A mysterious drone. A Mercedes RV. A Chinese intelligence puzzle in the New Mexico desert

It was spring 2025 and the hunt was on.

American authorities near a sensitive Army missile testing facility in New Mexico had spotted a quadcopter-style drone flying in such a way that suggested it was conducting reconnaissance in restricted airspace around the range.

It wasn’t the first time. Just months earlier, in fall 2024, a similar drone was seen flying a similar pattern over the same base, leading agents with US Customs and Border Protection on a roughly 35-mile chase, multiple current and former US officials said.

Using helicopters and drones and taking “absolutely beautiful video,” a former US official said, the border agents tailed the drone until it crossed into Mexican airspace, where they had to turn back. They never learned who was operating the drone, or why.

But this time, officials set a trap.

For roughly five days, amid dust storms and bad weather, the drone flew in and out over White Sands Missile Range. A task force made up of officials from a hodgepodge of agencies — the Army, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, even the small office in the Pentagon that tracks UFOs — studied the drone’s patterns of movement, collected intelligence on it, and tried to understand who was operating it and why.

Finally, using electronic warfare tools, they forced the drone to land in a parking lot on the base. Their first step was to make sure the drone wasn’t armed with explosives, according to the former official familiar with the incident.

Meanwhile, officials were watching a group of Chinese nationals in a rented Mercedes RV parked nearby. According to the former US official and another source familiar with the matter, the people had flown into New York, rented the RV, and driven across the country to Las Vegas to pick up a third person before turning south and beelining for White Sands.

There was another person nearby, too: a Chinese woman who had arrived in Texas on a cruise ship, rented a car and driven to White Sands National Park nearby, where she would remain behind the gates after the park’s closing.

Later, both of the sources said, the FBI would tell military and CBP officials that the people were believed to have ties to Chinese intelligence.

Officials watched the two vehicles, trying to understand how they related to each other and to the drone itself.

Eventually, both groups were detained: The group in the RV was picked up by military officials near the base and turned over to federal authorities, according to the source familiar with the incident.

The woman in the park was ticketed and released by the Department of the Interior, according to the former US official.

CNN was unable to learn what happened to any of them afterward. But officials were sure the two groups were connected: According to one of the sources, identifying information related to the woman was found in the RV.

The Army did not respond to a request for comment before publication. The FBI declined to comment. CBP declined to comment on the specific incident, citing routine policy against commenting on reported incursions. A spokesperson with the Chinese Embassy denied knowledge of the episode.

“The false narrative regarding China engaging in espionage activities is entirely devoid of factual basis or evidence, consisting of nothing more than baseless speculation and sensationalist hype,” the spokesperson said.

The episode is one of countless incursions by drones into US airspace over military facilities and other restricted government areas, often flown by hobbyists, cartels ferrying drugs to a third destination, or tourists — but sometimes believed to be flown by foreign agents conducting spy operations.

The proliferation of cheap, easy-to-operate drone technology has made it relatively simple for ordinary people to conduct what at least appears to be drone surveillance — and incredibly difficult for the US government to track and prevent it. That new, chaotic reality has left the government scrambling to catch up.

John Ingle/Department of Defense

The nature of any ties to Chinese or other intelligence services is often frustratingly opaque to counterintelligence officials across the government. Investigations involve a matter of gut instinct and guesswork that make it hard to secure more than a petty prosecution for operating a drone in a restricted airspace, current and former officials say.

China is believed to pressure or incentivize ordinary civilians into doing what one official termed “nuisance surveillance” over a variety of military targets, some highly sensitive, some less so. In other instances, those sources say, Chinese nationals inside the US appear to take it upon themselves to spy with no direct order from a Chinese intelligence official.

US officials are worried about the potential for something worse: a lone-wolf-style terrorist attack on critical US infrastructure or civilian targets. Although two US officials with knowledge of the latest intelligence said there’s no indication of an active plot by Iranian proxy groups or other terror groups like ISIS, the obvious opportunity is there.

The recent theft of 15 pesticide drones in New Jersey deeply alarmed American officials, one of the officials said, because of their potential as a delivery system for a chemical weapons attack. Authorities eventually recovered the drones.

CNN maps how Kyiv is changing the face of modern warfare

Military officials are also publicly warning that a swarm of drones could overwhelm air defenses in the US homeland. One military official described a Ukrainian drone operation in June 2025, dubbed Operation Spiderweb , as a sobering depiction of what’s possible. Ukraine used 117 drones to destroy at least a dozen Russian warplanes parked at air bases thousands of miles from the front lines.

