Mystery Drones Swarmed a US Military Base for 17 Days. Investigators are Stumped (msn.com) 89
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:5, Funny)
This is obviously the Irish doing this...
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A student named Fengyun Shi lost her drone?
This is obviously the Irish doing this...
*his*
Re: Hmmm (Score:2)
he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket.
But yah let's be smooth brained and go with the name thing.
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he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket.
But yah let's be smooth brained and go with the name thing.
Whoosh! and whoosh again. Who you quoting anyhow?
So a Chinese student flies their drone over a military base, then after it gets hung up when they downloaded what was on it, and he gets arrested trying to get back to China.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last several decades, it is widely known that part of the deal that Chinese citizens perform when they go to US university is perform spying. If you don't know that, don't take my word for it, google Chinese students spying.
I would t
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So a Chinese student flies their drone over a military base, then after it gets hung up when they downloaded what was on it, and he gets arrested trying to get back to China.
Could be the Chinese government is engaging in indirect Crowdsource-based espionage. Instead of engaging formal spies:
"Dear Kids: the following types of things are of interest to the Chinese people. There will be a profound affect on you and your family members' social credit score depending on what records and information you ar
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So a Chinese student flies their drone over a military base, then after it gets hung up when they downloaded what was on it, and he gets arrested trying to get back to China.
Could be the Chinese government is engaging in indirect Crowdsource-based espionage. Instead of engaging formal spies:
"Dear Kids: the following types of things are of interest to the Chinese people. There will be a profound affect on you and your family members' social credit score depending on what records and information you are able to provide us."
That is part of it, for certain. Most everything they gather isn't classified, though this was trespassing, and perhaps sensitive.
But there can be a lot of parallel construction.
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Just shoot them down (Score:5, Insightful)
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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:Just shoot them down (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Just shoot them down (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Just shoot them down (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It takes only one to discharge a small nuke.
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OK, but I'm not the guy you need to convince.
At this point, the path forward is pretty simple: all you need to do is convince the base commanders involved that your tactical and legal analysis of the situation is superior to theirs, so they'll know how better to proceed next time.
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I would say a swarm of unknown 100ft drones should be deemed a threat. You have no way of knowing they are ONLY for spying; but you can tell it's a deliberate violation, and very possible they contain a dangerous payload; which you can't determine without inspection
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Congress should not change this law because shooting at a drone not directly over a military base will result in every missed shot becoming an attack on every U.S. citizen and their property that the bullets eventually hit. If they do this, they should be charged for friendly fire under the UCMJ, along with all of their base chain-of-command officers.
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This requirement is easily satisfied by sending up a manned helicopter to manufacture an imminent threat. With manned helicopter aloft, they could then fire away.
I expect these provocations were an attempt to trigger a defensive response to then reveal what current US drone defense capabilities are. This is a moving canvas and the US military likely wants to keep it's primitive response capability hidden while more sophisticated defenses are being rapidly developed. W
Re:Just shoot them down (Score:4, Informative)
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Heh. Reminded me of the classic Stan Boardman interview that got him banned from UK TV. "Yes, but these fokkers were Messerschmitts!" [youtube.com]. Should be obvious, but NSFW... :)
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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.
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Sometimes more intelligence is gathered by simply observing.
Re: Just shoot them down (Score:2)
Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesnâ(TM)t qualify.
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.
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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.
I hate Trump as much as the next non-insane person but that's not really the facts.
The spy balloons were just ordinary spy balloons [wikipedia.org] headed close to Guam (outside US airspace) and they got blown off course. The US tracked them the whole time but didn't really want to do anything about them because they weren't a threat and they didn't want the Chinese to know their tracking capabilities
Then the media found out and a whole lot of hubbub over nothing.
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You seem to be implying the capability of the defense department to detect weather/spy balloons depends on who is sitting in the oval office.
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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:\o/ (Score:5, Insightful)
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, Funny)
Obviously (Score:3)
we need some anti-drone drones
American Hubris (Score:5, Interesting)
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, and a single Northrop Grunman or Lockheed Martin killing machine will run you about the same as several million quad-copters with grenades attached to them. The US's overpriced corrupt military industrial complex can't compete with the Chinese factories US consumers have funded.
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That depends on how you measure it: Telling the locals how to live and destroying wrong-think in the North, no. (That plan has failed every time the USA used it.) Murdering more people and reducing their quality of life, yes.
