Executive Summary
This report summarizes the key assertions and critical questions raised in an interview between host Ross of Reality Check (NewsNation) and Daryl Johnson, a former Senior Security Specialist at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response (ONSER). Johnson, who spent fifteen years (2010–2025) monitoring drone and UAP flyovers at commercial nuclear power plants and fuel cycle facilities nationwide, has documented a pattern of aerial intrusions that he considers one of the most underacknowledged security vulnerabilities in the United States today.
The interview reveals a deeply troubling picture: between 200 and 300 drone and UAP incidents over nuclear sites in the eleven years between 2014 and 2025; reporting that was voluntary — and therefore grossly incomplete — for most of that period; facilities with zero mandated aerial detection capability; security guards legally unable to counter intruding aircraft; and a regulatory culture that, according to Johnson, actively resisted his attempts to raise alarm. Several recorded incidents exhibit flight characteristics that fall outside the performance envelope of any known commercial or military drone technology.
The report is organized into four sections: Section 1 provides background on Daryl Johnson and the context of the interview; Section 2 presents all twenty-eight key assertions from the transcript, organized thematically; Section 3 distills twenty critical questions raised explicitly or implicitly by the discussion; and Section 4 offers a concluding assessment of the significance of these findings. The source material is the interview transcript itself, used verbatim as the evidentiary basis throughout.
By the Numbers
~75
Operating Nuclear Plants
<1%
Operators Ever Identified
200–300
Documented Flyovers
2
No-Fly Zones (of 75)
0
Mandated Detection Systems
$10Ks
Cost of Detection Systems
Security Gap Analysis
Key Assertions
Twenty-eight assertions drawn directly from the interview transcript, organized thematically to highlight structural patterns.
Scale & History of the Threat
Anomalous Characteristics of Observed Objects
Institutional & Regulatory Failures
Legal & Countermeasure Gaps
Security Rollbacks & Industry Capture
International Comparison
UAP vs. Drone Distinction & The Broader Question
Specific Incidents
The two most dramatic incidents in Johnson's monitoring record, both unresolved.
Susquehanna Nuclear Plant
Berwick, PA — October 22, 2022
A triangular-shaped object hovered over the Susquehanna nuclear power plant outside Philadelphia for more than two hours. The object had a spotlight that shone directly down onto the plant facility — a characteristic that implies deliberate observation or targeting of the site. Johnson describes the incident as one of the most striking in his monitoring record. No countermeasures of any kind could be taken. The identity, origin, and purpose of the object remain entirely unresolved.
Duration: 2+ hours • Shape: Triangular • Behavior: Hovering with spotlight • Status: Unresolved
Surrey Nuclear Plant
Surrey, VA — December 2024
During the broader “holiday drone frenzy” of late 2024, a large object accompanied by two to three smaller objects was observed near the Surrey nuclear power plant in Virginia. The lights from the objects disappeared and then reappeared miles away within seconds — implying instantaneous acceleration of a kind not physically possible with any known aircraft. The large object subsequently ascended vertically into the sky and disappeared, consistent with what researchers describe as transmedium travel. The two smaller lights performed synchronized zigzag ascent patterns until they were no longer visible. No noise was heard, and no visible propulsion system was observed at any point. Johnson considered this incident potentially anomalous in ways that warranted immediate reporting to AARO — but was told to stand down.
Objects: 1 large + 2–3 smaller • Behavior: Instantaneous acceleration, silent, vertical ascent • Status: Not reported to AARO until May 2025
Note on the Surrey Incident: The behavioral characteristics described — instantaneous positional change, silent ascent, synchronized geometric movement of multiple objects, and possible transmedium travel — are consistent with UAP reports reviewed and documented by AARO, the UAP Task Force, and congressional testimony. These behaviors are not attributable to any publicly known drone or aircraft technology as of the date of the interview.
“All we could do is observe and report.”
— Daryl Johnson, on the legal constraints facing nuclear security personnel
Critical Questions
Twenty questions raised explicitly or implicitly by the interview. They represent the policy and analytical agenda that Johnson's testimony leaves on the table.
Nature & Identity of the Objects
Are the objects over nuclear plants actual commercial or military drones — or something else entirely? Johnson is explicit that he cannot say with authority what the observed objects are. The behavioral characteristics of the most anomalous incidents fall outside the known performance envelope of any commercial or military drone technology.
