Tag: Drones

US Navy Destroyers Swarmed by Mysterious ‘Drones’ Off California in 2019

Article by Adam Kehoe and Marc Cecotti                                March 23, 2021                                         (thedrive.com)

• On July 14, 2019, a group of US Navy ships were conducting exercises about 100 miles off Los Angeles, near San Clemente island, and south of the Channel Islands off of Ventura/Santa Barbara. Around 10:00 pm, the US Navy destroyer, the USS Kidd logged the sighting of two “UAVs” or ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’, more commonly referred to as a ‘drones’. In addition to utilizing some of the most sophisticated sensors on Earth, a “SNOOPIE team” – or ‘Ship Nautical Or Otherwise Photographic Interpretation and Exploitation’ team, ie: a group of sailors with consumer-grade cameras – was deployed to track and record the UAV drones.

• Ten minutes after the initial sighting, the USS Kidd advised the USS Rafael Peralta of the situation, and the second destroyer activated its own SNOOPIE team. Reports of additional sightings were coming in from a third destroyer, the USS John Finn. The USS Rafael Peralta described a ‘white light’ hovering over the destroyer’s helicopter landing pad, matching the ship’s speed at 16 knots (about 18 mph) as it operated in low visibility weather conditions and at night. This continued for over 90 minutes—significantly longer than what commercially available drones can sustain.

• As this was going on, the civilian bulk carrier Bass Strait was situated towards the northern edge of the encounter area. A Liberian-flagged oil tanker, the Sigma Triumph, was just south of the position of the three destroyers. And the 50-foot catamaran, the ORV Alguita, was just off the western tip of San Clemente Island.

• On the following night, July 15th, 2019, the USS Rafael Peralta spotted the drones again at 8:39 pm. By 9:00 pm, the USS Kidd also spotted the drones. This time, the ships were located further south and closer to shore, between San Diego and San Clemente Island. The drones seem to pursue the ships as they maneuvered. By 9:20 pm, the USS Kidd log reads: “Multiple UAVs around ship”.

• At 9:37 pm, the command was issued to man Mark 87 stations – the Mk20 Electro-Optical Sighting System (EOSS) located above the bridge, which provides surveillance and tracking over long distances. At about the same time, logs from the Navy destroyer USS Russell describe the drones dropping in elevation, and apparently moving forward and backward, left and right.

• Meanwhile, the USS Rafael Peralta received a radio call from a passing cruise ship, the Carnival Imagination, notifying the Navy that the drones were not theirs, but they could see as many as five or six drones maneuvering nearby. The incident continued into the night, with the USS Rafael Peralta recording two drones, and then four drones near their own ship. This continued for nearly three hours, but none of the warships were able to identify the drones.

• A formal investigation appears to have been launched on July 17th. By the morning of July 18th, a Navy liaison to the Coast Guard and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) assigned to 3rd Fleet got involved. Their findings would go directly to the commander of the Pacific Fleet and to the Chief of Naval Operations. The initial focus of their investigation was the 50-foot catamaran, the ORV Alguita. While the ORV Alguita did have drones onboard, they were small quadcopter drones with a maximum flight time of 28 minutes and incapable of operating more than a few feet from the ship. Also, they were not operating at the time of the incident. Navy investigators conceded that they needed to keep looking.

• Next, Navy intelligence and the director of the Maritime Intelligence Operations Center sought to rule out the possibility that the drones were operated by the Navy itself. A representative from the Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility based in San Diego clarified that UAV drones were only operated by the Navy in certain limited areas. By the afternoon of July 23rd, the investigators were still grappling with the intent behind the incidents.

• Remarkably, the USS Kidd detected the drones again in the early hours of July 25th and July 30th. Further information continues to emerge from The Drive’s FOIA requests, but based on the available evidence it appears that the initial investigation did not ultimately identify the source of the drones. It remains uncertain if other ships also continued to have drone encounters in July.

