How the U.S. is confronting the threat posed by drones swarming sensitive national security sites
Last month – the head of NORAD and NORTHCOM – the military commands that defend North America – told Congress some of those mysterious drones seen flying inside the United States may indeed have been spying. He did not say for whom. 60 Minutes has been looking into a series of eerily similar incidents – going back years – including those attention getting flyovers in New Jersey recently. In each, drones first appeared over restricted military or civilian sites, coming and going – often literally – "under the radar." The wake-up call came just over a year ago, when drones invaded the skies above Langley Air Force base in Virginia over 17 nights, forcing the relocation of our most advanced fighter jets. Our story starts with an eyewitness and an iPhone.
Jonathan Butner: Close around 7 o'clock, I would say, I started seeing these reddish, orange flashing lights that were starting to come in from the Virginia Beach area. It began slowly, like, one at a time.
Jonathan Butner's close encounter with drones came on Dec. 14, 2023. He was at his family's cabin on the James River in Virginia, about 100 miles south of Washington, D.C, with a commanding view of several military installations across the water.
Jonathan Butner: They started really coming in, like, almost, like, on a conveyor belt.
Bill Whitaker: How many in total?
Jonathan Butner: I probably saw upwards of 40 plus. When I first saw that, I was like, "Those are going directly over Langley Air Force Base."
Langley is one of the most critical air bases on the East Coast – home to dozens of F-22 Raptors, the most advanced stealth fighter jets ever built. Butner says from his perch he has seen it all.
Jonathan Butner: I'm very familiar with all the different types of military craft. We have Blackhawks, we have the F-22s. And these were like nothing I've ever seen.
Butner took these iPhone videos of the objects coming and going for nearly an hour and a half. These are the only public videos of the drones over Langley.
Bill Whitaker: Here's another one.
Jonathan Butner: Yes.
He shared this video with the FBI for its investigation.
Bill Whitaker: And another.
Jonathan Butner: Yes.
Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): The reports were coming in 20-to-30 sightings, same time every evening, 30-to-45 minutes after sunset.
Retired four-star Gen. Mark Kelly was the highest-ranking officer at Langley to witness the swarm. A veteran fighter pilot, Kelly went up to the roof of a squadron headquarters for an unobstructed view of the airborne invaders.
Bill Whitaker: So what'd you see?
Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): Well, what you saw was different sizes of incursions of aircraft. You saw different altitudes, different air speeds. Some were rather loud. Some weren't near as loud.
Bill Whitaker: What was the smallest one? What was the largest one?
Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): The smallest, you know you're talking about a commercial-size quadcopter. And then the largest ones are probably size what I would call a bass boat or a small car.
Bill Whitaker: The size of a small car?
Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): Mhmm (affirm).
At the time, Gen. Glen VanHerck was joint commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM, the military commands that protect North American airspace. He has since retired.
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): I actually provided support in the form of fighters, airborne warning and control platforms, helicopters to try to further categorize what those drones were at the time.
Ten months earlier, he ordered an F-22 from Langley to shoot down that Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic after it had sailed across the U.S., but this time, he found himself ill-equipped to respond. 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.
Bill Whitaker: Why don't we just shoot them down?
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): Well, first, you have to have the capability to detect, track, identify, make sure it's not a civilian airplane flying around. If you can do that, Bill, then it becomes a safety issue for the American public. Firing missiles in our homeland is not taken lightly.
Bill Whitaker: We're not able to track them? We're not able to see where they originate?
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): No, it's the capability gap. Certainly they can come and go from any direction. The FBI is looking at potential options. But they don't have an answer right now.
And there haven't been answers for similar encroachments for more than five years.
In 2019, naval warships training off the California coast were shadowed for weeks by dozens of drones. For years, the pentagon did little to dispel speculation these images, taken with night vision equipment, were UFOs. But ships' logs show they were identified as drones at the time. and the Navy suspected they came from this Hong Kong flagged freighter sailing nearby, but couldn't prove it.
Since then, the defense news site, The War Zone, has documented dozens of drone intrusions at sensitive infrastructure and military installations: in 2019, the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona, the largest power producer in the country; in 2024, an experimental weapons site in Southern California where defense contractors are building the next generation of stealth bombers.
