One evening after sunset, in December 2023, a senior military commander at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia went outside. He wanted to take a look at something unusual.

Ultimately, he was very concerned, climbed up on a roof with

binoculars and night vision goggles to look up into the sky and try to

figure out what it was he was looking at which were essentially formations of

small drones flying over his base. That's our colleague Gordon Lubold.

Basically every night after dusk, they'd show up between one and two dozen drones at any one time

flying in formation over the base. Some had lights, some didn't, and this went on

over the course of 17 days and it was just kind of creating a sense of chaos because they were coming and going and they were in and out and

flying in some versions of formations and then splitting off. From what we can gather based on police reports and just our own reporting was that these flew not in any

particular regular way each night but kind of crossing the water near the base, crossing over the base and over the

tarmac and the runways, and then disappearing again, back over the water.

Some of the drones were estimated to be around 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour.

Others were smaller quadcopters that occasionally hovered.

After 17 nightly visits, the drones disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived.

This was the first example that we know of of the scale and scope of this

a military base.

They've never had to really deal with this before.

U.S. officials kept the incident largely under wraps.

But a few months ago, Gordon got a tip from a

source and after he and his colleagues started digging they were able to publish a story

about it earlier this month. This was an incredible well-reported scoop Harris from

our colleagues at the Wall Street Journal and confirmed to us by Pentagon officials

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