Tag: drones

C-32 Forced To Delay Landing After F-16s Scrambled To Intercept Drone Near Capital

AC-32A VIP transport jet on a special air mission (SAM) had to delay landing at Joint Base Andrews on Saturday because two U.S. Air National Guard F-16C Vipers and a U.S. Coast Guard MH-65 helicopter were scrambled to intercept a “potential drone” flying near the capital region, according to Air Traffic Control (ATC) audio posted online the internet. The object was observed over Freeway Airport located about 10 miles north of Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, according to that audio. The incident began around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday.

The C-32A was using callsign SAM47, which makes it clear neither POTUS nor VPOTUS were on board, although it was likely operating in support of the President’s movements to the West Coast.

“You can expect some delay, I have a scramble in progress,” an ATC operator told the pilots of SAM47, according to the audio posted by a user named TEEJ on the metabunk.com website. Our friend @Thenewarea51 on X also posted a snippet of the conversation, along with flight tracking data that showed C-32A’s flight path.

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White House reveals Trump explanation for NJ drones — and raises even more questions

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the drones that spooked New Jersey residents last month were “not the enemy,” reading aloud President Trump’s assessment that many were doing “research” — an assertion that generated new questions.

“After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons,” Leavitt said, reading Trump’s dictation at her first briefing.

“Many of these drones were also hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones. In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy.”

The explanation did not clarify what research was being performed — in many cases near military bases — or detail what “other reasons” were at play.

Some leading politicians have been skeptical of the official explanation that the drones were innocent.

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Mysterious drones spotted in Ohio skies, again

People who live in Mercer County have been left puzzled following a series of mysterious drone sightings over the past few nights. Sheriff Doug Timmerman confirmed that his office is actively investigating the incidents and working closely with federal and local law enforcement to identify the origin and operators of the drones.

According to Sheriff Timmerman, the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office is collaborating with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the FBI, and local law enforcement in nearby counties, including those across the Indiana border. Despite these efforts, the purpose of the drones and their operators remains unknown.

“Our office is aware of the significant number of drone sightings, and we are taking this matter seriously,” said Sheriff Timmerman in a statement. “We are committed to identifying who is behind these flights and ensuring the safety of our community.”

The Sheriff’s Office is calling on Mercer County residents to assist in the investigation by sharing any information or video footage of the drones. Citizens who capture footage are encouraged to submit it via the Mercer Sheriff Facebook page and provide the specific location where the video was taken. “For safety reasons, we strongly advise against trying to confront or follow these drones,” the Sheriff’s Office said.

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White House Clarifies ‘Dronegate’: New Jersey UAPs Authorized By FAA For “Research Purposes”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt provided much-needed transparency regarding the “dronegate” incident that sparked nationwide concerns over potential threats from China and Russia.

In a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Leavitt said the drones spotted over New Jersey and New York in December had been authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration for “research purposes.” 

“An update on the New Jersey drones. After research and study, the drones flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones are hobbyist and recreational drones that enjoy flying drones,” Leavitt said during her press conference. 

She concluded on the drone subject: “This was not the enemy.” 

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F-35 AI-Enabled Drone Controller Capability Successfully Demonstrated

Lockheed Martin says the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter now has a firmly demonstrated ability to act as an in-flight ‘quarterback’ for advanced drones like the U.S. Air Force’s future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) with the help of artificial intelligence-enabled systems. The company states that its testing has also shown a touchscreen tablet-like device is a workable interface for controlling multiple uncrewed aircraft simultaneously from the cockpit of the F-35, as well as the F-22 Raptor. For the U.S. Air Force, how pilots in crewed aircraft will actually manage CCAs during operations has emerged as an increasingly important question.

Details about F-35 and F-22 related crewed-uncrewed teaming developments were included in a press release that Lockheed Martin put out late yesterday that wrapped up various achievements for the company in 2024.

The F-35 “has the capability to control drones, including the U.S. Air Force’s future fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Recently, Lockheed Martin and industry partners demonstrated end-to-end connectivity including the seamless integration of AI technologies to control a drone in flight utilizing the same hardware and software architectures built for future F-35 flight testing,” the press release says. “These AI-enabled architectures allow Lockheed Martin to not only prove out piloted-drone teaming capabilities, but also incrementally improve them, bringing the U.S. Air Force’s family of systems vision to life.”

“Lockheed Martin has demonstrated its piloted-drone teaming interface, which can control multiple drones from the cockpit of an F-35 or F-22,” the release adds. “This technology allows a pilot to direct multiple drones to engage enemies using a touchscreen tablet in the cockpit of their 5th Gen aircraft.”