• It is unclear why anyone would operate drones near Navy warships in such a brazen manner. Commercially available drones are not usually capable of flying for such long durations across great distances at relatively high speeds. It is estimated that the drones traversed at least 100 nautical miles during the July 14th incident. The drones were able to locate and catch a destroyer traveling at 16 knots in conditions with less than one nautical mile of visibility. Equally baffling, their operators appear to have coordinated at least five to six drones simultaneously.

• Is it possible that the drones were operated from the Navy’s nearby training area on San Clemente Island in an errant test of some kind? No UAV activity was scheduled during July 14th. If there were classified drone exercises, why would the incursions continue after an investigation that reached the highest level of the Navy hierarchy? This is the same area where the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO (and the ‘fleet’ of them according to a Navy pilot’s remark) was seen in 2004.

• If the drones were not operated by the American military, these incidents represent a highly significant security breach. If they were part of some kind of covert action, it is nonetheless unclear why they were flown so openly and so frequently in almost a harassing manner. More troubling still, if a foreign state actor was involved, where exactly were the drones launched from? And was there ever a hard description of these craft beyond ‘lights in the sky’?

 

                   USS Rafael Peralta

In July of 2019, a truly bizarre series of events unfolded around California’s Channel Islands. Over a number of days, groups of unidentified aircraft, which the U.S. Navy simply refers to as ‘drones’ or ‘UAVs,’ pursued that service’s vessels, prompting a high-level investigation.

During the evening encounters, as many as six aircraft were reported swarming around the ships at once. The drones were described as flying for prolonged periods in low-visibility conditions, and performing brazen maneuvers over the Navy warships near a sensitive military

       50-foot catamaran ORV Alguita

training range less than 100 miles off Los Angeles. The ensuing investigation included elements of the Navy, Coast Guard, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The incidents received major attention, including from the Chief of Naval Operations—the apex of the Navy’s chain of command.

                        USS John Finn

The following is our own investigation into these events, during which we discovered these events were far more extensive in scale than previously understood.

A Strange Story Emerges

                            USS Kidd

Last year, documentary filmmaker Dave Beaty uncovered initial details about the events, centering on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Kidd (DDG-100). That initial account described a tense encounter, culminating in the deployment of onboard intelligence teams.

                   Carnival Imagination

New documents significantly expand the public’s knowledge of the scope and severity of that incident and reveal others that occurred around the same time. These details come largely from our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, which resulted in the disclosure of deck logs from the ships involved. Additionally, our investigation utilized hundreds of gigabytes of automatic identification system (AIS) ship location data to forensically reconstruct the position of both military and civilian ships in the area during this strange series of events.

By using the USS Kidd’s position as a starting point, we were able to identify several other ships in close proximity to it during the incidents in question, including U.S. Navy destroyers USS Rafael Peralta, USS Russell, USS John Finn, and the USS Paul Hamilton. Subsequent FOIA requests for these ships’ records allowed us to build a composite picture of the events as a whole.

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Are Drones the Worst Thing to Happen to UFOs Since Orson Welles?

Article by David MacQuarrie                                   November 10, 2020                                     (dronedj.com)

• In 1938, actor/ director Orson Welles frightened listeners with his Halloween prank radio broadcast of a Martian invasion in War of the Worlds. For years after that, the skies remained more or less clear of extraterrestrial menace. Then in 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold says he spotted flying objects skipping like saucers over the Cascade Mountain Range near Seattle. This time there was no Orson Welles to blame it on. UFOs became part of the cultural landscape. When we see lights in the sky, they’re usually blamed on the planet Venus, aircraft, oddball reflections or swamp gas (uh, swamp gas?) Still, there is a minority of reports that defy easy explanation.

• Drones have become the go-to explanation for any mysterious lights in the sky. This month, people were startled to see mysterious lights in the skies over Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But they turned out to be drones practicing for a Christmas Pageant light show over a festival park. People in New Jersey reporting a UFO were told it was a police drone. Factories in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, China have filled the skies with hundreds of thousands drones.

