Drones or UFOs?

[Laird]

“We are Going to Have a Catastrophic Event”: Drone Incursions in Restricted Airspace are Surging in 2025

By Tim McMillan for The Debrief on May 30, 2025.

Tim gives no consideration to the possibility of these being non-human tech, but it's an interesting article.

According to data reviewed by The Debrief, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recorded 411 reports of illegal drone incursions near airports across the United States from January to March—an unsettling 25.6% increase from the 327 reports during the same period in 2024.

A geographic analysis of FAA data shows that the northeastern United States—where clusters of “mystery drone” sightings emerged in late 2024—continued to report high numbers of drone incursions into early 2025. Many of these incidents were concentrated near areas with a strong U.S. military presence, particularly around weapons manufacturing and storage facilities.

“These incursions are not from hobbyists being blown off course,” Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs, Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.), said. “The multitude of drones reported flying over bases in the past several years to yield a coordinated effort by our adversaries to collect valuable intelligence and surveillance of some of our most sensitive military equipment.”

In a bold move this January, German lawmakers amended the country’s Aviation Security Act, granting the Luftwaffe the unprecedented authority to shoot down unidentified drones operating within German airspace.

In contrast, U.S. officials have been largely dismissive of the possibility that foreign adversaries are behind some of the drone incursions into American airspace.

That "large" dismissiveness presumably does not include Rep. William Timmons.

[Laird]

Who Swarmed Langley Air Force Base With Drones?

By The Podcast Team for Atlas Obscura on June 19, 2025.

This podcast covers events from about a year before the events that triggered @David001 to start this thread.

In December 2023, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, it’s just after sunset, and something weird is happening in the sky. Just after dusk, a drone would arrive, and then another, and then another. And this happened for 17 nights straight. On any given night, between one and two dozen of these drones would appear above the base. Some had lights. Some didn’t. They would fly in this kind of formation and then split off. Their size varied. Some were big. We’re talking like the size of a car.

Dylan: And now comes the question, where the hell are these coming from? I guess maybe we could start by talking about potential suspects. So I’m going to start with maybe the silliest one. Were these aliens?

Gordon: Right. So I think the conclusion is no, they weren’t. Somebody did say to me that there was some evidence that these things were flying into the water and then back out again, which sounds crazy because a drone normally, unless it’s some kind of crazy super drone that we don’t really know, that starts to get goosebump time. But the idea that they were aliens was probably ruled out fairly quickly.

No explanation, unfortunately, is provided in the podcast as to how/why this was ruled out.

Dylan: Okay. So that basically, in our suspects, it leaves basically everyone else, you know, China, Russia, Iran, you know, insert someone else here, maybe, presumably an adversary. So where are we left? Because they never got their hands on one of these drones, right?

Gordon: Right. As far as I understand, none of the drones from the swarms were ever snagged and taken and dissected. There’s a couple of things to answer your question. I think, likely China.

Gordon goes on to provide some contextual and circumstantial evidence for China being the culprit, but there's no real smoking gun here, and we're left (or at least I am) uncertain as to whether this really is the explanation.