I know people who work with the systems used to identify the aircraft aloft over the CONUS. It’s operating all the time. It picks up on everything in the air. They can track very small craft, from the point of launch to the point of landing.
Why would you tell the media anything about testing your AI systems to identify drone swarms in a crowded airspace? And, I am guessing, what we are not seeing is the laser direction (that would fire actual missiles), that are being activated against these “swarms.”
You would need to be very accurate. You would not be able to test that stuff in the middle of a desert somewhere because you need all of the physical and electronic traffic that would be present in an urban setting.
The PIO guy would not be given that detail. So his answer is that “my sources don’t know.” Because they wouldn’t know.
Now, craft hovering over nukes sites peeks my interest a bit more than this stuff.
NASA’s WB-57Fs were sent to Langley AFB for this very purpose. They fly above such drones and observe and record electronic signatures. No word on what they concluded.
Why not do it at a base not located in a busy civilian neiborhood?