Drones swarmed a military base for days. The Pentagon still doesn’t know why.

[MontyB]

Ten months after multiple drones flew over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for more than two weeks, the Pentagon is still unsure where they came from.

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that the Department of Defense hasn’t figured out the source of the uncrewed aerial systems that flew over the base for 17 days in December 2023, breaking into restricted air space several times. They did not attack or interact with any aircraft or personnel, but the nearly three weeks of incursions prompted major meetings with government officials. The FBI, Department of Defense officials and members of the Department of Defense’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, created to identify unidentified objects, held two weeks of meetings to try and determine the source of the incursions.

Drones swarmed a military base for days. The Pentagon still doesn’t know why.

The military and the Pentagon’s UFO investigating arm have tried to determine the source of the drones that flew over Langley Air Force Base.

taskandpurpose.com

This raises a lot of questions for me.
1. Why can't the US military bring them down, I can certainly understand why they can't open fire on them as they are within populated areas, but surely sensitive facilities would be operating jammers routinely and are no fly zones.

2. Where are they coming from, I doubt they are being flown directly from China, Russia etc. which would indicate that there are either undetected vessels offshore or a sophisticated network of operators within a short distance of these bases.

Also 6 months for this seems unusually lenient ...

Chinese National Charged for Taking Drone Photos of Classified US Navy Nuclear Submarines

In seemingly the first case of its kind, the US Justice Department has charged a Chinese national with using a drone to photograph a Virginia shipyard where the US Navy was assembling nuclear submarines.

www.wired.com

I really do think the west is making a big mistake in not being more aggressive towards these incidents, personally I am amazed we aren't blasting the snot out of the Houthi's on a daily basis.

 

[George]

I'm sure they're no fly zones, as is any airport. You'd think they would be testing out electronic defences. Letting it go isn't a bright idea. Houthis: Guess the Admin is too concerned with collateral damage & being compared to Gaza wreckage.

 

[MontyB]

I'm sure they're no fly zones, as is any airport. You'd think they would be testing out electronic defences. Letting it go isn't a bright idea. Houthis: Guess the Admin is too concerned with collateral damage & being compared to Gaza wreckage.

What collateral damage can there miss a Houthi and hit a Somalian pirate?

I am not suggesting boots on the ground I am suggesting the continuous degradation of their combat ability to the point that they lose ground to the government forces, I accept they are no better but I prefer our terrorists to theirs.

I think the only option we have to deal with Russia, it's allies and hangers on is to return to the cold war, we are losing ground because we seem determined to focus on a post war solution which doesn't make any sense if we have no plan to win the war.

 

[George]

What collateral damage can there miss a Houthi and hit a Somalian pirate?

I am not suggesting boots on the ground I am suggesting the continuous degradation of their combat ability to the point that they lose ground to the government forces, I accept they are no better but I prefer our terrorists to theirs.

I think the only option we have to deal with Russia, it's allies and hangers on is to return to the cold war, we are losing ground because we seem determined to focus on a post war solution which doesn't make any sense if we have no plan to win the war.

I seem to recall the media saying the US bombing of the Houthis was making life harder for the Yemeni people, Democrats are hurting in some sections for the elections because of Gaza. Joe originally said he would supply just enough to keep Ukraine from losing, maybe he was changed his position, who knows.

 

[MontyB]

I seem to recall the media saying the US bombing of the Houthis was making life harder for the Yemeni people, Democrats are hurting in some sections for the elections because of Gaza. Joe originally said he would supply just enough to keep Ukraine from losing, maybe he was changed his position, who knows.

Here's a thought, if the Yemeni people don't want to do anything about them them then I think we can safely assume that they are at best ambivalent to the Houthi or at worst in support of their actions in which case I really don't care about the Yemeni people, you make your bed and then you lay in it.
I suspect Democrats are hurting in many areas simply because they won't make a decision at all, the worst part is that because of this you will elect an orange man baby who will make bad decisions.

 

[George]

Here's a thought, if the Yemeni people don't want to do anything about them them then I think we can safely assume that they are at best ambivalent to the Houthi or at worst in support of their actions in which case I really don't care about the Yemeni people, you make your bed and then you lay in it.
I suspect Democrats are hurting in many areas simply because they won't make a decision at all, the worst part is that because of this you will elect an orange man baby who will make bad decisions.

At this point it's unclear who will win, neither is a great choice.

 

[MontyB]

At this point it's unclear who will win, neither is a great choice.

While true, I think I speak for a sizable chunk of the rest of the world when I say one is clearly a worse choice than the other.
Looking at this with regards to the topic at hand I don't believe Trump has the desire or intellectual capacity to understand the problems facing the US military (and that of the western world) arising in the next five years, I think he is so "smitten" with Putin and autocrats in general that they will be directing your foreign policy which will be to run down the US ability to respond to crisies.

