For the last several
days we have been talking about drones. At this point, it seems that we are
relying more on rumor, speculation and misinformation. There have been several
people interviewed and official spokespeople have been saying, things, sometime
in direct contradiction of each other.
For some perspective on
this, I will note that dozens, if not hundreds of drones have been seen over
New Jersey and now those sightings have slipped into Pennsylvania and New York.
There are several military installations in that general area. There are many
videos of the drones seen in both daylight and at night. There are descriptions
of drones that are relatively small, there are some described as six feet in
diameter and then those are said to be the size of SUVs.
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| The Predator Drone. The size of an SUV? Suggestive of what some are seeing over New Jersey and Pennsylvania? |
You might say this
began with the incursions around Langley Air Force Base recently and now migrated
into other areas of the United States. And the Pentagon just reported that the
drones, whatever they are, do not come from any of our adversaries in today’s
world and they are not part of the US military.
After the incursions
around Langley in December 2023, Christopher Mellon wrote an article wondering
who was operating those mysterious drones that have been seen over Navy
military exercises, around nuclear plants, and other critical operations. He
mentioned that these intrusions by drones got so bad around Langley AFB that in
response to the drones, aircraft at the base were moved to other, more secure
locations.
Mellon wrote “Our
government has had no success in determining where they are coming from or who
is operating them. It is also surprising that not a single one has
malfunctioned and been recovered despite extensive operations by large numbers
of them over extended periods of time.”
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| Christopher Mellon |
Air Force General Mark
Kelly told reporters for the Wall Street Journal that one drone, 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.”
Adding to this,
U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Air Force Gen.
Gregory M. Guillot told The War Zone that the Langley AFB incursions
were just some of the more than 600 incursions reported over military
installations in 2022.
He also said two other
interesting things. One was that the he didn’t know if the drones had been had
been tracked back to their recovery point or whether they could have been
launched by a vessel off the coast. And two, he saw that NORAD’s responsibility
for countering UAS was very limited to something that would be an attack of
national consequence. He added that NORTHCOM had no responsibility or authority
to take action, meaning they wouldn’t be intercepting them or trying to down
one. He was saying that it was somebody else’s responsibility.
Surprisingly, he told The
War Zone that all this activity led to the creation of a counter-drone
experiment this week called Falcon Peak 2025, in which several companies will
offer their solutions to counter these incursions.
Which I found
interesting because, according to Mellon, these incursions had something of a
history beginning in late February to early March, 2019. He mentioned,
specifically, drones, displaying bright spotlights were seen repeatedly over
Anderson Air Force Base on Guam. It seemed these drones were interested in a
newly installed anti-ballistic missile system.
There is some
indication that the Chinese might have been interested in learning about this
system but there is no direct evidence of them deploying drones. The real
problem with that is that none of the drones were brought down by American
defensive systems. In other words, they operated with impunity.
There is, of course,
proof of Chinese interest in what it happening in Canada and the United States.
In February 2023, there was the great balloon flight that crossed parts of
Alaska, Canada and the US. It was finally intercepted over the Atlantic Ocean
and brought down. I often wondered why it wasn’t intercepted over some of the
wide-open spaces in Canada or in the western and central parts of the US. It
was apparently allowed to complete its mission, whatever that mission was,
before it was destroyed.
And, not to put too
fine a point on it, these drone incursions have been going on since, at least,
2019 and now, they have come up with a program that, apparently, will begin in
2025. Nothing like jumping on the problem and solving it in a timely manner.
But Guam and Anderson
AFB were not the only target in 2019. In September, swarms of these drones were
around the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The drones had flashing red and
white lights. Again, these drones flew without hindrance or restriction and no
identification was made. Robert Hastings, in his book UFOs and Nukes,
made a study of these sorts of incursions in which security forces were unable
to identify or down the objects flying over both military bases where atomic
weapons were stored and the power plants that used atomic power.
