It’s probably just a plane: drone experts advise calm over New Jersey sightings
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Although politicians have called to shoot them down, experts say the lights are likely legal drones, planes – or stars. At first, in mid-November, the mysterious lights were seen blinking across the night skies of New Jersey. Then, they spread. Reports of incandescent flying objects were logged in New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Bystanders in Virginia Beach said they saw an aircraft “unlike any other they’ve seen”. Sightings have now come from as far afield as Louisiana, Florida and Arizona. People across the US are looking up.
![[A light in the night sky over a suburban house]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2667bb1b4398dbf7d4b23f4d25741713400a8ad9/0_0_6000_4000/master/6000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
No one seems to know for certain where these enigmatic flying objects are from or who is controlling them. But several lawmakers and much of the general public seem dead-set on one answer: a swarm of drones. “The American people deserve answers as to what the hell is going on,” the representative Pat Ryan, a New York Democrat, said on Tuesday. “We’ve got a serious national security issue.”.
![[Lights in night sky ]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/09c5ddb971e587fd14567e07060c99b5dc130417/0_0_2000_1332/master/2000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, raised even more alarms on Saturday, attributing the “elusive maneuvering” of the drones to “major, military-power sophistication”, perhaps that of Russia, China, Iran or North Korea. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) banned drones from flying at all in parts of New Jersey for a month.
Drone and national security experts are telling people to please calm down. They say they’re taking the matter seriously and there’s little to worry about. What appears to be happening in New Jersey right now is a perfect storm that’s coalesced around a lack of concrete information, confusion about what drones actually look like in night skies and a contagion effect.
