Mysterious drones raise oversight questions. What can be done?

Last month, drones flying over two military installations on the East Coast prompted “thousands” of phone calls to report them, raising the latest in a series of questions that have swirled for months around mysterious drones spotted above U.S. military bases and other sensitive locations throughout the country.

The most recent were in New Jersey, including over a Defense Department research center, Picatinny Arsenal, specializing in developing weapons, some secret, for future wars. 

This comes on the heels of reports of drones that loitered over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia off and on for nearly two weeks. There were more sightings earlier this month at Ramstein, the Pentagon’s premiere hub in Germany, and at U.S. military facilities in the United Kingdom late last month.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican, theorized that the drones at U.S. sites were being deployed by an Iranian “mothership” in the Atlantic, prompting some eye rolls and a denial by the Pentagon. But the concern is bipartisan, with some Democrats pointing to the possibility of Chinese meddling. 

The Biden administration has tried to assuage fears. “I think there has been a slight overreaction,” an official with the FBI said in a background call with reporters Saturday.

But the inability of the federal government to provide definitive explanations and solutions has generated annoyance, suspicion, and calls for action.

“Let the public know, and now,” President-elect Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform. “Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” 

Shooting down drones is illegal, the Federal Aviation Administration has been quick to note, unless they pose an immediate threat to national security, but the lack of options short of that has led to growing questions about whether oversight of U.S. skies is too lax – and just what can be done about it. 

There is legislation in the works to give state and local officials more power to track and counter drones – a move the FBI “strongly supports,” Robert Wheeler Jr., assistant director of the bureau’s Critical Incident Response Group, told lawmakers earlier this month.

For now, a Pentagon official said on the weekend background call, “We don’t know what the activity is. We don’t know ... if it’s criminal. But I will tell you that it is irresponsible.”

It’s legal to fly a drone below 400 feet in most places. There are just a few “simple rules” that those “flying for fun” should follow, the FAA noted in an informational post it published online Friday. 

These include “keeping the drone in sight, avoiding all other aircraft, and not causing a hazard to any people or property.” 

Hobbyists must also be at least 16 years old and pass a free online “basic safety knowledge test,” which can be taken through FAA-approved test administrators such as the Boy Scouts. There’s another set of regulations to fly drones commercially.

In all cases, “Flying near airports usually requires authorization from the FAA,” the post notes. 

These rules – and provisos like “usually” – have led some lawmakers to call U.S. drone laws lax.

There are more stringent rules for people who want to fly drones near U.S. military bases, which are generally designated “no drone zones,” and other sites deemed critical for national security.

Chinese national Yinpiao Zhou ran afoul of these regulations last month when a drone he appeared to be piloting loitered for an hour at nearly 5,000 feet above Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

When authorities tracked down and confronted Mr. Zhou in a nearby park, he tried to hide the drone – later found to contain sensitive photos of the base – under his jacket. He was arrested prior to boarding a flight to China with a one-way ticket.

Chasing down drone pilots is tricky, however – some said by way of Mr. Zhou’s defense that he would have to be the “worst spy ever” to have been caught.

More reliable will be developing a system of sensors to detect and track drones above military bases and secret government installations, says Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington.

Such systems exist in Ukraine for its war against Russia, but “The U.S. military doesn’t have many of them – they need to acquire a lot more,” Dr. Pettyjohn says. The Pentagon is working on putting them in place. 

Most radars are instead focused on faster, high-flying objects – missiles or jets, say, rather than slow and low-flying drones. 

And even when they pose a threat, “We don’t want to be shooting things out of the sky,” Dr. Pettyjohn says. There’s the problem of shrapnel from drones exploding and crashing, causing injuries on the ground.

Better to put in place GPS jamming or spoofing so that defenders can, for example, hijack control of a drone and land it.

The Pentagon has limited authority to take military actions in the United States, however – there are even privacy considerations when it comes to tracking drones – so federal agencies will have to work together to better determine the threshold for deeming a flying vehicle suspicious, and for determining intent, Dr. Pettyjohn says. 

For now, defense officials have been working to tamp down what is being referred to in some quarters as drone hysteria. 

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters at a news conference about a close relative of his who “flies his drone all over and does amateur photography.”

Wind can blow a drone “too close to a facility,” he noted. “And is that a drone incident, or are we talking about something more serious, like the Langley incident, where there’s multiple drones operating over a facility for multiple days?” 

It’s a balancing act, Major General Ryder added. He said that “many case sightings” are actually of crewed aircraft. “How do we make sure that we’re responsibly protecting our assets while at the same time not assuming every single aircraft is going to be a threat?”