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UFOs and drones: How to prepare for the ultimate unknown

Even if you don’t “want to believe,” it is time to prepare for it. 

Throughout most of human history, those believing in UFOs were considered crackpots and never quite taken seriously. In recent years, though, attitudes have started to change — likely due to mounting evidence of unresolved mysteries and credible voices stepping forward to share their experiences and demand answers.

With UFO hearings on Capitol Hill and the recent alarm over unexplained drone sightings in the Northeast, something has shifted in American society.

At the heart of the mainstreaming of UFOs is journalist Ralph Blumenthal, who retired from his 45-year career with the New York Times back in 2009. When journalist Leslie Kean approached him with a lead, he jumped back into the fray to collaborate on a story that would shift the nature of UFO discourse. 

A Pentagon official named Luis Elizondo was threatening to resign in frustration and go public with information regarding a secretive working group within the Pentagon that had been set up to investigate UFOs. 

“At the time, the Pentagon was not officially in the UFO business,” recounts Blumenthal. “No one knew that they were studying UFOs, so it was quite a revelation.” 

Blumenthal reached out to New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet about the subject and, to his surprise, got the green light to run with the story. The result was a blockbuster, front-page story published in December 2017, specifically delving into the Pentagon’s “mysterious UFO program.”

“It was the first time a mainstream publication was really interested in UFOs, and it played a huge role in making it respectable,” says Blumenthal. “Until then, the subject was considered fringy. We did follow-up stories on pilots who had experience with UFOs, stories on near misses and even touched on the recovery of crashed UFOs and the materials that have been recovered.”

Eventually, UFOs were renamed UAPs — unidentified anomalous phenomena — since the sightings weren’t just airborne but coming from the ocean as well.

A blizzard of government working groups boasting an alphabet soup of acronyms like AARO (All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has come to light since then and it is now apparent that, despite decades of denials, the U.S. government has been studying the phenomena for years. Blumenthal points out that “all the important information is classified, so there was only so far we could go with our reporting.”

Despite the seismic shift in attitude, so much remains beyond our understanding. With the government acknowledging that there are crafts in the skies and emerging from the seas that they don’t understand — and can’t credibly attribute to human technology — it’s time for both the public and private sectors to take steps in preparing for scenarios that could potentially disrupt daily life.

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The 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Is Testing 3D-Printed Drones

In case the display of the drone threat over states like New York and New Jersey wasn’t enough to cause concern, the famous 101st Airborne (Air Assault) “Screaming Eagles” is partnering with the 5th Special Forces Group (SFG) and Eaglewerx Applied Tactical Innovation Center at Fort Campbell, KY to field and test 3D-printed drones as a fraction of the cost of existing small unmanned systems (sUAS).

The testing will take place during Operation Lethal Eagle, a division level training exercise and will include 100 units and ground control consoles. Lethal Eagle is a 21-day exercise designed to test prototypes or Army initiatives among other tasks.

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Analyzing Ukraine’s Attempted Drone Strike On TurkStream’s Russian Infrastructure

Here are five observations about Kiev’s latest provocation in terms of the bigger picture.

Russia accused Ukraine of attempting a drone strike against one of TurkStream’s gas compressor stations, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as “energy terrorism” while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that the US greenlighted it in order to obtain an energy monopoly over the EU. This comes less than two weeks after Ukraine cut off Russian gas exports to Europe across its territory. Here are five observations about Kiev’s latest provocation in terms of the bigger picture:

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1. This Isn’t The First Attempted Ukrainian Attack Against TurkStream

Ukraine tried to destroy this pipeline at least three times in late 2022 alone, with two of its failed sabotage attempts being analyzed here and here, but this is the first time that it tried using drones. What this shows is that TurkStream remains a priority target for Kiev, yet strangely enough, this hasn’t led to a downturn in ties with Ankara as proven by their continued military cooperation that even includes a drone factory. The latest attempted attack therefore isn’t expected to harm their relations either.

2. Neither Turkiye Nor NATO As A Whole Cares About This Provocation

Turkiye’s stance is difficult to understand, but it either doesn’t believe Russia’s claims of Ukraine attempting to attack TurkStream or it inexplicably believes that it has more to gain from continuing to arm Ukraine in spite of these provocations than to cut it off in response. As for NATO, while member state Hungary condemned this as a violation of its sovereignty due to the country’s partial dependence on that pipeline’s exports, the bloc as a whole predictably doesn’t care since it’s anti-Russian to the core.

