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in Bergen County, one of the witnesses who recorded the most footage of these drones in the sky is a woman named Lisa Paloo. Let's count the drones right there. One, two, 3 4 6 7. One of them literally went right over my house where you could just reach out and touch it. This one's right above us. I didn't believe that it could be something that was going to harm us, but you would hear other people talk. Then you're like, "Well, maybe. What if?" So, you're making up your own stories and so is everybody else.
When I look at a map of northern New Jersey, the first thing I notice is that Lisa and her neighbors live only about 5 miles outside of Pikatini Arsenal. This is not a typical military base. It's the US Army's main laboratory for testing explosives, weapons, and advanced hardware like robots and drones. Could there be a connection between the base and the sightings in Lisa's town? I'm heading over to meet with the mayor of Mine Hill to find out.
A lot of people up in that area started seeing them all up and over around Pikatini. There were airspace violations. Um they then put restrictions in and some of the drones still violated that. The one thing that got me one night, I got a call from a resident. Hey mayor, the drones are over the elementary school and heading toward town hall. The mayor even grabbed his phone and shot his own video of the fleet of drones that had residents on edge. They were in formation. They were kind of working together, a team. They're all going the same direction. People started seeing them as weapons and asking questions.
I am literally freaking out right now. Holy crap. What is that? Myself and a whole group of people were trying to get real answers. Whoever's doing this is tiptoeing right through the federal and state laws. Are these things up there to harm us? Are they Chinese? Are they Russian? But the feds wouldn't respond. The FAA wouldn't respond. The military wouldn't respond. And when you leave people hanging like that, they're going to fill in the blanks. It was November 25th when the FAA closed the airspace above Pikatini Arsenal and then extended that restricted zone over a golf club owned by then
President-elect Donald Trump. They didn't provide a reason why, but you don't restrict airspace without a reason. The New York Post has been on this story from day one. So, I reached out to one of the first journalists to report on the sightings to find out if they believe there could be any connection between the drones and the military base. What was it like in the middle of it all on the ground like you were? It was total pandemonium. No one really knew exactly what the hell was going on. There was several agencies that all said everything is fine. Don't worry about it. No problems. It was like the vibes of the mayor from Jaws where he tells
you everything at the beach is fine. There's no sharks. um just so that everybody can continue swimming in peace, right? It was incredibly frustrating. The number one question is why didn't Pikatini Arsenal shoot down the drones that were in their airspace operating illegally? It seems to me that it wasn't exactly just commercial drones and miss sightings that was going on in New Jersey in 2024. There was something else going on. If the government wasn't shooting down the aircraft that were violating the restricted zone, you have to wonder, did the government already know what was going on? We have footage of a formation flight that's traveling from one side of Pikatin Arsenal to the other side of Pikatini Arsenal. With so many sightings
in such a small area, it actually elevated to the level where the president himself had to make comments. Nothing nefarious. Apparently, there's a lot of drones authorized up there. Is there a chance that this could be related to some kind of secret US government operation at Pikatini? It's an intriguing lead, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before we jump to the conclusion that these drones were part of some kind of conspiracy or cover up, I want to start with what my training taught me. At CIA, we're taught to follow very strict rules of analysis, something called razors. And the first razor that we learn is something called AAM's razor, which states that the simplest explanation is often times the correct explanation. So
the question is, was there something strange happening in the skies over New Jersey? Or were those lights nothing out of the ordinary? To answer that question, I've arranged a meeting with a pilot from Skyo, a company whose drones are used by police departments and first responders all over the country. Hey, Andy. How's it going? Ken Van Heath is a former Navy Seal who flew drones on classified missions all over the world. If anyone can help me try and understand what was going on over New Jersey, he can. I want to start by showing you a video that I received from a woman named Lisa. Lisa lives on a hill above Pikatini Arsenal.
Let's count how many drones we got. One, two, three, four. A lot more than I thought it was going to be. Six. There's seven. And as she's counting these, you can see that she's moving her camera in one direction. Yeah. Which suggests that all the drones are going in a predominant direction. Would it be possible for us to recreate what we just saw in this video? We can take a try and see if we can do it. Let's do it. Awesome. Matt and I will be the multi- drone remote flight deck operators. Wes, you'll be covering down on thermal.
