The American edition has published real reports of the US Navy pilots on encounters with unidentified flying objects over the past few years. Journalists note that the documents themselves contain some oddities, and according to some indications, a significant proportion of such cases were classified.
In total, The War Zone reports that it has received eight documents marked "unclassified" and "for official use only." Seven of them relate to the events that occurred with the F / A-18E / F Super Hornet aircraft (carrier-based fighters of the American naval aviation) between 2013 and 2014 in the airspace off the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. The eighth document describes an incident in 2019 involving a Grower EA-18G (a US Navy carrier-based electronic warfare aircraft developed from the "super hornets"), flying in another part of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland. These are reported to be the only messages stored in the WAMHRS centralized aviation incident database.
UFO and a mysterious ship
On June 27, 2013, F / A-18F of the 11th Fighter Squadron, taking off from the Oceana Naval Aviation Base, Virginia, encountered "a white aircraft, approximately the shape and size of a drone or missile." The pilots observed the object when it passed to their right at an altitude of about 5000 meters. The unknown plane was gaining altitude and had a visible exhaust trail.
At the same time, neither the Super Hornet, nor the Oceana recorded the aircraft's radar track. 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 Naval Airside Control Center in Virginia Capes said that "no aircraft have been identified [sic] or tagged in the area."
The Navy did not issue any NOTAMs or TFRs based on this hazard report, but did circulate internal notifications to tactical aviation units, air traffic controllers and drone operators of the potential hazard associated with unauthorized or inconsistent drone actions.
A few months later, on November 18, 2013, F / A-18E Super Hornet from Squadron 143 detected an unidentified object flying at an altitude of about 3700 meters at a speed of Mach 0.1.
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According to the report, the US Navy concluded that the object was an unmanned aerial system, but the special agencies were again unable to identify the operator of the device. As in the previous case, the command limited itself to issuing internal warnings.
Curiously enough, as the document states, "there was little surface movement during the incident, with only one commercial fishing trawler and one unidentified US naval vessel heading south," while which vessel it was, "could not be identified ". "It is not entirely clear how the Navy was able to determine that one of their ships was operating on the surface in the same area, but could not figure out which ship it was," the author of the article notes.
Flying "suitcase"
On March 26, 2014, a Super Hornet from Squadron 106, taking off from Oceana Base, discovered a possible radar track at an altitude of about 5800 meters, the object was moving at a speed of Mach 0.1. The pilot did not display the object on the radar, so there was a debate between the pilots whether the track could be displayed erroneously due to the strong wind.
“The unknown plane turned out to be small, about the size of a suitcase, and silver in color,” the message says. The pilot was only able to pass within three hundred meters of him and was unable to identify the device. After that, the pilots lost sight of the object and were no longer able to restore visual contact.
Ground control systems again failed to spot the 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 signals "friend or foe", which is a "serious security problem."
“I feel like it’s only a matter of time before one of our F / A-18s will collide with an unidentified UAS [unmanned aircraft system] in the air,” he added.
In this case, neither NOTAM nor TFR was issued, although internal warnings followed.
Ball-shaped UFOs and dog fights
On April 24, 2014, another Super Hornet from Squadron 11 collided with several Unidentified Airborne Devices (UADs) while taking off from the Oceana Naval Airfield. The crew initially spotted two such objects on radar, one at 3,700 meters and the other at 4,600 meters. Both objects were nearly stationary at Mach 0.0. Then the presence of the devices was confirmed using an infrared sight (ATFLIR).
During the study of the first pair of UADs in the ATFLIR "field of view", apparently, two more objects passed at high speed. The aircraft's radar did not show two moving vehicles.
Again, it was not possible to identify the objects and establish their operators. The end of this report is similar to the previous ones - again it says that "a collision in the air is only a matter of time." The command again did not impose restrictions on flights, 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 aerial combat (known as dogfighting). … Both aircraft recorded the object on radar - the UFO hovered at an altitude of about 3500 meters and did not move. No visual contact was established.
On April 27, 2014, for the third time in five days, an F / A-18F crew of 11 Squadron, taking off from Oceana Base, reported a collision with an unknown aerial device.
Otherwise, this report is the most "Spartan" in terms of details. As in all other cases, US Navy officials sent out many internal warnings.
On February 13, 2019, almost five years after the last unidentified object collision in the US Navy's database, the crew of the EA-18G Growler combat aircraft of 23rd Air Test Squadron took off from Patuxent River Naval Airfield in Maryland, visually noticed what was called the "red weather balloon" in the report, located at an altitude of 8200 meters.
Neither military nor civilian control services were aware of any planned balloon actions. The report says the Navy was unable to identify the individuals or organizations responsible for the balloon's lift. Various internal warnings were issued in response to the incident.
Are the rest of the UFO encounters hiding?
Recall that these are only reports officially recorded in the database of meetings of naval aviation with UFOs. Apparently, in fact, there were more such meetings, given the previous reports of Navy pilots, both official and unofficial, that several such incidents occurred over the Atlantic in 2014-2015. But there are no reports about that period in the database.
The War Zone received a copy of a report on another incident involving F / A-18Es from 106 Squadron on March 13, 2018. Then the crew saw four separate unknown objects off the coast of North Carolina on radar. According to the report, all vehicles moved at a speed of approximately Mach 0.1 at an altitude of 5000 to 6700 meters. The pilot visually identified one of them at an altitude of 6,000 meters. The device, he said, was a drone in the form of a quadcopter about a meter wide. The objects, the pilot said, hardly moved and were scattered over an area 40-50 miles wide. The closest craft was 15 miles from the only boat seen in the area.
The report lacks a serial number, which raises questions about where the document may have ultimately been sent and what official actions the Navy could take in this regard. According to the publication, the squadron passed the report to the fighter wing, and one would expect that from there the document would be sent to the database, but it seems that this did not happen. This looks odd considering that the squadron commander has repeatedly stated the security threat posed by these UFOs.
In this regard, the publication recalls the incident with the flying object "Tik-Tak", radar and visually observed in November 2004 off 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 that incident, the AUG chief scout sent a full report to the US Navy's 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 involved aircraft from 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 have 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 accidents with UFOs may have a completely terrestrial reason: supposedly aircraft could be sent to the training zone of the American military aviation by a potential enemy in order to collect intelligence data.
We will remind, at the end of April, the Pentagon published three videos, which captured "unidentified phenomena." One of them was recorded in November 2004, the other two - in January 2015, according to the agency's website. All of these videos in 2007 and 2017 were made publicly available without the approval of the US Department of Defense. Their authenticity was confirmed by the US Navy. Note that we are talking about incidents not described in the article The War Zone.
