Unauthorized drones have been zipping across US military bases at speeds of up to 170mph, easily dodging radar and signal-jamming systems.
But contrary to the non-answers intelligence officials have been dishing out as New Jersey residents panic about ‘car-sized’ drones flying over their homes for the past month, the government has been aware of this threat for over a year.
Exclusively obtained images show one craft photographed by specialist military units over a US airbase in England last month. DailyMail.com also obtained excerpts from a joint US Air Force, NASA and FBI report on previous airbase incursions, and an account from a senior officer briefed on the incidents.
This news follows repeated widespread sightings of drones near military bases in New Jersey and other states over the past month.
And a public outcry over the swarms prompted a stunning admission from FBI chiefs to Congress – they don’t know where these craft are coming from.
DailyMail.com obtained an internal government report showing federal agencies knew about incursions from apparent advanced drones over a year ago but have failed to put a stop to them.
Langley Air Force Base in Virginia was swarmed with dozens of drones for weeks in December 2023, creating a security panic. The incident was kept secret until it was revealed by defense magazine The Warzone in March this year.
A report authored by the Air Force, FBI and NASA – which has a facility next to Langley air base – said that their ‘detection equipment’ and ‘signal jamming’ had ‘failed’, in a presentation slide titled ‘lessons learned,’ DailyMail.com can reveal.
The apparent bungled security response was due to the drone incursions being ‘not initially viewed as a crisis’, with a ‘delay in external resources being deployed’ and a ‘delay in setting up [a] Unified Command Post’.
The report calls for ‘more training/equipment needed for Ground Intercept Teams’, ‘better form[s] of communication for field personnel’, a ‘more robust notification and reporting system among partner agencies’ and a ‘better understanding of legal authorities (process) and capabilities of cUAS [anti-drone technology] / detection systems.’
It listed ‘over-reliance on RF [radio frequency] -based detection equipment (failed)’ and ‘over-reliance on signal jamming mitigation technology (failed)’.
But despite the warnings in the report, a UK military source told DailyMail.com that when drones started swarming a US airbase in eastern England last month, security personnel were unprepared to deal with the advanced foreign technology.
The source, a senior officer, was briefed in detail on the drone incursions at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, which began on November 20.
Lakenheath is a highly sensitive location for the US military, reportedly earmarked earlier this year to store some of America’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The officer told DailyMail.com that drones were recorded flying at up to 170mph near the base, chased a police helicopter, and appeared to be controlled remotely using radio frequencies outside of the normal bands used for military or civilian drones.
‘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 source said.
When one of the objects was detected near the Lakenheath base around November 20, police sent a chopper to investigate.
‘The drones were flying in set formation and then immediately locked on to the helicopter,’ the source said.
‘Long range UAVs [drones] that the US military use, there’s a couple of seconds lag in the system. A report from the pilot said it must have been controlled by a controller within the UK, as there was no lag in the response.
‘When the police helicopter climbed, the drones climbed with it. When the police helicopter tried to leave the area, the drones followed it.
‘They were traveling really fast, faster than anything they’d seen before. From police helicopter footage, one of the drones was tracked traveling at 170mph.’
The officer said one helicopter even caught the advanced drone on an infrared camera in a video which is now classified.
‘There is a 30-minute video of the incident,’ they said. ‘The camera on the helicopter was in IR mode, infrared. There is approximately one minute of footage when you can see a craft which looks like a fixed wing craft, and the maneuver that it does on the screen is like a very fast banking maneuver.
‘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.
‘We ended up using some Special Forces equipment, and nothing actually worked, to my knowledge.
‘Nothing ever suggested to me we knew what we were doing, or what we were dealing with,’ the source added.
The officer said that the drones’ average recorded flight time was around three to four hours – similar to the Langley incident – and which combined with their speed is ‘significantly more advanced than any type of drone in today’s civilian market.’
DailyMail.com exclusively obtained a photograph of one of the drones over Lakenheath, taken by a specialist military group investigating the incursions and circulated in a UK military intelligence report.
The photos show a dark blue sky, with a silhouetted object displaying four yellow, red and white lights.
Though appearing to have a similar shape to a plane in one of the photos, a source who received the brief said that descriptions of the movement of the object by eyewitnesses on the base ruled out commercial aircraft.
Drone incursions over US military bases have continued this month, with dozens of drones spotted in New Jersey including over Naval Weapons Station Earle and Picatinny Arsenal, which manufactures and researches weapons including arms supplied to Ukraine, as well as reported incidents over the US’ Ramstein Air Base in Germany on December 3 and 4.
New Jersey witnesses have reported ‘car-sized’ drones since mid-November, sometimes appearing in groups and often remaining in the same place for hours at a time. They are also said to have been spotted in New York, Texas and Oklahoma.
A New Jersey police department sparked concern after it revealed that a drone it sent up to track a mystery aircraft ‘easily’ evaded their device before disappearing into thin air.
And Ocean County Sheriff Michael Mastronardy said a drone was launched after one of his officers saw 50 unmanned aerial vehicles ‘coming off the ocean’.
On December 10, FBI assistant director Robert Wheeler Jr. spoke at a congressional hearing on the drone incursions saying the Bureau is stumped.
‘You’re telling me we don’t know what the hell these drones in New Jersey are?’ Texas Republican congressman Tony Gonzalez asked.
‘That’s correct,’ Wheeler Jr. replied.
The government response appears to be in disarray, with apparent contradictory statements from civilian and military branches.
A joint statement from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on December 12 tried to attribute the sightings to conventional airplanes and claimed ‘There are no reported or confirmed drone sightings in any restricted air space.’
But Bill Addison, public affairs officer for New Jersey’s Naval Weapons Station Earle, told ABC News the next day that ‘we can confirm multiple instances of unidentified drones entering the airspace above Naval Weapons Station Earle’.
