It’s a mystery that has captured the nightly attention of our neighbors and pumped the 24/7 news cycle with speculation and few real answers. Residents have reported dozens of mysterious aircraft sightings in the skies above New Jersey for weeks. The images have fueled social-media hysteria. Is the Garden State the battleground for the War of the Worlds, or is this the latest in a long line of New Jersey lore?
The federal government’s delayed reaction has created a crisis of confidence in an already cynical population and must be remedied by decisive action. Days after federal officials downplayed reports about the mysterious nighttime drone sightings, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed in an interview with ABC News that at least some of the sightings are real drones. The U.S. government is taking action, he said. In a letter to the Biden administration, Gov. Phil Murphy asked for more resources for the investigation. He wrote that members of state and local law enforcement are “hamstrung” by existing laws and policies in their efforts to counteract the nefarious activity of unmanned aircraft successfully.
The endless stream of misinformation is drowning out what little we do know. Lawmakers aren’t helping us determine fact from fiction. When a New Jersey congressman told Fox News that the squadrons of drones were launched from an Iranian “mother ship” operating off the East Coast, citing confidential information from “high sources,” he wasn’t fact-checked. (My high sources tell me it’s Santa Claus testing new delivery techniques.) The public must shoot down, so to speak, the conspiracy theories and misinformation being fed to us by politicians in the media and reverberating in an endless stream of social media echo chambers. We need answers, yes. And we also need common sense. Misinformation is a recurring feature in American life, and we must do all we can to combat it.
John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, told reporters last week that some of the ominous lights in the night sky are manned aircraft being operated lawfully and that there is no evidence that the flying objects pose a national security or public safety threat. But the federal government must work harder, deploy more resources, and stop brushing off claims that the drone mystery is just that.
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Whatever legitimate explanation is to come, we need to trust the institutions created with their unique expertise. Invariably, if the answer is something less than sensational speculation, the truth will be ignored, and the misinformation will continue. That is genuinely dangerous. Facts have to matter and must be the basis of the truths we are entitled to know.
State Sen. John McKeon, a Democrat, represents New Jersey’s 27th Legislative District.
