In a previous update on our investigation into a series of drone swarm incidents in 2019, The War Zone published an intriguing, but heavily redacted briefing slide. Strangely, before our appeal could be fully processed, we and other FOIA filers received completely unredacted versions of the same slide attached to separate requests. The unredacted version of the slide provides several new details, namely a timeline of interactions between the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Paul Hamilton and several objects denoted as “UAS” or unmanned aerial systems. To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available document to use the term “swarm” in relation to the incident.
Additionally, the newly released material includes an infrared image of three of the objects. It is too low in quality to show any identifying features of the objects.
You can view the now unredacted timeline and briefing slide here:
