Over a period of 17 nights in December 2023, mysterious drones of unknown origin flew over the United State’s highly restricted airspace above the Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline, the Wall Street Journal published on Saturday.
While abroad, the US military can shoot down aerial threats. However, on US soil, shooting down drones threatens the safety of Americans and is therefore restricted to imminent threats only.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, then-commander of the US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said that while it was not unheard of for drones to be spotted in flight above defense installations, the Langley swarm was unlike past incursions.
A local student
In January, the military finally discovered a clue, which led them to University of Minnesota student Fengyun Shi.
Espionage attempts
Some two months before the nightly incursion, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear weapons experiments in Nevada. US officials, again, said they did not know who operated the drones. In response to the incident, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department’s Nevada National Security Site noted the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones.