FBI Confirms Report of 'Long, Cylindrical' UFO 'Moving Really Fast' Over New Mex (popularmechanics.com) 150
An anonymous reader shares a PopularMechanics report: An American Airlines flight crew encountered an unidentified flying object over New Mexico on February 21. American Airlines has confirmed the strange incident, during which a "long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile" zipped over the Airbus A320, according to a pilot's transmission obtained by The War Zone. American Airlines Flight 2292 was en route from Cincinnati to Phoenix on Sunday afternoon when it came into contact with the mysterious object at approximately 37,000 feet over northeastern New Mexico. Radio interceptor Steve Douglass captured Flight 2292's transmission on the Albuquerque Center frequency of 127.850 MHz or 134.750 MHz.
In the transmission, which you can hear here, the American Airlines pilot reported:
"Do you have any targets up here? We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing -- moving really fast right over the top of us."
Albuquerque Center didn't respond to the pilot's report because local air traffic interfered, Douglass wrote on his blog, Deep Black Horizon. American Airlines Flight 2292 safely landed in Phoenix shortly after the encounter.
American Airlines later confirmed with The War Zone the validity of the transmission:
"Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21. For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI."
When TMZ reached out to the FBI, spokesperson Frank Fisher said the Bureau is "aware of the reported incident." He continued: "While our policy is to neither confirm nor deny investigations, the FBI works continuously with our federal, state, local, and tribal partners to share intelligence and protect the public."
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also released a short statement confirming the encounter:
A pilot reported seeing an object over New Mexico shortly after noon local time on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. FAA air traffic controllers did not see any object in the area on their radarscopes.
In the transmission, which you can hear here, the American Airlines pilot reported:
"Do you have any targets up here? We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing -- moving really fast right over the top of us."
Albuquerque Center didn't respond to the pilot's report because local air traffic interfered, Douglass wrote on his blog, Deep Black Horizon. American Airlines Flight 2292 safely landed in Phoenix shortly after the encounter.
American Airlines later confirmed with The War Zone the validity of the transmission:
"Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21. For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI."
When TMZ reached out to the FBI, spokesperson Frank Fisher said the Bureau is "aware of the reported incident." He continued: "While our policy is to neither confirm nor deny investigations, the FBI works continuously with our federal, state, local, and tribal partners to share intelligence and protect the public."
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also released a short statement confirming the encounter:
A pilot reported seeing an object over New Mexico shortly after noon local time on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. FAA air traffic controllers did not see any object in the area on their radarscopes.
It's swamp gas. (Score:4, Funny)
Stop talking about it. Stop asking.
-Lockheed
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Long cylindrical object? (Score:2)
Could be the same event, given some ... assholes that I've seen.
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Oh come on, it is in New Mexico, not some state that has a top secrete military base that tests experimental aircraft, that is in Nevada.
Re:Long cylindrical object? (Score:5, Informative)
Just for those who don't recognize sarcasm, White Sands Missile Range and Holloman AFB are both located in New Mexico, along with Spaceport America. All three are sites used to test experimental air vehicles.
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Roswell's tourism industry is based on aerospace engineering and ufology museums and businesses, as well as alien-themed and spacecraft-themed iconography.
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Also, I get really fed up by people not realizing something labeled an "Unidentified Flying Object" does not mean its alien in origin.
We don't know what it is. We only know what it isn't.
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Well if the Aliens are going to visit, I can see why they picked NM. Come for the fly-through liquor stores (opened and poured for the uh passenger), stay for the best chile (SUCK IT TEXAS). Plus they haven't figured out how to install court ordered ignition interlocks on UFOs and the police/DMV don't seem to care if you've put 100,000 miles on the emergency spare levitation disc without changing the tire. And a mini ristra looks way better than some fuzzy dice.
Re:Long cylindrical object? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kill yourself, Ms. Mash! (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realize that we've been funding the most expensive military in the history of the planet on "Nothing" for half a century, right? You didn't know that? Graph the US deficit and the Pentagon budget for every year since 1970, they matched very closely until the last decade.
Re:Kill yourself, Ms. Mash! (Score:4, Funny)
Paying for our military is our great-grandchildren's problem.
