As reports of drone sightings continued to spread across New Jersey and New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Friday said she was investigating the matter with federal law enforcement agencies.
“At this time, there’s no evidence that these drones pose a public safety or national security threat,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement on social media.
A spokesman for the National Security Council, John Kirby, said at a news conference on Thursday that federal investigators had been unable to corroborate reports of any unauthorized drones above New Jersey. Instead, he said that many of the reported sightings appeared to be “manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully.”
Mr. Kirby’s comments, and assurances from state and federal officials that there was no evidence of a threat to residents, have done little to allay public concerns about the spate of sightings.
Lawmakers in New York and New Jersey have called on the federal government to provide more information about the purported drones.
“The Biden administration has an obligation to the American people to figure out and tell us what is going on immediately,” Chris Smith, a Republican representative from New Jersey, said in a statement on Friday.
In a letter to President Biden that same day, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey thanked the White House for looking into the issue, but added that it had “become apparent that more resources are needed to fully understand what is behind this activity.”
The sightings began in central New Jersey in mid-November after personnel inside the Picatinny Arsenal, an Army facility in Morris County, spotted what they said was a drone flying near the base. Days later, reports of the sightings began pouring into the New Jersey State Police, Mr. Murphy said in the letter.
The initial sightings were clustered in a few counties in central New Jersey, but the phenomenon quickly spread across the state, including to coastal counties in the south and to the Philadelphia suburbs.
In early December, drone sightings were reported in parts of New York City, first along Staten Island’s west shore, and then in southern Brooklyn, near the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. On Thursday, sightings were reported in the Bronx and near LaGuardia Airport in Queens.
Residents in parts of upstate New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have also reported mysterious sightings at night. On Friday, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said on social media that he had personally seen “what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky” above his home in Davidsonville, Md.
