President-elect Donald Trump said that the mysterious drones spotted in New Jersey and other states should be shot down if the federal government doesn't take action.
On Friday, Trump called for the government to be transparent with the American people.
The White House, however, said that it needs more definitive information to make a decision on whether to take them down.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has urged President Joe Biden to allocate more federal resources to investigate mysterious drone sightings.
Murphy confirmed that numerous drones have been spotted since Nov. 18.
On Thursday night, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan revealed he saw drones himself, expressing concern that they were flying 25 miles from the nation’s capital.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (R-N.J.) called on the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to hold a public briefing on the matter, give local and state agencies the tools they need to monitor drone activity, and allow them to deploy assets that can safely take down the drones.
"New Jersey can't become the Wild West of drone activity," Gottheimer said during a news conference on Friday. "No state can become the Wild West of drone activity."
Robert W. Wheeler Jr., assistant director of the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group, was among the officials who were pressed on the drone sightings over New Jersey.
Wheeler said the FBI is investigating the “unexplained sightings.”
“We do not attribute that to an individual or a group yet,” Wheeler said. “We’re investigating, but I don’t have an answer of who’s responsible for that—if one or more people that are responsible for those drone flights."
The hearing prompted frustration among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The White House says that a review of the reported sightings shows that many of the drones are actually manned aircraft being flown lawfully.
John Kirby, White House national security spokesman, said that there were no reported sightings in any restricted airspace.
The FBI and DHS continue to deploy personnel and technology to investigate the situation to “confirm whether the reported drone flights are actually drones or are instead manned aircraft or otherwise inaccurate sightings," according to the statement.