For 17 consecutive nights, a fleet of unidentified drones repeatedly violated the airspace over Langley Air Force Base, home to some of America’s most advanced military assets.
Despite the base’s state-of-the-art defenses, military personnel were left perplexed and concerned, watching each night as the drones crossed Virginia’s restricted airspace without a deterrent.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the unusual drone activity has left military commanders, including U.S. Air Force General Mark Kelly, scratching their heads in confusion. Kelly observed in disbelief as drones zipped across the night sky at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour.”
These aircraft flew over restricted zones, even passing near Navy SEAL Team Six’s home base and Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval port in the world. Yet, despite their frequency and proximity to these high-value targets, no action was taken.
Wall Street Journal reports:
For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy’s SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.
Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.
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.
The breaches come less than a year after the infamous Chinese spy balloon incident, where Biden’s Pentagon allowed a surveillance balloon to float across the entire continental U.S. before finally shooting it down.
The drone swarm over Langley is yet another embarrassing display of indecision by the Biden-Harris administration.
Instead of a decisive military response, the drones were allowed to carry out their nightly missions unimpeded for 17 days.
Even more concerning, local law enforcement in Hampton, VA, chased the drones on foot, as if this were a low-stakes game rather than a potential national security crisis.
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