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It was a dry and cool Wednesday evening outside the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, a longtime military installation that once made the bombs and shells that led to victory in World War II. A contractor there knocked off work and decided to wait out rush hour traffic. He picked up some takeout from Wawa, parked outside a nearby wildlife preserve and settled in to watch an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast on his phone. Then he saw a flash in the side mirror.
A light rising straight up from the tree line and toward the arsenal. He started recording. Could it have been a plane?
Or was it a drone?
And so began what seems to be the origin story of the ongoing drone saga. The contractor called in his sighting to his superiors on Nov. 13, and others followed quickly, first throughout the county, then the rest of New Jersey, then into neighboring states.
Countless people have reported mysterious hovering objects dotting the night skies and posted blurred images — a white light, a black background — on social media. Every day, for weeks. Drones. Drones?
Small drones. Drones big as vans. Blinking, stationary, speeding and zipping and buzzing.
Jeffrey Parker first saw them outside his Vineland, N.J., apartment building. He was barefoot, checking the mail, and there they were: three lights flying low and slow.
“I was like damn, that’s not airplanes,” Mr. Parker, 65, said.
Was it a foreign government? Our own government? Kids? Visitors from space?
English (US)