Unknown drones have been flying over US military bases for months, WSJ

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Unknown drones have been tracking US military bases for months, monitoring important US national security facilities. This is reported in the article by The Wall Street Journal.

As US Air Force General Mark Kelly reported, when he first saw a suspicious fleet of unknown aircraft over Langley Air Force Base on the coast of Virginia, he did not know what to do.

General Kelly says that drones usually appear in the sky 45 minutes to an hour after sunset.

— For several nights, the military reported mysterious violations of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that contains one of the largest concentrations of national security assets in the United States, — the newspaper quotes Officer Kelly as saying.

According to the military, the drones are about 6 meters long and fly at an altitude of 900 to 1,200 meters at a speed of more than 160 km/h.

The first drone was followed by other drones, “the sounds of which from afar resembled a parade of lawn mowers,” the newspaper writes.

The drones headed south across the Chesapeake Bay toward Norfolk, Virginia, and over the area home to the U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port.

Authorities could not say for sure whether the fleet of drones belonged to clever amateurs or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the reaction of U.S. forces.

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At the same time, as the WSJ writes, federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near U.S. military bases unless they pose an immediate threat. Aerial espionage is not covered by this ban, although some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.

Reports of the drones reached U.S. President Joe Biden and prompted two weeks of meetings at the White House after the planes first appeared last December. Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's UFO office, along with outside experts, discussed possible explanations and ideas for how to respond.

Drone intrusions into restricted airspace have also worried officials at the National Security Agency since five drones flew over a government facility used to experiment with nuclear weapons in October 2023. The Energy Department’s National Security facility in Nevada near Las Vegas detected four of them over three days. Officials spotted a fifth.

As the WSJ notes, this has created a dilemma for defending against drones on American soil compared to the ease of deploying and countering them overseas.

— Drones have become a lethal and cost-effective tool of war, capable of carrying surveillance equipment, explosives, or deadly chemicals. Yet by shooting down suspicious aircraft over U.S. soil, the military risks disrupting or endangering the lives of the Americans it is sworn to protect, — the publication writes.

General Glen VanGurk, then commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had been spotted flying around defense installations for years. But the nighttime swarms of drones over Langley, he said, were unlike any previous incursion.

Prepared by: Sergey Daga