Latest news with #VanHerck
CBS News
16-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
The challenge of stopping drone swarms
This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Bill Whitaker reports on drone incursions that have pierced the skies above significant military and infrastructure sites around the United States over the last six years. No one seems to know where the aircraft are coming from or who is operating them, including three four-star generals, a senior member of Congress, and a Biden White House senior administration official that 60 Minutes spoke with. "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." One of the most significant recent drone incursions happened in December 2023, when dozens of what the military calls unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, invaded the skies above Langley Air Force Base in Virginia over 17 nights. The incursions were so persistent, the Air Force moved some of the F-22s stationed at Langley to a nearby air base to protect them from being damaged. The nightly incursions at Langley were just one of many recent brazen drone swarms over military sites. In 2019, dozens of drones shadowed naval warships training off the California coast for weeks. Since then, the defense news website The War Zone has documented dozens of similar intrusions at sensitive military and civilian installations, including over the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona and over the U.S. Air Force's secretive Plant 42 in southern California, where defense contractors are building the next generation of stealth bombers. The Army also confirmed 11 drone sightings late last year over the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, where they are designing and building advanced weaponry. That preceded numerous drone sightings over New Jersey over the following weeks. With so many incursions over sensitive military areas, why has it been so hard to stop these drones? The answer, in part, lies in the capability of modern drones. Today's drones are ubiquitous, in the hands of American adversaries and citizens alike. Sophisticated drones can be bought on the internet for a few thousand dollars, and some can fly or hover for up to 10 hours, carrying a 30-pound payload. They also can be modified to fly at extremely high or low altitudes that are not trackable by the standard surveillance radars used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or NORAD. "If you can't detect them, and track them, and identify if they're potentially a civilian airplane, then it's really challenging," VanHerck told Whitaker. Shooting drones down Even if the drones are determined not to be an aircraft carrying civilians, VanHerck said, the problem with stopping drones over mainland America is not as easy as simply knocking them out of the sky, as the U.S. military might do on a battlefield abroad. "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," VanHerck explained. "So that's not safe, either." A safety concern would also result from the debris field scattering in a civilian neighborhood, with pieces of a missile and drone that both potentially weigh several hundred pounds. A second issue is one of jurisdiction. Which organization would oversee downing the drones? Depending on where an incursion occurred, numerous entities would have a stake, including local law enforcement, the FBI, the FAA, and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. "I believe we'd be in a better position if we had one organization that was resourced, that was empowered, that was tasked with working this problem for the nation," said retired Air Force General Mark Kelly, who was the highest-ranking official at Langley Air Force Base to witness the drone incursion there in December 2023. Jamming drone frequencies The military could jam the frequency the drones use to communicate — but that comes with complications, as well. Most commercial drones operate on the 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz radio frequencies, which are the bands typically used for Wi-Fi, wireless LAN applications and networks, and video systems. Jamming those frequencies knocks all of those services out in the surrounding area, Kelly explained. Similarly, the military could deny a PNT service, or precision navigation and timing, which is what most people think of as GPS. According to Kelly, rendering PNT unusable to stop drones also takes navigation ability away from commercial pilots and civilians. VanHerck agrees that blocking drone communication is complicated. "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," he said. "And that's the concern about using the electromagnetic spectrum." VanHerck noted that it is possible for the military to issue a so-called "Notice to Airmen," which could notify commercial airlines not to fly in a particular area while the military jammed frequencies. He revealed for the first time that during the incursion at Langley, there was an attempt to jam frequencies that was approved and coordinated by the FAA, which used NASA and Coast Guard assets. But that effort came up short. "I'm not aware of any success that they had," VanHerck said. Fly-away kits to stop future incursions To fight drone incursions, the military is now working on fly-away kits, which are prepackaged bundles of technology that can be deployed to different military installations when there is a persistent incursion of drones. The kits will include systems that would allow the military to see these low-flying aircraft that today's radar misses. "We would have several pre-positioned 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. Guillot said flyaway kits will eventually include equipment that will be able to bring drones down and estimated they will be ready to be distributed within a year. That means, were an incursion like the one at Langley Air Force Base to happen again in 2026, the military would have some ability to respond. "That's my goal," Guillot said. "And we're well on our way, partnering with industry to get there." Videos of drones courtesy of Jonathan Butner and Paul Gerke. The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.
