Tag: North Carolina

US Marines Say Goodbye Tanks and Hello Space

Article by Peter Suciu                                      November 27, 2020                                   (news.clearancejobs.com)

• Back in 1775, the US Marine Corps was known as the Continental Marines. It consisted of two battalions with one Colonel, two lieutenant-colonels, two majors and other officers. Following the American Revolution, the Continental Marines, was dis-established as part of the Continental Navy, and then re-established in 1798. Since then, the Marine Corps has played a role in every American conflict, continuing to evolve with the times.

• The Marine Corps is now undergoing its biggest transformation in decades, transitioning from a “second land army” back to its maritime roots, which include defending ships at sea, island-hopping, and battling for contested coastlines – all in preparation for potential conflict with adversaries such as China.

• In March, the Marine Corps announced it would undergo a 10-year transformation, eliminating its tank battalions, bridging companies, and law enforcement battalions to better meet the demands of the 2018 United States National Defense Strategy. The USMC is also scaling back the number of infantry battalions, artillery cannon batteries, and amphibious vehicle companies. In addition, the Marines could cut back on the MV-22 Osprey, attack and heavy-lift squadrons, and stealth fighters.

• As tanks and bridging units are phased out, the Marine Corps reactivated the 2nd Landing Support Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina last month. The landing support unit, which played a crucial role during World War II’s Pacific island hopping campaign, hadn’t been active in more than four decades.

• “The re-establishment of 2nd Landing Support Battalion comes during a time of significant transformation within the Marine Corps,” said Lt. Col. Randall L. Nickel, commanding officer of 2nd Landing Support Battalion. “[L]anding support to the Fleet Marine Force is essential to ensure … a persistent forward naval presence that has long been the hallmark of US expeditionary forces.”

• The Marine Corps’ tradition of island hopping may evolve into “planet hopping” with the service’s future role in space. This month, Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger directed the activation of Marine Corps Forces Space Command (MARFORSPACE). Based out of Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, MARFORSPACE will provide space operation support to the Fleet Marine Force.

• MARFORSPACE is under the command of Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Matthew G. Glavy who also serves as commander of the Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command. “Space and cyber are critical capabilities in the information environment that, when brought together, can provide a competitive advantage,” said Glavy. “We cannot be successful in these technology-heavy domains without prioritizing people, ideas and things … in that order.”

 

November 10 marked the 245th anniversary of the United States Marine Corps – which back in 1775 was known as the Continental Marines. At the time, it consisted of two battalions with one Colonel, two lieutenant-colonels, two majors and other officers. Following the American Revolution, the Continental Marines, as part of the Continental Navy, was disestablished – but was reestablished in July 1798 under President John Adams.

The Marine Corps has played a role in every American conflict since then, and over the past 245 years this elite fighting force has continued to evolve. It is now undergoing its biggest transformation in decades.

TRANSFORMATION PLAN

 

     Commandant General David Berger

In March, the Marine Corps announced it would undergo an ambitious 10-year transformation plan, which would see the service eliminate its entire tank force – including all of its tank battalions as well as its bridging companies and law enforcement battalions.

       Lt. Col. Randall L. Nickel

The changes are meant to allow the Marine Corps to be better optimized to meet the demands of the United States National Defense Strategy. This focus began last year when the service began force design activities focused on adapting capabilities to properly shape the Marine Corps’ contributions to naval warfare and joint force operations.

The Marine Corps is now making that transition from a “second land army” back to its maritime roots, which include defending ships at sea, island-hopping, and battling for contested coastlines, all in preparation for potential conflict with near-peer adversaries such as China.

    Maj. Gen. Matthew G. Glavy

As part of this ambitious plan, the USMC announced that it would also scale back the total number of infantry battalions from 24 to 21, artillery cannon batteries from 21 to five and amphibious vehicle companies from six to four. In addition, the Marines could cut back on the MV-22 Osprey, attack and heavy-lift squadrons – and would even reduce the number of F-35B and F-35C fifth-generation stealth fighters per squadron from 16 to just 10.

NO MORE TANKS

The reorganization efforts have brought an end to the USMC 1st Tank Battalion, which was activated on November 1, 1941, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and attached to the 1st Marine Division. Tanks from Companies A and B took part in the landings at Guadalcanal in August 1942 and had their first major encounter with the enemy on August 21.

