Donald Trump is having fun with drones: A joint statement from the Pentagon, the Homeland Security, and the FBI warned about the growing threat of weaponized drones
In August, the DHS warned that US cities were woefully underprepared for the rising threat of weaponized drones. According to a memo, the capabilities of UAS are growing more quickly than the anti-countermeasures offered by a federal framework.
The memo, first obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security, was circulated roughly three months before the recent flurry of alleged drone sightings along the East Coast—growing national interest in which has been driven in part by the government’s own nebulous response.
The memo states that violent extremists in the US are increasingly searching for ways to modify “off-the-shelf” drones to ferry dangerous payloads, including “explosives, conductive materials, and chemicals,” with major advancements in the area being propelled largely by rampant experimentation on foreign battlefields, including those in Ukraine.
You would expect that when you look at night in a dense area in the year 2024. The most boring answer is usually the one that’s most likely to be right.
The FBI, Pentagon, Homeland Security, and FAA released a joint statement yesterday that essentially throws a bucket of cold water on all the speculation. Their assessment: “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.”
First, he said he was canceling his trip to his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, because drones were spotted there. (The Federal Aviation Administration had already issued temporary flight restrictions prohibiting drone flights over Bedminster as well as above the Picatinny Arsenal, a military installation.) He claimed, without evidence, that the military knew where the drones “took off from.” He urged people to shoot them down.
President-elect Donald Trump is having fun with drones, which doesn’t feel like a good thing. Donald Trump is in a bad mood when he spouts off nonsense about something which nobody can agree on, like he did with ex-NJ Governor Chris Christie.
The New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: politicians wrong. The NY DVR is a real country, not Iran
First of all, Melham’s not technically wrong. Some radioactive material went missing in a recent alert according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is missing some important context when it comes to the material, which is cancer screening equipment used in the calibration of the Positivity Emission Tomography Scans. And the amount in question was “unlikely to cause permanent injury.” Not exactly the nuclear codes!
Melham thought about what they might be looking for. “Well, potentially, we’re aware of a threat that came into Port Newark. Maybe that’s radioactive material. There was, and there is, an alert that’s out right now that radioactive material in New Jersey has gone missing, on December 2nd.”
The Pentagon denied this, but Van Drew doubled down, slamming defense department officials for treating us like we’re “stupid” and withholding information about the drones. And fearing that his fearmongering about Iran was insufficiently fearful, he broadened the scope to include “China” and “somebody else.”
Literally one day later, he walked the whole thing back in a tersely worded statement. (No Fox News appearances for embarrassing mea culpas, I guess.) He acknowledged that the Iranian mothership he previously said on national television was off the coast of the United States was actually — get this — still in Iran.
Source: The New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: no one knows anything
The New Jersey Drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: no one knows anything — the story of Andrew Cuomo
The hysteria surrounding drones has been great for politicians who like to get their hands dirty. If Andrew Cuomo was still in office, you would see him wearing a parka and headset operating radar equipment from a flight tower.
According to a community guidelines note appended to his followers, some of the lights Hogan spotted were just the constellation Orion. And the stars Sirius and Procyon. He got some fresh air.
Michael Melham wouldn’t let the opportunity pass him. As mayor of a relatively small New Jersey suburb (population approximately 35,000), he knew he needed to use his preciously allotted five minutes on Fox 5 to say something that was going to get him noticed and generate some content. He needed to up the stakes.
Source: The New Jersey drone hysteria exposes one salient truth: no one knows anything
The Real Deal: Jeff Van Drew and the U.S. drone problem: where are we going? How many Americans do we know? What are we supposed to know?
“I’m going to tell you the real deal. Iran launched a mothership that contains these drones,” Van Drew told Fox News. “It’s off the East Coast of the United States of America. They’ve launched drones.”
Jeff Van Drew is a member of Congress from New Jersey, where the bulk of the sightings have taken place. He’s also a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which entitles him to high-level security briefings. He should be aware of what is happening. He does not, as evidenced by his musings about the drones coming from an Iranian mothership anchored off the Jersey Shore.
Here are the best examples I could find of current and former elected leaders and government officials spouting utterly deranged nonsense about the drone sightings.
The people who have security clearance and subpoena power, the ones whose jobs are to give them access to all the technology and equipment, the ones who have access to them, are supposed to know things that the majority of us can’t. Actually, it’s worse than that: they think they know shit, and they are willing to confidently stand before the public and say as much, even when they actually don’t know shit.
No one is aware of anything. The cops don’t know anything. The feds sure don’t sound like they know anything. Everyone has a theory. Depending on where you fall on the DSM-5 spectrum for conspiracy-addled nonsense, they could be a few DJI Mavic enthusiasts having a laugh, a bunch of small planes, or a full-on alien invasion of our nation’s most consequential state.