A rash of more than two dozen recent drone sightings — some “as big as cars” — over or near Francis Gabreski airport in Westhampton Beach prompted local officials on Friday to call for more help from the federal government.
The officials asked that the federal government “empower” the FBI to investigate illegal drone activity in the area and that the Federal Aviation Administration better enforce existing laws prohibiting the illegal use of drones in restricted airspace. They said a mobile drone detection system being put in place at the county airport this week would also aid in locating those responsible for the unlawful drone activity.
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine pointed to the 28 unauthorized drones seen operating over or near the airport in recent weeks and called on federal officials to “empower the FBI to begin investigating these drones and to arrest and charge,” their operators.
The airport sightings included 17 on Christmas day alone, said Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon. Gabreski is also home to the Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing. Beyond the Westhampton area, there have also been numerous drone sightingsreported over the North Fork in the last month, according to Southold police.
Suffolk County Chief Deputy Sheriff Chris Brockmeyer said five miles of airspace around Gabreski airport is off-limits to drones. As for the multiple sightings around the airport last month, he said, “we’re not talking about five miles out. We are talking about over the airport, over taxiways, over runways — and that’s a serious safety concern. It’s impacted air operations and we’re not going to stand for it.”
Mr. Brockmeyer said Gabreski’s air traffic control tower monitors for airspace intrusions and notifies the FAA of breaches, but that local officials’ efforts to investigate the unlawful activity are not enough.
“We need cooperation with our federal partners, because this is a federal problem.”
The deputy sheriff said that a new “mobile detection system … will allow us to help identify not only where these are taking off from, but also the IDs that are associated with these drones.”
Mr. Romaine said local officials need more federal help.
“Once we get this mobile detection system in place, we will be looking to our federal partners to pursue whatever remedies are necessary to shut this down and send a signal that this is not acceptable.”
An FAA spokesperson provided a statement to the News-Review in response to the press conference, and provided a link to instructions on how to report a drone sightingto the federal agency.
“The agency looks into all reports of unauthorized drone operations and investigates when appropriate,” the statement said. “The FAA works with federal and local law enforcement partners to educate them about how to respond to unsafe or unauthorized drone operations. FAA personnel in the 77 local Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) across the country perform investigations and when necessary, take appropriate enforcement actions.”
Powered by the latest microtechnology and driven by billions in defense industry and commercial research dollars, domestic drone use has exploded since 2016, when the FAA first implemented operational rules for commercial or non-hobbyist use of small drones, known as Part 107.
As of May, there were more than 392,000 recreational drones and more than 383,000 commercial drones registered in the U.S., according to the FAA.
In recent months, the tri-state area has experienced a barrage of mysterious drone sightings, mostly at night. In response, the FAA last month temporarily banned drone flights in 22 areas of New Jersey and 30 areas in New York, including Calverton.
One of the biggest challenges to incorporating hundreds of thousands of drones into U.S. airspace in recent years has been the limited ability of the FAA – which has jurisdiction over all U.S. airspace — to effectively enforce restrictions.
Shooting down drones is not only illegal and dangerous but exceedingly difficult, according to experts. When operators flying unlawfully are identified, penalties are generally restricted to civil fines and license suspensions or revocations, though criminal charges could apply in some cases.
Local law enforcement officials are limited to investigating the airspace breaches in their jurisdictions, and to date have not identified any of the operators behind the unlawful drone flights near the airport.
“Shooting anything down in the air is extremely dangerous, so what we have to do is really just investigate,” Sheriff Toulon said.
The officials also took the opportunity to alert local hobbyists and commercial businesses of the requirements to register any drone that weighs more than .55 pounds with the FAA, and observe federal flight restrictions by using the LAANC [Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability] system, an online tool to secure permission to fly in certain restricted airspaces through apps like B4UFly.
Holding aloft a DJI Mini 3 Pro, a popular consumer drone and one of the few models on the market that weigh less than the .55 pound threshold for FAA registration, Mr. Romaine said, “this is a personal drone. But the ones we’re talking about could be 20 times larger than this, sometimes as large as a car, that pose a challenge.”