The American publication has published real reports by U.S. Navy pilots about a meeting with unidentified flying objects over the past few years. Journalists note that the documents themselves contain some oddities, and for some signs, a significant proportion of such cases were classified.
In total, The War Zone announces the receipt of eight documents marked “unclassified” and “for official use only.” Seven of them are related to events that occurred with F / A-18E / F Super Hornet aircraft (carrier-based fighter aircraft of the American naval aviation) from 2013 to 2014 in the airspace off the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. The eighth document describes the incident that occurred in 2019, and the plane included the Grower EA-18G (a US Navy’s super-hornet carrier-based electronic warfare aircraft) flying in another part of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland. It is reported that these are the only messages stored in the centralized aviation incident database WAMHRS.
UFO and the mysterious ship
June 27, 2013 F / A-18F from the 11th fighter squadron, flying from the naval base of Oceana (Virginia), met with a “white aircraft in shape and size approximately corresponding to a drone or rocket.” The pilots observed the object when it passed to their right at an altitude of about 5000 meters. An unknown plane was gaining altitude and had a visible exhaust trace.
At the same time, neither Super Hornet nor Oceana recorded the radar track of the aircraft. The commander of the Atlantic fighter wing (the wing is the next level of command after the squadron) “contacted the operational units, but no one reported such operations.” The Cape’s Navy Airspace Control Center in Virginia reported that “no aircraft have been identified or flagged in this zone.”
The Navy did not issue any notices to flight personnel (NOTAM) and did not set time limits for flights (TFR) based on this hazard report, but issued internal notifications to tactical aviation units, air traffic controllers and unmanned aerial vehicle operators of potential dangers associated with unauthorized or uncoordinated actions of drones.
A few months later, on November 18, 2013, the F / A-18E Super Hornet from the 143rd squadron discovered an unidentified object flying at an altitude of about 3700 meters at a speed of Mach 0.1.
“The aircraft had a wingspan of about 5 feet (one and a half meters – approx. Ed.) And was painted white without other distinguishing features,”
– said the pilot, who visually observed the object for an hour.
According to the report, the US Navy concluded that this facility was an unmanned aerial system, but the special departments were again unable to establish the operator of the device. As in the previous case, the command limited itself to issuing internal warnings.
It is very curious that, as stated in the document, “during the incident, surface movement was weak, only one commercial fishing trawler and one unidentified US naval vessel headed south,” and it was not possible to establish which ship it was. “. “It is not entirely clear how the Navy was able to determine that one of their ships acted on the surface in the same area, but could not figure out which ship it was,” the author of the article notes.
Flying suitcase
March 26, 2014 Super Hornet from the 106th squadron, flying out of the Oceana base, discovered a possible radar track at an altitude of about 5800 meters, the object was moving at a speed of 0.1 Mach. The wing pilot did not see the object on the radar, so there was a debate between the pilots over whether the track could be displayed erroneously due to strong winds.
“The unknown plane turned out to be small, about the size of a suitcase, and silver,” the report said. The pilot could only go within three hundred meters of him and could not identify the device. After that, the pilots lost sight of the object and were no longer able to restore visual contact.
Ground controls did not again record an unknown aircraft. At the same time, the squadron commander noted that coastal systems cannot notice an object of this size if it does not give “friend or foe” signals, which is a “serious security problem”.
“I feel that this is only a matter of time before one of our F / A-18 aircraft collides in the air with an unidentified UAS [unmanned aerial system],” he added.
Neither NOTAM nor TFR were issued either, although internal warnings followed.
Spherical UFOs and Dog Fights
On April 24, 2014, another “super hornet” from the 11th squadron collided with several “unidentified airborne devices” (UADs) while taking off from the Oceana Naval Airfield. The crew initially discovered two such objects on the radar, one at an altitude of 3700 meters, and the other at an altitude of 4600 meters. Both objects were almost motionless at Mach 0.0. Then the presence of the devices was confirmed using infrared sight (ATFLIR).
During the study of the first pair of UAD in the ATFLIR “field of view”, apparently, two more objects passed at high speed. On the radar of the plane, two moving vehicles did not appear.
