Drones, drones and more drones

Something bizarre has been going on across the country and the Biden administration has no answer for it. It’s all about drones. They are everywhere, but more recently, some of them have been involved in what appears to be spying activities over some sensitive military sites, especially in New Jersey. Cold it be a hostile state engaged in espionage? Could it be the Russians or Chinese or some terrorist organisation? Washington – and that means all the administration agencies from the FBI and Homeland Security to the various intelligence services – conclude that the drone sightings have not been threatening and in many cases are not drones at all, but aircraft. And yet, drones or what appear to be drones, have been spotted in groupings, moving very fast, and hovering over sites where they should be forbidden from flying. The Pentagon was receiving so many reports that finally it decided to make a full statement to try and reassure people that the country was not being invaded by either hostile or alien unmanned aerial vehicles. After decades of attempting to convince conspiracy enthusiasts that alien UFOs (unidentified flying objects) were not speeding across our skies, the Pentagon has had quite a challenge in persuading everyone that the drones in our midst are not being operated by some foreign state. The drone sightings started more than a month ago in New Jersey over a number of sensitive locations. The reports emerged of more drones in Pennsylvania, New York State, Connecticut and Maryland. The suspicious drone sightings coincided with similar reports of sophisticated drones appearing over four US Air Forces bases in the United Kingdom. Those sightings caused such concern the UK government sent specialist troops to investigate. No firm evidence was found to accuse the Russians of being behind the drone flights. But the involvement of Russia was not ruled out. In the US, however, no one in the administration suggested that a Russian intelligence agency was operating the drones. In fact, John, Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told a media conference that most of the reported drones were manned aircraft operating lawfully. One statistic produced by the Pentagon underlined the challenge facing the authorities in trying to keep control of the huge rise in drone activity. It turns out there are more than one million drones legally registered with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). So, at any one point in the day all over the country, there will be drones flying above people’s heads. The FBI and other agencies concluded after reviewing all the technical data linked to drone sightings in the last few weeks that many of them involved lawful commercial or law enforcement drones as well as manned aircraft ,helicopters “and stars mistakenly reported as drones”. So much for the theories that spy drones operated by hostile states were among the 5,000 or so sightings received by the FBI. But who knows?