John Kirby grilled on mysterious New Jersey drone sightings: 'Why don't we know?'
White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby maintained that the government still lacks definitive answers regarding the nature of reported drone sightings as public frustration intensifies.
"Many of the corroborated sightings have turned out to be piloted aircraft. I didn't say all of them, and what I said was those are the ones we were able to corroborate," Kirby said on "The Story." "There certainly is ones that we have not been able to, and we don't know the answer to it, and I strongly recommend that for folks that are seeing these things and documenting them to share that as they can with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI."
In a Wednesday letter to Biden, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy asked the president for more federal resources to address drone sightings, noting that the federal law limits the ability of state and local law enforcement to counter drones.
"… it has become apparent that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity," Murphy wrote. "The continued reporting of UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) activity has raised more questions than answers and prompted an outcropping of conspiracy theories across social media and other platforms."
Kirby addressed the possibility that the reported drone sightings could be linked to a private company, saying that they "could very well be" commercially developed drones of some kind.
"Why don't we know? I wish I could tell you exactly why we don't have an answer for you here in the afternoon on the 13th of December," Kirby said. "But I can tell you that we are working on it very, very hard to know, because we want to answer those questions the same as those folks in New Jersey want answers to them."
Kirby disclosed that there was an inter-agency conversation Friday morning about the topic.
"We have now decided to employ some additional technology to New Jersey and some additional personnel to try to get a better sense of what these things are," he said.
Monmouth County, N.J., Sheriff Shaun Golden urged officials to declare a state of emergency over the drone sightings, issuing a statement Wednesday evening. The release included a heat map showing the density of drones spotted across his county:
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Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., whose district includes parts of Monmouth and Ocean Counties, recounted spending Monday night on a beach where he spoke with several individuals, including a U.S. Coast Guard commanding officer stationed in Barnegat Light.
According to the commander, he said, a 47-foot Coast Guard vessel had been closely followed by more than a dozen drones the previous night.
Monmouth and Burlington Counties are home to several military installations, including Naval Weapons Station Earle in Colts Neck and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
On Thursday, Middletown, N.J., Mayor Tony Perry expressed his "concerns" to Fox News regarding the drone sightings near Naval Weapons Station Earle's waterfront site in his town, 14 miles north of the Colts Neck installation.
"I'm not going to lie to you or to the American people, and I'm not going to say we know something when we don't," Kirby said. "We would never, ever stoop to think that an American citizen was crazy or nuts because of what they're seeing and what they're documenting. We're taking that imagery seriously, and we're doing the best we can to analyze it, and we encourage people to come forward if they have additional sightings and imagery."