The sooner Americans hear an honest explanation for the recent wave of drone sightings, the better for everyone.
Until then, we will continue to wonder if U.S. government officials qualify as evil liars or mere incompetents.
On Tuesday, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that last month high-speed drones began buzzing around a U.S. airbase in eastern England, reportedly the site of a nuclear arsenal, and that federal officials, including the FBI, have known about the broader drone threat to U.S. military installations for more than a year.
The Daily Mail’s remarkable report featured a fascinating and alarming account of officials’ response to drone sightings that began Nov. 20 at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England. The account came from a senior U.K. military officer who received a briefing on the incident.
“The drones were flying in with no lights. When they were close to the site, they were turning on the lights going, ‘Here I am,’ and as far as I know, not one piece of our equipment could bring it down or spot it,” the unnamed officer said.
A police helicopter investigated the drones and made incredible discoveries.
“They were traveling really fast, faster than anything they’d seen before. From police helicopter footage, one of the drones was tracked traveling at 170 mph,” the official said.
The drones also took a reciprocal interest in the helicopter, which they followed but easily evaded.
An infrared camera on the helicopter captured the drones’ unusual movements.
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“It’s very, very advanced technology. It can move very fast, and it can’t be detected on any of the systems that we’ve currently got,” the official said.
Incredibly, that includes detection equipment used by Special Forces, which proved useless.
Furthermore, as if the drone encounters in England do not sound sufficiently alarming, it turns out that federal officials have known — and apparently done nothing — about drone threats to U.S. bases dating back more than a year.
Actually, that is not altogether true. They did something, the one thing for which federal officials possess undisputed talents: They wrote a report.
For weeks in December 2023, drones “swarmed” Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, per the Daily Mail
That security incident prompted — what else? — a report, co-authored by the Air Force, NASA, and the FBI.
Much like the recent encounters in England, the Langley incident resulted in a near-total security failure.
Thus, the report called for more training, better communication, “more robust notification and reporting system among partner agencies,” and — perhaps most telling of all — “better understanding of legal authorities [process] and capabilities of cUAS [anti-drone technology]/detection systems.”
In other words, those who respond to drones seem not to know what to do or how to do it.
What, therefore, should Americans make of all this?
For one thing, the FBI’s involvement hardly inspires confidence. In fact, the Bureau’s tyrannical behavior in recent years makes it unlikely that informed Americans will believe anything FBI agents have to say.
Above all, however, we know that federal officials’ responses to the drone sightings can mean only two things.
Either those officials know the drones’ origins and refuse to inform the public, or those officials have no idea where the drones have come from, how to counter them, or even how to detect them. Nor do they appear to have implemented any effective measures since the Langley incident last year.
Neither explanation should make anyone feel better about the U.S. government or the drone situation in general.
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