Many are saying this should be an impeachable offense. Will anyone in the news media ask Kamala Harris what she knew and when she knew it, and why her administration did nothing?
Unknown drone fleet breached US military base airspace in Virginia for 17 straight days: report
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.
For several nights last December, U.S. military personnel reported witnessing a fleet of unknown unmanned aircraft breach restricted airspace over a stretch of land at Langley Air Force Base along Virginia’s shore, the Wall Street Journal first reported.
The drones would start to arrive about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset each night, one official reportedly told U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, who joined several other officers responsible for the country’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors, on a squadron rooftop.
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.
These would not be privately owned drones, not at that size and speed
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. Those meetings included the Defense Department, the FBI and the Pentagon’s UFO office, as well as outside experts.
No. Have you ever seen a hobbyist flying a 20 foot drone? The air space over military bases is restricted below 400 feet, and some bases have total restrictions, where planes have to fly around them. In fairness, it was more than just huge drones, others were involved
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.
The originating article at the WSJ, which is paywalled, of course, notes (via Twitchy)
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.
Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after the aircraft first appeared in December last year. 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.
Large drones flying over military bases and a nuclear weapons site sure seems like an imminent threat. Biden-Harris held meetings while allowing someone to spy on bases and such
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.
Near the end of the article, we learn that the feds busted a Chinese student from the U of Minnesota as he was boarding a flight to China in January 2024
On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Fengyun 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…”
And had you heard this story before? You’d think it was big. Yet, no news of it at the time. Was kept hush hush. Didn’t want to interfere with Biden’s re-election campaign, eh?
Read: Mystery Drones Sat Over US Military Bases For 17 Days in 2023, Biden-Harris Admin Did Nothing »