Confronting the threat posed by mystery drone swarms over the U.S.

This is an updated mentation of a communicative archetypal published connected March 16, 2025. The archetypal video tin beryllium viewed here. 

---

The caput of NORAD and NORTHCOM - the subject commands that support North America - told Congress earlier this twelvemonth that immoderate of those mysterious drones seen flying wrong the United States whitethorn so person been spying. He did not accidental for whom. 60 Minutes has been looking into eerily akin incidents going backmost much than 5 years, including those attention- getting flyovers successful New Jersey. In each, drones archetypal appeared implicit restricted civilian oregon subject sites, coming and going - often virtually - "under the radar." As we archetypal reported successful March, the wake-up telephone came conscionable implicit a twelvemonth ago, erstwhile drones invaded the skies supra Langley Air Force basal successful Virginia implicit 17 nights, forcing the relocation of our astir precocious combatant jets. Our communicative starts with an eyewitness and an iPhone.

Jonathan Butner: Close astir 7 o'clock, I would say, I started seeing these reddish, orangish flashing lights that were starting to travel successful from the Virginia Beach area. It began slowly, like, 1 astatine a time.

Jonathan Butner's adjacent brushwood with drones came connected Dec. 14, 2023. He was astatine his family's compartment connected the James River successful Virginia, astir 100 miles southbound of Washington, D.C, with a commanding presumption of respective subject installations crossed the water.

Jonathan Butner: They started truly coming in, like, almost, like, connected a conveyor belt.

Bill Whitaker: How galore successful total?

Jonathan Butner: I astir apt saw upwards of 40 plus. When I archetypal saw that, I was like, "Those are going straight implicit Langley Air Force Base."

Langley is 1 of the astir captious aerial bases connected the East Coast – location to dozens of F-22 Raptors, the astir precocious stealth combatant jets ever built. Butner says from his perch helium has seen it all.

Jonathan Butner: I'm precise acquainted with each the antithetic types of subject craft. We person Blackhawks, we person the F-22s. And these were similar thing I've ever seen.

Jonathan Butner 60 Minutes

Butner took these iPhone videos of the objects coming and going for astir an hr and a half. These are the lone nationalist videos of the drones implicit Langley.

Bill Whitaker: Here's different 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 successful 20-to-30 sightings, aforesaid clip each evening, 30-to-45 minutes aft sunset. 

Retired four-star Gen. Mark Kelly was the highest-ranking serviceman astatine Langley to witnesser the swarm. A seasoned combatant pilot, Kelly went up to the extortion of a squadron office for an unobstructed presumption of the airborne invaders.

Bill Whitaker: So what'd you see?

Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): Well, what you saw was antithetic sizes of incursions of aircraft. You saw antithetic altitudes, antithetic aerial speeds. Some were alternatively loud. Some weren't adjacent arsenic loud.

Bill Whitaker: What was the smallest one? What was the largest one?

Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): The smallest, you cognize you're talking astir a commercial-size quadcopter. And past the largest ones are astir apt size what I would telephone a bass vessel oregon a tiny car.

Bill Whitaker: The size of a tiny car?

Gen. Mark Kelly (retired): Mhmm (affirm).

Retired four-star Gen. Mark Kelly 60 Minutes

At the time, Gen. Glen VanHerck was associated commandant of NORAD and NORTHCOM, the subject commands that support North American airspace. He has since retired.

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): I really provided enactment successful the signifier of fighters, airborne informing and power platforms, helicopters to effort to further categorize what those drones were astatine the time.

Ten months earlier, helium ordered an F-22 from Langley to sprout down that Chinese spy balloon implicit the Atlantic aft it had sailed crossed the U.S., but this time, helium recovered himself ill-equipped to respond. NORAD's radar systems, designed during the Cold War to observe high-altitude air, abstraction oregon rocket attacks, were incapable to observe debased flying drones that could beryllium seen with the bare eye. 

Bill Whitaker: Why don't we conscionable sprout them down?

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): Well, first, you person to person the capableness to detect, track, identify, marque definite it's not a civilian airplane flying around. If you tin bash that, Bill, past it becomes a information contented for the American public. Firing missiles successful our homeland is not taken lightly.

Bill Whitaker: We're not capable to way them? We're not capable to spot wherever they originate?

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): No, it's the capableness gap. Certainly they tin travel and spell from immoderate direction. The FBI is looking astatine imaginable options. But they don't person an reply close now.

And determination haven't been answers for akin encroachments for much than 5 years.

In 2019, naval warships grooming disconnected the California seashore were shadowed for weeks by dozens of drones. For years, the pentagon did small to dispel speculation these images, taken with nighttime imaginativeness equipment, were UFOs. But ships' logs amusement they were identified arsenic drones astatine the time. and the Navy suspected they came from this Hong Kong flagged freighter sailing nearby, but couldn't beryllium it.

Since then, the defence quality site, The War Zone, has documented dozens of drone intrusions astatine delicate infrastructure and subject installations: successful 2019, the Palo Verde atomic works successful Arizona, the largest powerfulness shaper successful the country; successful 2024, an experimental weapons tract successful Southern California wherever defence contractors are gathering the adjacent procreation of stealth bombers.

Last December, the Army confirmed 11 drone sightings implicit the Picatinny Arsenal successful bluish New Jersey, wherever precocious weapons are designed and built, which ignited a nationalist frenzy, with sightings of unidentified flying objects each implicit the region.

While overmuch of the state was fixated connected New Jersey, different swarm of drones was disrupting operations astatine an air basal successful the U.K. where U.S. atomic weapons person been stored.

Sen. Roger Wicker: Clearly, determination is simply a subject quality facet of this.

Sen. Roger Wicker 60 Minutes

Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi is president of the Armed Services Committee that oversees the Pentagon. We talked to him this past December.

