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14th-century English logicion and Franciscan friar, William Occam stated: "One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything." This razor of explanation includes the subject of UFOs. After sixty years of reports, garbage in/garbage out, compelling atterns have emerged that suggest a sizeable percentage of UFO sightings may be of a more terrestrial persuasion. The National Institute of Discovery Sciences published the following report examining so-called: Black Trinangles.
NIDS Investigations of the Flying Triangle Enigma.
August 2004
Summary
The United States is currently experiencing a wave of Flying Triangle sightings that may have intensified in the 1990s, especially towards the latter part of the 1990s. The wave continues. The Flying Triangles are being openly deployed over and near population centers, including in the vicinity of major Interstate Highways. The behavior of these Triangular aircraft does not conform to previous patterns of covert deployment of unacknowledged aircraft. Neither the agenda nor the origin of the Flying Triangles are currently known.
Background
NIDS was abruptly exposed to the Flying Triangle phenomenon on the morning of January 5, 2000 when a police officer called the hotline to report a close encounter with a very large, silent, brightly lit object in western Illinois. Following a high profile investigation by NIDS it emerged that five separate police officers in several different precincts and over a dozen other eyewitnesses had seen the object as it flew slowly in a southwesterly direction.
The flight path of the aircraft took it near the perimeter of Scott Air Force base (SAFB), the Head Quarters of Air Mobility Command. One of the NIDS investigators interviewed the AFOSI special agent in charge in his office at SAFB. The upshot of the NIDS interview was a denial from the Air Force of any knowledge of an aircraft in the vicinity of SAFB, as well as a denial that any aircraft had flown out from Scott AFB.
A report on the NIDS investigation, including several eyewitness testimonies and summaries can be found at: http://www.nidsci.org/news/illinois_contents.php
The NIDS report also includes two video clips (reproduced with permission) from an intensive forensic reconstruction of the event by a company that routinely conducts these reconstructions of traffic accidents for presentation in a court of law.
During the ensuing years (2000-2004), NIDS received hundreds of reports from people in the United States and Canada reporting large triangular aircraft, often silent and often flying at very low altitude and at low air speed. In many cases, the objects were brightly lit.
A good example of some structural details of these aircraft comes from an eyewitness in Port Washington Wisconsin who encountered a large object that flew over her home at 500 feet altitude in October 1998. The witness’s husband is a graphics artist, so a graphic reconstruction from the pair shows a football field-sized, wedge-shaped object with flashing red, blue and white“disco lights”.
The eyewitness described several (maybe four, see below) large circles underneath the object as it flew over her. She heard a low hum as it executed a flat bank turn and flew slowly out over Lake Michigan.
The eyewitness from Port Washington describes the circumstances as the aircraft came into her field of view: “clear starry night; took dog out between 10.31-10.37 PM; was waiting for her to finish…standing by our lot-line fence, facing north…just looking at the beautiful night…suddenly this monstrosity came out of the “blue”, just like a Star Trek uncloaking, no kidding….so quiet I couldn’t believe it and so huge….no more than 500 feet or so up, and big enough to take up my field of sky vision…crude mathematics makes this vessel about 200 ft wide and 250 feet long.”
The witness continued:” “Looked like a Chrysler Corp symbol almost…a pentagonal arrow… sort of a combination of a boomerang/diamond/arrow….it had substantial cabin sitting on top that looked broader with many faceted window type panes. Cabin seemed rather high for the overall thickness of the body of the craft….size of object based in part on the hugeness of the strobing “cop car gumball” banks of lights.
Behavior of the craft: looked like it was on a dreamy pleasure cruise…very quiet… just a low humming… and strobing bizarre red/clear/blue huge banks of lights. This thing was so psychedelic flashy, I couldn’t believe I was standing there alone watching it. I knew it was for real when I saw my dog looked up at it.”
The Port Washington sighting is reviewed here along with the Illinois police officer’s sighting as an illustration of the behavior of these aircraft. Along with these reports, NIDS has accumulated almost 400 separate sightings of triangular/boomerang/wedge-shaped objects, many of which are brightly lit, low flying, and traveling at unexpectedly low air speeds.
To give a general impression on the noticeably low altitude, Table 1 summarizes some relevant details on altitude from several NIDS reports. We are mindful of the caveat that estimates of altitude, especially at night, are fraught with inaccuracy.
TABLE 1: List of Witness Descriptions of Low Altitudes of Triangular Aircraft
Case# Location Description of Altitude
300 Al-Theodore “Treetop Level”
218 OK-Creek Co “40 feet”
317 FL-Gainesville “100’ or less”
319 UT-Arcadia “30 feet”
272 SC-Williamson “100 feet”
303 IL-Sparta “Twice treetop height”
048 CA-Death Valley “50 feet”
050 NY-Bedford “Just Above Tree-tops”
066 MO-Nelson “3 story building”
015 OK-Inola “20 feet”
117 NV-Las Vegas “50 feet”
523 MI Marquette “Treetop”
543 TX Lockhart “~30 feet”
205 OR-Aloha “8-10 stories”
230 TX-Corpus Christi “100-150 feet”
231 FL-Newberry “150’, just over trees”
161 MO-Valley Park “40-50 feet”
330 AL-Wadley “100’ above trees”
385 VA-Lynn Haven “100 feet”
603 Germany Base “100-150 feet”
420 NY-Pond Eddy “100 feet”
450 PA-Waymart “2 stories”
575 OK-Yukon “Just over trees”
601 NJ-Jersey City “100 feet”
358 KS-Topeka “50 feet”
590 IN-Indianapolis “50 feet above big maple trees”
093 NM Standing Rock “From Ground”
271 OR “Ground (nearest)”
092 AZ-Window Rock “from ground”
156 KS Salina “on the ground”
278 OR-Eugene “ground (nearest)”
Results
In earlier reports, NIDS outlined a tentative correlation between reported sightings of Triangles and the locations of Air Mobility Command and Air Force Materiel Command bases in the United States.
