While official reports of eerie drone-like UFOs dropped over the holidays, New Jersey residents are still coming forward with bizarre encounters.
Two witnesses in Manalapan Township, for example, videotaped a bus-sized, 25- to 50-foot-long black triangle UFO that they saw 'pull off a high g [force] maneuver over a residential area' just days before Christmas.
The sighting, which lasted at least one minute, ended with the object zooming 'in the general direction of McGuire [Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst]' — matching a persistent pattern of 'drone' UFO incursions over US bases in recent years.
Another New Jersey skywatcher recorded what they described as a classic 'flying saucer' with an 'aura or haze around object' just three miles off the coast of Atlantic City.
And still more Garden State witnesses now say they saw as many as 20 to 30 drones just this Wednesday night, which 'kind of hovered and all looked like miniature aircraft,' in an account posted to Facebook. 'Very disconcerting for sure,' one witness said.
Some experts attribute the drop in official reports to law enforcement to expanded drone flight bans by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) across the tristate area.
But others, including former chief of the FBI's counter-drone unit Rob D'Amico, believe most of the sightings were errors and 'hysteria' to begin with, suggesting that the decline might be nothing more than a case of the 'mystery drone' fever breaking.
'I truly think that 90 percent of these sightings are manned aircraft,' D'Amico said. 'People have never looked up in the sky before to notice how crowded it is.'
![Two witnesses in Manalapan, NJ, photographed a 25-50 foot-long black triangle UFO that they saw 'pull off a high g [force] maneuver over a residential area' just days before Christmas](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/02/19/93686411-14244707-image-a-40_1735847438019.jpg)
Two witnesses in Manalapan, NJ, photographed a 25-50 foot-long black triangle UFO that they saw 'pull off a high g [force] maneuver over a residential area' just days before Christmas
'When you look at them and the landing lights and the navigation lights and how they fly,' D'Amico argued in an interview with NJ Spotlight, 'they are manned aircraft.'
But local eyewitnesses are unconvinced by the past and present federal investigators dismissive assertions, with many acknowledging that the strange craft do resemble traditional aircraft.
Rich V. reported seeing a large drone buzzing over his in-laws' house in Somerset this Christmas.
He shared the details with DailyMail.com, saying it was flying lower than the average airplane and was the size of a private jet.
'It went over homes so there was a reference point to see how low it was,' Rich said.
'2 additional large drones flew over shortly after I left which I did not see first hand, but was told to expect it by my in-law in law enforcement,' he told DailyMail.com of the event, which occurred during a Christmas visit just last week.
Somerset sits about 30 miles south of Newark airport where tons of planes fly in and out from all parts of the world.
But, as Rich took pains to emphasize, 'we checked the Flight Radar and there was no plane in the sky where we were at, which was Bound Brook NJ.'
His account of odd behavior by somewhat conventional-looking objects echoes the account from this past Wednesday night by a driver, Richie Sougstad, who spotted roughly 20-30 drones on his commute home through northern New Jersey.
Sougstad described the drones as being stationary except for two.
'One was moving slowly about 20 mph, another one just kinda shot up into the atmosphere and disappeared from sight,' he shared online.
But the remaining two dozen or so, he explained, 'looked like mini airplanes but they were definitely bigger than my pick up truck.'
'Crazy part to me was just how they hovered like a helicopter but just silently,' he said.
On December 21, 2024 at around 7:10pm in Atlantic City, one witness told NUFORC that they documented 'a strange flying saucer' that 'appeared to shake and change shape, but always returning to its original disc shape' (still image from the witnesses video submission above)
The two Manalapan witnesses who saw a 25-50 foot 'black triangle' UFO from little more than 400 yards above them along County Route 527 described the craft as 'silent' despite flying so 'quickly' that they initially thought it was a jet (above their second photo to NUFORC)
Experts have said that many of the drone sightings were actually manned aircraft as seen in this image
Tales of more exotic-looking drones or UFOs spotted in recent weeks over New Jersey, as reported to the nonprofit National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), have also curiously kept to these same 'bus-sized' dimensions.
The two Manalapan witnesses who saw a 25-50 foot 'black triangle' UFO from little more than 400 yards above them described the craft as 'silent' despite flying so 'quickly' that they initially thought it was a jet.
'Took a screenshot from the vid and you can just make out a dark triangle angled around each of its 3 lights,' one of the two anonymous NUFORC witnesses reported.
The witness said that a friend claimed the sightings might have been a TR-3B: the legendary and still unconfirmed 'Black Manta' anti-gravity spy plane, alleged to have been made by US defense contractor Northrop in the early 1990s.
The black triangle, the said, was spotted above County Route 527 on December 18, 2024 at around 7:30pm ET.
Three days later, on December 21 at around 7:10pm in Atlantic City, one witness told NUFORC that they documented 'a strange flying saucer' that 'appeared to shake and change shape, but always returning to its original disc shape.'
Shortly after this flying disk left, the witness said it was followed in apparent pursuit by a 'red/pink light' the size of basketball that flew past 'at high speed, flashing randomly and leaving a reddish trail in the sky.'
But the witness was only able to submit video of the first UFO to NUFORC.
Newly elected New Jersey Senator Andy Kim told the public that, while the number of sightings reported to law enforcement have decreased, federal and local investigators are still working on the 100 or so cases that merit investigation.
'DHS [Department of Homeland Security] detailed to me the array of tools they have in NJ for drone detection including thermal sensors, drone-specific radar, radio frequency kits, and visual monitors,' Senator Kim told his constituents just before Christmas.
And even government experts who have criticized the 'media frenzy' and 'conspiracy theories' around the alleged drone sightings have said in recent weeks that some worst case scenarios can't be ruled out yet.
The former head of the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, published an op-ed in Scientific American Friday floating the risk that 'foreign or domestic bad actors' were probing US defenses.
'Operators could be probing the limits of legal activities, or in military speak, performing or exploring preparation of the battlespace,' Dr Kirkpatrick wrote.
'They could be flying commercial drones, complete with lights, to test reactions of both the public and the government. As long as they are flying within legal airspace, under legal limits, they can push those limits and measure what the reaction is.'
The now retired government physicist added that this response-time data could one day be used for 'attack planning, illegal drug delivery or other malicious intent.'
Dr Kirkpatrick added a few other possibilities including the chance that the drones' operators 'could be using them intentionally to whip up frenzy, hysteria and panic.'
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