EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—When a medical helicopter can't land because unidentified drones are tailing it, and police radios go silent the moment officers get close to the aircraft, maybe you're no longer dealing with hobbyist quadcopters and neighborhood paranoia.

While much of the media frenzy turned out to be civilians mistaking airliners and even planets for sinister aircraft, a massive tranche of newly released law enforcement documents obtained by The War Zone through Freedom of Information Act and Open Public Records Act requests tells a far more complicated story.

These thousands of pages of police reports, internal memos, and emails, published for the first time in March 2026, offer firsthand accounts from the officers who were actually out there in the dark, looking up. Here are the five most unsettling encounters buried in the files.

1. A Truck-Sized Drone Invisible to Radar Hovering Over an Airport

On the night of December 8, 2024, a Mercer County Sheriff's Officer arrived at Trenton Air Traffic Control to investigate reports of drone activity around Trenton-Mercer Airport. What he described seeing was staggering. According to his incident report, the officer personally observed a rotary-style drone he estimated to be "approximately the size of a truck" hovering over the airport terminal at roughly 400 to 500 feet.

An air traffic controller confirmed that multiple drones were operating in the airfield's airspace, yet none were appearing on radar. A NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) was issued, and an NJSP helicopter was dispatched to sweep the perimeter, but by the time it arrived, the objects had vanished. A Frontier Airlines flight carrying approximately 182 passengers from Orlando landed without incident that night, though pilots were advised to exercise caution, per the same report.

The lack of radar signature is a recurring theme in the documents. At Essex County Airport on December 6, tower employees told a West Caldwell Police Officer that four drones had been spotted above the facility, but their radar couldn't detect them. Staff speculated the drones were using some form of signal-jamming technology, according to the released documents.

2. Drones Chased a Medical Helicopter and Forced It to Abort a Landing

One of the most alarming incidents came on November 26, 2024, when a New Jersey State Police NorthStar emergency medical helicopter was dispatched to airlift an injured man from a motor vehicle crash.

As the medevac helicopter approached its landing zone at Raritan Valley Community College, according to an officer from the Branchburg Police Department, multiple drones were spotted in the immediate area. NorthStar was forced to abort the landing. A new landing zone was established at Somerset Airport in Bedminster. But, according to report releasd by The War Zone, three to four drones then appeared to follow the helicopter as it flew to the alternate site.

A medical evacuation, disrupted in real time by unidentified aircraft.

3. Police Radios Went Dead Right Next to the Drones

On the night of November 23, 2024, officers with the Branchburg Township Police Department noticed something eerie: their portable radios and vehicle radios simultaneously went "Out of Range." The officer who documented the incident reported that Somerset County Communications confirmed every police department on the county system experienced the same outage, which lasted three to five minutes.

One officer reported that he was at police headquarters when the blackout occurred and observed a drone flying near the building at that exact moment.

A similar incident occurred on December 6 in Jefferson Township. Officers investigating a suspicious figure near Saffins Pond Dam reported that their portable radios and cell phones stopped functioning as they got closer to where the figure and a flashing light had been spotted. Communications returned to normal once they left the area, per the same cache of documents. Whether these were coincidences or evidence of electronic warfare capabilities remains unknown.

4. Eleven Drones Buzzed a Federal Nuclear Research Lab

On December 13, 2024, staff at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility conducting fusion energy research, contacted Plainsboro Township Police to report drone incursions over their restricted airspace. An officer of the lab's Site Protection Division reported observing approximately 11 drones over PPPL property for 20 to 25 minutes, with five of them penetrating the facility's federal restricted airspace and passing within 100 to 200 yards of personnel.

The drones were described as fixed-wing aircraft with red, green, and white flashing lights. The officer reportedly provided cell phone video to police. The Mercer County Prosecutor's Office Counterterrorism Coordinator, later noted in an internal email that the drone activity across Middlesex County appeared concentrated around medical centers and the Princeton Plasma lab specifically, calling the emerging pattern worth sharing with officials.

5. A Drone as Big as a Car Drifted Silently Over a Cop in South Jersey

Far from the northern New Jersey epicenter, Galloway Township Police got a call on December 12 from air traffic control at Atlantic City Airport about a drone above 5,500 feet that was descending rapidly, along with reports of a blue laser shining down from altitude.

An officer drove to investigate and spotted a slow-moving object with red and green flashing lights at roughly 1,000 feet. It passed directly over his position. In his report, published by The War Zone, he described it as "a very large drone comparable to the size of a small car." Notably, he wrote that "it did not emit sound like an airplane or helicopter." He observed three additional drones before clearing the area and contacted an FAA employee at the tower, who told him he was reporting the activity to the DEN, a federal-level intelligence operation center.

As of March 2026, no arrests have been made in connection with the New Jersey drone wave. No drones have been publicly recovered. In January 2025, the Trump administration announced that the drones had been FAA-approved for research purposes.