White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said the White House’s assessment, in coordination with the FBI and state and local officials, is that the mysterious drones flying over the country are in fact “legal” and “legitimate.”

Kirby told Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday’s “Special Report” show that they have investigated about 5,000 sightings and that their analysis so far blames the sightings on “legitimate, legal, commercial hobby and even law enforcement aircraft activity.”

“Some of them are manned, others are unmanned. We are fully aware that many of these are probably drones, but they are flying legally. And it is legal to fly drones in unrestricted airspace as long as you are registered with the (Federal Aviation Administration) FAA and there are thousands and thousands of these types of flights every day,” he added.

Map showing some of the locations where mysterious drones were spotted in the northeastern United States in December 2024. (Fox News)

Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a press conference As of Monday, more than 1 million drones are registered with the FAA in the United States and more than 8,000 drones are flown lawfully each day.

An FBI agent said over the weekend Its Newark office set up a hotline in early December to handle the number of calls related to reported drone sightings in New Jersey.

Since December 3, they have received 5,000 tips through this national tip line and out of those 5,000, “less than 100 tips were generated and deemed worthy of further investigative activity,” the official said.

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Baier pressed Kirby about the White House’s assessment of the drones being used have no foreign participation.

“We have done the detection and analysis. We have confirmed the sightings. And in every case that we have investigated so far, we have seen nothing, nothing that suggests a risk to public safety,” Kirby said. “We have also seen nothing in our work with the Department of Defense (DOD) that indicates a foreign adversary, an implicated actor or a harmful national security threat.”

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He acknowledged that there had been some cases of drone flights over military bases, but that the White House and Defense Department were investigating them.

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“This is an ongoing investigation,” Kirby said. “We are still working on it. Sightings keep coming. We have taken all of them seriously and will continue to address them.”