Drones take over America’s skies: Two arrested over Boston airport incident while Ohio military base forced to shut airspace
The incidents come after the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said there is ‘no evidence’ the drone sightings pose a national security threat
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Your support makes all the difference.Two men were arrested for operating a drone “dangerously close” to a Boston airport while a critical Ohio Air Force base was forced to shut its airspace as investigations continue into reports of hundreds of flying objects sighted over the US.
Robert Duffy, 42, and Jeremy Folcik, 32, both of Massachusetts, were arrested and charged with trespassing on Saturday evening after their unmanned aircraft system (UAS) was detected above Logan International Airport, according to the Boston Police Department.
Officers managed to track the operators’ location to the decommissioned Long Island Health Campus using UAS monitoring technology, police said. The drone’s altitude, flight history and location were also collected.
Boston police said they’re working with Homeland Security, state police, the Federal Communications Commission, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the airport’s air traffic control team on the investigation.
Meanwhile, officials were forced to close airspace over the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for almost four hours late on Friday and early Saturday after a drone was sighted flying over the military facility, according to WHIO.
The “small unmanned aerial systems” were being monitored by base units, the base’s chief of public affairs Bob Purtiman told the outlet.
An audio recording of the incident captured in a Wright-Patterson air traffic control tower sees a controller urging an aircraft identified as “MedFlight 8” to “use extreme caution” due to “heavy UAS movement on the base,” according to the clip shared on YouTube by ‘The War Zone’.
Runways at New York Stewart International Airport in Orange County were forced to close on Friday night for about an hour due to drone activity, Governor Kathy Hochul announced.
The incidents come as mysterious lights have been spotted in the skies in states across the country, fueling speculation about the origins and causing federal officials to admit they don’t know who or what is behind them.
Between November 19 and December 13, almost 1,000 drone sightings have been recorded in New Jersey alone, the Office of Emergency Management confirmed to the New York Post.
The FBI said it had received about 5,000 tips in total regarding drone activity, but fewer than 100 were “deemed worthy of further investigative activity,” an agency spokesperson said on Saturday. The official claimed that there had been a “slight overreaction” to the reports.
The Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials have said that some of the sightings reported are “mistaken identity,” with members of the public misidentifying legally operated manned aircraft as drones.
Drones are legal across the US for recreational and commercial use, but they are subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions. Operators must also be FAA certified – with nearly 792,000 being registered with the agency.
The FBI and the DHS said Thursday there is “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”
The reported sighting began to garner traction after UAS were spotted in two New Jersey locations: the US military research facility Picatinny Arsenal and President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.
After weighing in on the “mystery,” Trump called for the flying objects to be shot down in a Truth Social post on Friday.
State lawmakers have called for further restrictions around who can fly unmanned devices, enhanced federal support and the equipment and software to effectively track the flying objects.
On Saturday, Hochul demanded action, and in the wake of the Orange County airport closure, she said that “this has gone too far”.
However, federal officials continue to investigate and have emphasized that there is no apparent security concern.
“We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the northeast. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter, the Department of Homeland Security, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the lead,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sunday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for Mayorkas to deploy “special drone-detection tech,” across New York and New Jersey, he wrote on Bluesky on Sunday.
In a news conference on Sunday, Schumer said: “If the technology exists for a drone to make it up into the sky, there certainly is the technology that can track the craft with precision and determine what the heck is going on.”
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tweeted on Sunday evening that “the public deserves clear answers – we will keep pushing the federal government for more information and resources”.
The House Intelligence Committee is set to receive a classified briefing on the drones this week. Democratic Representative Jim Himes, a member of the committee, told Fox News he’s frustrated with the current lack of information.
“There are a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” Himes said. “The answer ‘we don’t know’ is not a good enough answer when people are anxious, when they are nervous, and this has been true since we’ve been a species on this planet.”
He added: “Let me say something I know with confidence: It is not the Iranians, it is not the Chinese. They aren’t Martians.”
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