Newly Released Documents Show What the Feds Knew About the New Jersey Drone Scare

Even after the Biden administration realized the most alarming claims were bunk, it didn't publicize the evidence it had.

The government sent out a lot of mixed messages the week of December 16, 2024. In response to various apparent drone sightings in New Jersey, then-President Joe Biden said on December 17 that there was "nothing nefarious" in the sky. That same day, members of Congress came out of a classified briefing saying that the alleged drone sightings posed no threat to the public. Then, on December 18, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed large flight restrictions backed by "deadly force" over New Jersey, and authorities announced they were investigating drone sightings over military bases across the country.

New Jerseyans would just have to take it on faith from the authorities that there was nothing to worry about, while the authorities themselves acted worried. But the day before the FAA no-fly zones were imposed, the federal government had already internally debunked some of the most alarming reports. The explanation was neither nefarious nor too sensitive to share with the public.

On December 17, 2024, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) presented an internal slideshow demonstrating that three alleged drone incidents—one during a medevac flight, one over the ocean, and another near a nuclear plant—were simply normal air traffic. Another report of a "drone" spraying mysterious mist could be explained by wing-tip condensation on a small airplane. The presentation included maps matching flight logs to specific sightings.

The Department of Homeland Security released the slideshow this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Originally, Reason had requested materials from the department's closed-door briefing to local authorities on December 11, 2024, which had left New Jersey state Rep. Dawn Fantasia (R–Sussex) calling for a "military intervention." Although the department didn't provide that briefing to Reason, it did release TSA briefing materials from the following week.

Asked by Reason, the TSA didn't specify who exactly the slideshow was meant for. "This presentation was part of collaborative law enforcement research in late 2024 to support transportation security," TSA spokesperson Jason Goff wrote in an email.

One of the earliest—and most dangerous—drone sightings took place on November 26, 2024, near Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey. A medical helicopter was coming to evacuate victims from a car crash when firefighters told it to stay away due to three mysterious drones in the area. "We never found out what the actual drones were," Brian Serge, security supervisor at the college, told NJ.com on December 4. "It's kind of a mystery. We were asking around about that, but nobody knew anything."

The feds found a likely explanation from flight logs and aeronautical charts. At the time of the incident, three commercial aircraft were approaching the nearby Solberg Airport, a small local airfield. "The alignment of the aircraft gave the appearance to observers on the ground of them hovering in formation while they were actually moving directly at the observers," the slideshow notes.

Those findings do not appear to have been reported on in the media. Reason reached out to the security office at Raritan Valley Community College by email to ask whether they were ever told the results of the investigation. The office has not responded as of press time.

Similarly, a December 12 sighting of drones near a Salem nuclear power plant along the Delaware River happened to line up with a flyover by a military UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, a civilian Cessna C150 propeller plane, and commercial flights coming out of Philadelphia.

The same day, a drone was reported spraying "gray mist" over Clinton, New Jersey. The TSA identified it with "high confidence" as a Beechcraft Baron 58 propeller plane being tossed around by turbulence, which caused swirly condensation clouds to form on the wing-tip vortices. The FBI did inform local police about the results of that investigation, and Clinton Township Police Chief Thomas A. DeRosa informed the public on December 31.

Throughout December 2024, local citizens, police departments, and even a Coast Guard crew reported nightly swarms of drones over the ocean, near a National Guard training facility on the Jersey Shore. Rep. Chris Smith (R–N.J.) claimed that "more than a dozen drones" had chased down a Coast Guard patrol boat. He speculated that it "could be a foreign power" such as Russia or China. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R–N.J.) even conjured up an Iranian "mothership" floating off the coast.

But when a reporter from NewsNation followed the Ocean County Sheriff's Office investigating a "drone sighting," the footage clearly showed commercial aircraft in the sky. The White House eventually concluded that the Coast Guard crew had also seen passenger jets on the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Smith called the White House "profoundly uninformed" and said the Coast Guard had really seen drones.

The TSA slideshow, produced the same day as Smith's spat with the White House, outlined exactly how the feds had come to their conclusion. Airplanes landing at JFK were making a large S-shaped maneuver over the ocean as they lined up for the runway. "For these periods of time, they would appear to almost hover in the sky as they flew toward, and then away from, land," the slideshow states.

The drone panic was a self-inflicted crisis for the government. On December 3, 2024, the FBI and New Jersey State Police put out a call for information on drone sightings over the Raritan Valley. Because Donald Trump's golf resort is in the Raritan Valley, the media began to report on drone overflights as if they were targeting the president-elect, and Trump himself said he would cancel his trip to New Jersey.

By the time the Biden administration concluded that there was nothing to worry about, the drone panic itself was starting to endanger air traffic. The FBI and the state police begged citizens on December 18 to stop shining lasers at aircraft or shooting guns into the air. Both Democratic and Republican politicians implied that the administration was hiding something as they used the aerial menace to call for more government spending or regulations on drones.

Releasing the kind of granular, specific evidence that the Department of Homeland Security possessed would have done a lot to restore calm. And it wouldn't have compromised any kind of secret intelligence. (Aircraft publicly broadcast their location for safety reasons, and there's a whole hobbyist subculture dedicated to picking up those broadcasts.) But the national security apparatus likes to hold its cards close to the chest.

"I would remind you, we're at the beginning, not the end," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on December 12. "There's a lot more work to be done. We're working closely with state and local authorities to gain more information. I would argue that we're moving pretty well here with a sense of energy."

Keeping up the security theater helped the administration look like it was on top of a crisis—and push for powers that it had always wanted. In his December 16 press conference, when he told reporters that most drone sightings were aircraft "operating legally," Kirby also urged Congress to pass "legislation that has been proposed and repeatedly requested by this administration that would extend and expand existing counter-drone authorities to help identify and counter any threat that does emerge." Never let a good crisis go to waste.