What was the triangular object over Susquehanna that hovered for two hours with a spotlight on October 22, 2022? No identification has been made.
What was the large object with accompanying smaller objects seen at Surrey in December 2024 that demonstrated instantaneous acceleration and apparent transmedium travel?
What are the two pre-2014 triangular incidents in the NRC database, and have they ever been investigated?
What actually are UAPs? Are they foreign adversarial technology, a secret U.S. program, non-human intelligence, or something else?
Regulatory & Reporting Failures
Why was the NRC's suspicious activity reporting system voluntary for eleven years before mandatory reporting was enacted in January 2025?
Why is it currently legal to fly a drone over the vast majority of U.S. nuclear power plants with no legal consequence?
Why don't nuclear power plants have mandated aerial surveillance, radar, or RF detection systems?
Why does the U.S. lag behind Japan, France, and the United Kingdom in aerial security requirements for nuclear sites?
Is the 2019 NRC vulnerability assessment — which concluded there were "no risk-significant vulnerabilities" to drone-based radiological sabotage — still operationally valid?
Legal & Countermeasure Gaps
Why are nuclear security forces legally prohibited from taking any countermeasure against intruding drones, even when those drones linger for hours with apparent adversarial intent?
Why have private nuclear utilities not self-imposed drone detection systems, given their negligible cost relative to the catastrophic consequences of an attack?
Has the NRC even issued guidance pursuant to Executive Order 14305 (June 2025), and if not, why not?
Institutional Accountability
Why did NRC management laugh at and dismiss the UAP topic when Johnson raised it internally?
Why was Johnson told to "stand down" rather than immediately report the Surrey incident to AARO?
If AARO is receiving incomplete, under-reported, and poorly described data from the NRC, what is the actual quality of AARO's overall threat picture for UAPs near nuclear infrastructure?
Now that ONSER has been dissolved and Johnson has retired, who at the NRC has the knowledge, the mandate, and the institutional memory to track, classify, and assess UAPs near nuclear sites?
Has the nuclear energy lobby's influence over the NRC's security rulemaking ever been formally examined or audited?
The Bigger Picture
What is the TR-3B, and if it is a U.S. government asset, what is it doing above commercial nuclear plants?
What is the true scale of drone and UAP flyovers at nuclear plants, given that AARO's data represents only a small fraction of recorded incidents, and recorded incidents represent only a fraction of actual incidents?
“Less than 1% of operators were ever identified.”
— Daryl Johnson, on the 200–300 documented flyovers over U.S. nuclear sites
About Daryl Johnson
Former NRC Senior Security Specialist
Early Career
Counterterrorism analyst with the U.S. Army, ATF, and DHS (2004–2010). Authored the 2009 DHS report on right-wing extremism — a document that was widely criticized at the time of release but whose warnings were vindicated by the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
NRC Career (2010–2025)
Senior Security Specialist and Federal Security Coordinator Headquarters Program Manager, Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response (ONSER), Division of Security Operations.
Primary Responsibility
Monitoring, assessing, and trending all drone and UAP flyovers at commercial nuclear reactors and fuel cycle facilities nationwide; writing annual reports to Congress; coordinating with DoD's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) on UAP reporting.
Current Role
Founder of DT Analytics; author of Unguarded Skies: Safeguarding America's Commercial Nuclear Fleet Against UAPs and Drones of Unknown Origin.
Context of the Interview
The interview, conducted by Ross for NewsNation's Reality Check program, took place in the context of Johnson's book publication and his retirement from the NRC in 2025. Johnson speaks as an insider: someone who personally tracked every flyover incident, drafted internal briefings, and attempted — with limited success — to push for stronger detection and reporting requirements.
The timing is significant. Johnson retired shortly after the NRC dissolved the very office — ONSER — that housed its nuclear security expertise. This dissolution, combined with the elimination of live force-on-force training exercises and reductions in security inspections, means that the institutional capacity he spent fifteen years building no longer exists in the form he left it.
The book's title — Unguarded Skies — encapsulates Johnson's central thesis: that American commercial nuclear infrastructure, while heavily protected on the ground, is effectively open to the sky above it. What flies over these sites, who controls it, and what it intends remain, in the vast majority of documented cases, completely unknown.
