Wright Patterson Drone Documents and Video [Lots of Planes]

[Mick West]

https://www.theblackvault.com/docum...terson-afb-shutdown-air-force-videos-surface/

Newly released Air Force records confirm that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) in Ohio experienced multiple drone incursions in mid-December 2024, prompting the temporary shutdown of military airspace and a large-scale security response. The disclosure, made through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to The Black Vault, includes incident reports, sworn witness statements, law enforcement documentation, and supporting video footage—all now public for the first time.

The base, one of the most prominent and historically significant in the U.S. Air Force system, initiated emergency procedures on December 13, 2024, after security forces reported observing several unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operating in restricted airspace.

Initial sightings occurred at 10:08 p.m., when patrols near the Hot Cargo Pads spotted a drone hovering in the area and heading toward the West Ramp of the installation. The object was described as "black, with four (4) propellers, was roughly 6 inches in size, and had alternating red and green lights." It was later seen flying over Fire Station #2 at about 20 feet off the ground.

Document attached.

There are multiple videos, the original FOIA released here:
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/usaf/2025-01757-F-Videos.zip


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSSDhNrDwS8


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EBDFom0PA4


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmOaL0WXyw


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EORL1W0vrQU


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shk4AeQrQOw


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnjWkA-KCds


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOFMLFCGmGI


None of which seems particularly unlike planes on first glance.

 

[Mick West]

There's are several statements, I'm not sure if they correlate with any of the videos. This one has date and time (in 2024)

 

[jarlrmai]

Where are the non YT versions of the videos released to the Black Vault? There is potentially metadata that would be useful, it does not feel appropriate for them to be put on YT by the BV and described as archived

 

[Mick West]

The above one correlates with this jet flying overhead, parallel to the runway. Skeel ave marked

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?ica...72&zoom=11.9&showTrace=2024-12-17&trackLabels

 

[jdog]

I can't be the only person to have thought of this, but the Dayton area is also a hotbed for aerial vehicle and drone development and the state has been targeting the flying car industry for years: https://abcnews.go.com/US/hundreds-flying-taxis-built-ohio-governor-announces/story?id=103287998

Dayton International is about 10 miles from Wright Patterson. "Dayton is also home to the Air Force Research Laboratories, located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The lab was a major partner with Joby as it developed the company's first eVTOL."

And from earlier: https://parallaxresearch.org/news/p...nies-tapped-drone-focused-defense-accelerator: "Ten Ohio companies will spin new drone technology out of their portfolios and into the defense and commercial unmanned aerial systems (UAS) markets through the second cohort of the Dayton Region's Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA) Defense Accelerator"

 

[MonkeeSage]

The IMG 9511 video looks a bit like a quad drone when zoomed out, but when zoomed in it looks like a plane. There's also what sounds like jet engines.

 

[jarlrmai]

Bass Lake is in the grounds of the AFB

The IMG 9511 video looks a bit like a quad drone when zoomed out, but when zoomed in it looks like a plane. There's also what sounds like jet engines.

View attachment 82374View attachment 82375

It's clearly a plane, you can see the tail..

 

[Mick West]

Sitrec of the Skeel Ave sighting, with possible plane

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250712_103910.js

 

[JMartJr]

Is there anything other than reflections in the first video Mick posted? I've watched it a couple of times and don;t see anything at all... perhaps I need new glasses?

 

[Mick West]

Original videos.
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/usaf/2025-01757-F-Videos.zip

With exif

IMG_0375.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T23:46:13-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T04:46:13Z
• Location: 39.7976, –84.0539, 253 m
• Frame rate: 30.000 FPS

IMG_1913.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T22:49:41-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T03:49:41Z
• Location: 39.8221, -84.0351, 250 m
• Frame rate: 29.970 FPS

IMG_1914.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T22:50:13-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T03:50:13Z
• Location: 39.8221, -84.0351, 250 m
• Frame rate: 24.000 FPS

IMG_1915.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T22:52:34-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T03:52:34Z
• Location: 39.8220, -84.0352, 250 m
• Frame rate: 24.000 FPS

