By KEN KORCZAK
Reports of “drone motherships” suggest intriguing new elements to the ongoing outbreak of UAV swarms invading sensitive sites and illegally intruding into sovereign territories
Remember that massive, mysterious drone intrusion flap, mostly over the skies of New Jersey, that closed out the year 2024? It left millions of American citizens baffled, frightened and frustrated by a disturbing lack of government accountability and “real answers” about what was really going on.
It’s difficult to believe that I last wrote about the drone mystery in January of this year (see my article here: UFO THOUGHT LEADERS ) because the phenomenon has never gone away and, in fact, has recently evolved, and on a global scale.
And you might be wondering: “Is a UFO angle still in play in the drone saga?”
The answer is “Yes, maybe.” More on the UFO connection later in this article, but first, the latest intriguing developments.
DRONE MOTHERSHIPS
One of the most significant new elements is the addition of “drone motherships.”
So, not only are key locations around the world being swarmed with drones that menace sensitive airspaces unchallenged and with impunity, but there’s a new focus on reports that drones are supported by large, silent, hovering vehicles that serve as airborne distribution platforms.
These so-called motherships disgorge payloads of numerous drones, also called UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), and sometimes UAS, Unmanned Aerial Systems.
Like oceangoing naval aircraft carriers that serve as launch platforms for fighter jets on the deep blue seas, drone motherships bring the same capability to the open blue skies. Whoever is behind the latest drone advancement technology has developed robust systems that significantly enhance the strategic dimensional capability of UAV mission utility.
I bring your attention to this recent article in the influential German news magazine, Der Spiegel, which details the latest, baffling drone story.
A September Der Spiegel article told of an alarming drone intrusion above a power plant, university hospital, shipyard and above the Schleswig-Holstein government building in Kiel, Germany.
Witnesses told authorities of observing what appeared to be a “drone mother” from which dozens of UAVs emerged and also “flew a grid pattern” around the drone mothership. The drones also dispersed and ranged over the Kiel sites. On another occasion, a “large stationary drone” was observed hovering silently over the Kiel Fjord canal, host to vital NATO and German military & naval assets.
The Kiel Canal is a crucial waterway for global trade and transport. NATO’s presence in Kiel and the surrounding region is used for training, analysis, and strategic security in the Baltic Sea.
After the Kiel drone incursions received international media attention, a commonly held notion among many is that the Russians are the likely culprit. After all, it fit a pattern with the recent belligerent and provocative violations of NATO airspace by Russian MiGs and also attack drones that violated Polish airspace. Unidentified drones also invaded the skies over Denmark.
But neither NATO, the German or Danish authorities have officially stated that the drones over their territories were of Russian origin. The Kremlin and Vladimir Putin himself deny having anything to do with the events, with Putin even mocking NATO with a characteristically insolent suggestion that the drones were “UFOs.”
Whatever the case, eyewitness reports of drone motherships add a new element to the phenomenon — or does it?
As it turns out, the very first drone swarm flap occurred in the United States some six years ago, in 2019 and 2020, in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming. Known as “The Great Plains Drone Flap,” these events also featured an eyewitness account of a “silently floating drone motherships.”
Thanks to the reporting of journalist Marik von Rennenkampff — who is also a former analyst with the US Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Non-Proliferation — we now have the email of an FAA investigator that fleshes out more details. In the email, the FAA official wrote:
“The Chase County, Nebraska, sheriff reported observing 30 to 50 (drones) flying independently of each other with a larger mothership hovering for hours. The deputy stated the larger drone appeared to be way over 55 pounds. All at one time, the smaller drones returned to the larger drone and departed the area to the west. They also flew over the local airport, and a citizen report stated that they observed the larger drone land and take off from the airport.”
That was in 2019. Then the next year, in 2020, another “mothership” sighting occurred over Kansas. In an email to the same FAA official mentioned above, a Kansas State Highway Patrol officer wrote:
“…one of the drones had a bright light on it, like a spotlight. That drone stayed relatively stationary at that location. He then said there were 10 to 15 smaller drones that flew all kinds of patterns around the stationary drone.”
