The situation occurred in Virginia, and so far authorities have not said they know the origin of the devices or what their purposes were.
There were 17 days during which a swarm of drones An unknown plane flew over Langley Air Force Base on the Virginia coast in USA .
The first of the sightings took place on the night of December 6, 2023 and the flights continued until the 23rd of that month. as confirmed by The Wall Street Journal through interviews with more than two dozen government officials and others close to the events.
In addition, in the aforementioned newspaper, they examined police files, documents and photographs that reported on the incident. suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft .
It has been reported that these nights The drones violated the restricted airspace of the military base .
One of the witnesses to the swarm was US Air Force General Mark Kelly. who is currently retired.
The man in uniform, who trained as a fighter pilot, He estimated that the first drone he saw was about 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles per hour. .
Then the said plane was accompanied by others who followed her on her journey .
According to a senior military leader, Drones began appearing between 45 minutes and an hour after sunset. .
Also They managed to fly over an area which includes the home base of the Sixth Navy SEAL Team and Naval Base Norfolk considered the largest naval port in the world.
The situation led to several attempts to decipher the origin of drones due to potential risks to national security.
American officials They counted a dozen or more units the nights they passed through the region.
The authorities They sought to discover whether the flying machines belonged to amateurs experienced in handling them or whether they belonged to forces likely to pose a greater threat. .
Some officials have suggested they could belong to Russia or China. in what could have been a possible attempt to test the military response of American agents.
However, Until now, they have not declared knowing its origin or what its objectives were. of these planes.
Kelly assured Newspaper that the Pentagon is baffled by this situation which was reported to President Joe Biden and discussed at the White House.
On the other hand, even if a link with the aforementioned case could not be proven, A 26-year-old Chinese citizen was tried and sentenced to prison for drone activities exceeding legality in the region. .
Why they didn’t shoot down the swarm of drones that flew over a US military base for 17 days
Even though the authorities knew that the drones were flying over the area, agents faced certain limitations .
This, because Federal law prohibits shooting down drones near military bases in the United States unless they pose an imminent threat. .
In this sense, aerial espionage is not admissible as confirmed by the aforementioned media outlets.
Reports on the drone swarm were sent to President Biden and contributed to the two weeks of meetings at the White House to evaluate the file .
Such cases occurred after the first sighting was reported and in these cases Officials from agencies including the Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Pentagon’s UFO office participated. .
They also benefited from the support of external specialists to examine how to respond and possible explanations.
The issue of drone flights and possible risks to national security was latent, since a similar episode had occurred barely two months earlier . At least, to a certain extent.
In October 2023, five drones flew over government space used for nuclear weapons testing located on the outskirts of Las Vegas.
It was the Nevada Department of Energy’s national security site and, as U.S. officials reported at the time, They did not know who was using these drones or what their motivations were. .
Following this episode, a spokesperson assured Newspaper that the installation has improved its systems to detect and counter this type of aircraft .
The concern of the American authorities regarding the swarm of drones It’s not just because they violated the restricted airspace of the military base .
Some types of these planes They can perform tasks ranging from surveillance and explosive attacks to transporting potentially lethal items. like certain chemicals.
However, the fact that American agents Trying to demolish them could put citizens in danger. .
This is the main reason why the federal law of the North American country take into account the limitations mentioned .
How did the movements of the swarm of drones take place above the American military base?
During the 17 days of drone presentation, These arrived at dusk and circled, while some emitted small lights .
Although officials assured that a large amount of resources had been deployed to catch them, These were hard to track and disappeared every day .
The then commander of the United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, General Glen VanHerck, told the aforementioned media that Drones have been flying around defense installations for years .
However, he clarified that What happened at Langley Air Force Base was not like previous incursions .
Faced with this situation, ordered pilots of fighter jets and other aircraft to fly near the drones, in an attempt to obtain information .
At the same time, the first two nights—corresponding to September 6 and 7— Police officers in Hampton, Virginia, pursued the drones on foot and in patrol cars. .
Even though some of these planes landed for a few moments, They flew away again before they could reach them .
Likewise, as they reported, another appears to have landed offshore .
These attempts are some of the multiple operations that have been carried out to decipher the origin of these devices and the reasons of its deployment.
According to reports, They were able to identify a specific flight pattern .
One or two fixed-wing drones positioned more than 30 meters in the air were accompanied by smaller quadcopters. the size of commercial drones around 9 kilos, they estimated.
The latter tended to go below and with lower speed .
The officials’ analyzes indicated that, given the characteristics of the operation, it is unlikely that the drones were operated by amateurs .
And although several proposals have been made to catch them, Many of them have been abandoned due to their potential risks or lack of powers to put them into practice. .
Another feature they discovered is that small quadcopters did not use the usual frequency band provided by default on commercial drones detailed the experts.
Due to the drone’s flight, officials They canceled night training missions and moved their F-22 fighter jets to another base. in order to protect them from possible risks.
Who is the man sentenced to prison for his use of a drone in a restricted military zone
On the morning of January 6, 2024, a 26-year-old Chinese citizen named Fengyun Shi He parked a car – which he had rented – on a street 17 kilometers from Langley Air Force Base.
His vehicle was abandoned in front of a shipyard managed by HII a company that builds nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers.
The subject was a student at the University of Minnesota and told residents living in the area that I wanted to remove a drone stuck in a tree .
The weather that day was rainy. .
Shi tried to remove the device from the branches with his controller an action that caught the attention of a neighbor who decided to call the police.
When the officers arrived, They asked him why he was flying a drone in these weather conditions and suggested he call the fire department. to ask for help.
Instead of doing the latter, Shi returned to the car and returned it to the rental company an hour later. .
SO, I took a train to Washington DC and the next day I took a flight to Oakland, California. .
The same day, The drone fell to the ground and was examined by FBI agents .
Experts have discovered that Shi had taken photos of Navy ships American in dry dock.
Some of these images They were captured around midnight while others showed units under construction at a shipyard located near this location.
Suspicions led to him being arrested on January 18, just before boarding a flight to China .
He only had a one-way ticket. as the aforementioned American newspaper learned.
When they questioned him, Shi told officers he was interested in ships and did not know he had crossed restricted airspace with his drone. .
As saved by Newspaper, Investigators disagreed with his story, but they found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. a hypothesis they were considering at the time.
The actions he took with the drone led to it being accused of taking illegal photographs of classified naval installations .
Shi pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison on October 2. in a federal prison.
During the court proceedings, Justice Lawrence Leonard said that I did not believe his version, because “there are significant gaps” .
So far, U.S. officials They did not say they knew who flew the drones over Langley Air Force Base during those 17 days. Nor the why .
Source: Latercera
I am Robert Harris and I specialize in news media. My experience has been focused on sports journalism, particularly within the Rugby sector. I have written for various news websites in the past and currently work as an author for Athletistic, covering all things related to Rugby news.