Drone-detecting devices deployed in New Jersey in the past week have found “little to no evidence” of anything nefarious or threatening, Gov. Phil Murphy said Monday as calls grew for action to address the mysterious nighttime sightings of suspected unmanned flights across the northeastern U.S. Murphy told reporters in Trenton that there were 12 sightings of suspected drones in the state on Saturday and one on Sunday. He declined to go into detail about the detection equipment, but said it was powerful enough to disable the drones, although he added that is not legal on U.S. soil. Murphy, a Democrat, echoed calls by officials in other states for Congress to give them more authority to deal with drones. Nearly all the power now rests with the federal government. “It is extraordinary to me that, that a nation as great as ours and as powerful as ours has the deficiencies that we have now seen in living color as it relates to drone incursions,” Murphy said. Federal officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have repeatedly said there are no signs that any drone operators have shown bad intent, nor is there evidence of foreign involvement. Some witnesses have mistaken manned aircraft for drones, they said. “There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” Mayorkas told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But I want to assure the American public that we are on it. We are working in close coordination with state and local authorities.” But that hasn’t reassured everyone. Conspiracy theories about foreign actors, the U.S. government and the “deep state,” abound online, while elected officials concerned about threats to military bases, airports and other locations have increased their calls for federal officials to act. The skeptics include President-elect Donald Trump, who suggested Monday that “the government knows what is happening.” “Our military knows and our president knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” Trump said. He refused to say whether he had been briefed on the drone sightings. Over the past two days, New York and Pennsylvania officials have also requested drone-detecting equipment from federal officials. “It is imperative our communities in Pennsylvania are protected and questions on the presence of these drones are answered,” U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote in a letter to Mayorkas on Monday. “State-of-the-art radar systems will provide insights into where these drones are deploying from and what the motives for their flights may be.” After reports of drones in Connecticut, state police said they were monitoring drone activity and state officials said analysts were comparing reported sightings with federal flight data. “One of the drone sightings had the word Frontier on the back, that it was an airline,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said Monday. “But some of them are big and unexplained and we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Right now, what we do is we make sure that our security and airports are secure.” At a media briefing on Monday, the Pentagon’s press secretary, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said defense officials have seen no indication that the drones flying over multiple locations in the U.S. are being controlled by a foreign country. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, he said, there are approximately 1 million registered drones in […]