on this topic right now we want to bring into the conversation none other than CEO of Sky safe Grant Jordan Grant good morning to you thank you so much for joining us here on live now from Fox morning good to be here so as I just mentioned a lot to dissect let's go back in time i' love to get your first reaction as we were seeing across social media all of these posts uh people coming up with their own uh thoughts as to what are these mysterious drone sightings H what were your thoughts when you
first heard the news well I think so in our work at Sky safe you know we track drone activity across a number of cities uh we work with foreign partners and uh so it's not a new thing to us we see thousands of drones uh flying all the time but uh I you know I do always worry that the Dr that the public may get concerned over something and uh you know start seeing things that aren't necessarily drones we've definitely seen a lot of that in this case um but the real key here is we
need the tools for law enforcement for government agencies to be able to monitor the airspace to be able to know that before an actual incident occurs and I think that's one of the things that's underscored here is uh you know once the incident has already happened it's a it's too late to then start rolling out Technologies uh by then you know you've got so many different reports of things that maybe aren't drones and uh it's very easy for that to become kind of mass hysteria if we don't actually have the infrastructure out there already yeah
Grant you raised a great point point because so many people including lawmakers are demanding answers from federal Partners as to what are these drones where do they come from uh how are they allowed to be in the airspace uh during this time and because uh depending on who you ask uh because we don't have that much information people are coming to their own conclusions even to the point where you hear uh people just everyday civilians saying maybe we should shoot these down uh to figure out what it is uh with your professional expertise why should
you not do that and why should we leave it to the experts like yourself well first off obviously uh you know interfering with an aircraft in the air is a federal crime so I would encourage anyone to not be doing that but uh but more importantly you know what what we do need is you know we need people to be aware we need people to understand and uh you know at Sky safe our focus is really about enabling the use of the airspace uh you know having drones be able to share the space with traditional
aviation in a safe manner um and the way we need to do that is we need to be able to uh you know have the proper authorities have the proper approvals uh as you mentioned you know it's not legal for most people to be flying a drone at night you know nighttime operations are their own thing um but even during the day we've got lots of commercial uses of drones um and we need to make sure that that's done safely Grant uh you posed a great point about sharing the airspace I can tell you uh
in the media my former uh news markets you know some of the photographers have had drones that they'll use to get aerial footage of crime scenes and things like that but this is significantly different when you hear about a drone sharing airspace of airplanes U many of the viewers were like okay so as I'm heading home during the holidays and I roll up the window will I look out and just see a drone coasting along next to the airplane is that a possibility is that safe will that be the new reality well it's it is
a possibility and that you know do have some people who go out and do uh you know not necessarily directly malicious or nefarious things with drones but things that are maybe just careless uh in the Aerospace that does happen and uh you know the FAA has been doing a good job over the last couple years to try to build out the rules needed and uh you know Regulators have been putting out the regulations to be able to manage the airospace but the the thing that we haven't yet built up is this infrastructure is the sensing
and airspace awareness capabilities to be able to actually uh have an awareness of what's Happening you know in traditional Aviation we already have that we have air traffic control we have networks of surveillance Radars and uh things like that you know you can pull up something like Flight Aware or uh any of the uh adsb exchange kind of things and see all of the planes that are in the air um you know but now we need to be doing the same thing for drones um so that we can actually do that together and you know
the the government has been under pressure for a long time I think it's been a little bit slowo because we haven't seen as many of these incidents that have really made it to the public Consciousness uh you know obviously at Sky saafe since we work with uh you know groups all the time and we manage this uh constantly we see dozens of incidents all over the place um you know we work with Border Protection prisons airports uh military and um you know so for for government operators this is not a new issue they've been dealing
with it for a long time but I think this is one of the uh you know early instances where it's really Rising to the understanding the public um and highlighting the need to address this kind of thing like like any security issue you can't address it after an incident you have to have procedures you have to have training of personnel uh to be able to recognize these things and respond appropriately before it happens yeah Grant well that actually goes to my next question because with your findings and with your expertise uh have you and your
team been able to pinpoint uh what these drones are and where they've come from uh do you think this is National Security concern well it definitely is I I wouldn't say this particular incident necessarily is a national security concern but the broader question of drones and our ability to manage the airspace is definitely a national security concern um outside of just this incident with New Jersey you know we've seen incidents over the past year of uh Chinese government Espionage on us soil you know there just believe it was last week or the week before um
there was a Chinese National arrested uh filming around around Vandenberg Air Force Base here in California and there was another one prosecuted earlier in the year uh for flying over a shipyard repairing Navy ships um on the East Coast so you know it's clearly an issue we need to deal with but you know my my take on this whole thing is I I completely believe that there were drones uh you know seen by people maybe there were drones doing slightly sketchy things but one of the problems we have now is once that incident has become
kind of publicly uh seen and I think at this point now it's likely that whatever drones started this incident are probably not flying currently and now most if not all of the reports we have are things other than drones we've seen you know almost all I mean certainly all of the videos that I've seen uh across social media across the news have been traditional aircraft or helicopters or satellites or uh stars as we've seen in that case so you know that's kind of the problem once it reaches this level uh the original threat may be
gone and we may only be looking at things that are just you know traditional Aviation flying uh correctly and legally Grant so many uh things you are posing this morning that's just really uh peing my interest as well as the viewers so thank you so much uh for coming on the show one thing that you mentioned i' love to dive a little deeper if you have the time uh when we discuss these drones and you know the airspace obviously they can go higher in the airspace but also come lower there are concerns from the viewers
to this morning about maybe invasion of privacy at what point will drones be um stopping in front of someone's bedroom window you hear about peeping Toms and maybe someone looking through someone's window with binoculars uh is that a concern for this because we don't really know the purpose of these drones we don't know what information they are trying to gather yeah it privacy is always a concern um and the one thing that I can at least reassure the public of is you know a drone is just a tool and we already have the laws on
the books around uh privacy around peeping Toms around uh you know General kind of nuisance stuff so if someone is actually using a drone for those kinds of malicious purposes there are already the laws on the books you know local police uh and State Police can already prosecute someone based on that whether they're using a drone or as you said just binoculars um so the key here is just being able to recognize what's going on and uh you know involve state and local law enforcement the other thing that I would kind of put in the
plug here for is uh one of the challenges that state and local law enforcement uh face at this point is state and local law enforcement right now don't have the legal authority to actually take action against a drone in the air federal agencies do but uh we've been working for a number of years to try to get uh authority to be rolled down to State and local law enforcement and that's that's still a work in progress It's been I think a lot slower than most folks in the industry thought that it would be um and
it's clear from cases like this that it's definitely a necessity CEO of Sky safe there Grant Jordan a pleasure having you on the show thank you so much for your candidness and your expertise on this topic of mysterious drones uh we hope to be speaking with you soon thank you so much thank you
