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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Debunking New Jersey Drone Rumors

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Okay so this is a follow-up to the initial video I made last week on the drones flying over New Jersey, which seems to be everywhere I look. This story continues to gain traction whether I’m on social media or watching TV – it doesn’t matter. I’m seeing more and more reports from people seeing drones flying through the sky at night, and it’s spread from not just New Jersey but across the entire country as well as some areas around the world. It seems like anybody who looks up and sees flashing lights thinks they’re in danger and thinks they’re drones spying on them.

What I want to do in this video is formulate a better opinion about why you probably shouldn’t be worried about these lights flying through the night sky.

YouTube video

Now just to give you some quick background, as I did in my previous video so you don’t think I’m some random guy on the internet – I’m a drone pilot based here out of the Philadelphia area, so I’ve been asked non-stop about this topic. I primarily use drones for work, taking photos and videos for real estate agents and construction companies, but I also work with local Police departments helping them integrate Drone Technology into the tools that they use daily.

Okay so over the past few weeks, I’ve heard a lot of talk about the legality around flying drones, who’s allowed to fly them, where they can fly them, and what drone rules and regulations need to be followed. The first thing to know is that there are two different types of operators: a hobbyist or recreational drone pilot who just flies for fun, and a commercial drone operator who needs to take a 60-question test to get their Part 107 from the FAA. This license basically allows these operators to make money with their drone but doesn’t unlock the ability to fly larger drones like the ones that have been reported in the skies above New Jersey.

Now no matter if you’re a hobbyist or a commercial pilot, there’s still a similar set of rules that you need to follow. Some of these rules slightly vary between a hobbyist and commercial pilot, but things like following airspace rules, not flying out of your visual line of sight, and flying over people are the same.

A question I often get is “Can you fly your drone legally over somebody’s house or property without their permission?” to which I respond yes. Remember, the FAA controls the airspace in the United States, so as long as I’m following their rules, regulations, and guidelines, I can fly my drone over whatever I like. Think about it in terms of a manned aircraft like a plane or a helicopter – they don’t ask you for explicit permission to fly over your house, and when you see one, you’re like “oh yeah, there’s a plane passing over” because the FAA is controlling that airspace.

Now this same logic applies to drones even though it’s a little bit different because the drones are lower to the ground. I still don’t need to ask permission to fly over somebody’s house. Really what it comes down to is where I operate, take off, and land my drone from. I need to make sure that wherever I’m going to be standing, I’ve got permission to fly my drone from that spot – if it’s my own property, if it’s somebody that I’m working for, or maybe even if it’s a public piece of property.

Now there are larger drones out there that exceed the 55-pound weight limit the FAA has put into place, and if you want to fly one, you’ll need to get special approval from the FAA to do this. For example, I was out delivering supplies with a friend in Utah, and in order to fly this big drone to carry things, we needed special approval to do so. It’s not like flying one of these smaller drones that have a camera on them for photography or videography. These large drones are also much more difficult to come by – you can’t just drive down to Best Buy, pick one up, bring it home and start flying it. It’s usually something that needs to be ordered online or maybe a custom drone someone’s building like a prototype.

So really the point I’m trying to make is that with the claims made of these large SUV-sized drones flying through the sky, it’s not something that someone can easily get their hands on. Now when it comes to the FAA, unfortunately, they’re really not the best at policing drone pilots, as I could just go down to Best Buy, buy one of the smaller drones, bring it back home and without their approval just take off from my backyard and start flying my drone. So even though the FAA has put all these rules and regulations into place, I don’t think many people actually follow them because there’s really no enforcement.

What could these mystery drones be?

So right now everybody seems to think that these lights flying around at nighttime are a bunch of different things. There are so many crazy theories jumping around, but I’ve kind of narrowed it down into seven possible things these lights at nighttime could be.

  • They could be a hobby drone pilot,
  • They could be a commercial drone pilot,
  • It could be a manned aircraft,
  • It could be a military aircraft,
  • It could be some sort of test or prototype aircraft,
  • It could be an adversarial aircraft,
  • Or it could be aliens.

And look, I think that out of the seven things I’ve listed there, the bottom two are probably the worst-case scenario while the other five are just kind of run-of-the-mill everyday scenarios.

Now look, is a hobby drone pilot a nuisance? Look, I’ve been there. I fly my drone for fun, I know how annoying somebody can be flying in the park, but it’s their right to have fun flying their drones. So I don’t think that would necessarily be anything bad if you saw somebody in your neighborhood just flying around at nighttime for fun. The cameras on these drones that are for hobbyists and for people just having fun usually aren’t the best, so if they’re flying at nighttime, they probably can’t see anything anyway.

