Washington The White House wants Congress to enact legislation that would give the federal, state, and local governments more ability to deal with drones that fly in U.S. airspace, as public anxiety over drones operating in the skies over New Jersey and other East Coast states has grown.
In an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” program on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby stated, “We do need better authorities to deal with that growing ecosystem of drones in U.S. airspace.”
According to Kirby, there are gaps in the federal, state, and municipal government’s ability to handle drones.
“Congress needs to help us get through this,” he stated.
Kirby said the federal government has done some analysis on the drones over the past several days in an effort to convince the public that the Biden administration is handling the surge in drone reports.
“Our assessment leads us to conclude that these are lawful and legal aviation activities, manned and unmanned drones and civil aviation aircraft or commercial aircraft,” he stated. We are aware that there isn’t a threat to national security. We are aware that there is currently no threat to public safety.
Kirby also said White House officials are being as “open and as transparent with the American people as we can be.”
Speaking separately on Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Kirby stated that President Joe Biden is requesting a bipartisan committee to look into the matter.
“We put forward a bill. It s gone nowhere on Capitol Hill, but there are additional authorities we need,” he said.
Officials from the FBI, CIA, and the national intelligence director’s office briefed members of the House Intelligence Committee on the drone sightings Tuesday afternoon behind closed doors.
After the classified briefing, Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the panel, said the drones are not being used unlawfully or by individuals with malign intent.
“We repeatedly raised this question after receiving assurances. They are not federal government operations to sniff radiation, gas recovery, anything else,” referring to a series ofconspiracy theoriesabout what was prompting the reported drone sightings.
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, another Democrat on the committee, added the briefing reaffirmed that the reported drone sightings did not indicate foreign meddling.
To date, they haven t found anything that would indicate that there s foreign influence, foreign actors, or even little green men who are are working on the American people, Houlahan said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to use special drone technology, specifically the Robin Radar Systems 360-degree technology, to address the drones in the Northeast.
Schumer said he will also push to pass a measure to broaden state and local law enforcement agencies rights to use equipment to detect uncrewed aerial devices.The billwas proposed last year by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., witha bipartisan companion bill introduced in the House. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is one of its sponsors, having proposed the measure before he was elected to his leadership post. Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Houlahan havecalledon Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.,to include the legislation in the government funding bill Congress is expected to pass before the holidays.
A provision in theshort-term funding billcongressional leaders released Tuesday night would reauthorize a program led by the Department of Homeland Security allowing coordination and permitting federal agencies to counter drone threats.
The Defense and Homeland Security departments, the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI said in a joint statement Monday thatthere doesn’t seem to be anything nefarious about the drones.
“Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” the agencies stated. “We have not identified anything anomalous and do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk over the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.”
The statement said that the FBI has received more than 5,000 tips in recent weeks and that about 100 of them required further investigation.
The FAA requires that drones be registered with the agency and has more than 1 million of them in its system, but experts have said it’s not clear that everyone complies with the requirement.
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