• “A significant amount of UFOs that we investigate are hobby drones,” said Ken Jordan, Texas’ chief of investigations for the international Mutual UFO Network. A high-flying aircraft moving at impossible speeds can be mistaken for a low-flying drone puttering along at 20 k/h. Acrobatics that seem to defy the laws of physics are now on routine display at drone airshows, no extraterrestrial technology needed.

• Even when the New York Times published US Navy videos of strange objects flying off the East Coast of the US, the Navy pilots assumed they were drones. They didn’t especially look like drones, but really what else could they be? Perhaps the mothership is parked ominously just behind the Moon and is sending its vile horde of drone-shaped legions toward our unsuspecting planet. Perhaps we should be vigilant like the character Ned Scott in The Thing from Another World: “Keep watching the skies”. But if you do see something up there, it’s probably just a drone.

 

This month, mysterious lights startled some people looking to the skies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Readers of this

               TX MUFON’s Ken Jordan

website will already know there is no mystery; the UFO lights at Maier Festival Park were just drones practicing for a Christmas Pageant light show.

But there’s a long history of alarming lights in the sky and earthlings assuming it just can’t be good.

Actor/ Director Orson Welles frightened many listeners in 1938 with his Halloween prank radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. It’s controversial just how many people actually feared Martian invasion. But a lot of listeners felt silly once the hoax was revealed, and CBS fought at least one lawsuit. For years after that, the skies remained more or less clear of extraterrestrial menace.

Until 1947. That’s when pilot Kenneth Arnold says he spotted flying objects skipping like saucers over the Cascade Range near Seattle. This time there was no Orson Welles to ‘fess up. UFOs were with us and became part of the cultural landscape.

Most turn out to be sightings of the planet Venus, aircraft, oddball reflections or swamp gas. (Really? Who’s fooled by swamp gas?)
Still, there was always a tiny minority of reports that defied easy explanation.

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FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Air Force Reports on Aircrew Encounters with Unidentified Flying Craft

Article by Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway                          June 26, 2020                           (thedrive.com)

• In 2019, reports emerged from US Navy pilots of UFO encounters off the East Coast and in the Middle East. (see previous ExoArticles here and here) Since then The War Zone website has collected Navy and Air Force incident reports through Freedom of Information Act requests. In this article, The War Zone has compiled 25 reports obtained through FOIA from the Air Force Safety Center.

• The UFO issue, especially involving US military aircraft, was thrust back into the public spotlight in June when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence demanded a full accounting of matters pertaining to UFOs from the Pentagon and the US Intelligence Community. (see previous ExoArticle here) The incident reports listed below may be among the information provided to the Senate Committee.

• Only the November 1, 2017 report involves a combat jet and only the April 21, 2015 report involves ‘tactical aircraft’, which The War Zone considers “extremely odd”. Fighter jets and tactical aircraft have the most capable radars and other sensors to spot and track small, unidentified objects. Additional reports may be getting passed through separate or even classified systems, outside the normal reporting channels for military aviation safety incidents. The Black Vault received a number of internal Air Force Emails via FOIA related to this topic, including one that said, “Currently the Air Force is not working any specific guidelines for reporting UAPs.”

• The 25 reports show the steady rise of lower-end drone activity – an increasing issue for commercial air operations. Regulators around the world, including the Federal Aviation Administration, have struggled to develop rules and guidelines that are practical and enforceable. This underscores the fact that small drones present real safety concerns to U.S. military activities at home, as well as abroad. The proliferation of cheap but capable drone technology enables non-state actors, in addition to the military forces of nation-states, to increasingly employ unmanned aircraft for surveillance and actual kinetic attacks on and off the battlefield. This is a threat that the DoD was astonishingly too incurious to recognize.

• #1 June 17, 2014: 27th Special Operations Wing – The 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico reported an unidentified fixed-wing aircraft flying under Visual Flight Rules intruding into the nearby R5104 range area between 11:04 and 11:22am. Communications could not be established with the aircraft.

