Between 2015 and 2019, several American nuclear installations were the subject of a total of 57 incursions by unidentified aerial drones, some even operating in swarms. Then, the same phenomenon was subsequently observed in Colorado, not far from a US Air Force base housing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. To this day, the mystery remains unsolved.
In addition, in July 2019, a US Navy “destroyer”, in this case the USS Kidd, was followed by relatively large drones for several evenings, while participating in an exercise off the coast of California. . Two years after the events, the origin of these devices had not yet been determined. [et elle ne l’est toujours pas].
Drone flights near sensitive sites then became much rarer… At least that was the case until October 2023, when a site dedicated to nuclear weapons testing located near Las Vegas was flown over by five unknown aircraft. Then it was the turn of Langley Air Base, which houses F-22A Raptor fighter jets, to be confronted with the same phenomenon for several days.
In December 2023, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, drones operating in formation regularly flew over this military right-of-way, before heading towards the Chesapeake Bay and venturing towards the Norfolk naval base. This scenario was repeated seventeen times.
“Given its complexity, the American authorities believe that amateurs, even enlightened ones, could not be at the origin of such an operation,” said the daily, based on a Pentagon report. Especially since it was established that these drones “did not use the frequencies usually made available to 'general public' devices”, he noted.
These overflights ended on December 23. Since US law prohibits shooting down drones even if they fly near military installations [sauf s’ils présentent une menace « imminente »]it was not possible to determine their origin, even if, last January, a Chinese student was arrested by the FBI after trying to photograph with a drone the installations of the Newport News shipyard, located around twenty kilometers from Langley.
At the time of his arrest, this student was preparing to fly to China, without a return ticket. Since then, he has pleaded guilty to two of the six charges… But no link with Chinese intelligence has been established to date.
More recently, it is the “Picatinny Arsenal”, a site dedicated to the development of certain US Army weapons, which was flown over by several unidentified “large” drones.
However, this phenomenon does not only concern the United States… Since November 20, the British base of Lakenheath, which houses F-15 Strike Eagles and F-35As of the US Air Force, as well as those of Mildenhall and Felwell [également utilisées par les forces américaines] also received visits from unknown drones for several days.
The US Air Force in Europe [USAFE] did not provide many details about these attempted incursions. “The number of systems fluctuated, and they varied in size and configuration,” she said only, via a press release published on November 25. And to simply add that it reserves the right to “protect its installations”, with means that it has not deemed useful to detail for reasons of operational security.
This is not the first time sensitive installations have been approached by unidentified drones in the UK. Faslane naval base [Écosse]which houses the nuclear ballistic missile submarines [SNLE] of the Royal Navy, as well as the Atomic Weapons Establishment [AWE]dedicated to the design, manufacture and support of nuclear warheads for the British strike force, had been overflown several times by unknown devices between 2019 and 2021. A priori, London believes that Chinese agents were at the origin …
Please note that during a stopover in Hamburg [Allemagne]the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth was also approached by a drone [de 1,5 mètres de long, d’après le quotidien Bild]despite the security zone established by the Bundeswehr. The attempt to neutralize it with a portable HP-47 jammer having yielded nothing, the device continued its flight before disappearing near the Tollerort terminal… of which China has been co-owner for about a year.
More generally, several dozen flights over sensitive sites [dont des bases accueillant des formations données aux forces ukrainiennes] have been observed in Germany for several months.
