WASHINGTON — As public concern has escalated over drones flying in the skies above New Jersey and other East Coast states, the White House wants Congress to pass legislation that would give greater authority to the federal, state and local governments 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 reported drones, saying that 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 will receive a closed-door briefing Tuesday on the drone sightings, according to two sources familiar with the plan. Officials from the FBI, CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will provide the briefing at 2 p.m. ET.
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 be pushing to pass a measure to broaden the rights for state and local law enforcement agencies to be able to use equipment to detect unmanned aerial devices. The bill was proposed last year by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., with a bipartisan companion bill introduced in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is one of its sponsors, proposing the measure before he was elected to his leadership post. Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., are calling 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.
The Defense Department, Homeland Security Department, Federal Aviation Administration and 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 federal 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 the FBI has received more than 5,000 tips in recent weeks and 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 and Laura Strickler contributed.