• #2 July 2, 2014: 58th Special Operations Wing – An “unidentified helicopter” flew under the two aircraft at a distance of between 100 and 300 feet near Sorocco, New Mexico. The HC-130P’s crew first spotted a bright light near the aircraft. An accompanying HH-60G crew also saw it. The light grew brighter, blinding the pilots using night-vision goggles. No communication was established with the unidentified helicopter.

• #3 July 24, 2014: 317th Airlift Group – A C-130J Hercules airlift had a near-collision with an unidentified light fixed-wing aircraft approximately eight miles to the south of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, during a training mission.

• #4 November 21, 2014: 121st Aerial Refueling Wing – A KC-135R tanker was given notice of a potential hazard from its Traffic Collision Avoidance System while climbing away from Wilmington Airpark near Wilmington, Ohio.

• #5 February 7, 2015: 45th Space Wing – An HC-130 Combat King combat search and rescue and tanker aircraft had an encounter with what was described as “a possible remote control aircraft” with a “flashing red light”. Personnel at Patrick Air Force Base tower spotted the remote control aircraft and contacted the Brevard Country Sheriff’s Office to investigate along with the Air Force Security Forces Squadron at Patrick. They found no further evidence of the object, which had been flying an estimated 900 to 1,000 feet in the air.

• #6 April 21, 2015: 379th Air Expeditionary Wing – A KC-135R tanker at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar visually saw an “unidentified aircraft” while conducting an aerial refueling mission over Afghanistan near Kandahar, but the object did not appear on radar with the tanker plane or air traffic control.

• #7 May 15, 2015: 100th Aerial Refueling Wing – A KC-135R Stratotanker had several near collisions with an unidentified aircraft while on approach to its home base of RAF Mildenhall, UK. When the tanker descended to 2,600 feet as part of their approach, air traffic controllers warned them about another aircraft directly below them. The crew climbed to 3,600 feet to avoid the craft. The crew never visually saw the other aircraft or received any radio calls from another plane warning of a potential collision.

• #8 May 21, 2015: 452nd Air Mobility Wing – A C-17A Globemaster III airlifter had a near-collision with an “unidentified remotely piloted aircraft” while on approach to March Air Reserve Base in California. The pilot said that the flying object came within 15 feet of the aircraft, passing it above and to the left.

• #9 July 25, 2015: 129th Rescue Wing – An MC-130P Combat Shadow search and rescue tanker aircraft had to take evasive action to avoid hitting an unidentified object during a nighttime training mission near Niagara Falls International Airport in New York State. While on approach to the airport, the pilot saw through their night-vision goggles an “object [that] appeared to be illuminated by a single external light” and that looked to “be accelerating from left to right” in front of them. The pilot took evasive action and passed directly over the object.

• #10 August 13, 2015: 452nd Air Mobility Wing – A KC-135R tanker suffered a near collision with what the crew described as a “quad-copter-type drone” 100 feet below the craft while flying a pattern around March Air Reserve Base in California. It continued on in the opposite direction from the KC-135R and “disappeared from sight.”

• #11 January 15, 2016: 45th Space Wing Wing – An American detachment at RAF Ascension Island, a territory of the United Kingdom in the South Atlantic Ocean, reported seeing an “unauthorized personal drone” at two separate locations. The RAF pilots did not see the drone nor did it interfere with their landing, but the 45th Space Wing described the incident as having a “high accident potential.”

• #12 April 21, 2016: 193rd Special Operations Wing – An EC-130J(SJ) aircraft had a near collision with a small drone flying at around 4,000 feet while in contact with aircraft controllers at Philadelphia International Airport. The crew initially thought they saw a bird, until they saw a flashing red light pass 3 feet above the left wing.

• #13 January 25, 2017: 27th Special Operations Wing – An unidentified private fixed-wing aircraft flying at around 10,000 feet intruded into restricted airspace near Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico at 4:10pm. Cannon’s Radar Approach Control lost the signal from the aircraft’s transponder by 4:37.

