Nearly a year after mysterious drones flew for 17 days near a top-secret military base in Virginia, Senator Tim Kaine says he is “very frustrated” by “so many unanswered questions” that remain.
The Virginia Democrat said his state’s delegation would receive a classified briefing on the situation on Thursday.
For more than two weeks in December 2023, the mysterious drones flew over the restricted airspace of the installation, which houses key national security sites and F-22 Raptor stealth fighters.
The Pentagon has said little about the incidents, except to confirm that they occurred after a Wall Street Journal article in October. If officials know where the drones came from or what they were doing, they haven’t shared it with Congress.
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“We’re sort of on the anniversary of these incursions into Langley. And I’m very frustrated that there are still so many unanswered questions,” Kaine told Fox News Digital.
The lack of a standard protocol for such incursions left Langley officials unsure of what to do other than allow the 20-foot drones to fly over near their classified sites.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, DC, April 27, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As defense-minded lawmakers sought more answers, Langley officials referred them to the FBI, which referred them to Northern Command, which referred them to local law enforcement, a congressional source said .
“I’m going to continue to push federal agencies to get their act together and have a clear agency that is responsible for responding rather than pointing fingers at each other and telling us we need to go to another agency for an answer. ” Kaine said.
The drones over Langley “don’t appear to be armed, but they are there at least for surveillance purposes. And they disrupted training exercises at Langley.”
And during the recent drone phenomenon in New Jersey, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) were spotted near Picatinny Arsenal and above President-elect Trump’s golf club in Bedminster. Trump said he canceled a trip to his golf club because of the drone sightings.
Drone incursions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio prompted the base to close its airspace Friday evening, and UAS sightings took place at U.S. military bases in the United Kingdom and Germany .
A spending bill expected to pass before the end of the week includes a reauthorization of government anti-drone authorities. But it’s a simple reauthorization of a program that many drone experts say is outdated. Lawmakers and experts concerned about national security have implored Congress to pass legislation that would grant the government greater detection capabilities and give state and local law enforcement authorities the power to combat unauthorized drones.
An F-22 fighter jet takes off from Langley Air Force Base to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon. (USNORTHCOM)
U.S. capabilities offer many different ways to take down a drone, including shooting it, using it with thermal lasers, and jamming frequencies so it stops functioning and falls from the sky.
Whether Congress should change the laws is a point of contention, but one thing is clear: Incursions like Langley’s spark confusion about legal authority.
“It’s kind of the problem of too many cooks. And it’s not clear who the chef is,” Kaine said. “The FAA is looking at it. The FBI is looking at it. The DOD is looking at it.
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“It’s much clearer if there is a drone incursion over a base in a war zone like Syria, for example, or in Iraq, on a base where American soldiers are positioned. authorities responsible for shooting down these drones in this context are much clearer than if there is a drone incursion over a base on national soil, OK, I’m not going to fly over the town of Hampton, where the debris could fall into neighborhoods, Authorities are not so clear on this subject.
A drone (Jens Büttner/photo alliance via Getty Images)
When drones encroach near overseas bases, rules of engagement give the military more leeway to interact with them.
However, US law does not allow the military to shoot down drones near its bases unless they pose an imminent threat. While Langley has the authority to protect its coastal base, the Coast Guard has the authority to protect the waters and the Federal Aviation Administration has authority over U.S. airspace, one of the most crowded with commercial airliners in the world. world.
Last week, a Chinese national was accused of flying an unauthorized drone over the Vandenberg Space Base in California. In October, Chinese national Fengyun Shi was sentenced to six months in prison for filming drone footage above the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, 10 miles from Langley Air Force Base.
Two months before Langley, in October 2023, five drones flew over the Nevada Department of Energy’s National Security Site, used for nuclear weapons testing. The American authorities also did not know who was hiding behind these drones.
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A Chinese surveillance balloon crossed the United States for a week last year before the Air Force shot it down off the coast.
US Air Force Plant 42 in California, home to highly classified aerospace development, has also seen a series of unidentified drone incursions in 2024, leading to flight restrictions around the site.
