Yes, more people are looking at the sky now. And yes, there are more legitimate uses of drones than there were 10 years ago.
But when a medevac helicopter can’t pick up an accident victim because of drone traffic, it’s hard to think it’s all imagined.
Oh, great! Shooting down flying objects over populated areas. Wonderful idea. (Eye roll) 
If this is mass hysteria a la Grovers Mill it’s time for the federal and state governments to just say, enough already, it’s planes/helicopters in a densely populated area with numerous airports, etc., stop panicking and relax. Why can’t they just say this? I don’t understand this weaseling about. It breeds fear and conspiracy theories.
I personally have not seen any “drones” but we are underneath a flight path to EWR so we see stuff in the night sky all the time. Nothing new, nothing different.
I live in a semirural area of my state. I’m 45 minutes to the nearest airport. And further to the nearest train station. My town is about 6200 people.
My town FB page is filled just today with drones being seen here. Not much to see except trees, a couple of shopping centers and some farms….and homes.
I have yet to see a silent drone. They all make a humming noise! I can always hear a drone from a distance (and wish it would be legal to whack it down like a pesky fly). Has that drone noise been reported? Or just the lights?
I heard the humming the night I saw them above our house. And the flight path looks nothing like a small plane or helicopter, it’s much more jittery. And these were not flying in a straight line, they were flitting around in the sky. Our firehouse is a block behind our house and it’s a medivac location so we have helicopters flying in regularly. That was not what I saw, at all. Could it have been a bunch of local drone enthusiasts having some fun by getting everyone wound up about them? Absolutely! But they were not small planes or helicopters.
They are pretty loud! I’ve seen them, there are a ton of videos on our local Facebook pages, they are clearly drones and not the many planes we see here constantly. Being 10 miles from NYC we do have a bit of light pollution.
Aliens? Probably not. If I was an alien, I would fly by Earth and grab lunch in the next solar system 
My NJ mayor friend said that several NJ mayors had a zoom meeting with the White House and learned absolutely nothing. Makes you wonder what’s being hidden and why.
The New York Times today discussed the aerial sightings as somewhat of a discordance between public perception and informed opinion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/us/politics/drone-sightings-explanations.html
Meanwhile we have the president-elect is claiming that the government is hiding something from us. Yawnnn.
This appears in the New York Times article as well:
The House Intelligence Committee is expected to receive a classified briefing about the mysterious drones over New Jersey on Tuesday afternoon, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
There’s nothing going on, but we’re going to have a classified briefing about what is going on…
And don’t forget they are perfectly safe and lawful (despite flying over military bases) even though we don’t know what they are or who is operating them.
What a shock that the Intelligence Committee is holding a classified briefing. Are intelligence briefings ever held in open session??? Please . . .
They are receiving a classified briefing, not holding one. So is their classified information regarding the drones that is known but not being shared?
Come on, Joe. When they receive a classified briefing, they ask questions, there are discussions. No one knows where the conversation will lead. It can easily go beyond drones. Or some of the drones may be from Homeland Security or from out military. None of that is fodder for a public briefing. You’re trying to make something where nothing exists.
Let’s move on from discussing/debating/defining classified briefing.
