I would venture to say that I'm "credentialed" based upon my employment. On the way home from work when this all started happening, a drone flew right over my vehicle as I turned off a main road. I said "WTF is that" and stopped in the road and rolled my window down. It was dark but I clearly saw what was the size of a hood of an SUV (maybe 6 ft x 4 ft), had red and green lights and a white light in center, it was a quadcopter and I could hear its distinct sound as my Agency has drones and uses them for various things, such as surveillance. I'm not a drone guy, but it was not a hobbyist drone...it looked like the one I posted previously from Ptero Dynamics. I tried to follow it...threw on my lights to back on to the main road as the drone continued flying across the road literally just above the tree line. The drone shut off its lights/went dark and accelerated/continued over the woods....I'm guessing he saw my lights for that brief moment I used them to back up. Since I have to use roads and he doesn't, needless to say he was gone.
This was in Morris County where a lot of sightings occur. Now do I think it was a Chinese spy drone launched from a mothership off the coast...no. Do I think is was one of ours either sniffing, mapping or carrying a payload for training based upon its close proximity to Picatinney...yep. And if part of a Special Access Program they'll never tell. But listening to the news and watching briefings from officials telling me I didn't see what I saw is just plain BS. I also believe based upon my conversations with others in LE that there are a ton of copycats now, people mistaking planes and helicopters for drones, etc. but I saw what I saw.