The Marine Corps has been steadily deactivating its tank units, and this month that included Bravo Company, 2d Tank Battalion. In accordance with Marine Corps Force Design 2030, the 2nd Tank Battalion was deactivated to optimize the Marine Corps’ ability to conduct naval expeditionary warfare.

In total, about 1,300 Marines will be impacted by the tank deactivations.
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Cities Across the Carolinas Report UFO Sightings

Article by Joe Marusak                              August 27, 2020                               (charlotteobserver.com)

• The San Francisco-based True People SearchNational compiled the rankings of US cities with the most UFO sighting reports sent to the National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport, Washington. Founded in 1974, NUFORC offers both an online form and a telphone hotline for people in the US and Canada to add their ‘objective UFO data’ to a public database.

• The True People website analyzed more than 80,000 reported UFO sightings, and then narrowed it down to 446 cities with 25 or more sightings over a 114 year period, through 2014. Seattle topped the list of major cities with 620 sightings, more than double second-place Phoenix. Charlotte, NC and Jacksonville, Florida were the only Eastern US cities making the top ten.

• Nationwide, “lights have been reported to move in weird patterns, flash, appear and disappear, display in a formation, and more. While some lights can be explained as an aircraft originating from Earth, a meteor, or satellites, some reports have remained shrouded in mystery,” says Mitchell Barrick, content director for True People Search Insights.

• Charlotte’s 153 sightings of mysterious lights, discs and orbs in the sky since 1910 ranked ninth among the 25 largest cities by population. ‘Unexplained light in the sky’ is the most commonly reported type of UFO in the US, “and this holds true for Charlotte,” said Barrick. Other commonly reported objects in the US include triangles, circles, fireballs, disks, sphere, snake-like UFOs (cigars and cylinders), chevrons, eggs and cones.

• Adjusting for comparative population density, however, Charlotte had 17 reported UFO sightings per 100,000 people, which ranks 37th in North America and only 6th in North Carolina. Three South Carolina cities were ranked in the top ten when comparing population density. Surfside Beach, SC came in at No. 3 with 671 sightings per 100,000 people; Myrtle Beach at No. 6 with 507 sightings; and North Myrtle Beach at No. 9 with 380 sightings. Wilmington ranked highest per capita in North Carolina. Its 58 sightings translated to 47 sightings per 100,000 people, good for 162nd place in North America, followed by Asheville with 43 sightings (168th place); Gastonia with 25 sightings (252nd place); Fayetteville with 43 sightings (351st place); and Greensboro with 56 sightings (364th place). After these came Cary with 28 sightings; Raleigh with 78 sightings; Durham with 33 sightings; and Winston-Salem with 27 sightings.

• According to Barrick, “[I]t’s our theory that a higher frequency of sightings correlates with a higher percentage of reports from people who believe they have genuinely seen something in the sky that they cannot explain: a UFO.”

• Peter Davenport, director of the National UFO Reporting Center, said NUFORC has received a spate of recent UFO reports from the Carolina coast. People have reported red, orange, yellow, amber and gold lights in the sky above the Atlantic Ocean – lights with no earthly explanation. For instance, on August 18, a retired senior law enforcement official in Conway, SC saw a tiny, white colored, strobing light fly overhead from NNE to SSW. The object is joined by a second similar object, and then two more, for a total of four objects. (see 1:52 minute video below) “Because of the strobing, and because of the direction the objects were traveling, the witness doubted whether they could have been ‘Starlink’ satellites.”

• Another phenomena associated with the Carolinas for over a century are mysterious apparitions known as the ‘Brown Mountain Lights’ which have been reported in the North Carolina highlands. In summer 2016, a scientific team from Appalachian State University captured on video a bright orb that “suddenly appeared and then vanished” high above a Brown Mountain ridge. “Then it came back, same spot,” The Charlotte Observer reported. “And then an encore.”

 

Charlotte has managed to beam itself up into the ranking of the top 10 largest North American cities for total UFO sightings in the past century, a new study shows.

And other cities in the Carolinas made related lists for sightings per capita, including Wilmington, Asheville and Myrtle Beach.

