begin to feel like I’m going crazy. Could we all have been duped into believing in something that really isn’t there at all? Could this be a well orchestrated psyop that relies on our inability to differentiate between drones and airplanes to succeed?

Regardless, I think that anti-UAS legislation has a major role in all of this.

The last thing I will say: I am profoundly disappointed in the UFO community and the truther community. This entire fiasco has been an embarrassing display of incompetence when it comes to the simple ability to identify planes in the sky. There is not much required to figure out what is flying above you. Minimal effort is needed, in fact. Still, everyday I see only the fucking SLOP make the headlines, verified RETARDS on X pushing a narrative for clicks, blatantly FAKE and CGI videos going viral to widespread acclaim, enthusiastically lopped up by people who claim to know much about the hidden machinations of the supposed Deep State, but literally cannot identify an airplane. It’s pathetic, quite frankly.

As time goes on, I feel like we lost the battle for the minds of the masses. The people involved in the various “truther” movements of today, whether it be those in the UFO community or those in the broader conspiracy community, have demonstrated an embarrassing inability to achieve the most basic of things. It is for that reason that I continue to drift away from this work, as much as I don’t want to. The fact of the matter is things are different now then they were between 2016-2019. Nobody gives a shit about genuine fact-based research. Everybody is happy with falling for AI-generated slop. They’re happy with sharing videos of planes as long as it gets them clicks, and those that view the videos with glee are happy to consume such media and share it out to their followers without a single instance of fact checking any of it.

I always looked forward to the day when a community such as the UFO community would take centers stage in some widespread aerial event such as this. But now it has become clear that they are not capable of handling it reasonably. The rational and reasonable people who share their thoughts barely get noticed, and get algorithmically shuffled to the bottom of the pile, as usual. Only the most extreme and attention-grabbing theories prevail.

Those of us that dedicate their lives to objective research and fact-based analysis are, once again, rendered invisible as the world moves on, content in the illusion they helped construct.