Senior Pentagon officials have been baffled by a swarm of mysterious drones that flew over Langley Air Force Base for 17 straight nights.
According to the Wall Street JournalAs news revealed on Saturday, the phalanx of drones flew in a precise pattern for more than two weeks in December 2023 over the base in eastern Virginia, an area with one of the highest concentrations of national defense and security facilities in American soil.
One or two fixed-wing drones flew more than 100 feet in the air while smaller quadcopters, the size of 20-pound commercial drones, flew slower and below them and occasionally hovered during the 17-night period.
They were preceded by a drone approximately 20 feet long and flying at 100 mph at an altitude of 3 to 4,000 feet. The drones were nearly impossible to catch, despite the Air Force’s vast resources, according to Gen. Mark Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the air base.
They flew across Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay toward the city of Norfolk, over an area that included the home of SEAL Team Six, Langley Air Force Base, Fort Eustis and Naval Station Norfolk, but the Air Force was unable to take them down due to strict federal laws. .
While officials at Langley, home of Air Combat Command, asked the Navy and Coast Guard to be careful with the drones, their size meant they avoided detection.
Pentagon officials were baffled by a swarm of mysterious drones that flew over Langley Air Force Base for 17 nights in a row (File Image)
The phalanx of drones flew in a precise pattern for more than two weeks in December 2023 over the base in eastern Virginia (File image)
Defense officials did not know for sure whether the drones belonged to curious amateurs or rogue actors, and some suspected they came from Russia or China to test a U.S. response.
But analysts found that the quadcopters did not use frequencies available to most commercial drones on the market, which they believed indicated they were not operated by amateurs.
They knew they had to respond quickly and approached the White House to discuss their options to combat potential surveillance.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said, “If there are unknown objects inside North America (we have to) go out and identify them.”
One official suggested using electronic signals to disrupt the drones’ navigation systems, although this was rejected due to the risk of disrupting Wi-Fi networks and local emergency response systems.
Another wanted to use directed energy weapons, an emerging warfare technology, to shoot down drones. But a Federal Aviation Authority official said a weapon like this carried too high a risk for commercial airliners flying overhead during the holiday season.
A third official said the US Coast Guard could shoot nets into the air to capture the drones, although it was also suggested the security service would not have the authority to use a tool like this. On top of that, tracking the exact location of the fast drones was already too difficult.
The suspected Chinese spy balloon heads into the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, US, February 4, 2023.
A US Air Force U-2 pilot observes the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon on February 3, 2023 as it hovers over the US.
A Chinese high-altitude spy balloon floats over Billings, Montana, on February 1, 2023.
Although the investigation into who was responsible for flying the drones over the militarily sensitive area, they found a clue in January this year when a Chinese student was arrested as he was about to fly back to China and accused of illegally taking photographs of naval facilities. classified.
Fengyun Shi, a student at the University of Minnesota, was found flying a drone outside a shipyard run by HII, the company behind U.S. nuclear submarines and the Navy’s latest generation of Ford Class aircraft carriers.
Investigators who accessed his drone, which had crashed into a tree, discovered that it was taking photographs of Navy ships in a dry dock around midnight. Many of the ships were still under construction.
His lawyer said during his appearance in federal court: “If we were a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known.”
The drones over Langely came just two months after drones were detected at a government site used to test nuclear weapons.
The Department of Energy’s Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days, while employees detected a fifth.
It also came after a Chinese spy balloon flew over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where nuclear assets are stored.
The United States found evidence contradicting China’s claim that it was used for weather monitoring and not spying.
An investigation revealed that the balloon contained a combination of commercially available American equipment, some of which was available for purchase online, along with specialized Chinese sensors and other tools designed to collect and transmit data. The presence of both types of equipment suggests that the balloon was intended for surveillance purposes rather than scientific observation.
On February 4 of last year, the Air Force sent an F-22 fighter jet armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile to shoot down the balloon over the water.
Officials described the Chinese spy balloon as a clever attempt by Beijing to conduct surveillance using a combination of specialized and readily available equipment.
During its eight-day cross-country trip over Alaska, Canada and the lower 48 states, the balloon collected data but apparently did not transmit it to China, officials told the Wall Street Journal.
It is not yet clear whether this was due to a malfunction or whether countermeasures implemented by the US military prevented the transmission of information.
This incident added more tension to the already strained relationship between the United States and China.