Ground observers across an increasing number of U.S. states are reporting aircraft in the sky that appear to be unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or drones, leaving the public on edge.
With no definitive answers available, aviation experts—perplexed by the federal government’s limited response—suggest multiple origins for the unidentified aircraft.
During weeks of sightings pooling out of states such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, California, Ohio, and Utah, some observers reported seeing aircraft as large as SUVs.
Now, state and local officials are demanding answers from Washington.
These reports consist of a “combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones” with nothing yet identified as anomalous, the government wrote, denying any national security or public safety risk.
The Epoch Times reached out to commercial pilots, aviation safety experts, and a leading counter-UAS company, who said that not only do these purported drones present a serious public safety and national security risk, but also, they may be privately owned, U.S. military assets, or weapons of foreign adversaries.
Shawn Pruchnicki, an aviation safety expert and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Center for Aviation Studies, told The Epoch Times that until one of the aerial objects is brought down and further analyzed, no one can be sure whether all sightings are of actual drones or UAS and not other unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).
“I think one of the problems is that individuals, the government ... the way the media is talking, is they’re already being labeled as drones. The term drones is a specific description of a certain type of vehicle, and that already is an explanation,” Pruchnicki said.
“Technically, they’re UAPs. We don’t know what they are.”
Although the FBI and FAA never identified who was operating those aircraft, the federal government suggested that the reports could be attributed to hobby drones and misidentified planets and stars.
There was also reportedly an unidentified drone incursion in the restricted airspace around Langley Air Force Base in Virginia throughout several nights in 2023.
The aircraft flew in formation and included fixed-wing drones and quadcopters.
The alleged incident took place on Nov. 30, and federal agents found several aerial photographs of the base after searching Zhou’s drone.
That amounts to roughly 1,000 daily.
“I think the real overarching hidden message here is it’s happening every single day, and not just three or four a day, but over 1,000 a day,” Smulders said.
Drones Flouting FAA Regulations
More than 700,000 of the year-to-date drone violations tracked by Dedrone involved drones flying at elevations higher than 400 feet, which is a violation of FAA regulations.
“Many of these drone sightings ... appear to be these larger drones operating autonomously. So they are not working within line of sight. They are instead following a pre-programmed GPS flight plan,” Juan Browne, a commercial pilot for one of the major U.S. airlines, told The Epoch Times.
“That’s not legal. ... unless somebody knows about it and has approved it.”
Browne explained that larger drones are usually “too big and too expensive” to be hobbyist drones and are rated as commercial aircraft, which are sometimes used in the agricultural industry or for carrying Hollywood-style cameras.
The purported drones flying near and around airports in the northeast are flouting FAA regulations.
Generally, any drones that are required to be registered, “including those flown for recreation, business, or public safety,” must use remote ID unless explicitly flown within line of sight of the operator in a special FAA-Recognized Identification Area (FRIA).
FRIAs are defined geographical areas where drones without remote ID can be flown legally.
One pilot for a commercial airline who asked to remain anonymous told The Epoch Times that if Air Traffic Control (ATC) can’t track or locate these drone operators, they’re likely defying the FAA’s remote ID rules.
“[Remote ID] is a way of telling air traffic control and other aircraft that you’re out there. ‘I’m at this altitude for collision avoidance purposes.’ Clearly, that’s not being complied with because ATC doesn’t know anything about it,” he said.
“So if you have large drones in airspace that they shouldn’t be in, and ATC doesn’t know about it, it’s an illegal operation.”
However, remote ID does not always work so easily, according to Browne.
“Remote ID is kind of in its infancy, and it’s only working with a Wi-Fi connection between the drone and a cellphone [or Bluetooth],” he said, adding that it’s not always easy for ATC to capture those data since it’s within “very short range communication with the cell phone of the drone operator.”
Smulders said that another issue with remote ID, which went into effect in early 2024, is that according to FAA documentation there is still low compliance with it.
“We haven’t really given law enforcement the ability or the tools to enforce it, so nothing’s really happening,” she said.
When asked whether it knew of any confirmed drone reports in which the observed aircraft were breaking FAA regulations, the agency said it “continues to monitor reported UAS sightings across the Northeast” and that it “has not received an increase in reports from pilots or airports.”
An FAA spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the agency’s role is to “ensure drones operate safely within the broader National Airspace System.”
“Generally speaking, it is legal to fly a drone in most locations if you’re operating under 400 feet, but there are rules—including safety tests, keeping below 400 feet, keeping the drone in sight, avoiding all other aircraft, not causing a hazard to any people or property, and avoiding restricted airspace,” the spokesperson said.
“The FAA continues to support security partners regarding the reported drone sightings.”
Serious Safety Risks
While the federal government has thus far downplayed any national security or public safety risks, aviation experts say any unauthorized drone usage poses serious threats.“I don’t care if it comes from Toys ‘R’ Us, it’s got to be licensed, because they can be used as terror weapons,” Michael Boyd, president and CEO of Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting and research firm, told The Epoch Times.
Even the smallest and most affordable drones can cause serious catastrophes in large public gatherings, Smulders said.
Professional football games often have a temporary flight restriction and an installed Dedrone, which warns security whenever an unauthorized drone comes into the “warning zone,” or whatever the team has designated as its buffer zone for drones.
