Saw some guy on Twitter (who deleted the post since, but screenshots are still floating around) positing that it started as the military testing nuke sniffing drones (For dirty bombs, for example), given the proximity to McGuire Air Force Base, the size / shape of the drones and their similarity to drones provided previously to Ukraine, the government's silence on the whole thing, and some of the RF and radio details on what was earliest reported. Something like that makes sense to me, and the military being mum and secretive about it is frustrating but also makes sense.
Of course, then these original drones, not many over a relatively small area of a relatively small state, get brought up online, and then the places where the dumbest people talk (Facebook groups, the extremely stupid local news pages, and neo-Twitter) run with it and people who haven't looked upwards in decades (apparently) start reporting every 747, star, and tower with a flashing light on it as OMGZ DRONES.
It's 10% "what are these drones doing" and 90% collective overreaction to me at this point.