For weeks, people in several states, including California, have been seeing drone-like objects flying in the night sky in clusters.
Concerns about visibility have risen sharply in recent days, prompting some officials to call for calm.
But there are still many unanswered questions about why people seem to be seeing so many drones, and if this is an unusual occurrence, what is going on?
Here's what we know.
Officials downplay the concerns
Federal officials said over the weekend that many drone sightings in New Jersey and other states “are actually manned aircraft that are not properly identified as drones.”
On Saturday, officials said in a White House statement that there was no evidence of illegal activity or foreign involvement.
“At this time, we have no reason to believe that there is a crime involved, that there is a threat to national security, that there is a specific threat to public safety or that there is a foreign malicious actor involved in these drones,” the US Department said. said a Homeland Security official during the briefing.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy urged the public Monday morning to “calm down” and insisted there was “no evidence of anything wrong here.”
Murphy declined to elaborate on the agency's investigation into the sightings but said there are “very serious programs” “with high-level people” to find out what happened.
New Jersey is the epicenter
Reports about drones in the sky have been going on for three weeks. New Jersey has been the center of attention, along with other nearby states.
California has seen some reports but much less than the East Coast.
On Nov. 18, there were multiple reports of drones operating at night made through the New Jersey Suspicious Activity Report System, officials said. The FBI opened an investigation into the sighting two days later.
By December 3, the FBI network had established 800 tip lines to relieve 911 call centers that received reports about drones. About 5,000 tips were received through the national tip line and fewer than 100 leads were deemed worthy of further investigation.
With surveillance teams throughout New Jersey, FBI officials “determined that all sightings with fixed wings were manned aircraft.” The sightings also appear to be similar to the approach patterns at Newark-Liberty, John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.
“This modeling is an indication that manned aircraft are often mistaken for unmanned aircraft or UAS,” they said.
Homeland Security officials said they have also “determined that there is no evidence to date of any foreign involvement in sending drones ashore against naval vessels in the area.”
View from Southern California
Residents of Southern California are also participating in the national offering of drone sightings.
On social media, videos from Temecula and Riverside appeared to show groups of illuminated objects circling the sky.
Damon Angel, a music producer in Temecula, posted several videos on Instagram showing what he described as suspicious lights on the high street.
In the following video, he said he hopes his videos of suspected drones – which have attracted millions of views online – will help draw attention to the issue. Another video, from a TikTok user in Riverside, claimed to show several unidentified objects in the sky.
FAA reminds about drone rules
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued guidelines on drones that explain their use. “More and more people are using drones, which means more people are noticing them in the sky,” the FAA guidance reads.
The FAA has emphasized that it is legal to fly an airplane in most areas of the US during the day and at night as long as it stays below 400 feet, avoids other aircraft and does not cause danger to any person or property.
Two temporary flight restrictions have been put in place for the Picatinny Arsenal, a military base in New Jersey, and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.
The Picatinny Arsenal limit includes 2 nautical miles and 2,000 feet and will expire Dis. 26. The Trump golf course has a 1-nautical-mile, 1,000-foot limit that expires Dec. 20.
Murphy and New York Governor Kathy Hochul urged Congress to pass the Security, Safety, and Counter-UAS Authority Authorization Act, which would renew the federal authority to investigate and track drones and give state authorities the power to create their own drone mitigation plan.
