Mystery Drones Swarmed a US Military Base for 17 Days. Investigators are Stumped (msn.com) 35
The Wall Street Journal reports on a "suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft... as many as a dozen or more" that appeared in Virginia 10 months ago "over an area that includes the home base for the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port." The article notes this was just 10 months after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon...
After watching the drones — some "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" — there were weeks of meetings where "Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond..." Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn't qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway...
Drone incursions into restricted airspace was already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department's Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth. U.S. officials said they didn't know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones...
Over 17 days, the [Virginia] drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back... They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them. Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley [Air Force base], he said, were unlike any past incursion...
Analysts learned that the smaller quadcopters didn't use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial drones — more evidence that the drone operators weren't hobbyists.
"Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm, and moved the F-22 jet fighters to another base... On December 23, the drones made their last visit."
But toward the end of the article, it notes that "In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case." It was a student at the University of Minnesota named Fengyun Shi — who was reported flying a drone on a rainy morning near a Virginia shipyard that builds nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Their drone got stuck in a tree, and ended up with federal investigators who found "Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard." On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn't realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren't convinced. but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk. U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn't believe Shi's story — that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. "There's significant holes," the judge said in court.
"If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known," said Shi's attorney, Shaoming Cheng. "I'm sorry about what happened in Norfolk," Shi said before he was sentenced to six months in federal prison.
But "U.S. officials have yet to determine who flew the Langley drones or why..."
"U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles."
After watching the drones — some "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" — there were weeks of meetings where "Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond..." Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn't qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway...
Drone incursions into restricted airspace was already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department's Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth. U.S. officials said they didn't know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones...
Over 17 days, the [Virginia] drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back... They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them. Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley [Air Force base], he said, were unlike any past incursion...
Analysts learned that the smaller quadcopters didn't use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial drones — more evidence that the drone operators weren't hobbyists.
"Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm, and moved the F-22 jet fighters to another base... On December 23, the drones made their last visit."
But toward the end of the article, it notes that "In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case." It was a student at the University of Minnesota named Fengyun Shi — who was reported flying a drone on a rainy morning near a Virginia shipyard that builds nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Their drone got stuck in a tree, and ended up with federal investigators who found "Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard." On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn't realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren't convinced. but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk. U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn't believe Shi's story — that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. "There's significant holes," the judge said in court.
"If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known," said Shi's attorney, Shaoming Cheng. "I'm sorry about what happened in Norfolk," Shi said before he was sentenced to six months in federal prison.
But "U.S. officials have yet to determine who flew the Langley drones or why..."
"U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles."
Hmmm (Score:3)
This is obviously the Irish doing this...
Re: (Score:3)
A student named Fengyun Shi lost her drone?
This is obviously the Irish doing this...
*his*
Just shoot them down (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If they are flying in restricted airspace, just shoot them down. No one will be injured, and it will be a lot easier to determine who was flying them.
It’s going to be real awkward when it turns out it’s our own drones part of a secret force they didn’t have a need to know about. Well, until they got shot down anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
If it's your own then those flying the drones knows the risk and do it to test the alertness.
The cost of a drone for the government is miscalculation money so they can live with it.
If it's a secret force unit they don't want to claim back the remains and you'd probably wouldn't figure out much from the remains. Just put the control frequency hidden among the FT8 traffic on the ham radio bands and it'll drown there.
Re: (Score:3)
Even the /. summary explains why not :
Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn't qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway...
But if they change the law, then sure. But until then, they have to follow the law.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
If you're operating a 20ft-long UAV, you should know how to do it safely+legally, it's hardly comparable to a random hobbyist with a small quadcopter.
Re: (Score:2)
It takes only one to discharge a small nuke.
Re:Just shoot them down (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Bullets tend to continue keep going if they miss their target. The U.S. Military does not want to be responsible for where they wind up. And restricted air space tends to be over their own personnel. Drones can easily be flying high enough to be out of shotgun range.
Re:Further evidence Democrats destroyed America (Score:5, Informative)
What about all the balloons that went unnoticed when the cheeto was president?
No, no. You can't say that. Bringing up the complete failure to detect these balloons while cheeto was in office isn't fair. You can't state facts like that. It scares them.
Just like you can't remind them he released 5,000 Taliban prisoners [snopes.com]. Or had dozens of our undercover personnel killed when he gave away classified information [tumblr.com] to Russia AND classified documents found by the FBI in his bathroom had human intelligence information in them.
Re: (Score:1)
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A serious country would frown on racial stereotypes.
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\o/ (Score:2)
That's an extremely limited list of previous events - also nothing closer to the event.
Re: (Score:3)
That's an extremely limited list of previous events - also nothing closer to the event.
Chinese students have always been used to gather intel on the US. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01... [cnn.com]
All part of their deal with Pooh bear
Probably Geico (Score:1, Troll)
Obviously (Score:3)
we need some anti-drone drones
American Hubris (Score:2)
Here we are and our military is woefully unprepared for the wars of the future.
We didn't 'win' Vietnam, and those same hard lessons in the middle-east (Afganistan, Iraq) proved asymmetrical guerilla warfare was not our forte.
What's a decked out, expensive Humvee full of well trained, expensive Good 'Ole Boys versus an IED in a Pringles can?
Now here we are and we don't make anything cheaply, an
20 foot long?? (Score:2)
Not only is it clearly not a commercial drone, but how can you lose something that large? And how did someone sneak it need the base in the first place?
Re: (Score:2)
You don't have to sneak it into the base, it's flying over the fence and you can stay away from it.
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Doesn't say much for the "wealth of resources."
A 20' long radio controlled aircraft couldn't be tracked by the US military in the continental US?
If we are *this* stupid ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat.
If we are this stupid, then I guess we deserve to get conquered.
What they Should Have Done dept. (Score:3)
Wasn't this just a missed opportunity for target practice?
All those guys bored with the gun range targets, after all. Bounty is a case of beer for each one bagged.
Re: What they Should Have Done dept. (Score:1)
Yup, it's just that easy, right? So why does Ukraine need them?
Re: (Score:2)
Have they checked Hobbyking? (Score:1)
You know, before finding "threat actors" everywhere (except in the mirror)?
Military cucked by drones... (Score:1)
Shooting Drones is Illegal? (Score:2)
This seems a lil weird. I would assume they would shoot down intruders into restricted airspace. Or is this more for UFOs and trying to prevent an inter-species war?
Down it and see if anyone makes a court claim. (Score:3)