For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the U.S. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.

The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers. …

Officials didn’t know if the drone fleet, which numbered as many as a dozen or more over the following nights, belonged to clever hobbyists or hostile forces. Some suspected that Russia or China deployed them to test the response of American forces.

Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway.

Reports of the drones reached President Biden and set off two weeks of White House meetings after the aircraft first appeared in December last year. Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon’s UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond.

The sightings revealed the dilemma of defending against drones on U.S. soil compared with the ease of deploying or battling them abroad. Drones have become a deadly and cost-effective tool of war, capable of carrying surveillance gear, explosives or lethal chemicals. Yet shooting down suspicious aircraft over the U.S. risks disrupting or endangering the lives of Americans the military is sworn to protect. …

Flying blind

The drone swarm was reported to the Pentagon office of the National Military Command Center, which is responsible for dispersing emergency messages to U.S. military commanders worldwide.

A report went to the White House Situation Room, and the president learned about it in his daily briefing.

U.S. officials didn’t believe hobbyists were flying the drones, given the complexity of the operation. …

Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall convened the White House brainstorming sessions. One official suggested using electronic signals to jam the drones’ navigation systems. Others cautioned that it might disrupt local 911 emergency systems and Wi-Fi networks. …

Others suggested that the U.S. Coast Guard shoot nets into the air to capture the drones. An official pointed out that the Coast Guard might not have the authority to use such a weapon in this instance. …

On Dec. 23, the drones made their last visit.

In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case.

‘Worst spy ever’

During a rainy morning on Jan. 6, Fengyun Shi parked a rented Tesla near 65th Street and Huntington Avenue in Newport News, Va., 11 miles from the Langley base. …

Shi, a student at the University of Minnesota, told nearby residents around midmorning that he was flying a drone that got stuck in a tree. As he tried to free it using his controller, a neighbor called Newport News, Va., police. Officers asked Shi why he was flying it in such foul weather, and they told him to call the fire department for help.

Shi instead returned his rental car an hour later and took an Amtrak train to Washington, D.C. The following day, he flew to Oakland, Calif. By chance, the drone fell to the ground that same day and ended up with federal investigators. FBI agents found that Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard.

On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. …

U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing.

Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn’t believe Shi’s story—that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. “There’s significant holes,” the judge said in court.

“If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known,” said Shi’s attorney, Shaoming Cheng. …

“This isn’t a tomorrow problem, this is a today problem,” said Tom Karako, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national-security think tank in Washington. “It’s not an over-there problem—it’s an over-there, over-here and everywhere problem.”

U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles.

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(Excerpts from Campus Reform and The Wall Street Journal. Photo Credit: Przemyslaw Ceglarek via Canva Teams)