WASHINGTON — As public concern over drones flying in the skies above New Jersey and other East Coast states has escalated, the White House wants Congress to pass legislation that would give the federal, state and local governments greater authority to address drones that fly in U.S. airspace.
“We do need better authorities to deal with that growing ecosystem of drones in U.S. airspace,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday in an interview on NBC’s “TODAY” show.
Gaps exist in federal, state and local government authorities to deal with drones, Kirby said.
“Congress needs to help us get through this,” he said.
Kirby sought to reassure the public that the Biden administration is dealing with the increase in reports of drones, saying the federal government has conducted some analysis on the drones over the last several days.
“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 said. “We know that there’s no national security threat. We know there’s no public safety threat right now.”
Kirby also said White House officials are being as “open and as transparent with the American people as we can be.”
In a separate interview Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Kirby said President Joe Biden is calling for a bipartisan commission to examine the issue.
“We proposed legislation. It’s gone nowhere on Capitol Hill, but there are additional authorities we need,” he said.
Members of the House Intelligence Committee received a closed-door briefing Tuesday afternoon on the drone sightings from officials from the FBI, the CIA and the national intelligence director’s office.
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 were assured, and we asked this question over and over and over again. They are not federal government operations to sniff radiation, gas recovery, anything else,” referring to a series of conspiracy theories about 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 bill was proposed last year by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., with a 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 have called on 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 the short-term funding bill congressional 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 that there 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 said. “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.
Kate Santaliz, Laura Strickler, Syedah Asghar and Zoë Richards contributed.
