Drones of unknown origin have been seen flying over military bases in Virginia and Nevada over the past year, including the secret base for the Navy's elite SEAL Team Six commando unit and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port, the US publication reports.
General Mark Kelly of the US Air Force did not know what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had flown over Langley Air Force Base on the coast of Virginia.
For several nights, military personnel have reported a mysterious violation of restricted airspace where one of the largest concentrations of US national security installations is located. The show usually started 45 minutes to an hour after sunset.
Kelly, a fighter pilot, estimated that the first drone in the fleet was about six meters long and flying at over 160 km/h at an altitude of about 915-1220 meters. Then, one by one, the entire fleet of drones arrived. This included about a dozen devices.
US federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases unless they pose an imminent threat.
Reports of the drones reached President Biden and followed two weeks of White House meetings since the aircraft first appeared last December. Agencies such as the Defense Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's Office of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena joined outside experts to come up with possible explanations and debate ideas on how to respond.
Drone incursions into restricted airspace already worried national security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear weapons testing.
For 17 days, the drones appeared at dusk, flew over quickly, and made their way back. Some emitted tiny lights, making them look like a moving constellation in the night sky. They were also almost impossible to track, always disappearing despite the many resources deployed to track them down.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones have been spotted over the years flying around defense installations. But the nighttime swarms of drones over Langley, he said, were unlike any previous incursion.
VanHerck ordered fighter jets and other aircraft to fly close enough to the drones to pick up clues. He recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorize a full range of wiretapping and spying to find out more, even though the Pentagon is limited in what it can do on US soil.
"If there are unknown objects on the territory of North America, the task is to act and identify them," he said.
The local police were the first to move. For two nights beginning Dec. 6, officers in Hampton, Va., tracked the drones in patrol cars and on foot, radioing police observations of where they were flying. For example, some appeared to land, only to rise again before the police could get to them. Another seemed to have landed in the sea. Eventually the police gave up.
The drone formation was reported to the National Military Command Center, a Pentagon office responsible for relaying emergency messages to US military commanders around the world.
Given the complexity of the operation, US officials did not believe the drones could be flown by amateurs. Furthermore, they followed a pattern: one or two fixed-wing drones were positioned more than 30 meters in the air, while smaller quadcopters, the size of 10-kilogram commercial drones, often flew lower and at a lower speed.
They came from the north, crossed the base, which is on a peninsula at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, and continued south, beyond radar range. They would resume the pattern and disappear, usually until midnight.
One official suggested using electronic signals to jam the drones' navigation systems. Others have warned that doing so could disrupt local 911 emergency systems and Wi-Fi networks.
One suggestion was to use directed energy, an emerging technology, to disable or destroy drones. An FAA official said such a weapon poses too much of a risk to commercial aircraft during the December holiday travel season.
Others have suggested that the US Coast Guard launch nets into the air to capture the drones. One official pointed out that the Coast Guard may not have the authority to use such a weapon in this case. Additionally, drones were too difficult to track closely.
Langley officials called in US Navy and Coast Guard vessels to monitor the drones, without much luck. These were much smaller than military aircraft and did not always show up on radar. Military personnel had to recalibrate their radar systems, which were set to ignore anything resembling a bird.
The analysts found that the smaller quadcopters did not use the frequency band commonly available to commercial drones — further evidence that the drone operators were probably not amateurs.
Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, concerned about potential collisions with swarms of drones, and moved the F-22 fighter jets to another base. Residents of the base shared their sightings at the local Starbucks coffee shop and posted blurry photos of the drones on private Facebook groups.
Intelligence officials spotted a vessel floating in international waters off the coast of Virginia, suspecting a possible connection. Coast Guard crews boarded the ship but found no computers or other equipment to support the suspicion.
On December 23, the drones made their last visit.
US officials have not yet learned who is behind the drone raids or why. US officials confirmed this month that several swarms of unidentified drones have been spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles.
