A Diamond DA40. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 bomberpilot
The mysterious object, which mirrored the pilot's movements, was captured on camera.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report that was discovered by The War Zone, the incident occurred on September 16th, 2018 when a pilot, who had been flying a Diamond DA40 light aircraft over Atlantic City in New Jersey at 2,000ft, spotted a rather unusual object.
Initially believing it to be a set of balloons, the pilot slowed down but was surprised to discover that it seemed to be mirroring the plane's movements.
One of his passengers recorded some footage, which can be viewed below.
The pilot described how the unidentified object had a "v-shaped antenna" with some sort of payload hanging off the bottom of it, possibly a camera rig of some kind.
He stated that it had circled around the plane, as if it were trying to record a video of it.
"It was an unidentified flying object; of course, it wasn't an alien," he told air traffic control.
According to the report, the object was too small to pick up on radar.
As things stand, it remains unclear exactly what the object was or who was operating it, however in all likelihood it was some sort of drone being flown illegally and dangerously close to the aircraft.
As inexpensive drones become increasingly commonplace, such incidents are also likely to rise.
It is unclear whether or not officials ever managed to catch whoever was responsible in this particular case.
Pretty cool, Its worldly and likely human controlled lots of hobbyists play with RC stuff on the coast, some go out of range. Im not sold it was copying the planes movements
I think we are getting into the age of a new psy-ops for the military. I think some of the 2000000 sats in orbit are capable of radar and visual spoofing. I one hundred and ten percent believe these pilots. And some of the tech I personally saw as I exited the military as a contractor make me believe that this is new technology. Trump started spaceforce for a reason people.
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