Let's do it. All right. Kilo one, taking off. Some witnesses said the craft they saw were much larger than these. But what I wanted to recreate wasn't the size, it was the visual effect. When multiple drones move together at night, it can trigger something called perception bias, where a few small lights in the sky suddenly look much bigger and much more ominous than they really are. I never think of flying a drone from a laptop. I always think of it from a control. The future is here. Holy smokes. So now what we're going to take him is right across the horizon and see if we can recreate what she saw. Okay. All right. 3, two, one, go.
Look at that. That is exactly what she sent us in the video. Two, three, four. She watched and counted them in the sky. You can count them right now yourself as they move across the horizon from one point to another in one predominant direction. So then Ken, what's your theory about what was happening in the skies over New Jersey? And do you think any of it could have been Skyo technology? I think it could have been Skyo. We do have law enforcement customers in the New Jersey area. So I think they could have been flying drone as first responder uh missions.
I don't think the average American recognizes that police forces fly drones at all. They don't. I think that's good for cops. I think when people see drones in the sky, it keeps the person honest. Uh, the tech is here and it's not going anywhere. Drone pilot Ken Vanhees told me he believes the answer is police and first responder drone activity the public is just noticing for the first time. Ken's theory sparked my curiosity. So, I decided to have a little fun. I want to see firsthand what a drone tracking someone looks like with a test of how my CIA evasion and escape techniques stack up against the latest police drone technology. So, I asked Ken
to set up a manhunt with the local police department. The target, me. We're going to see how long we can track and follow you. My job is just to evade for as long as possible and try to escape detection. Exactly. I had no idea that over 1,400 police departments fly drones every day for all sorts of missions. You guys ready over there? It's time to roll. Where's he at? We're coming. So, check maybe Colorado and Nevada. I'm going to start using my peripheral vision to try to identify anything in the sky that's looking for me.
Becca, where you at? I'm approaching center on now. Okay, this is nerve-wracking as hell. In my seven years at CIA, I spent much of it operating overseas undercover. I got used to people trying to follow me. Learning how to shake surveillance is basic tradecraft, but losing a drone in the sky, that's a different game. There is a very real instinct to run when you know somebody is on your tail, but a professional has to fight that instinct. Becca, you got him. There you go. Yeah, that's him from the back. Hit see subject track. Yep. Click them. There you go. I saw the drone in the sky. All right, let's get creative here.
Do you have him? He just turned the corner, so he's heading north. I have a real chance of blending in with a crowd. So, all of these folks are hanging out. Can I walk in here with you guys? We're all right. Well, it's not easy to get accompllices for this kind of stuff. But that's not the only trick up my sleeve. I need a place where the drone can't see me and what I'm doing. I'm actually going to go into an underground bar. It's open. We are now underground.
He just went down into the rabbit hole. If he's still in there, he's just doing a ruse on us. We'll go get him. Because we know we have him there. Now is a really good time to get a fresh battery. Um, it's a very strange question. Is there an exit other than this from this building? Go up this way and then All right, we got our back exit out of the bar. So, now the question is whether or not the drone's going to find us. Okay, we are underneath a canopy. I hear a drone passing overhead. There it goes. It's going towards the opposite direction. So, we're going to continue our walk. Hopefully, that means there's a battery problem.
Are you guys able to clear downstairs? Yeah, it's the back door keypad. We are literally feet away from a place that might be my safe haven. How you doing? Where did he go? We might need to do a missing person's report. Cheers. I was able to beat the drone by exploiting a weakness. Even these expensive police drones are small in scale and have battery limits. But many of the drones reported over New Jersey were seen flying for hours. Police drones may have been part of the puzzle, but I'm not convinced that they're the sole explanation. Which leads me to a number of other wild conspiracy theories
that exploded on social media. One of the first conspiracy theories to go viral came from reality TV star Bethany Frankle. There are many different theories. one that the government, our government is searching for something that has been lost. There have been many nuclear WS that were lost during different wars. Something could be disassembled and then reassembled here. Soon, people across the tri-state area started freaking out that the drones were part of a search for some kind of loose nuke. Before my time at CIA, I was a US Air Force nuclear missile officer.
