Written by by Leslie Eastman at legalinsurrection.com
In a chilling breach of military security, a swarm of drones has been violating air space over Langley Air Force base in Virginia for 17 days since last December, and the Pentagon appears clueless as to who is controlling these vehicles.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly wasn’t sure what to make of reports that a suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft had been flying over Langley Air Force Base on Virginia’s shoreline.
Kelly, a decorated senior commander at the base, got on a squadron rooftop to see for himself. He joined a handful of other officers responsible for a clutch of the nation’s most advanced jet fighters, including F-22 Raptors.
For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
In such a swarm, each drone is a highly mobile, high-tech unit equipped with cameras, sensors, and maybe even arms or tools designed for specific tasks. Algorithms choreograph these vehicles to move and function for a particular purpose. Drones in a swarm are directed to fly in a pattern and communicate on a designated frequency band.