F-16s Pursue Unknown Craft Over Region

Washington Post ^ | Saturday, July 27, 2002 | Steve Vogel

[berned]

This was no aurora, or any other kind of US craft. They would NOT be test-flying experimental US aircraft in the airspace of Wash DC, in broad daylight, AFTER 9-11. Forget it. Ain't gonna happen.

This was NOT of US origin. The F-16's were scrambled by NORAD.

[VaBthang4]

There is something to the story but anyone in a post 9/11 World who upon seeing F-16 fighters chasing something over Northern Virginia who has a first reaction of "I think those jets are chasing a UFO." is an idiot.

We've got many aircraft in our arsenal that can pull away from a F-16 however...I doubt F-16's would be chasing one of them.

Odd story....but until a small green man walks up to my front door and rings the doorbell...my first reaction to anything isnt going to be "It must be a UFO".

[tomkat]

F-104

---

F-4

[kinghorse]

Could be just an experimental plane being tested without the knowledge of Andrews.

Yeah, great test. "Hey Major let's see if we can make the President crap his pants this weekend." That would be cool.eheehee..eh..heeheehehehe.

[the crow]

stories?

[kinghorse]

Could have been some sort of ballistic, dare I say, missile??

[Gunrunner2]

>>F-14 : 1,564mph at level flight.
F-16 : 1,320mph at level flight<<

Like I said, "old engines," and with the new 229's, we win.
When it comes to numbers, they don't tell the story, and are usually put out by the manufactuer, not the services. Talk to the pilots, they know. That said, maybe I was hallucinating when at Maple Flag in my F-15E I was able to run away from the F-14's trying to chase me down and continue my low-level bombing mission . . . possibly because I was at 200' and they don't perform that well at such a low altitude. (I won't mention how many kills I got against the F-14's. . .don't want to embarass anyone. . .

The 229 engines on the F-15E are star performers, and the 229's can beat the stuffing outta any other jet/engine out there.

Reality check, okay, to the bar, I'm gonna challenge everyone to a game of combat crud, winner gets bragging rights. . .and then tomorrow, first one to the end of the runway is lead and we will meet in the MOA, you take the south side and I'll take the north, I got evens you got odds, deck is the surface and max is whatever you can get, BVR with two forms of EID, heaters take two shots and by the way, we will brief on Guard---let 'er rip!

:-)

Ahh. . .the old days. . . .

[Mulder]

Relieved the see Mulder weigh in.

Let's see if Scully is around.... ;-)

[maquiladora]

*Shrugs*

A high-altitude hypersonic plane could be heading out to the seaboard, develop some fault and be forced to reduce altitude and airspeed unexpectedly, perhaps in the Washington region. But......

Guess it must be aliens then eh.

[Check6]

One wonders exactly what "faded from the radar screen" means. Did it land? Did it turn on some stealth technology that someone besides the US Air Force is using? Or did it simply leave at mach 10? This is a very curious story. There must be other witnesses if there actually was an attempted intercept ... even at 1am ... and if there are other witnesses who come forward and are publicized, then the story could get very interesting indeed.

[Marie]

(timidly raises hand) Yes, I do. I've seen too much evidence to shrug it all off as swamp gas and Venus sightings.

I had a friend who had a really weird encounter about three years ago. About a week later there was an article on CNN about hundreds of people seeing the same thing. When they recycled the news 30 minutes later, the story was gone. I found it on their website later that day and forwarded it to my friend,but by the time the sun went down the article was scrubbed from their archives. I was never able to find it again and have remained curious.

[tomkat]

The 229 engines on the F-15E...

google actually pulled up a result on your exact phrase !
kinda small, but ...

gawd, the net's just too kewl ...

[tomkat]

a missle, given the past year, would not surprise me in the least.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

229's can beat the stuffing outta any other jet/engine out there

Not the F119

[maquiladora]

What shape was it?

[tomkat]

then again, google returned this on an image search of 'F119'

[Hellmouth]

Well this is a strange one:

Radar verification.

Jets on a chase that aren't able to catch up with the craft.

An eyewitness seeing it as blue non-plane like.

The object mysteriously disappears from radar.

The craft flying in a security sensitive zone.

Extremely unllikely that any other country could be the progenitor of the object.

Extremely unlikely because of the location, that it could a prototype of a new US avionics devise in testing: Don't they test those at Area 51/Groom Lake?

So it's either has to be a UFO, some type of natural phenomenon ala a meteor, comet, or perhaps some previously unknown form of energized plasma.

Or it's some type of military experiment with the eyewitness being a plant.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Wonder what her thrust to weight ratio is?

[Gunrunner2]

>>"faded from the radar screen"<< usually means it just disappeared from the scope. This is not unusual, as anomalies happen all the time, even with the most advanced pulse-Doppler radars. In fact, I had on many occasion ran my radar out to max rage, scrolled it “up” just to see if anything was trolling along. And sometimes I did lock onto something. Sometimes it stayed in place and nothing happened, sometimes it was moving at terrific speeds, but in all cases it was resolved to be an an anomaly that caused the return, or another aircraft that was able to be identified. I would suspect this event was one of those I just described.

Basically, I think the radar returns were anomalies and the blue light was an illusion (the AB glow from the lead aircraft, as seen from behind by the guy on the ground).

I can gar-an-darn-tee yah it wasn’t no experimental aircraft-—no way would we ever let one of those out of the box, especially over heavily populated areas and hi-alert areas like the east-coast/Wash DC. No way. No how.

Bottom line, to repeat myself, the jets scrambled to investigate an anomaly, the blue light was the AB glow of the lead aircraft from zero aspect. The blue light went away when the lead aircraft pulled out of AB.

Nothing more.

>>This is a very curious story. There must be other witnesses if there actually was an attempted intercept ... even at 1am ... and if there are other witnesses who come forward and are publicized, then the story could get very interesting indeed.<<

Like most stories of “UFO’s,” it will take on a life of its own, as those that want to believe will, and those that offer explanations are one of “those” that are hiding the secret, and the lack of proof jusy goes to show ya just how good the cover up really is.

Now, that is not to say we don’t have secrets, we do, but we don’t take our secrets out into the world to be seen by the neighbors.

[cibco]

"DING-DONG..."