Drilling down on drones sightings above Long Island

Drones by the dozens have been reported flying in recent weeks over Long Island, with thousands more observed in other parts of New York and New Jersey. The sightings have prompted an FBI investigation as well as other efforts aimed at finding out who is operating the drones, why and whether the airborne devices are a safety risk.

On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a plan to fast-track legislation that would, among other things, expand federal authority to detect and disable drones determined to threaten "safe and efficient operation of the national airspace system."

Also Monday, Suffolk police said in a statement that department officials and County Executive Edward P. Romaine were working with "state and federal law enforcement partners to monitor the situation." A Suffolk police spokeswoman said the department had logged sightings but declined to say how many. A Nassau police spokesman said the department had logged two reports of drone sightings Sunday, after logging 55 from Friday through Saturday.

Also on Sunday, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the deployment of a "state-of-the-art drone detection system."

Where have sightings been reported?

Long Islanders from Wading River, Centereach and Rocky Point have spoken to Newsday about drone sightings. Department of Defense officials have confirmed sightings by personnel at two military installations in New Jersey, Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle. Many of the reported sightings have been near approaches to busy airports including Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark-Liberty, according to the FBI.

What’s the airport connection?

Manned aircraft are often mistaken for drones. Even fixed-wing aircraft may appear to move in a drone-like fashion to a ground observer. "If an aircraft is far away but flying directly to you, it can easily look as if it’s hovering," said Arthur Holland Michel, a founder of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and former senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Such illusions are more common at night, when many of the reported sightings have taken place, Michel said.

Do the drones pose a threat?

Unclear. A Department of Homeland Security official, speaking on background at a weekend briefing, told reporters "we don’t have any current evidence that there’s a threat to public safety."

Almost a million aerial drones are registered across the United States and operating them is generally legal, with legitimate uses like facility inspection, aerial mapping and cinematography, Michel said. But there are fewer legitimate reasons to operate them at night, Michel said, and operating at any time around airplanes and helicopters is dangerous and illegal.

An FBI official said at the briefing that fewer than 100 of 5,000 leads the bureau got through a national hotline proved worthy of investigation.

The high number of reported sightings suggests a positive feedback loop is at work, said Michel. As news spread of the early drone sightings, people who may not have previously scrutinized the night sky were primed to see more, he said: "Things that appear to be hovering, moving at unbelievable speeds, and in the context of these stories, the drone is the quickest, easiest, most available explanation."

Who’s flying the drones?

A Department of Defense official, speaking at the weekend briefing, said there was no "intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent. But I just got to simply tell you we don’t know."

Michel said that a foreign state using drones to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance over the United States would be taking a considerable risk. "If one of these systems were found, or if their operators were caught, then you are potentially talking about huge diplomatic fallout," he said.

He was also skeptical that this could be a wide-scale prank, especially considering that some of the drones were reported as large as 6 feet. "Flying drones like this requires technical sophistication, not to mention some fairly deep pockets. And It would be unusual to keep up the prank for several weeks, or to rove as widely as these drones seem to have been spotted," he said.

What kind of technology was Gov. Hochul talking about?

Hochul’s press office did not respond to an email seeking clarification. But a DHS official, speaking at the weekend briefing, said the agency had sent New Jersey State Police radar equipped with an infrared camera.

Zachary Kallenborn, a policy fellow in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University who studies drone warfare and terrorism, said in an interview that other detection tools include microphones to pick up drone sounds and sensors to monitor radio frequencies used for drone control.

In theory, authorities could follow detection with interdiction, "but there aren’t really good ways to defeat" drones, Kallenborn said, especially over a densely populated area. Kinetic solutions include missiles and shotguns. Non-kinetic solutions include frequency jamming to disrupt an operator’s control. "The problem is, that signal and radio frequency could also be used for a bunch of other things — you could also, for example, jam the signal for first responders or an air control tower," he said.