As I was poking around to learn more about our East Coast drone invasion, one question kept popping into my head: Why New Jersey? I may have found the answer:
New Jersey is a Drone Industry Trend Setter
The state’s drone task force avidly promotes drone technology for initiatives related to traffic management, structural inspections, and aerial corridor 3D mapping.... In addition, the state passed a law that indemnifies drone fliers against lawsuits from New Jersey landowners for use of their property for drone overflights.
....New Jersey’s proximity to New York, where the drone industry is more tightly restricted, has also made it an attractive platform for drone operators seeking access to airspace shared by the two states. Drone air shows, for example, can be freely staged from the New Jersey side of Hudson River.... New York-based companies can also conduct drone operations at some of their facilities located in Jersey City to advance their business interests at home.
According to the Mercatus Center, New Jersey is the third most drone friendly state out of the ten highest density states:
There you have it. Most of the mysterious sightings have turned out to be ordinary aircraft or commercial drones with FAA-approved lighting, but not all of them. Some number of them remain unexplained.
But the New Jersey mystery is probably solved. It's the highest density state in the country by a bunch and is extremely drone friendly. So there are lots of drones flying around and lots of people to see them. Add to that New Jersey's reputation for, um, excitement, and it all starts to make sense.
Has anything really changed???
People have started looking up at night and claiming drones are everywhere. Before this latest scare, they didn't care.
I blame switching the clocks back an hour a month or so ago.
Orson Welles already did but it was in Grover's Mill instead of Newark.
Forget about it Jake, it’s New Jersey…
But don't shine lasers at them. I have on good authority from a xweet on X that the Aliens feast on laser beams.
I wonder if there's such a thing as a "heavy lift" drone?
(If there is then former NJ Gov Chris Christie would need to be concerned)
Lots of mysterious drone sightings recently over U.S. and German military bases, in Germany.
1950’s UFO scare deja vu. Somethings really do never change.
Kevin can be such a killjoy. MAGA websites are having even more fun with the swarms of drones that rise out of the ocean every night than they did with the Chinese Death Balloon.
Latest theory is that they're looking for a "lost Ukrainian nuclear warhead", one of 80 (!) which supposedly disappeared when Reagan made Russia give up lots and lots of nukes. This imaginative explanation was posted on TicToc by a guy whose company makes drones, and who is therefore self-evidently an expert on all things drone-related, even if his history is somewhat garbled. Ukraine didn't transfer the nuclear weapons on its territory to Russia until 8 years after Reagan left office, and there is no evidence any went missing. There was a totally evidence-free story last century that up to 100 "nuclear bombs" had gone missing from Ukraine, but these were not "warheads". They were supposedly suitcase-sized devices developed for the KGB. Why one would surface 30 years later in the USA is a mystery.
It's just Jersey?! That's all you got? I've been sitting in my Manhattan apartment, looking at all the whizzing lights across the Hudson, waiting for you to ring in with a sensible analysis. It's just "drone-prone Jersey" might be too sensible for the current moment.