
FAA Tapes from That Oregon UFO Incident - tensor_rank_0
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18473/faa-recordings-deepen-mystery-surrounding-ufo-over-oregon-that-sent-f-15s-scrambling
======
computator
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.

~~~
sureaboutthis
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
Agreed, but it does say "© 2018 Time Inc. All Rights Reserved" at the bottom,
that enough of an About page for me.

------
tbabb
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
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
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_Extend...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_KC-10_Extender)

[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)

------
wizardforhire
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
> _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.

~~~
colordrops
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
> _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
Peacetime? The US is still in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force bombed
Russian military contractors in Syria last week.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
We have always been at war with EastAsia.

------
davidu
[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/inde...](https://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/flights/aircraft/index.html)

1: Trump put RR engines on his 757, for instance.

~~~
rrmm
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
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".

------
erentz
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
Yeah, they need Slack

~~~
mistermann
They'd get killed on pricing.

~~~
smoyer
The unpaid plan might be useful in this case ... the history would become
hidden very quickly ;)

------
princekolt
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.

~~~
7dare
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
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.

------
juicy-fruit
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
We'll know alright... it will just be too late.

------
Animats
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-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/el-chapo-guzman-mexico-drug-
trafficking-airplanes-2016-5)

~~~
krallja
Are those aircraft invisible to radar?

~~~
isjenhe6n
When flown in the radar shadow of another plane, yes. They’ve done that
before.

------
flavmartins
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
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.

------
testplzignore
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)

~~~
chakalakasp
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
> 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?

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

~~~
patrickyeon
(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?

------
ChuckMcM
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
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.

------
XzetaU8
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)

------
themodelplumber
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
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
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.

------
sduclos
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-...](https://thedailyintrep.com/nt-43a-the-rat-55-a-very-unusual-
boeing-737-200/)

------
xnrv
Maybe the pilots should start being issued binoculars?

~~~
coatmatter
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-
re...](https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/18/travel/australia-yacht-
rescue/index.html)

* 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.

------
LolWolf
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-10791270...](https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-
sr-71-story-1079127041)

~~~
ridgeguy
That linked story never gets old.

~~~
jonah
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
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.

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

------
newnewpdro
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-
mug...](https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/bill-gates-famous-mugshot-due-
to-a-speed-ticket-in-a-porsche-ar25588.html)

[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4kfs42/john_ca...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/4kfs42/john_carmack_discusses_tesla_roadster_1000whp/)

~~~
bitL
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
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
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.

------
pankajdoharey
Woah!!! This is crazy!!!

------
IWeldMelons
How come there is no Wikipedia article?

------
jbob2000
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
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).

------
lolc
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
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
> the object maintained altitude and was able to manoeuvre

Is there a chart of the encounters somewhere? All I heard is "it's
northbound".