• #14 June 9, 2017: 12th Flying Training Wing – A T-6A Texan II trainer had a near collision with a “red unmanned aerial system” while flying south of the Mobile Bay Bridge in Alabama. “The UAS was spotted approximately one half to one wingtip away from the EA [Event Aircraft] and was co-altitude.”

• #15 November 1, 2017: 48th Fighter Wing – An F-15E Strike performed evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with an “unidentified flying object” while flying near its home base at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. “The object passed over the right side of the aircraft with an estimated minimal separation of 100 feet.”

• #16 January 20, 2018: 47th Flying Training Wing – A T-1 Jayhawk training jet reported a near-collision with an “unidentifiable unmanned drone” while on approach to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona, 4.2 miles from the airport’s runway. The aircraft was flying at 1,300 feet and flew right under the drone. Both pilots identified it as a UAV due to the fact it was hovering, and they saw a small white steady light emanating as they passed underneath it.

• #17 February 7, 2018: 71st Flying Training Wing – A T-38C Talon jet trainer had a near collision with a drone while on approach to Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, coming within 300 feet of the jet trainer.

• #18 February 5, 2018: 325th Fighter Wing – The pilot of a transient US Navy T-6A Texan II aircraft was on approach to Tyndall Air Force Base at 1000 feet when they spotted an unmanned aircraft 1,200 feet off his left wing. The pilot “noticed sun glint off of metal, this is when he realized the black object was not a bird and that it was moving to the southeast.”

• #19 March 26, 2018: 45th Space Wing – The pilot of a civilian helicopter flying near Patrick Air Force Base in Florida “had a model airplane come within about 100 feet.” All the other major details about this incident are redacted, but it appears to have led to the issuance of a formal Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) regarding the potentially hazardous situation.

• #20 September 10, 2018: 86th Airlift Wing – A C-130Js had a near collision with an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle while flying near Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The report describes the drone as “spherical with an approximated 6 feet diameter top mounted rotor.”

• #21 March 6, 2019: 12th Flying Training Wing – A T-1 Jayhawk training jet reported seeing “a quad copter or non-traditional aircraft” that was “silver in color” while flying in Mississippi on a low-level training flight. “The UAS was stationary or near stationary” and was seen within one nautical mile of the T-1 hovering at around 1,500 feet.

• #22 March 13, 2019: 445th Airlift Wing – A C-17A Globemaster III airlifter had to take evasive action to avoid a small drone during a training sortie on March 13, 2019. The aircraft was flying at approximately 3,500 feet over Ohio. “The pilot flying (PF) observed a white sUAS [small unmanned aerial system] with either brown or black accents or propellers just below the [Aircraft]…. within 50 feet.”

• #23 March 21, 2019: 552nd Air Control Wing – An E-3B Sentry flying at 3,000 feet reported that a “DJI style quad-copter/unmanned aerial system” passed by the aircraft approximately 20 feet below its number four engine. The crew also told air traffic controllers at Oklahoma City Approach that “they came close to one.”

• #24 July 25, 2019: 445th Airlift Wing – A C-17A Globemaster III airlifter, when departing RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, “visually acquired an orange colored small unmanned aerial system as it passed approximately 50′ below the left wing” after climbing out to an altitude of 7,500 feet. “

• #25 September 9, 2019: 109th Airlift Wing – An LC-130H Hercules airlifter reported a near-miss with a quad-copter-type drone while conducting a proficiency flight around Albany International Airport. During a climb out at 1,100 feet, the crew spotted the drone, yellow in color, approximately 300 feet away laterally and between 100 and 200 feet below.

 

Last year, reports emerged about Navy fighter pilots having numerous encounters with unidentified flying objects while flying in restricted airspace off the East Coast of the United States. Details remain limited, though The War Zone has been steadily collecting more and more information that could help explain many of those incidents. At the same time, curiously, there haven’t been virtually any revelations about similar encounters with other U.S. military services’ flying branches, especially the Air Force, which is the entity primarily responsible for safeguarding America’s airspace.

