Meet the new space cowboys.
Nassau County cops have gotten the green light to shoot troublesome drones out of the sky — with officials saying they don’t want to wait for something “disastrous” to happen.
The order went out Thursday as county officials unveiled a new state-of-the-art drone command center that can track the mysterious flying crafts from miles away, but they need the feds to sign off on high-tech tools to intercept and take down the drones.
Instead, they’re taking matters into their own hands.
“We don’t want to wait until we have some kind of disastrous event to then say, ‘Well, we could have done this and we could have done that,’” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman told reporters.
“The Nassau County Police Department has the authority and certainly has my approval that if there is a mass gathering anywhere and there is a drone that is a threat to the public at large, they have the authority and the jurisdiction and the right to shoot down that drone.”
Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said his team is trained up and ready to roll.
“As far as my snipers go, I have 30 of the best, world-renowned snipers in the country that can hit a quarter a mile away,” he said. “That’s how good they are.”
The announcement comes as the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily banned drone operations over parts of New Jersey and decreed that “deadly force” can be used to bring them down.
The agency said that at least until Jan. 17 unmanned aircraft are barred from flying within a nautical mile of specified airspace outlined in an FAA Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM.
Drone sightings in recent months, primarily over New Jersey and portions of New York, have raised the alarm among locals and security concerns for authorities, who fear foreign agents are behind them.
The Post reported this week that there have been sightings near at least 17 US military installations as far off as Hawaii and Utah that located near property owned by the Chinese.
Nassau County’s new command center can now keep tabs on any drones near their air space.
But there’s a limit to what officials can do without the feds lending a hand.
“I can see a drone coming from 20 miles, but I can’t stop it,” Ryder said Thursday. “That’s what we’re asking for. The county exec is asking Congress to push that bill forward so we can get our drone mitigation here.”
The White House has largely downplayed the concerns despite repeated calls from local residents and government officials demanding action to at least get answers for the mysterious flying objects.
One lawmaker, Republican New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, has gone so far as to suggest that the drones may be coming from an Iran “mothership” high over the Atlantic Ocean.
He called the federal government’s lack of response “is not just frustrating — it’s dangerous.”
Blakeman said Nassau County can only do so much without the federal government approving and sharing with local jurisdictions the technology to intercept the drones.
“We would like the power to do a few things,” he said. “Number one, we would like the technology so we don’t have to shoot it down, because that creates a whole ‘nother set of problems with the people who are on the ground.
“But the technology is there there to jam it and send it back to its home base,” Blakeman added. “And we want that. We also want federal legislation that would allow us to issue a federal summons in that even that someone was violation the law.”
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