Specifically regarding the activity of the past month, assuming for a second that the early reports of what's been flying over New Jersey are credible – acknowl

Specifically regarding the activity of the past month, assuming for a second that the early reports of what's been flying over New Jersey are credible – acknowledging that as this becomes a bigger and bigger story the number of misattributions will certainly grow – then at best this feels like a real failure of public communications. I'm reading Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot right now, and it's fascinating to be reminded of how the Apollo mission – which we all tend to celebrate as this scientific success – was really about the nuclear arms race. More to the point, it was about demonstrating technological superiority with rockets. Now, this whole situation has gotten conflated with what we can just call 'orbs' or the ongoing UAP fascination – of which there have been congressional inquiries, lots of news stories, speculation, some fairly credible military pilots coming forward, etc. But what appears to be happening over new jersey – again, from second-hand reporting – sounds more like the types of man-made drones you would expect to see in a war zone (or even agricultural setting) rather than over suburbs. There would be some obvious explanations: Military testing out their gear, geological mapping, etc. If these reports are accurate, and there are SUV-sized, fixed-wing drones above NJ, and they're the military's – you'd expect some benign explanation: "we're doing a geological survey and there's absolutely nothing to be concerned about." We have no evidence they're denying anything. They could just be struggling to articulate "we're aware of the reports, but haven't seen any reliable evidence to back up what people are reporting." But that's not what they've said. They've simply said there's no evidence this represents a threat. Well, I'm sorry but that's horrible public messaging. If there are SUV-sized drones in busy population centers that haven't been attributed to a particular group, they are implicitly a threat. [And is such a stark contrast with our stance during the Apollo era of not signaling weakness – sorry to be US-centric here, but that's where I am.] As a Carl Sagan fan, I grew up as a skeptic. But you don't have to think these specific things are alien to think that it's problematic that they seem to be free to do whatever they want with no consequence, and continue to apparently persist despite tons of media scrutiny. Which leads ultimately to, can someone who has experience shooting bird photos please spend a week in New Jersey with a fast telephoto lens? Unless we get some evidence one way or another, this seems like it will just continue to spin and ultimately make people panic. We're already seeing that happen. Public messaging is an art, and right now it's being handled terribly.