In May, The War Zone was first to publish details from a number of hazard reports from the Naval Safety Center, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). regarding interactions between that service’s aircraft and unknown aerial craft that offered an additional look into what might be happening, why, and how these encounters were or weren’t getting reported. We can now share information from 25 similar reports obtained through the FOIA from the Air Force Safety Center.

This whole issue, especially regarding U.S. military aircraft encountering unidentified objects when flying over or near the United States proper, was thrust back into the public consciousness just this week. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said that it was looking to get a full accounting of the issue from the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Pentagon. As part of a report accompanying the latest draft of the Senate version Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, the Committee members included language asking for a detailed review of exactly what information about these kinds of incidents exists now, how new data is getting collected, how this is all shared within the federal government, and what threats these aerial objects might pose, including whether they might reflect technological breakthroughs by potential adversaries. These Air Force reports, as well as the previously disclosed ones that the Navy has on file, could easily be among the information that the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense might end up compiling for Senators to review.

The 25 reports that The War Zone obtained, which cover various types of incidents around the world and come from the Air Force Safety Automated System (AFSAS) database, came in response to a request that asked for copies of “any flight incident, hazard, or similar reports that the Air Force Safety Center received during the calendar years 2013 to 2019 that deal with encounters that any Air Force aircraft had anywhere in the world with any unidentified aerial objects.”

This date range was meant to capture a snapshot of similar experiences that the Air Force might have been having around when Navy pilots said they saw a spike in the number of encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, more commonly known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, off the East Coast of the United States through the end of the most recent complete calendar year.

Personal identifying information is redacted throughout the Air Force reports. “Safety investigation boards’ Findings, Evaluations, Analyses, Conclusions, and Recommendations are exempt from disclosure,” the Air Force Safety Center also said in a letter accompanying the release, citing various Air Force and Department of Defense regulations, as well as relevant FOIA case law, which you can read in full, with certain personal information redacted by us, here.

“All other privileged portions of the report have been withheld according to established laws,” the letter added. “Unfortunately, some pages are virtually illegible due to the quality of the microfilm record and our capability to reproduce it.”

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The Letter the Navy Sent a Congressman Who Was Demanding Answers About UFOs

 

Article by Joseph Trevithick                             March 6, 2020                              (thedrive.com)

• Last year, Congressman Mark Walker, (R-NC) and a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security (pictured above), wrote a letter to the US Navy demanding answers to the military’s UFO sightings. On July 31, 2019, then-Under Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly wrote a responsive letter to the Congressman, who deemed it “frustratingly insufficient”. Politico reported on the response in September 2019, but didn’t publish the letter itself. On March 5, 2020, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, The War Zone obtained a complete, unredacted copy of the responsive letter.

• In his July 31 responsive letter, Moldy wrote, “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled training ranges and designated air space in recent years. …The Department of the Navy (DON) takes these reports very seriously and continues to log sightings and fully investigate the accounts.”

• Congressman Walker’s original letter clearly asked the Navy for information about the highly publicized incidents that fighter pilots had reported, which involved flying craft capable of extreme levels of speed and maneuverability (ie: the “Tic Tac” UFO). But Modly’s letter makes no mention of the high-profile UFO/UAP incidents involving US Navy pilots and personnel dating back to at least 2004. It also does not mention the DoD/DIA’s Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program or its predecessor program.

• Instead, the Navy’s response focused on drones buzzing military bases. “The wide proliferation and availability of inexpensive unmanned aerial systems (UAS) has increasingly made airspace de-confliction an issue for our aviators.” Moldy’s letter then addresses what the Navy is doing about these drones. “Naval aircrews have been provided reporting guidance to determine the frequency and location of UAS operating in training areas. …The Department of the Navy continues to dedicate resources to the tracking and investigation of reports that could affect the safety of our aircrews.”

• Modly’s letter ends by saying that the Navy will continue to work with the House of Representatives via the House Armed Services Committee, of which Walker is not a member. It does not address the release of data or physical evidence relating to reported UAP sightings, which the letter specifically sought.

