Page 30 - Pierce County Lawyer - January February 2025

DRONES OVER LANGLEY
On October 12, 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported
that mysterious drones1 were surveilling sensitive
military sites, including Virginia’s Langley AFB and
Naval Station Norfolk, leaving the Pentagon “baffled and
struggling to respond.” The article was based on interviews with
two airforce generals who gave firsthand eyewitness accounts.
U.S. Air Force General Mark Kelly, a senior base commander,
reported seeing up to a dozen unidentified drones flying over
Langley AFB’s restricted national defense airspace for 17 nights
in a row. General Kelly, a career fighter pilot, said the drones
were about 20 feet long and flew over 100 miles an hour, at
altitudes of 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, in single
file, “sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.”
The drone clusters usually included two fixed-wing aircraft
accompanied by smaller quadcopters, “the size of 20-pound
commercial drones,” which all flew as a coordinated unit. The
drones headed south across Chesapeake Bay toward Norfolk,
Virginia 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. According to Kelly, the military could not figure out
how the drones were controlled or where they came from but
the complexity and coordination of the flights suggested “a level
of sophistication beyond civilian drone operations.”
The WSJ also interviewed retired United States Air Force
General Glen D. VanHerck, who served as the commander
of United States Northern Command and North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) from 2020 to
2024.2 General VanHerck said that drones had been spotted
flying around defense installations for years but the nightly
drone swarms over Langley were “unlike any past incursion.”
1 Gordon Lubold, Lara Seligman, \and Aruna Viswanatha, “Mystery Drones Swarmed
a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon is Stumped.” Wall Street Journal, Oct.
12, 2024.
2 VanHerck was the person who led the military response to the Chinese “weather
balloon.” He was quoted as saying, “if there are unknown objects within North America,
our job (NORAD) is to go out and identify them.”
3 0 P I E R C E C O U N T Y L A W Y E R | J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 2 5
“Mystery Drones
Swarmed a U.S.
Military Base for 17
Days. The Pentagon
is Stumped.”1
After hearing the reports from Langley, General VanHerck
recommended deploying special electronic tracking devices
and other countermeasures to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
It is unclear whether such actions were taken or how well they
worked because the drones never returned to Langley after
December 23, 2023.3
Aerial view of Langley Air Force Base. Photo by Ndunruh. 1st Fighter
Wing Public Affairs Office. Public Domain.
DRONES OVER NEW JERSEY
Picatinny Arsenal is a U.S. military research and manufacturing
facility in New Jersey which made bombs and shells during
World War II. On November 13, 2024, a contractor who
worked there, reported seeing a light rising straight up from the
tree line in a nearby park and begin flying toward the arsenal.
“He started recording. Could it have been a plane? Or was it a
drone?”4
3 In several criminal cases prosecuted in federal court, the FBI and military have
documented their ability to track drones controlled by radio signal. Effective drone
tracking and jamming has also been demonstrated on the battlefield causing increased
reliance on drones which can fly autonomously with no need to communicate with any
radio signal.
4 See Michael Wilson, Alyce McFadden and Tracey Tully, “How Drone Fever Spread