Pentagon stumped by mystery drone swarm flying over Langley Air Force Base The former commander of the the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, has revealed an unidentified drone swarm buzzed the facility for 17 days last December. According to retired US Air Force General Mark Kelly, the flyovers took place using a mixture of 20-foot long fixed-wing drones traveling at around 100mph (160 km/ …
I worked with an Iranian ('ex-Iranian) colleague who was a drone enthusiast. He flew his homebrew drone over the coast to get stunning pictures of the Pacific coast, the mountains and the Navy's Pacific missile Test Range. Of course, he had no idea about the range, it was just some radomes and stuff at the end of the video, but explaining that to the Men In Black would have been 'interesting'.
Not everyone's a spy. Especially as anything that can be seen by a drone can also be seen by a satellite.
Somebody’s gonna buy a “fun fly” stunt plane from Hobby King, rig it with 1 gallon jug of fruit cocktail and a one-way GPS wayfinder and is going to safely and courteously make deliveries to deserving individuals. Look, I didn’t invent it. Some guy already tried to serve Maduro with court documents at a street celebration via similar technique a couple years back.
I find it more interesting that the story comes out from the recently retired base commander. Incidents like this are usually classified to some level or other above "blabbing to the press with a high level of credibility and authority" Does the US not have rules on blabbing "sekrit" stuff even after you leave the military? And anyway, isn't he by definition still a reservist?
That's longer than von Richtoven's Fokker Dr. 1 Triplane.
It's no good sitting on the doghouse roof and muttering "Curse you Red China!"
WTF are the Air National Guard for? They probably pay a million dollars for each 20ft custom aerial target they blaze away at.
would have thought they would have some helicopters to track the drones or one of those fancy f-22's circling and. using their expensive radars, surely it could see a 20ft drone?
drones have low endurance so must have been launched from within the US, especially the small copters, its possible the 20ft ones where launched from a boat but would have passed through a lot of air traffic control radars etc.
"drones have low endurance so must have been launched from within the US, especially the small copters, its possible the 20ft ones where launched from a boat but would have passed through a lot of air traffic control radars etc."
Bolt on a Starlink dishy mcflatface and you are good to go.
Sell hunting licenses to locals with shotguns. NO limits on drones flying in the 'no fly' zone. Equip off duty soldiers and marines with whatever armaments they need and let 'em shoot the things for FUN.
Problem SOLVED!!!
or (in my best R Lee Ermey voice) the BASE COMMANDERS can WIMP OUT and act like a bunch of PATHETIC BOOT CAMP REJECT COWARDLY MAGGOTS while OBVIOUS TARGETS fly around their MILITARY BASES!!!
The former commander of the the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, has revealed an unidentified drone swarm buzzed the facility for 17 days last December.
According to retired US Air Force General Mark Kelly, the flyovers took place using a mixture of 20-foot long fixed-wing drones traveling at around 100mph (160 km/h) and smaller quadcopters. They appeared shortly after nightfall on December 6 and returned every evening in what he called "Close Encounters at Langley," Kelly explained to the Wall Street Journal.
the most sophisticated military & associated agencies on earth could not track them to their landing places.
makes you wonder just how advanced they are.
they can find a ship at the bottom of the ocean but not the final landing sites of drones flying over some of their most secure institutions in their own nation.
i also wonder why they have admitted that less than a year later.
Agreed. That's why I said "and/or (b) flying very close to the ground". Keeping to the treetops is a well known (if unsafe) way of avoiding radar.
I doubt a 20ft drone would a be copter style machine, most likely a reaper style drone, I.e it’d have wings.
Fly that as low as you want but it’ll need to turn to make multiple passes.
If it’s too low its field of vision wouldn’t be great, necessitating those multiple passes.
This is where it gets a bit strange. According to the news Israel has been and still is intercepting hundreds of drones and small missiles on an almost daily basis using American kit. If they aren't using American kit then why have they not given it to the Americans. Either the capability to shoot them down and track them exists or it doesn't. Therefore we could ask what is the truth?
I understand that however to shoot them down they need to be able to track them accurately. There have also been zero reports of the surface to air missiles causing any problems in Israel over their cities.