Once again, non-US countries 'forgave' the enemy of the USA, in turn forcing the USA to drop sanctions against Vietnam. Now, Vietnam is westernized and an important source of materials.
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Vietnam is still a communist country. Our goal was to split it into two countries and prevent the south from being communists. At that we clearly failed.
In fact, the United States military hasn't won very many wars since 1945. We lost by the measure of whether we achieved our goals in Korea, Vietnam. Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Gulf War, Iraq War 1, was sort of a success, as was Panama and Grenada. The war on poverty was sort of a success, it didn't defeat poverty but it certainly reduced it dramatically.
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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?
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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?
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If it's 20 feet long, going over 100 mph and 30 feet off the ground you track it by people calling in complaints to the cops.
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"The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers."
So not particularly near the ground.
If we are *this* stupid ... (Score:5, 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.
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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.
Only the exceptionally stupid believe any country is trying to conquer the US.
The US keeps threatening war against China, so it's no surprise that the Chinese military would be spying on the US.
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It's not stupid to not allow the army to engage in non-defense activities.
If they're not an imminent threat it's not a defense matter, it's a law enforcement matter. That's someone else's jurisdiction.
What they Should Have Done dept. (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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Have they checked Hobbyking? (Score:1)
You know, before finding "threat actors" everywhere (except in the mirror)?
Military cucked by drones... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Here's why- regulations prohibit shooting the UAVs unless they pose a threat? Typical response would be to send up a helicopter for any made up reason at all, and then suddenly declare the drones a threat to the safety of the helicopter and shoot them down.
The US military chose to ignore their arial harassers. This leaves the d
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:5, Interesting)
Id like to believe everything i read but... (Score:2)
Re: Id like to believe everything i read but... (Score:2)
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What a lot of people dont realize is that bases are usually miles of unoccupied space between the fence and whatever buildings/equipment are housed there.
Most bases are not like that. You can look at the map and see for yourself [app.goo.gl].
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Re: Id like to believe everything i read but... (Score:2)
Couldn't find the controllers? (Score:3)
"The drones flew in a pattern: one or two fixed-wing drones positioned more than 100 feet in the air and smaller quadcopters, the size of 20-pound commercial drones, often below and flying slower. Occasionally, they hovered."
This implies multiple people guiding the drones and a lot of radio traffic between them and the controllers. It seems like it would be easier to use directional antennas and software-defined radios to zero in on the controlling gear than it would be to try to follow the drones home somehow. You could do it with a SDR attached to a laptop and a directional antenna sticking out the window of your car.
The range of low end consumer drones is only a couple of miles and less than 30 minutes of flight. More expensive drones like the DJI Mavic 3 have a radius of up to 10 miles, but that requires more powerful radios that should be easier to track down. Fixed-wing drones "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" are some substantial planes that could travel quite some distance, and that means a strong radio.
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The range of low end consumer drones is only a couple of miles and less than 30 minutes of flight. More expensive drones like the DJI Mavic 3 have a radius of up to 10 miles, but that requires more powerful radios that should be easier to track down. Fixed-wing drones "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" are some substantial planes that could travel quite some distance, and that means a strong radio.
I'm guessing the large fixed wing were signal relays for the smaller drones, we're seeing that a lot in Ukraine now so it wouldn't be surprised to see it deployed for surveillance by a state actor. And if the unit controlling the cluster of drones was mobile it would be hard to catch them with directional antenna triangulation as long as the flights are shorter than the time it takes you to even get near them, much less pinpoint their position. If mobile they can launch from a different area every day to
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The details are very sketchy, but something stinks about this story.
A drone "was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet". The FAA prohibits drone flights above 400 feet, and anything like that near a military base should get serious attention. They actually "canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm" and still took no action to locate the controlling units? Relay drones at altitude woul
What Costco Drone goes 100mph (Score:2)
On an "unusual" frequency. I mean seriously. This whole thing makes no sense.
If this guy's story is full of holes, so was the writer of this story...
Looks like somebody is not up to speed (Score:2)
The War in Ukraine shows that drones are the future. Seems that some people have not gotten that message.
They sure gone soft. (Score:2)
Who wrote this law? (Score:2)
"Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat."
Who wrote this law? If I were a Chinese agent, I would pay a bunch of money to US lawmakers (not a bribe, just ... money to help lawmakers see the truth) to pass exactly this law. If an enemy wanted to kill a bunch of US soldiers, they could send a bunch of drones with explosives toward US bases, and the military would legally be unable to intercept those drones, as the immine
Newport News Shipyard (Score:2)