By Tim Binnall
It has been revealed that mysterious drone swarms appeared over a U.S. military base for more than two weeks late last year and left the Pentagon stumped as to how to thwart the odd aerial incursion. The problematic situation came to light this past weekend by way of the Wall Street Journal, which indicated that the curious case unfolded in the skies above Langley Air Force Base in December of 2023. On seventeen nights that month, military officials observed a fleet of approximately a dozen drones that flew in formation over the highly restricted Virginia site that is home to the Navy’s SEAL Team Six among other important American assets.
Remarkably, the matter was considered so serious that it was brought to the attention of President Biden in his daily intelligence briefing. Among Pentagon officials, the origin of the craft was thought to be Russia or China, since the complex nature of the incursion left them doubtful that the drones were being controlled by a misguided prankster. Seemingly more mystifying than where the craft came from was what to do about them. Initial attempts to get to the bottom of the situation using local police tracking the craft from the ground proved futile as cops could not keep up with the fast-moving UAVs.
Subsequent discussions about a possible military response found the options lacking. Electronically jamming the drones was dismissed out of fears that it would disrupt the local 911 system. Using directed energy weapons on the mysterious craft was also eschewed due to concerns that such a tactic could inadvertently cause a disaster for any commercial flights in the area. Even the idea of simply deploying nets to snag the drones was shut down because of jurisdictional issues with the Coast Guard and the elusive nature of the diminutive vehicles. To that end, the interlopers were too small to be picked up by the current calibration of military aircraft radar.
The case ultimately ended in a fittingly mysterious fashion as the visits by the drone swarms simply stopped in late December. One possible lead in the case was the January arrest of Chinese national Fengyun Shi, who was busted using a drone to photograph Navy vessels shortly after the incursions came to an end. The young man was sentenced to six months in prison for what he claimed was simply an accident brought about by an interest in ships. Although Shi's assertion was undoubtedly suspicious, authorities could not connect him to the Langley Air Force Base drone swarms that remain unsolved.