Probing Public Concern Over Mysterious Drone Sightings

Jim Geraghty of National Review Online explores reaction to multiple unexplained drone sightings on the East Coast.

I suspect a major reason that many people are concerned about these drone sightings is the public’s experience of the Chinese spy balloon in early 2023. The Biden administration and military were content to not tell the American public they were tracking the Chinese spy balloon until the Billings Gazette published photos of it. On February 16, 2023, President Biden assured the nation, “We were able to protect sensitive sites against collection.” By April, NBC News reported the balloon was able “to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.”

So when Singh says these are not U.S. military drones, or “our initial assessment here is that these are not drones or activities coming from a foreign entity or adversary,” many Americans assume they’re not hearing the full truth.

One counterargument to the idea that these are drones operated by a hostile foreign power: One would presume that the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard would have at least some ability to track a drone aircraft carrier off the east coast, and that NORAD and local air traffic control would have at least some ability to detect and track these craft while they’re in the air. If the U.S. had any reason to think that China, Iran, Russia, or any other hostile state was flying spy drones above our military bases, would they really just leave them unmolested and not make any effort to shoot them down? Forget ordinance; you can disable and take down a flying drone with an electronic pulse to disrupt the signals between a surveillance drone and its controller.

The post Probing Public Concern Over Mysterious Drone Sightings first appeared on John Locke Foundation.