Shoot to kill.
A growing chorus of local officials in New Jersey and New York are demanding the feds stop gaslighting locals and finally shoot down a drone.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) demanded Saturday the Pentagon open fire on one of the nearly 1,000 drones that’ve been spotted above the Garden State since Nov. 18, so answers can be had.
“Why can’t we bag at least one drone and get to the bottom of this?” Smith wondered aloud during a press conference in Seaside Heights. “Why can’t we even track a suspect drone to its origin? Have we so little control over our airspace?”
His demand came just hours after New York Gov. Hochul declared it’s time to take action. “This has gone too far,” she said in a terse statement Saturday announcing that she asked federal authorities to authorize local police departments to shoot down drones.
They echoed sentiments already expressed by concerned citizens and even President-elect Donald Trump, who said he wants the feds to shoot a drone out of the sky. “Let the public know, and now,” Trump urged. “Otherwise, shoot them down!”
The rising rhetoric comes on the heels of more alarming sightings.
Stewart International Airport in upstate Newburgh closed its runways for an hour Friday night after two drones were seen overhead. The commercial airport is adjacent to a New York Air National Guard base, where the 105th Airlift Wing is stationed.
New Jersey’s largest utility, PSE&G, petitioned the FAA to halt all air traffic over two of its nuclear power plants — after drones were recently spotted over the sensitive sites. It is the first time the company has made such an appeal.
Most disturbing of all were accounts out of the Jersey Shore, where the military provided credible reports. In one, a 47-foot Coast Guard cutter was tailed by 13 to 30 drones on Dec. 9, the military branch confirmed.
They were alerted to the drones over the Atlantic by the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office, which actually deployed its own drone to track the 50 mystery aircraft. Shockingly, Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said the law enforcement drone could not keep pace.
Officials at Naval Weapons Station Earle, a highly sensitive base in Monmouth County, NJ, also reported ongoing drone activity this week.
Drones of unknown origin have also been detected over Newark Airport as well as nearby shipping yards, LaGuardia Airport, and the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, located at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey’s Morris County.
Through it all, federal officials have downplayed the disturbing sightings, dismissing them as misidentified manned planes, like Cessnas.
Late Thursday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the drones were not Iranian, Chinese or Russian, but actually normal helicopters and small planes. Flight records were being analyzed to confirm, he said.
“How does Secretary Mayorkas who infamously told us for years that our southern border was secure and closed — when it was and is not — now insult our intelligence that ‘we haven’t seen anything unusual?” Smith said Saturday. “This is usual? And how can he — and others like national security spokesman Admiral John Kirby — say we know of no threat?”
Meanwhile, the sightings mount. In New Jersey alone, between Nov. 19 and Dec. 13, there have been 964 reported drone sightings. They have also been seen over Manhattan and Staten Island, and the NYPD and FBI claim to be monitoring the issue.
Smith told The Post this week his sources suspect the drones could be from foreign rivals. “It could be Tehran, it could be [Russian President Vladimir] Putin — no one knows,” he said. “This is a potential threat to the people of my district, the state of New Jersey, and the nation. We need to get to the bottom of it.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) told The Post his own “high-clearance” sources within the U.S. government and across the private sector contend the drones could be part of an alliance between China and Iran.
“Something’s very wrong,” Van Drew said. “We’ve got unidentifiable, sophisticated drones, as big as minivans, carefully navigating airspace that’s not covered by radar, in a very important part of our country, and still, a month later, we somehow don’t know anything — and we’re being told, ‘Don’t worry, everything’s okay.’”
He has speculated the drones could’ve come from Iranian drone ships, which were spotted this week in the Persian Gulf but left their docks in mid-November.
The dismissive federal statements flew in the face of seemingly reliable eyewitness reports — including the worrisome encounter between a Coast Guard cutter and a fleet of drones in the waters off Island Beach State Park.
On Friday, sailors approached outside U.S. Coast Guard Station Barnegat Light refused to speak to The Post about Monday’s incident, instead offering knowing smiles.
A Coast Guard official confirmed the encounter, saying only that “multiple low-altitude aircraft were observed” by sailors, and that “no immediate threats or disruptions to operations were identified.”
The NYPD’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating recent sightings in the five boroughs, and has at least 109 drones at their disposal.
“We have NYPD detectives as well as FBI agents and state officials and they’re on it,” said spokesman Carlos Nieves, who refused to provide specific details about the investigation.
“FBI New York is aware of recent sightings of possible drones flying over observed flying in multiple locations in the New York area,” said the FBI in its own statement. “FBI New York remains engaged with our federal, state, and local partners to share information and protect the public. As always, suspicious or criminal activity can be reported to the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submitted online at tips.fbi.gov.”
Van Drew told The Post that at a gathering of state officials this week in Trenton, federal investigators allegedly insinuated local authorities should take the drones out.
“[They had] the temerity, the gall to tell local sheriffs, local police departments and firemen they should do something about shooting them down, so they can investigate,” he said, adding the comment was made “casually,” and that “no official directive” was issued by any federal agency.
“This is not an investigation for your municipal police force or for the county sheriff’s office. Are you kidding me? I have never seen anything like it.”
Firefighters in the state this week received guidance from the New Jersey Division of Fire Safety not to approach any downed drones. Instead, local cops, the FBI, hazmat teams and bomb squads be summoned to the scene, a document viewed by The Post explained.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) told The Post she thinks there’s “more to [the drones] than what we’re being told.” She also questioned Kirby’s claims.
“A police officer and members of our Coast Guard [saw these clusters] of drones, so that doesn’t make much sense to me,” the GOP pol said.
Even if all of the drone sightings were, indeed, misidentified manned aircraft, it begs another question, Malliotakis said.
“Where are all of these additional aircraft coming from, and is it safe?” she asked.
The feds “have been very lax” with their response to the anxiety-inducing sightings, she added.
“This has been handled so poorly by this administration, especially in this post-Chinese spy balloon world. This is not normal. We don’t normally have this kind of flight activity around our communities.”
The fed’s sluggish response to the drones “doesn’t make us seem like we are the most powerful country in the world,” Van Drew said. “To see us in this kind of shape, it’s sad. The damn government is behaving stupidly.”
President-elect Trump “can’t get into office soon enough,” he said, adding, “this would not be happening if Donald Trump was president. We’d already have answers.”