The Queen City’s 153 sightings of mysterious lights, discs and orbs in the sky since 1910 had Charlotte ranked ninth among the 25 largest cities by population and tops in North Carolina. That’s according to San Francisco-based True People Search, which compiled the rankings based on sightings people sent to the National UFO Reporting Center in Davenport, Wash.

Founded in 1974, the non-profit center maintains a public database of “objective UFO data,” according to its website. It offers an online form and telephone hotline to report sightings.

The people-finder website analyzed more than 80,000 reported UFO sightings in the U.S. and Canada. It then narrowed the list to 446 cities with 25 or more total sightings over 114 years, through 2014, Mitchell Barrick, content director for True People Search Insights told The Charlotte Observer in an email Wednesday.

Seattle topped the list of major cities with 620 sightings, more than double second-place Phoenix. Jacksonville, Fla., was the only other Eastern U.S. city in the top 10, falling just one sighting shy of Charlotte’s overall total.

 

1:52 minute timelapse video of objects streaking over the NC Outer Banks (‘Wes Snyder Photography’ YouTube)

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143 UFO Sightings in North Carolina So Far in 2019

Listen to “E190 143 UFO Sightings in North Carolina So Far in 2019” on Spreaker.

Article by Kimberly Johnson                            December 4, 2019                             (patch.com)

• UFOs have been seen in the US since at least the mid-20th century when Kenneth Arnold, piloting a small plane, saw nine high-speed, crescent-shaped objects zooming along at several thousand miles per hour “like saucers skipping on water.” Although the objects weren’t saucer-shaped at all, his analogy led to the popularization of the term “flying saucers.” Ever since, the idea that aliens are circling the planet in strange-looking spacecraft has fascinated us.

• The National UFO Reporting Center’s website receives thousands of UFO reports annually. Here is one account from Gallipolis, Ohio: “A husband (former law enforcement) and wife (scientist), while sitting outside their recreational vehicle at a public campsite, witness a very bright light approach their campsite from the south in an erratic manner, appearing to slow or stop on several occasions as it drew near. It got within 50 yards, they estimate, of their campsite, at which time, out of a sense of alarm, the husband reached for his .45 caliber sidearm, but he felt unable to use his arm, or lift the firearm. The object, estimated by the witnesses to have been approximately 20 feet in diameter, hovered nearby for approximately 8 seconds, and then suddenly accelerated toward the west, and disappeared very quickly to the west.”

• At least 143 reports have been filed in North Carolina so far in 2019. For instance, On October 9, 2019 in Mooresville, North Carolina: “I was taking my dog out and I just by chance happened to see a bright flash in the sky. I looked up to see what I can only describe a ‘scrambler’ ride from the fair spinning in circle like a top and every time it spun around the arm had some “meteor blue” lights on each arm that swung around.. It didn’t have a repeating movement it was very erratic, but it just moved slowly right across the sky.”

• On October 12, 2019 in Huntersville, North Carolina: “I was driving on Saturday night… (when) I spotted several Orange pulsating orbs moving in straight line across the sky. These where not Chinese lanterns, flares, or airplanes. I could see directly into the orbs and they appeared to be generating some type of energy pulse. These objects where completely silent. They also appear out of nowhere and quickly disappeared once they passed by my direct view. The sighting lasted about 5 minutes one after another.”

• On November 25, 2019 in Wilksboro, North Carolina, a witness reported a “Circle looking silver object was hovering in the sky. … I thought I was crazy and even sprayed my windshield and wipers but it was still there. Weather was great and no clouds absolutely no way it was aircraft because it was there then it was gone so fast and not moving in the sky.”

• The idea of intergalactic UFOs got a boost when it was revealed that in 2007, Democratic Senator Harry Reid from Nevada, home of Area 51, funded a $22 million, multi-year Pentagon program to study UFOs.

• Then, in 2017, it was revealed that retired Navy Commander and pilot David Fravor had seen an oblong craft flying erratically through his airspace at incredible speed off of the coast of California in 2004, maneuvering in a way that defies accepted principles of aerodynamics. Fravor described the wingless object as about 40 feet long, shaped like a ‘Tic Tac’, and “other worldly”. When Fravor’s radar jammed and he flew closer, the craft zoomed upward and disappeared.