It was again not possible to identify objects and establish their operators. The end of this report is similar to the previous ones – it is again said that “a mid-air collision is only a matter of time.” The command again did not impose flight restrictions by issuing internal notifications.
On the same day, April 24, 2014, two more F / A-18Fs (11th Squadron) made radar contact with another unidentified vehicle in the same area during a training air battle (known as dogfighting, “dog fighting”) . Both aircraft fixed the object on radars – the UFO hovered at an altitude of about 3,500 meters and did not move. No visual contact has been established.
On April 27, 2014, for the third time in five days, the F / A-18F crew from the 11th squadron, departing from Oceana base, reported a collision with an unknown airborne device.
The pilot describes a “meeting in the air with an object like a balloon.” This is the first document that gives any substantial description of stationary or almost stationary devices from previous reports.
Otherwise, this report is the most “Spartan” in the sense of details. As in the rest of the cases, US Navy officials sent out many internal warnings.
On February 13, 2019, almost five years after the last collision with an unidentified object recorded in the U.S. Navy database, the crew of the EA-18G Growler combat aircraft from the 23rd Air Test Squadron, flying from the Patuxent River Naval Airfield in Maryland , visually noticed what was called a “red weather balloon” at a height of 8,200 meters in the report.
Neither the military nor the civilian control services were aware of any planned balloon activities. The report said the Navy was unable to identify the individuals or organizations responsible for lifting the balloon. In response to the incident, various internal warnings were issued.
Do you hide other meetings with UFOs?
Recall that this is only officially recorded in the database messages about meetings of naval aviation with UFOs. Apparently, in fact, there were more such meetings, given the previous reports of the Navy pilots, official and unofficial, that several such incidents occurred over the Atlantic in 2014-2015. But there are no reports on that period in the database.
The War Zone received a copy of the report of another incident involving F / A-18E from the 106th squadron on March 13, 2018. Then the crew saw on the radar four separate unknown objects off the coast of North Carolina. According to the report, all the devices moved at a speed of approximately 0.1 Mach at an altitude of 5000 to 6700 meters. The pilot visually identified one of them at an altitude of 6000 meters. The device, according to him, was a drone in the form of a quadrocopter about a meter wide. The objects, as the pilot reported, barely moved and were scattered over an area 40-50 miles wide. The nearest vehicle was 15 miles from the only boat seen in the area.
The report does not contain a serial number, which raises questions about where the document could eventually be sent and what official actions the Navy could take in this regard. According to the publication, the squadron transmitted the report to the fighter wing, and it was to be expected that the document would be sent from there to the database, but it does not seem to have happened. This seems strange given that the squadron commander has repeatedly stated the security threat posed by these UFOs.
The War Zone suggests that for some reason, these reports subsequently began to be transmitted through separate or even secret channels.
In this regard, the publication recalls the incident with the Tik-Tak flying object, which was radar and visually observed in November 2004 near the coast of Mexico and the United States in the Pacific Ocean by the strike group of the American aircraft carrier Nimitz. According to one of the pilots, the object looked like a smooth white bright ellipsoid (or a shape close to an ellipsoid) measuring 9 to 14 m in length. Following the incident, the AUG chief intelligence officer sent a full report to the US Navy 3rd Fleet Intelligence Agency, headquartered in San Diego, California, via secure email. For reasons that remain unexplained, the senior intelligence officer refused to send the report further upstairs and deleted the email.
It is also curious that almost half of the reported incidents occurred with the aircraft of one squadron, the 11th. Given that several squadrons are based at the Oceana airfield (and even more in the vicinity), this may indicate that not all units officially reported these meetings. In addition, US Air Force pilots often train in the same area, but they do not indicate anything like this in their reports.
The publication notes that the incidents with UFOs may have a completely earthly reason: allegedly, a potential enemy could send aircraft into the training zone of the American military aviation in order to collect intelligence data.
Recall that at the end of April, the Pentagon published three videos that capture “unidentified phenomena”. One of them was recorded in November 2004, the other two in January 2015, according to the agency’s website. All these videos in 2007 and 2017 without the permission of the US Department of Defense were in the public domain. Their authenticity was confirmed by the US Navy. Note that we are talking about incidents not described in the article The War Zone.