IMG_1916.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T22:59:37-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T03:59:37Z
• Location: 39.8258, -84.0301, 251 m
• Frame rate: 24.000 FPS

IMG_9508.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T22:28:07-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T03:28:07Z
• Location: 39.8165, –84.0283, 254 m
• Frame rate: 24.056 FPS

IMG_9511.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T23:43:03-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T04:43:03Z
• Location: 39.8414, -84.0275, 250 m
• Frame rate: 24.173 FPS

 

[Harabeck]

Is there anything other than reflections in the first video Mick posted? I've watched it a couple of times and don;t see anything at all... perhaps I need new glasses?

I concur. I'm not sure what the first video is supposed to be showing.

 

[Mick West]

You can cut and paste the UTC and location lines into the Metabunk chatbot:
https://www.chatbase.co/chatbot-iframe/jm08ypN4zneL5S7wU2QOD

9511 is the plane I identified from the verbal description.

 

[Mick West]

9511 is the plane I identified from the verbal description.

100%, I synced the video start time, and it all matches
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250712_103910.js

 

[Mick West]

9508 is also a plane
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...aws.com/1/WPAFB 9508 Plane/20250711_185638.js

At the start, if I unlock the camera from the target and pan down a bit, we see the buildings and the fence. I 10xed the plane so you can see where it is

 

[Mick West]

Is there anything other than reflections in the first video Mick posted? I've watched it a couple of times and don;t see anything at all... perhaps I need new glasses?

Video 0375, Right in the middle at the start there's a flashing light that seems to be hovering over the building.

 

[Mick West]

For 0375, they are looking at
FedEx 1316 (N792FD). It's flying away, so it seems like they just get the strobe.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 0375/20250711_194437.js

 

[Mick West]

With exif
IMG_1913.mov

• Creation date: 2024-12-16T22:49:41-0500
• UTC: 2024-12-17T03:49:41Z
• Location: 39.8221, -84.0351, 250 m
• Frame rate: 29.970 FPS

The extracted locations in the list were low resolution, as I used AI rather than typing them. Fixed now. All fixed the minus signs being em-dashes!

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Is there anything other than reflections in the first video Mick posted? I've watched it a couple of times and don;t see anything at all... perhaps I need new glasses?

There is a very small blinking white light at 0s and 7-8s. May be easier to see in the original videos in the zip file linked to in the Black Vault article than in the youtube re-uploads. It looks a lot like a typical strobing interval you'd expect to see on a plane when viewed from the side/rear. To me it looks like a plane with its steady bright white lights off, so the strobes dominate and it looks invisible between flashes from this distance.

When the camera pans right there is also this even more faint one at a lower angle (left) and then a brighter one at a slightly higher angle that looks more red (right)

EDIT cropped to those tiny dots

 

[Calter]

Hopefully these videos will serve as future reference that "drone sighting over a military base" doesn't mean it can't just be like any other "drone sighting" that ends up being a plane.

 

[Mick West]

1913, 1914, and 1915 are from the same location, and within a few minutes of each other. The only building reference is a light pole across the street in 1913, which sufices to identify the plane as N468AN

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1913/20250711_205937.js

1915 is distinguished by being a pair of lights rising past a star, which resolved it to (very likely, but not 100%) N418XY
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFT 1915/20250711_211037.js

Just a couple more to go

 

[Mick West]

Based on the time, location, angle of motion, speed of motion, and passing a star at the right time, 1914 is N468AN

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1914/20250711_213048.js

 

[Mick West]

Improved 9511 by using the location from the camera, instead of the written report

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250711_213432.js

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

For 0375, they are looking at
FedEx 1316 (N792FD). It's flying away, so it seems like they just get the strobe.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 0375/20250711_194437.js

View attachment 82385

For 0375 N792FD looks like a perfect match for the one at a steep-ish angle over the building. When the camera pans right there are 3 additional very faint blinking lights, which seem to match up with N296FE, N944FD, and N162FE.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...17113/WPAFB_0375_pan_right/20250711_220226.js

It may be hard to see but left is sitrec at 2024-12-17 04:46:16UTC, middle is sitrec with added labels and lines to help gauge relative position, and right is frames 91, 95, and 133 with transparency and overlaid with the blinking lights circled.

