By Ralph Nader
April 3, 2026
While our intelligence agencies and the Defense Department have long studied possible “domestic blowback scenarios” to our aggressive wars overseas, what happened last month was a troubling, unexplained reality. ABC News reported that the large Barksdale Air Force Base (BAFB) in Louisiana, where B-52 bombers are stationed, “detected multiple unauthorized drones operating in our airspace during the week of March 9th, quoting Capt. Hunter Rininger of the 2nd Bomb Wing. These drone flights continued for nearly a week.
More specifically, according to what ABC News described as a confidential Air Force briefing document dated March 15, 2026, “the drones came in waves and entered and exited the base in a way that may suggest attempts to ‘avoid the operator(s) being located.’ Lights on the drones suggested the operators ‘may be testing security response’ at the base.”
“Between March 9-15, 2026, BAFB Security Forces observed multiple waves of 12-15 drones operating over sensitive areas of the installation, including the flight line, with aircraft displaying non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links and resistance to jamming,” the document added.
These flights lasted around four hours each day. The confidential document obtained by ABC News considered these “incursions” to be criminal offenses under federal law, calling them “a significant threat to public safety and national security since they require the flight line to be shut down while also putting manned aircrafts already inflight in the area of risk.”
Well, Mr. Trump, even your MAGA loyalists may be wondering why your “Department of War” did not intercept these drones, bring them down, and learn whose sending them. One would also think, this would be a huge newsworthiness episode for the mainstream mass media. The American people were left with a vague assurance that the Air Force’s investigation was being assisted by the Louisiana State Police.
Since then, there has largely been silence, from the media, from Congress, and from the war-mongering Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who would be expected to overcome this unauthorized “unmanned aerial system.”
This is the kind of provocative event that generates conspiracy theories.
There is a larger puzzle here, given how much the Pentagon is given by Congress to spend on defense – over 50 percent of the entire federal government’s operating expenditures. Ellen Mitchell, writing in The Hill newspaper on March 7, 2026, gives us an expert’s assessment: “Brett Velicovich, a former Army intelligence special operations soldier who has worked with Ukraine’s drone forces in its defense against Russia, said he and other drone experts have been warning the U.S. to prepare for drone warfare for years.” He added, “Our counter drone systems need work.”
Small Ukraine is ahead of the U.S. in developing low-cost drones and drone interceptors, while the U.S. builds $13 billion aircraft carriers, which in modern missile warfare would become sitting ducks.
The U.S. military is presently experiencing Iran’s response to Trump’s February 28th treacherous attack, in the middle of negotiations no less, of their advanced, inexpensive Shahed drones, which can be assembled in a garage.
Those garages assembling drones could soon be in the U.S., which now are included in the blowback assessments noted earlier by U.S. intelligence agencies. The more the U.S. Empire blows up people abroad in countries that pose no threat to the U.S., the more the grieving survivors may be motivated to retaliate. Certainly, if the shoe were on the other foot and some giant military powers were obliterating U.S. civilians and civilian infrastructure, does anyone doubt there would be vengeful retaliation?
Iran has the added grievances of having their elected prime minister overthrown by the CIA in 1953, followed by the U.S.-installed dictator Shah for 25 years. Then, following the Iranian overthrow of the Shah in 1979, the U.S. backed Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, to invade Iran, causing about 500,000 Iranian fatalities in this multi-year aggression. Since then, the U.S. and Israel have been sabotaging Iran, annihilating its leaders, and imposing crushing economic sanctions on that country (twice the size of Texas) of 93 million people.
Is it a surprise that the militarily surrounded and massively infiltrated by Israeli spies Iranian theocratic regime imposes very harsh measures internally? By comparison, without any external threat, Tyrant Trump has imposed police state measures in our country, illegally seizing and imprisoning innocent people by the thousands, and causing casualties among United States citizens.
It is evident from warnings by specialists that the U.S. is unprepared for ‘lone wolf’ drone attacks, much less more organized drone retaliations.
You do not have to be a cynic to predict that Trump would relish such mayhem, which he would immediately exploit to bolster his failing dictatorial regime and dropping poll numbers. Dictators know exactly how to brutally suppress dissent and consolidate their domination with exaggerated rhetoric to pursue massive violent revenge. Trump, in his lie-filled and violent televised diatribe to the nation on Wednesday, told the Iranian people that “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Age, where they belong.” That is the grisly playbook that dictators have launched for generations to cover their own crimes of death and destruction.
The American people had better be alert to this predictable reaction by the dangerous Trump. His more extremist supporters, including some convicted violent criminals who he has pardoned, may not wait and are capable of trying to pull off a “false flag” operation to provoke worse impacts from Trumpian fascism.