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FAA Tapes from That Oregon UFO Incident

282 points by tensor_rank_0 9y ago

jarym 9y ago
Based on the current climate it would not be surprising if this ends up being a ‘blame the Russians’ moment
foota 9y ago
I wonder if there's any publicly available satellite footage, from someone like planet.com
- patrickyeon 9y ago
  (Planet employee here) Planet imaging happens in the late morning, because that's when we tend to get clearer atmosphere, relatively short shadows, but minimal specular-like reflection of sunlight. This event happened in early evening (I think the aircraft was first spotted on radar around 4.30 PM) so we won't have any imagery of it. We'd have more luck if we could guess at a location it would be in the morning, and we had reason to believe it was parked out in the open. Any guesses? Does anyone want to dig into something like flightradar24 records and see if something took off with a transponder then disappeared that day?
wizardforhire 9y ago
Very end of the article: [The call with the pilot of Southwest 4712 was by far the most interesting. He immediately notes how strange the encounter was and how he has never seen an incident like it in nearly 30 years of flying jets. The pilot noted, "if it was like a Lear (private jet) type airframe I probably would not have seen it this clear. This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were... It was a larger aircraft yeah."] What's most interesting is how many people we're involved and of course... Someone is apparently flying some really advanced aircraft over the U.S.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Someone is apparently flying some really advanced aircraft over the U.S. Apparently? So many atmospheric effects can look the same to many people from a single perspective.
  - justAnotherNET 9y ago
    Thousands of non-crazy subject matter experts making claims over the decades is not “atmospheric phenomenon”.
  - SomewhatLikely 9y ago
    From the recordings it sounded to me like they got visual confirmation from both north and south bound aircraft.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    The US didn't stop developing secret aircraft after the B-2 was declassified in 1988. The SR71 was built in the 50s and still seems crazy advanced. I can't imagine what they are working on now.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      > The US didn't stop developing secret aircraft after the B-2 was declassified in 1988 But the rate at which information disperses changed since then. Big, covert, multi-decade military research projects might be possible if we entered a new Cold War. But in peacetime? While we’re navigating political junctures? Unlikely. (Though not impossible.)
      - muricula 9y ago
        Peacetime? The US is still in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force bombed Russian military contractors in Syria last week.
        9y ago
davidu 9y ago
[Just speculation] It could very easily have been a plane replacing one like N313P, or similar, outfitted with higher-performance engines. Perhaps on a test flight to see how it handles. There are plenty of military landing spots up and down the west coast for a plane like that. An empty plane with big engines could go very fast, and maneuver quickly. That'd be my best guess. If they had used a shell registration and transponder, the flight would still be tracked and then there'd be a flight record they don't want. Here's an example of planes that are in this category, and it's not unheard of for a 737 to get souped up engines[1]: https://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/flights/aircraft/index.html https://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/flights/aircraft/inde... 1: Trump put RR engines on his 757, for instance.
- rrmm 9y ago
  It sounds like they had trouble tracking it with primary radar which means there might be something else going on. It'd be amusing to find out how the people on the other side of this are reacting: Either "hey that was a pretty successful test," or "someone f'd up big time and now we have to clean up this mess."
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Or maybe the civilian air radar isn't very good and the operators aren't highly skilled in using it since most traffic uses ADSB now. The article says "disappears from radar" but that could mean "flew out of effective radar range".
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- will_asouka 9y ago
  It's not the engines that would prove limiting to cruise speed at those altitudes, it's the aerodynamic design of the wing. Airliners are flying at between 78 to 86% of the speed of sound, you can't improve on that in a way that would be dramatically noticeable without a huge redesign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_wing#Subsonic_and_transonic_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_wing#Subsonic_and_transo... Many 757s have RR engines, but adding more power would allow take off with higher weight from shorter runways etc, not faster cruise.
LolWolf 9y ago
Note: this is just a general guess. But my money is on this just being a military test—some SR71-like replacement (probably air-breathing, maybe even unmanned). It's not really out of the question, but a big hole in this idea is that merging with general air traffic is usually a no-no even by military standards. Anyways, on a somewhat unrelated note, it just reminds me of this[0] story, for anyone even remotely interested in flight. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-10791270...
- IntronExon 9y ago
  I think the next “SR-71” is hypersonic, part of the “cancelled” HTV-X3 successor program under FALCON. There would be no “chasing” something like that, and it would be.... striking.
  - rrmm 9y ago
    No one in the calls even seemed particularly surprised at the speed, so maybe in the high-performance business jet territory.
- ridgeguy 9y ago
  That linked story never gets old.
  - bigtones 9y ago
    Always makes me smile. So well written.
  - jonah 9y ago
    If you haven't heard him tell it, it's worth a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI
    - LgWoodenBadger 9y ago
      I've never heard this before, I've only read it. I like the context of the written one better. Seems like the focus/slant/whatever changed from the one-upmanship of the written one to let's-piss-off-center of the spoken one.
juicy-fruit 9y ago