Once an incursion is detected, an alert describes the drone as either a “friend,” such as a preapproved broadcast drone, or a “foe.”
The alert also includes the drone’s payload capacity, its range and speed, and the approximate location of its operator.
The most that law enforcement is legally allowed to do, according to Smulders, is tell the drone operator to bring the drone down and cease operations. Usually, the operator feigns ignorance and complies with the request.
But if an operator wanted to use the drone for terrorism purposes instead of filming bird’s-eye shots for a YouTube channel, the operator could cause serious damage with limited resources, she said.
Smulders said the fact that anyone can buy a drone anonymously for $500 and spend a small amount to modify it into a weapon has “completely democratized terrorism.”
“It’s so easy and so cheap, it’s shocking nothing has happened yet,” she said.
Browne cautioned that larger drones are concerning because they can carry a “fairly large payload,” which can be easily “turned into a nefarious activity.”
There are also collision hazards with other aircraft, especially commercial jets, according to the pilot who asked to remain anonymous.
Potential Explanations
Pilots and aviation experts are not convinced that the unidentified aircraft seen in the sky throughout a growing number of U.S. states are necessarily hobbyist drones, or otherwise those operated by private citizens, companies, or local law enforcement, as the federal government has suggested.The two dueling possibilities that the reported aircraft either are of foreign origin or are U.S. military assets are both becoming increasingly believable, the anonymous pilot said.
“A foreign adversary is obviously the most insidious. If there’s something like Iran or, one of our adversaries out there that’s possibly flying these drones in our airspace, that’s worrisome, especially if you think of the Chinese balloon,” he said, adding that foreign agents could be inside the country gathering information and sending it abroad.
He was referring to a high-altitude balloon originating in China that passed through North American airspace, including over parts of the United States.
“It could be a military operation, and I am leaning more toward that every day ... or ... it could be people out there just messing around, rather hobbyists,” the anonymous pilot said.
If all of the reported aircraft are civilian drones, that would be “one of the biggest running hoaxes to ever happen.”
“That stuff does happen, but this seems too widespread for that,” the anonymous pilot said.
The two possibilities that seem most likely to Boyd are foreign threats or a “rogue department in the Defense Department.”
“There have been various weaponry, fighters, and things like that, that they were flying for years testing before anybody even knew about them,” Boyd said. “The government is so big and so huge, anything is possible.”
The idea that the aircraft could be some form of U.S. military equipment is also the hypothesis that Capt. Richard J. Levy, a former American Airlines pilot and lead consultant at Aviation Expert Consulting, said he finds most credible.
The fact that the federal government is not denying the aircraft’s existence while it’s simultaneously telling the public not to fear them “makes you wonder if it’s the U.S. government ... testing new technology on drones,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The people within the government who have spoken ... not one person has voiced an opinion of fear or anxiety about it. So that is a red flag, in my opinion.”
If the aircraft were merely foreign assets, the government likely would have shot one down at this point, as they eventually did with the Chinese balloon, Levy said.
He said one possibility is the aircraft are a new type of drone intended to gather intelligence overseas on civilians in residential and suburban areas.
“It’s the information it’s getting, but not necessarily spying on the [U.S.] pedestrians and their own homes, but to be used in certain parts of the world to see what intelligence they can pick up from different [residential] areas,” Levy said.
He suggested that if that theory proves true, a possible whistleblower could step forward in the future.
Although Browne said he is less convinced that the aircraft are U.S. military assets, because that testing is usually carried out within restricted airspace, he said many of his friends in the drone community are worried about the implications, especially if foreign actors are involved.
“What we’ve learned is how effective these drones are in Ukraine,” Browne said. “It’s [an effective] weapon in an asymmetric warfare situation, and the Ukrainians have proved that very successfully.”
“At this time, we have no evidence that these activities are coming from a foreign entity or the work of an adversary,” Singh said. “These are not U.S. military drones.”
“These are not military drones,” Ryder said. “And so far, we’ve seen nothing that would indicate malicious activity or a foreign nexus or anything that has operational impact on our ability to do our mission, nor physical threat to our personnel.”
‘Drones’ or UAP?
Another issue, according to Pruchnicki, is that there is no guarantee that all of the reported sightings are of drones or UAS.“I don’t think we should be calling them ‘drones,’ because that means we’ve already decided what they are, the discussion’s over, they’re drones, and it’s just the power of figuring out who owns them,” he said.
Pruchnicki, who serves on an aviation board that analyzes pilot UAP sightings in the sky, said some of the reports that he has seen are “truly baffling,” leading to a larger question about unexplained phenomena throughout U.S. airspace.
Many of these pilots describe repeatedly seeing the northern lights, decades-old rocket boosters finally making atmospheric reentry, and meteors so often that nothing in the sky appears unexplainable or novel.
In one report, however, the pilots described seeing two orange globes that were chasing each other as if on a racetrack before the two lights lined up and “zoomed off so fast it looked like Mach 25 or Mach 30,” Pruchnicki said, describing how the “globes” shot straight into the atmosphere such that they would be experiencing a G-force that no human could tolerate.
“There were a lot of reports like that we read where you’re just like, ‘That’s no rocket booster on re-entry, that’s no star.’ No, these are 18,000 pilots who have seen their share of really weird [expletive], and this is blowing them away.”