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Given that national defense is actually a federal responsibility, and no one has even bothered to introduce an amendment granting the federal government authority for Social Security and Medicare, it seems odd to call the defense spending extra.
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I said it was deficit spending, which is appears to be.
Medicare and Social Security are trust funds, not budget items.
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No. they are budget items. People pay in to the general fund, money is withdrawn from the general fund. There was never any sort of Goreian lockbox. That was always a lie.
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They are trust funds.
In a very roundabout fashion, one can argue that they influence the general fund, because when the government must pay the interest on the trust funds, they borrow, which means it comes from the treasury.
But that's more a consequence of deficit spending.
Otherwise, the trust find is isolated, is paid for with isolated taxes, and is self sufficient; i.e., runs a surplus.
That of course won't last forever, as the surplus amount has been dropping for a long time,
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It's right there with the amendment for having an Air force and how it is budgeted.
An amendment for the Air Force would have probably passed very easy too, unlike various other things that go against the wording of the Constitution.
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You're aware of the constitutional prohibition of funding a standing army right?
While you are certainly correct that SS and Medicare were not envisioned by the founders, neither was a permanent standing army.
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You do realize that we've been funding the most expensive military in the history of the planet on "Nothing" for half a century, right?
In related revelations, having home/auto/medical insurance is pointless if you've never used it -- 'cause if nothing has ever gone wrong before, it never will... /sarcasm
Re:Kill yourself, Ms. Mash! (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh, not really sure how you got that idea from my post. I was simply pointing out that were it not for military spending the federal budget would have been close to balanced for most of the last half century.
It is excessive though, IMNSHO. We spend more than the next 10 countries combined, 8 of which are our allies. We could reduce our war budget by 65% and still be far and away the largest spender, reduce it by 55% and still spend more than China and Russia combined. We don't seem to get much for our deficit spending though, the Pentagon hasn't won a war since 1945 (Grenada doesn't count) and after spending a trillion dollars in Afghanistan they still don't even control the suburbs of Kabul.
Of course we can't spend deficit money on infrastructure or education, that's just crazy talk.
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Yeah... spending money on education above a comparatively low amount per pupil generally only found in more rural areas has jack fucking all to do with educational outcomes.
money is fungible (Score:2)
That is bad mathematics, ignoring fungibility of money. Suppose :
Income is under 3 heads : A, B and C
Expense is under 3 heads : X, Y and Z
If Expense - Income matches exactly the value of Z, that does not mean the expense of Z is superfluous, or that Z is running on "Nothing". Actually all expenses are running partially on the shared "Nothing" :
1. X/(X+Y+Z) proportion of X is superfluous
2. Y/(X+Y+Z) proportion of Y is superfluous,
3. Z/(X+Y+Z) proportion of Z is superfluous,
Now assume X > Z, and Z > Y.
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Biden is trying to flood the USA with aliens while we are out of work due to COVID. Nothing.
Question: When Obama failed to make this happen by 2016 why didn't you change the channel?
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Realistically, it's only gotten better.
Missile (Score:5, Funny)
"long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile"
So, a cruise missile?
Re:Missile (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missile (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Missile (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking this sounds rather similar to some of the newer UAV approaches. Maybe something similar to this: https://newatlas.com/military/... [newatlas.com]
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Civilian aircraft comms use AM instead of FM, to avoid the FM capture effect possibly keeping a weak emergency signal from being heard over stronger transmissions.
Unfortunately, it can have the opposite effect when there are a lot of aircraft all talking at once.
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I agree. the local traffic taking over is what stood out for me.
Maybe the mystery man with the jetpack has a new toy.
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What kind of FAA civilian aircraft comm center lets itself be "talked over" by local traffic? And what kind of pilot estimates distance as "right over us"? Shit, between this, engines blowing up and breaching containment, and discount models with manual attitude steering wheels, why would I ever want to get on a fucking commercial aircraft in the US again? Lot of lyin' going on here. But it would be awesome if it was an alien craft like the little guys in Close Encounters that buzz around before the mothership shows up and does the summersault. But my money is on an errant cruise missle. Or one that has better steering than a 737-MAX.
Even ATC radio is subject to the laws of physics.