I want to believe this was something extraterrestrial so bad. The sad part is even if they find the answer, we won't ever know.
- monkmartinez 9y ago
  We'll know alright... it will just be too late.
xnrv 9y ago
Maybe the pilots should start being issued binoculars?
- coatmatter 9y ago
  I brought my 8x42* binocular on an international trip last year but I found it took up space and weighed my carry-on luggage down (every kilo makes a difference with lengthy time in transit and tired walks through large terminals). I also didn't end up using them all that much enroute. On my return trip, I simply packed it as checked luggage. I imagine pilots and flight crews would have similar considerations as to how useful binoculars are on a typical sector - most seem to not pack all that much with them. It sounds that if pilots were to be issued expensive binoculars for the purpose of identifying unidentified objects, rare events would need to become a lot more frequent? On a vaguely related note, in 2012 an Air Canada passenger plane was diverted to help locate a stranded yacht off Australian waters. Apparently, there was a call out to any passengers who might have had binoculars, but it's not clear whether they were instrumental in the end: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/18/travel/australia-yacht-rescue/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/18/travel/australia-yacht-re... * While smaller binoculars are lighter and more compact, they also cost a lot more if optics quality is to be preserved. Also, smaller ones don't work as well at night - so that probably rules out any real chance of identifying stealth aircraft when it's dark. I've noticed with my 8x42 binocular at daytime, large aircraft at a certain height (I can't remember if it was 10,000 or 30,000 ft) on a clear day with no contrails cannot be seen by my naked eye on the ground but shows up clearly in the binocular - but only if I know where to scan (after looking up FlightRadar, etc). While they do bring the view closer, they're not magic and come with tradeoffs like a narrow field of view, etc.
newnewpdro 9y ago
I know it's unlikely to be the case here, but it would be quite amusing to learn this was someone like Jeff Bezos one-upping the likes of Bill Gates and John Carmack with their fast cars. [1] [2] It is only a matter of time before this actually becomes plausible, if not already. The next logical step for extreme hooning and evading police is doing it in the air, and evading the USAF. If you're not pushing it further than those who came before you, it's kindof irrelevant in this context. [1] https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/bill-gates-famous-mugshot-due-to-a-speed-ticket-in-a-porsche-ar25588.html https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/bill-gates-famous-mug... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4kfs42/john_carmack_discusses_tesla_roadster_1000whp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4kfs42/john_ca...
- bitL 9y ago
  Crossed my mind; some Silicon Valley/Seattle-based billionaire testing a skunkworks project. Or maybe Sebastian Thrun flying high-performance version of Kitty Hawk for next-gen Uber flying taxis ;-)
  - newnewpdro 9y ago
    Or even something far less extraordinary like billionaires betting they can fly their jet from point A to point B in controlled airspace without transponders in complete radio silence without getting caught. The whole disappearing from radar thing in this story is the only reason anyone suspects something extraordinary or military. Everything else about it says it's somewhat benign. The observed speeds are fairly common, they describe something behaving like a normal jet, and it's traveling in airspace the military has no reason to mess with and every reason to avoid for safety reasons. I know of a number of psychopaths who would do this kind of thing if they had the means.
    - cornellwright 9y ago
      Yeah I've heard stories of some people doing crazy, dangerous, illegal things in small planes and just turning their transponders off. I was a passenger in a C182 once where the transponder antenna fell off midflight. It was very educational how much trouble ATC had seeing us. Even after telling them exactly where we were, flying the heading they gave us to present the broadside of the a/c to the radar antenna, they basically said "there's something that might be you there, but I can't really tell." A big jet at FL370 should show up on primary, but I can see it depending on a bunch of factors.
Animats 9y ago
The Sinaloa cartel has been known to use old B-727 and Caravelle aircraft to smuggle drugs.[1] At least once, a DC-8. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/el-chapo-guzman-mexico-drug-trafficking-airplanes-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/el-chapo-guzman-mexico-drug-t...
- krallja 9y ago
  Are those aircraft invisible to radar?
  - isjenhe6n 9y ago
    When flown in the radar shadow of another plane, yes. They’ve done that before.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    Invisible to radar is a better standard than a B-2, while hard to track from civilian ATC radar isn’t really stealth at all.
lolc 9y ago
What are the reasons to assume this wasn't just junk from space? Why say it was an aircraft? The object was referred to as a "white speck" by one pilot. Civilian radar did not hold on to it for long. That's all I got from those exchanges. Did I miss something?
- bamboozled 9y ago
  Did you read the article and watch the videos? The encounter went for several minutes, was identified as a white aircraft, the object maintained altitude and was able to manoeuvre. Never heard of "space junk" doing that before.
  - lolc 9y ago
    > the object maintained altitude and was able to manoeuvre Is there a chart of the encounters somewhere? All I heard is "it's northbound".
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- princekolt 9y ago
  One of the pilots reported following it for "over 100 miles".
erentz 9y ago
Listening to these phone calls in the last video, it's really surprising to me how archaic this is. There doesn't seem to be established rules. And everybody is calling everybody to relay messages on phones and missing information because their phones aren't connected. Only-semi-joking but maybe someone there should set up an IRC channel that the FAA manager's in charge, and the defense operators can join to exchange info.
