'Drones' swarm New Jersey and New York. How close are we to learning what these UAPs actually are?

What's bright, flying and reportedly swarming the night skies over northern New Jersey?

The answer, apparently, is "drones," but no one seems to know — or, at least, to be able to disclose — much more than that.

The past several weeks have seen surging reports of strange unidentified aircraft — some allegedly as large as a car — over parts of the Garden State. Eyewitnesses and videos suggest that some are rotorcraft and others are fixed-wing. Some purportedly fly solo and erratically, while others seem to operate in an orderly formation. All, however, seem to show no signs of stealth; they've been described as conspicuously bright lights. And, according to a Dec. 5 social media post by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, the spate of sightings is being seriously investigated — but "there is no known threat to the public at this time."

Many of the reports initially clustered in New Jersey's Morris County — where strange objects were seen apparently maneuvering over major waterways, municipal reservoirs and even sensitive military facilities such as the U.S. Army's Picatinny Arsenal — but some of the latest sightings are from other surrounding counties and stretch as far south as the outskirts of Philadelphia. The activity comes amid fresh reports of alarming drone activity elsewhere, including at four U.S.-used military bases in the U.K. in recent weeks, and around Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in December 2023.

The uptick in reports in New Jersey has spurred a patchwork of responses from local, state and national authorities. About 20 elected officials in Morris County signed and sent a letter to relevant federal agencies, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) temporarily banned drone flights over Picatinny Arsenal and the Bedminster, New Jersey golf club owned by President-elect Donald Trump. Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced it was probing the matter, issuing a statement alongside the New Jersey State Police and the state's Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, seeking information related to the drone sightings. In its advisory, the FBI asked that eyewitnesses submit their reports via the "Call FBI" hotline (1-800-225-5324) or an agency website.

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In the interim, many eyewitnesses have instead turned to local news organizations, as well as to Enigma Labs, a New York City-based startup that allows users of its smartphone app to submit geolocated reports and recordings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). According to Christine Kim, Enigma Labs's head of marketing, the company processes thousands of sightings each month, and has received dozens of related reports (including some with video) from users in the region in the last three weeks, with 16 percent of its U.S. submissions in that time related to the NJ drones.

"This is an active investigation where what's needed is more eyes on the sky," Kim says. "For us, this is like a 'stress test' of getting our users to film and report on what they're seeing, so that we can crowdsource this and investigate together. … We don't have clear answers yet, but by getting more data we can try to find and figure out patterns in what we're seeing."

So far, Kim notes, the content and quality of the reports is so variable that certainty is elusive. "One person wrote they saw a large triangular craft with three lights on its corners, not flying high or fast, shining too bright to be a conventional aircraft. Another one reported seeing several craft night after night, flying really fast, with different ranges of brightness and looking relatively small next to other helicopters and planes. … Some of the photos I've seen floating around out there, we're like, 'Yeah, that's what a plane looks like in the clouds.' So we're sort of debunking some of these ourselves, too."

Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday in response to the sightings, UAP skeptic and investigator Mick West posted a smartphone video of a supposed "drone" he had recorded near his California home, noting that it was in fact an ordinary aircraft passing overhead as confirmed by flight-tracking data. Many of the New Jersey sightings, his post suggests, are likely to be similar cases of mistaken identity — in large part because of how poor most smartphone optics are, and how easy it is for even experienced observers to misgauge the sizes, distances and motions of objects in the sky.

Even so, to attribute all these latest sightings and the wealth of recordings to mere mass hysteria seems implausible, especially given the resulting responses from multiple echelons of law enforcement. Something strange is indeed in the air over northern New Jersey — but what, exactly, remains to be seen.

This article was first published at Scientific American. © ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow on TikTok and Instagram, X and Facebook.