The closest of these 3, N296FE is about 18 miles away from the camera and around at about 18k ft altitude. A little concerning if they thought it was over the base. Also good that no one took that one NJ Congressman's advice and started shooting at these.

 

[jarlrmai]

is that all the videos done?

 

[Mick West]

For 0375 N792FD looks like a perfect match for the one at a steep-ish angle over the building. When the camera pans right there are 3 additional very faint blinking lights, which seem to match up with N296FE, N944FD, and N162FE.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...17113/WPAFB_0375_pan_right/20250711_220226.js

If you drag in the attached KMZ, you'll get the building on the left.

There are a couple of things you can to to make things temporarily easier to find:
- Objects -> Global Scale : will scale up all objects in the scene.
- Show/Hide -> "Show all tracks in Look View" and "Labels in Look"

If you want planes instead of spheres,

Pick a model. Generally this is not very visible at night, so doing "Add Material" will make it the same color as the sphere was (you might want to change to white), which is a little more like lit planes at night.

Eventually I hope to have virtual lights on the models.

 

[Mick West]

is that all the videos done?

1916 is the only one I can't tell exactly which plane it is, mostly because there are several candidate planes. But like the others, it's a plane-like set of lights moving at plane speed in a straight line.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1916/20250711_221642.js

 

[jarlrmai]

Don't worry The black Vault is sure disclosure is just another FOIA request away


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1lxb73l/air_force_confirms_drone_swarms_over/n2kp5nj/

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

Don't worry The black Vault is sure disclosure is just another FOIA request away

I mean I do not agree with his takeaways about what can be concluded from the contents of these documents and videos, but I applaud him for going through the effort to get them, and for releasing everything he received, including original video files with no re-encoding or metadata stripped. Many others in this domain go out of their way to avoid providing original video files, even re-encoding on purpose in order to add their own watermarks over the video content.

 

[jarlrmai]

Yeah I am happy they are released.

No-one thinks it's impossible some people flew commercially available drones over AFB's

It's entirely possible a real drone or 2, started a flap which ended in the recording of aircraft mistaken for drones, but the problem is that it becomes a swarm, because you have 1 or 2 drones + 7 737's / A320's etc

And then the swarm over a AFB cannot be normal drones because the military is too good for that, so these must be alien spacecraft or Chinese superdrones reverse engineered from alien technology.

But what's weird is we are yet to see one single video of anything that even looks like it is is the most basic DJI quadcopter, it's all planes.

 

[MonkeeSage]

It's wild that out of all of these, there were no actual drones. And some of the witnesses thought they were just 500ft above the base. Do we know if the sightings at Langley a year before the drone flap were all at night?

This article says the first one at least was spotted at night at Langley.

"The installation first observed UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] activities the evening of December 6 [2023] and experienced multiple incursions throughout the month of December. The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration," a spokesperson for Langley Air Force Base told The War Zone in a statement earlier today. "None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety. The FAA was made aware of the UAS incursions."

Source: https://www.twz.com/air/mysterious-drones-swarmed-langley-afb-for-weeks

I have been assuming that a few were real drones there and the rest were probably misidentifications, especially after people were primed to expect to see drones, but it would be really wild if there have never any mystery drones at all and they have all been misidentifications.

 

[jarlrmai]

There could be actual drones with no video and then planes are just caught in the flap that results.

What you need is a timeline of the reports and then specific mention of which report has video and which doesn't so you can correlate planes.

 

[jarlrmai]

@Mick West some of tghe sitrecs are giving me a json error

It would also help to correlate the suredness of drone description in reports that were confirmed planes and those with no video.

