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November 2024 — January 2025
The national episode: In November and December 2024 the sighting report changed its object: thousands of reports of large drones at night, beginning over New Jersey and spreading nationally, drew the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA and the Defense Department into a joint statement on 16 December 2024 — the agencies had found no evidence that the reported sightings posed a national-security or public-safety threat, could not corroborate the reported visual sightings with electronic detection, and assessed that many of the reported drones were in fact manned aircraft operated lawfully. On 28 January 2025 the White House closed the episode's official account: the flights had been, in large part, drones flown with FAA authorization for research and other purposes, together with hobbyist and private drones, stars and ordinary aircraft misread at night. More than 5,000 reports had come in during the New Jersey phase alone.
South Bend's share: No Michiana press account of the drone winter was found in the sources — no WSBT, WNDU or Tribune story of local drone reports, no sheriff's statement, no local specimen in the center's record that this search could tie to the episode. The entry is printed at that size: the episode is national history and belongs in the frame of this section, but the documented local record of it, unlike Fort Wayne's — where the press covered hundreds of northeastern-Indiana reports — is silence.
Sources:
- FBI, Department of Homeland Security, FAA and Department of Defense, joint statement on reported drone sightings, 16 December 2024 (DHS) — no national-security or public-safety threat found; no corroboration by electronic detection; many reported drones assessed as lawfully operated manned aircraft.
- White House press briefing, 28 January 2025 (carried by ABC News and WNDU) — the sightings attributed in large part to FAA-authorized research flights and other authorized activity, hobbyist drones, and misidentified aircraft and stars.
- Contemporary national coverage of the New Jersey phase (November–December 2024) — the 5,000-plus reports of that phase.