Conclusion & Significance
The Core Finding
The testimony of Daryl Johnson, examined in its totality, presents a picture of a known, documented, and worsening security vulnerability at the most sensitive category of civilian infrastructure in the United States — one that has been systematically underreported, institutionally dismissed, and deliberately unaddressed by the regulatory apparatus responsible for its oversight. The convergence of factors he describes is not accidental: voluntary reporting, no detection mandates, no countermeasure authority, no regulatory distinction between conventional drones and anomalous UAPs, an outdated threat assessment, and an industry lobby that has successfully resisted the imposition of even basic aerial awareness requirements.
The Anomaly Problem
Perhaps the most significant dimension of Johnson's account is the subset of incidents that cannot be explained by conventional drone technology. The Surrey and Susquehanna incidents, taken on their face, describe objects behaving in ways that are physically inconsistent with any commercially available or publicly known military unmanned aerial system.
This creates a particularly consequential gap. If the anomalous objects are foreign adversarial technology, the absence of detection and response capability represents a strategic intelligence failure. If they are a classified U.S. program, the absence of coordination with the NRC represents a critical interagency communication breakdown. If they are something that does not fit either category, the absence of a formal investigative mechanism represents a failure of the national security enterprise at the most fundamental level of threat characterization.
Critical Note: The Institutional Dimension
The dissolution of ONSER — the NRC's dedicated nuclear security office — concurrent with the reduction of security inspections and the elimination of live force-on-force exercises, means that the institutional infrastructure for assessing and responding to aerial threats at nuclear sites has been materially degraded at precisely the moment when Johnson's data shows the threat is at its historical peak. The combination of a record-high incident count in 2025 and the simultaneous dismantling of the office responsible for tracking those incidents is, in his assessment, not a coincidence to be dismissed.
The International Standard
The comparison with Japan and France is instructive not because those countries are more technologically sophisticated, but because they treated a single aerial incident as a sufficient regulatory trigger. The United States has experienced hundreds of incidents — many of them more anomalous than the events that prompted legislative action abroad — without enacting a comparable regulatory response. This disparity cannot be fully explained by differences in legal frameworks or regulatory philosophy. It reflects, in Johnson's view, the influence of an industry that has successfully externalised the cost of aerial security onto the public interest.
What Needs to Happen
Johnson's testimony implies a clear agenda: mandatory aerial detection systems at all commercial nuclear sites and CAT-1 fuel cycle facilities; expedited no-fly zone designations; real-time AARO reporting for any incident with anomalous characteristics; legislative authority and liability protection for counter-UAS response at nuclear facilities; a new and updated threat assessment incorporating post-2019 drone capability developments; regulatory guidance distinguishing UAPs from conventional UAS; and the restoration of a specialized office within the NRC with the mandate and expertise to conduct this work.
| Area | Current Status | Required Action |
|---|---|---|
| Aerial Detection | Zero mandated systems at any nuclear plant | Mandatory detection (radar, RF, optical) at all nuclear sites |
| No-Fly Zones | 2 of ~75 plants designated | Expedited FAA designation across the fleet |
| Counter-UAS Authority | None — guards may only observe and report | Legislation with liability protection for nuclear operators |
| AARO Reporting | Annual data dump; real-time prohibited | Mandatory real-time reporting for anomalous incidents |
| Threat Assessment | Dated to 2019; not updated for modern drone capabilities | Immediate updated assessment incorporating post-2022 landscape |
| UAP/UAS Guidance | No guidance distinguishing UAPs from conventional drones | Formal licensee guidance on UAP behavioral recognition |
| Security Infrastructure | ONSER dissolved; live exercises eliminated | Restore specialized nuclear security office and training requirements |
“Something is observing us. We don't know what it is or who controls it.”
— Daryl Johnson, Unguarded Skies
Final Assessment
The significance of Johnson's interview lies not in any single incident or statistic, but in the composite picture it assembles: a decade-plus of documented aerial intrusions at the nation's most sensitive civilian infrastructure; a regulatory regime that has been structurally designed — whether by intention or inertia — to minimize rather than illuminate the scale of the problem; a legal framework that renders the security forces at those facilities helpless observers; and an institutional culture that responded to internal alarm-raising with dismissal and obstruction. Whatever the ultimate nature of the objects involved, this combination of factors represents a serious and growing vulnerability. Johnson's account is a matter of public record and warrants the most serious attention from policymakers, oversight bodies, and the public alike.