Those fears have sparked an energetic push across the government to develop and field sophisticated counter-drone equipment to a broad group of authorities — including state and local police and military bases.

The White Sands operation was deemed a success by US authorities​, according to two people involved or briefed on the operation, showcasing a successful interagency process.

But the problem is much bigger than White Sands. And just who in the US government is supposed to be in charge, nobody is quite sure.

“The problem is it’s everyone’s problem — so it’s no one’s problem,” said one US official.

There is no single body in the US responsible for detecting, deterring or defeating these incursions in either government or civilian airspace — what the national security community now short-hands as “C-UAS,” or counter-unmanned aircraft systems.

In late 2023 under President Joe Biden, when a mysterious swarm of drones flew over an Air Force base in Virginia for 17 days, some officials who worked on the situation described it as a leaderless free-for-all.

The situation was so chaotic that officials in the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a part of the military that is supposed to advise, not participate in operations — stepped in to create a task force to try to bring order to the situation, according to one of the former US officials.

“It was a circus, it was embarrassing,” this person said. “That’s not in their mandate. But they saw a vacuum.”

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images/File

Drones continue to buzz over US bases. The military isn’t sure why or how to stop them

After that incident, then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin designated Northern Command, the military command responsible for homeland defense, as the coordinating authority for small drone incursions at bases.

Since then, Northern Command has established a protocol: Whenever an errant drone is spotted over a military base, it convenes a teleconference between the base, local law enforcement, FBI, DHS, the military services and anybody else who might have a counter-drone system nearby. If the base isn’t capable of mounting its own defenses, they sort out who’s going to transport it and pay for its use.

That system has worked well, the military official said.

“I’ve seen it move from, ‘Who owns [the problem]?’ to, ‘We all own it, and we all have a role to play in it,’” this person said.

Sometimes, the Pentagon office tasked with identifying and analyzing “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena” — the government’s term for UFOs — is also called because it has specialized equipment designed to track flying objects of an unknown origin. As it did in White Sands, the UAP office can provide a common operating picture for officials tracking drones.

The Pentagon in 2025 also established a task force to coordinate counter-drone technology and techniques across the military. It is exploring directed energy weapons such as lasers and high-powered microwaves that officials hope can cheaply disable drones. DHS in January established a similar office.

There have still been prominent failures.

In two back-to-back misadventures in February, the Federal Aviation Administration closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas, after the Defense Department failed to coordinate with the aviation agency before it allowed CBP to test a counter-drone laser system, sources told CNN at the time. The move effectively shut down the city’s airport for eight hours.

About two weeks later, the US military accidentally shot down an unmanned aircraft operated by CBP with a laser about 50 miles south of El Paso.

Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

When it comes to federal facilities, large civilian gatherings and critical infrastructure — installations not under the military’s authority to protect — federal officials have responded by trying to expand the number of entities with access to counter-drone training and equipment and the authority to use it.

The CIA received new authorities from Congress in 2026 for its police to disable drones in the air in the US and force them to the ground when they threaten agency facilities. Congress also expanded state and local governments’ ability to do the same, amid a recognition by lawmakers that no single federal agency could protect against the sheer number of illegal drone flights across the country.

DHS and the FBI have provided extensive support for large, public gatherings — classic “soft targets” — in recent months. Earlier this year, federal officials charged multiple people who they claimed discussed plots to use drones and a gunman to attack a UFC event at the White House. The FBI established no-drone zones around World Cup sites this year, and said that by the week before the final match, it had detected nearly 1,600 illegal drones and confiscated more than 700.

But officials say there are still some gaping security vulnerabilities. One example, according to one of the US officials: No one is sure who is responsible for protecting the data centers that are privately owned but house an enormous amount of sensitive government data for agencies like the CIA.

Right now, it’s the purview of local law enforcement — who may not have the capabilities they need to defend against the threat.

When it comes to apparent espionage efforts by China to use drones to spy on military sites in the United States, officials struggle to describe the scope of the problem. This is largely because confidently attributing any one incursion to a Chinese intelligence operation is almost impossible. Officials say that China uses civilian cut-outs to do its dirty work — students and Chinese-origin Americans with family in mainland China whom they can pressure — not trained intelligence officers.

“It’s not like MSS officers are just running wild through the US,” one of the US officials said, referring to China’s espionage service.

In fall 2024, federal officials caught a Chinese national piloting a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base during a military satellite launch, arresting him at the San Francisco airport as he prepared to board a flight to China. Investigators found aerial photos on his devices of locations in Arkansas, Texas and China. But ultimately, prosecutors were able to only secure a guilty plea from 34-year-old Yinpiao Zhou for flying a small drone into restricted airspace.

