Drones over Washington military bases – but not ours
Seems someone is taking an unhealthy interest in Langley Air Force base.
A mysterious fleet of drones entered restricted airspace and swarmed a U.S. military base along the Virginia coast for 17 days late last year, stumping the Pentagon, according to a new report.
My first thought was a stream of Amazon-purchased jobbies…nope, this is serious stuff. Seventeen DAYS? Over Langley, Norfolk, and the rest of that area?
Kelly described the first drone he saw as roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. As many as a dozen or more drones followed, flying across Chesapeake Bay, and then traveling toward Norfolk, Virginia, and through a space overlooking the base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port, according to the Journal.
20 feet long? That isn’t exactly hobbyist material. But Biden and company weren’t sure. How many hobbyists can launch 340 feet worth of drone at one time?
The report said officials could not determine if hobbyists or adversaries – such as China or Russia – were responsible for the drone fleet. Reports of the matter reached President Biden and resulted in two weeks of meetings at the White House in December 2023, the Journal reported.
Langley/Norfolk isn’t the only area being visited.
Two months before the drone fleet emerged in Virginia, five mysterious drones reportedly breached restricted airspace over a government nuclear weapons experiment site in Nevada.
Whatever happened to “you fly over restricted air space, you are in trouble?” Is this a symptom of “we have all the gee-whiz high-tech stuff at our disposal, but this is low/slow lo-tech” like we ran into with the Chinese balloon. Or just “we have nothing obvious to respond with” – well, why not? Heck, a Huey with a competent door gunner should be able to handle stuff like this.
Oh, and further on Las Vegas:
Four of the drones were detected by the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas, while the fifth was spotted by employees, according to the Journal. The facility has reportedly since upgraded its detection system, but officials have not determined who was behind the breach. Fox News
I’m so glad they can see it coming… that’s pretty open country there – what prevents them from taking them down?
In the years since Russia entered Ukraine, the weather balloon fiasco – is no one paying attention? Gotta be some duck-hunters in the audience – are we so limited by Patriots and the sexy gee-whiz stuff that we can’t handle something functionally equivalent to a nice Cessna?
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force, Navy
Just like the balloon, I bet Biden and company will say “*DUUUUHHHH!*” until it’s way too late!
If you aren’t out front you are way behind. Gee, I wonder how so many Chinese spies were able to sneak into the country with no one noticing?
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-new-bullet-drones/
Ohh, lots of people noticed. We have pictures of them lined up with their nice new clothes and backpacks, showered and ready to be issued their new phones, and credit cards before they hop on that free flight to wherever they want to go!
Meanwhile, you and I must show a “real id” to fly on a plane in our own country.
Show ID, get groped and told you can only bring x amount of toiletries with you. I’m not leaving or entering the country, I’m trying to get to Peoria.
The issue is that just like they don’t want police enforcing the law against criminals, the current administration is very slow to enforce its sovereign air and land borders. Instead of saying to the unlucky hobbyist “I am sorry for your destroyed toy, but it should not have been flying in restricted air space.” They have lawyers telling them they can’t shoot it down unless it is an identified threat (meaning it is launching missiles or dropping bombs).
I think it was 60 minutes that did a news story of a bunch of Chinese “immigrants ” coming through a hole in a chain link fence, dropping their passports once on us soil, and the news crew filming while our border patrol watched and did nothing.
Prepare