[Editor’s Note]   Speaking of UFOs over North Carolina, an Updated Exoarticle from October 21st exclusively reported that the “fleet” of lights which a tourist on the Outer Banks described as coming “from the Atlantic Ocean” was actually coming from the direction of Camp Lejune Marine Corp base and Jacksonville, NC to the southwest, and not from the ocean, due east. See Exoarticle here.

 

NORTH CAROLINA — The idea that we’re not alone and aliens from another galaxy are circling the planet in strange-looking spacecraft has long fascinated us. Thousands of reports of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, are filed every year. In North Carolina, at least 143 reports have been filed in 2019.

The National UFO Reporting Center’s website is filled with accounts like this one, from Gallipolis, Ohio:
“A husband (former law enforcement) and wife (scientist), while sitting outside their recreational vehicle at a public campsite, witness a very bright light approach their campsite from the south in an erratic manner, appearing to slow or stop on several occasions as it drew near. It got within 50 yards, they estimate, of their campsite, at which time, out of a sense of alarm, the husband reached for his .45 caliber sidearm, but he felt unable to use his arm, or lift the firearm. The object, estimated by the witnesses to have been approximately 20 feet in diameter, hovered nearby for approximately 8 seconds, and then suddenly accelerated toward the west, and disappeared very quickly to the west.”

Intrigued? Don’t be jealous of those folks in Ohio. Here’s some of what’s been reported in North Carolina:
• On Oct. 9, a Mooresville resident reported seeing an object moving north to south in the sky, saying: “I was taking my dog out and I just by chance happened to see a bright flash in the sky. I looked up to see what I can only describe a ‘scrambler’ ride from the fair spinning in circle like a top and every time it spun around the arm had some “meteor blue” lights on each arm that swung around.. It didn’t have a repeating movement it was very irractic, but it just moved slowly right across the sky.”

• Three days later, fireball shaped orange pulsating orbs were spotted in Huntersville. “I was driving on Saturday night 10/12/19 at 9:30pm in Huntersville North Carolina. I spotted several Orange pulsating orbs moving in straight line across the sky. These where not Chinese lanterns, Flares, or Airplanes.. I could see directly into the orbs and they appeared to be generating some type of energy pulse. These objects where completely silent. They also appear out of nowhere and quickly disappeared once they passed by my direct view. The sighting lasted about 5 minutes one after another,” the report said.

• Nov. 25, an unidentified object was reportedly spotted in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. “Circle looking silver object was hovering in the sky as I was driving past chick fil a towards Boone on 421 I thought I was crazy and even sprayed my windshield and wipers but it was still there. Weather was great and no clouds absolutely no way it was aircraft because it was there then it was gone so fast and not moving in the sky,” the report said.

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Hampton Roads’ Long, Strange History With UFOs

Listen to “E71 8-10-19 Hampton Roads’ Long, Strange History With UFOs” on Spreaker.

Article by Katherine Hafner, Matt Jones and Gordon Rago                August 2, 2019                   (pilotonline.com)

• There have long been reports of UFOs buzzing above Hampton Roads. Located in Southeastern Virginia, Hampton Roads, which includes Norfolk and Virginia Beach, is home to several military installations and NASA facilities. Reports of UFOs in the region can be traced back to 1813, when a Portsmouth tavern owner claimed to have watched “a ball of fire” weave over Norfolk County. He wrote about the incident to Thomas Jefferson.

• Jimmi Bonavita was a Virginia Beach police officer in the summer of 1975. He was sitting in his patrol car about 2 am when he saw five crescent-shaped “semi-translucent” globes coming over the horizon several miles out at treetop level. The five objects were traveling in formation, moving up and down as if bouncing. Then four Navy fighter jets armed with missiles flew by, apparently chasing the UFOs. Bonavita followed them, driving north toward the Oceanfront tourist area (pictured above). He saw the objects reach the beach and disappear over the Atlantic Ocean, outdistancing the Navy fighter jets. Says the now retired Bonavita, “I know that what I saw was real. It wasn’t an illusion.”

