Gone quiet · last update Jan 28, 2025 / New Jersey
The mystery drone sightings over New Jersey in late 2024
Overview · reviewed October 28, 2026
In late 2024, residents of New Jersey and other states reported seeing thousands of mysterious lighted drones at night, setting off speculation and conspiracy theories and calls from officials for answers.[1][2]Federal authorities said they had found nothing to suggest a threat to national security or public safety,[3] and in January 2025 the White House said the drones had been authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration and were "not the enemy."[4]
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Federal authorities said they had found nothing to suggest a threat to national security or public safety,[3] and in January 2025 the White House said the drones had been authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration and were "not the enemy."[4]
Coverage over time
Share of tracked outlets · weekly (UTC)
30%0%
Dec 20242026this week
LeftCenterRightLighter bar: this week so far
Each bar is the share of the outlets on our Left / Center / Right rating scale that we tracked publishing that week which carried reporting on this story, split by the outlets' ratings. We track more outlets now than in the archive, so a share keeps earlier and later weeks comparable. An outlet counts once a week however much it published, and outlets in one ownership or syndication group count as one on each side they appear on. A rating describes the outlet, not the report. A gap means no such reports were collected that week, not that nothing was reported anywhere. Weeks run Monday to Sunday in UTC, so a report published on a Sunday evening in US Eastern time counts in the next week. 4 more outlets off the scale (not rated, or outside the left-right graphs) also reported; they are not in this chart. See them.
Weekly counts, outlets and reports (4 weeks with coverage)
Outlets on the rating scale that carried this story each week, of the outlets tracked that week, newest first
Gov. Phil Murphy and law enforcement officials stressed that there was no known threat while asking the Biden administration for more resources to investigate.[1][5] A US senator called for the drones to be "shot down, if necessary,"[6] and drone activity closed the airspace over a major Air Force base in Ohio for nearly four hours, while arrests were made near Boston's Logan airport.[7][8] Drone-detecting devices deployed in New Jersey found "little to no evidence" of anything nefarious, Murphy said,[9] and the FAA issued temporary bans on drone flights over several New Jersey communities.[10]
