Adm. Daryl Caudle, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, told Fox News Friday that there’s been an uptick in the number of foreign nationals trying to get onto military bases in the U.S.
“It’s 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 this is just Navy alone.”
Caudle said the visitors often say they are students or ship enthusiasts.
“It’s hard for us to tell the underlying motive,” he said. “[They’re] Russian, Chinese – it’s coming from all these different nations.”
Caudle also said the Navy is improving its capability to defend against drones that he said fly over U.S. military installations two to three times a week.
“In general, we believe it’s mostly just folks who have bought drones commercially… but it’s hard to differentiate between that and a nation-state trying to do espionage.”
New Training Focuses on Intruders, Other Emerging Threats
The military is providing new training to units on how to respond to intruders, drone swarms and other emerging threats, USNI News reported last week.
A recent training activity among Marines marked “a significant change in the exercise design… and exercise objectives,” Col. Philip Laing, MCI-West’s chief of staff at Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, California, said, noting “it forces you to think and fight a living, breathing adversary.”
Laing said “the homeland is not a sanctuary.”
Fox News screenshot
