(Photo by Ryan Morrill)
I remain inextricably fascinated by the whole sky-high drone affair, which has shown brightly within social media, sparking a back and forth frenzy between those who have seen (and believe) and those who disbelievingly mock such sightings.
At national and world levels are nightly newscasts leading with enticing stories about N.J.’s countless sightings, though always ending with nary a viable clue into what’s going on up there.
Along nomenclature lines, it’s fine and good that some news reports have opted to use the “UFO” term. Technically, the things being seen are just that. Far more apropos are the letters UAV, unmanned aerial vehicles, affectionately known as drones – though far from affectionately viewed in Ukraine.
The drone-use ugliness in Ukraine has solidified the notion that unmanned aircraft mark the future of warfare. As such, it might very well offer an insight into any hushed testing of our nation’s drone assets, be it happenstancely – or strategically – focused on the skies over N.J.
Myself and a million or so others are becoming growingly convinced some military mechanism is behind the current in-state epidemic of drone reports. Experts far above my pay grade are offering identical assumptions. Even the FBI, formerly forwarding the party line that a form of mass hysteria is behind the hullabaloo, has done a full reversal, recently admitting there’s something suspicious taking flight on an almost nightly basis, complicated (or not) by nary a single sighting on Thanksgiving and most Sundays.
Far more sinister, other federal agencies are being implicated in the dronization of Jersey. Fox news ran the headline “NJ drone sightings could be a ‘classified exercise’ says former CIA officer.”
If the CIA is involved, it flies against congressional dictates that forbid the agency from operating within U.S. borders. On the other clandestine hand, when national security, health and welfare are in play, government eccentricities, some seemingly unconstitutional, are readily allowable, as evidenced during COVID.
Reckoning that military maneuvers factor into our drone sightings, we down-below folks might be inadvertently performing an integral and honorable service to the nation.
By utilizing the most crowded state in the nation (per square mile), the military could gain key insights into the public’s rate of awareness – and reaction – to unmanned flyovers. The Pentagon might then parlay its findings to predict how people in hostile nations would respond to drone arrivals. Such reconnoitering objectives would explain our highfalutin’ national secrecy – and the need to surreptitiously make spotters out of Jerseyans. I think we deserve a cool “Official Spotter” cap.
Did you know that during WWII, coastal Americans, east and west, were taught the silhouettes of military aircraft to thereafter act as spotters?
I’m going full monte on military involvement during these drone nights, though not losing scary sight of the fact that even everyday store-bought drones can easily be modified into potentially hostile delivery systems, capable of dropping canisters of almost anything, anywhere.
I wonder if drone ownership in America might be on the line here. And what will the National Rifle Association think of that? If they go gonzo over the banning of drones, it would be admitting the devices could, in fact, have a weaponry angle. It’s never simple out there … or up there.
Regarding the time frame of virtually all sightings, drones own the night. What’s more, sightings have occurred just after dark in southern parts of the state, but “late night,” per reports from northern areas.
DRONES TO SPARE: At a military level, the U.S. utterly dominates the martial drone realm with a stockpile estimated to be in the tens of thousands of units – with some estimates soaring into the hundreds of thousands. They are part of the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), overseen by the Department of Defense. The military often uses the term UAS for its drones.
Whereas China rules the world in drone production, supplying millions of UAVs to the public – along with Russia and Ukraine – the U.S. military sticks with in-country builds, relying on General Atomics, Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Technologies Corp. and Northrop Grumman.
American drone builds aren’t just for the skies. There is a race for drone supremacy of a submarine sort.
The U.S. Navy sports a growing population of UUVs, unmanned/uncrewed underwater vehicles, which can travel underwater before surfacing and instantly taking flight to perform preprogrammed undercover missions.
Nationalinterest.org/ writes, “Underwater Drone ‘Aircraft Carriers’? The U.S. Navy Is Loading Submarines with UUVs.”
The website goes on, “The U.S. Navy will deploy a groundbreaking torpedo-tube launch-and-recovery uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) capability on a submarine for the first time by the end of this year.”
Worthy of a wonder: Are U.S. subs surfacing at night off the Jersey Shore, launching assorted data-gathering drones, then quickly submerging, allowing the UAVs to do their reconnaissance magic? Might the many drones spotted heading out to sea indicate submarines resurfacing to bring their minions back aboard the mother vessel?
(Hey, when secrecy becomes the norm, imaginations like mine take off.)
HOW DARE YOU!?: The sourest point in this entire drone affair is our federal government snarkily telling us that our sightings, including many photographs, are merely a form of hysteria, marked by the misreading of domestic aircraft navigation lights.
In response to that inane suggestion, I turn to our nation’s greatest orator, brother Abe, who said, “You can fool all of the people some of time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
Fewer and fewer Jerseyans are playing the fool. I’m firmly in the “can’t fool” camp, having now seen over two dozen utterly unexplainable aeronautic light anomalies (ALAs). That’s my term, meant to place greater emphasis on the lighting angle, which dominates most sightings.
In my last column, I had only one sighting under my belt. Now, I’m loaded for bear. My count is in the clouds after I located a prime sighting spot: the bayside bathing beach parking lot in Surf City. If sightings continue, check it out after dark.
On Friday night, Dec. 13 (9 p.m.), I pulled up there to a veritable light show of impressive ALAs. The look was disquietingly remarkable. Within maybe 30 minutes, I saw a dozen or more, mostly moving west to east.
