So many "bangers."

Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.

"We have 0 evidence of this, but just assume this is the evil enemy to assist in your 5 minutes of hate."

Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.

Ah yes, that poor, poor US military doesn't have enough power. They need the right to just shoot down anything they want whenever they want, for free speech!

Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after the drones first appeared in December last year.

So...this has been a non-issue for almost a year? Why are they reporting on it now? Just got to drum up some fearmongering I guess.

Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon’s UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond.

Pentagon UFO office does sound like a fun job. Sadly, it's probably the opposite of what I would like it to be, you have to claim every blinking light in the sky is a Chinese/Russian drone.

The sightings revealed the dilemma of defending against drones on U.S. soil compared with the ease of deploying or battling them abroad. Drones have become a deadly and cost-effective tool of war, capable of carrying surveillance gear, explosives or lethal chemicals. Yet shooting down suspicious aircraft over the U.S. risks disrupting or endangering the lives of Americans the military is sworn to protect.

Damn. The ground around that bush has a little trench from all the beating they've been doing. "It's fine to shoot down drones in other countries because we don't have to worry about civilian casualties there, but over here we at least have to pretend we don't want to do that before we do it."

Early last year, a suspected Chinese spy balloon crammed with electronic surveillance gear floated across the country for eight days, while military leaders waited for it to reach a spot isolated enough to shoot it down safely. After the balloon reached the Southeast coast, an F-22 jet from Langley punctured it with a missile.

That spy balloon has really been this decade's Watergate, hasn't it? They always have to bring it up at every opportunity.

Ten months later, the phalanx of drones appeared at Langley.

And how many people live in China? That's right, at least 10. Clearly these two incidents are connected.

Over 17 days, the drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back. Some shone small lights, making them look like a constellation moving in the night sky—or a science-fiction movie, Kelly said, “‘Close Encounters at Langley.’”

So...if these are "spy drones" they're doing a pretty terrible job of it. It's almost like this is a group of people doing this for fun or something. But the US media can't let an opportunity to fearmonger pass them by.

They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them.

The MIC is so corrupt and incompetent it can't track down a bunch of hobbyist's drones, so clearly they need more money!

VanHerck, who led the military response to the Chinese balloon, ordered jet fighters and other aircraft to fly close enough to glean clues from the drones.

Legendary general Glen "Balloon Vanquisher" VanHerck leads the charge. I wonder how much money it cost to scramble jet fighters to "investigate" these drones?

He recommended that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorize a full menu of electronic eavesdropping and spycraft to learn more, though the Pentagon is limited in what it can do on U.S. soil.

And yet another call for more expansion of the powers of the Pentagon and the deep state. This article is basic honestly, just their usual fearmongering and demands for more money for the MIC and less "restrictions" on the military so they can freely use them on US citizens. Honestly, it does seem like they're gearing up for a civil conflict of some kind in the near future and will use fearmongering about the bad guy countries to prepare for it.

And the rest of the article is just more handwringing about how they don't have the authority to just light up the night sky and annihilate these drones (and every block in a 12 mile radius around them), but then it just gets sad.

The last part is just really blatant fearmongering. A Chinese student was flying his drone "suspiciously" and is therefore proof that this completely unrelated drone incident is also China, this guy is accused of being a spy because...look how Chinese he is. So China is both sending incredibly incompetent spies that are so bad at being spies they clearly aren't spies (but this is just a ruse!) and also they are masters of drone spying and can carefully outmaneuver the US military with them. The enemy is both strong and weak etc.

It really was a waste of time reading this article. They could just replace every article like this with "CHINA BAD! Hate the Oriental scum! Prepare for war! No sacrifice is too great to defeat the enemy!" and would have exactly the same meaning.