House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul said Tuesday that he believes that some unidentified drones spotted above New Jersey and New York are “spy drones” from China — after Biden administration officials insisted many of the aircraft are innocent commercial aircraft.
“We want answers but the response I’m getting is we don’t know whose drones these are,” McCaul (R-Texas) told reporters before executive-branch officials offered a classified briefing to members of the House intelligence committee.
“I was with the NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, he said that these drones have been reported over military sites, military bases. I would not think those are friendly. I would think those are adversarial,” McCaul said.
“We need to identify who is behind these drones,” he said. “My judgment based on my experience is that those that are over our military sites are adversarial and most likely are coming from the People’s Republic of China.”
“I believe they’re spy drones and the PRC and communist China is very good at this stuff. We know they bought land around military bases. This would be very consistent with their policy over the past couple years,” McCaul added.
“We’re not getting answers and I think it’s because our government does not know who is behind them and that is very disturbing to me.”
“They seem to think that most of them are American-based commercial,” he went on. “It’s the ones over the military bases that i cant explain and they can’t either.”
The drones have stoked significant public concern and speculation.
Unidentified aircraft have been reported this month above New Jersey’s Picatinny Arsenal and the state’s Naval Weapons Station Earle — and on Sunday forced the temporary closure of Stewart International Airport in New York near Poughkeepsie.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said that many of the drones are commercial or are actually fixed-wing aircraft — while the White House has said it doesn’t know what accounts for the apparent surge in sightings.
The FBI, FAA, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement Monday that there was little reason for concern.
“We assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the agencies said.
White House spokesman John Kirby last week claimed that authorities “have not been able to, and neither have state and local law enforcement authorities, corroborate any of the reported visual sightings.”
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday accused President Biden and his subordinates of a coverup — but said that he doesn’t believe they are the work of a hostile foreign power.
“Look, our military knows where they took off from — if it’s a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don’t want to comment,” Trump said.
“And I think they’d be better off saying what it is. Our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.”
“I can’t imagine it’s the enemy,” Trump added. “Because if it was the enemy, they’d blast it out — even if they were late, they’d blast it. Something strange is going on. For some reason they don’t want to tell the people, and they should.”
Reps for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, whose members on Tuesday received a closed-door briefing from the FBI, CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the drone sightings, did not respond to a request for comment.