- roadbeats 9y ago
  Yeah, they need Slack
  - mistermann 9y ago
    They'd get killed on pricing.
    - smoyer 9y ago
      The unpaid plan might be useful in this case ... the history would become hidden very quickly ;)
    - danaliv 9y ago
      And the rest of us would get killed whenever it went down!
- grzm 9y ago
  Oh, they're using IRC, all right. They're using IRC to keep the cover story straight as they're conversing over the air. wink wink
themodelplumber 9y ago
Does anybody know the airspeed or have an estimate? Since it was originally visible to radar, I was wondering why the speed wasn't listed in the article. Also by what mechanism could anything become radar-invisible mid-flight? Some kind of adaptive geometry? Could things like roll angle have influenced the RCS?
- jshmrsn 9y ago
  Angle absolutely can affect RCS. Retracting landing gear, retracting flaps, etc. can reduce RCS. For military aircraft, closing of weapons bays that were previously open would reduce RCS. In an extreme case, jettisoning of external fuel tanks and weapons can reduce RCS.
  - themodelplumber 9y ago
    Thanks. I was also wondering if radio wave propagation might have been a factor. It'd be nice if someone put together a timeline that includes these sensor data so we could build a better model of the situation.
computator 9y ago
I want to point out the aircraft with the reddish-orange contrail moving at high speed in the first video -- 25 to 32 seconds into the video. The caption says, "It was moving south at a very high speed over Northern California." This is not the UFO aircraft being discussed. After looking at the video several times, I finally noticed that it says GETTY in the top right corner, meaning that it's stock video from Getty Images. I know that lots of TV journalists do this kind of thing for dramatic effect, but I still find it dishonest and misleading.
- archgoon 9y ago
  > but I still find it dishonest and misleading. I'll agree with confusing and misleading; but I don't feel it is being dishonest (in the sense that it being deliberate) in this case. Just stupid and confusing.
  - mistahchris 9y ago
    Maybe not dishonest in the sense that they're purposefully trying to mislead viewers, but it's negligent in the least.
- bootlooped 9y ago
  Most of the first video was composed of stock footage though. I initially assumed it all was.
- sureaboutthis 9y ago
  Do not confuse these web sites with TV journalism or journalism at all. They don't even have an "About" page. This is a consumer magazine and that's all it is.
  - sqlacid 9y ago
    Agreed, but it does say "© 2018 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved" at the bottom, that enough of an About page for me.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Well at least it is a persistent mystery. Has anyone said how fast it was moving? I'm presuming it was subsonic the whole time but it seemed an odd omission.
- rrmm 9y ago
  In the exchanges, no one seemed particularly surprised at the speed, just that it was relatively fast. So my WAG would be like mach .8 to .9 maybe? The anomalous thing they were focused on was that it wasn't squawking a transponder code, wasn't in radio contact, and possibly that it wasn't being well-tracked on primary radar.
princekolt 9y ago
The pilot of the Southwest flight 4712 was convinced it was a plane (and “a large one”). At no point he mentioned considering it to be something else. On top of that he reported following the thing “for some 100 miles”. Also, not many currently declassified stealth aircraft fit the description of being large and white. I don’t know if knowing this was a large plane flying faster than cruise jets is more concerning than not.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  There’s no reason to believe that it was stealthy, based only on the failure of civilian ATC to track it.
  - PuffinBlue 9y ago
    Well, having just listened to the entire tapes, WADS clearly weren't seeing anything either as they were relying on vectoring the f-15s with info from civilian pilots with visual identification of the unknown aircraft relayed through the civ ATC operators. Presumably WADS has access to some of the most sophisticated radar equipment as isn't is part of NORAD? The suggestion being no one was tracking this aircraft, not just a failure of civ primary radar.
- 7dare 9y ago
  It's not very hard for large planes to outpace a cruise jet, for the very reason that cruise speeds are rather far from maximum speeds. Even a cruise jet could outpace a cruise jet.
  - kijin 9y ago
    Different airliners are optimized for different cruise speeds, too. Large planes like the 747 and A380 tend to fly faster by default than smaller planes like the 737. A large passenger jet with an airspeed close to Mach 0.9 in strong tail wind can sometimes show ground speed very close to, or even a bit over, what we normally take as Mach 1.
- zipwitch 9y ago
jbob2000 9y ago
I think this was a test flight for somebody's new personnel transport. Facts: It's large, fast, airplane shaped, painted white, and off radar. It stayed in the area, but ran away when fighter jets were nearby. Since it's large, then it must be for holding things, so it's for transporting something. It's fast, so whatever it is transporting needs to get their quickly, or needs to run away from other things. It's distinctly airplane shaped, so it's optimized for flying through the air at cruising altitudes. It's white, so it's not trying to hide at night or under cover. Commercial airliners are generally white, so maybe it is supposed to blend in at commercial airports. It's off radar. Stealth airplanes are flat and small, this airplane is not. It does not have radar absorbing/deflecting abilities, it is off radar. Is it possible that civilian radar equipment is programmed to ignore certain transponders like photocopiers reject scanning dollar bills? It knew the difference between commercial aircraft and fighter jets, and that the fighter jets were a threat. It didn't leave the area until it was in proximity to the fighter jets. It could have been a test of the airplane's capabilities. But since it seemed to hang around the area for a bit, almost as if it was teasing pilots, I think it was testing the reaction time of the ATC and the fighter jets. The thought being, "If we need to get out of here, how long until they scramble fighters? And if they scramble them, can we get away?" Could be that there are multiple factions in the government/military and one of these factions is planning for a quick getaway. That's the only way it would have "off radar" capabilities, civilians wouldn't be able to get a hold of that tech. Is this Donald Trump and co's getaway van?
