Drones: My Estimate of the Situation

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.

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.”

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.