(NewsNation) — Reported drone sightings across the country have left people with more questions than answers.
The FBI has received more than 5,000 reports of drone sightings.
However, John Slaughter, the director of the University of Maryland’s UAS Research and Operations Center, told NewsNation that many of the sightings he’s reviewed may not be drones.
“I can tell you if it’s a quarter-mile away or 30 miles away on a clear night, you can’t tell what you’re looking at,” Slaughter, who served as a Navy pilot for 30 years, said. “All you know is what you see is a light, and the light is moving. But you don’t know how big it is, you don’t know how fast it’s moving, you don’t know what direction it’s traveling.”
Spotting a drone versus other aircraft
Because the vast majority of drone sightings took place at night, the darkness and the difficulty in accurately determining the distance from the ground make properly identifying an object more difficult, Slaughter said.
The Federal Aviation Administration requires drones to fly at a maximum altitude of 400 feet, but only relying on the aircraft’s lights to gauge what an object is may lead to drones being misidentified, he said.
While some who reported mysterious drone sightings said they saw objects the size of cars, drones would not fall into that category, Slaughter said.
Lights on drones are typically white, red or green, according to the website Pilot Institute, which reported that a drone operator flying a drone at night without lights is difficult, if not impossible.
The FAA only requires drones to have one flashing anticollision light on the aircraft, and all other lights are optional.
According to FAA regulations, drones can only weigh up to 55 pounds, and Slaughter said that the flight of drones operated by his team at the University of Maryland typically measures 5 feet in diameter from rotor to rotor.
The better indicator of a drone comes down to sound and flight behavior. Most of the multirotor drones, which are typically known as quadcopters, have a unique high-pitched sound when they are in flight. The sound is different from helicopters, which tend to be more low-pitched, Slaughter said.
Drones have the ability to stop immediately and execute sudden, sharp turns, which airplanes and helicopters are not capable of.
Reports of drones flying in a pattern or a cluster were more than likely commercial aircraft waiting to land at a local airport. Meanwhile, aircraft that are in a holding pattern would fly in a racetrack pattern, he said.
Are drone operators knowingly breaking the law?
Some operators may be clueless about violating FAA rules. Others may understand that they are breaking the rules but don’t care.
The criminal element, however, represents a “tiny, tiny, tiny fraction” of operators, and those who are using drones for nefarious activities likely would do so without lights being turned on.
Drone detection devices
Drones built since 2023 require Remote ID technology, which transmits information about the drone’s location, latitude, longitude, flight direction and ground location of the drone operator.
Technology called Dedrone, used by the U.S. military, can detect this information. States like New York and New Jersey have requested access to this technology.
For the average citizen, there are a handful of apps that can provide assistance to sky watchers and aircraft enthusiasts, but the effectiveness of the technology is not always reliable, Slaughter said.
Although the information that is produced by mobile apps can be useful, a person’s level of knowledge of what they are looking at comes into play when the information is not reliable.
Because many do not have aviation training and fall under the novice category, many people simply assumed what they were seeing were drones, Slaughter said.
The search for answers
On Tuesday, the White House confirmed that drones spotted in several states last year “was not the enemy” but were authorized by the FAA for research and various other purposes.
The FBI, FAA and other federal agencies determined that the objects being seen were not the property of the U.S. military or foreign governments. President Donald Trump promised to deliver a report on the drones after accusing former President Joe Biden and other federal agencies of not being transparent about drones with the American public.
Slaughter told NewsNation he does not expect a definitive answer to arrive any time soon.
“I think we’ve got what we’re going to get,” he said. “Some of them were drones, many of them were planes and other regular aircraft, and there were other phenomena and other unidentified flying objects later shown to be other things like weather balloons and planets.”
Slaughter says that Congress needs to update laws giving more authority to the military and law enforcement to mitigate unauthorized drone flights in sensitive areas such as military installations and restricted airspace.
He hesitates to put a percentage on the reported drone sightings that he believes were actually drones but believes it was limited in number.
As a former pilot who often encountered other aircraft that he couldn’t immediately identify, the challenge in properly identifying what one is seeing is real, he said.
“Lights in the night sky are weird,” Slaughter said. “And it’s just tough to tell what you’re seeing.”
