Langley Air Force Base is a U.S. Air Force installation in Hampton, Virginia, home to dozens of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters. Langley became the public flashpoint for the modern homeland C-sUAS problem after a 17-night drone swarm beginning Dec. 14, 2023 — F-22s were relocated to a nearby base during the incursions. The episode was first reported by the-war-zone and later dissected on national television by CBS 60 Minutes, with retired NORAD/NORTHCOM commander glen-vanherck and retired Gen. Mark Kelly describing drone sizes from commercial quadcopters up to “a bass boat or a small car.” Gen. gregory-guillot cited Langley as the centerpiece of his 90-day NORTHCOM assessment.
The identities of the Langley drone operators remain publicly unknown. The Biden White House framed the swarm as “likely hobbyists”; VanHerck publicly rejects that assessment and warns of a “foreign nexus.”
On June 26, 2026, chris-mellon independently corroborated the 17-day incursion in a NewsNation/The Hill segment, calling it evidence that “the air combat command at Langley can’t control its own airspace” and citing it as part of a broader, undercounted pattern of hundreds of base incursions annually (src-pentagon-bases-ufo-mellon-2026-06).
Sources
- src-60-minutes-drone-swarms-2025
- src-drone-incursions-epic-fury-2026-03
- src-pentagon-bases-ufo-mellon-2026-06 — Jun 26 2026 Mellon corroboration