As per the article "20-foot long fixed-wing drones traveling at around 100mph" so these aren't all hobby drones.
I just find the whole thing very odd and a contradiction to what we have seen on the news which is why I'm curious.
> There have also been zero reports of the surface to air missiles causing any problems in Israel over their cities.
There has to be some collateral damage from falling bits of missile and drone (depending on what the missiles hit).
After all, reports of falling parts of air defence missiles are regularly reported in Ukraine injuring and killing people and damaging property.
The likelihood is that Israel hasn't reported it because they don't want to tell their people that their "Iron Dome" system does damage every time it's fired.
It's possible but would you let them do it 17 days in a row? We also know this technology exists as it's already allegedly in use so there is literally no secret to hide. It's either one of two things. This tech doesn't exist and the news isn't correct or some other explanation I can't quite work out. I am also doubtful the US would admit to being so inept unless they had no choice. Who knows what the truth is?
Every once in a while the US military shows some brains and decides to NOT give aid & comfort to foreign entities and not spill their guts over new weapons, technologies, or deployments. I believe the last time this level of common sense occurred was around June 6, 1944.
That works if we didn't know it already exists and it hadn't been highlighted constantly for the last year by a very close military ally of the US. There was talk last week of the THAAD defence system being deployed.
I'm just applying logic here to two situations that don't make any sense when you put them together. I would be more than happy if someone could give me an actual plausible reasoning.
"At some point, kinetic (i.e.: rifles) means should have been able to secure a sample for analysis..."
Not rifle. Shotgun. Goose loads, modified choke. Handloads optimized for your particular firearm work best. Good out to 80 or 90 yards, maybe 100 if the weather cooperates and the shooter has clues. Any duck hunter worth his/her salt should have no trouble taking out drones if they are in range. (Special note for the hand-wringers: the collateral damage would be nil.)
HOWever ... Chances are the drones were ours[0]. Why else would they have not set up such an ambush for them, especially seeing as they supposedly came over on a fairly regular schedule? It's not like the military has a lack of trained firearms users who have nothing better to do than stand guard duty, waiting for this kind of thing.
[0] If, in fact, they existed at all. William of Ockham might have been overheard to mutter something about lex parsimoniae ...
This is an air force base.
Chances are all they have is short-barreled Benelli/Mossberg riot shotguns with cylinder chokes and 00 buck loads for security or blanks for scaring birds away from the apron/runway.
I should also note I have tried shooting clays with a Beretta riot gun with a Modified choke once.
It sucked, and I would not want to send Airman Duffy out to shoot a drone down with one, much less using a battered armory shotgun.
I did consider that option myself but then the old adage comes into play. What goes up must come down and I remember reading stories of bullets going up and coming down and killing people in places like Mexico or LA when criminal gangs have shoot in the air parties and what not. I would guess the Army firing random shots in the air would have to come down somewhere which wouldn't be a good look.
“The former commander of the the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, has revealed an unidentified drone swarm buzzed the facility for 17 days last December.”
Possibly a flock of seagulls? First they buzzed the base then they ran, they ran so far away…
I believe that HOOOOAH is copyrighted by the USMC, which would like to remind you that it is not the Army.
Also nothing is more dangerous or devious than a bored Marine. See a previous test where some defeated an AI guardbot by borrowing from Metal Gear Solid and sneaking up on it in a cardboard box. Which reportedely contained giggling. But as others have said, I'm suprised the US couldn't track a 20' drone, or DF its control frequencies.
"I'm suprised the US couldn't track a 20' drone, or DF its control frequencies."
If it's satellite comms, there's no way to DF that back to the operator. What I have a hard time swallowing is there not being a way to direct jamming signals at the drones. This is something the military has been looking at for a number of years now. I've seen shows where they've targeted off the shelf quad copters in red team/blue team testing, but mention was made of having the capability of defeating non-commercial craft. I'm not seeing how a very directional high power jamming signal couldn't be aimed at the drones and kept on them to overload their receivers.
