Pentagon confirms 'incursions' of unauthorized drones over Air Force base

The Pentagon has confirmed a number of “unauthorized” drone flights last year in restricted airspace over a Virginia base that houses the nation’s most advanced fighter jets.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that for 17 days in December, a fleet of the unidentified aircraft flew over Langley Air Force Base as well as over the area that includes the Navy’s SEAL Team Six home base and Naval Station Norfolk, the world’s largest naval port.

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh on Tuesday confirmed Langley “did experience incursions of unauthorized unmanned aerial systems last year in December 2023.”

She said the number of those unmanned aerial system (UAS) incursions fluctuated on any given day but didn't appear to exhibit any hostile intent. 

“It's something that we have kept our eye on, but I just don't have more to provide on that,” Singh told reporters. 

Asked why the drones were not shot down, she said any commander of any base has the authority necessary to protect forces, facilities, infrastructure and capability there.

“I do know that with all of these incursions, given that it's on US soil there is another level of coordination within the interagency that needs to take place. But the commander absolutely had his or her authorities to engage any systems that are a threat to the base,” Singh said.

Objects flying into restricted airspace has worried national-security officials, with the most notable case happening early last year when a Chinese spy balloon hovered over the U.S. for a week before the U.S. military shot it down off the Carolina coast. 

In last October, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments for three days. The Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site outside Las Vegas detected the drones but did not know who operated them, the Journal reported. 

And U.S. officials confirmed to the Journal this month that unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., north of Los Angeles. 

The incursions at Langley, home to F-22 Raptors, would take place about 45 minutes to an hour after sunset. Officials estimated that as many as a dozen or more drones that were about 20 feet long kept an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet while flying over the base, according to the outlet. 

Officials didn’t know who operated the aircraft but did not shoot them down because federal law prohibits U.S. forces from shooting down drones near military bases in the country unless they pose an imminent threat. 

The Pentagon relayed the reports of the drones to the White House, and for two weeks, officials from the Defense Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation consulted with each other and experts to figure out who was responsible and how to respond, the Journal reported.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, then the head of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told the Journal the incidents over Langley were unlike anything he’d seen in the past.

VanHerck ordered jet fighters and other aircraft to try to fly close to the drones to figure out more about them and also recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorize electronic eavesdropping.

Because the drones flew in a pattern and some didn’t use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial UAS, U.S. officials didn’t believe hobbyists were flying them. 

The incursions caused Langley officials to cancel nighttime training missions and move the F-22s to another base. The drones last visited the base Dec. 23.

Authorities had no leads until Jan. 6, when a Chinese national, Fengyun Shi, got his drone stuck in a tree about 11 miles from the Langley base and outside a shipyard run by Huntington Ingalls Industries. The company builds nuclear submarines and the Navy’s new aircraft carrier.  

A student at the University of Minnesota, Shi abandoned the drone, took an Amtrak train to Washington, D.C., and flew to Oakland, Calif., the next day. The FBI investigated the drone and found he photographed Navy vessels, with some shots taken around midnight. 

Federal agents arrested Shi on Jan. 18 as he was about to take a flight to China on a one-way ticket, though he told agents he was just a ship enthusiast. Investigators could not link him to the Chinese government, and he was charged with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations and sentenced to six months in federal prison.

U.S. officials still have not figured out who flew the Langley drones.