- smoyer 9y ago
  Hmm ... I think you have something there. It's got to be Apple iPhone delivery (and the all white motif matches Jony Ives design sensibilities - you can't have tail numbers messing up your design. Or transponders cluttering up your radio spectrum).
tbabb 9y ago
Most likely scenarios, in my mind: - An American military exercise or other secretive government maneuver, but the reporting chain of command got screwed up (suggested by all the "who ordered that?" chatter mentioned in the article), which caused a scramble that wasn't supposed to happen. - More alarmingly, a foreign military aircraft in US airspace. (Who knows what behind the scenes posturing might have engendered it). - Some private entity behaving very badly, and flying something big around with no transponder. This would be very interesting and sketchy indeed, as "owning an aircraft" (particularly of that size) is not something you'd undertake unless you're a pretty big organization. Who with that kind of money would take that kind of risk? Organized crime, perhaps?
- 7dare 9y ago
  I initially thought of these scenarios, but the article doesn't really mention the speed other than "it outpaced a 737". If we had a better idea of the speed, it'd be easier to make a guess. However, I'm not sure a foreign military aircraft would be "very large", given how risky that would be, I'd envision it as a fighter jet or a Blackbird-type of aircraft.
  - tritium 9y ago
    It sounds like it’s likely to be subsonic, since whatever it is, it’s maintaining a low profile in every way beyond simply being a highly visible white paint job, and appearing on radar at all. The ATC commentary suggests a fast relative speed, in reference to other traffic only. So, in the 600MPH to 700MPH region, it would be going faster than most air traffic, but wouldn’t cut the noisy wake of a sonic boom overflight, which means, in my mind it wasn’t going “very fast” or fast enough to put it in the same league as what qualifies for fast for any fighter or other fast military plane. The “large” description is also vague, but suggesting as big as a passenger jet is my estimate. Perhaps not freakishly large like a KC-10 Extender, C-5 Galaxy or a C-17 Globemaster III [0,1,2]. Large, in aviation, often means “not a 2 passeneger Cessna,” to evoke not scale relative to other humans, but scale of catastrophe if it fell into a neighborhood or if a pilot had to think about colliding with such a thing, which would “win.” That said, the white paint job sounds uncharacteristic of military/government (especially skunkworks) operations, and the expanding attention of the incident, points to unexpected events. Another hypothesis is high level leadership asking questions about actual preparedness for something that fits the profile of a sudden terrorist hijacking incident, based on peered civil aviation inputs alone, along with an undisclosed fire drill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extend... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III
XzetaU8 9y ago
Minot AFB B-52 UFO Incident [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSqEDXZf4To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSqEDXZf4To [2]http://minotb52ufo.com/introduction.php http://minotb52ufo.com/introduction.php
IWeldMelons 9y ago
How come there is no Wikipedia article?
testplzignore 9y ago
Could it have been an E-4B[1] or some new variant of it? That's the first thing I think of when reading large, white, unidentified plane. I remember seeing one on Sept 11 circling near Wright-Patt - very unsettling thing to see in person. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chakalakasp 9y ago
  Living near Omaha, I see them all the time -- they look a lot like Air Force One (and get mistaken for that by non-locals all the time due to the similar livery). That's the first plane I thought of reading this article, too. I imagine that, while not being developed as true stealth aircraft, any variants developed of this plane would try hard to not show up on radar.
avenoir 9y ago
> Both agree that there was "definitely something out there" with the Oakland Center controller saying the aircraft first appeared going southbound at high speed before executing an abrupt maneuver and then "took off northbound." So what constitutes an abrupt maneuver and how many aircraft can make such radical change in direction while moving at full speed?
sduclos 9y ago
Read between the line. It's a UFO/Rat 55 [0] in the sense that commercial pilot see poor airmanship and calling it out. The same kind of poor seamanship from the Navy we saw last year. [0]https://thedailyintrep.com/nt-43a-the-rat-55-a-very-unusual-boeing-737-200/ https://thedailyintrep.com/nt-43a-the-rat-55-a-very-unusual-...
flavmartins 9y ago
I know that many people will think UFO as extra terrestrials, but could it be that these aircrafts are actually stealth spy planes from foreign governments that are doing surveillance over US territory? We know that the US does regular flights over foreign countries for intelligence and normally we tend to think of foreign powers as "less capable" in their military technology. I think it's quite the opposite. There's heavy investment in military tech. Could be Russian or Chinese stealth spy planes. It would make more sense that this is the case than aliens from outer space. Stealth planes would behave this way. Dropping in an out of radar, no transmission, etc. If you think about aliens, if they were to make it to the US, they would need some sort of advance propulsion systems in their space craft. This would likely allow their space craft to NOT fly like normal earth aircraft. Why do they need to be traveling in linear patters as this incident shows? I think foreign military is a more likely answer to the incident.
- bitL 9y ago
  Stealth is easy to detect with ancient long-wave radars from WW2 (not very precise, but visible anyway when arranged into a grid). Foreign spy planes would be immediately visible and military planes could easily make visual contact after being roughly guided by LFR.
pankajdoharey 9y ago
Woah!!! This is crazy!!!
pankajdoharey 9y ago
This could be a Chinese or Russian Spy plane for all we know.

