It was spring 2025 and the hunt was on.
American authorities close to a delicate Army missile testing facility in New Mexico had noticed a quadcopter-style drone flying in such a means that steered it was conducting reconnaissance in restricted airspace round the vary.
It wasn’t the first time. Just months earlier, in fall 2024, a comparable drone was seen flying a comparable sample over the identical base, main brokers with US Customs and Border Protection on a roughly 35-mile chase, a number of present and former US officers mentioned.
Using helicopters and drones and taking “absolutely beautiful video,” a former US official mentioned, the border brokers tailed the drone till it crossed into Mexican airspace, the place they needed to flip again. They by no means realized who was working the drone, or why.
But this time, officers set a lure.
For roughly 5 days, amid mud storms and unhealthy climate, the drone flew in and out over White Sands Missile Range. A job power made up of officers from a hodgepodge of companies — the Army, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, even the small workplace in the Pentagon that tracks UFOs — studied the drone’s patterns of motion, collected intelligence on it, and tried to know who was working it and why.
Finally, utilizing digital warfare instruments, they compelled the drone to land in a parking zone on the base. Their first step was to verify the drone wasn’t armed with explosives, in keeping with the former official accustomed to the incident.
Meanwhile, officers had been watching a group of Chinese nationals in a rented Mercedes RV parked close by. According to the former US official and one other supply accustomed to the matter, the individuals had flown into New York, rented the RV, and pushed throughout the nation to Las Vegas to choose up a third individual earlier than turning south and beelining for White Sands.
There was one other individual close by, too: a Chinese lady who had arrived in Texas on a cruise ship, rented a automotive and pushed to White Sands National Park close by, the place she would stay behind the gates after the park’s closing.
Later, each of the sources mentioned, the FBI would inform military and CBP officers that the individuals had been believed to have ties to Chinese intelligence.
Officials watched the two automobiles, making an attempt to know how they associated to one another and to the drone itself.
Eventually, each teams had been detained: The group in the RV was picked up by military officers close to the base and turned over to federal authorities, in keeping with the supply accustomed to the incident.
The lady in the park was ticketed and launched by the Department of the Interior, in keeping with the former US official.
CNN was unable to study what occurred to any of them afterward. But officers had been positive the two teams had been related: According to considered one of the sources, figuring out data associated to the lady was present in the RV.
The Army and the FBI didn’t reply to a request for remark earlier than publication. CBP declined to touch upon the particular incident, citing routine coverage in opposition to commenting on reported incursions. A spokesperson with the Chinese Embassy denied data of the episode.
“The false narrative regarding China engaging in espionage activities is entirely devoid of factual basis or evidence, consisting of nothing more than baseless speculation and sensationalist hype,” the spokesperson mentioned.
The episode is considered one of numerous incursions by drones into US airspace over military amenities and different restricted authorities areas, usually flown by hobbyists, cartels ferrying medicine to a third vacation spot, or vacationers — however generally believed to be flown by international brokers conducting spy operations.
The proliferation of low-cost, easy-to-operate drone know-how has made it comparatively easy for atypical individuals to conduct what at the very least seems to be drone surveillance — and extremely tough for the US authorities to trace and forestall it. That new, chaotic actuality has left the authorities scrambling to catch up.
The nature of any ties to Chinese or different intelligence companies is commonly frustratingly opaque to counterintelligence officers throughout the authorities. Investigations contain a matter of intestine intuition and guesswork that make it arduous to safe greater than a petty prosecution for working a drone in a restricted airspace, present and former officers say.
China is believed to strain or incentivize atypical civilians into doing what one official termed “nuisance surveillance” over a number of military targets, some extremely delicate, some much less so. In different situations, these sources say, Chinese nationals inside the US seem to take it upon themselves to spy with no direct order from a Chinese intelligence official.
US officers are anxious about the potential for one thing worse: a lone-wolf-style terrorist assault on important US infrastructure or civilian targets. Although two US officers with data of the newest intelligence mentioned there’s no indication of an lively plot by Iranian proxy teams or different terror teams like ISIS, the apparent alternative is there.
The current theft of 15 pesticide drones in New Jersey deeply alarmed American officers, considered one of the officers mentioned, due to their potential as a supply system for a chemical weapons assault. Authorities ultimately recovered the drones.
Military officers are additionally publicly warning that a swarm of drones may overwhelm air defenses in the US homeland. One military official described a Ukrainian drone operation in June 2025, dubbed Operation Spiderweb, as a sobering depiction of what’s doable. Ukraine used 117 drones to destroy at the very least a dozen Russian warplanes parked at air bases 1000’s of miles from the entrance traces.
Those fears have sparked an brisk push throughout the authorities to develop and area subtle counter-drone tools to a broad group of authorities — together with state and native police and military bases.
The White Sands operation was deemed a success by US authorities, in keeping with two individuals concerned or briefed on the operation, showcasing a profitable interagency course of.
But the downside is far larger than White Sands. And simply who in the US authorities is meant to be in cost, no one is kind of positive.
“The problem is it’s everyone’s problem — so it’s no one’s problem,” mentioned one US official.
There is not any single physique in the US accountable for detecting, deterring or defeating these incursions in both authorities or civilian airspace — what the nationwide safety neighborhood now short-hands as “C-UAS,” or counter-unmanned plane methods.
In late 2023 below President Joe Biden, when a mysterious swarm of drones flew over an Air Force base in Virginia for 17 days, some officers who labored on the scenario described it as a leaderless free-for-all.
The scenario was so chaotic that officers in the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a a part of the military that’s alleged to advise, not take part in operations — stepped in to create a job power to attempt to carry order to the scenario, in keeping with considered one of the former US officers.
“It was a circus, it was embarrassing,” this individual mentioned. “That’s not in their mandate. But they saw a vacuum.”
