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For more than two weeks in December 2023, a swarm of unexplained drones flew in restricted airspace over Langley Air Force Base in eastern Virginia.
According to a new Wall Street Journal report, the swarm of drones flew in a precise pattern every night and were nearly impossible to track.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley, he said, were unlike any past incursion.
VanHerck, who led the military response to the Chinese balloon, ordered jet fighters and other aircraft to fly close enough to glean clues from the drones. He recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorize a full menu of electronic eavesdropping and spycraft to learn more, though the Pentagon is limited in what it can do on U.S. soil.
The first to try to track and locate the source of the mysterious drones was the local police. Using their police radios, officers on foot and in cars attempted to follow them, to no avail.
U.S. officials didn’t believe hobbyists were flying the drones, given the complexity of the operation. The drones flew in a pattern: one or two fixed-wing drones positioned more than 100 feet in the air and smaller quadcopters, the size of 20-pound commercial drones, often below and flying slower. Occasionally, they hovered.
They came from the north around 6 p.m. to traverse the base, which sits on a peninsula at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, and continued south, beyond the reach of radar. They repeated the pattern and then disappeared, typically by midnight.
It was also discovered that these drones didn’t use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial aircraft.
Eventually, news of these drones made their way to the White House Situation Room and the President learned about it in his daily briefing.
There, one U.S. official suggested using electronic signals to jam their navigation systems, but that was shot down because it could disrupt local 911 emergency systems and Wi-Fi networks. Another thought using directed energy to disable or destroy them might work, but an FAA official said it could pose a risk for commercial aircraft in the area. Someone else wanted the U.S. Coast Guard to shoot nets into the air to capture them, but it was pointed out that the Coast Guard might not have the authority to use such a weapon in this situation.
Eventually, on Dec. 24, the drone swarms stopped.
The Pentagon never did figure out who was responsible for the mysterious drones that flew over Langley, but they did report that more of these unidentified drone swarms were spotted recently near Edwards Air Force Base in California.