Officials downplayed worries while admitting the drones are being investigated.
U.S. national security officials try to dismiss worries about mysterious drones flying over Northeast in latest time call with reporters one going as far as nationwide uneasiness as a sight overreaction.
The senior officials remained silent on the origins of the drones which are being investigated.
The mysterious aircraft were spotted by flying above New Jersey in mid November and have been repeatedly seen by thousands of residents over past few weeks.
The NSC official said
” Obviously we are talking this incredibly seriously at this point”.
“We have not identified any basis for believing that there is any criminal activity involved that there is any national security threat that there is any particular public safely threat or that there is malicious foreign actor involved in these drones”
During the call with reporters FBI official said his agency has get 5000 tips since first mysterious drone was seen flying above Garden State in November.
The FBI official said that investigators have found no evidence of mega scale unmanned drone activity despite latest uptick in drone activity in past weeks.
“We are doing our best to find origin of that specific those drone activites” the official said
“But i think there has been a slight overreaction”
A DOD official said that agency has gathered “no intelligence or observations that would indicate that were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent”.
FBI rep. said a DHS official said that while his agency is not dismissing all tips about drones as non credible the amount of actual drone activity is likely less than what being reported”
“But you know just to simply tell you we do not know” the rep said
“We have not been able to locate or identify the operators or points of origin”.
The Pentagon official said that there are limitations in terms of investigating the drones sources.
“We are significantly restricted and rightfully so in fact prohibited from intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance here in homeland”
“So we do not have same capabilities and the same method that we would employ in other locations outside of the homeland to decide points of origin”.
An NSC official said that there is no evidence foreign adversaries are involved with drone and there is no proof of any threat to public safety.
Apps like Flightradar24, Plane Finder and FlightAware all have features that let user see in real time what aircraft are flying around them consisting of commercial and private flights and helicopters that may be in skies at any given time.
The apps can identify unmanned aircraft like commercial drones are signaling location the same method planes do.
These apps work by collecting the data that most aircraft transmit to ground stations and other plane famous as ADS-B data as well as satellites and other data sources.
Not each aircraft is going to show up on those platforms few small hobby drones for exampled do not contain kind of technology to broadcast their locations the way commercial aircraft do.
With FlightRadar24 and Plane Finder you can point your phone camera at an aircraft in sky and apps will tell you about it even at night kind of like Shazam for airplanes.
Flightradar24 added that on given day it can track more than 200,000 airplane through skies.