In Nevada and beyond, eyes are glued to the skies for mystery drones that have captured nationwide attention. For three weeks, waves of unknown objects said to be similar to drones, have emerged at night over highly populated areas and restricted airspace. No one knows who’s flying them or why it’s happening, and conflicting information is rampant.
Since late November, the barrage of drone fly-bys has been concentrated mainly on New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the U.S. and the origin of the alien invasion depicted in H.G. Wells’s classic War of the Worlds.
Differentiating between simple mere drones and something more mysterious is a task the U.S. government has been making difficult, blurring dividing lines in recent years. In July 2019, more than 100 unknown objects buzzed and swarmed ten U.S. Navy warships 100 miles off the Pacific coast. The objects were documented in multiple shapes and sizes on camera, radar, and thermal sensors, including huge wingless orbs with no detectable propulsion system.
The Pentagon said these were just drones. No biggie.
A few years earlier, when Navy pilots on the East Coast encountered unusual objects daily in their training ranges, the debunkers called them drones, balloons, or a combination of both.
Certainly not UFOs.
Recently, the military has used the general term “drones” to explain unknown objects, replacing swamp gas and weather balloons. In what might be the most ironic of the current sightings, intrusions by so-called drones shut down air traffic at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Wright-Patterson is where the wreckage from the 1947 Roswell incident was reportedly stored.
Nice touch, drone people.
“We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat,” John Kirby, White House national security communications advisor, said in a Dec. 10 news conference.
Several government officials have recently tried to quell public concerns, but the public isn’t buying it, and the mystery drones didn’t get the memo either. Social media platforms are jam-packed with cell phone videos of assorted lights and odd objects seen nightly in the skies over New Jersey and many other states, including Florida, Texas, California, and Oregon.
Most are likely the lights of airplanes, but some do resemble standard drones, albeit a few the size of a sports utility vehicle. They do not perform like known drones.
New Jersey officials have demanded briefings and say they were told the drones are not a threat, are not being flown by the U.S. government, and are not being flown by foreign adversaries.
By the way, the government cannot track them and doesn’t know where they originate or go each morning.
President-elect Donald Trump is among those who doubt the narrative.
“The government knows what is happening,” Trump told the media at a news conference on Monday. “Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. For some reason, they don’t want to comment.
Questions leading to the cynicism include why U.S. intelligence cannot track the objects. Two decades ago, when U.S. Navy pilots encountered the so-called “tic tac” object off of the Pacific coast, it was revealed that the Navy possessed sensors capable of tracking a golf ball from 100 miles. Two decades later, the same intelligence organizations are apparently unable to track drones the size of automobiles.
In the absence of credible information, rumors have swirled. Maybe they’re from Russia, China, or an offshore Iranian mothership. Maybe it is a secret operation by the federal government to quietly track down a dirty bomb or nuclear materials smuggled into the country by terrorists. Officials have tried to quash such rumors, but their credibility has been impaired.
The public was told that there were no verified drone intrusions into restricted airspace over military bases before a statement released on Dec. 14 by multiple agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the U.S. military, admitted there had been intrusions by unknown drones over two New Jersey military sites. The statement also confirmed drone intrusions over a nuclear power plant and an incident in which mystery drones repeatedly flew into the highly restricted airspace over three critical air bases in the UK, set before the New Jersey incidents began.
Two reports of mystery drones entering the Nevada National Security Site, formerly the Nevada Test Site, are part of the ongoing tsunami of drone sightings.
So what gives?
