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National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby reiterated Monday that there is no indication that the drone sightings pose a risk to public safety.
Kirby, in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, said federal officials have worked with local and state law enforcement to examine more than 5,000 examples of possible drone sightings and have determined that some aircraft are manned, while others are unmanned.
They have also concluded, however, that the unmanned drones detected around New Jersey they operate legally and for the purpose of the common good. They show no signs of foreign involvement, Kirby said.
When asked how law enforcement could come to that conclusion, he said “we’ve done the analysis.”
“We did the detection, then the analysis. We corroborated the sightings,” the White House spokesman said. “And in every case we’ve looked at so far, we’ve seen nothing, nothing that indicates a risk to public safety.”
“There are drones flying over the skies of the United States every night, every day, and we haven’t seen anything in this, in and around New Jersey, that should concern people on the ground for their safety, for this activity,” Kirby continued. “And we’ve seen nothing, working with the Department of Defense as well, that indicates a foreign adversarial actor is involved or any kind of pernicious threat to national security.”
He added that the drone sightings detected on military bases they represent a different threat and the Pentagon is looking into that as a separate issue.
“Now, there have been some drone sightings, I think, as you know, over some military bases. We’re obviously looking at that,” Kirby said. “That’s a different category, and DOD has different authorities to do that.”
He added, “But again, we haven’t seen any disruption to operations at our New Jersey bases because of any of this either.”
Later on Monday, at joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Department of Defense (DOD) indicated that after reviewing “technical data and advice from concerned citizens, We estimate that sightings of The data include a combination of legal commercial drones, hobbyist drones and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and stars have been reported mistakenly as drones.”