In the latest
go-around, we learned there is a report of a large drone, flying above 8000
feet, in violation of FAA rules and regulations. Drones have also been reported
at altitudes between 24,000 - 28,000 feet. An orb was chased by an F-16 over a
sensitive military base in New Jersey. That object vanished at an estimated
Mach 3 and I will note that it was an estimate of its speed. These reports
certainly are a threat to aerial navigation, and to national security but all
we are hearing is talk about what they can do.
In fact, there seem to
be laws or regulations that prevent any attempt to bring one down unless there
is a threat. I’m not sure why there is talk of that. I would think that the
drones operating above 400 feet would be a fair target since it is in violation
of FAA regulations and is, therefore a threat to aerial navigation.
I’ll note here that the
US military has drones that can operate at tens of thousands of feet above the
ground. The Predator drone can hover high over the battlefield for hours and is
virtually invisible from the ground. It is large enough to carry Hellfire Missiles
and can be controlled from bases inside the United States while flying over
targets on other continents. It is so quiet that it can’t be heard on the
ground. In other words, we have the technology to do some of the things that
the drones over New Jersey are reported to have done.
Given the growing
concern over the drone flights that are now reported in New York as well as New
Jersey and Pennsylvania, members of Congress were given a classified briefing
on the ongoing problem with UAP, once known widely as UFOs. These drones are
classified as UAP. Following that meeting, Congresswoman Nancy Mace said:
"We talked about
several different UAPs that have been in the press or leaked. Most of those
have been explained but there are ones that we discussed that are unexplained
and they have a plan, they say, to disclose and declassify how they came to that
conclusion and why they're still objects that are unanswered. There are certain
shapes that are unexplained, that are in the air. I'm in a classified setting.
I don't wanna cross over and disclose classified information but there are
certain shapes consistently that are unexplained. Which is fascinating.”
The Pentagon was
pushing back on the idea that some of the reports relate to off-world
technology. Sabrina Singh, the DoD Deputy Press Secretary said, “To date the
department has discovered no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings,
activities or technology.”
This is, of course, the
same song and dance that we have heard since 1947 when flying saucers entered
the public consciousness. There were classified investigations and a near
constant claim about the lack of crash recovered debris, which would answer
some of the questions.
In contrast to that
bleak statement, AARO’s director, Dr. Jon Kosloski has said, “There are
interesting cases that I, with my physics and engineering background and time
in the intelligence community, do not understand and I don’t know anybody else
who understands.”
There have been more
statements by officials that tell us nothing, other than to suggest that there
is no reason for concern. One Pentagon spokesman said that many of the drone
sightings were actually commercial and private aircraft that have been
misidentified as drones. Of course, there are videos and photographs that prove
that many the reports of drones are actually drones and many are flying in
violation of the FAA regulations about drones. And we have the report of 600
sightings made over several months.
We now learn that
California and Oregon have had there own troubles with these incursions. You
can listen to one pilot’s report of seeing something strange here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UppitJ6E9tM&t=21s
I could go on, but I
think the point is made. These sorts of activities have been going on for years
with no real governmental or official response. There has been little in the
way of investigation or interception of them. I’m not sure why the Pentagon has
been unable to bring down some samples of these drones. All they do is tell us
that these flights are not controlled by our adversaries in the world, they
have suggested that they can’t jam the radio frequencies being used by the
drones, and they seem to be able to evade our attempts to get our hands on one.
This strikes me as another indication of our inability to properly respond to
what is an obvious threat to our national security. We talk, we worry, but we
do nothing other than provide weak statements suggesting there is nothing to worry
about.
Given the response of the government, it is possible to believe that they do know what is going on. They tell us that it of no importance to national security, which makes no sense, unless they understand what is happening and actually do know the source of the drones. Their response screams that they do have the answers. It’s just they can’t do anything about it of maybe that they don’t want to. Getting a drone would generate more questions and it is clear to me, they simply don’t want to answer any of them.
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