Tag: drones

Assessing Reports That Ukraine Is Preparing A False Flag Drone Provocation Against NATO

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova raised global awareness of Hungarian media reports about a planned Ukrainian false flag drone provocation against NATO in her Telegram post on Friday. She hyperlinked to one of the outlets, Pesti Srácok, a little more than two hours after they published their editorial. It ended by citing unspecified Telegram posts about Ukraine’s plans to bomb logistics hubs in Poland and Romania with captured Russian drones and then blame Moscow.

Accordingly, there’s no solid intelligence about this, just social media reports that were picked up by the Russian Foreign Ministry and amplified by their spokeswoman. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that such a scenario isn’t credible, especially given the larger context. Trump just greenlit NATO downing Russian jets that violate the bloc’s airspace, which could arguably embolden some members to attempt this on false pretexts, thus risking a major escalation of NATO-Russian tensions exactly as Ukraine wants.

Likewise, if the most zealously anti-Russian ones along the alliance’s eastern frontier ultimately get cold feet after fearing that Trump might hang them out to dry, Ukraine could nudge them in the direction of offensive operations against Russia disguised as “reciprocal retaliation” via this false flag plot. The essence is similar to what Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service warned about twice over the summer regarding joint British-Ukrainian plots to stage false flag provocations in the Baltic Sea.

According to their sources, this would involve Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes hitting a US ship there or at least exploding in close proximity to it and/or fishing up Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian mines, either of which could suffice for pulling Trump into mission creep. They could also falsely justify offensive actions on the grounds of “reciprocal retaliation”, albeit at sea in these scenarios, while the latest one that Zakharova warned about could include drones, airstrikes, and/or a no-fly zone.

Russia continues to gradually gain ground in the special operation zone, and while no breakthrough has yet to occur, the military-strategic dynamics are clearly in its favor and decisively against Ukraine’s. Taken to its conclusion, this trend will inevitably result in Russia controlling all the disputed territory with time, thus enabling Moscow to end the conflict on more of its terms by then. Ukraine wants to avert that scenario so it’s desperately trying to engineer the game-changer of direct NATO intervention to that end.

It’s only through such a dramatic development that the abovementioned dynamics could possibly be altered to at the very least freeze the conflict, which Ukraine and the West have demanded of Russia to no avail since that would leave unmet many of its goals in the conflict, ergo Ukraine’s false flag motives. Having captured Russian drones bomb NATO logistics hubs in Poland and Romania via a modern-day “Gleiwitz incident” as Zakharova described Ukraine’s reported plans to be might easily achieve that.

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Drone Maker DJI Loses Lawsuit Over Inclusion on Pentagon’s ‘Chinese Military Company’ List

China-based drone maker DJI will remain on the Pentagon’s blacklist of Chinese companies working with Beijing’s military, after a D.C. federal judge dismissed its lawsuit challenging the designation on Sept. 26.

In his 49-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that the Pentagon’s finding that DJI contributes to the Chinese defense industrial base is “supported by substantial evidence,” even though he “cannot conclude” that DJI is “indirectly owned by the Chinese Communist Party.”

“DJI acknowledges that its technology can and is used in military conflict but asserts that its policies prohibit such use,” Friedman wrote. “Whether or not DJI’s policies prohibit military use is irrelevant. That does not change the fact that DJI’s technology has both substantial theoretical and actual military application.”

In other words, Friedman concluded that the Pentagon had presented enough evidence to call DJI a “military-civil fusion contributor” to China’s defense industrial base.

DJI, a private company headquartered in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, sells more than half of all commercial drones in the United States. In October 2024, it filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon after the latter placed the Chinese drone maker and many other Chinese companies on its list of “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States, under Section 1260H of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

In a complaint, DJI called the Pentagon’s decision “unlawful and misguided,” and said that it “is neither owned nor controlled by the Chinese military.”

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How Weed Surveillance Drones Destroyed the Lives of These Californians

The drone hovered low, whirring like a giant bug above the lush, green northern California fields. Its camera was trained on the curved roof of an aging dome home. Inside, Keni Meyer, a petite, ponytailed 54-year-old, didn’t know her property was under surveillance again. But the Sonoma County authorities were taking another step in a harassment campaign, ostensibly aimed at unpermitted cannabis grows.

Drone photos of the property spurred the county to allege a series of building code violations. Those citations drew Meyer into a doomed six-year fight to save her property, as Sonoma’s covert cannabis surveillance operation warped into an attack on less affluent residents. For dozens if not hundreds of people, a crackdown on unlicensed cannabis crops has led to six-figure fines, foreclosures, and evictions. The result has been tears and devastation—even for folks, such as Meyer, who did not grow cannabis at all.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of three other Sonoma County residents. The suit says the authorities’ “runaway spying operation” violates constitutional protections against unlawful searches. Officials, the lawsuit charges, deployed a fleet of high-powered drones that could hover at 50 feet and capture high-quality video footage with precision zoom cameras, all while concealing the surveillance from residents, the media, and local oversight bodies.