Pilots are pretty good at estimating speed and distance of known objects, but when presented with an object of unknown size or speed it's much harder to tell since the usual cues that we'd use to size an object on the ground are not present... i.e. is it 20 feet long traveling at 200 mph or 200 feet long traveling at 2000 mph?)
In all likelihood is a test drone from a military base, possibly built to be stealthy which made it invisible to ATC radar.
Re:Missile or Lear Jet (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.metabunk.org/threa... [metabunk.org]
Re:Missile or Lear Jet (Score:5, Informative)
For those who do not bother to follow the link, a Lear Jet 60 XR, designated N738RJ, passed by overhead a few minutes before the report was made by the pilot.
UFO no longer.
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Except that that looks like a pretty stereotypical airplane that a pilot would see quite frequently.
Granted, I have no belief that this object is alien/extraterrestrial in origin, however I highly doubt that it would be a bog-standard airplane.
Re:Missile or Lear Jet (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that that looks like a pretty stereotypical airplane that a pilot would see quite frequently.
Granted, I have no belief that this object is alien/extraterrestrial in origin, however I highly doubt that it would be a bog-standard airplane.
If you follow the whole thread, one of the posters explains that from the distance and the speed, an assumption of it being closer and flying faster may have occurred.
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Except that that looks like a pretty stereotypical airplane that a pilot would see quite frequently.
There are many, many, many cases of UFOs turning out to be planes. You can find them all over the place on metabunk, including the fucking silly claims by the pilots who took the footage.
There is this bizarre belief that pilots can't be stupid. I assure it, it's completely fucking false.
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They don't even need to be stupid.
The human vision is full of shortcuts and "reconstructions", with the vision on the peripheral area being pretty much guesswork with the black & white, low resolution quality there is.
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Looking at a fuzzy blob and thinking it was an alien does.
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You don't see a fuzzy blob, you see whatever your brain decided that the fuzzy blob looks like.
Look for a video called "Shocking illusion - Pretty celebrities turn ugly!" to see how autocomplety your vision is.
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Why did the controllers report they saw nothing on radar?
Re:Missile or Lear Jet (Score:4, Interesting)
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That sounds like a terrible idea.
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Radar isnt as great as the movies make it out to be...
Transponders are significantly better when in controlled airspace.
Development (Score:3)
Current cruise missiles look like small stubby-winged aircraft. They test the new ones in New Mexico.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Totally not cylindrical. Not at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Never a willow.
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Not only are most aircraft highly cylindrical in nature, a cruise missile happens to be a literal cylinder with a couple of tiny wings, tiny elevators, and a tiny vertical stabilizer attached to it.
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The Tomahawk (the standard cruise missile in US inventory) IS a cylinder with tiny aerofoils.
Re: Missile (Score:2)
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You are just trolling, right?
Both look like long ass cylinders with small control surfaces on them.
The difference is, that if you see a ballistic missile pass over you horizontally trajectory, it's literally not a ballistic missile.
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I long for the days when we would disagree about floor wax and dessert toppings.
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"long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile"
So, a cruise missile?
The problem with saying 'it was a cruise missile' is that as soon as its determined to be not an actual cruise missile but some other thing that looks like a cruise missile, then whoever said that becomes belittled for being an idiot who raises false alarms and makes unfounded accusations.
Re:Missile (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do I get the feeling there is some low level Air Force guy getting chewed out right now.
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How many of those submarines are in New Mexico?
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Due to an overflow bug, the mighty Rio Grande is perfectly navigable by any vessel with a keel depth less than 65536 fathoms. They can't even fix it now, or else the roadrunner penguin will go extinct.
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Oddly enough, it's possible it's some low-level Navy guy. More than a few US submarines are capable of carrying (and firing) something that looks like a cylindrical cruise missile.
I wonder which about-to-retire admiral is assigned the coastal defense of New Mexico.
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More than a few US submarines are capable of carrying (and firing) something that looks like a cylindrical cruise missile.
Ya. Cruise missiles.
