The
New York Times online version has a UFO report that MR will love. (Unfortunately it's behind a paywall.) It will be in the Dec 17, 2017 print edition on page A22.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/po...-navy.html
Two experienced US Navy pilots were flying F-18 fighters in 2004 on a training mission about 100 miles west of San Diego. An operations officer from a Navy cruiser, the USS Princeton, radioed the pilots to ask if their jets were armed. (They weren't.) "Well, we've got a real world vector for you" the cruiser said.
The backstory is that for about two weeks prior to this, Navy radar had been seeing radar contacts dropping suddenly from above 80,000 feet, stopping at 20,000 feet where they hovered. Then they either disappeared or ascended vertically the way they had come.
Now it was happening again while two jets were close by. So the two jets were dispatched to the point where the cruiser said their radar had the unidentified contact located. When they got there, neither pilot saw anything.... at first.
Then one of the pilots looked down at the sea. He saw a very large object just below the surface. The ocean was behaving strangely around it, churning and boiling. And directly above the object agitating the water was a flying object, a white oval about 40 feet across.
One of the pilots began a circling descent to get a closer look while the other stood watch above. As the descending jet began spiraling down the white oval rose as if it meant to meet him halfway. At that point the pilot stopped circling and flew straight towards the object.
The white oval then flew away with an acceleration and velocity that no known aircraft could match. (The
Times story doesn't say what the larger object in the water did.)
The two jet pilots talked to the operations guy on the cruiser who directed them to fly to a 'cap point' (apparently this is a reference point on their onboard navigational computer display) about 60 miles away. A minute later, the cruiser informed them "...you won't believe it, but that thing is at your cap point!" (60 miles/minute x 60 minutes/hour = 3,600 mph). When the two jets got there, the contact was gone.
No wings, rotors or exhaust plumes were seen associated with the white oval. It just flew, very fast.
The two jets returned to the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and landed safely. Their squadron had heard about it and made lots of jokes about little green men. The pilots never heard anything more about it, but apparently the report of the incident ended up in Washington and drew some attention.
There seem to be a number of similar reports that can't just be sneeringly dismissed with assertions that anyone who takes reports like these seriously is "intellectually dishonest"! Reports of sightings have been associated with military bases, nuclear power plants and sensitive sites like that which aroused concern.
I'm inclined to think that there's a real possibility (obviously not a certainty) that something interesting is happening in the skies (and maybe under the seas as well). If there is, I don't have a clue what it might be. But the possibility shouldn't just be ignored out of stubborn closed-mindedness.
Dec 16, 2017 07:23 PM
