US Base Orders Shelter-in-Place as Drones Swarm

On the morning of March 9, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana told personnel to shelter in place. The reason, according to a confidential military briefing later obtained by ABC News: a drone was operating over the installation. By the time the shelter order lifted that same day, the incursion had already been underway for hours. It would not stop there.

Over the next six days — March 9 through March 15 — Barksdale Security Forces logged multiple waves of 12 to 15 drones operating over sensitive areas of the base, including the flight line, according to the March 15 briefing document. The aircraft displayed non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links, and resistance to jamming. They entered and exited the base in patterns that analysts said appeared designed to avoid triangulation of the operator location. After reaching multiple points across the installation, the drones dispersed. There was no detected activity on March 13 and 14. It is not clear whether there has been activity since.

Capt. Hunter Rininger of the 2nd Bomb Wing confirmed the week-long campaign in a statement: "Barksdale Air Force Base detected multiple unauthorized drones operating in our airspace during the week of March 9th." He added that flying a drone over a military installation is "a criminal offense under federal law" and that the base is cooperating with federal and local law enforcement. He declined to confirm the number of drones, their signal characteristics, or whether any kinetic or non-kinetic countermeasures were employed.

What the drones were doing, however, is not a mystery. The briefing interpreted the operators' behavior as deliberate testing: the aircraft kept their lights on rather than running dark, a departure from avoidance behavior that analysts read as intentional observation of base responses. "It looked like this was deliberate and intentional to see just how they would react," Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and ABC News contributor, told the network.

Barksdale is not a routine military installation. It is one of two U.S. bases housing B-52H Stratofortress bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and it serves as the headquarters for Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the entire U.S. strategic bomber fleet and intercontinental ballistic missile forces. During the same period that Barksdale was being overflown, the U.S. was conducting Operation Epic Fury — strikes against Iranian missile sites that began February 28. The overlap in timing is noted in the briefing but has not been publicly addressed by the Pentagon.

The drones were not consumer quadcopters. Analysts assessed with "high confidence" that the aircraft appeared custom-built, requiring "advanced knowledge" of signal operations. They flew for roughly four hours per day along varied ingress routes, deliberate maneuvering within restricted airspace suggesting the operators had prior knowledge of the base layout.

The Flyaway Kit and the Detection Gap

NORTHCOM commander Gen. Gregory M. Guillot told Congress in written testimony on March 17 and 19 that during "the early hours of Operation Epic Fury," a deployed counter-UAS flyaway kit "successfully detected and defeated sUAS operating over a strategic U.S. installation." A NORTHCOM spokesperson said the kit used its "jamming protocol" against at least some of the drones. The briefing document assessed with high confidence that unauthorized drone flights over the base would continue "in the immediate future."

NORTHCOM currently has one flyaway kit in operation, with two more expected in April, Guillot said. Each kit includes a drone detection system, countermeasures such as jammers, lasers, and kinetic systems, and control software. It can be deployed to any installation within 24 hours.

The Barksdale episode exposes a structural problem that predates this incident: the gap between what counter-drone technology can do and what bases are legally authorized to do with it. A Pentagon Inspector General report released in January found that unclear policies around protecting "covered assets" — including nuclear deterrence sites — left base commanders without consistent guidance on how to respond to drone threats. Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where 75 percent of the world's F-35 pilots train, was not designated as a covered asset under the prior policy framework, meaning installation officials could not legally employ counter-drone capabilities to protect training operations. The IG report said "a large percentage of installations do not have the operational approval to use c-UAS capabilities."

Following that report, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed updated guidelines in December 2025 expanding base commanders' defensive area around facilities and explicitly classifying unauthorized drone surveillance over installations as a threat. But the policy changes were already behind the threat: drones had been swarming U.S. bases for years, and Barksdale is the latest — and most strategically significant — example of a pattern that shows no sign of stopping.

Guillot told lawmakers that stopping drones remains difficult: "About a quarter of the ones that we detect, we're able to defeat." That is an improvement from last year, when he said "almost every one that was detected was not defeated." The rest escape, or at least escape without being stopped.

NORTHCOM has established Joint Interagency Task Force 401, an Army-led organization meant to coordinate counter-drone capabilities across services and with other federal agencies. But with one flyaway kit currently operational and two more arriving in April, the gap between coverage and need remains wide.

Multiple Bases, One Pattern

Barksdale was not the only installation overflown during this period. Unidentified drones were also detected over Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C. — where Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are living — prompting a White House meeting to assess the response. Officials considered relocating both officials; neither has moved. The Washington Post first reported the Fort McNair incident.

Multiple other installations have raised force protection levels. Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey and MacDill Air Force Base in Florida — home to U.S. Central Command — have elevated to Force Protection Level Charlie in recent weeks.

The Barksdale incident fits a documented pattern. In December 2023, drones circled Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia for 17 consecutive nights. In 2024, House Republicans demanded accountability for more than 350 drone incursions over U.S. military bases. In November 2025, drones flew over Belgium's Kleine Brogel nuclear weapons base — home to U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed there as part of NATO — in what Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken described on X as "a clear mission targeting Kleine Brogel," adding that the flights resembled a "spying operation" targeting the base's fighter aircraft.

The Barksdale briefing document is explicit about the threat assessment: "The drone incursions at BAFB pose a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircraft already in-flight in the area at risk." Each wave of incursions forced a flight line closure at one of America's most active strategic bomber bases, during a period of active combat operations in the Middle East.

Nobody is saying who did it. The Air Force, NORTHCOM, and the Louisiana State Police have each referred questions elsewhere or declined to comment. The FAA referred ABC News to the military. The investigation is ongoing.

What the briefing makes clear is that someone with advanced signal knowledge, custom-built aircraft, and detailed familiarity with Barksdale's layout flew a coordinated surveillance operation over one of America's nuclear bomber bases for a week — and got away with it.