282 points by tensor_rank_0 9y ago

jarym 9y ago

Based on the current climate it would not be surprising if this ends up being a ‘blame the Russians’ moment

foota 9y ago

I wonder if there's any publicly available satellite footage, from someone like planet.com

patrickyeon 9y ago
(Planet employee here) Planet imaging happens in the late morning, because that's when we tend to get clearer atmosphere, relatively short shadows, but minimal specular-like reflection of sunlight. This event happened in early evening (I think the aircraft was first spotted on radar around 4.30 PM) so we won't have any imagery of it. We'd have more luck if we could guess at a location it would be in the morning, and we had reason to believe it was parked out in the open. Any guesses? Does anyone want to dig into something like flightradar24 records and see if something took off with a transponder then disappeared that day?

wizardforhire 9y ago

Very end of the article: [The call with the pilot of Southwest 4712 was by far the most interesting. He immediately notes how strange the encounter was and how he has never seen an incident like it in nearly 30 years of flying jets. The pilot noted, "if it was like a Lear (private jet) type airframe I probably would not have seen it this clear. This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were... It was a larger aircraft yeah."] What's most interesting is how many people we're involved and of course... Someone is apparently flying some really advanced aircraft over the U.S.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Someone is apparently flying some really advanced aircraft over the U.S. Apparently? So many atmospheric effects can look the same to many people from a single perspective.
- justAnotherNET 9y ago
  Thousands of non-crazy subject matter experts making claims over the decades is not “atmospheric phenomenon”.
- SomewhatLikely 9y ago
  From the recordings it sounded to me like they got visual confirmation from both north and south bound aircraft.
- colordrops 9y ago
  The US didn't stop developing secret aircraft after the B-2 was declassified in 1988. The SR71 was built in the 50s and still seems crazy advanced. I can't imagine what they are working on now.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > The US didn't stop developing secret aircraft after the B-2 was declassified in 1988 But the rate at which information disperses changed since then. Big, covert, multi-decade military research projects might be possible if we entered a new Cold War. But in peacetime? While we’re navigating political junctures? Unlikely. (Though not impossible.)
    - muricula 9y ago
      Peacetime? The US is still in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force bombed Russian military contractors in Syria last week.
      - 9y ago

davidu 9y ago

[Just speculation] It could very easily have been a plane replacing one like N313P, or similar, outfitted with higher-performance engines. Perhaps on a test flight to see how it handles. There are plenty of military landing spots up and down the west coast for a plane like that. An empty plane with big engines could go very fast, and maneuver quickly. That'd be my best guess. If they had used a shell registration and transponder, the flight would still be tracked and then there'd be a flight record they don't want. Here's an example of planes that are in this category, and it's not unheard of for a 737 to get souped up engines[1]: https://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/flights/aircraft/index.html https://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/flights/aircraft/inde... 1: Trump put RR engines on his 757, for instance.

rrmm 9y ago
It sounds like they had trouble tracking it with primary radar which means there might be something else going on. It'd be amusing to find out how the people on the other side of this are reacting: Either "hey that was a pretty successful test," or "someone f'd up big time and now we have to clean up this mess."
- jandrese 9y ago
  Or maybe the civilian air radar isn't very good and the operators aren't highly skilled in using it since most traffic uses ADSB now. The article says "disappears from radar" but that could mean "flew out of effective radar range".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
will_asouka 9y ago
It's not the engines that would prove limiting to cruise speed at those altitudes, it's the aerodynamic design of the wing. Airliners are flying at between 78 to 86% of the speed of sound, you can't improve on that in a way that would be dramatically noticeable without a huge redesign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_wing#Subsonic_and_transonic_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swept_wing#Subsonic_and_transo... Many 757s have RR engines, but adding more power would allow take off with higher weight from shorter runways etc, not faster cruise.

LolWolf 9y ago

Note: this is just a general guess. But my money is on this just being a military test—some SR71-like replacement (probably air-breathing, maybe even unmanned). It's not really out of the question, but a big hole in this idea is that merging with general air traffic is usually a no-no even by military standards. Anyways, on a somewhat unrelated note, it just reminds me of this[0] story, for anyone even remotely interested in flight. [0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041 https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-10791270...

IntronExon 9y ago
I think the next “SR-71” is hypersonic, part of the “cancelled” HTV-X3 successor program under FALCON. There would be no “chasing” something like that, and it would be.... striking.
- rrmm 9y ago
  No one in the calls even seemed particularly surprised at the speed, so maybe in the high-performance business jet territory.
ridgeguy 9y ago
That linked story never gets old.
- bigtones 9y ago
  Always makes me smile. So well written.
- jonah 9y ago
  If you haven't heard him tell it, it's worth a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg73GKm7GgI
  - LgWoodenBadger 9y ago
    I've never heard this before, I've only read it. I like the context of the written one better. Seems like the focus/slant/whatever changed from the one-upmanship of the written one to let's-piss-off-center of the spoken one.

juicy-fruit 9y ago

I want to believe this was something extraterrestrial so bad. The sad part is even if they find the answer, we won't ever know.

monkmartinez 9y ago
We'll know alright... it will just be too late.

xnrv 9y ago

Maybe the pilots should start being issued binoculars?

