Military pilot’s reported encounter with UFO: ‘This is going to sound weird’

This one is a pilot report obtained by UAP Discovery advisor Ben Hansen.

  • Pilot sees dark, football-sized object pass under the plane’s wing
  • Air traffic controller reports ‘UFO’ sighting, adding object disappeared
  • Ex-FBI agent: The object’s speed, altitude suggest it wasn’t a drone

https://www.newsnationnow.com/banfield/us-military-pilots-encounter-with-ufo-this-is-going-to-sound-weird/

2 Likes

I think if we had A artist to draw what people have observed of said spacecraft A simple sketch. And catalogue those sightings with sketches of the crafts. I think that would be better way to collect data and classify what they might be seeing
Never know if others may look at sketches collected and also describe them similarly.

The artist would have to interrogate on the details similar to how they would putting together a murder suspect portrait drawing.

1 Like

There is an artist rendering video on this one. Not likley this is a spacecraft. Probably a balloon. The hard part with creating artist renderings is that witness testimony is not reliable. That is why we need sensor data, like cameras and other systems.

2 Likes

I agree with Ben Hansen in one of his interviews. It’s very strange and compelling the pilots reported the object 60 miles away, 2 minutes after it flew under their wing.

I doubt the possibility of that for a balloon or any other non-powered objects. I would be interested in getting the actual ARTCC recording to count exactly how much time passed before the “60 mile out” report. https://www.liveatc.net/ could have caught it, but couldn’t find enough information about the encounter to fish it out.

A free floating object could be 20 miles out max, and that’s taking a lot of assumptions and best case scenarios. However, my math could be wrong.

My work

From what I’ve found on performance charts & Beechcrafts website for the Kingair 350C, the max cruise speed at FL20 is around 311KTAS.

https://d16bsf97ryvc45.cloudfront.net/Media/2013/01/kingair_350.pdf
4th page

(Since this is the military’s ISR version, I doubt it would be able to reach that speed due to all the additional drag from the large, protruding antennas. 311kts is best case scenario).

Vs

311KTAS is a little more than 5 nautical miles per minute. Assuming the UFO is unpowered, hence stationary and only moving with the wind, the plane should’ve only flown 10 nautical miles away from the object. (2 minutes out bound since time of 1st report and “60 mile” report)

311kts/60 = 5.183nm per min 5.183•2 = 10.366

(That assumes the plane never turned around to “point” the nose and radar at the object. But, maybe that’s not needed and the aircraft radar works 360°. If the plane did turn around to “point” the radar, the distance would be even shorter. Couldn’t find any details, cant comment on that any further).

BUT, what if exactly when the UFO passed under the planes wing, the plane and UFO entered into separate jet streams, moving in opposite directions, at the same best speed of the aircraft, 311kts. Even in this, extremely unlikely, scenario where the plane and UFO have over 900kts of separation. Our UFO would barely pass 30 miles separation. Even when you bump the time from 2 minutes to 3 of separation, there’s still almost 15 miles unaccounted for.

933kts/60 = 15.55 nm per min 15.55x2 = 31.1 15.55x3 = 46.65

I don’t believe winds aloft couldn’t accounted for this much separation. But, I may have something fundamentally wrong or missing in my basic calculations. if you notice anything, please let me know.

2 Likes

We’ll get Ben in hereto give us some updates.

1 Like

@Bhansen - Anything to add?

I do have the raw ATC audio from the FOIA request and the radar data before it was purged. That’s what you see overlaid on the animation that aired on NewsNation. My estimate of the speed they reported, did come from counting the elapsed time between radio calls and where they believed they picked it up on air-to-air radar minutes later. The real question is whether their onboard radar is really capable of seeing a football sized object that far out. The radar anomalies I pointed out on NN were not ones that the crew specifically reported. Those were pointed out to me by the FOIA coordinator actually and another ATC controller chimed in that they too thought they were unusual. There are possible explanations as to how a radar could provide errors like that, but it certainly isn’t all that common, especially because balloons and other stationary objects (or those that go with prevailing winds) don’t track as fast as these. They were estimated to be 200-250 kts. Remember, it was in a controlled airspace where transponders are required also, but they were showing as “strong” primary returns and moving in a straight line. I have a few other cases on my plate right now, but I plan on circling back to get permission to share what they crew said because they were spoken to.

3 Likes

BTW… I confirmed that what the crew saw was nearly spot on to what the animation depicted, but I need permission to share their description.

3 Likes

Thanks for the update!

1 Like

I was on my phone using google meet and it didnt allow me to copy the new meetup address.