So, let's walk through what would happen if there was a dirty bomb in New Jersey. You'd start quietly. Radiation detection teams, aircraft with sniffers. These are systems that already exist. The public would in fact see more aircraft in the skies. Helicopters, fixedwing aircraft, even drones flying tight grid search patterns. What you wouldn't hear is, "Good morning. There may be a missing nuclear device in your neighborhood." So, what people were seeing could fit this pattern, and a loose nuke isn't science fiction. In 1961, a US Air Force B-52 bomber broke apart over North Carolina and dropped two fully armed hydrogen bombs.
We call this a broken arrow. One of them nearly went off. The public didn't learn how close that was until decades later. But in this case, you're probably not surprised to learn there was no missing radiological weapon. Energy agencies knocking down an alarming theory, saying it's just not true. Authorities even addressed the rumor in time. That statement goes on to say that nuclear officials are not currently conducting any aerial operations in that region. What went missing was a small amount of radioactive material that was used for testing. It had nothing to do with the drones, but that didn't matter.
This is what happens when national security anxiety collides with social media and fear is rewarded with clicks. Speculation takes over and facts are forgotten. And within days, the New Jersey drone mystery went from a dirty bomb scare to a full-on invasion. Only this time, it wasn't a real housewife raising the alarm. It was a police officer. She can sheriff's office 45. I'm one of the officers at Island Beach State Park. We have like 50 drones. Don't know if you're aware yet, but they're coming off the ocean.
We don't have any video from her, but this isn't a random person with a phone. This is a 911 call from a trained officer. They're doing things that normal drones can't do. They're going up very fast and far. And there's these two big boats you can see out over the water. I don't know if those two boats have anything to do with that. This was Ocean County about a 100 miles south of Mine Hill where civilian and eyewitness Lisa Paloo was first recording drones above her home. A 911 call that came from a state park police officer who wasn't sure what she was
seeing. She described it as a giant swarm of drones coming in from over the ocean. This sighting was one of many that happened in the region and the sheriff down there started to raise the alarm. We have flight radar mapping capabilities and we did not see anything on uh indicating it was a plane. Obviously, they want us to know they're there. They put on their lights. Uh so who it is, I wish I could tell you, but you know, obviously there's a lot of tension to this matter throughout. What struck me when I heard this 911 call was the sheer number of drones and that they seem to be coming from a ship offshore. What did your office do? We immediately contacted the Coast Guard,
reported back around 11:30 that night that there was 11 or 13 of them following their Coast Guard cutter. One drone that they documented, it didn't give a heat signal and it needed another type of fuel source. Nobody saw them take off or land. And that's interesting because at some point you would have to take off or land. So for us, the indication would be that it's possibly coming off the ocean and possibly a submarine. What the sheriff went on to tell me is really quite alarming. A swarm of drones tracking a Coast Guard cutter. The strange thing being that they showed no heat signature, which suggests that possibly they were trying to cloak. I
mean, this sounds more like advanced militarygrade technology. And that's why when a congressman went on TV and made the following announcement, it was a New Jersey resident's worst nightmare. I'm going to tell you the real deal. Um, Iran launched a mother ship probably about a month ago that contains these drones. That mother ship is off I'm going to tell you the deal. It's off the east coast of the United States of America. They've launched drones is everything that we can see or hear. And again, these are from high sources. I don't say this lightly.
Was there an Iranian mother ship launching an aerial invasion near Atlantic City? If anyone can help me separate the facts from the fear on this, it's my friend Trevor Forner, a former US Navy counterterrorism special operator. Thank you for coming, brother. It's great to see you, Andy. What can I do for you? So, I've been chewing on this question of the drone sightings that happened in New Jersey about a year ago. Okay. And there were all these rumors circulating about whether or not there was an Iranian mother ship launching drones into the mainland. How would the United States react to a foreign naval threat like that?
I don't believe that we would have allowed them to actually get that close to the country. So even though it's international water, it's not really free water for anyone to just sail in. Not from our perspective. No, we have a nautical statue. It's 15 nautical miles becomes international territory. After that, we're still monitoring that and observing what's happening. Had there been a foreign threat, what's your confidence level the US military would have neutralized the threat before it even got close enough to pose direct harm?