coatmatter 9y ago
I brought my 8x42* binocular on an international trip last year but I found it took up space and weighed my carry-on luggage down (every kilo makes a difference with lengthy time in transit and tired walks through large terminals). I also didn't end up using them all that much enroute. On my return trip, I simply packed it as checked luggage. I imagine pilots and flight crews would have similar considerations as to how useful binoculars are on a typical sector - most seem to not pack all that much with them. It sounds that if pilots were to be issued expensive binoculars for the purpose of identifying unidentified objects, rare events would need to become a lot more frequent? On a vaguely related note, in 2012 an Air Canada passenger plane was diverted to help locate a stranded yacht off Australian waters. Apparently, there was a call out to any passengers who might have had binoculars, but it's not clear whether they were instrumental in the end: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/18/travel/australia-yacht-rescue/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/18/travel/australia-yacht-re... * While smaller binoculars are lighter and more compact, they also cost a lot more if optics quality is to be preserved. Also, smaller ones don't work as well at night - so that probably rules out any real chance of identifying stealth aircraft when it's dark. I've noticed with my 8x42 binocular at daytime, large aircraft at a certain height (I can't remember if it was 10,000 or 30,000 ft) on a clear day with no contrails cannot be seen by my naked eye on the ground but shows up clearly in the binocular - but only if I know where to scan (after looking up FlightRadar, etc). While they do bring the view closer, they're not magic and come with tradeoffs like a narrow field of view, etc.

newnewpdro 9y ago

I know it's unlikely to be the case here, but it would be quite amusing to learn this was someone like Jeff Bezos one-upping the likes of Bill Gates and John Carmack with their fast cars. [1] [2] It is only a matter of time before this actually becomes plausible, if not already. The next logical step for extreme hooning and evading police is doing it in the air, and evading the USAF. If you're not pushing it further than those who came before you, it's kindof irrelevant in this context. [1] https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/bill-gates-famous-mugshot-due-to-a-speed-ticket-in-a-porsche-ar25588.html https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/bill-gates-famous-mug... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4kfs42/john_carmack_discusses_tesla_roadster_1000whp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4kfs42/john_ca...

bitL 9y ago
Crossed my mind; some Silicon Valley/Seattle-based billionaire testing a skunkworks project. Or maybe Sebastian Thrun flying high-performance version of Kitty Hawk for next-gen Uber flying taxis ;-)
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  Or even something far less extraordinary like billionaires betting they can fly their jet from point A to point B in controlled airspace without transponders in complete radio silence without getting caught. The whole disappearing from radar thing in this story is the only reason anyone suspects something extraordinary or military. Everything else about it says it's somewhat benign. The observed speeds are fairly common, they describe something behaving like a normal jet, and it's traveling in airspace the military has no reason to mess with and every reason to avoid for safety reasons. I know of a number of psychopaths who would do this kind of thing if they had the means.
  - cornellwright 9y ago
    Yeah I've heard stories of some people doing crazy, dangerous, illegal things in small planes and just turning their transponders off. I was a passenger in a C182 once where the transponder antenna fell off midflight. It was very educational how much trouble ATC had seeing us. Even after telling them exactly where we were, flying the heading they gave us to present the broadside of the a/c to the radar antenna, they basically said "there's something that might be you there, but I can't really tell." A big jet at FL370 should show up on primary, but I can see it depending on a bunch of factors.

Animats 9y ago

The Sinaloa cartel has been known to use old B-727 and Caravelle aircraft to smuggle drugs.[1] At least once, a DC-8. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/el-chapo-guzman-mexico-drug-trafficking-airplanes-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/el-chapo-guzman-mexico-drug-t...

krallja 9y ago
Are those aircraft invisible to radar?
- isjenhe6n 9y ago
  When flown in the radar shadow of another plane, yes. They’ve done that before.
- IntronExon 9y ago
  Invisible to radar is a better standard than a B-2, while hard to track from civilian ATC radar isn’t really stealth at all.

lolc 9y ago

What are the reasons to assume this wasn't just junk from space? Why say it was an aircraft? The object was referred to as a "white speck" by one pilot. Civilian radar did not hold on to it for long. That's all I got from those exchanges. Did I miss something?

bamboozled 9y ago
Did you read the article and watch the videos? The encounter went for several minutes, was identified as a white aircraft, the object maintained altitude and was able to manoeuvre. Never heard of "space junk" doing that before.
- lolc 9y ago
  > the object maintained altitude and was able to manoeuvre Is there a chart of the encounters somewhere? All I heard is "it's northbound".
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
princekolt 9y ago
One of the pilots reported following it for "over 100 miles".

erentz 9y ago

Listening to these phone calls in the last video, it's really surprising to me how archaic this is. There doesn't seem to be established rules. And everybody is calling everybody to relay messages on phones and missing information because their phones aren't connected. Only-semi-joking but maybe someone there should set up an IRC channel that the FAA manager's in charge, and the defense operators can join to exchange info.

roadbeats 9y ago
Yeah, they need Slack
- mistermann 9y ago
  They'd get killed on pricing.
  - smoyer 9y ago
    The unpaid plan might be useful in this case ... the history would become hidden very quickly ;)
  - danaliv 9y ago
    And the rest of us would get killed whenever it went down!
grzm 9y ago
Oh, they're using IRC, all right. They're using IRC to keep the cover story straight as they're conversing over the air. wink wink

themodelplumber 9y ago

Does anybody know the airspeed or have an estimate? Since it was originally visible to radar, I was wondering why the speed wasn't listed in the article. Also by what mechanism could anything become radar-invisible mid-flight? Some kind of adaptive geometry? Could things like roll angle have influenced the RCS?

