Bowie police say they are fielding calls and trying to investigate, but they don’t seem to know any more than anyone else. And the reports come from all over the area.

Add former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s name to those asking questions about this strange sight. He posted a video on X He says he left his home in Davidsonville on Thursday around 9:45 p.m.

“I personally saw (and filmed) what looked like dozens of large drones in the sky,” Hogan said.

Around the same time last night, Jazmine Johnson of Crofton said she saw something in the sky while driving on Route 50 through Bowie. In fact, she said she saw it the last two nights.

“I thought, OK, these aren’t stars,” Johnson said. “They can’t be stars because they’re in the same position and place, but I also felt like I saw it moving, the light changing, something like that.”

She also realized that they weren’t airplanes. And it turns out her brother had reported seeing something similar last week while driving from Laurel to Glenarden. What bothers her is that she didn’t see the flying objects during the day on the way to work, but only at night on the way home.

Bowie resident Mary Tutman said she noticed three objects moving from north to south – more specifically, toward Route 50 – while taking out the trash Sunday night. She was aware of the stories coming out of New Jersey, but initially assumed that the drones mentioned there were the more common hobby drones that you can buy cheaply.

“It wasn’t small,” Tutman said. “And they just came in like a line. “One thing, and then it made this strange, deep hum.”

Minutes later she saw two more.

“They had red and green lights,” she said. “At that point I was trying to say, ‘Wait a minute, that must be what they’re talking about.’ And then I tried to see that the lights were kind of flashing, and I couldn’t tell how big it was, but it was not small.”

Living in an area where all types of air traffic pass overhead, be it commercial flights to and from BWI Marshall Airport, military flights to Joint Base Andrews, or small aircraft flying to and from Freeway Airport – not to mention police and the rescue helicopters – Tutman said she was able to block out most of it. But not this one.

“The sound was unlike anything I had heard before, and it caught my attention almost more than the flying things,” she said.

While the government was unable to provide an explanation, the FAA said in a statement to WTOP that recreational drone flyers do not need special permission to fly as long as the drones weigh 55 pounds or less. And that assumes that they are drones.

In a joint statement, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said they had no evidence that the New Jersey sightings posed a threat to national security or public safety.

“In the past, we have experienced cases of mistaken identity where reported drones were actually manned aircraft or facilities,” authorities said. It is not clear whether the statement applies to what is being seen in Maryland.

In an email to WTOP, Joint Base Andrews said it has not conducted any drone strikes but remains alert and ready to respond to any risks or threats.

In his post on the activity on

“The government has the ability to track these from their point of origin but has been negligent in their response. People are rightly demanding answers but are not getting them,” Hogan said.

“I don’t feel like they really know what it is or, you know, if so many people have seen it that they know what it is,” Tutman said. “You have to say something like, ‘We test, we do’ – no one really cares if it’s a company, if they test.

“But if they don’t know, that’s pretty scary,” she added. “If they know…they should say something else.”

“The drones are here when they weren’t there before,” Johnson said. “And I know we live in an area where there are different bases – Fort Meade… we’re close to the NSA. We are close to many different places. So I think the drones on the East Coast are a major concern.

“I don’t think they’re going to be open about what they understand and know to be true.”

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