Why drone hysteria has taken off

Dating back a month now, you’ve either seen them in the sky, or you’ve seen them on the news: Drones seem to be everywhere. By all accounts, alleged drone sightings are multiplying exponentially, with more than 5,000 reported in just the past few weeks alone.

But of those 5,000, only a hundred or so have generated actual law enforcement leads.

George Mason University engineering professor Missy Cummings, who has been doing drone research for 25 years, says what most people are actually seeing are likely aircraft, stars, or reflections off of objects, like towers. “Of all of those options, drone is the least likely, because it’s actually pretty hard to pick these out of the sky,” she said.

We heard a similarly ordinary explanation for these extraordinary lights-in-the-sky when we visited New Jersey’s Monmouth County Sherriff Shaun Golden this past week. “The majority of these sightings are probably some type of commercial o recreational manned aircraft,” he said.

In other words, no imminent threat.  As a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the FAA, and the FBI, put it on Tuesday, “[We] do not assess the activity to date to present a national security or public safety risk.”

Cummings said, “If you’re actually looking at lights from a drone, it means that you’re definitely not looking at a foreign adversary, because they’re sophisticated enough to turn the lights off.”

And yet, some of the American public have been a little on edge.

The best approach for the moment, according to Cummings, is that we should all try to stay grounded: “If I go on the news and tell you, ‘You have something to worry about,’ then you have something to worry about,” she said. “But in this case right now, really, things are operating as usual.”

       
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Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Joseph Frandino.

Tom Hanson

Tom Hanson is a national investigative correspondent for CBS News and Stations. His in-depth reports air across all platforms and programs. He is a member of CBS News and Stations Medical, Health, and Wellness Unit.