• Walker had sent his letter because the reported UAP incidents represented a threat to Homeland Security, including commercial and civilian aircraft as well as military ones flying in US Airspace. With these mysterious UAPs roaming the skies, Navy pilots had expressed concern for their safety. The responsive letter from the Under Secretary did little to alleviate those concerns.

• In a statement, Walker said: “While I am encouraged the Under Secretary of the Navy confirmed that UAP encounters are fully investigated, there is frustration with the lack of answers to specific questions about the threat that superior aircraft flying in United States airspace may pose. …If the Navy believes that China or Russia possesses advanced aerospace technologies that represent a national security vulnerability, the American people have the right to know what their government is doing about it.”

• It’s unclear if Walker, or any other members of Congress, have followed up or otherwise succeeded in obtaining additional information on this issue. Some Senators and the President have received classified briefings on the UAP sightings. But in September 2019, the Navy stated that it had not received any further requests from legislators on this topic.

• Whatever the case, the public safety and national security concerns surrounding UAP sightings are still very much in the public consciousnesses.

 

Last year, Congressman Mark Walker, a Republican from North Carolina and a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote a letter to the U.S. Navy demanding answers regarding sightings of what are commonly referred to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Now, The War Zone has obtained a complete copy of the service’s response to these questions about how it is recording and assessing incidents involving what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, which the lawmaker has already said he felt was frustratingly insufficient.

On Mar. 5, 2020, the Navy released an unredacted copy of the letter, which then-Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly wrote on July 31, 2019, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Politico was first to report on this letter, after obtaining a copy, in September 2019, but did not publish or otherwise reproduce it in full.

Walker had sent his initial letter, addressed to then-Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, on July 16, 2019, and had made a copy publicly available on July 29, which the War Zone reported on at the time. It is also worth noting that Modly has been Acting Secretary of the Navy since Spencer resigned in November 2019.

“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled training ranges and designated air space in recent years,” Modly wrote in this July 31 response. “The Department of the Navy (DON) takes these reports very seriously and continues to log sightings and fully investigate the accounts.”

Modly’s letter makes no mention of a number of high profile UAP incidents involving Navy F/A-18C/D Hornet and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets, dating back to at least 2004. You can read more about these particular events in detail in these past War Zone stories.

It also does not discuss any Navy connection to the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program (AATIP), or its predecessor, the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) program, which existed for various periods of time within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. You can find out more about those programs in these previous War Zone pieces.

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Near Miss in Birmingham Skies Among Dozens of Pilot UFO Reports

Listen to “E103 9-21-19 Near Miss in Birmingham Skies Among Dozens of Pilot UFO Reports” on Spreaker.
Article by Bev Holder                     September 9, 2019                       (stourbridgenews.co.uk)

• British pilots have reported dozens of “near misses” with UFOs in the skies over the United Kingdom. Investigations by the UK Airprox Board showed 36 such near misses involving aircraft and ‘unknown objects’ since May 2017 – with nearly a quarter of them involving a “high risk” of collision.

• On July 5, 2018 at around 9:30 am, the pilot of a small propeller aircraft reported a small “rectangle or elliptical object pass 500 to 1,000-ft below” the plane as he was cruising at around 16,000-ft about 10 nautical miles north of Birmingham. “There was no time to take any avoiding action.”

• The pilot of an Airbus A321 was flying at around 900-ft on final approach to Birmingham Airport “when he saw an object pass directly beneath the aircraft”. The pilot said that the object, which passed about 25 feet below the plane, “was either some sort of balloon or drone”. The Board listed this one as a category ‘A’ high risk of collision event.

• The Civil Aviation Authority says the vast majority of reports involved drones, model aircraft or balloons – although it is against the law to fly drones above 400-ft and close to airports.

• Nick Pope, who investigated UFO sightings for the Ministry of Defence in the 1990s, says the authorities may be “missing a trick by being too quick to blame drones”. Most unidentified objects were sighted at altitudes much higher than drones would typically or can legally be flown.

