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In early March, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana was visited by a swarm of mysterious drones. The drones proved resistant to electronic warfare measures. They artfully evaded attempts to approach or neutralize them and lingered over the base for four hours—an astonishing display of negligence by the U.S. military.

It is obvious that they were not simply hobby drones belonging to some unusually adept pranksters. They were almost certainly the property of one of the very few countries with the motive and means to pull off this sort of operation. The top suspect would have to be China, the world’s leading producer of drones. At least one expert has suggested that the drones were satellite-controlled, which would help explain the resilience of their communications—and narrow the probable candidates down to China and Russia.

In early March, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana was visited by a swarm of mysterious drones. The drones proved resistant to electronic warfare measures. They artfully evaded attempts to approach or neutralize them and lingered over the base for four hours—an astonishing display of negligence by the U.S. military.

It is obvious that they were not simply hobby drones belonging to some unusually adept pranksters. They were almost certainly the property of one of the very few countries with the motive and means to pull off this sort of operation. The top suspect would have to be China, the world’s leading producer of drones. At least one expert has suggested that the drones were satellite-controlled, which would help explain the resilience of their communications—and narrow the probable candidates down to China and Russia.

By loitering over the base, the drones likely harvested valuable intelligence about its counterdrone defenses (such as they were), including reaction times and system characteristics. And note: Barksdale is not just another military base; it’s the headquarters of the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command, the organizational backbone of the United States’ strategic bombers. If Beijing ever finds itself confronting Washington and its allies over a grab for Taiwan, knowing how to disrupt the operations of bases like Barksdale could come in handy.

You’d think that a lapse on this scale would have prompted a broad debate about the U.S. Defense Department’s astonishing failure to protect one of the country’s most sensitive security........

© Foreign Policy