>What I have a hard time swallowing is there not being a way to direct jamming signals
If course you can, you just need permission from the FCC and inform the FAA and dialogue with stakeholders and have Space Command stamp in and demand that they are in charge of anything GPS
The paperwork we had to do in order to test laser guide stars from Mauna Kea, while the Top-Secret (don't look at the big white telescope domes) USAF stuff next door on Mauna Loa had to do all that AND get permission from every level of DoD and the Boy Scouts.
Well in Hawaii it would involve somebody trying to remember how to login to the email that they used for the nuclear warning password reset
"If course you can, you just need permission from the FCC and inform the FAA and dialogue with stakeholders and have Space Command stamp in and demand that they are in charge of anything GPS"
The military doesn't suffer from that sort of red tape. While they might drop the FAA/FCC a courtesy note, if a base takes action against a threat, they don't have to get permission in advance.
You have half the legions of hell flying over and around your base for more than two weeks and were phoning home using a non standard frequency. An advanced course of hand sitting was prescribed. Pull the other one - it is nearly Xmas so will be seasonal.
Even pulling an old WW1 biplane out of mothballs and flying beside some of these drones you could capture them with a butterfly net. :) Or a remote controlled airship with a trawl net. Or a WW2 Mosquito and use the drones for target practice. :)
"Surely a military airbase has air defences, no? Wait, this is the US military. Never mind."
In the case of Edwards AFB, it's a testing facility and not a deployment base so their defense assets other than MP's on the gates can be very limited. They're closed on the weekends for the most part. I had a friend that worked there as a crew chief and he told me it was a pain to fly in or out on weekends without filling in a load of paperwork. That was good for him as it meant more pay for being TDY if they had to delay until Monday to RTB.
One should never trust flag officers running to the press and crying foul, or at least keep in mind that they have an agenda.
That he picks to give an exclusive to the WSJ tells me he's girding himself for a political career under the MAGA brand. If he's not contributing to the conservative intellectual discourse with "Why is the sky the color of woke? Why do the commuliberals make us shoot them?" thinkpieces in a few years or elected on a "Make the Blues pay" ticket, I'll eat my hat.
The story sounds very bizarre in that not a lot is being done while US military bases are being subject to unknown intelligence gathering. By not triggering a very vigorous response, the US is making it very easy for somebody. The best time to gather intel is before there is conflict and security is lax. Making a bunch of passes over bases will let the opposition gather cm accurate data on buildings and other infrastructure. The spooks should keep an eye on there being any replica Potemkin villages being set up in the middle of nowhere. Even in the US to not exclude rouge militia groups.
I have a FAA Part 107 pilot certification that allows me to operate a UAS (drone) commercially. My drones had to be upgraded with Remote ID which is a very cheesy bluetooth based broadcast module that is programmed with my name, the craft's serial number/make/model and the ID module serial number. This is so the airspace is safe from bad guys and then this goes on. These craft don't seem to have Remote ID, they are working with non-sanctioned radio frequencies for this application, the are being operated in restricted airspace, etc. Why did I, just a low level domestic terrorist according to TSA, have to jump through all of the hoops to be able to take aerial photos for customers?
It seems to be a thing in the US, but also elsewhere that when bad guys do something, there's a new license to get, a registration or some other restriction that the good guys are required to follow and the bad guys aren't going to pay any heed to following.
"and the bad guys aren't going to pay any heed to following."
There's a reason for that. Same reason a visitor to the USA has to declare in writing that they are not an "enemy agent". That way, if they get caught doing anything even close to what is suspected, they get arrested at the very least for lying to a Federal Agency. So, an "enemy" flying an unauthorised drone somewhere where they shouldn't and getting caught will at the least be done for the rule breaking even if they can't prove s/he was spying.
"That way, if they get caught doing anything even close to what is suspected, they get arrested at the very least for lying to a Federal Agency."
It would be another case of so much ineptitude it would be the same as having to convict Al Capone for tax evasion as they couldn't prove anything else.
Although, your case sounds like convicting somebody for "conspiracy", but not for the underlying crime that would be enhanced by that assertion. What is the written definition of "enemy agent". Obviously, on one end of the spectrum would be a spy stealing military secrets, but where's the line on the other side and how much gray is there? Would you be an enemy agent if you were downloading data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics while being employed by the FSB?
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