Bill Whitaker: Do you judge that these drones are a spying system, a spying platform? 

Sen. Roger Wicker: What would a logical idiosyncratic conclude?

Bill Whitaker: That. That these are spying incursions.

Sen. Roger Wicker: Yes. And, and yet I tin archer you, I americium privy to, to classified briefings astatine the highest level. I deliberation the Pentagon and the National Security advisors are inactive mystified.

Bill Whitaker: Still mystified?

Sen. Roger Wicker: Yes. 

More alarming: with drones overhead, immoderate of the F-22s stationed astatine Langley were moved to a adjacent aerial basal for their ain protection. There's a caller wartime reality: drones that tin spy tin besides destroy. Deep wrong Russia, precocious craft person been destroyed by Ukrainian drones. Gen. VanHerck told america drones could bash the aforesaid happening here.

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): I person seen video of drones successful assorted sizes flying implicit the F-22 flightline astatine Langley.

Bill Whitaker: What's your absorption to that? They could driblet ordnance connected them, driblet bombs on, they could clang into them to disable them. Was that a concern?

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): Absolutely it's a concern. A tiny UAS, oregon drones, tin bash a myriad of missions.

President Biden was informed of the Langley intrusions, and meetings were held astatine the White House to fig retired however to bring the drones down. But aft 17 nights, the drone visitations stopped. A elder authoritative successful the Biden White House aboriginal downplayed the incidental to 60 Minutes, saying it was apt the enactment of hobbyists.

Retired Gen. Glen VanHerck and Bill Whitaker 60 Minutes

Bill Whitaker: From what you saw, did you regularisation retired that these mightiness beryllium hobbyists sending these drones up?

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): No. It would beryllium my appraisal they weren't hobbyists due to the fact that of the magnitude of the events, the sizes of immoderate of the drones, and the duration. 

Bill Whitaker: So what's going on?

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): Well, I privation I had the answer. It surely could person a overseas nexus, a menace nexus. They could beryllium doing anything, from surveilling captious infrastructure, conscionable to the constituent of embarrassing america from the information that they tin bash this connected a day-to-day ground and past we're not capable to bash thing astir it. 

In overseas warfare zones, the U.S. subject has wide authorization to bring down menacing drones with gunfire, missiles, and physics jamming. Here astatine home, immoderate of those actions would airs a menace to civilians connected the crushed and successful the air.

Gen. Gregory Guillot: Well, we surely request caller systems to antagonistic this threat. 

A twelvemonth ago, Gen. Gregory Guillot – a combat seasoned – took power of NORAD and NORTHCOM. He ordered a 90-day appraisal of operations and says the drones – oregon UAVs – astatine Langley became the centerpiece. 

Bill Whitaker: We're the astir almighty subject connected the look of the earth. And yet, drones could alert implicit a large Air Force basal and we couldn't halt them? How is that possible?

Gen. Gregory Guillot: Well, I deliberation the, the menace got up of our quality to observe and, and way the threat. I deliberation each eyes were, rightfully, overseas, wherever UAVs were being utilized connected one-way onslaught to onslaught U.S. and conjugation work members. And the menace successful the U.S. astir apt caught america by astonishment a small bit.

Bill Whitaker: As it stands today, could you observe a swarm of drones flying implicit oregon flying into the airspace astatine Langley? Could you observe that today?

Gen. Gregory Guillot: At debased altitude, astir apt not with your modular FAA oregon surveillance radars.

Complicating his efforts: bureaucracy. When the drones flew extracurricular the perimeter of Langley Air Force Base, different agencies had jurisdiction: the Coast Guard, FAA, FBI, and section police. There was nary 1 bureau successful charge. 

Bill Whitaker: So what did you find went connected astatine Langley?

Gen. Gregory Guillot: Well, that-- that-- that probe is inactive ongoing. So I don't deliberation w-- we know-- wholly what happened.

Bill Whitaker: You know, erstwhile we perceive things from the White House that it's not deemed a threat, it seems to maine that this is, alarming. I mean, this is benignant of hairsbreadth connected occurrence time. 

Gen. Gregory Guillot: It is alarming. And, I would accidental that our hairsbreadth is connected occurrence present in, successful NORTHCOM, successful a controlled way. And we're moving retired highly quickly.

This past November, Gen. Guillot was fixed the authorization to chopped done the reddish portion and coordinate antagonistic drone efforts crossed aggregate authorities agencies. He says new, much delicate radar systems are being installed astatine strategical bases, and NORTHCOM is processing what it calls fly-away kits with the latest anti-drone exertion – to beryllium delivered to bases besieged by drones.

Gen. Gregory Guillot: My extremity is wrong of a twelvemonth that we would person the flyaway kit capableness to augment the services and the installations if they're necessary.

Bill Whitaker: So wrong a year, were Langley to hap again, there'd beryllium immoderate quality to respond?

Gen. Gregory Guillot: That's my goal.

His predecessor, Glen VanHerck, says the Pentagon, White House, and Congress person underestimated this monolithic vulnerability for acold excessively long.

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): It's been 1 twelvemonth since Langley had their drone incursion and we don't person the policies and laws successful spot to woody with this? That's not a consciousness of urgency.

Bill Whitaker: Why bash you deliberation that is?

Gen. Glen VanHerck (retired): I deliberation it's due to the fact that there's a cognition that this is fortress America: 2 oceans connected the eastbound and west, with affable nations northbound and south, and nobody's gonna onslaught our homeland. It's clip we determination beyond that assumption.

Produced by Graham Messick. Associate producer, Jack Weingart. Broadcast associate, Mariah Johnson. Edited by Robert Zimet. 

• Drone
• NORAD