17th December, 2024

By Professor Will Austin of Warren County Community College

I first learned of the sightings of drones in New Jersey on November 19, from the leader of our elected county commission, and former Warren County Community College student, James Kern. When first asked about these sightings a month ago, I asked classes of students to keep an eye on the night sky, and just for the record, to date we have only seen small drones (the 2-4lb, typical drone we would expect to see in affluent areas in New Jersey).

I was first contacted by North Jersey’s regional media on November 26 by the Morristown Daily Record, where I tried to explain that the drones were most likely small drones flown by our recreational FAA Trust certified pilots or by Part 107 pilots engaged in commercial flights, but that it would be impossible for me to discount a flyaway from Picatinny Arsenal given its close geographic proximity. The paper is owned by Gannett Co. Inc., which also owns the USA Today, which grabbed the headline and in large part began the current media frenzy, which quickly became a proverbial political football.

Not realizing the coming storm, like all of you I went on to enjoy friends and family for Thanksgiving. Upon my return to work, frankly I had forgotten the whole thing, and I most certainly did not see a single drone of the size described in the night sky (I am still waiting to see one, even though I have been out hunting for the better part of a month). On December 8^th, my media folks at Warren County Community College called to tell me that the story was likely going national and that our statewide news media was calling for comment as we have the most advanced drone training program in New Jersey. 

On December 10, I reached out to a couple media contacts and The Droning Company to share my perspective, because I know that reporters follow their ‘gut’ on a story, whereas this college president follows the science. All along, I have suspected that there are no large drones over NJ, but there did seem to be a large number of eyewitnesses that kept growing, especially after the politicians on both sides of the aisle added to the story. Many of these folks are close personal friends of mine, and they have never lied to me, yet I know in my heart that there are no large drones flying over New Jersey even though many truly believe they saw them.

The story continued to grow with the alleged sightings. I began to realize when helping reporters who would send me files, stop by the drone lab, or just ask me live on TV, what people were looking at (hint: it was always an airplane or a small drone, or in a couple of cases an over zoomed in picture of the planet Jupitor, which is very clear in New Jersey right now). The Associated Press began to pick up the story, and now between the Gannett story and the AP story, I was seeing my name in just about every newspaper in the nation. I am an extremely private person, so friends asked why I would get involved. The reason is simple, I do fear the repercussions of how this story could hurt our industry, progress, and the chances of our students finding gainful employment, whereas last year WarrenUAS students were signing six-figure employment contracts.

By now the political and media forces were travelling throughout the state, searching for drones (likely with little to no knowledge of drones). They were allegedly finding drones, where after almost a month, I couldn’t find or verify much more than a couple of DJI Mavic’s, two Phantoms, and a rare M600 sighting – but absolutely not a single drone over 55lbs. College presidents exist to run colleges but often should exist to speak to the truth wherever it takes us, this is what the true meaning of Academic Freedom is, and as this president also enjoys tenure as a faculty member, I may be one of the last people who can speak truth where ever it leads.

Our team decided to reach out to the national media to share our drone story and to suggest that perhaps people were experiencing the parallax effect, spotting planes, and becoming disoriented and confused into believing they were seeing drones. We in the aviation community are familiar with this concept, among others, that make such night flying aircraft hard if not impossible at times to distinguish. Our team appeared first on FOX News (which has covered happenings at Warren County Community College many times in the past). On the way back from that airing, the Associated Press was calling with more questions, and CNN was practically racing after us to get to our drone port hoping we could do a night flight demo for them. As that team was arriving at the college, the Jake Tapper show asked me to come on live to talk about recently sited drones by NJ Senator Andy Kim. Unfortunately, I could see on the screen immediately that poor Senator Kim and law enforcement had mistaken airplanes for drones, and although I really did not want to, I was compelled by logic and reason to state the truth. Senator Kim, among other politicians, has now stated that his misidentification came from a lack of trust of the government (which I thought he was a part of), and which I get is related to not accepting the response or the utter lack of it from our federal government. Still, how are all these intelligent people seeing so many drones, hearing them, and having them hover over their homes? I thought, surely, I must be going mad? Still, I knew the truth in my heart, so I kept pushing for the sake of our industry.

Finally, to ensure that I could demonstrate that all my opinions were based on fact and not on politics as I live a life of metaphysics based in objective reality and an epistemology of reason, I really searched the internet hard for some sign of any large drone in flight at night in New Jersey. After this hard search for facts, I began hoping this story was bound to have run its course, I mean no one actually had identified a single large drone, so when asked I went on MSNBC to be more forceful about the fact that we are mistaking airplanes for drones at night, that’s why we don’t see drones in the daytime, because they are actually airplanes. I mean at this point my statewide education reporter is asking me to  speak to the fact that people on the ground are trying to use laser pointers to take down drones and its impacting the safety of manned flights in NJ (a fact I verified with local airport managers). I also verified that no commercial pilot had reported seeing all these drones and that that all flights in the NAS were proceeding as normal. This kind of behavior could get people hurt or worse.

So now, two days later, as I write this essay, by request, I sit here listening to early morning stories in the background about so-called mystery drones, watching reporters show videos of obvious airplanes and call them drones on the air, and I think how did we get here and what is this phenomenon as most certainly it is not drones. I am now certain of this because over the weekend, the sophisticated federal tracking software identified a whopping 12 sightings Saturday (December 14) and just one on Sunday (December 15) in the entire state of New Jersey as reported by the Associated Press. I thought all this should have dispelled the idea that there are thousands of drones in the NAS in New Jersey?

How could so many people be seeing and experiencing drones that are not there? To answer this, I must put away my Embry Riddle Aeronautical University aviation degrees and take out my sociology degrees from Loyola University of Maryland and Temple University. You see, there is a concept in sociology called, “Mass Sociogenic Illness,” where healthy folks develop the symptoms of people around them for illnesses the healthy do not have, or to put it simply we often model the behavior of those around us that we trust in very deep ways. So, what are we experiencing then, I feel it is two things, first, there is definitely a sociological phenomenon that I am going to term  here and now as “Mass Sociogenic Technophobia,” which I now believe explains all the previous drone sightings that came and went around the nation, which now seems to be spreading thanks to an udder lack of leadership by our federal government. You see, at this point it no longer matters if there were actual drones in the NAS, to the hearts and minds of thousands, they saw large drones and no one will ever convince them otherwise, just bring on the Congressional Hearings to prove my point.

It is time for some real leadership from the FAA. Please stop sitting silently by and do the hard work of telling folks that there were no drones, as we both know that is the truth. There are a lot of us out here who have dedicated years and countless resources to this industry, and I fear a coming overreaction to a sociological phenomenon mistaken for a technological one that will have all of us in the industry forever scrambling to catch up because of new regulations to make sure these mystery drones never return from wherever it is they will now likely go, which I can only assume is back to the imagination. This will give our adversaries the boost everyone in NJ already assumed they had. It is time, the silence has now hurt enough people this holiday season, and only heaven will know the aftereffects for our industry. Enough is enough already, enjoy the holiday, there does not appear to be a single large drone, and perhaps there never was one in the first place.