To the ACLU, this isn’t ultimately about codes, or even cannabis. It’s about the right to privacy.

“We all have the right to live a private life at home without having to worry about a government drone flying overhead and watching us without a warrant or our knowledge,” says Matt Cagle, an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Sonoma County’s drone program demonstrates how technology further disrupts the power balance between governments and people, making it easy for agencies to warrantlessly sift through people’s private affairs at scale and levy charges and fines that upend lives and livelihoods. At the same time, the county has hidden these unlawful searches from the people they have spied on, the community, and the media.”

The lawsuit adds: “Never before has the government been able to deploy, at its convenience, an inexpensive and unobtrusive floating camera, controlled from afar, to surreptitiously monitor and record scenes from above a person’s private property.”

Drive around Sonoma today, and you’ll see plenty of housing that’s ramshackle and almost certainly unpermitted, with many egregious apparent violations. Many residents continue to erect out-buildings without permits, partly because the process is expensive and partly because many of them resent having to deal with Permit Sonoma as a point of principle: It violates their DIY ethos and their sense of rugged frontier freedom.

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Budapest Says Zelensky ‘Is Losing His Mind’ After Allegations of Hungarian Drones Invading Ukrainian Airspace

During the war, Ukraine has remained in a state of constant conflict with Hungary.

But since the Kiev regime bombed the Druzhba pipeline – that was vital for their energy security of the neighboring country – the bilateral relations took a turn for the worse, and seem to have reached the point of no return.

Not content of calling Viktor Orbán and his conservative, anti-Globalist government ‘Putin’s lackeys’ and some such slanders, Kiev’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky has forwarded the seemingly absurd thesis that Hungarian drones would have invaded his country’s airspace.

And the pushback from the Hungarians has been brutal.

Reuters reported:

“Reconnaissance drones that violated Ukraine’s airspace could have flown from Hungary to check the industrial potential of western border areas, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday, prompting a mocking rebuke from Budapest.

‘President Zelenskiy is losing his mind to his anti-Hungarian obsession. He’s now starting to see things that aren’t there’, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in a post on X.”

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Massive Drone Attack SHUTS DOWN Major Airport

Copenhagen Airport, Scandinavia’s largest aviation hub, suspended all outgoing flights and diverted incoming traffic after multiple large drones appeared near the facility at 8:46 p.m. on September 22.

The unprecedented shutdown lasted nearly four hours, with operations resuming only at 12:30 a.m. the following day.

Norwegian authorities arrested two foreign nationals for similar drone activity near Oslo Airport’s military installations within 24 minutes of the Copenhagen incident, suggesting coordinated timing that should alarm every American concerned about infrastructure security.

Danish police Chief Superintendent Jens Jespersen characterized the unknown operator as a “capable actor” whose technical proficiency far exceeded typical drone hobbyists.

The sophisticated nature of the operation, involving multiple large drones operating simultaneously near restricted airspace, demonstrates the kind of advanced planning and execution that intelligence agencies associate with state-sponsored activities.

This level of capability represents exactly the type of hybrid warfare tactics that threaten Western democracies and critical infrastructure nationwide.

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Russia unleashes drone-missile attacks on Ukraine

ussia launched a barrage of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine early Sunday, which officials said was one of the most intense attacks on Kyiv since the war began, according to reports.

Authorities reported at least four people were killed nationwide, with more than 14 wounded, and damage suffered to residential buildings, factories, and a cardiology clinic in Kyiv, Reuters reported.

According to Ukraine’s military, Russia launched 595 drones and 48 missiles overnight and air defenses managed to shoot down 568 drones and 43 missiles. 

The capital was the main target of the attacks, with explosions heard across Kyiv for more than 12 hours, Reuters also reported.

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FAA Records Add ‘Black Cube’ Sighting to Wright-Patterson AFB Drone Mystery

Newly released Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents obtained by The Black Vault under FOIA case 2025-04622 add significant new information to the still-developing story about a series of unauthorized drone incursions at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in December 2024. These records, drawn primarily from the FAA’s SKYWATCH system, supplement the earlier Air Force FOIA release (2025-01757-F) previously covered by The Black Vault, and they introduce a striking new element: the report of a “black cube”-shaped “UAS” observed at around 16,000 feet.

SKYWATCH is an FAA operations security platform used to collect and disseminate reports of suspicious or unauthorized aerial activity, often relayed through Air Traffic Control Towers, FAA regional offices, and the Domestic Events Network. It serves as a central alert system for potential security risks, with reports often shared with law enforcement and military security forces.

Here is a breakdown summary of the events just released as a result of this case, and drawing from the SKYWATCH system. The documents themselves (located at the bottom of this article) go into greater detail.