• The UK Airprox Board has a significant number of such accounts and there are numerous reports in the MoD’s UFO files. Pope says that, “In most cases, sightings turn out to be birds, weather balloons, plastic bags or bin liners, or Chinese lanterns, while some are indeed attributable to drones. However, other cases remain unexplained even after thorough investigation, and this is of concern.” “[I]t raises important defense, national security and – as we see here – air safety issues.”

• Dr David Clarke, from the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University, is not convinced the sightings are of intergalactic spacecraft. “Things that are unexplained are likely to be natural phenomenon – not aliens from other planets.”

• David Taylor of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena believes we should be cautious about witness testimonies of strange objects in the sky. “The majority of all anomalous reports – I would say around 95 per cent – are explainable in rational terms, either with known phenomena (misidentification, drones, birds, military tests etc.) and currently little understood phenomena (ball lightning, earthquake lights etc).” But, Taylor says, “[W]e must resist the temptation to dismiss them all out of hand.”

 

A close encounter with a mystery object in the skies near Birmingham was among dozens of baffling near misses reported by pilots in UK airspace, a Newsquest data investigation has revealed.

Investigations carried out by the UK Airprox Board show 36 such near misses involving aircraft and ‘unknown objects’ have been reported in UK skies since May 2017 – and nearly a quarter involved a high risk of collision.

One of the reports tells how the pilot of a BE90 small propeller aircraft saw a “rectangle or elliptical object pass 500 to 1,000-ft below” the plane as he was cruising at around 16,000-ft about 10 nautical miles north of Birmingham.

The incident happened on July 5, 2018, at around 9.30am, and the report states the pilot estimated the object to be 50-100cm long and it was “either hovering or travelling in the opposite direction” but “he only saw it for about 2 seconds before it passed underneath the aircraft”.

The Board, which monitors close calls between aircraft and other objects in the skies such as drones and balloons, determined the risk of collision was low but the report stated: “There was no time to take any avoiding action.”

Another incident involving an ‘unknown object’ was listed as a category A high risk of collision event and the report says the pilot of an Airbus A321 was flying at around 900-ft on final approach to Birmingham Airport “when he saw an object pass directly beneath the aircraft”.

It says the reported separation between the aircraft and the unidentified object was just 25-ft vertically and it adds that the pilot “thought it was either some sort of balloon or drone”.

The Board concluded there had been a definite risk of collision but it was not able to ascertain whether the object was a drone or a balloon so it was listed as ‘unknown’.

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Bizarre Drone Formation in US Skies Sparks World War III Fear

by Nirmal Narayanan              April 16, 2018               (ibtimes.sg)

• A video shot by a Michigan woman, Kaylin Nicole Adams, in mid-April (see 1:47 minute video below) shows a bizarre formation of lights in the skies that flash and move together as if they were remotely controlled.

• “I was driving when I first noticed them, I was very shocked. We pulled over, along with many others to be able to get a better view of it. I was not expecting it all,” said Kaylin.

• Some folks believe that these are a number of small UFOs exiting a larger mothership. Others believe that it is a large cluster of drones controlled by earthlings. Some even argue that these are holograms projected in the sky. Still, some are saying that it heralds World War III, amidst rising tensions with Russia over Syria.

A video apparently shot in Michigan by a woman named Kaylin Nicole Adams is now going viral on the internet. The clip shows a bizarre formation of lights in the skies, and they appear to flash and move together as if they were remotely controlled.

Soon after shooting the video, she uploaded it to her Facebook page where it racked up more than 70,000 views in less than one hour. The video was later shared on YouTube by conspiracy theory channel UFOmania, and it has attracted 23,000 views since its upload.

“I was driving when I first noticed them, I was very shocked. We pulled over, along with many others to be able to get a better view of it. I was not expecting it all,” said Kaylin, Daily Star reports.

As the video went viral on online spaces, people started coming out with several possible theories to explain the weird sighting.

Most of the people who watched the video claimed that these are alien UFOs which came from deep space. They even argued that aliens have been visiting earth for many years, and the government is very much aware of its existence. According to these theorists, aliens have appeared in the skies to warn that a war is about to begin soon.

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