• On July 14th, 1952, flight officers William Nash and William Fortenberry were alone in the cockpit of their Pan American Airways Douglas DC-4, en route from New York to Miami. As they cruised over the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay, they spotted six glowing discs, each about 100 feet wide. Two more UFOs joined the formation over the Newport News peninsula, then entered a steep climb and disappeared into space. Nash told the AP, “There is no doubt in our minds that we saw missiles of some kind operating under intelligent control.” Days later, three Norfolk residents confirmed seeing the UFOs that day. Air Force officials at Langley AFB on the peninsula said that the pilots had seen rockets or tracers being fired at a nearby bombing range.

• More local sightings soon followed in July of 1952, making national news. A Hampton couple told the Daily Press newspaper that they had seen eight yellow-orange lights near the Chesapeake Bay coastline. A commercial airline pilot said he saw two pulsating white lights. Finally, radar at the National Airport picked up a formation of UFO’s over the nation’s capital and scrambled Air Force fighter jets in the infamous Washington, DC sighting.

• In 1957, it was reported in a Pilot newspaper article that an “experienced Ground Observer Corps member” at Langley Field in Newport News saw a “flattened-oval object” hovering in the sky. After watching it for about ten seconds, the object disappeared.

• In 1958, a Pilot newspaper reporter at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront saw a long silvery cylindrical object hovering stationary in the sky for several minutes. It then slowly began to move south toward North Carolina, emitting a stream of white exhaust. The reporter described it as “no known plane or missile”.

• During the 1960’s 70’s and 80’s, folks in Hampton Roads reported waves of UFO sightings. A 15-year-old boy fired two shotgun blasts at a UFO he saw in Poquoson (on the peninsula). In 1983, an Alexandria, Virginia man sued the Air Force, claiming the Langley base in Hampton was hiding “long-dead creatures from outer space packed in ice.”

• In 1965, a sheriff in Western Virginia became alarmed by the number of citizens carrying arms, and asked whether they had the “right to mow the (UFOs) down? ” The Virginia Attorney General ruled that there was no law against shooting “little green men’ from outer space”.

• While UFO sightings have been routinely dismissed, that changed in the spring of 2019 when several Navy pilots in the “Red Rippers” fighter squadron at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach reported routinely seeing UFOs from Virginia to Florida for several years, starting around 2014. They told the New York Times that the objects flew up to 30,000 feet in the air at hypersonic speeds, had no exhaust plumes, and moved in ways impossible for humans, with sudden stops and turns. One UFO was described as “a sphere encasing a cube.” (see Navy video of UFO flying off of the Virginia coast in 2015 below)

• Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher told The Virginian Pilot newspaper, “For quite some time, and especially within the past few years, there’s been an increase of observed incursions into our training areas, especially off of the Virginia capes” down to Florida. These sightings have occurred on a quite frequent basis.” In a policy reversal, Navy officials have gone down to the Oceana Master Jet Base to encourage pilots to report new sightings as soon as they happen.

• In 2003, Virginia Beach native, Cameron Pack, was driving when he and a friend saw triangular lights with “no structure, no shape, no outline,” flying low above the treetops. The lights flew straight over their car, then turned and moved away. It made a “God-awful noise,” Pack said. “Not like a jet noise but… like alive, almost. But still in a machine way. … We kind of knew it was something not normal and not from here.”

• Pack sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the city’s police department. In response, he received dozens UFO sighting reports made by local citizens. Between 1976 and 2008, the Virginia Beach Police Department collected detailed UFO reports, passing them along to a central UFO hotline. Among these accounts: November 1995, a caller’s daughter witnessed a circular object with lights on the bottom and making a humming sound, flying very low to the house; May 1988, someone reported a group of lights stopped still in the sky, then shot straight up; One woman reported an object with lights had followed her car from Salisbury, Md., to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.

• Kelly Herbst is an astronomy curator at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, and a UFO skeptic. When she gets calls from people seeing a UFO in the sky, she says that 9 times out of 10 it is the planet Venus. Says Kelly, “Your brain wants to explain these things. By nature, we do pattern recognition. So it’s trying to fit what it sees into its known experience.” According to the American Meteor Society, meteors can move in unusual paths, burn different colors depending on their chemical composition or explode and disappear in a flash of light. Kelly Herbst says that “Just about anything that appears in the sky can end up being misidentified.” Kelly thinks that what Virginia Beach police officer Jimmi Bonavita saw back in 1975 was a meteor. Kelly also blames fast-moving birds, weather balloons, Chinese lanterns, drones, military aircraft, clouds and the aurora borealis for mistaken UFOs.

