BURSTRep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said in a podcast interview that the public should not rule out “outer space” as a possible origin of some of the drones sighted recently in the Northeast.
In an interview on “OutKick” recorded Monday, Mace expressed skepticism in some of the government’s efforts to reassure the public that they face no safety risk related to the drone sightings. She insisted that some pilots have said they cannot explain some of what is depicted in videos of the sky circulating on social media.
“My concern is, if it's not craft from outer space — because I think that has to be on the table. That has to be an option — is it our technology? Or is it Russia or Iran or China? Is there someone who's winning the arms race, and are we behind?”
“Because my question is about national security, and I hope that it's us,” she continued. “I hope that it's not our adversaries or something from outside the universe, because I have real concerns that, like, if these drones are from Iran or China, like some of the rumors have been, I pray that they're ours, but we should also know why they're out there. Like, are they looking for radiation? Are they looking for a missing nuclear warhead?”
Mace said congressional offices have gotten calls from constituents with real concerns about the uptick in drone sightings.
“We deserve to have some answers here, because people are scared, and a lot of congressional offices are hearing people, they're writing in with their concerns when they're seeing these drones,” Mace said. “And quite frankly, I mean, Congress needs answers and the [Defense Department], the Pentagon, needs to come and tell us the truth."
Federal law enforcement officials have said publicly that the recent uptick in reports of drone sightings does not suggest any increased risk to public safety.
National security communications adviser John Kirby said Monday in an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier that federal, local and state officials have worked together and examined more than 5,000 examples of possible drone sightings, and they’ve determined some aircraft are manned while others are unmanned.
“We’ve done the detection, then the analysis. We’ve corroborated the sightings,” the White House spokesperson said. “And in every case that we have examined to date, we have seen nothing, nothing that indicates a public safety risk.”
“There are drones flying over the skies of the United States every single night, every single day, and we’ve seen nothing in this, in and around New Jersey, that should give the people on the ground their concerns for their safety, for this activity,” Kirby continued. “And we’ve seen nothing, working with the Department of Defense as well, that indicates a foreign adversary actor involved or any kind of pernicious national security threat.”
Later on Monday, a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense indicated that, after looking into “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.”