The incursions of mystery drones over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia – which we were the first to report back in March – has sparked a lot of questions about who flew them and how the U.S. military responded to them and will do so in similar instances in the future. Drone flights over sensitive military installations, warning areas, naval warships, and critical national infrastructure sites is a major issue The War Zone has raised for years. Today we had a chance to ask the general responsible for defending America's airspace about the issue and the Langley incursions, in particular.

Speaking to The War Zone along with a small group of reporters at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, the commander of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the joint U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot offered few specifics about the incursions but talked about some of the steps NORTHCOM is taking in the wake of those incidents.

"The only thing I can tell you about the Langley drones is roughly the number and roughly the altitude," he said when we asked him about the exact characteristics and configurations of those drones. He did not elaborate. However, earlier this month, Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly told The Wall Street Journal that at least one of the drones 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."

Replying to our question, Guillot told us he did not know if they were tracked back to their recovery point or whether they could have been launched by a vessel off the coast.

The Langley incursions were among more than 600 reported over U.S. military installations since 2022, NORAD stated Tuesday. In the wake of the rash of drone activity over Langley AFB, NORTHCOM was tasked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to look at drone incursions across the U.S., Guillot said.

"I saw that NORAD's responsibility for countering UAS was very limited to something that would be an attack of national consequence," he explained not the small drones as seen over Langley and elsewhere. NORTHCOM, meanwhile, has no responsibility or authority to take action, because the services are charged with securing their facilities.