Pentagon ‘still mystified’ as drone drama deepens

Objects exhibiting advanced technology continue to fly with complete impunity over sensitive military installations and critical infrastructure. Despite the Pentagon’s advanced imaging and sensor capabilities, the nature, purpose and origin of these enigmatic craft are unknown, raising an array of pressing national security concerns.

In interviews with “60 Minutes” earlier this month, two recently retired four-star Air Force generals and the Air Force commander overseeing North American airspace defense begrudgingly admitted that the “drones” that loitered in dramatic fashion over key military assets in recent years remain a confounding mystery.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told “60 Minutes” that, despite being “privy to classified briefings at the highest level,” the “Pentagon and the national security advisers are still mystified” by the repeated incursions.

Notably, the objects are impervious to electronic jamming efforts, indicating that they are not off-the-shelf hobbyist drones.

On their face, these incidents pose an alarming intelligence and espionage risk. In the most brazen incidents in recent years, the unknown craft displayed bright flashing lights as they hovered over sensitive facilities and assets.

Such conspicuous tactics are the opposite of basic intelligence collection tradecraft, which calls for stealth. Once exposed, any foreign surveillance operation is not only at risk of compromise, but of sparking a major geopolitical crisis.

Despite this, “dozens” of unknown, brightly illuminated objects hovered and flew with complete impunity over a critical Air Force base for 17 nights in 2023. Ditto for a series of audacious incursions over sensitive American military bases in the United Kingdom last year. In those incidents, witnesses reported dozens of brightly-lit craft “hovering” and exhibiting extreme performance characteristics while evading detection and multiple advanced counter-drone systems.

These enigmatic craft also demonstrate baffling flight dynamics that surpass any known technologies. For several months in 2019, for example, objects with bright flashing lights swarmed some of the Navy’s most advanced warships off the coast of southern California, often well over 100 miles offshore.

In the most detailed publicly available footage of one of these craft, the perplexed crew of the USS Omaha watched their infrared video display as a spherical object moved against strong winds before descending slowly into the ocean. The sphere was one of many “drones” tracked on radar swarming their ship that evening. Meanwhile, sailors positioned outside on the ship’s deck recorded multiple objects with bright flashing lights hovering and maneuvering around the Omaha.

How can a spherical object move against strong winds and descend, in a seemingly controlled manner, into the ocean? Is this evidence of breakthrough technology? How — and why — did groups of these craft put on such strange displays in full view of Navy ships?

The Omaha incident was not unique. The following day, several unknown objects swarmed another Navy vessel, the USS Paul Hamilton, with one descending (“splashing”) into the ocean.

More recently, law enforcement officers observed similar “swarm” dynamics in rural Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming. In late January, federal officials informed Mercer County, Ohio, Sheriff Doug Timmerman that the unknown airborne objects operating in his county engaged in “swarming” tactics. Timmerman, who observed the craft himself, stated that the mystery “drones” reported to his department were the size of “picnic tables or hot tubs” and moved at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour at altitudes as low as 100 feet. Some of the incidents occurred in the vicinity of farms battling outbreaks of bird flu.

Asked earlier this month about the incursions, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) echoed the bewilderment and powerlessness of local law enforcement, stating that “this is something that Congress has to take up.”

Similarly, sheriffs in at least eight Wyoming counties have expressed frustration over perplexing “drone” activity in recent months. In one notable instance, Sweetwater County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to record unknown objects flying over a local power station. After circling for an extended period, the objects then followed the deputies some 30 miles back to their headquarters. In other words, these mysterious craft can travel significant distances and loiter for several hours — while, eerily, turning police observers into the observed.

Wyoming sheriff’s deputies also reported puzzling flight characteristics, to include grid-search patterns and “spoke-like formations with multiple drones branching off from one large, central drone.” According to the Sublette County sheriff, “We’ve had two accounts of very large drones … and several smaller drones flying in a grid pattern around that singular drone.”

Such perplexing flight dynamics match those reported during a series of mysterious incidents that occurred in rural Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas in late 2019 and early 2020, where law enforcement officers observed several smaller objects circling a large, stationary “mothership.” In one notable instance, a Nebraska sheriff’s deputy reported “observing 30 to 50 [objects] flying independently of each other with a larger ‘mothership’ hovering for hours.”

In another incident, a Kansas Highway Patrol officer observed a large object that “stayed relatively stationary” while “10 to 15 drones ... flew all kinds of patterns around that stationary drone.” One of the objects then passed 200 feet over the officer yet, somehow, “made absolutely no sound at all, even though the wind was calm.”

Some of these incidents occurred over nuclear missile facilities, leading the Air Force to track the incursions closely. Publicly released Air Force emails describe sheriff’s deputies “seeing a ‘mothership’ [six feet] in diameter flanked by 10 smaller drones.” “When deputies follow the drones,” the email continues, “they clock them at speeds of 60-70 mph.” Similarly, multiple reports from Custer County, Neb., described “a swarm of 30 following a ‘mothership.’”

During a January roundtable hosted by Trump, the governors of Virginia, Wyoming and Louisiana expressed palpable frustration with the ongoing incidents, some of which have occurred near to and over nuclear power plants.

By flying so openly over sensitive sites while demonstrating seemingly extraordinary technology, an unknown actor is sending a stark message. But until these mysterious objects are identified, the exact nature of that message remains elusive.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense.

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