jshmrsn 9y ago
Angle absolutely can affect RCS. Retracting landing gear, retracting flaps, etc. can reduce RCS. For military aircraft, closing of weapons bays that were previously open would reduce RCS. In an extreme case, jettisoning of external fuel tanks and weapons can reduce RCS.
- themodelplumber 9y ago
  Thanks. I was also wondering if radio wave propagation might have been a factor. It'd be nice if someone put together a timeline that includes these sensor data so we could build a better model of the situation.

computator 9y ago

I want to point out the aircraft with the reddish-orange contrail moving at high speed in the first video -- 25 to 32 seconds into the video. The caption says, "It was moving south at a very high speed over Northern California." This is not the UFO aircraft being discussed. After looking at the video several times, I finally noticed that it says GETTY in the top right corner, meaning that it's stock video from Getty Images. I know that lots of TV journalists do this kind of thing for dramatic effect, but I still find it dishonest and misleading.

archgoon 9y ago
> but I still find it dishonest and misleading. I'll agree with confusing and misleading; but I don't feel it is being dishonest (in the sense that it being deliberate) in this case. Just stupid and confusing.
- mistahchris 9y ago
  Maybe not dishonest in the sense that they're purposefully trying to mislead viewers, but it's negligent in the least.
bootlooped 9y ago
Most of the first video was composed of stock footage though. I initially assumed it all was.
sureaboutthis 9y ago
Do not confuse these web sites with TV journalism or journalism at all. They don't even have an "About" page. This is a consumer magazine and that's all it is.
- sqlacid 9y ago
  Agreed, but it does say "© 2018 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved" at the bottom, that enough of an About page for me.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Well at least it is a persistent mystery. Has anyone said how fast it was moving? I'm presuming it was subsonic the whole time but it seemed an odd omission.

rrmm 9y ago
In the exchanges, no one seemed particularly surprised at the speed, just that it was relatively fast. So my WAG would be like mach .8 to .9 maybe? The anomalous thing they were focused on was that it wasn't squawking a transponder code, wasn't in radio contact, and possibly that it wasn't being well-tracked on primary radar.

princekolt 9y ago

The pilot of the Southwest flight 4712 was convinced it was a plane (and “a large one”). At no point he mentioned considering it to be something else. On top of that he reported following the thing “for some 100 miles”. Also, not many currently declassified stealth aircraft fit the description of being large and white. I don’t know if knowing this was a large plane flying faster than cruise jets is more concerning than not.

IntronExon 9y ago
There’s no reason to believe that it was stealthy, based only on the failure of civilian ATC to track it.
- PuffinBlue 9y ago
  Well, having just listened to the entire tapes, WADS clearly weren't seeing anything either as they were relying on vectoring the f-15s with info from civilian pilots with visual identification of the unknown aircraft relayed through the civ ATC operators. Presumably WADS has access to some of the most sophisticated radar equipment as isn't is part of NORAD? The suggestion being no one was tracking this aircraft, not just a failure of civ primary radar.
7dare 9y ago
It's not very hard for large planes to outpace a cruise jet, for the very reason that cruise speeds are rather far from maximum speeds. Even a cruise jet could outpace a cruise jet.
- kijin 9y ago
  Different airliners are optimized for different cruise speeds, too. Large planes like the 747 and A380 tend to fly faster by default than smaller planes like the 737. A large passenger jet with an airspeed close to Mach 0.9 in strong tail wind can sometimes show ground speed very close to, or even a bit over, what we normally take as Mach 1.
zipwitch 9y ago

jbob2000 9y ago

I think this was a test flight for somebody's new personnel transport. Facts: It's large, fast, airplane shaped, painted white, and off radar. It stayed in the area, but ran away when fighter jets were nearby. Since it's large, then it must be for holding things, so it's for transporting something. It's fast, so whatever it is transporting needs to get their quickly, or needs to run away from other things. It's distinctly airplane shaped, so it's optimized for flying through the air at cruising altitudes. It's white, so it's not trying to hide at night or under cover. Commercial airliners are generally white, so maybe it is supposed to blend in at commercial airports. It's off radar. Stealth airplanes are flat and small, this airplane is not. It does not have radar absorbing/deflecting abilities, it is off radar. Is it possible that civilian radar equipment is programmed to ignore certain transponders like photocopiers reject scanning dollar bills? It knew the difference between commercial aircraft and fighter jets, and that the fighter jets were a threat. It didn't leave the area until it was in proximity to the fighter jets. It could have been a test of the airplane's capabilities. But since it seemed to hang around the area for a bit, almost as if it was teasing pilots, I think it was testing the reaction time of the ATC and the fighter jets. The thought being, "If we need to get out of here, how long until they scramble fighters? And if they scramble them, can we get away?" Could be that there are multiple factions in the government/military and one of these factions is planning for a quick getaway. That's the only way it would have "off radar" capabilities, civilians wouldn't be able to get a hold of that tech. Is this Donald Trump and co's getaway van?

