What happened
From mid-November 2024, residents of Morris and Somerset Counties in New Jersey began reporting nighttime lights moving low over houses, near the Picatinny Arsenal and Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster. They were taken to be large drones. By December, reports were coming in from New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland, and the FBI had received more than five thousand of them. Authorities in several states called for explanations, and the FAA imposed temporary drone flight restrictions over several New Jersey communities. Local politicians and the media speculated about foreign intelligence, secret tests, and UFOs.
Witnesses
Thousands of residents of New Jersey and neighboring states, police officers, and local politicians.
Explanations and hypotheses
The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon stated that the videos they analyzed showed mainly manned aircraft, lawful drones, helicopters, and stars, and in January 2025 the White House announced that many of the objects were drones flying with FAA authorization for research purposes. Skeptics point to the classic mechanism of a media-fueled panic. Some sightings have not received a detailed explanation.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
More: Wikipedia (en)