A commercial drone pilot is somebody literally just trying to get their job done. I can’t tell you in the past couple of weeks how many times I’ve had somebody come up to me and think that I’m the person that is flying the drones at nighttime – like they think because I’m in their neighborhood and I’m doing work taking photos of a house for sale that I am the one flying the drones above the entire state of New Jersey.

So if it’s a commercial drone pilot, it’s literally somebody just trying to get their job done. A manned aircraft could be anything – it could be police, it could be Coast Guard, it could be a commercial airliner flying people from one Airport to another, it could be somebody just flying their airplane for fun. So when it comes down to manned aircraft, that is literally happening each and every single day between a bunch of different places. There are literally always manned aircraft flying over us, and really, a lot of these lights at nighttime that are captured seem to be these manned aircraft.

If it’s a military aircraft, depending on where you live, I mean honestly that’s not much of an issue either. There’s a lot of exercises being done, there’s military bases all over the country that are moving assets between one point to another, there’s tests being conducted. So just know that if it’s like a military aircraft flying above, it doesn’t mean war is imminent – military aircraft move around all of the time.

Now test and prototype aircraft are also kind of fun – this is kind of what I hope it is. I hope that it’s somebody or someone testing some sort of really cool technology at nighttime. I know a lot of people will immediately think that that is something that is bad, they’re like “oh, there’s this test prototype aircraft over my house, I’m not sure what it’s doing” but actually that’s kind of cool. Like if we can continue to push technology forward and if it means that somebody is flying an aircraft above your house at nighttime, which happens all the time, it’s probably something that’s actually for the good.

Now when it comes to adversarial aircraft, this is like one of those crazy theories going around that Iran has a mothership sitting off the east coast of the United States, they’re sending aircraft over to us, but let’s be real – if it was somebody trying to do something nefarious with their drone or with their aircraft, it likely isn’t going to have lights on it so they can do what they’re doing in secrecy. And also, like if they’re trying to collect data, they’re not going to fly at nighttime – usually cameras collect better data during the daytime anyway, so why would they be flying at nighttime with their lights on? That really just doesn’t make much sense to me.

And of course we get to our final point, which is aliens, which I don’t even want to really go in depth here. There are a lot of people thinking that it could be an alien invasion, it’s aliens visiting us, there’s UFO sightings dating way back into the 1900s. I mean look, this is a huge can of worms that I’m not going to open up here in this video. I do think that there is other life out in the universe – it’s kind of hard to believe that with how many stars and galaxies out there there’s not another form of life out there – but do they have the time and do they really care about coming to visit us? I’m not sure. So I’m going to leave the aliens thing for the experts to discuss down in the comments.

Latest updates on mystery drones

Now I think one of the best places to stay up to date with information on this topic is through X. It’s really great to see people posting videos online of their encounters with lights during the night sky. I myself have gone out, I’ve seen things at nighttime that literally just look like manned aircraft – it’s nothing that I see that’s out of the ordinary. It’s a plane flying up to New York, it’s a plane flying into the Philadelphia International Airport. I mean, we see air traffic during the daytime and at nighttime all of the time.

But there are people that are encountering things that are a little bit different that they’re posting onto X, and it’s great to have the Community Notes feature so that experts can come and add on a little note to the bottom to let other readers know that hey, while this person says it’s this, it’s actually this, and it’s great because some of these really crazy conspiracy theories are being completely debunked by people that just provide logical evidence.

Now the first general thing I want to cover here is the people not only just on X but across any news outlet that is sharing photos and videos of blatant airplanes and helicopters – like it is a Southwest airplane bringing people to Philadelphia International Airport and people are filming it thinking it’s a drone. And what’s my favorite is people on the news are literally calling themselves journalists and experts talking about these weird New Jersey drones, yet there is a full-on airplane that everybody sees every night flying above their house, and it’s something that really does just make me laugh because it’s a blatant airplane, it’s not a drone – we see it every single day.

Now the first specific example I want to share is what people are saying is a close-up of the New Jersey drones flying over the night skies when this just looks to be any normal quadcopter – like this is probably a commercial operator or a test or prototype drone hovering there doing nothing. Nobody can even tell where the drone is as it’s just a blank night sky – you can’t see anything in the foreground or the background and it also has the typical navigation lights of any drone. So to me this really isn’t anything special – again, it could just be anybody flying a drone literally anywhere.

