Cheap Drones and the Iran War Blowback Threat
While our intelligence agencies and the Defense Department have long studied possible “domestic blowback scenarios” to our aggressive wars overseas, what happened last month was a troubling, unexplained reality. ABC News reported that the large Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB) in Louisiana, where B-52 bombers are stationed, “detected multiple unauthorized drones operating in our airspace during the week of March 9th, quoting Capt. Hunter Rininger of the 2nd Bomb Wing. These drone flights continued for nearly a week.
More specifically, according to what ABC News described as a confidential Air Force briefing document dated March 15, 2026, “the drones came in waves and entered and exited the base in a way that may suggest attempts to ‘avoid the operator(s) being located.’ Lights on the drones suggested the operators ‘may be testing security response’ at the base.”
“Between March 9-15, 2026, BAFB Security Forces observed multiple waves of 12-15 drones operating over sensitive areas of the installation, including the flight line, with aircraft displaying non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links and resistance to jamming,” the document added.
These flights lasted around four hours each day. The confidential document obtained by ABC News considered these “incursions” to be criminal offenses under federal law, calling them “a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircrafts already inflight in the area of risk.”
Well, Mr. Trump, even your MAGA loyalists may be wondering why your “Department of War” did not intercept these drones, bring them down, and learn whose sending them. One would also think, this would be a huge newsworthiness episode for the mainstream mass media. The American people were left with a vague assurance that the Air Force’s investigation was being assisted by the Louisiana State Police.
Since then, there has largely been silence, from the media, from Congress, and from the war-mongering Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who would be expected to overcome this unauthorized “unmanned aerial system.”
This is the kind of provocative event that generates conspiracy theories.
There is a larger puzzle here, given how much the Pentagon is given by Congress to spend on defense – over 50 percent of the entire federal government’s operating expenditures. Ellen Mitchell, writing in The Hill newspaper on March 7, 2026, gives us an expert’s assessment: “Brett Velicovich, a former Army intelligence special operations soldier who has worked with Ukraine’s drone forces in its defense against Russia, said he and other drone experts have been warning the US to prepare for drone warfare for years.” He added, “Our counter drone systems need work.”
Small Ukraine is ahead of the US in developing low-cost drones and drone........