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‘We cannot wait’: EU calls for drone wall to deter Russia after new incident in Denmark

Denmark has joined Estonia, Latvia. Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria in the project to build a ‘drone wall’ alongside the Eastern flank.

The European Commission has reaffirmed its intention to build a drone defence system along the bloc’s eastern flank to deter Russia from violating common airspace and respond rapidly to any such incursions.

In less than one month, Russian aircraft have violated the airspace of three member states – Poland, Romania and Estonia – putting the continent on high alert. The acts coincide with intensifying barrages on Ukrainian civilians.

On Monday, two to three large drones were spotted at Copenhagen Airport, prompting a shutdown in operations for nearly four hours. The airport later reopened but warned of delays and cancelled departures. Norway’s Oslo Airport was also disrupted.

Police said they refrained from shooting down the aircraft because the risk was too great, given the airport was at full capacity and planes were stationed near fuel depots.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the incident “the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date” and said she could not rule out Russian involvement.

On Tuesday, the Commission built on the events to call for the drone wall, a novel initiative first unveiled by President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the EU speech.

“For those who still doubted the need to have a drone wall in the European Union, well, here we get another example of how important it is,” said Thomas Regnier, the Commission’s spokesperson for defence policy.

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Donald Trump vows to defend Poland if it came up against Russia after its drones sparked ‘biggest escalation since WWII’

Donald Trump has vowed to defend Poland if it came up against Russia after its drone incursion sparked the biggest escalation since World War II. 

The US President made the commitment when speaking to journalists gathered outside the White House today as he left to attend the memorial for assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

He was asked: ‘Will you help defend Poland and the Baltic States from Russia if Russia keeps escalating?’

The American premier responded: ‘Yeah, I would, I will.’ 

It comes after suicide drones sent by Russian president Vladimir Putin ‘repeatedly violated’ Polish airspace earlier this month during a Kremlin attack on Ukraine. 

The Nato country was forced to scramble its air defenses to take out the craft in the early hours of September 10 – in its first engagement since the Russia-Ukraine war began in February 2022. 

Some 19 Shahed-2 drones entered Polish airspace with at least three shot down – and just days later, another was neutralised over Poland’s presidential palace. 

It saw Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warn ‘we are closer to war than any time since World War II’ as he denounced the ‘large-scale provocation’, which tests ‘Nato’s response threshold’. 

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Did The Polish Deep State Try To Manipulate The President Into War With Russia?

Leading Polish outlet Rzeczpospolita reported on Tuesday that investigators determined that the munition which damaged a home last week during Russia’s drone incursion into Poland actually came from an unexploded missile launched by an F-16 that was trying to down the incoming projectiles.

The National Security Bureau claimed that neither it nor President Karol Nawrocki were hitherto informed of these findings by Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government, which Nawrocki then confirmed.

He represents the conservative-nationalist opposition and pledged ahead of the second round in spring not to approve the dispatch of Polish troops to Ukraine while Tusk represents the ruling liberal-globalist government whose Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski just called for a no-fly zone there. Some therefore speculate that members of the Polish permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, or “deep state”, kept Nawrocki out of the loop in order to manipulate him into escalating against Russia.

Given what’s now known about how an F-16’s unexploded munition was responsible for damaging a Polish home, which Tusk’s government earlier told the UNSC was a Russian munition in a scandal that the National Security Bureau demanded accountability for, the aforesaid conjecture isn’t far-fetched. As for the drone incident itself, this analysis here argues that Russia’s drone incursion was due to NATO jamming causing Ukrainian-directed decoys (possibly launched from Belarus) to veer into Poland.

A compelling sequence of events is therefore beginning to take shape. It was likely the case that Russia’s drone incursion into Poland was accidentally caused by NATO jamming and only involved decoys that naturally weren’t outfitted with countermeasures against electronic jamming. A Polish F-16 then missed when firing an air-to-air missile that tried to intercept one of these out-of-control decoys, regardless of whether they knew that they were decoys at the time or not, which is a separate matter of speculation.

In any case, the munition didn’t explode after it missed, but the military would have known the entire time that a wayward missile must have landed somewhere and thus quickly realized that this was the cause of the damage to that home (especially after investigators arrived on the scene and found it). The National Security Bureau and the President were kept in the dark until a source leaked this to the media all while Tusk’s government blamed Russia for the damage at the UNSC and agitated for a no-fly zone.

Extrapolating from the above, Poland’s “deep state” dynamics are such that the National Security Bureau and the President oppose any escalation against Russia that risks sparking a direct war, which contrasts with some members of the armed forces and Tusk’s government as a whole who favor this scenario. That’s why they hid these facts from the first two in order to manipulate them into escalating. The domestic and international implications of this scandal could lead to the collapse of Tusk’s government.

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