Inside Investigators' Response to Emerging Threats in the Homeland

On paper, it was a minor case involving a man accused of taking photographs outside of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, but inside the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the encounter reflects how potential warning signs are emerging, not overseas, but at home.

"For our special agents, this isn't about a single case," said Col. David Bethel, commander of AFOSI Region 8. "It's about recognizing the operating environment has changed. Our investigators and analysts are adjusting how they engage so we can stay ahead of emerging threats and hold our adversaries accountable."

Bethel said for much of the past two decades, the most urgent threats were across the world, in deployed environments where threats were usually unmistakable.

"The question we have to ask is what does the adversary value most, what are they trying to learn and access?" he said.

For AFOSI leaders, those questions are not abstract. They have surfaced stateside, including one in early Dec. 2025 at Whiteman AFB.

The fence line

Whiteman AFB is the only operational home of the B-2 Spirit, an aircraft designed to be difficult to detect, and it's where late last year, Qilin Wu, a Chinese national was in a minivan with Massachusetts license plates and spotted lingering near the base perimeter with his camera.

That's where Defenders from the 509th Security Forces Squadron warned him not to take photographs. However, he returned the next day, and when AFOSI Det. 811 got involved and discovered Wu had taken images and videos of the base.

"What made this different was the pattern of behavior," said a senior AFOSI official involved in the investigation. "He wasn't photographing the aircraft. He was focused on the perimeter and infrastructure, and he returned after being warned.

They added the most difficult work began after the initial encounter.

"The challenge isn't identifying suspicious activity," they said. "It's often the legal work required to bring a case forward responsibly."

Later, Wu admitted he photographed aircraft and installations at other U.S. bases in previous months, including in Florida and Virginia. Court records add he entered the United States illegally in 2023 and was awaiting immigration proceedings when the Whiteman AFB encounter occurred.

Wu was charged under a federal statute with unlawfully photographing a vital military installation. He is presumed innocent, and if convicted, he could face up to one year in prison.

"This wasn't isolated," said a special agent involved in the investigation. "We've seen multiple situations like this near installations over a short period. Each case has sharpened how we document, how we coordinate and how we approach these situations."

Officials said applying decades-old authorities to modern national security threats has required investigators to strike a careful balance.

"There's a real gray zone between an aviation enthusiast and someone deliberately collecting information," they added. "Our responsibility is to sort that out carefully and avoid overreach while still protecting the mission."

'The Raider Triad'

Interestingly Det. 811's response wasn't limited to Whiteman AFB.

Det. 811 is part of what has been dubbed "The Raider Triad," which is a close working relationship among AFOSI detachments at Whiteman AFB, Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota -- the three installations scheduled to anchor the new B-21 Raider bomber enterprise.

Major infrastructure projects are underway at all three bases, with Ellsworth AFB slated to be the first to receive operational B-21 aircraft. The B-21, a next-generation stealth bomber designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, is expected to form the backbone of the Department of the Air Force's future bomber force.

Within that environment, incidents like the one at Whiteman AFB are treated less as isolated events and more as case studies of an accelerating trend, officials said, not because the details are identical, but because the pattern is instructive.

"We really prioritize early, direct communication between detachments," said a senior official from AFOSI Det. 816 at Ellsworth AFB. "That's how Region 8 operates, and it's how I stay closely connected with my counterparts."

Region 8, led by Bethel, includes several states in the central U.S., including Missouri, Texas and South Dakota, where AFOSI detachments support major DAF missions and information moves quickly between the region's detachments.

"I got the information early, and I knew what to ask and what to look for," one Special Agent said. "We didn't wait for formal channels. We shared it immediately."

New kinds of threat

Wu's case did not unfold overseas or on a distant battlefield. It did not happen inside a classified facility, either. It unfolded along a fence line beside a rural highway in the American Midwest, and that geography, Bethel said, is part of the bigger picture.

"This isn't the model many of us grew up in professionally," he said. "For a long time, we assumed distance gave us protection. That assumption no longer holds."

The mission hasn't changed, but the location has, he said. The homeland must now be understood as a space where adversaries try to operate in ways that are incremental, persistent and deliberate.

In other words, "the homeland is not a sanctuary," Bethel said. "The adversary is here and operating. That can take many forms. From testing how we respond, to probing where boundaries are or gathering information in subtle or even overt ways.

"When you step back" he said, "those individual incidents look less like one-offs and more like a pattern of adversary actions.

"When our teams share early, when they're candid about what worked and what didn't, the whole enterprise gets stronger," Bethel said. "Region 8 is building a culture that recognizes the environment as it is and prepares our people to operate effectively within it to counter our adversaries."

Editor's note: Several AFOSI officials were not identified due to the sensitive nature of their investigative responsibilities.