 

[George]

While true, I think I speak for a sizable chunk of the rest of the world when I say one is clearly a worse choice than the other.
Looking at this with regards to the topic at hand I don't believe Trump has the desire or intellectual capacity to understand the problems facing the US military (and that of the western world) arising in the next five years, I think he is so "smitten" with Putin and autocrats in general that they will be directing your foreign policy which will be to run down the US ability to respond to crisies.

At the same time Putin grabbed The Crimea & other meddling in other peripheral countries while Obama was Prez, did nothing while Trump was in & did the current invasion with Biden in. But his "Man crush", as some have put it, on dictators is troubling.

 

[MontyB]

At the same time Putin grabbed The Crimea & other meddling in other peripheral countries while Obama was Prez, did nothing while Trump was in & did the current invasion with Biden in. But his "Man crush", as some have put it, on dictators is troubling.

I never liked Obama, he suffered from "paralysis by analysis" syndrome where he never achieved anything because he was constantly looking for "consensus" in a world where it doesn't exist, basically he was constantly tripping over himself.

My overall assessment of the two choices you currently have is that:
Harris will be similar to Obama, things won't get a lot better, but they won't get significantly worse either.

Trump, I am not convinced the US will survive four years with him at the helm, his economic plans are ridiculous, Tariffs are good to protect an industry from unfair competition but while they are levied on the supplying industry, they are paid by the consumer so expect price rises, they also open the US up to retaliatory tariffs (as happened last time when China refused to buy US soy beans and switched to South American suppliers).

His foreign policies are dangerous for both the USA and the Western world, his "Man crush" as you describe it consists of deferring to dictators, he talks of Harris taking us into WW3 (or WW2 when he can't remember) but I will guarantee giving the likes of Putin and co what they want in exchange for a few months/years of peace actually moves us closer to WW3.

From a military policy point of view thanks to Putin I think most countries now recognise the need to spend more on defense (you can see this in Europe's increased spending) and that the US has to move away from its European focus to concentrate on Chinese expansion plans, but this takes time to implement and I don't think under Trump Europe will have that time as I suspect he will abandon NATO almost immediately.

 

[mark s conley]

Ten months after multiple drones flew over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for more than two weeks, the Pentagon is still unsure where they came from.

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that the Department of Defense hasn’t figured out the source of the uncrewed aerial systems that flew over the base for 17 days in December 2023, breaking into restricted air space several times. They did not attack or interact with any aircraft or personnel, but the nearly three weeks of incursions prompted major meetings with government officials. The FBI, Department of Defense officials and members of the Department of Defense’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, created to identify unidentified objects, held two weeks of meetings to try and determine the source of the incursions.

Drones swarmed a military base for days. The Pentagon still doesn’t know why.

The military and the Pentagon’s UFO investigating arm have tried to determine the source of the drones that flew over Langley Air Force Base.

taskandpurpose.com

This raises a lot of questions for me.
1. Why can't the US military bring them down, I can certainly understand why they can't open fire on them as they are within populated areas, but surely sensitive facilities would be operating jammers routinely and are no fly zones.

2. Where are they coming from, I doubt they are being flown directly from China, Russia etc. which would indicate that there are either undetected vessels offshore or a sophisticated network of operators within a short distance of these bases.

Also 6 months for this seems unusually lenient ...

Chinese National Charged for Taking Drone Photos of Classified US Navy Nuclear Submarines

In seemingly the first case of its kind, the US Justice Department has charged a Chinese national with using a drone to photograph a Virginia shipyard where the US Navy was assembling nuclear submarines.

www.wired.com

I really do think the west is making a big mistake in not being more aggressive towards these incidents, personally I am amazed we aren't blasting the snot out of the Houthi's on a daily basis.

my best opinion: they are trying to understand too much about these drones to effectively negate them. They really need to find, an eliminate the point they are being launched, and recovered from by an effective tracking method ( i would use a drone to attach a homing device to the offending drone.), or barring that, recover one intact to study it for signs of the user. it would appear that they are handling this in a legal way when they should adopt a much more responsive terminal way.

Any Military Base has a legal right to restrict any response or entry in regards to its need for security, up to using deadly force, Langley AFB is no different: located next door to Langley NASA, Langley, its a large intelligence source for quite a large number of operations, great or small. This was my first base of assignment in 1982. Believe me, its easy to control the ground approaches to Langley. But a wide open area along the water, plus in my opinion, the relative lack of large structures make it ideal for spotting the little shits. why they dont simply locate the base of the drones by physical tagging a drone with a gps data marker, and following it back to the lair, and then neutralizing it has been a staple item in the book of tactics for years: ie the use of Anti radiation missiles (ARM) in the wild weasel missions to hunt and kill radar stations.

In short, until they realize they are not concentrating their efforts to neutralize the drone base and operators. they are not going to get very far with this problem.

 

[MontyB]

To some degree it seems as though someone decided to move it to the too hard basket and move on.

I would however have assumed physically tagging an inflight drone would be quite difficult, I thought more along the lines simply following them using a higher altitude recon drone.

I am just a little surprised that the highest security bases are not operating jammers as a routine function.