Pentagon confirms ‘raids’ by unauthorized drones over air base

The Pentagon last year confirmed a number of “unauthorized” drone flights in restricted airspace over a Virginia base that houses the nation’s most advanced fighter jets.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that for 17 days in December, a fleet of the unidentified planes flew over Langley Air Force Base, as well as the area home to the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port, includes. .

Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed Tuesday that Langley “experienced incursions from unauthorized unmanned aerial systems last year, in December 2023.”

She said the number of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) raids on a given day fluctuated but did not appear to show hostile intent.

“It’s something we’ve been keeping an eye on, but I can’t say more about that,” Singh told reporters.

Asked why the drones were not shot down, she said every commander of any base has the authority necessary to protect the forces, facilities, infrastructure and capabilities there.

“I do know that with all of these raids, given that they are happening on American soil, there has to be a different level of interagency coordination. But the commander absolutely had his or her authority to engage systems that posed a threat to the base,” Singh said.

Objects flying into restricted airspace have worried national security officials, with the most notable case occurring early last year when a Chinese spy balloon hovered over the US for a week before the US military shot it down off the Carolina coast.

Last October, five drones flew for three days over a government site used for nuclear weapons experiments. The Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas detected the drones but did not know who was operating them, the Journal reported.

And U.S. officials confirmed to the Journal this month that unidentified drone swarms have been sighted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, California, north of Los Angeles.

The raids on Langley, home of the F-22 Raptors, would take place about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset. Officials estimated that as many as a dozen or more drones about 20 feet long maintained an altitude of about 3,000 to 4,000 feet as they flew over the base, the newspaper said.

Officials did not know who was flying the plane but did not shoot them down because federal law prohibits U.S. troops from shooting down drones near military bases in the country unless they pose an imminent threat.

The Pentagon relayed the drone reports to the White House, and for two weeks officials from the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation consulted with each other and with experts to figure out who was responsible and how to respond, the report said. theJournal.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, then head of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told the Journal that the incidents over Langley were unlike anything he had seen in the past.

VanHerck ordered fighter jets and other aircraft to fly close to the drones to learn more about them, and also recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorize electronic eavesdropping.

Because the drones flew in a pattern and some did not use the usual frequency band available to off-the-shelf commercial UAS, U.S. officials did not believe hobbyists were flying them.

The raids caused Langley officials to cancel night training missions and move the F-22s to another base. The drones last visited the base on December 23.

Authorities had no leads until Jan. 6, when a Chinese national, Fengyun Shi, stuck his drone in a tree about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the Langley base and outside a Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard. The company builds nuclear submarines and the Navy’s new aircraft carrier.

Shi, a student at the University of Minnesota, left the drone behind, took an Amtrak train to Washington, D.C., and flew to Oakland, California, the next day. The FBI investigated the drone and discovered that it was photographing Navy ships, with some of the photos taken around midnight.

Federal agents arrested Shi on Jan. 18 as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket, even though he told agents he was just a shipping enthusiast. Investigators were unable to link him to the Chinese government and he was charged with unlawfully taking photographs of secret naval installations and sentenced to six months in prison.

U.S. officials still have not determined who flew the Langley drones.

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