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Like Bruce Springsteen, saltwater taffy and organized baseball, concerns surrounding mysterious aerial drones flying over major American cities began in New Jersey.
Since mid-November, reports of drone activity along the East Coast have resulted in a swell of concern significant enough to earn a Wikipedia page. Initial sightings occurred during the nighttime across New Jersey, but now concerned citizens have called in drone activity in nearly a dozen other states – including New York, where drone sightings resulted runways being shut down for an hour last Friday at Stewart International Airport, 60 miles north of New York City.
If you were paying attention to the neighborhood monitoring Ring Neighbors app and other social media sites over the weekend, you likely noticed that the drone hysteria has now reached Dallas.
One Dallas Reddit user had the good sense to take screenshots of six of the posts made to the Ring Neighbors app Sunday evening that document alleged drone sightings in Dallas. (Our own account shows several others, with our favorite being one titled “WE JUST SAW SOME DRONES??”)
From accounts of concerned Dallasites, one to three aerial drones were spotted flying over backyards late Sunday evening. Some reports describe the drones as hovering in stationary positions before zooming off, but others state the machines flew in organized circular patterns.
“I don’t know what’s going on but it’s eerie!!” reflected one commenter.
“Possibly spy drones?” mused another.
“Not good,” a third commented. “See New Jersey.”
Some Dallasites also commented that their conspiratorial red flags had been raised after witnessing posts about the drones be deleted from the Ring Neighbors app. The Observer reached out to Ring, and a spokesperson told us that “a number” of this weekend’s posts about drones were determined to be spam and were moderated out of the app’s feed.
“At Ring, we have a combination of automated and manual processes for moderating content, and there can be instances where authentic content is accidentally removed. We have well developed user flagging and denial appeals processes, so if customers think their content was wrongly removed from the Neighbors app, they can flag that to us by replying to the email we send when notifying them their post was removed,” the spokesperson said.
The Observer reached out to the Dallas Police Department about the sightings, and a spokesperson told us the department “has not had any reports of any unauthorized drones or unauthorized aircraft flying over the city.”
This is not to say anyone who claims to have seen a drone in recent days was lying – and is especially not meant to imply that there is a conspiracy across North Texas to cover up nefarious drone activity. More than likely, any drone you have seen lately was authorized. Or maybe your neighbor has a drone pilot’s license and a sense of humor.
There are a few reasons you may have seen an actual drone flying over Dallas in the last few days. For one, the Downtown Dallas Trail of Lights is putting on a drone show “that lights up the night sky with holiday scenes” every evening through Christmas.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area is also the country’s largest hub for drone delivery services, Texas Monthly reports. This region has served as the training ground for Walmart’s drone delivery service this year, and with the holidays approaching it’s possible that airborne package delivery services are more in demand now than they were previously this year.
Finally, Dallas is home to two major airports, one of which is one of the busiest in the country. The next time you find yourself thinking “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s a drone,” it may just be a plane. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires planes be marked by red and green wing lights, so if you happen to catch a lit-up unidentified flying object moving over Dallas, those Christmas colors should help you identify it.
Droning On About Drone Sightings
On Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas addressed the Northeastern drone fright in a televised interview with ABC’s This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos. He assured viewers that the federal government is looking into the reports of elevated drone activity.
“Some of those drone sightings are, in fact, drones. Some are manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones,” Mayorkas said. “But there’s no question that drones are being sighted.”
The FAA updated the rules surrounding flying drones at night in 2023, which could be resulting in more nighttime sightings, he added. Mayorkas said he is not aware of any national security risks currently posed by flying drones. The FBI has also insisted that any drone sightings are not related to military activity.
Outside of DFW, Gulf Coast residents reportedly began seeing flying drones last week. One resident told the Houston Chronicle that she witnessed 20 flying in from the Gulf.