A second charge, for failure to register an aircraft, was dismissed as part of the plea agreement. Zhou was sentenced to four months in federal custody.

During the 2023 episode over the Virginia Air Force base, Coast Guard personnel boarded a Chinese-flagged frigate off the East Coast under the guise of a routine safety check, according to multiple sources. But they found nothing definitive to link the ship to the drones.

Staff Sgt. Cory Reese/US Army

Current and former US officials say the number of instances of true Chinese espionage flights is likely relatively low.

China’s intelligence-gathering apparatus is “decentralized,” one former counterintelligence official said. Communist party authorities make public their priorities, and “intelligence entrepreneurs” sometimes take it upon themselves to try to collect information that would be valuable, this person said.

The FBI is often tracking Chinese nationals who do strange things: “Driving for 24 straight hours, sleeping in their car, and then go home,” for example, that person said. “That kind of stuff happens a lot, it’s weird, sometimes it’s unexplained.”

Within the government, US officials often seem to speak definitively about attribution, a kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge suggestion that a given incursion was China.

But because it’s so hard to definitively link any one strange behavior or drone flight to a specific directive from the Chinese intelligence services, some officials think the threat is overblown.

“A lot of these people are guilty of just being Chinese,” the former counterintelligence official said, adding that most of the operators the FBI encounters are hobbyists.

As for a broader campaign of coordinated Chinese surveillance drones in the US?

“I look at this as a conspiracy theory in the making,” the former official said.

Were the people at White Sands more than just low-level cut-outs or “intelligence entrepreneurs”? Officials at DHS and the Defense Department came away with the impression that the FBI thought so. How firm that attribution really was, CNN was unable to determine.

The operation at White Sands, the other former US official said, was “a success story.”

“But we’re far from being done and we’re still very, very vulnerable.”

那是2025年春天，狩猎开始了。

美国当局在新墨西哥州一处敏感的陆军导弹试验场附近发现一架四旋翼无人机，其飞行方式表明它正在靶场周围的限制空域进行侦察。

这并非首次发生此类事件。多位现任和前任美国官员表示，就在几个月前的2024年秋季，一架类似的无人机也曾在同一基地上空以类似的模式飞行，导致美国海关和边境保护局的特工展开了大约35英里的追逐。

一位美国前官员表示，边境巡逻人员使用直升机和无人机拍摄了“非常精美的视频”，一路跟踪这架无人机，直到它进入墨西哥领空，他们才被迫返航。他们始终没能查明是谁在操控这架无人机，也没弄清其目的。

但这一次，官员们设下了陷阱。

在沙尘暴和恶劣天气中，这架无人机在白沙导弹靶场上空反复飞行了大约五天。一个由来自多个机构（包括陆军、联邦调查局、国土安全部，甚至五角大楼负责追踪不明飞行物的小型办公室）的官员组成的特别工作组，研究了这架无人机的飞行模式，收集了相关情报，并试图弄清是谁在操控它以及操控的动机。

最后，他们利用电子战手段迫使无人机降落在基地的一个停车场内。据一位熟悉此事的前官员透露，他们的第一步是确认无人机上没有携带爆炸物。

与此同时，官员们正在监视停在附近的一辆租来的奔驰房车，车内有一群中国公民。据一位美国前官员和另一位知情人士透露，这些人飞抵纽约后租了这辆房车，然后驱车横跨美国来到拉斯维加斯接上第三人，之后转向南方，直奔白沙导弹靶场。

附近还有另一个人：一位中国女性，她乘坐游轮抵达德克萨斯州，租了一辆车，然后开车前往附近的白沙国家公园，公园关闭后，她将留在公园大门内。

后来，两名消息人士都表示，联邦调查局会告诉军方和海关与边境保护局官员，这些人被认为与中国情报部门有联系。

官员们观察着这两辆车，试图了解它们彼此之间以及与无人机本身的关系。

最终，两伙人都被拘留了：据知情人士透露，房车里的那伙人被基地附近的军方官员抓获，并移交给了联邦当局。

据这位前美国官员称，公园里的那名女子被内政部开具罚单后释放。

CNN未能得知这些人的后续下落。但官员们确信这两个团伙有关联：据其中一位消息人士透露，在房车里发现了与这名女子有关的身份信息。

在本文发表前，陆军方面未回应置评请求。联邦调查局拒绝置评。海关与边境保护局以例行政策为由，拒绝就具体事件发表评论。中国驻美大使馆发言人否认知晓此事。

发言人表示：“有关中国从事间谍活动的虚假说法完全缺乏事实依据和证据，只不过是毫无根据的猜测和耸人听闻的炒作。”

