A critical U.S. Air Force base was forced to temporarily close its airspace over the weekend due to drone incursions.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, restricted its airspace for around four hours late Friday into early Saturday as authorities monitored the situation, a spokesperson told CNN. The incident is just the latest in a series of mysterious reports involving drones across the country.
The 8,000-acre base—one of the largest the Air Force maintains globally—has more than 38,000 military, civilian, and contractor workers. The site hosts the Air Force Material Command, responsible for “logistics support necessary to keep Air Force weapon systems ready for war,” the command’s website says.
The base is also home to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which is tasked with the discovery and characterization of “space, missile, and cyber threats.”
“Use extreme caution for heavy [unmanned aircraft system] movement on the base,” a controller at the Wright-Patterson air traffic control tower was heard telling an aircraft in a recording made during the incursion, according to a recording published by The War Zone. The outlet was the first to report the airspace closure Sunday.
“I can confirm small aerial systems were spotted over Wright-Patterson between Friday night and Saturday morning,” base spokesman Bob Purtiman told The War Zone 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.”
It comes after the Department of Defense said there is no cause for alarm while acknowledging other drone incursions at military installations in New Jersey. “We have no intelligence or observations that would indicate that they were aligned with a foreign actor or that they had malicious intent,” a Pentagon spokesperson told reporters Saturday.
The growing concern about sightings prompted the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, and Defense Department to hold a joint press conference to allay fears last week.
But the FBI said fewer than 100 of 5,000 or so reports were “deemed worthy of further investigation,” after a hotline was set up to comb through potential sightings, according to The War Zone.
Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Tom Adams suggested to CNN that recent sightings could be due to a mixture of factors, including people sending drones up because of the coverage the phenomenon has received.
