I Think I Know What Those “Drones” Are Over New Jersey

Planes and constellations. Let’s just get this out of the way first, because there is something of a mass hysteria going on where people are taking pictures of planes and saying they’re aliens. Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor, took a picture of Orion and demanded a federal investigation into it. We are, how do I put this nicely…losing our fucking minds.

But the cardinal sin of the study of unidentified stuff in the air is assuming that most equals all. I have heard from four friends in New Jersey who have seen these things, including one who said, “one of the drones literally was right above my house” and that it was “not quite the size of a small plane” with “red and green lights.”

Many enthusiastic debunkers will be quick to jump on the red and green light detail and dismiss it as a plane, but I asked my friend if they heard anything, and they said no. This is an example of where you can separate the earnest investigators from the ideological debunkers dedicated to everything being swamp gas, as planes, yannow, make noise. Not all of these sightings are the same, and figuring out what’s going on takes a lot more work than just pointing to craven politicians and saying “see? There’s nothing here.”

Last week I wrote about the reports from the Wall Street Journal, United States Air Force Plant 42, and the United States Air Forces in Europe all admitting that something like “small unmanned aerial systems” are entering and exiting sensitive military facilities at will and per the WSJ, “The Pentagon is stumped.” This was at the start of the New Jersey sightings too, as Governor Phil Murphy said the day before I wrote it that there are “very sophisticated drones” flying all over his state, including military facilities, and “the minute you get eyes on them, they go dark.”

The FBI later pushed back on his assertion that the New Jersey drones violated military airspace, saying in a statement that “There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space.”

Many have jumped on this to debunk the entire saga as proof of the all planes and constellations theory, but that is a poor reading of what the FBI said, as in the first paragraph they note that “The FBI, DHS and our federal partners, in close coordination with the New Jersey State Police, continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate this situation and confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings.”

Why would they still be deploying resources to investigate just a bunch of planes and constellations?

There is, however, an extremely obvious explanation for most or all of the earnest “drone” sightings that is not a nothingburger and has been widely reported on before, as New Jersey 101.5 explains in this story titled “Flying taxis ready to take off here in New Jersey” from back in January.

Not too long ago, United Airlines was ready to place a billion-dollar order in for air taxis/personal helicopters that will get you to Newark in minutes. Well, that market has exploded as entrepreneurs have doled out billions to air taxi manufacturers like Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, Lilium, and Britain’s Vertical Aerospace.

According to the Financial Times, industry analysts believe the air taxi market will be worth over $1.5 trillion each year by the year 2040. Those are incredible numbers.

Yeah I’m gonna go ahead and make a budding $1.5 trillion industry the heavy favorite at the Splinter sportsbook now. Air taxis are about to become big business, as companies like Joby have been filing the proper permits and such to literally get this idea off the ground in places like New York City. Known as eVTOLs, these helicopter-looking electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft fit a lot of the descriptions of these drones over New Jersey to a T. SmartCitiesDive wrote about this in October 2023, detailing how the final preparations for this industry were being made, with companies like Archer obtaining FAA Certificates to fly these vehicles beginning in 2025.

Four pilots completed a series of tests to gain information on the aircraft’s handling and pilot controls. Tests included tasks and maneuvers that pilots would need to accomplish in real-world operation such as vertical takeoffs, transitioning to forward flight, decelerating and landing.

That sure looks like a description of all the drone activity over the skies of New Jersey. If this is what is happening, there is a scandal here, as this is information in the public domain that the authorities could be telling us about. That they are not suggests either incompetence or malevolence.

Not all of these electric air vehicles look the same and fly at the same altitudes, which also helps explain the diversity of drone reports that are not planes or constellations. One of my followers on Bluesky pointed me towards this flight out of Philadelphia that swept over New Jersey of a Leonardo AW609, a fixed-wing airplane with helicopter-style rotors. According to Leonardo’s website, it can fly at 25,000 feet and it “meets the highest FAA requirements for both fixed-wing airplanes and helicopters including single-engine operation and autorotation.”

We are about to enter a brave new world of air transportation driven by companies like Leonardo targeted at “a wide range of missions including VIP and Executive Transport, Parapublic, Medical and Rescue Services and Energy Services.” I do not know for certain what is in the skies above New Jersey and what flew above my friend’s house, but I do know that red and green lights are FAA requirements, and these electric air taxis slated to begin debuting in American cities next year have obtained FAA clearance to fly their vehicles, with documented evidence of some flying over New Jersey. This does not explain away the far more disturbing incursions at military bases around the world that The Pentagon is reportedly “stumped” by, but I am willing to run to the Splinter sportsbook right now and place a large bet at -10000 odds that what is flying over New Jersey right now is what will be flying over New Jersey and New York in the coming years.