这只是无人机入侵美国领空，飞越军事设施和其他政府限制区域的无数事件之一。这些无人机通常由业余爱好者、向第三目的地运送毒品的贩毒集团或游客操控，但有时人们认为它们是由进行间谍活动的外国特工操控的。

廉价易用的无人机技术的普及，使得普通民众能够相对轻松地进行看似无人机监视的活动，而美国政府却很难追踪和阻止此类活动。这种混乱的新局面令政府疲于应对。

约翰·英格尔/美国国防部

政府各部门的反间谍官员往往难以弄清与中国或其他情报机构的任何联系。现任和前任官员表示，调查往往依赖于直觉和猜测，因此很难对在禁飞区操作无人机的行为提起更严厉的指控，最多只能是轻微的起诉。

据信，中国会向普通民众施压或诱导他们进行某种形式的“骚扰性监视”，目标涵盖各种军事领域，其中一些高度敏感，一些则相对不那么敏感。消息人士还称，在其他情况下，身处美国的中国公民似乎会在没有中国情报官员直接命令的情况下，自行从事间谍活动。

美国官员担心更糟糕的情况可能会发生：独狼式恐怖袭击，目标是美国的关键基础设施或民用目标。尽管两名了解最新情报的美国官员表示，没有迹象表明伊朗代理组织或其他恐怖组织（例如“伊斯兰国”）正在策划此类袭击，但这种可能性显而易见。

新泽西州近期发生的15架农药无人机被盗事件令美国官员深感震惊，其中一位官员表示，这些无人机有可能被用作化学武器袭击的运载工具。当局最终找回了这些无人机。

CNN绘制了基辅如何改变现代战争格局的地图

军方官员也公开警告，大量无人机可能突破美国本土的防空系统。一位军方官员将乌克兰2025年6月开展的代号为“蜘蛛网行动”的无人机行动描述为对这种可能性的令人警醒的写照。乌克兰当时动用了117架无人机，摧毁了至少十几架停放在距离前线数千英里之外的空军基地的俄罗斯战机。

这些担忧促使政府大力推进研发和部署先进的反无人机设备，并推广至包括州和地方警察以及军事基地在内的广泛机构。

据两名参与或了解此次行动的人士透露，美国当局认为白沙行动取得了成功，展现了跨部门合作的成功。

但问题远比白沙导弹靶场要大得多。至于美国政府内部究竟应该由谁负责，没人能确定。

一位美国官员说：“问题在于，这是每个人的问题——所以实际上谁也解决不了这个问题。”

美国没有一个机构负责侦测、阻止或击败这些入侵政府或民用空域的行为——国家安全界现在将其简称为“C-UAS”，即反无人机系统。

2023 年末，在乔·拜登总统执政期间，一群神秘的无人机在弗吉尼亚州的一个空军基地上空盘旋了 17 天，一些参与处理此事的官员将其描述为一场没有领导的混乱局面。

据一位前美国官员称，当时局势非常混乱，以至于参谋长联席会议（一个本应提供建议而不是参与作战的军事部门）的官员介入，成立了一个特别工作组，试图恢复秩序。

“简直是一场闹剧，太丢人了，”这个人说。“这不在他们的职责范围内。但他们看到了权力真空。”

Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images/文件

无人机持续在美国军事基地上空盘旋。军方尚不清楚原因，也不知道如何阻止它们。

在那次事件之后，时任国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀指定负责国土防御的北方司令部为基地小型无人机入侵的协调机构。

此后，北方司令部制定了一套流程：一旦在军事基地上空发现失控无人机，就会召集基地、当地执法部门、联邦调查局、国土安全部、各军种以及附近任何可能拥有反无人机系统的机构召开电话会议。如果基地自身不具备防御能力，他们会协商由谁来运输反无人机系统并支付相关费用。

这位军方官员表示，这套系统运行良好。

“我看到问题从‘谁该为此负责？’转变为‘我们都有责任，我们每个人都应该为此负责’，”这个人说道。

有时，负责识别和分析“不明异常现象”（政府对不明飞行物的称呼）的五角大楼办公室也会被召集，因为它拥有专门用于追踪来源不明飞行物的设备。正如在白沙导弹靶场所做的那样，该办公室可以为追踪无人机的官员提供通用操作图。

五角大楼于2025年成立了一个工作组，负责协调全军的反无人机技术和战术。该工作组正在研究定向能武器，例如激光和高功率微波，官员们希望这些武器能够以较低的成本使无人机失效。国土安全部于今年1月成立了类似的机构。

