In November 2025, a major US military base, Fort Campbell in Kentucky, reported some missing equipment. Not as you might imagine, some uniforms, tools, fuel, or even a pistol. You know, stuff you could quickly snatch and stash out of sight until you smuggled it off base. Nope, on this occasion, the 101st Airborne’s Air Assault contingent noticed that their complement of surveillance drones was looking a little . . . light. Light to the tune of 4 missing drones.

Four. Missing. Drones.

From a secure military base. And not just a secure military base, but one that is the home of military special operations aviation. It hosts the headquarters and 1st/2nd Battalions of the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the “Night Stalkers,” along with the Special Operations Aviation Training Battalion (SOATB). These are serious units who work with the most sensitive and up to date military technology on the planet. And yet four specialist surveillance drones were stolen and their absence not noticed for some time.

The drones were Skydio X10D systems, lightweight quadcopters designed for aerial surveillance and reconnaissance. Equipped with AI technology that enables operational autonomy and the ability to link to 5G mobile networks for connectivity continuity. They come in at around $30k a piece, so $120k of military technology stolen from a secure, special operations base.

But how?

The US Army’s official statement said that ‘. . . the two individuals had access to the military installation and the building, and “defeated the locks” on the storage cages.’ That information indicates that this was a targeted, rather than opportunistic crime.

The Army released CCTV images of the perpetrators as well as a reward of $5k for any information leading to the capture of the individuals and the recovery of the drones.

At any other time, this theft would probably not have made the headlines that it has, and indeed, this event occurred in Nov 2025 but didn’t really come to public attention until very recently. But another turn of events ensured that this theft of military drones was very much kept in the public eye.

Last week, an internal memo sent to agencies that are part of a federal Joint Terrorism Task Force was made public. The memo stated “We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran.” The media began contacting its sources within Federal and State governments and the story went mainstream.

What mattered here was that the original intelligence, believed to have emanated from The Coast Guard, was not verified. In intelligence circles this means that the information came from a single source, be that human or technical, but that no other corroborating information could be found to support it or verify the original intelligence. But the warning would have been issued as a matter of course, allowing agencies and organisations to respond in accordance with their counter-terrorism policies and procedures. When The White House was questioned on the memo, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt raged that the media had blown the entire incident out of proportion and demanded they retract the stories from their publications. When asked if it wasn’t in the public’s interest to be made aware of such threats, she doubled down on her stance, stating that the press were publishing ‘false information to intentionally alarm the American people.’

The problem here is that both the press and the public are only too aware of how dishonest and disingenuous this White House administration is with its information. Which means even if this drone threat memo was just a standard ‘hey, we heard this, not sure there’s anything to it but just so you’re aware’ type of thing, the default is to believe the opposite of whatever narrative the government is standing by. And that’s where the real problems begin.

On the first day of America/Israel’s war with Iran, a mysterious broadcast was picked up by radio hams around the globe. Serious radio hams. The types dedicated to an analogue slice of nostalgia rapidly disappearing from the modern world. What they heard and found in this mysterious, new broadcast initially baffled then alarmed. The signal has been heard across Europe and rebroadcast to other parts of the world, with consistent evening activity and short voice messages consisting of structured numeric sequences. A man’s voice can be heard speaking Farsi, counting out a series of apparently random numbers. The numbers are read out for varying stretches of time, followed by a pause in which the word tavajjoh, which translates as ‘attention’, is spoken three times

In old money in the intelligence world this was referred to as a Numbers Station. And the main role of a Numbers Station was for intelligence agencies and organisations to contact their agents in the field via a one-way transmission. The agent, knowing the designated frequencies and times to check, would have a secure method of decrypting the stream of numbers being transmitted. Translating them into formal orders and directives.

The beauty of an old-school Numbers Station in a digital age is that it provides direction and guidance to an agent who may be operating in an environment where any outbound communication is intercepted. That leads directly to the main question of who, today, would most require this ancient mode of communication?

Sleeper cells.

Hostile operatives embedded in their adversaries countries. Operatives who know any communication between them and those directing them have a high threat of being surveilled. The training in and use of an analogue mode of communication also builds in resilience in that, should the operatives’ home country be attacked and lose digital communication infrastructure, directions could still be securely passed over shortwave radio. A Numbers Station.

So, we have a transmission that begins on the first day of the America/Israeli war in Iran. It’s broadcast in Farsi. It appears to emanate from somewhere in Central Europe.

And it’s constantly being jammed.

Iran, Israel, and the United States all have the technical ability to carry out this jamming. So that begs the question, who is doing the transmitting and who is doing the jamming? The jamming is being carried out by someone who wants to make sure the recipient of the transmissions doesn’t get them.

In the USA, a recent statement from ABC News on March 9 reported that the US government had sent an alert to law enforcement agencies regarding ‘intercepted encrypted communications.’ While the report did not specify what exactly the transmission was, or whether it was a numbers station signal, it stated ‘While the exact contents of these transmissions cannot currently be determined, the sudden appearance of a new station with international rebroadcast characteristics warrants heightened situational awareness.’

We know there are Iranian sleeper cells in the USA. There have been official declarations as such from government officials including the President himself. And in recent days there seem to be more officials openly stating that the Numbers Station signal is an operational trigger for activating Iranian sleeper cells abroad. When coupled with drone thefts from a military special ops base, drone threats to the American mainland, and an analogue spy tradecraft brought out of retirement, well, as the Americans are fond of saying, ‘you do the math.’

Or in this case, The Numbers.