Some overflights of sensitive military areas remain unresolved, though experts such as Jamey Jacob suggested they were likely careless actors, and the Pentagon noted that drone flyovers are common and are generally not nefarious.

[7] Reporting on the case of the 2024 sightings, one journalist noted that New Jersey has for generations "played host to stories of the strange and the surreal, including Martian invasions and ghostly treasure guardians".

[24][25][26] The sightings, initially concentrating around the Raritan River corridor,[4][27][28] soon spread across New Jersey, including to the counties of Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Essex, Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Passaic, Sussex, Union, and Warren.

[4][1] The sightings were reported over residential neighborhoods and near sensitive locations, including military installations, emergency communication centers, local law enforcement facilities, and the Round Valley Reservoir.

There were multiple drone sightings over Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle, some reported by "highly trained security personnel" according to military officials.

[46] The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Department of Defense issued a statement on December 14, 2024, confirming certain sightings, that the DoD was unaware of who operated the drones, and that there was no present indication of involvement by adversary nations.

[32][51][37] On December 17, 2024, White House spokesman John Kirby said that, after doing forensics on the incident, the reported aircraft turned out to be "air traffic going into JFK International Airport, and not drones at all.

[66][67] On December 13, Stewart International Airport in Orange County, NY, was forced to shut down for an hour due to drone activity, which was later confirmed by Governor Hochul.

[73][74] Last night, beginning at around 9:45 pm, I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation's capital).

[77][79] In Massachusetts on December 15, Boston Police identified three local residents whom they said were operating consumer grade drones in restricted airspace near Logan International Airport.

And I want to assure the American public that we, in the federal government, have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.

[103][88][104] The agencies stated they did not assess the activity "to present a national security or public safety risk," noting that most sightings were identified as commercial, hobbyist, law enforcement drones, or conventional aircraft.

[66] On December 16, the state police announced they "found that most [drone sightings] could be attributed to manned aircraft or those UAS devices operating in the private sector in a legal manner".

[115][116] On December 14, Governors Maura Healey of Massachusetts and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia confirmed state investigations into the increasing sightings, with the latter citing concerns over national security and critical infrastructure.

[31][33][118] President Biden made his first public comments on December 18, 2024, stating there was "nothing nefarious, apparently" and "no sense of danger so far," adding that "we're following it closely" and noting "a lot of drones authorized up there.

[121][122] United States Senators Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Andy Kim sent a letter to the FBI, DHS and FAA on December 12, requesting briefings regarding their efforts to address the situation.

[126] Comedian Bowen Yang performed a skit during the December 21 episode of Saturday Night Live in which he portrayed an anthropomorphic drone of the type purportedly seen in New Jersey.

[106] Brandon Valeriano, a professor at Seton Hall University specializing in cybersecurity, indicated the sightings were probably connected to hobbyist drone use, and that some members of the public had sought "wild explanations for the things they can't understand".

"[39] On January 1, 2025, Matthew Livelsberger, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier and drone warfare specialist, committed suicide in a car bombing in Las Vegas.

[139][140] By December 15, Austin reported having completed review of a large amount of video of the sightings and had come to the conclusion that "100 percent of them are either airplanes that people have misidentified or drones that have grown in use since the media attention and are under 55 pounds".

[140] Asked by a reporter from WNEP-TV to analyze video of the drone sightings, the owners of three different UAV retail stores said they felt most of the objects spotted were either manned aircraft or the result of "nighttime illusion".

[142] Jamey Jacob, a professor in aerospace engineering at Oklahoma State University, attributed the sightings to misidentification "largely driven by social media and the inability to determine what's real and what's not".

[22] Vijay Kumar, dean of Penn Engineering, said that most of the images he saw in relation to the sightings were of legally operating aircraft and that popular fear about drones was due to their association with "science fiction-like scenarios where machines have autonomy".

[143] Missy Cummings, a professor of engineering at George Mason University, said that people were likely observing stars, aircraft, and reflections from objects, and that, "of all of those options, drone is the least likely, because it's actually pretty hard to pick these out of the sky".

[145] Skeptic Mick West suggested many of the sightings were cases of misidentification and videos claiming to show drones with unusual characteristics could be explained by the poor quality of smartphone camera optics.

[147] Tom Adams, a private sector counter-drone defense consultant and former FBI agent, said that, in his experience, satellites, aircraft, and celestial objects were often misidentified as drones, and that media coverage of the purported sightings was creating "a little hysteria".

[158] On December 18, a spokesman for Nazha Cancer Center, which mailed the missing part, stated the component — an Eckert & Ziegler model HEGL-0132 — contained an insignificant amount of Germanium-68 that was depleted prior to shipment, and that the device had been recovered, in any case.

[167][166][168] In a December 13 column for the Washington Post, Max Boot suggested the sightings could be at least partly explained by "mass hysteria" which, he noted, was "a recurring feature of American life".

[161] Andrew McCarthy, a space photographer, said that "every single video I've analyzed of this phenomenon has been either a normal helicopter or plane" and that the sightings had "become a social contagion where people are going outside and watching air traffic for the first time and assuming it's unknown aircraft".

[171] A professor of astronomy at LaGuardia Community College suggested that the widespread nature of the sightings might be a case of confirmation bias in which the public were misinterpreting mundane or routine phenomena.