Are they more than his team has admitted? How vulnerable are we? Before his election to a second term last November, Donald Trump promised he would get to the bottom of the multitude of mysterious drones being spotted around New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and some sensitive military sites across the country.
This included Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, one of the most critical air bases on the East Coast—home to dozens of F-22 Raptors, the most advanced stealth fighters ever built.
They were also spotted at a U.S. base in the U.K. hosting American nukes. Many officials admitted that they had no idea what they were.
After 17 days, the amped-up mystery drone activity simply stopped.
After he was inaugurated, the White House put out a statement saying that the drones were mostly recreational or hobbyist unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), or otherwise drones approved to fly in U.S. airspace by the FAA.
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump told her to brief that the drones were “authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons” and were “not the enemy.”
Some argue that the drones are ours and some might be radiation-sniffers looking for nukes or nuclear material, opening up a whole new discussion.
But regardless, the Trump team basically said the same thing as Team Biden: “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
This left quite a few observers, including me, a bit frustrated, as the new administration didn’t say more than the previous one, nor did it shed any new light on the phenomenon, and instead left many unanswered questions and concerns.
The Pentagon, however, may see things differently.
Some senior national security leaders believe there is a lot more to this issue. They worry that a number of these drones, sometimes operating in swarms, may have ties to foreign adversaries and are potentially being used to spy on American targets.
And there is a huge gap in our ability to detect, track and intercept these threats.
The North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and Northern Command (NORTHCOM), both responsible for protecting the American homeland, recently briefed Congress on the potential threat.
The current joint NORAD and NORTHCOM commander, Gen. Gregory Guillot, who ordered a 90-day assessment of the phenomenon, testified during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that he needs increased authority to better protect military installations from drones.
“The primary threat I see for them in the way they’ve been operating is detection and perhaps surveillance of sensitive capabilities on our installations,” Guillot added.
His predecessor is also voicing his concerns.
CBS News reports:
Officials in Washington have underestimated the threat posed by drones in U.S. airspace, despite several cases of mysterious drone swarms over sensitive military sites, warned Glen VanHerck, the former joint commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command.
Elusive drones flew over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia over 17 nights in December 2023, well before drones over New Jersey captured the attention of the nation late last year, yet the U.S. still doesn’t have policies and laws in place to deal with the swarms, retired U.S. Air Force general Glen VanHerck said. A senior official in the Biden White House later downplayed the Langley intrusions to 60 Minutes as likely the work of hobbyists, but VanHerck did not believe they were hobbyists based on the evidence he saw.
“It certainly could have a foreign nexus, a threat nexus,” VanHerck said. “They could be doing anything, from surveilling critical infrastructure, just to the point of embarrassing us from the fact that they can do this on a day-to-day basis and then we’re not able to do anything about it.”
Meanwhile, unlike overseas, where the U.S. military has overriding authorities to take down drones with “gunfire, missiles and electronic jamming. Here at home, any of those actions would pose a threat to civilians on the ground and in the air. “
“Firing missiles in our homeland is not taken lightly,” VanHerck said to CBS.
So where does that leave us?
Well, according to Guillot who has been tasked to cut through the bureaucratic red tape, interagency issues and technology hurdles, his team is sprinting to develop and acquire the means and authorities to effectively counter the threat of foreign drones in U.S. airspace.
CBS News reports that he is having “new, more sensitive radar systems installed at strategic bases, and NORTHCOM is developing what it calls fly-away kits with the latest anti-drone technology—to be delivered to bases besieged by drones.”
However, his predecessor, General VanHerck says the Pentagon isn’t sprinting fast enough.
…it’s been one year since Langley had their drone incursion and we don’t have the policies and laws in place to deal with this? That’s not a sense of urgency.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Of course we’re being watched. And with any luck they’ll conclude that they don’t want to mess with us.
Same for Chinese Ballonns under Biden?