If we look at the textual report that correlates with the video of N891AT

It's initially described as a plane looking to land and it is lined up with the runway a bit, so good there

But then it it's described as 500ft from the runway, not clear if this is total distance or ground distance, seems likely to be total distance, but it's at near 6000 feet, so small/far away issue here

The tower was asked if there was anything in the airspace and they said no, so is this just a distance thing again with them checking the local space and just another small/far away issue?

They check a car (unrelated as we know it's a plane) because they are worried about human operated drone.

So basically just a small (drone) or far away (plane) issue

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

1916 is the only one I can't tell exactly which plane it is, mostly because there are several candidate planes. But like the others, it's a plane-like set of lights moving at plane speed in a straight line.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1916/20250711_221642.js

I believe the stars visible in the bottom right of first few frames of the video are those in the green highlight below, so the AZ is around 30º and the incline of the aircraft they zoom in on is around 30º

 

[Kyle Ferriter]

1916 is the only one I can't tell exactly which plane it is, mostly because there are several candidate planes. But like the others, it's a plane-like set of lights moving at plane speed in a straight line.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1916/20250711_221642.js

I think it has to be N525KF. That position matches the position of the aircraft in the video relative to those bright stars in the lower right.

With same stars traced:

 

[jarlrmai]

For some reason The Black Vault decided to respond to this on Reddit


Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1lxnqtu/my_response_to_the_metabunk_debunk_of_the_wpafb/

 

[JMartJr]

Could all the testimony be wrong and this is all planes?

Yes. Absolutely. Testimony is often completely wrong. If that were not the case, analyzing the video would be superfluous!

Could the personnel at WPAFB hear those misidentifications and all sign off on closing the airspace of such a large base? Of course that's a possibility.

I agree. It is a thing that sometimes happens. Acting on best available information, particularly where it is a flight safety issue, is normal and prudent. Of course, best available information at the time may later be shown to be in error.

But what is the likelihood that WPAFB, with their clear capabilities to monitor their own airspace, shut down because of misidentified planes? And to add to that, what are the odds not only that happens, but the FAA can't identify any authorized aircraft in the area, and state such in the records?

Non-zero.

In any case, the videos were placed in evidence. They've been demonstrated to show planes. As such, the videos under consideration do not support claims of drone activity. IF those videos were taken by folks believing them to be drones, then they were wrong. That does not mean there were no drones involved. But this video evidence does not support that.

(External quotes from The Black Vault's Reddit post linked in previous post of this thread.)

 

[MonkeeSage]

Sitrec of the Skeel Ave sighting, with possible plane
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250712_103910.js

100%, I synced the video start time, and it all matches
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250712_103910.js

@Mick West These sitrecs are still throwing JSON errors.

 

[Mick West]

Doh, I'd deleted it to give more consistent names.

Here's all seven

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9508 Plane/20250711_185638.js
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 0375/20250711_194437.js
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1913/20250711_205937.js
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1915/20250711_212334.js
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1914/20250711_213048.js
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250712_103910.js
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 1916/20250711_221642.js

The Skeel one is 9511 (I've fixed the links in my posts)
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...amazonaws.com/1/WPAFB 9511/20250712_103910.js

 

[jarlrmai]

I am reading through the report and its hard because it's all out of sequence, for the 16/Dec/24 'event' it all seems to get kick-started by a report from a member of the public made at around 21:38, but probably his sighting was just before that time

From there all the reports are follow ons from that that seem to be mostly base people seeing planes when looking for the drones reported by the civilian and then reacting to the planes seen by their colleagues.

There's a report on 11/Dec/24 23:49 of a UFO (specifically written as unidentified flying object) that the reporter says they took a video of, but the video is not included in the release.

If you look at the reports they are are collection of reports from all the people on the base who were involved, made pretty soon after the sighting, there's no 'meta' or later analysis presented.

So essentially it's a snapshot of witness statements and not a reflection of what the airforce might currently have worked out from later analysis. whether that information is FOIAable I do not know.

 

[jarlrmai]

So the trichotomy of this issue is hindering dialogue

Planes
Drones
Alien space craft

I find it hard to express the issue in writing.