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I wonder when you're flying at 500mph and something passes close to you, if literally any object wouldn't look cylindrical? I've been in a passenger jet and staring out a window when I saw two fighter jets fly below in the opposite direction. I have no idea how far away they were, probably 10kft in height and for all I know a mile off to the side (or more, I have no way to know). They moved really, really fast, if I blinked I would have missed it. But they were far enough away that I got a good enough look
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Current US cruise missiles only travel about 80 kt faster than this airplane was going, but it sounds like this thing was going so fast that the pilot didn't get a very good look at the thing.
China, Russia and the US all have hypersonic missile programs; the US program is called "Prompt Global Strike". If this thing was one of ours, it was from a program the DoD is being cagey about, so maybe that was it.
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"long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile"
So, a cruise missile?
Or Tom Cruise.
I saw one in Greenwich CT, the year is foggy (Score:2)
Re: Missile (Score:2, Troll)
INB4 downmodded due to the mis-assumption that my comment was pro-Trump cause it can't possibly be that I'm not.pro *anything* coming from big (> {100..150}^{2..3}) state leadership of any country whatsoever.
it's not us, it's you (Score:2, Insightful)
your numerous posts are trash. sometimes we down mod them without even reading
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anyone who read otherwise is probably a douche waffle.
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You alright, man? You seem angrier than usual the past few days.
Long cyindrical? fast? (Score:2)
You mean a ... rocket?
Velocity differential (Score:3)
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Tomahawks are subsonic.
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Informative though, so thank you
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The problem with cruise missiles, is that they're essentially a plane.
Planes are very easy to shoot out of the sky.
This gives you 2 reasonable options: Too fast to hit (hypersonic) or too low to hit (subsonic)
Technically speaking, one could have a ground-hugging supersonic cruise missile, but its control surface requirements would be vastly different.
Probably a 737 Max (Score:5, Funny)
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Situation Looks to have Changed (Score:5, Informative)
"American Airlines later confirmed with The War Zone the validity of the transmission:
"Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21. For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI." When TMZ reached out to the FBI, spokesperson Frank Fisher said the Bureau is "aware of the reported incident." He continued: "While our policy is to neither confirm nor deny investigations, the FBI works continuously with our federal, state, local, and tribal partners to share intelligence and protect the public."
But if you go to the provided link to the Black Horizon Blog [blogspot.com], you can see that their original article was updated on Tuesday 23rd with the following:-
"American Airlines emailed ABC 7 News the following statement on Tuesday morning:
At this time, we do not have any indication the radio transmission was from the flight crew on board American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21."
It isn't entirely clear what's happened here... It looks as though the timeline was:-
2/21/21 - Black Horizon publish their initial post covering the incident, which includes the first American Airlines quote, confirming the incident and redirecting reporters to the FBI
2/23/21 - Black Horizon update their original post, with what amounts to a denial from American Airlines, effectively suggesting that the transmission was not from the AA flight in question.
2/26/21 - Slashdot cover the story but do not include references to the updates now showing on the Black Horizon Blog.
It isn't clear from the material presented quite what has happened here. Certainly I don't think there is any attempt to deceive or mis-represent what had happened. But perhaps the original anonymous submission was either incomplete or it sat in a queue for a while waiting to be posted, during which time the updates occurred.
Bottom line is: there have been additional developments. Definitely worth clicking through to the document sources to get the latest updates.
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Just say the name. We all know the worst... msmash publishing "anonymous whatever" reports. .
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Used to be that you could go to a part of the site and vote on submissions, such that the stories which received the most upvotes would be published. The "Submit" function still exists, but the review of submitted articles seems to have gone. [I have mod points at the moment and I don't see it anywhere obvious].
Although I could have missed it.
Does that mean that the editors alone are now selecting stories?
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If it looks like a duck (Score:2)
It's probably a duck. This thing didn't show on radar, and a quick googling reveals lots of cruise missiles that claim to be stealthy. They have ranges of 100s of miles. The speeds I saw were just listed as "subsonic", but that still gives some room to be considerably faster than an airliner.
Somebody, somewhere, is getting chewed out by their CO.
That seems like the most likely explanation, but we'll probably never find out. I'm still wondering who overflew our neighborhood *twice* last year at tree-top
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Near as I can tell, cruise missiles are mostly meant to cruise at low altitudes to avoid AAA and AA missiles. Near as I can tell, they cruise slower at high altitude when they fly at high altitude.
