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Audio By Carbonatix
More mystery drones are causing concern, this time in Ohio, over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Airspace over the military base had to be closed for around four hours late Friday night and on into early Saturday.
“I can confirm small aerial systems were spotted over Wright Patterson between Friday night and Saturday morning,” Bob Purtiman, Chief of Public Affairs for the 88th Air Base Wing, told The War Zone on Sunday. “Today leaders have determined that they did not impact base residents, facilities, or assets. The Air Force is taking all appropriate measures to safeguard our installations and residents.”
He added that those incursions were caused by what he called “small unmanned aerial systems” that “ranged in sizes and configurations.” Purtiman also stated, “Our units are working with local authorities to ensure the safety of base personnel, facilities, and assets.”
In air traffic control audio, a controller can be heard telling an aircraft identified as “MedFlight 8” to “use extreme caution for heavy UAS [unmanned aircraft system] movement on the base, security forces is handling the situation.” No mention was made as to the altitude that the UAS were flying.
Last week, local officials in the Staten Island area in New York and New Jersey asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the FBI to conduct investigations into multiple sightings of giant drones that appeared without explanation over a two-plus week time span. Those concerns were followed by a Congressman saying he believes the drones were launched by an Iranian “mothership,” and a State Senator is calling for a state of emergency.
“We’re asking The Department of Homeland Security to deploy special detection systems like the Robin [Radar System], which use not a linear line of sight, but 360-degree technology that has a much better chance of detecting these drones,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said about the drones spotted around Staten Island. “We’re asking DHS to bring them to the New York and New Jersey area.”
The confirmation of drones over Wright Patterson came a day after the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, and Defense Department (DoD) held a joint press conference to address the growing concern about sightings over the U.S., mostly in the airspace above New Jersey. The War Zone was the first to report the confirmation of drones being spotted over Picatinny Arsenal in that state. Since then, there has been a flood of mostly unconfirmed and erroneous reported sightings throughout New Jersey.
According to an FBI spokesman, more than 5,000 tips were called into a national hotline due to recent news, but less than 100 of them were “deemed worthy of further investigation.”
“Most of the reports of UAS have originated from the ground, with very, very few reports of UAS activities from pilots of manned aircraft,” said the FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Overlaying the visual sightings reported to the FBI with approach patterns for Newark-Liberty, JFK, and LaGuardia airports – the density of reported sightings matches the approach patterns of these very busy airports, flights coming in throughout the night. This modeling is indicative of manned aviation being quite often mistaken with unmanned aviation or UAS.”
The Hill reports that similar sightings to those in New Jersey and Ohio have occurred in San Diego County and other parts of Southern California, as well as over Bowie, Maryland and Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The U.S. Department of Defense, however, is still not offering much in the way of clarity with regard to the drone sightings.
“We have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent, but just kind of simply tell you we don’t know. We have not been able to locate or identify the operators who are the points of origin,” a DoD official told reporters on Saturday.