A senior US official told pro-US media outlets Monday that the Biden regime is introducing a “whole-of-government plan” to “address” what they reportedly claimed in a press briefing to be “threats in the homeland” posed by unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Insisting that "the federal government is just not able to be everywhere that they need to be in order to protect the American people," an unnamed US official was quoted as telling Newsweek that “state and local” security forces must be incorporated into Biden’s anti-drone crackdown.
In recent years, alarming reports of “mystery drone swarms” have popped up across the US. The US Navy has alleged multiple sightings of drones that descended on destroyers off the coast of California in 2019, and even claims to have fired unsuccessfully at the aircraft it purportedly still couldn’t identify as recently as last year.
Earlier in the call, the anonymous official reportedly admitted the US has no knowledge of any “any specific threats” that might justify such legislation. But reporters on the call say the official asserted that "what's happening overseas" and "what’s happening in Mexico… is concerning” and professed to “know” that “the same capabilities exist here.”
Newsweek reports that the official also noted the "UAS attacks against Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi last November and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in August 2018." Previously, the US steered clear of describing the 2018 drone attack on the Venezuelan president as an assassination attempt, with former National Security Advisor John Bolton going as far as to suggest the murder plot “could be… a pretext set up by the Maduro regime” to persecute political opponents.
In 2019, President Maduro told Max Blumenthal, editor of the independent outlet The Grayzone, that “the assassination attempt was ordered by John Bolton.” The Venezuelan government alleged in 2021 that the shadowy Florida-based security company blamed for the assassination of former Haitian President Jovenel Moise carried out the attack.
Buried in Biden’s drone overhaul scheme s also a proposal that would authorize the CIA to "conduct UAS detection and mitigation activities to protect domestic locations," Fox News reports.
In recent years, the US has claimed its forces have come under attack of such devices in Iraq, where soldiers remained deployed even after the Iraqi Parliament passed legislation demanding the expulsion of “all foreign troops from their country.” A Pentagon spokesperson pointed the finger at Iran without blaming Tehran directly, saying “these kinds of attacks” are “very much in keeping” with the “kinds of attacks we’ve seen from Iran-backed militias in Iraq and in Syria.”
Meanwhile, efforts by the US military and private businesses to further weaponize drones continue unabated. On Friday, the US manufacturers of a kamikaze drone being used to carry out ‘suicide bomber’ style attacks on Russian soldiers announced they were opening up direct negotiations with the Ukrainian regime. And the same day Biden officials rolled out their new regulations, the US Army kicked off testing of what it bragged was “the largest interactive drone swarm ever.”
Looking forward, “I think what you're going to see is an expansive use of electronic warfare and expansive use of our interactive drone swarm,” predicted the head of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team, Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, in an interview published Friday. Rugen explained that drone warfare research was being conducted “in partnership with DARPA.”