CBS News
16-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Drone swarms inside the U.S. could be spying — and the ability to detect, track them is lagging
Officials in Washington have underestimated the threat posed by drones in U.S. airspace, despite several cases of mysterious drone swarms over sensitive military sites, warned Glen VanHerck, the former joint commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. Elusive drones flew over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia over 17 nights in December 2023, well before drones over New Jersey captured the attention of the nation late last year, yet the U.S. still doesn't have policies and laws in place to deal with the swarms, retired U.S. Air Force general Glen VanHerck said. A senior official in the Biden White House later downplayed the Langley intrusions to 60 Minutes as likely the work of hobbyists, but VanHerck did not believe they were hobbyists based on the evidence he saw. "It certainly could have a foreign nexus, a threat nexus," VanHerck said. "They could be doing anything, from surveilling critical infrastructure, just to the point of embarrassing us from the fact that they can do this on a day-to-day basis and then we're not able to do anything about it." Last month, VanHerck's successor, Gen. Gregory Guillot, testified during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that he needs increased authority to better protect military installations from drones. "The primary threat I see for them in the way they've been operating is detection and perhaps surveillance of sensitive capabilities on our installations," Guillot said. He did not say who was operating the drones. Drone swarm incidents date back years U.S. Navy warships training off the California coast were shadowed by dozens of drones for weeks in 2019. For years, the Pentagon did little to dispel speculation that they were UFOs, even referring videos of them to their "UAP Task Force" for analysis, but ships' logs show they were identified as drones at the time. The Navy suspected the drones came from a Hong Kong-flagged freighter sailing nearby, but couldn't prove it. Since then, The War Zone, a defense news site, has documented dozens of drone intrusions at sensitive infrastructure and military installations, including the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona and an experimental weapons site in Southern California where defense contractors are building the next generation of stealth bombers. In December of 2023, Jonathan Butner was at his family cabin on the James River in Virginia when he spotted what he describes as dozens of mysterious orbs over Langley Air Force Base, one of the most critical on the East Coast — home to dozens of F-22 Raptors. Butner said he's familiar with different types of military aircraft. What he saw on Dec. 14, 2023, was unlike anything he had seen before. "They started really coming in, like, almost, like, on a conveyor belt," Butner said. He took iPhone videos of the objects coming and going for nearly an hour and a half. Butner says he shared the video with the FBI for its investigation. Retired four-star Gen. Mark Kelly was the highest-ranking officer at Langley to witness the swarm. A veteran fighter pilot, he identified them as drones, and says they varied in size, speed and altitude. "The smallest, you know, you're talking about a commercial-size quadcopter," Kelly said. "And then the largest ones are probably [the] size [of] what I would call a bass boat or a small car." Then, late last year in northern New Jersey, the Army confirmed 11 drone sightings starting in November over the Picatinny Arsenal where advanced weapons are designed and built. The sightings ignited a public frenzy, sparking reports of drones all over the region. While much of the U.S. was fixated on New Jersey, another swarm of drones was disrupting operations at an air base in the U.K. where U.S. nuclear weapons have been stored. Prior to his Inauguration, President Trump promised to get to the bottom of the mysterious drone sightings over New Jersey and along the East Coast. In her first White House press briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt relayed an update she said was directly from President Trump: the drones were " authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons" and were "not the enemy." Why the drones are a concern Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said it's clear there's a military intelligence aspect to the drone swarms. When 60 Minutes interviewed him in December, he said that the Pentagon and national security advisers are mystified by the swarms. There's also a new wartime reality: drones that can spy can also destroy. In Russia and Ukraine, advanced aircraft have been destroyed by drones. Drones could do the same thing in the U.S., Gen. VanHerck said. "Absolutely it's a concern. A small UAS (unmanned aircraft systems), or drones, can do a myriad of missions," he said. Some of the F-22s stationed at Langley were moved to a nearby air base for their own protection. Hard to detect, track, shoot down VanHerck, who was charged with protecting North American airspace at the time of the Langley incident, found himself ill-equipped to respond to the drone swarm. NORAD's radar systems, designed during the Cold War to detect high-altitude air, space or missile attacks, were unable to detect low-flying drones that could be seen with the naked eye. "They can come and go from any direction," he said. "The FBI is looking at potential options. But they don't have an answer right now." In overseas war zones, the U.S. military has broad authority to bring down menacing drones with gunfire, missiles and electronic jamming. Here at home, any of those actions would pose a threat to civilians on the ground and in the air. "Firing missiles in our homeland is not taken lightly," VanHerck said. Guillot, who took control of NORAD and NORTHCOM last February, ordered a 90-day assessment of operations. He said a new strategy is needed to counter the threat of drones. "I think the threat got ahead of our ability to detect and track the threat. I think all eyes were, rightfully, overseas, where UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were being used on one-way attack to attack U.S. and coalition service members." Federal Aviation Administration and NORAD surveillance technologies still lack the capabilities to detect a drone swarm at a low-altitude over a military facility in the U.S., he said. In addition to the technological challenges, there's the bureaucracy. When the drones flew outside the perimeter of Langley Air Force Base, other agencies had jurisdiction: the Coast Guard, FAA, FBI, and local police. There was no one agency in charge. This past November, Guillot was given the authority to cut through the red tape and coordinate counter drone efforts across multiple government agencies. He says new, more sensitive radar systems are being installed at strategic bases. NORTHCOM is developing the latest anti-drone technology to be delivered quickly by air to bases besieged by drones. "My goal is inside of a year, that we would have the flyaway kit capability to augment the services and the installations if they're necessary," Guillot said. His predecessor, VanHerck, doesn't believe there's been a sense of urgency around the issue. "I think it's because there's a perception that this is fortress America: two oceans on the east and west, with friendly nations north and south, and nobody's gonna attack our homeland,'" he said. "It's time we move beyond that assumption."
