Swarmed Navy Destroyer Had Its Bridge Illuminated By Mysterious Drones
Reports The War Zone obtained reveal new details about swarming incidents off Southern California in 2019 and many more across the Pacific.
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|PUBLISHED OCT 14, 2022 12:54 PM
Swarmed Navy Destroyer Had Its Bridge Illuminated By Mysterious Drones
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
The U.S. Navy has released 35 brief reports regarding various incidents involving its ships and facilities and unidentified small uncrewed aircraft systems, or sUASs, across the entire span of the Pacific between 2016 and 2021. Not all of the reports appear to be notable, and some are clearly innocuous, but others absolutely provide additional evidence of concerning trends that The War Zone has been actively reporting on in recent years. Among the newly released reports, for instance, is one that covers a worrying encounter that the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Paul Hamilton had with four drones in the Pacific off the coast of southern California in 2019, which you can read more about in our past reporting here.
The Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Paul Hamilton, which had a series of encounters with unidentified drones off the coast of southern California in 2019. USN
The War Zone obtained these records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet (PACFLT) for UAS incident reports made through the OPREP-3 reporting system between 2017 and April 22, 2021. The reports that the Navy released, which may include one incident that occurred in 2016, are all unclassified and only have privacy-related redactions. PACFLT withheld in full another 116 reports that it found, but said were classified.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/mystery-drones-swarming-navy-destroyer-shined-lights-on-its-bridge