Last December, the Army confirmed 11 drone sightings over the Picatinny Arsenal in northern New Jersey, where advanced weapons are designed and built, which ignited a public frenzy, with sightings of unidentified flying objects all over the region.
While much of the country 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.
Sen. Roger Wicker: Clearly, there is a military intelligence aspect of this.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi is chairman of the Armed Services Committee that oversees the Pentagon. We talked to him this past December.
Bill Whitaker: Do you believe that these drones are a spying system, a spying platform?
Sen. Roger Wicker: What would a logical person conclude?
Bill Whitaker: That. That these are spying incursions.
Sen. Roger Wicker: Yes. And, and yet I can tell you, I am privy to, to classified briefings at the highest level. I think the Pentagon and the National Security advisors are still mystified.
Bill Whitaker: Still mystified?
Sen. Roger Wicker: Yes.
More alarming: with drones overhead, some of the F-22s stationed at Langley were moved to a nearby air base for their own protection. There's a new wartime reality: drones that can spy can also destroy. Deep inside Russia, advanced aircraft have been destroyed by Ukrainian drones. Gen. VanHerck told us drones could do the same thing here.
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): I have seen video of drones in various sizes flying over the F-22 flightline at Langley.
Bill Whitaker: What's your reaction to that? They could drop ordnance on them, drop bombs on, they could crash into them to disable them. Was that a concern?
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): Absolutely it's a concern. A small UAS, or drones, can do a myriad of missions.
President Biden was informed of the Langley intrusions, and meetings were held at the White House to figure out how to bring the drones down. But after 17 nights, the drone visitations stopped. A senior official in the Biden White House later downplayed the incident to 60 Minutes, saying it was likely the work of hobbyists.
Bill Whitaker: From what you saw, did you rule out that these might be hobbyists sending these drones up?
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): No. It would be my assessment they weren't hobbyists because of the magnitude of the events, the sizes of some of the drones, and the duration.
Bill Whitaker: So what's going on?
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): Well, I wish I had the answer. It certainly could have a foreign nexus, a threat nexus. 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.
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.
Gen. Gregory Guillot: Well, we certainly need new systems to counter this threat.
A year ago, Gen. Gregory Guillot – a combat veteran – took control of NORAD and NORTHCOM. He ordered a 90-day assessment of operations and says the drones – or UAVs – at Langley became the centerpiece.
Bill Whitaker: We're the most powerful military on the face of the earth. And yet, drones could fly over a major Air Force base and we couldn't stop them? How is that possible?
Gen. Gregory Guillot: Well, I think the, the threat got ahead of our ability to detect and, and track the threat. I think all eyes were, rightfully, overseas, where UAVs were being used on one-way attack to attack U.S. and coalition service members. And the threat in the U.S. probably caught us by surprise a little bit.
Bill Whitaker: As it stands today, could you detect a swarm of drones flying over or flying into the airspace at Langley? Could you detect that today?
Gen. Gregory Guillot: At low altitude, probably not with your standard FAA or surveillance radars.
Complicating his efforts: 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.
Bill Whitaker: So what did you determine went on at Langley?
Gen. Gregory Guillot: Well, that-- that-- that investigation is still ongoing. So I don't think w-- we know-- entirely what happened.
Bill Whitaker: You know, when we hear things from the White House that it's not deemed a threat, it seems to me that this is, alarming. I mean, this is kind of hair on fire time.
Gen. Gregory Guillot: It is alarming. And, I would say that our hair is on fire here in, in NORTHCOM, in a controlled way. And we're moving out extremely quickly.
This past November, Gen. 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, and NORTHCOM is developing what it calls fly-away kits with the latest anti-drone technology – to be delivered to bases besieged by drones.
Gen. Gregory Guillot: 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.
Bill Whitaker: So within a year, were Langley to happen again, there'd be some ability to respond?
Gen. Gregory Guillot: That's my goal.
His predecessor, Glen VanHerck, says the Pentagon, White House, and Congress have underestimated this massive vulnerability for far too long.
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): It's been one year since Langley had their drone incursion and we don't have the policies and laws in place to deal with this? That's not a sense of urgency.
Bill Whitaker: Why do you think that is?
Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): 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. It's time we move beyond that assumption.
Produced by Graham Messick. Associate producer, Jack Weingart. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Robert Zimet.
