House Intelligence Committee gets classified briefing on mystery drones

The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday got a classified briefing from federal officials about the spate of drone sightings on the East Coast.

The lawmakers said they were largely satisfied with the answers from the Defense, Homeland and Justice departments but called for more transparency to ease growing public concerns.

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the panel, said they were told that any drones sighted were not operated by the federal government and no laws were being broken by drones that were being flown in the area.

There are more than 800,000 registered drones throughout the country, he said, and possibly “millions and millions” more that aren’t — so identifying who is operating the craft would be extremely difficult.

“We have no idea who owns these drones, assuming these drones are, in fact, drones,” Mr. Himes told reporters. “Again, everybody who studied this has arrived at the conclusion that most of these sightings are commercial aircraft.”

The Biden administration has spent several days trying to quash the fervor over the sightings of mysterious drones over New Jersey and elsewhere on the East Coast, with officials insisting the purported drones did not have malicious intent and were not operated by foreign powers.

Officials have also said that sightings were likely a combination of commercial, hobbyist and law enforcement drones, manned aircraft, helicopters or even stars mistakenly identified as drones.

As they exited the closed-door briefing, lawmakers said they believed the explanations but wanted the Biden administration to do a better job explaining it to Americans.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Democrat, said that the big takeaway was that the vast majority of sightings were manned aircraft, but he wanted federal authorities to provide the data that backed it up.

Reports of sightings in New Jersey began to trickle in before Thanksgiving and then spread to Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland.

It led to calls for Congress to reauthorize and expand drone-countering powers, with the government’s main mechanism for countering unmanned aircraft systems or UASs set to expire Friday.

The current drone-countering powers, authorized as part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, authorize Homeland Security and the Justice to use advanced technology to detect, track and intercept drones that don’t comply with the law.

Mr. Krishnamoorthi said more legislative actions are needed to “plug some holes within the law.”

“Quite frankly, the technology of drones has outpaced the law, and that’s kind of the bottom line,” he said.