John Kirby
speaker
39 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
John Kirby’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I just want to add a few comments on the reports of drone activity here on the East Coast, particularly in and around New Jersey.
We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or a public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.
The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are investigating these sightings, and they're working closely with state and local law enforcement to provide resources using numerous detection methods to better understand their origin.
Using very sophisticated electronic detection technologies provided by federal authorities,
We have not been able to and neither have state or local law enforcement authorities corroborate any of the reported visual sightings.
To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully.
The United States Coast Guard is providing support to the state of New Jersey and has confirmed that there is no evidence of any foreign-based involvement from coastal vessels.
And importantly, there are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted airspace.
That said, we certainly take seriously the threat that can be posed by unmanned aircraft systems, which is why law enforcement and other agencies continue to support New Jersey and investigate the reports, even though they have uncovered no malicious activity or intent at this particular stage.
While there is no known malicious activity occurring, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight a gap in authorities.
And so we urge Congress to pass important legislation that will extend and expand existing counter drone authorities so that we are better prepared to identify and mitigate any potential threats to airports or other critical infrastructure.
And so that state and local authorities are provided all the tools that they need to respond to such threats as well.
Certainly I understand why people would be looking at this and being concerned about it.
We're concerned about it too, which is why we have the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, my goodness, looking at this.
And we're taking it seriously.
We understand that people are concerned.
We understand that they got questions.
We got questions too.
And we're working hard to get the answers to that.
What I can tell you as we sit here today, at 2.16 in the afternoon on the 12th, is we haven't seen any indication thus far that there's a public safety risk.
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