Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Contact    |    RSS icon Twitter icon Facebook icon  
Unexplained Mysteries
You are viewing: Home > News > The UFO Phenomenon > News story
Welcome Guest ( Login or Register )  
All ▾
Search Submit

The UFO Phenomenon

Pentagon releases report on pilot UFO encounter over Gulf Of Mexico

By T.K. Randall
April 29, 2024 · Comment icon 16 comments
Eglin UFO over Gulf of Mexico.
A zoomed-in infrared image of the object. Image Credit: US Air Force
The Pentagon's UFO office has reached a conclusion about the nature of an object observed near Eglin last year.
The incident, which occurred on January 26th, 2023 over the Gulf of Mexico, was reported by the pilot of a US Air Force fighter jet during a sortie from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

Details were later made available to the public through the Freedom of Information Act.

According to the report, the pilot had acquired a radar lock on four unidentified objects at around 16,000-18,000 feet, but was ultimately only ever able to observe one of these directly.

Oddly, the plane's radar then malfunctioned and remained inoperable for the remainder of the event.
The object that the pilot did manage to observe was described as vaguely pear-shaped and similar to the "Apollo spacecraft". It had an "orange-reddish" illuminated, roundish underside and had a cone-shaped top section covered in "gunmetal gray segmented panels".

Now, in a newly released analysis of the incident, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has put forward a conventional suggestion for what the pilot encountered that day.

"Although the pilot described the object as uniformly gray in the visible spectrum (it appears uniformly black from the viewing angle in the EO image), the magnified infrared image (see above) shows the object had a strong contrasting signature in the infrared spectrum," the report reads.

"This contrast suggests either a temperature/emissivity difference or a reflectivity difference between its two hemispheres."

With "moderate confidence", therefore, the report suggests that what the pilot actually encountered was a "commercial lighting balloon", or something similar.

The report also suggests with "high confidence" that the object was "not anomalous".

Source: The War Zone | Comments (16)




Other news and articles
Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #7 Posted by Trelane 16 days ago
One thing that can be reasonably and logically eliminated is extraterrestrial craft. Once the catalog of "known-knowns" are investigated and eliminated as possibilities, then we can jump in the speculative pool of alien visitation.
Comment icon #8 Posted by OpenMindedSceptic 16 days ago
Balloons that disengage radar, come in packs and look love nothing a pilot had seen before. Balloons? Lol    
Comment icon #9 Posted by Trelane 16 days ago
Allegedly did those things. ?
Comment icon #10 Posted by the13bats 15 days ago
We won yet another one as definitely not aliens.
Comment icon #11 Posted by the13bats 15 days ago
Really?! You couldn't find anything about internally lighted balloons and blimps? Ranging from small party club size to car lot type advertising right up to the Goodyear blimp we have all kinds of lighted balloons and blimps in our sky's even ones made to look like classic flying saucers They want to attract attention and some groups compete to design wild ones. Countless times these advertising craft have been mistaken for craft from other worlds but no.   Actually if a person reads the article carefully they will see that a radar return say four but changed to one right before the radar wen... [More]
Comment icon #12 Posted by Hankenhunter 15 days ago
The object that the pilot did manage to observe was described as vaguely pear-shaped and similar to the "Apollo spacecraft". It had an "orange-reddish" illuminated, roundish underside and had a cone-shaped top section covered in "gunmetal gray segmented panels". Yup, sure sounds like another balloon. Lol. ? 
Comment icon #13 Posted by Trelane 15 days ago
That could be his deion to the best of his perception.  We don't know if it was, in fact constructed of "gunmetal gray segmented panels" or items that he perceived as such. It could be a number of things that the pilot may not be immediately familiar with. But yeah, let's not consider any of those possibilities before jumping to extraterrestrial craft. ?
Comment icon #14 Posted by the13bats 15 days ago
It's that whole irrational claim to authority silliness in this case a pilot is flawless in their interpretation of all things and knowing of all things which of course is a ridiculous assumption. Look at the mantel case, the seasoned pilot lost his life chasing a sky hook balloon, sorry chasing a UFO likely alien craft.
Comment icon #15 Posted by pallidin 13 days ago
From Wiki: Balloon lights (also called lighting balloons) are a specialized type of luminaire used primarily for lighting in the motion picture industry, night highway construction, incident management, and public security applications such as police checkpoints. These luminaires typically consist of one or more high-intensity lamps surrounded by a translucent fabric balloon. The balloon acts as a diffuser to soften and disperse the light. The upper portion of the balloon sometimes has a reflective inner coating to direct more of the light downward. Some commercial products use a blower t... [More]
Comment icon #16 Posted by Hazzard 12 days ago
  I could not agree more.   I have worked with and known pilots my hole life (cops and military) and I have seen nothing that can convince me that they are any better than the rest of the population at this UFO stuff.      


Please Login or Register to post a comment.


Our new book is out now!
Book cover

The Unexplained Mysteries
Book of Weird News

 AVAILABLE NOW 

Take a walk on the weird side with this compilation of some of the weirdest stories ever to grace the pages of a newspaper.

Click here to learn more

We need your help!
Patreon logo

Support us on Patreon

 BONUS CONTENT 

For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can gain access to a wide range of exclusive perks including our popular 'Lost Ghost Stories' series.

Click here to learn more

Top 10 trending mysteries
Recent news and articles