17 March 2025

The mystery of drones zipping across the New Jersey skies in 2024 was eventually explained as research UAVs approved by the FAA and/or hobbyist flights.

But there are some drone swarms that appear to be much more insidious and they remain mostly unexplained. They are also targeting U.S. military sites.

As revealed on 60 Minutes by correspondent Bill Whitaker, the past six years have seen "significant" drone incursions above bases and infrastructure facilities, and even high-ranking generals don't know where the uninvited guests are coming from, nor do they know who is piloting them.

"We should be concerned that we don't know what these are," said Gen. Glen VanHerck, the former chief of NORAD and NORTHCOM, the agencies that protect U.S. airspace. "And the question that needs to be asked is 'Why don't we know what these are?' And I think you'll see that there are gaps in capability, there are gaps in policy, and there are gaps in law that need to be addressed."

Some of the Incidents

• In December 2023, a flight of drones hovered over Virginia's Langley Air Force Base for 17 nights, causing the Air Force to move some F-22 fighters to another base. 

• Back in 2019, drones were reported as tailing naval warships during training missions off the California coast.

• The defense media site, The War Zone, claims dozens of drones have invaded the airspace over sites such as Arizona's Palo Verde nuclear plant and the Air Force's "secretive" stealth-bomber development facilty, Plant 42, in Southern California

• The U.S. Army reported 11 confirmed drone sightings over the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.

How Are These Drones Operating in the Shadows?

Well, the simple answer is that drones are everywhere. Hobbyists, researchers, first responders, and enemies can purchase and deploy drones for just a few thousand dollars each—or less. In addition, savvy tech operators can modify drones to fly at high—or even low—altitudes that can't be easily tracked by NORAD or the FAA.

"If you can't detect them, and track them, and identify if they're potentially a civilian airplane, then it's really challenging," VanHerck explained to 60 Minutes.

Can We Fight Them?

That's not an easy question to answer.

Although shooting down unauthorized drones seems to be a quick and easy defense, according to VanHerck, that is hardly the safest way to dispose of the threats.

"People calling for 'shooting them down' over very populated areas need to understand that a fighter, or a land-based missile, or a missile off of a ship, is going to accelerate to two to four times the speed of sound and have large exploding titanium rods that come out of the warhead at thousands of feet per second," he told 60 Minutes. "So that's not safe, either."

In addition to the concern of dangerous debris possibly weighing hundreds of pounds from both a defensive missile and a unknown drone, there's the question of which organization would give the A.O.K. to shoot down the drones. The location of the incident could point to an entity, but even then, is the shoot-down order authorized by the FAA, FBI, Department of Defense, Homeland Security, or another office?

Even an attempt to jam the control frequency used by a suspicious has a downside, as knocking out the 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz frequencies used by most commercial drones could also take down Wi-Fi, various wireless networks, and other systems in the area of the incursion.

"If you jam those frequencies, and they reside in a spectrum that may be for TV, or transportation such as airplanes, then you're going to have interference with those," said VanHerck. "And that's the concern about using the electromagnetic spectrum."

Future Tech

Obviously, the military sees potentially damaging drone swarms as a threat—especially if they continue to be secret flyers—and it is working with the tech and drone industries to devise better defenses.

"We are working to have several pre-positioned tech at various parts of the country, where we could rapidly respond not only with the equipment, but with the authority to operate that equipment to defeat that incursion," said Gen. Gregory Guillot, the current commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM. "That's my goal, and we are well on our way."

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