Admiral Daryl Caudle: “This thing of our military bases getting penetrated by foreign nationals is happening more and more. This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate.”

He adds that in the Navy alone, the nationals come from various countries and often have passports and papers.

Bill Hemmer: Chechens, Jordanians, some of them just crossed the border. What’s going on?

Admiral Daryl Caudle: Well, this thing of our military bases getting penetrated by foreign nationals is happening more and more. This is something we see probably two or three times a week, where we’re stopping these folks at the gate.

Bill Hemmer: A week?

Admiral Daryl Caudle: A week, at least. And this is just Navy alone, where we’re seeing folks try to come in. And usually the cover story is, I’m a student. I’m here. I’m an enthusiast. I want to see the ships, that type of thing. We have to turn them around. And typically, we get NCIS involved in those, and we get biometrics when possible. But yes, there’s been an uptick in that.

Bill Hemmer: Do they have passports?

Admiral Daryl Caudle: A lot of times, they have passports. They have papers, yes. But they’re in no way, shape, or form, authorized to be on our base. It’s really hard for us to tell the underlying motive for these type of cases.

Bill Hemmer: Wow. That’s – that’s stunning… It’s gotta be a concern.

Admiral Daryl Caudle: It is… This is Russian, a Chinese. It comes from all these different nations. We’re seeing an uptick in it.

Bill Hemmer: In addition to that, there’s been some reporting on this over the last six months. You’re getting two or three drones flying over military bases in America per week.

Admiral Daryl Caudle: There is no question

Bill Hemmer: How do you overcome that?

Admiral Daryl Caudle: Well, we are improving our capabilities to detect that, to defend against that, to make sure that our folks are trained to actually counter that. I do this under my authorities from US Northern Command as the component commander for that. I have great reporting on it. And generally, in general, we mostly just folks with drones that you buy them commercially from Amazon or whatever the case may be. But it’s hard to differentiate between that and a nation state trying to do espionage.