'UAS' exposing the truth

We've never had total control of our skies

Shoot ‘em the hell down: Freedom isn’t free, and a little collateral damage is a small price to pay.

It looks like this “drone invasion,” or whatever we’re calling it, is documenting what UFO researchers have been clamoring about since the 1950s – America does not control its own airspace. Fancy that. After untold trillions of taxpayer dollars deposited in the Pentagon piggy bank since forever, the truth of it is, we can’t stop unauthorized aerial surveillance of “critical infrastructure such as water reservoirs, electric transmission lines, rail stations, police departments and military installations.”

That’s the assessment of Joseph Orlando, the police chief of Florham Park, New Jersey, just one of dozens of cities and towns in the Garden State, New York and Pennsylvania whose residents have been reporting and videotaping regular nightly visits from Unmanned Aerial Systems since mid-November. From the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal to Trump’s Bedminster Golf course, these low-flying UAS are crowding air traffic corridors whenever and wherever they choose, without regard for conditions on the ground; a few weeks ago, a medevac helicopter was prevented from reaching the scene of an auto accident by a hovering craft that refused to move.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you know how New Jersey governor Phil Murphy is under pressure from local officials to declare a limited state of emergency, and that state and federal lawmakers are demanding answers from Uncle Sam. You may have heard these things appear to be coming from the ocean, and that a Coast Guard vessel off the New Jersey coast was shadowed by “multiple low-altitude aircraft” last weekend. On Friday, an official with Naval Weapons Station Earle admitted there have been “multiple” incidents of “drones” buzzing the base.

And while descriptions of the craft in this UAS wave are often consistent with conventional drones – fixed-wing platforms, navigational lights, audible buzzing – these are some big-ass objects, the size of SUVs in some cases. And there are anecdotal outliers. When a Morris County (N.J.) family began following one of these things in their car, the UAS hovered over them and changed the time on their dashboard’s digital clock. The clock self-corrected once the object moved on. There are reports of these things knocking out conventional drones attempting to zoom in for a closer look, perhaps by electromagnetic pulse.

Corkscrew patterns and flunked audits

If you’ve been paying attention, you also know that this late-autumn spasm of “UAS” reports actually began last month overseas, when “drones” buzzed four joint British/U.S. airbases in England. A Royal aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, reported being shadowed by UAS as it entered a German port off Hamburg. German media is reporting “numerous” sightings over the U.S. military base at Ramstein. And now the action has jumped the pond, into the American heartland.

In late November, flight crews aboard Spirit and American airliners cruising at 34,000 feet above Fort Worth reported seeing bright, quick-moving objects above their planes. “We are following these two lights that are up above us,” the American pilot told air traffic control, “that are kind of jogging back-and-forth, left and right, for the past, like, half hour.” A week or so later, on Dec. 7, a United Airlines jet flying west to Oregon out of Denver reported high-speed lights ahead, one of which was executing “corkscrew patterns.” In a 44-minute recording logged by LiveATC.net, an air traffic controller urges the pilot to "maneuver as necessary left and right to avoid the UFO out there."

Although the latest evidence of our inability to secure our skies is part of a longstanding continuum, it comes at an especially awkward moment for the national security bureaucracy. Last month, for the seventh consecutive year, the Pentagon flunked its annual audit, unable to fully account for its $824 billion in expenditures. But the Defense Department’s deficiencies did not include a failure to anticipate challenges from evolving drone or UAS technology. This week, The Debrief reported on America’s innovative arsenal of “kinetic and non-kinetic” countermeasures for detecting, tracking and “neutralizing” these unmanned platforms, from RF/GPS-jamming to directed-energy weaponry.

Yet, the Pentagon’s most advanced assets have been unable to identify the intruders, their origins or bring one of them down. So far, the best that military authorities can do is claim they are not foreign adversaries, secret U.S. tech or a threat to public safety. And they’ve swatted down a congressman’s accusation that the drone swarms are being unleashed by an Iranian “mothership” loitering offshore. The FBI and Homeland Security have nothing to offer but goose eggs and bafflement. The White House response has been insubstantial.

And the radar says . . .

“The real problem is that it undermines faith in good governance,” says veteran UFO researcher Mark Rodeghier. “Right now, we’re in a leadership vacuum because nobody is taking charge and no one seems to be particularly worried about it. This goes back to the Colorado-Nebraska drones three years ago and Langley Air Force Base in 2023, and it just keeps happening.”

Director of the Center for UFO Studies, Rodeghier has been watching the drill play out for decades – a major flap over populated areas, superficial media coverage, rote reassurances from authorities, the intrusions taper off, and everything goes quiet again, like it never happened. Maybe the pattern will repeat itself this time as well. But regardless of whether these brazen and extended duration events reflect non-human intelligence, China, SMERSH, SPECTRE or some other non-state actor, Rodeghier is, once again, apoplectic over the media’s inability to ask the most fundamental questions.

“These drones, if that’s what they are, are clearly not small – they’re SUV-sized. Are they on radar? Of course they are!” he says. “Obviously! Maybe some of them are flying under coverage, but all of them? Every one? Why is no one asking what the radar is saying?”

Federal Aviation Authority radar can track aircraft flying 1,000 feet above flat terrain, or 2,000 feet over hills and mountains. Drone operators need FAA waivers to fly above 400 feet.

‘Fear of panic’?

Robert Powell, investigator with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, used FOIA-acquired radar data to catch F-16s red-handed while reconstructing the 2008 Stephenville UFO incident (the Air Force initially claimed it had no planes in the area that night). He says radar coverage can pivot on how close the targets are to the actual towers. Powell says the F-16s returning to Carswell AFB were five miles from the closest tower when they finally dropped off the screen at 500 feet.

“I don’t know what military radar capabilities are,” he stated in an email. “They would likely need to have a radar unit on a tall tower so that the beams could catch objects at low altitude or they would need to put up an aircraft that has downward looking radar.”

Powell’s SCU colleague Ralph Howard has been studying FAA radar data for years, and he reported some disturbing traffic trends to the American Institute for Astronautics and Aeronautics in 2023. He issued some cautious email remarks: “Given that witnesses including military personnel are hearing drone-like sounds, and that the ones over Langley AFB were using radio communications (but not on a frequency used by hobbyists) [suggests] these are definitely drones and not UFOs.”

Official statements notwithstanding, Howard says the intel community is in a pickle, and the fact that the FBI is appealing to the public for decent video footage suggests they have limited options.

“The way it is exploding, and at which types of places, smacks of planning and coordination, not to mention intention,” he stated. “The DoD would have strong reason not to admit [the possibility of an adversary nation] for fear of panic.”

Will a new administration fare better at securing American air space? On his Truth Social account, Trump advocated blowing them out of the sky. In 2021, his former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, broke a taboo when he advocated declassification and admitted that satellites have documented UFO activity; now, Ratcliffe is Trump’s pick for CIA director.

Rodeghier isn’t optimistic.

Reward money, legal muscle as bait

“I don’t think any one person’s gonna be driving policy on this, and if you’re not actively looking for (UFO data), you’re absolutely not going to find it,” he says. “If Congress passed legislation that says we need funding for research at a fundamental level and we want to invest $100 million with the National Science Foundation to get us there, that would excite me, because that sort of commitment has never existed in history. But nobody’s making that request.

“We could have more hearings in 2025 but we’d need first-hand whistleblowers to get anywhere, and I don’t see conditions changing that would encourage them to come forward.”

Maybe it all depends on who’s really in charge.

“What if Elon Musk said, ‘I’m sick and tired of people claiming this and that, dah-dah-dah, about UFOs, so I’m offering a $10 million reward for a whistleblower to step up and give us the actual proof. Plus I’ll pay for your legal defense.’

“How about that?”

Sounds like a bargain.