After that incident, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin designated Northern Command, the military command accountable for homeland protection, as the coordinating authority for small drone incursions at bases.
Since then, Northern Command has established a protocol: Whenever an errant drone is noticed over a military base, it convenes a teleconference between the base, native regulation enforcement, FBI, DHS, the military companies and anyone else who may need a counter-drone system close by. If the base isn’t able to mounting its personal defenses, they kind out who’s going to move it and pay for its use.
That system has labored nicely, the military official mentioned.
“I’ve seen it move from, ‘Who owns [the problem]?’ to, ‘We all own it, and we all have a role to play in it,’” this individual mentioned.
Sometimes, the Pentagon workplace tasked with figuring out and analyzing “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” — the authorities’s time period for UFOs — can also be referred to as as a result of it has specialised tools designed to trace flying objects of an unknown origin. As it did in White Sands, the UAP workplace can present a widespread working image for officers monitoring drones.
The Pentagon in 2025 additionally established a job power to coordinate counter-drone know-how and methods throughout the military. It is exploring directed power weapons equivalent to lasers and high-powered microwaves that officers hope can cheaply disable drones. DHS in January established a comparable workplace.
There have nonetheless been distinguished failures.
In two back-to-back misadventures in February, the Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas, after the Defense Department didn’t coordinate with the aviation company earlier than it allowed CBP to check a counter-drone laser system, sources advised CNN at the time. The transfer successfully shut down the metropolis’s airport for eight hours.
About two weeks later, the US military by accident shot down an unmanned plane operated by CBP with a laser about 50 miles south of El Paso.
When it involves federal amenities, massive civilian gatherings and important infrastructure — installations not below the military’s authority to guard — federal officers have responded by making an attempt to increase the variety of entities with entry to counter-drone coaching and tools and the authority to make use of it.
The CIA acquired new authorities from Congress in 2026 for its police to disable drones in the air in the US and power them to the floor after they threaten company amenities. Congress additionally expanded state and native governments’ means to do the identical, amid a recognition by lawmakers that no single federal company may shield in opposition to the sheer variety of unlawful drone flights throughout the nation.
DHS and the FBI have offered in depth assist for massive, public gatherings — traditional “soft targets” — in current months. Earlier this 12 months, federal officers charged a number of individuals who they claimed mentioned plots to make use of drones and a gunman to assault a UFC occasion at the White House. The FBI established no-drone zones round World Cup websites this 12 months, and mentioned that by the week earlier than the closing match, it had detected practically 1,600 unlawful drones and confiscated greater than 700.
But officers say there are nonetheless some gaping safety vulnerabilities. One instance, in keeping with considered one of the US officers: No one is certain who’s accountable for defending the information facilities which are privately owned however home an unlimited quantity of delicate authorities information for companies like the CIA.
Right now, it’s the purview of native regulation enforcement — who might not have the capabilities they should defend in opposition to the risk.
When it involves obvious espionage efforts by China to make use of drones to spy on military websites in the United States, officers wrestle to explain the scope of the downside. This is essentially as a result of confidently attributing anyone incursion to a Chinese intelligence operation is sort of inconceivable. Officials say that China makes use of civilian cut-outs to do its soiled work — college students and Chinese-origin Americans with household in mainland China whom they’ll strain — not skilled intelligence officers.
“It’s not like MSS officers are just running wild through the US,” considered one of the US officers mentioned, referring to China’s espionage service.
In fall 2024, federal officers caught a Chinese nationwide piloting a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base throughout a military satellite tv for pc launch, arresting him at the San Francisco airport as he ready to board a flight to China. Investigators discovered aerial images on his gadgets of areas in Arkansas, Texas and China. But finally, prosecutors had been capable of solely safe a responsible plea from 34-year-old Yinpiao Zhou for flying a small drone into restricted airspace.
A second cost, for failure to register an plane, was dismissed as a part of the plea settlement. Zhou was sentenced to 4 months in federal custody.
During the 2023 episode over the Virginia Air Force base, Coast Guard personnel boarded a Chinese-flagged frigate off the East Coast below the guise of a routine security test, in keeping with a number of sources. But they discovered nothing definitive to hyperlink the ship to the drones.
Current and former US officers say the variety of situations of true Chinese espionage flights is probably going comparatively low.
China’s intelligence-gathering equipment is “decentralized,” one former counterintelligence official mentioned. Communist celebration authorities make public their priorities, and “intelligence entrepreneurs” generally take it upon themselves to attempt to gather data that will be invaluable, this individual mentioned.
The FBI is commonly monitoring Chinese nationals who do unusual issues: “Driving for 24 straight hours, sleeping in their car, and then go home,” for instance, that individual mentioned. “That kind of stuff happens a lot, it’s weird, sometimes it’s unexplained.”
Within the authorities, US officers usually appear to talk definitively about attribution, a type of wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggestion that a given incursion was China.
But as a result of it’s so arduous to definitively hyperlink anyone unusual conduct or drone flight to a particular directive from the Chinese intelligence companies, some officers assume the risk is overblown.
“A lot of these people are guilty of just being Chinese,” the former counterintelligence official mentioned, including that almost all of the operators the FBI encounters are hobbyists.
As for a broader marketing campaign of coordinated Chinese surveillance drones in the US?
“I look at this as a conspiracy theory in the making,” the former official mentioned.
Were the individuals at White Sands extra than simply low-level cut-outs or “intelligence entrepreneurs”? Officials at DHS and the Defense Department got here away with the impression that the FBI thought so. How agency that attribution actually was, CNN was unable to find out.
The operation at White Sands, the different former US official mentioned, was “a success story.”
“But we’re far from being done and we’re still very, very vulnerable.”