If you’re worried about recent drone incursions and other apparent security breaches on our military bases, you’re not alone.
In a Friday interview with Fox News, U.S. Navy Admiral Daryl Caudle, commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, told “America’s Newsroom” that there were “at least” several incursions on American bases a week — and that was “just the Navy alone.”
The move comes after several drone incidents overseas, including one where the USS Ronald Reagan was allegedly recorded in dock by a drone operator who goes by a Chinese name. It also came after a recent story in which foreign nationals were spotted near a base in North Carolina used by Special Forces.
“Well, you know, this thing of our military bases getting penetrated by foreign nationals is happening more and more,” Caudle said.
“This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate.”
“And usually the cover story is ‘I’m a student, you know, I’m here, I’m an enthusiast. I want to see the ships.’ That type of thing,” Caudule said. “We have to turn them around.
“And typically we get NCIS involved with those. And we get biometrics when possible. But yes, there’s been an uptick.”
Even if the foreign nationals may have the appropriate visas and passports, Caudule said “they’re in no way shape or form authorized to be on our base.”
“And it’s really hard for us to tell the underlying motive for these type of cases. Wow, that’s, that’s stunning. It is. It’s got to be a concern.”
Are America’s domestic bases under surveillance?
Foreign nationals have been attempting to breach U.S. bases multiples times per week.
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) May 26, 2024
“This is Russian, Chinese,” Caudule added. “It’s comes from all these different nations. We’re seeing an uptick in it.”
The full interview is here:
There hasn’t been much action on arresting prosecuting these individuals, however. In March, according to the U.K. Daily Mail, an illegal immigrant from China was arrested at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms in Twentynine Palms, California. Officials said he “ignored orders to leave.”
In 2019, there were three Chinese nationals sentenced to prison for unlawfully photographing military infrastructure at a Florida base, the Daily Mail reported, and two more Chinese citizens were expelled the same year after an attempt to drive on military property at a base in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
This comes as the number of Chinese citizens being apprehended trying to illegally cross into the United States over the southern border has risen over 8,000 percent (you read that correctly) to more than 24,000 this fiscal year.
Even more worrying, according to the Daily Mail is that “more asylum claims are approved for Chinese migrants than any other nationality.”
“When you’re talking about the number of Chinese coming across the southern border, not that they’re all here doing intelligence research, but when it goes up by a factor of 80 in one year, you’ve got to wonder what’s going on here,” GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin told the Daily Mail.
(And the problem is not just Chinese, of course. The two Jordanian nationals who tried to drive onto the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, earlier this month, for instance, had also crossed the southern border.)
While there’s little doubt that the Chinese Communist Party is one of the most repressive regimes on earth, the fact is that it remains the United States’ sworn geopolitical enemy, a situation that doesn’t show any sign of easing in the near future. This is especially true when you consider what’s happening over in Japan with the aforementioned situation involving the USS Reagan:
Another security scandal at Japan’s Yokosuka Naval Base.
A drone launched by a Chinese citizen (not confirmed) flew over the deck of nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan at Yokosuka Naval Base. pic.twitter.com/qJmhtNQXWe
— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 8, 2024
This showed up earlier this month on a Chinese social media outlet over which users share videos.
If this is the kind of thing that Chinese citizens do close to home, the question raises itself: What are they doing on U.S. soil? And, more importantly, is President Joe Biden’s abdication of border enforcement during a time of crisis at least partially responsible for whatever is being done?
If it is, this could be several orders of magnitude worse than just a carrier showing up on a Chinese video-sharing website.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was preceded by months of successful intelligence gathering around the base by the government of Japan. That painful, deadly lesson should never be forgotten by the U.S. military, or its civilian government.
When Admiral Caudule is raising the alarm, this isn’t just a hypothetical, either. Anything less than swift and decisive action by the Biden administration should be considered yet another abdication of duty.