• Carter Bulger of Virginia Beach is a volunteer field investigator with the Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON. Over the past three years, he’s been assigned about thirty local UFO cases. Someone from Newport News reported seeing a “small disc shaped object” glide in front of his truck about 60 feet in the air. It “looked transparent, but sunlight reflected off of rippled edges.” Bulger conducts recorded interviews with witnesses. He goes out to the scene and takes photos and videos. He checks weather records and submits public document requests to the Navy and Federal Aviation Administration seeking radar records. For the most part, Bulger has concluded his cases were indeed UFOs.

[Editor’s Note]    I won’t even go into the depth of cognitive dissonance that someone like Kelly Herbst must have to dismiss all UFO sightings across the board with such flimsy and boiler-plate explanations – birds, clouds and the aurora borealis.  She basically says that Navy fighter jets were chasing a meteor over Virginia Beach in 1975.  But I do find it very interesting that on July 14th, 1952, Pan Am pilots flying south to Miami spotted eight large glowing discs over the Virginia peninsula, with many others on the ground reporting the same.  Newspapers across the country reported on the glowing lights seen flying in formation over Washington D.C. from July 12th thru the 29th, 1952 (see ExoArticle here), and insiders such as William Tompkins and Corey Goode have revealed that these were early models of Antarctic Nazi-German electromagnetic/anti-gravity spacecraft buzzing the nation’s capital in order to put pressure on government and military authorities to assent to entering into a secret treaty with the Antarctic Germans, which Eisenhower did soon thereafter.  It would make sense that the Antarctic Germans would also buzz the Norfolk Naval Base to demonstrate their technical superiority.

 

VIRGINIA BEACH

Five crescent-shaped objects were traveling in formation, moving like saucers bouncing off the top of water. Up and down. Up and down.

Jimmi Bonavita, then a Virginia Beach police officer, saw the “semi-translucent” globes coming over the horizon, several miles out at treetop level. He revved up his patrol car.

It was early, around 2 a.m., in midsummer 1975.

Norfolk, Virginia

Then four Navy fighter jets came buzzing by, seemingly chasing the flying objects. Bonavita followed suit, zooming down the city’s roads to keep up. He wanted to keep them in sight.

The UFOs eventually went toward the Oceanfront and disappeared over the sea, outmaneuvering the pilots, said Bonavita, who’s now retired.

The scene, which could be straight out of a sci-fi movie, stuck with him the rest of his life — including the image of a jet flying right over his car.

“These planes were armed,” Bonavita, now a game warden with the Department of Defense and well-known local expert on snakes and other reptiles, recalled in an interview. “They had Sidewinder missiles. You don’t fly armed jets over a populated area unless it’s national security.”

It was his third and last UFO sighting. “I’ve long since given up what people think of me,” Bonavita said. “I know what I saw. I know that what I saw was real. It wasn’t an illusion. Can I explain it? No. But I’m not going to worry about it.”
There have long been reports of unidentified flying objects buzzing around Hampton Roads skies. It makes sense, with the region home to several military installations and NASA facilities.

Such reports can be traced as far back as 1813, when a Portsmouth tavern owner claimed to have watched “a ball of fire” weave over Norfolk County. He even wrote about the incident to Thomas Jefferson.

But often the sightings have been easily dismissed, written off and not taken seriously. That changed this spring.
The Navy updated its protocol for reporting what it calls unexplained aerial phenomena, and several pilots came forward saying they’d seen UFOs as close as Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. The move by military brass brought the topic out of the shadows, providing a sense of legitimacy to obsessed amateur sky watchers.
And to what they’ve seen.

Police and news reports, interviews and emails are full of flashing lights and objects that move like no other. Astronomers and others offer logical explanations for some sightings — but not all.

Read their accounts, and see: You just might find yourself wondering what’s out there when you look up.

36 second Navy jet video of “fast moving” UFO off of the Virginia coast in 2015 (USA Today)

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