Mystery Drone Sightings in the U.S. Northeast Spark Calls for Enhanced Detection Systems

Experts Urge Action to Close Gaps in Airspace Awareness and Empower Local Law Enforcement

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

With a swirl of media attention surrounding mysterious drone sightings in the skies above New Jersey and other states, experts in drone systems and counter-UAS technology are calling for greater use of drone-detection systems by civilian infrastructure owners. They also think that local law enforcement agencies should be given greater authority to detect drones flying where they shouldn’t be.

In an effort to calm public fears over the sightings, a group of federal agencies recently issued a joint statement, declaring weeks of investigations had failed to identify “anything anomalous” and said the suspected high level of drone activity in the skies over the Northeast U.S. does not appear to present a risk to national security or public safety risk.

“We assess that the sightings to date include 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,” said the joint statement put out by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Department of Defense (DoD).

Nevertheless, the series of reported incidents has pointed out a number of gaps in the ability of U.S. officials to rapidly identify unmanned aircraft and determine if they pose a threat, according to a number of experts who spoke with DroneLife.

David McGill, law enforcement director for SPS Aerial Remote Sensing, said the recent surge of reports of drone sightings near sensitive military sites and critical infrastructure exposes the vulnerability of such sites to drones operated by malicious actors.

“The time to act was long ago and, and I’m afraid that we’re not going to act until something happens. We’re starting to see that this thing in New Jersey is actually kind of opening people’s eyes to saying, ‘Hey, Wow! Are we prepared for it?’”

McGill, whose company specializes in developing command-and-control systems and detection software, said SPS Aerial Remote Sensing and other companies produce technology that would help the owners of critical sites identify drones flying in or near there airspace, but this technology is not yet widely in use.

“Let’s get our stuff together and let’s put some funding in, certainly in the big city areas in the United States, the high-density populations that may be at more risk for terrorism and nefarious actors,” he said.

Grant Jordan, CEO of Sky Safe, said the development of a more robust national airspace awareness system would have prevented the weeks-long speculation over the fears of a potential threat in the skies above northeastern cities.

“I think the biggest problem here is that because the tools and technology weren’t in place ahead of time to be monitoring the airspace, it meant that we don’t have the information of what those initial reports really were,” he said.

“And I think this whole incident really underscores the need to be building out that kind of airspace awareness, so that we can integrate drones into the national airspace safely, so we can know who’s flying where and that they’re doing it safely and legally.”

He added that the uncertainty surrounding the alleged drone sightings has given a black eye to the entire legitimate commercial drone industry.

“I think any kind of incident where there’s so much unknown information, is understandably concerning for the public and it really hurts the commercial use of drones,” Jordan said. “For the drone industry as a whole, we really need to be building that trust with the public. And it’s tough when incidents happen like this and there aren’t answers.”

Jeffrey Starr, CMO of Israel-based D-Fend Solutions, said the military has long had the technology to identify suspicious UAVs, and in extreme cases bring down those unmanned aircraft considered as a threat, but private industry has been slower to adopt drone-detection technology.

“Historically most of the counter-drone detection and mitigation systems, or the technologies, came from the military,” he said. “Those technologies are great, they’re proven, they’re tried and true. But, when you move them into a civilian environment, they have certain shortcomings.”

Under current U.S. law, while civilian use of drone-detection systems is allowed, drone mitigation, or bringing down suspicious UAVs, remains the province of a handful of federal authorities.

Starr said that while the recent rash of drone reporting has led to greater awareness of potential problems, non-federal law enforcement agencies are having a difficult time keeping up with the large number of sightings.

“The authorities are doing a great job — the best they can — but these incidents are happening on a much more widespread basis, and they’re happening all over the place, and the first responders are very often state and local types of law enforcement.”

Aaron Pierce, CEO of remote ID technology developer Pierce Aerospace, advocates for the passage of federal legislation that would give state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement agencies greater drone detection and mitigation authorities.

“We don’t have the legislation in place today to expand the authorities beyond just the federal agencies, who don’t have enough resources to cover every single type of event in the United States that needs to have a level of airspace protection,” he said.

“We very much see a future state where the law enforcement officers are trained to a national standard, similar to how bomb squad officers are trained,” he said. “Those folks are then able to go and execute those security and safety missions at a high school football game or an NFL football game or any other type of major sporting event, concert or other places where law enforcement protects us today.”

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Read more:

• FAA Imposes New Drone Flight Restrictions Amid Northeast Drone Sightings
• DHS, FBI, FAA, and DoD Respond to Reported Drone Sightings
• Clearing the Air on New Jersey’s Drone Sightings

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.