BRETT VELICOVICH: ‘Mystery’ drones are no mystery, they are a dangerous threat to national security

Fox News ^ | Brett Velicovich

[RoosterRedux]

Reports of multiple unauthorized drones over Barksdale Air Force Base and Fort McNair should alarm every American. Up until now, no threat has been identified. If this were happening overseas, we’d call it pre-operational surveillance. That’s how I was trained. At home, we’re still calling it, "mystery." It’s only a matter of time until a credible threat presents itself.

What’s most alarming is that we cannot definitively answer who is flying these drones. all it’s going to take is one single drone to slip through our defenses and kill an American, to cause massive strategic damage to our country. I’ve been advocating for someone to do something about it for years and still feel like legacy bureaucrats and policymakers are just waiting for an American to die before doing something. That’s unacceptable. The American people deserve better.

Unauthorized drone incursions over military installations have been rising for years. All it will take is one drone slipping through our defenses to kill an American and cause massive strategic damage. Waiting for that moment to act is unacceptable.

...

The real issue isn’t "mystery drones" — it’s that they are operating over sensitive bases without consequence. We’ve spent decades building high-cost systems for rare threats, while today’s threats are cheap, scalable, and persistent.

This is not a technology problem — it’s a bureaucracy problem. Despite being at war, our procurement system moves at the speed of bureaucracy and too slowly for a threat that evolves rapidly.

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TOPICS: News/Current Events
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[RoosterRedux]

Per Wiki, the author of this article is:

[A]n American drone expert, former U.S. Army intelligence and special operations soldier...

Velicovich served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a U.S. Army special operations intelligence analyst and former Delta Force.

[RoosterRedux]

Drones over AFBs - Ping

[RoosterRedux]

Brett Velicovich is founder, president & COO of Powerus, an advanced drone company.

[Sirius Lee]

Given the alleged lack of defensive actions by our military, they are either a threat that we are not capable of answering, or they are ours, or the story is not true.

What other logical conclusions can one draw?

[jerod]

[Candor7]

USE the simple remedy of the Ukrainians.

https://x.com/Fibrik_Oficial/status/1677189222766084096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1677189222766084096%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.twz.com%2Fwatch-six-ak-74s-strapped-together-as-a-ukrainian-anti-drone-gun-in-action

[RoosterRedux]

The author is saying the drones are real and they aren’t ours. But the problem is the bureaucracy.

Counter-drone tools exist. But what doesn’t exist is a coherent legal framework that lets anyone actually use them. Authority is fragmented, local law enforcement can’t act without federal liability exposure, and the procurement system moves too slowly for a threat that evolves in real time.

[maddog55]

Any unauthorized intrusion is a threat period. Not being able to stop that intrusion is a weakness and not knowing who or what is doing this is an intelligence failure of huge magnitude.

[RoosterRedux]

Per Barksdale AFB:

“Between March 9-15, 2026, BAFB Security Forces observed multiple waves of 12-15 drones operating over sensitive areas of the installation, including the flight line, with aircraft displaying non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links and resistance to jamming...”

[jerod]

Don’t kid yourself... Those drones they sell at Walmart are pretty advanced stuff.

[Gen.Blather]

“...with aircraft displaying non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links and resistance to jamming...””

It’s hard to believe that someone in the military wouldn’t take action and be damned the consequences. Unless those drones are ours and being tested by a classified program. I was on a secret project that generated UFO reports every time we ran a test. As remote as our testing facility was, the vehicle had to go to a test range being used by other military aircraft. USAF and Navy pilots would report a UFO with a fantastic profile and unusual flight characteristics. The program ignored those reports even though they often caused quite a stir. I asked our security manager why the program didn’t go to the pilots in question and tell them to shut up. The answer was, security policy was to never under any circumstances reveal to anyone not actually on the project that it was ours.

For the same reason our project operated over a known test facility these drones may be operating over a known base. In order to understand the data, you collect you must have a huge number of known data points to base your results off. The position of buildings and objects on a US base are known to the inch. Whereas, if you were to conduct the same test over some random area navigation and object identification would be significantly harder.

My conclusion...the drones are ours.

[RoosterRedux]

The drone in that photo isn't sold by Walmart, it's operated by Walmart for grocery delivery. And its performance specs–short range, light payload, standard RF control–are about as far from what the Barksdale briefing document describes as you can get.

You're kidding yourself.