These reports an hypotheses derived from them can be found in the “Research News” section
(http://www.nidsci.org/researchnews.php) of the NIDS web site.
Recent Analysis of the NIDS Database
In mid 2004, NIDS again reviewed our database comprising the locations of the Triangle sightings in the United States. We find the sightings of Triangles appear primarily adjacent to population centers and along Interstate Highways. From the map, the Triangle sightings cluster on both coasts. The flight path direction of the Triangle aircraft is shown by the direction of the black arrow on the map. If an arrow points west, the Triangle was reported flying west.
Discussion
The years 1990-2004 have seen an intense wave of Flying Triangle aircraft, as measured by three separate databases. The major finding in this report is that the behavior of the Flying Triangles, as related by hundred of eyewitnesses, does not appear consistent with the covert deployment of an advanced DoD aircraft. Rather, it is consistent with (a) the routine and open deployment of an (unacknowledged) advanced DoD aircraft or (b) the routine and open deployment of an aircraft owned and operated by non-DoD personnel. The implications of the latter possibility are disturbing, especially during the post 9/11 era when the United States airspace is extremely heavily guarded and monitored. In support of option (a), there is much greater need for surveillance in the United States in the post 9/11 era and it is certainly conceivable that deployment of low altitude surveillance platforms is routine and open. The data from the NIDS, MUFON and NUFORC (see below) Triangle databases show an increase in sightings of Triangles after 1997, so if option (a) is correct, large-scale deployment of the Triangles was initiated over the United States, possibly towards the late 1990s.
Whether the deployment of the Flying Triangles is exclusively confined to population centers is unknown, since the majority of the NIDS reports come from cities and from Interstate Highways where people are clustered. NIDS does have some reports of Flying Triangles from remote areas.
There have been other analyses of the Flying Triangle wave in the United States (1) and in the United Kingdom (2). Writers and researchers fall into two camps when analyzing the burgeoning number of Triangle reports. One camp stipulates that the Triangles are man-made; the other says they are not. In 2004 it is extremely
difficult to distinguish between these two possibilities since th former option overlaps heavily with legitimate National Security concerns, while in the absence of much more physical evidence, the latter option is not testable. Currently, the dominant data in the field comprise eyewitness sightings. These come with the usual caveats regarding eyewitness reliability.
Analysis of more than 700 Triangle Sightings show that a significant number of the above mentioned eyewitnesses are located near areas of population including major Interstate highways. The trend of open deployment as described in this report is not consistent with secret operation of an advanced DoD aircraft. For example, crude examination of the (anecdotally derived) patterns of deployment of previously developed DoD stealth aircraft programs, including the F-117 and the B-2 aircraft, show that the pattern of deployment of unacknowledged F-117 and B-2 aircraft, prior to their acknowledgement by DoD, is different from the patterns for the Flying Triangles. Prior to acknowledgement of the F-117 and B-2 aircraft, only rare night time sightings occurred in the sparsely populated sections of Nevada, California and a few other states (see F-117 and B-2 in 12). Flying at low altitude over populated areas was rarely reported for the F-117 or B-2. In contrast, the Flying Triangle deployment, especially during the 1990s, appears more consistent with the open and public operation of these aircraft. In some cases (for example see the above description of the Port Washington Triangle), the deployment may be more consistent with an attempt to display or to be noticed. There appears to be little or no attempt to hide. Hence, the cumulative recent data from several databases lead us to modify the tentative NIDS hypothesis, published in July 2003, that the Triangles are covertly deployed DoD aircraft.
While it is premature to dismiss the previously published NIDS correlation between Triangle sightings and a subset of AFBs, the apparent association with centers of population may point away from a covert program. Rather, it is consistent with routine and open deployment of an advanced aircraft.
References
(1) Dolan R. What Are the Triangles? http://keyholepublishing.com/What_Are_The_Triangles.htm
(2) Fowler, Omar The Flying Triangle Mystery (1996). http://dbarkertv.com/FTM.pdf
(3) http://homepage.ntlworld.com/project_ft/
(4) Vallee, J. (1990) Confrontations: A Scientist’s Search for Alien Contact.
(5) http://www.ufocasebook.com/Belgium.html
(6) Von Ludwiger, Illobrand (1998). Best UFO Cases Europe.
(7) Night Siege, The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings (1998). Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Philip J. Imbrogno,
and Bob Pratt, Llewellyn Publications, Second Edition.
(8) Pratt B . Belgian Military Jets Track UFOs. http://www.bobpratt.org/belgium.html
(9) Pratt B. The Hudson Valley Boomerang. http://www.bobpratt.org/siege.html
(10) National UFO Reporting Center: http://www.ufocenter.com/
(11) http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/noss.htm
(12) http://www.lowobservable.com/aircraft.htm
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