Nothing contradictory or weird if you actually read the articles instead of having an aneurysm over the headlines. The Pentagon says in the Economic Times article that "we've not identified that any of these reported drone sightings were assessed as anomalous or that it presented a national security or public safety risk over civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast" and that "In the case of drones flying near or over US military installations, that in and of itself just given the volume of drone flights we see on a given day, is not something that's new" but that they will "continue to take appropriate action if and when it's deemed that any of these drones near US military installations pose a threat".
The article by ABC news does not contradict that at all, stating that "In coordination with the FAA and our critical infrastructure partners who requested temporary flight restrictions over their facilities, out of an abundance of caution, the FAA has issued temporary flight restrictions over some critical infrastructure facilities in New Jersey" and that "We continue to assess there is no public safety threat relating to the reported drone sightings". Makes it pretty clear that they don't see an actual threat, but those security partners are crapping their pants, so "out of an abundance of caution" and "at their request", to soothe them they'll issue some airspace restrictions. You can practically hear the eyeroll in the wording.
They conclude that "Having closely examined the technical data and tips from concerned citizens, we assess that the sightings to date include a combination of lawful commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones".
The only question that remains for me is how that "deadly force" against drones would look like. I wanna see what anti-drone measures they'd actually take. They'll probably do the boring thing, identify the frequency the drones are transmitting on, directionally jam them, and wait for the (hopefully existent) autoland at transmission loss feature to set the drone down on the ground where they can scoop it up. Would be a lot more interesting, but also way more potentially dangerous, if they had some solution to actually grab them out of the air.