3. Ukraine Wanted To Complete Russia & The EU’s Pipeline Decoupling

Ukraine’s motive was to destroy the last operating pipeline between Russia and the EU, which it believed would then make it more difficult for them to enter into a meaningful rapprochement after the conflict ends while also depriving the Kremlin of revenue for financing its ongoing special operation. It was essentially meant to complement September 2022’s Nord Stream terrorist attack in the sense of serving as a geopolitical power play for influencing Europe’s post-war future.

4. Was This A Rogue Deep State Operation Or Was It Approved By Biden?

The first scenario would align with the hypothesis posited here last spring regarding Ukraine’s attacks against Russia’s early warning systems, which were thought to be a desperate attempt at escalation that was later brought under control, while the second would align with the Nord Stream II precedent. Lavrov already blamed the US so the question is the extent to which its elected government was aware of this. The answer will help predict whether or not Trump’s return to office next week will make a difference.

5. How Might Trump React To This Development After Returning To Office?

Building upon the above, rogue deep state behavior would be more difficult for Trump to rein in if he was against what they did, but the precedent of Biden (or rather those who control him) being able to stop Ukraine’s attacks against Russia’s early warning systems suggests that it’s not impossible. On the flip side, it can’t be ruled out that he might support sabotaging TurkStream in order to obtain an energy monopoly over the EU and/or leverage over Turkiye, in which case more such attempts might follow.

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Some of these mysterious ‘drones’ are indeed UFOs and should be taken seriously

In recent years, mysterious “drones” have hovered with impunity above sensitive government facilities, spurring urgent briefings at the White House and at the highest levels of the British government. Not only can the objects involved in these incursions evade detection and sophisticated countermeasures, they also demonstrate an array of extraordinary flight characteristics.

To be sure, some recent drone incidents are likely espionage or intimidation operations. But until conventional drone technology is conclusively linked to the most brazen incursions, these craft must be considered UFOs — or, as Congress and the government now prefer, “unidentified anomalous phenomena.”

The UFO designation is particularly appropriate considering that several well-documented and equally perplexing incidents over sensitive nuclear facilities in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s bear a remarkable resemblance to the recent incidents.

For 17 nights in late 2023, for example, between one and two dozen brightly-lit objects flew at any one time over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Beyond forcing the cancellation of nighttime training missions and the transfer of highly advanced fighter jets to another base, the incidents left the military so perplexed that it tasked a special NASA aircraft equipped with sophisticated cameras to investigate the objects.

Somehow, despite nightly incursions stretching over weeks, no verified imagery of the “drones” has emerged beyond a video showing numerous blinking lights in the sky. According to Glen VanHerck, the recently retired commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, “our most advanced” aircraft attempted to identify the objects with “extremely limited results.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) expressed “disappointment” and “shock,” respectively, at the lack of answers regarding the incidents following a year of investigation.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a key member of both the intelligence and armed services committees, stated that the government does not know “what technology [the objects] are using.” According to Gillibrand, the craft in the Langley incursions involved a “type of technology that our radar did not detect them arriving.” Moreover, government documents indicate that all counter-drone technology deployed against the objects “failed.”

Gen. Mark Kelly, a decorated Air Force pilot and the commander of Air Combat Command, observed the incursions personally, likening the brightly illuminated objects moving across the night sky to a science fiction film: “Close Encounters at Langley.”

Would an adversary expose its ultra-stealthy technology so dramatically and consistently in full view of the U.S. military? If so, to what end?

What kind of craft, despite displaying bright flashing lights and flying in formation, can operate with complete impunity — avoiding radar and visual detection while resisting counter-drone technology — above a key military base?

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Trump Promises To Reveal What’s Going On With The Drones

During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago Thursday, President Trump vowed to reveal exactly what is happening with the drones that have been seen flying over the East coast and beyon for weeks.

“I’m going to give you a report on drones about one day into the administration because I think it’s ridiculous that they’re not telling you about what’s going on with the drones,” Trump told reporters.

Trump also noted that several governors who he was meeting with have told him there are mystery drones over their states and that they want answers.

Trump then turned it over to GOP Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin who remarked, “We are home to the largest naval base in the world in Quantico. And we also have a lot of the [Navy SEAL] teams and have a huge national security infrastructure and now for two years running, we have had drone incursion over secure airspace.”

“And we still don’t know why. And I think that’s absolutely unacceptable,” Youngkin added. 

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