Doing Nothing About Drones in Jersey
New Jersey doesn’t get much respect and, frankly, it doesn’t deserve much. The state consistently shows up in polls as one of the worst states to live in or retire to because of its high taxes, lousy roads, and hilariously inept government. So why is it worthwhile for some nation or group to harass its residents with drone flights?
President-elect Trump has said that these drones should be brought down. January 20th can’t come soon enough.
Because President-elect Trump has a golf club there? Or maybe because there are at least a couple of military bases there and possibly a couple of secret facilities?
We know far too little about the drones that have been flying over New Jersey at night since mid-November. Some are reportedly the size of an SUV and some are smaller. One congressman, Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), said that there was an Iranian “mother ship” off the coast of New Jersey from which the drones were flying. Van Drew’s statement was quickly — and specifically — denied by the Pentagon.
Other reports say that the drones are coming in from the sea, but none are of sufficient credibility to rely on.
Drone sightings aren’t limited to New Jersey. They have become common across the East Coast from Connecticut to Maryland. Some have been spotted in California.
The drone problem is multi-faceted and complex. Why not just shoot them down? Because the FAA’s regulations threaten fines and imprisonment for anyone shooting down a drone. So why doesn’t the military do it?
Why indeed?
The military could and should shoot a bunch of them down if they were over restricted or prohibited airspace such as airports or military bases. The drones could then be analyzed to determine where the drone operators are and what they’re trying to do.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that drones had prevented aircraft from taking off from Stewart Airport in the Hudson Valley. She also demanded that the Biden administration do something. Good luck with that.
Biden & Co. have made a political calculation to not interfere with the drones just like they didn’t interfere with the Chinese reconnaissance balloons that were allowed to take pictures and record radio traffic over military bases in 2023. Biden is still president — 37 more days to go before we get rid of Joe & Co. — and he and whoever is running the show want our country to be left defenseless. Do they know who is operating the drones and are afraid of “escalating” a conflict? It’s entirely possible, given the Biden regime’s history of failure.
We have to remember the Chinese reconnaissance balloons that few over the U.S. in 2023, spying on several military sites, and broadcasting the information they’d gathered before the Biden regime saw fit to shoot them down over the ocean after their successful spy mission. Is China or some other adversary operating the drones?
Worse still, there have been many reports of drones flying over top-secret military installations as far back as last year. Langley Air Force Base in Virginia is the home of Air Combat Command and half of the Air Force’s F-22 fifth-generation fighters. In December 2023, for more than two weeks, drones flew through prohibited airspace at Langley taking pictures and listening to radio transmissions. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: The President Isn’t Done With Pardons)
The Pentagon said that the drones showed no “hostile intent” so they were allowed to continue what they were doing. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
On Tuesday, the head of the FBI’s critical incident response group told a congressional committee that the FBI had no evidence of “nefarious motives” but said it couldn’t rule that out. How comforting.
New Jersey’s Democrat governor, Phil Murphy, said that the drones were “sophisticated” and “went dark” once detected. One report said one of the Jersey drones chased a Coast Guard cutter.
Belleville, New Jersey Mayor Michael Melham told CNN that the drones would not be taken down, according to the Coast Guard and New Jersey State Police, because of the fear of what is on them. If there’s a fear of what the drones contain, there must be more information on that subject but no one is sharing anything with the public.
Some of the drones reportedly fly in groups, perhaps exchanging information which more powerful drones can send to some controller in China, Iran, Russia, or North Korea.
On Thursday, two federal agencies — the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security — said that most of the New Jersey drone sightings were lawfully-flown manned aircraft. Most, not all.
Their statement said, “We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.” Maybe shooting down a bunch of them would give them a clue.
We know we’re being gaslighted because DHS Secretary Alejandro (the border is secure) Majorkas said on Friday that, “we have not seen anything unusual.”
From all this we have to conclude that the feds — the FBI, DHS, the FAA, and the Defense Department — don’t know who is flying the drones or what they’re up to and are trying hard to conceal it.
Are the Feds lying or incompetent? Are they lying to conceal their incompetence or are they incompetently lying? It’s typical Biden regime ineptness, and the Biden crew seems intent on not doing anything about the drone incursions whether at Langley AFB or over New Jersey. At this point, it’s anybody’s guess.
We know, for example, that among the two million “gotaways” — people who have evaded the Border Patrol while illegally immigrating into the U.S. — are thousands of Chinese citizens. Among them are certainly members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army or its Ministry of State Security. Others have come in through Border Patrol checkpoints. Lower numbers of Russians and other nationalities have come in as well.
Have the Chinese migrants — or the Russians or people from any of our other enemies — been building drones since they came here and using them now with the intent of providing reconnaissance information to hostile forces?
It’s complicated to bring down a drone without shooting it down. You can’t shoot them down over populated areas where they are flying because, obviously, people on the ground could be injured or killed. (READ MORE: Biden Is Trump-Proofing the World)
You can jam a drone’s signals, but that requires knowing what frequencies it is receiving on. Scanners can do that, but they need to be deployed when and where the drones are flying. The Israelis have a system to jam drone signals causing them to land or shooting them down with lasers. But the Biden crew doesn’t seem interested in obtaining those systems.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) reportedly received a classified briefing on them on Saturday. What did he learn that isn’t available to the public? Why make the briefing classified if there’s no threat?
America has a vital national security interest in protecting our people and our skies not only from dangerous drones but from spy drones as well.
President-elect Trump has said that these drones should be brought down. January 20th can’t come soon enough.
The post Doing Nothing About Drones in Jersey appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.