Now this next video was sure to rile some people up as it showed one of these drones flying through the sky and actually firing down at the ground but was immediately debunked as a military training exercise from one of the bases here in Jersey. It’s actually McGuire Air Base, which is in the middle of New Jersey – some people will say that Central Jersey doesn’t exist but I’d say it’s in Central Jersey – and it was actually published ahead of time on their website to the public so that people would know what’s going on. But of course nobody did the due diligence, nobody did any sort of research to figure out what this might be, they just immediately assumed that this helicopter that was training was one of these drones flying through the sky.

Now this next example kind of goes hand in hand with what I mentioned in the beginning of this section where people are just pointing their phones up in the sky and recording any flashing light saying that it’s one of these drones when typically it’s a manned aircraft that we would see every single day no matter what day of the week it is. We see airplanes up in the sky and in this case it’s a military cargo aircraft – to be specific, it’s a C-17 landing at McGuire. These are airplanes that I see every day during the day and at nighttime, no matter what day it is, when I’m out like towards the Medford area doing work. So this is a normal sight in New Jersey because of the air traffic at McGuire – this is something that we see every day.

Another thing I’ve seen a lot of people post about is that these drones are spraying something down onto the ground when this video is clearly just a contrail that was made by the airplane as it was flying through the sky. So it’s just condensation that comes off of the plane – it’s basically a human-made cloud. This is not coming down to the ground, it’s actually streaking across the entire sky but it just looks like it’s coming down to the ground because it gets cut off at the top of the roof line. And as you can see, this person is just pointing his or her camera at any light that they can see up in the air and they think that each of these things are a drone when in fact all of them and most of them are probably just manned aircraft.

Now this next example appears to be digitally altered and this is the great thing about Community Notes – is that you can see when something is fake. And in this case this is actually a video that has been altered to make it look like the person filming is also shooting at the airplane. Again, this is fake, but I can’t help but imagine that there have been so many incidents over the past couple of weeks of people that haven’t filmed it but have actually taken fire upon these flashing lights into the sky, which is such a threat to everybody on the ground and everybody up in the sky as well. I mean, you don’t know what those flashing lights are – that could be a FedEx airplane delivering cargo, it could be a military aircraft, it could be a passenger airplane transporting people from one airport to another. So this is something that is going to give people bad ideas and even though it’s digitally altered, even though Community Notes came in and saved the day with this one, I assume that this is probably happening across the state every single night and it really is a shame. So please do not fire weapons at any aircraft – it is a federal offense and comes with a hefty fine as well as jail time.

Now up until this point all of the stuff that I’ve been sharing here and most of the videos that are posted online have been captured at nighttime – there doesn’t seem to be any daytime footage of these apparent drones flying around. But there is one good video someone’s posted of one of these drones up close in broad daylight but it’s just a regular manned aircraft that actually is being tested and manufactured here out of Philadelphia. This is a Leonardo AW609 – at first I thought it was just an Osprey but I’m glad Community Notes was here to give me the exact aircraft manufacturer as well as the type of airplane that it is. So even though people think that this is a drone, even though it does look a little bit different, this is quite literally just a prototype aircraft being tested out of Philadelphia that is set to be produced here in the city as well, which is pretty awesome for the local economy.

And now to end this video off on a funny note, this is a meme that I found from one of the aviation pages that I follow that is New Jersey’s guide to aircraft identification and it shows any and all aircraft being drones to people that live in New Jersey because apparently we don’t know what blinking lights look like up in the sky.

Now look, I don’t want to discredit anybody – I know that there’s a lot of stories and a lot of examples out there, there’s things that I’ve seen that I can’t explain like there’s videos of a bunch of clusters of lights, there’s videos of lights moving really fast, but let’s be real – we have seen so many of these apparent UFO or alien encounters for decades, things being classified by the governments, there’s been things that have been leaked in the past, right? This is nothing new. But what I don’t like is all this mass hysteria going around about blinking lights in the sky that are adversarial drones when in reality it’s just a Southwest flight flying people into Philly, right? Like I think that we’re right now over-amplifying all the lights up in the sky when we see these every single night – this is nothing that’s new.

So really I think that we should take what we see online with a grain of salt and make sure you’re doing your research before doing something stupid and say firing a weapon at a light in the sky when you have no idea what it is. Anyway guys, thank you so much for watching – I’d love to hear your thoughts on this situation. Please, please, please leave me a comment down below. Man, the comment section on my last video got unhinged so if you’re somebody that’s crazy and have a crazy conspiracy to share, please by all means leave it below – I’d love to read it.

And yeah, as always I’ll talk to you later, peace.


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