I think a cruise missile (more or less known models) don't fly at 37,000 feet at speeds greater than commercial aircraft cruise speeds.
I think it's possible that this could have been a new kind of cruise missile being tested that's capable of high altitude, high speed flight, although I kind of wonder if even thi
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Googling around a bit more, it seems that some cruise missiles (especially air-launched) will maintain high altitude to increase range, then drop down once they enter a zone where that's more advantageous.
I couldn't find a picture of the LRSO [airforcemag.com] currently under development. It's launched from a B-52 and allegedly has a 1500 mile range though, so a stray test of that is a good candidate.
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Putin's nuclear powered cruise missile? [wikipedia.org]
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The thread above about the Learjet that is known to have passed over the plane's flight path a few minutes before the call is pretty convincing though. The silhouette of a small jet is pretty similar to a cruise missile (aka. unmanned smaller jet) from a distance, and you can't tell how far away something is against the sky so the pilot wouldn't have a scale reference. The Lear was going 500 knots which was faster than the airliner (and surprisingly fast for a small craft) and in almost the opposite directi
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Ducks aren't cylindrical!
UFO != Aliens (Score:3)
In case we forgot, UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object.
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You mean there aren't cylindrical aliens out there?
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You mean there aren't cylindrical aliens out there?
There could be. We don't have proof either way.
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*LOL* ;)
YOU COULD BE after all, _I_ don't have any proof either way
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>You mean there aren't cylindrical aliens out there?
Only the very lowest budget aliens are cylindrical.
The slightly higher budget aliens are boxy, and full price aliens have tentacles.
Budgetless aliens simply have bad eyebrows, squint a lot, speak with a bad combination of German and Russian accent.
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Dr. Evil? (Score:5, Funny)
Colonel: What is it, son?
Johnson: I don't know, sir, but it looks like a giant--
Jet Pilot: Dick.
Dick: Yeah?
Jet Pilot: Take a look out of starboard.
Dick: Oh my God, it looks like a huge--
Bird-Watching Woman: Pecker.
Bird-Watching Man: [raising binoculars] Ooh, Where?
Bird-Watching Woman: Wait, that's not a woodpecker, it looks like someone's--
Army Sergeant: Privates! We have reports of an unidentified flying object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with--
Baseball Umpire: Two balls.
[looking up from game]
Baseball Umpire: What is that. It looks just like an enormous--
Chinese Teacher: Wang, pay attention!
Wang: I was distracted by that giant flying--
Musician: Willie.
Willie Nelson: Yeah?
Musician: What's that?
Willie Nelson: [squints] Well, that looks like a giant--
Colonel: Johnson?!
Johnson: Yes, sir?
Colonel: Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.
The Big Question (Score:2)
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Supersonic cruise missile prototype (Score:5, Interesting)
Almost all of the major military powers have been pursuing supersonic cruise missile technology and some designs have been put into service. The US has been conspicuously absent in this area. The US has been publicizing its hypersonic missile work, but not supersonic cruise.
Odds are these pilots saw a glimpse of a secret supersonic cruise missile prototype. They used to term 'cruise missile type of thing' and a fast supersonic cruise missile is likely to look less like a small aircraft and more like a fuel filled cylinder with stubby — perhaps hard to observe — control surfaces.
There has been writing from supposedly authoritative military analysists that attempt to downplay the need for supersonic cruise and rationalize the lack of an active supersonic cruise missile program in the US. I've always believed this is misguided or deceptive; in war speed is life and a fast cruise missile is likely to be capable of things that a slow one isn't, meaning targets that can't be killed by the latter are vulnerable to the former. The US military isn't in the habit of foregoing such capabilities.
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Wait... what?
Are you suggesting that the US would allow a UFO story to cover some black-book project?
SHOCKING!
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"FBI Confirms Report" (Score:2)
They actually confirmed that someone made a report!!!
Clearly cold fusion using bleach and windex is true, because someone made that report, you can confirm it.
Why is confirming that someone made a report news here?
As per rule I did not RTFA.
Drugs? (Score:2)
Just the Sunday night shipment coming in. Beats tunnelling.