Members of Congress will discuss the mystery drones that have been appearing in the skies above New Jersey on a classified conference call on Thursday, a top House Democrat says. Law enforcement has repeatedly said that they do not know anything about the drones. 

Congressman Adam Smith, who serves as the ranking member of the Armed Services panel, told reporters Thursday that he and fellow members would discuss the drones, among other issues. The drones began appearing over New Jersey in mid-November. 

On Wednesday, a New Jersey assemblywoman, Dawn Fantasia, said she received a briefing from the state police on the drone issue. She said that law enforcement knows absolutely nothing about the phenomenon. She further said that it seems the drones can evade all detection technologies. 

“[State police] deployed helicopters over Raritan Bay but could not detect drones, even with infrared cameras. Current radio frequencies do not pick up drone signals,” Ms. Fantasia wrote.

The drones were the focus of a hearing of a homeland security joint subcommittee meeting on Tuesday, where an FBI assistant director said the bureau is working with state and local law enforcement to determine what the drones are doing over the state. 

“We do not contribute that to an individual or a group yet,” the assistant director of the FBI’s critical incident response group, Robert Wheeler, told subcommittee members. “We’re actively investigating.”

Congressman Chris Smith, who has represented the Garden State in the House since 1981, said at the same subcommittee hearing that he had spoken to a New Jersey sheriff who claimed that one of his officers had seen around 50 drones in the sky. 

“I was on the beach in Island State Park in Ocean County with the sheriff,” Mr. Smith said. “He’s been working on it every single night … One of his officers two nights ago saw 50 drones come in off the ocean right there.” Mr. Smith further said that a Coast Guardsman claimed to have been followed by between “12 and 30” drones while he and his unit were out on patrol on the water one night. 

Mayors in the state have already called on Governor Murphy to dedicate every available resource to determining the origin and the intentions of these drones, and Mr. Murphy has said he’s taken the potential threat “deadly seriously.”