The Highway Patrol officer also noted that he observed one of the drones pass about 200 feet above his own house and that it was “completely silent” despite flying in strong wind conditions. In fact, in all the Great Plains drone sightings, witnesses report hearing no sounds of buzzing rotor blades that provide drones with lift.
Note: Credit to the Sol Foundation, a UFO Think Tank, for some of the information presented in the above portion of this article. For more, see the latest Sol Briefing here.
ALARMING: NUCLEAR MISSILE SITES TOO
One of the most disturbing aspects of the Great Plains Drone flap of 2019 and 2020 was the observation of yet another “drone mother” appearing over an area where 200 nuclear-armed missile silos are installed in remote areas of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.
Again, it was journalist Marik von Rennenkampff who obtained an internal Air Force memo written by an official stationed at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base located near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The memo stated that on Jan. 6, 2020, “a drone swarm” consisting of about 30 UAVs that were following a “mothership,” and that these UAVs flew with impunity and unchallenged over nuclear missile silos.
I don’t know about you, but the prospect of 30 drones supported by a drone mothership hovering over 200 nuclear-armed missiles at night — and nobody knows who these drones belong to — makes me just a tad nervous.
Furthermore, the 2020 drone incursion over the missile sites was not a one-off event. The drone motherships, along with their cadre of smaller UAVs, again frequented the nuclear missile sites in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming in 2024, just last year.
But wait a minute — some of my readers might reasonably suggest: “The most likely source of the drone is the U.S. Air Force itself! They are probably testing drone systems over our own nuclear sites as pre-emptive training exercises so that they can be ready to deal with at sort of contingency. Nothing to worry about here!”
The problem with that theory is that the Air Force itself has never copped to the drone incursions, but even more significantly, the evidence suggests that our U.S. Air Force is just as baffled by the drone invasions as are the rest of us — because several top military brass have said so.
To bolster this point, consider what happened over Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base in 2023. In November and December of that year, swarms of “mystery drones” confounded base officials over a period of 17 days.
At the time of the Langley drone intrusions, General Glenn VanHerck was the commander of NORAD. He said the objects over Langley “were impervious to all jamming efforts,” VanHerck said in a CBS 60 Minutes interview that the operators of the drones were “unknown.”
General VanHerck is now retired, but the current commander of NORAD, General Gregory M. Guillot, recently told defense industry trade publication, Breaking Defense, that:
“The U.S. government has not established any links between these truly bizarre and brazen incursions over critical military facilities and any foreign government.”
Before I move on to some concluding remarks and observations, I should also mention that drone swarms over the past two years have:
–> Forced Wright Patterson Air Force Base to close its airspace for the first time ever from Dec. 13 to 14, 2024, due to persistent drone “of multiple varieties” invading the airspace over this critically important U.S. air base.
–> Harassed multiple U.S. air bases based in the United Kingdom, some of which are believed to harbor nuclear weapons assets.
–> Appeared recently over U.S. naval ships more than 100 miles off the shore of California. One of them was the USS Omaha, which captured video footage of a singular object that flew unimpeded against 40 knot winds and also “splashed down” into the water, suggesting something much more than a drone — but maybe a UAP with “transmedium” capabilities.
–> The next day, the USS Paul Hamilton was also accosted by a “drone swarm,” one of which also demonstrated an ability to “splash down” into the ocean environment.
UFOs, BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION, OR PRIVATE CONTRACTOR MISCHIEF?
Now I will briefly suggest three possible theories of who or what is behind the drone swarms and the newly evolved drone mothership phenomenon.
1. UFO & NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
I believe UFO and non-human intelligence is the weakest theory to explain the ongoing airspace violation of some of the most sensitive military sites in the U.S. and now in both Germany and the U.K. — although many of today’s top “UFO Thought Leaders” disagree with me.
In my previous January article about the drone phenomenon, I surveyed a range of opinions gleaned from high-profile figures in the UFO community, from Stephen Bassett and Richard Dolan to Whitley Strieber and Luis Elizondo. Most believed the drone flaps are either possibly the agency of non-human mischief or at least represent a “UFO-adjacent” phenomenon.
