60 Minutes Overtime there are numerous challenges to defend in their Homeland the first would be domain awareness you have to be aware of potential threats if you can't detect you certainly can't deter and you can't defeat and you're seeing that play out with the events with drones around the country our story this week on 60 Minutes is about the Drone incursions like the one that everyone saw over New Jersey at the end of 2024 we've been keeping our eye on it for about the last 5 years especially one over Langley Air Force Base in December
of 2023 these are incursions over significant military sites and infrastructures that forcar generals members of Congress even staff at the White House have told us they don't know what they are where they're coming from who's behind it we should be concerned that we don't know what these are General Glenn van herk is the former Chief of NORAD and northcom the agencies that protect us airspace the question that needs to be asked is why don't we know what these are and if you go look back I think you'll see that there are gaps in capability there
are gaps in policy and there are gaps in law that need to be addressed I think the first question that came to my mind and I think comes to just about anybody's mind is well why don't we just shoot them down well if you can't detect them and track them and identify if they're potentially a civilian airplane then it's really challenging and people calling for shooting them down over very populated areas need to understand that a fighter or a landbased missile or a missile off of a ship is going to accelerate to two to four
times the speed of sound and have large exploding titanium rods that come out it come out of the Warhead at thousands of feet per second imagine those going off in a neighborhood or a missile that weighs several hundred pounds falling out of the sky in your neighborhood there's a an issue of jurisdiction who shoots it down I believe we'd be in a better position if we had one organization that was resourced that was empowered that was tasked with working this problem for the nation retired Air Force General Mark Kelly is the highest ranking official at
Langley Air Force Base to actually witness the drones I would offer from the FAA they see this as a distinct airspace problem they would not be wrong I would expect that the dod sees this as a defense of the nation problem they're they would not be wrong either the Department of Homeland Security probably sees this as a homeland security problem local and federal law enforcement sees this as a criminal activity problem none of these entities are wrong they just can't all be in charge the other thing the military could do is to try to jam
the the frequency that these drones are using but that has complications as well if you jam those frequencies and they reside in a spectrum that may be for TV or Transportation such as airplanes then you're going to have interference with those couldn't you tell commercial airlines don't fly over this area for the next 24 hours because we we're going to be jamming Communications I I mean it seems that this is significant enough that you might want to take Extraordinary Measures absolutely you can do that uh you put out what's called a notice to Airman to
avoid a certain location uh During certain hours because of potential interference there was the attempt to jam them at Langley with approval and coordination of FAA using some NASA assets and some other assets that I believe were provided by the Coast Guard but with very limited success So when you say limited success what what success did they have I'm not aware of any success that they had now I understand they can even fly on the um 5G Network so to stop them you would be jamming everybody's cell phones your hands are sort of tied they
are tied and general Gregory guo is the current commander of NORAD and northcom when you see how the incursion at langle unfolded it it almost seems that whoever is doing this had no fear of repercussions like they sort of figured nothing's going to happen to them doesn't seem that they're wrong about that well I'd like to make them wrong uh I'd like to show that you cannot fly where you're not supposed to uh incur U have an incursion over a military installation and you know I'd like there to be some uh consequences for not following
the rules in that in that regard since the radar at most bases is unable to detect these low-flying drones the military is working on FlyAway kits they're prepackaged bundles of technology that they can deploy to different military installations when there is an incursion of drones we would have several prepositioned at various parts of the country where we could rapidly respond not only with the equipment but with the authority to operate that equipment uh to defeat the incursion and Equipment being something that might bring them down that's right absolutely so it would be everything from detect
track and defeat my goal is inside of a year that we would have the FlyAway kit capability to augment the services and the installations if they're necessary So within a year we langly to happen again there'd be some ability to respond that's my goal and I think that we're well on our way partnering with industry to to get there
