Drones spotted over New Jersey | What you need to know right know

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) After weeks of fear and bewilderment about the drones buzzing over parts of New York and New Jersey, elected officials are urging action to identify and stop the mysterious flights.

“There’s a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“'We don’t know’ is not a good enough answer,” he said.

National security officials have said the drones don’t appear to be a sign of foreign interference or a public safety threat. But because they can’t say with certainty who is responsible for the sudden swarms of drones over parts of New Jersey, New York and other eastern parts of the U.S. — or how they can be stopped — leaders of both political parties are demanding better technology and powers to deal with the drones.

Sen. Chuck Schumer called Sunday for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to deploy better drone-tracking technology to identify the drones and their operators.

“New Yorkers have tremendous questions about it,” Schumer, the Senate majority leader, told reporters about the drone sightings. “We are going to get the answers for them.”

The federal government did little to answer those questions in its own media briefings Sunday morning. “There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “But I want to assure the American public that we are on it. We are working in close coordination with state and local authorities.”

Some of the drones reported above parts of New York and New Jersey have turned out to be “manned aircraft that are commonly mistaken for drones,” Mayorkas said. “We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast. And we are vigilant in investigating this matter.”