A notable dissenter in this group was Dr. Simeon Hein, a Colorado-based sociologist who conducted a personal “boots-on-the-ground” investigation of 2019–2020 Great Plains drones, partly because it was near the location where he lives. However, as for New Jersey drones five years after the Colorado-Nebraska sightings, Hein points out that the Jersey drones — although highly unusual — failed to demonstrate the “5 Observables” that would make them bona fide UFOs. These are:
a. Instantaneous acceleration
b. Hypersonic speed
c. Tran-medium capability
d. Anti-Gravity capability
e. Low observability
I urge my readers to review the article I published HERE last January to learn more about what Dr. Hein has suggested could explain the peculiar performance manifestations of the drone swarms that have been observed at various sites, beginning with the Great Plains incursions in 2019.
2. BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION
Several luminaries in the UFO sphere describe something they call a “Breakaway Civilization. The Google AI definition of this is:
The breakaway civilization theory suggests that an elite group, operating in secret, has developed advanced technology beyond public knowledge, possibly from reverse-engineered or suppressed sources. This “breakaway” group is said to be separate from mainstream society, utilizing its own industrial and economic bases, and is often linked to secret space programs and UFO phenomena.
I think this is an intriguing candidate for who is behind the invasive drone happenings. Before I say more about this, I’ll list my №3 suggestion:
3. MULTINATIONAL DEFENSE INDUSTRY PRIVATE CONTRACTOR GROUPS
This suggestion is just a slight step away from the Breakaway Civilization model; it’s perhaps just a bit less conspiratorial — although in a way, it’s increasingly becoming a “distinction without a difference,” in my opinion
The reality is that much of the UFO reality and Disclosure ecosystem as it manifests today revolves around the activity and enormous influence of huge defense contractor entities, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Northrup Gruman and a handful of others.
These entities have become extremely powerful as the military industrial complex has evolved to an enormous degree since the end of World War II.
Hugely influential private defense contractors are now inextricably intertwined with our most powerful government institutions, especially the Pentagon and the various branches of the Intelligence Community (IC), including the CIA, NSA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (I&A).
The deeply intertwined and thoroughly symbiotic relationship the private contractors have developed in sync with the U.S. Intelligence Community and Pentagon is the primary mechanism by which UFO secrecy has been maintained with an absolutely impenetrable “iron grip” since the advent of the modern UFO era that began in 1947.
It is these groups that have all the technology needed to explain every aspect of the drone flap of the past six years. Defense contractors also may now feel a certain amount of leeway or an arrogant new boldness to effectively “go rogue” when they deem it such action has value, including conducting ultrasecret operations and testing of their latest technology, with or without the full cooperation of the U.S. government and military.
It’s these groups that are, in my opinion, to be the most likely agencies behind the ongoing drone swarm sightings — now including advanced mothership drones — especially since the drone controllers appear confident to operate with complete impunity over our most sensitive military bases and installations, including fully armed and at-ready nuclear missile sites.
It bears repeating that the international octopus-tentacles-like global reach of the powerful, wealthy private multinational defense Industry players has evolved to such a staggering degree, it now bears a plausible resemblance to what we might consider a virtual “Breakaway Civilization” in its own right.
Finally, let me stipulate that, yes, global military powers, especially China, have recently come out with truly astonishingly sophisticated drone mothership assets with mind-blowing and potentially game-changing capabilities.
The best example is China’s Ju Tan. This is a jet-powered “drone mothership” that cruises at high altitudes, boasts a range of 7,000 km, and can carry up to six tons of munitions along with 100 smaller drones that disburse from its belly. Japan is also working on a similar drone mother, while nations like Israel and others already use much cruder, limited drone mother types of craft.
However, none of these bear any resemblance to the drone motherships I have discussed in the cases of the Great Plains, New Jersey, Germany or British drone incursion incidents. Because of the way they operate, they can’t be the explanation for what was observed in the 2019 and 2020 Great Plains events or over Kiel, Germany.
As I said near the beginning of this article, the UFO issue is still “in play,” especially considering their seeming special interest in nuclear sites and their uncanny ability to harass U.S. Navy vessels far out at sea. In the latter case, some of the drones appeared to demonstrate transmedium capability.
That suggests that non-human intelligence— or more likely “UFO-adjacent, reverse-engineered or perhaps “UAP-engineer-adapted” components — and this UFO-adjacent technology can only be attributed to the realm of private multinational defense contractors.
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