100%. That's where I am too, man. Cuz they would have been sunk in the water. I believe that 100%. Also, what would be the intent of Iran to send a mother ship so close to our shore and launch drones into our airspace that they know that we can absolutely detect? There's easier ways, more efficient ways to clandestinely sneak items into the country. Trevor is right. A ship-based attack isn't very likely. Boats are slow and trackable. The nightmare scenario for every national security professional I know is a drone attack launched from inside our own borders by a group of non-state actors or terrorists. So, if it wasn't a foreign enemy, we have to test the domestic threat idea. How fast could a drone swarm go airborne? And how hard would it be to stop?
It's just incredible to think that every one of those lights in the sky is being controlled by one single operator, somebody who's on our side. But just imagine what would happen if somebody with hostile intentions took control of those drones. What kind of damage could they inflict? Russian drones were spotted within NATO airspace this time in Romania. If the government was running exercises to prepare for such an attack, they'd keep it under wraps. All of this got me thinking about something at CIA that we call narrative control. In the intelligence world, this means shaping how people understand events. Not deceiving people or hiding secrets, per se, but steering perception
in the direction that you want. There's no better example of this than an incident that happened 50 years ago when a UFO story was used to cover up a classified test. In 1967, unidentified objects were reported over nuclear missile control centers at Mountstrom Air Force Base. Around the same time, multiple intercontinental nuclear missiles suddenly went offline. Missiles on duty would later go on to tell the story of the day UFOs turned off our launch capability to anyone who would listen. And that lived on in UFO lore for decades. At Malmstrom Air Force Base, in which 10 of our nuclear ICBMs were
rendered inoperable, at the same time, a glowing red orb was observed overhead. But last year, declassified documents told a very different story. The missiles being disabled had nothing to do with aliens. It was all the result of a top secret US military test. An electromagnetic pulse experiment designed to see whether an EMP could knock our own missiles offline. It worked. And because it worked so well, the Pentagon stayed silent because it didn't want the Soviets to know what had really happened. And the government allowed the story about aliens to go unchecked for more than half a century.
What is that? The government did not create the Jersey UFO story, but they did allow it to live. The fact that the federal agencies responsible for briefing the public have not come forward in a clear way is unacceptable. Why it is that they're not being forthcoming with this information is confusing to me and very frustrating. It seemed like we may never get an actual answer to this mystery. But then I get a major scoop. The New York Post reports that they may have the answer to what was actually flying in the skies in 2024. A private company with a government contract was testing out their newest tech, a car-sized aircraft. Does that ring a bell?
And residents have compared some of them to the size of a small car. There are SUVsized drones flying over my home. So, I'm going to make a cocktail. The reporter who broke the story, my man Shane. We got a tip from a source who was former military that some people were taking credit for setting off some of the scares over there in New Jersey and they were debuting this manned aerial craft that was about the size of a car. This is from a company called Pivotal and it's a Blackfly. You know, on the record they said that they had nothing to do with it, but they did not rule out the fact that they
could have sold to somebody on the East Coast. So Shane, what's your net takeaway from all this? I do think that I keep coming back to um Pikotay Arsenal. It could be like a field experiment essentially. It doesn't solve a whole mystery, but it at least plugs something in so that we can figure it out. Even if this eases fears that what people were seeing wasn't an invasion, but rather advanced car- sized aerial technology, the question still remains, why? What is the government not telling us? But then I heard this from the White House press secretary. After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and
various other reasons. Research and various other reasons. Words that explain everything but say nothing. Unless it wasn't just a test of the technology, but a test of us. What is that? Specifically, how we, the public, would respond. Of all the places to carry out a test like this, of course, you would pick a dense, heavily populated urban location like New Jersey to test. What would happen? How would people react? How would the rumors spread? How would authorities respond? How would elected officials speak out? Dozens upon dozens every single night and nobody's doing anything.
It's plausible this test was as much from an offensive perspective as defensive. If you think about the future of conflict, it's going to be about reaching people where they live, where they feel safe. And when you look at how the public reacted to these strange lights in the sky, their reaction went from curiosity to terror in an instant.