smoyer 9y ago
Hmm ... I think you have something there. It's got to be Apple iPhone delivery (and the all white motif matches Jony Ives design sensibilities - you can't have tail numbers messing up your design. Or transponders cluttering up your radio spectrum).

tbabb 9y ago

Most likely scenarios, in my mind: - An American military exercise or other secretive government maneuver, but the reporting chain of command got screwed up (suggested by all the "who ordered that?" chatter mentioned in the article), which caused a scramble that wasn't supposed to happen. - More alarmingly, a foreign military aircraft in US airspace. (Who knows what behind the scenes posturing might have engendered it). - Some private entity behaving very badly, and flying something big around with no transponder. This would be very interesting and sketchy indeed, as "owning an aircraft" (particularly of that size) is not something you'd undertake unless you're a pretty big organization. Who with that kind of money would take that kind of risk? Organized crime, perhaps?

7dare 9y ago
I initially thought of these scenarios, but the article doesn't really mention the speed other than "it outpaced a 737". If we had a better idea of the speed, it'd be easier to make a guess. However, I'm not sure a foreign military aircraft would be "very large", given how risky that would be, I'd envision it as a fighter jet or a Blackbird-type of aircraft.
- tritium 9y ago
  It sounds like it’s likely to be subsonic, since whatever it is, it’s maintaining a low profile in every way beyond simply being a highly visible white paint job, and appearing on radar at all. The ATC commentary suggests a fast relative speed, in reference to other traffic only. So, in the 600MPH to 700MPH region, it would be going faster than most air traffic, but wouldn’t cut the noisy wake of a sonic boom overflight, which means, in my mind it wasn’t going “very fast” or fast enough to put it in the same league as what qualifies for fast for any fighter or other fast military plane. The “large” description is also vague, but suggesting as big as a passenger jet is my estimate. Perhaps not freakishly large like a KC-10 Extender, C-5 Galaxy or a C-17 Globemaster III [0,1,2]. Large, in aviation, often means “not a 2 passeneger Cessna,” to evoke not scale relative to other humans, but scale of catastrophe if it fell into a neighborhood or if a pilot had to think about colliding with such a thing, which would “win.” That said, the white paint job sounds uncharacteristic of military/government (especially skunkworks) operations, and the expanding attention of the incident, points to unexpected events. Another hypothesis is high level leadership asking questions about actual preparedness for something that fits the profile of a sudden terrorist hijacking incident, based on peered civil aviation inputs alone, along with an undisclosed fire drill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extend... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-5_Galaxy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_C-17_Globemaster_III

XzetaU8 9y ago

Minot AFB B-52 UFO Incident [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSqEDXZf4To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSqEDXZf4To [2]http://minotb52ufo.com/introduction.php http://minotb52ufo.com/introduction.php

IWeldMelons 9y ago

How come there is no Wikipedia article?

testplzignore 9y ago

Could it have been an E-4B[1] or some new variant of it? That's the first thing I think of when reading large, white, unidentified plane. I remember seeing one on Sept 11 circling near Wright-Patt - very unsettling thing to see in person. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chakalakasp 9y ago
Living near Omaha, I see them all the time -- they look a lot like Air Force One (and get mistaken for that by non-locals all the time due to the similar livery). That's the first plane I thought of reading this article, too. I imagine that, while not being developed as true stealth aircraft, any variants developed of this plane would try hard to not show up on radar.

avenoir 9y ago

> Both agree that there was "definitely something out there" with the Oakland Center controller saying the aircraft first appeared going southbound at high speed before executing an abrupt maneuver and then "took off northbound." So what constitutes an abrupt maneuver and how many aircraft can make such radical change in direction while moving at full speed?

sduclos 9y ago

Read between the line. It's a UFO/Rat 55 [0] in the sense that commercial pilot see poor airmanship and calling it out. The same kind of poor seamanship from the Navy we saw last year. [0]https://thedailyintrep.com/nt-43a-the-rat-55-a-very-unusual-boeing-737-200/ https://thedailyintrep.com/nt-43a-the-rat-55-a-very-unusual-...

flavmartins 9y ago

I know that many people will think UFO as extra terrestrials, but could it be that these aircrafts are actually stealth spy planes from foreign governments that are doing surveillance over US territory? We know that the US does regular flights over foreign countries for intelligence and normally we tend to think of foreign powers as "less capable" in their military technology. I think it's quite the opposite. There's heavy investment in military tech. Could be Russian or Chinese stealth spy planes. It would make more sense that this is the case than aliens from outer space. Stealth planes would behave this way. Dropping in an out of radar, no transmission, etc. If you think about aliens, if they were to make it to the US, they would need some sort of advance propulsion systems in their space craft. This would likely allow their space craft to NOT fly like normal earth aircraft. Why do they need to be traveling in linear patters as this incident shows? I think foreign military is a more likely answer to the incident.

bitL 9y ago
Stealth is easy to detect with ancient long-wave radars from WW2 (not very precise, but visible anyway when arranged into a grid). Foreign spy planes would be immediately visible and military planes could easily make visual contact after being roughly guided by LFR.

pankajdoharey 9y ago

Woah!!! This is crazy!!!

pankajdoharey 9y ago

This could be a Chinese or Russian Spy plane for all we know.