仍然出现了一些明显的失败案例。

今年2月，美国联邦航空管理局（FAA）接连关闭了德克萨斯州埃尔帕索市上空的空域。据当时CNN报道，国防部在允许美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）测试反无人机激光系统前，未能与FAA协调，导致该市机场关闭了8个小时。

大约两周后，美国军方在埃尔帕索以南约 50 英里处，用激光意外击落了一架由美国海关与边境保护局 (CBP) 操作的无人机。

Jose Luis Gonzalez/路透社

对于联邦设施、大型民用集会和关键基础设施（这些设施不在军方的保护范围之内），联邦官员的回应是试图扩大有权获得反无人机训练和设备的实体数量，并赋予其使用这些设备的权力。

2026年，国会赋予中央情报局新的权力，允许其执法人员在美国境内拦截并强制降落威胁机构设施的无人机。国会还扩大了州和地方政府的类似权力，因为立法者们意识到，没有任何一个联邦机构能够应对全国范围内数量庞大的非法无人机飞行。

近几个月来，国土安全部和联邦调查局为大型公共集会——典型的“软目标”——提供了广泛的支持。今年早些时候，联邦官员指控多人密谋利用无人机和枪手袭击在白宫举行的UFC赛事。联邦调查局今年在世界杯比赛场地周围设立了无人机禁飞区，并表示在决赛前一周，他们已查获近1600架非法无人机，并缴获了700多架。

但官员们表示，仍然存在一些巨大的安全漏洞。一位美国官员举例说：没有人确定谁负责保护那些私有但存储着大量敏感政府数据的数据中心，这些数据来自中央情报局等机构。

目前，这属于地方执法部门的管辖范围——但他们可能没有能力抵御这种威胁。

当被问及中国涉嫌利用无人机监视美国军事设施的间谍活动时，官员们难以描述问题的严重程度。这主要是因为几乎不可能确凿地将任何一次入侵事件归咎于中国的情报行动。官员们表示，中国利用平民作为幌子来执行这些肮脏的任务——例如在校学生和在大陆有亲属的华裔美国人，他们可以对这些人施加压力——而不是使用训练有素的情报人员。

“这不像是中国国家安全局的官员在美国境内横行无忌，”一位美国官员说道，他指的是中国的间谍机构。

2024年秋季，联邦官员在范登堡太空部队基地上空抓获一名驾驶无人机的中国公民，当时该基地正在进行军事卫星发射。官员们在旧金山机场将其逮捕，当时他正准备登机前往中国。调查人员在他的设备上发现了位于阿肯色州、德克萨斯州和中国的航拍照片。但最终，检方仅能让34岁的周银飘（音译）承认其驾驶小型无人机进入禁飞区。

作为认罪协议的一部分，第二项指控——未登记飞机——被撤销。周某被判处四个月联邦监禁。

据多方消息来源称，在2023年弗吉尼亚空军基地上空发生的事件中，海岸警卫队人员以例行安全检查为由，登上了一艘停泊在东海岸的中国国旗护卫舰。但他们并未发现任何确凿证据将该舰与无人机事件联系起来。

陆军中士科里·里斯/美国陆军

美国现任和前任官员表示，中国真正的间谍飞行事件数量可能相对较少。

一位前反间谍官员表示，中国的情报收集机构是“分散的”。他说，共产党当局会公开其工作重点，“情报企业家”有时会自行其是，试图收集有价值的信息。

联邦调查局经常追踪一些行为怪异的中国公民，例如“连续开车24小时，睡在车里，然后回家”，那个人说。“这种事经常发生，很奇怪，有时根本无法解释。”

在政府内部，美国官员似乎经常对归因问题做出斩钉截铁的表态，这是一种心照不宣的暗示，认为某次入侵是中国所为。

但由于很难将任何一次奇怪的行为或无人机飞行与中国情报部门的具体指令明确联系起来，一些官员认为这种威胁被夸大了。

“这些人很多只是因为是中国人就犯了罪，”这位前反间谍官员说，并补充说，FBI遇到的绝大多数间谍都是业余爱好者。

至于中国是否会在美国开展更广泛的、协调一致的无人机侦察行动？

“我认为这是一种正在酝酿的阴谋论，”这位前官员说。

白沙导弹靶场的那些人仅仅是低级中间人或“情报掮客”吗？国土安全部和国防部的官员们感觉联邦调查局是这么认为的。但CNN无法确定这种推断究竟有多可靠。

另一位美国前官员表示，白沙导弹靶场的行动“取得了成功”。

“但我们远未完成，我们仍然非常非常脆弱。”