Same spot, the following evening (8:30 p.m.), my wife and I witnessed a conga line of white lights, one behind the other, arising in an orderly manner out of the southwest (roughly the Warren Grove Range area) and heading northeast. At one point, there were five ALAs stretched across the western skyline. No domestic or private aircraft would ever risk traveling in such a stacked flight pattern, especially after dark. At the same time, there was also a slew of explainable lights working the skies over the former nuclear power plant in Oyster Creek. Those ALAs offered some reds and (maybe) greens.
Making things even freakier, a few ALAs suddenly went black. A pilot with a major airline noted, “If we turned off our lights when in flight, we’d lose our license.”
As to the White House’s dogged adherence to sightings being everyday domestic aircraft, I’ll now call on another salient quote: Don’t insult my intelligence.
I have more after-dark sky-watching experience than most, having spent decades surf fishing at night, regularly seeing a steady flow of far-overhead, easily ID’ed aircraft, as they rather lazily passed some 30,000 feet overhead. Every drone seen on my watch has been far below the clouds. I’m guessing 1,000 feet up.
I’ll throw in one last quasi-famous quote regarding our government’s hushiness. “What we’ve got here … is failure to communicate.” So much for the new “transparency in government.”
Although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC news, “I want to assure the American public that we are on it,” methinks this bizarre drone display could end on a dime with nary a governmental peep.
Finally, how about those drone detection and tracking systems now deployed to military facilities in New Jersey? On one hand, it could suggest even the military is unaware of goings-on (within its own ranks?) or it’s a clever sideshow to further mask what might be the largest clandestine operation in American homeland history.
Again, coverups breed just such wild guesses from those of us within frustrated hoi polloi ranks.
COLD, THEN NOT: I don’t know about all y’all, but I’ve had it with winter, calendar notwithstanding. The good thing is my long-range winter forecast is mild and cuddly, which we’ll begin feeling after weathering one bitter-cold two-day event this week.
As to a Christmas clad in white, I’ll first laughingly forward an online meteorologist’s forecast for the worst N.J. blizzard since Lenape times, taking place on Dec. 25. Projecting complex weather systems colliding over South Jersey, the forecaster predicted we’d get … 57 inches! Not 56 or 58 inches, mind you. Within a day or two of that end-times snowfall prediction, the forecaster downgraded his prediction to a foot accumulation and finally reduced things to “a few flurries.”
Currently, that once grandiosely white forecast calls for “a warming trend,” replete with rain sprinkles.
As to the chances of a white Christmas at the shore, it’s best to stick to historic dictates, which place the chances at between zero and 5%.
The low-end odds (zero) place a white Christmas on LBI as less likely than winning the billion-dollar National Lottery, should one arise.
The glowing 5% chance of whiteness on the 25th includes times when snow was still on the ground from previous storms. In a stretch, it includes those plowed piles of melting, blackened snow in the Walmart parking lot, not quite Currier & Ives material.
There’s apparently some confusion over what constitutes an official snowy white Christmas. Per tradition, it comes on the day before, as in Christmas Eve. Google’s AI offers “The popular film ‘White Christmas’ further connects the idea of a snowy Christmas with Christmas Eve, as the main storyline takes place on that night.” The odds of a snowy Christmas eve? Maybe buy another National Lottery ticket.
I’ll reoffer my weather prediction for the upcoming winter by first aligning with just-arrived long-range forecasts indicating the holidays will usher in a mildness (50s) that could carry on for winter’s duration. I base that on jet stream idiosyncrasies, global warming input and, foremost, my personal preference. Please, let me be right.
CLOSE STRIPER CALL: We came that close to having our bass rights thoroughly stepped upon in 2025.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, seeking a 14% reduction in annual take, proposed closing the coastal bass fishery for November and December … the height of our N.J. bassing season.
Ripping those months from our bass clutches would be a horrific affront to Garden State saltwater anglers. It could also devastate the LBI Surf Fishing Classic, though many of us would fight to make certain the event lives on, though in a half-bass manner.
Mercifully, for now, it ain’t happenin’.
Helping to sink the ASMFC suggestion for a bass reduction in 2025 were powerful appeals and protests lodged by those opposed, including virtually all the state’s coastal tackle shop owners.
N.J. politicos, many of whom have long been staunch backers of the state’s fishermen, also took to pen and pulpit, explaining the abject unfairness that N.J. sportsman would suffer with the suggested closure.
Rep. Frank Pallone (N.J.-6th Dist.) sought to remove N.J. from the cut. In a letter that will have merit into 2026, Pallone wrote: “Meeting the stock rebuilding deadline of 2029 is important to the future of the species, as well as the industry and culture that depend on healthy stocks of Atlantic Striped Bass. A more appropriate framework to achieve shared goals would be to regulate New Jersey as a separate region. It is my understanding that the Atlantic Striped Bass Board is currently considering fishing closures to achieve a 14% reduction for a region that reaches from Massachusetts to New Jersey in November and December – my state’s best season. It is critical that the Board consider that the fish do not arrive from the North along the Jersey Shore until this time of year. As a result, the seasonal closure would wholly benefit our northern neighbors at the expense of New Jersey’s industry and culture. This is simply unfair.”
Protests seemingly hit a nerve, as the ASMFC decided on Dec.16 to forgo any regulation tweaks for 2025.
According to Jim Hutchinson in The Fisherman Magazine, “The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Striped Bass Management Board did not have enough votes to implement new regulations for 2025. In fact, their vote to implement changes for 2025 failed (by my count) 11-2. Instead, the ASMFC will be going through a comprehensive process once again in 2025 to look at how to implement regulatory changes in 2026. So yes, in a way, they’ve kicked the can down the road, but only because the more immediate reduction scenario was grossly unjust.”
While that is great news, what might come about in 2026 is anybody’s guess. Well within possibility range is an identical ASMFC effort to implement a November/December coastline closure.