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National
Institute for Discovery Science
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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” (Figures 1-3).
Figure 1.
Port Washington Object.
Head on perspective.
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.
Figure 2.
Port Washington Object.
Overhead
Figure 3 Port
Washington Object. Side
and Rear View.
The rear
of the object appeared to have a reddish or amber
colored grill arrangement as shown.
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 and
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 (see the Map #1) 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. The
results are shown here:
Map
#1: Triangle sightings in the NIDS database
The
MUFON Triangle Database
In
early 2004, Don Weatherby of MUFON kindly provided NIDS
with the MUFON Triangle sightings database.
The results of plotting the
MUFON
data (1990-2003) are shown in Map #2.
Map #2: Triangle
sightings in the MUFON database
The
Larry Hatch Triangle Database
In
early 2004, Larry Hatch, the creator and owner of one of
the largest and most comprehensive
UFO databases in the world
(see http://www.larryhatch.net/),
kindly
provided NIDS with his
database of Triangle sightings (1990-2003).
Larry
Hatch’s Triangle sightings are plotted on Map#3.
Map #3: Triangle
sightings in the Larry Hatch database
Three
Databases Mapped
Next, we
combined the locations of sightings from all three
databases (NIDS, MUFON and Larry Hatch)
and plotted more than 700
sightings on
a highway map of the USA.
Map #4 shows the location of each
sighting of a Flying Triangle
(denoted by a
red Triangle) and the relationship to nearby towns and cities. The
circles
denote the positions of nearby AFBs. It can be seen that the locations
of the
AFBs in many cases
overlap with populated areas. And many of the Flying
Triangle sightings also occur in or near populated areas.
Map 4:
Locations of Triangle Sightings, NIDS, MUFON and
Hatch databases.
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
hundreds
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.
Map #4
showing the sightings from all three databases (NIDS,
MUFON and Hatch) shows a significant
intensity of the Flying Triangle
wave in
the United States.
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 the 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.
Some of
the characteristics of the reports of Flying Triangles
that are inconsistent with deployment of a
covert DoD aircraft include:
(1)
Locations
and sightings near cities and on Interstate highways (see Map 4).
(2)
Low
altitude in plain sight of eyewitnesses.
(3)
Flying
at extremely low speed or hovering in plain sight of eyewitnesses.
(4)
The
aircraft sometimes fly with easily noticeable bright lights. Some
aircraft have
blinding white lights.
Others have “bright disco lights”, usually
flashing
combinations of red, green or blue.
Reports
of Flying Triangles in Other Countries
(1) The Belgian Wave of
Triangle Sightings
According
to one description of the Belgian wave of Flying
Triangle sightings (5): “ ..the Belgian flap began
in November of 1989.
The
events of November 29 would be documented by no less than thirty
different
groups of witnesses, and three separate groups of police
officers. All
of the
reports related a large object
flying at low altitude. The craft was of
a flat,
triangular shape, with lights underneath. This giant craft made
not a
sound as
it slowly, fearlessly, moved across the landscape of Belgium.
There was free sharing of
information as the Belgian populace tracked
this
craft as it moved from the town of Liege
to the border of the
Netherlands
and Germany”.
Two F-16s were ordered to intercept and identify this phenomena, and
one of
the
jet's radars locked the object in. It appeared as a small diamond on
the
pilot's screen. The pilot reported that
only a few seconds after
locking on the
target, the object began to pick up speed, quickly moving out of radar
range.
An hour-long chase ensued, during which time the F-16s picked up
the
strange
craft's signal two additional times,
only to see it fade from view. The
triangular craft seemed to be playing a cat and mouse game, and
finally
was lost in the night lights of Brussels.
The pilots of the fighters reported that the UFO had made maneuvers
at
speeds
beyond the capability of their technology, and once the radar showed
the craft
almost instantly drop
from 10,000 to 500 feet in 5 seconds”
From the
perspective of this report, the first Belgian
Flying Triangle (see Map 5) when plotted on a map
also showed that the
Triangle
Aircraft flew in the proximity of major highways and large cities. This
aircraft
too was making no attempt at concealment. According to
Illobrand von
Ludwiger’s account of the
Belgian Triangle wave (6), “between November
1989 and
April 1991, about 3500 UFO sightings were reported
in Belgium, some of
them
witnessed by more than 100 people. Members of the Belgian anomaly
investigative
group received more than 900 reports in which witnesses observed
objects in
close proximity (300 meters or less)”.
A lucid and descriptive report
on the
Belgian Flying Triangle wave written by veteran investigator Bob Pratt
is also
worthy of close study (8).
This first startling
sighting would evolve into a wave over the next several
months. On two occasions, a pair
of F-16 fighters chased the mysterious
object,
but to no avail. On March 30,
1990,
a frantic call to military
headquarters came from a Belgian national
police
Captain. He marveled at a giant Triangle passing over, and
simultaneously two
ground radar stations were reporting an object of unknown origin on
their
screens.
One of these bases was NATO controlled near the city of least
four
other stations were also reporting the
object on their screens. The
object was
moving across their screens slowly, and failed to send a transponder
signal to identify
itself.
“The
Belgium
wave has obtained classic status in UFO lore. With over 1,000
witnesses,
confirmed radar sightings,
plane radar lock-ins, and military
confirmations,
the fact that an unknown craft moved across the country of
Belgium
cannot be denied. The case is also important for it's unique
information
sharing. Civilian and Military
officials were behind the UFO enigma.”
Map 5:
The locations of the first Triangle sighting over Belgium
in 1989.
(2)
British Triangle Sightings
The late Victor Kean
amassed an impressive database of Flying Triangle sightings in the United Kingdom.
Some of the sightings are detailed in a
report by
Kean’s colleague Omar Fowler (2). More recent sightings
compiled by
Kean are
detailed here (3). Fowler reports (2): “During the period November 1994
until
May 1995,
fifty two “Flying Triangle” events were investigated in the
Derbyshire area”. Although there have been alleged
reports of Flying
Triangles
that go back into the 1960s, the majority of UK and European Triangle
reports
appear
to come from the late 1980s/1990s. In this respect, The European
and UK numbers of Triangle reports appear
to
agree with
those in the NIDS database.
The
Percentage of CE3 and CE4 in the Black Triangle
Database is no Different from the Percentage in the
Entire NIDS UAP
Database.
What
is known about the “occupants” of the Flying Triangles?
As noted above (see Table 1), a significant
number of the eyewitness
reports in
the NIDS Flying Triangle database are close encounters (CE). CE is the
widely
used descriptor for the eyewitness reporting of an object less than 600
feet
away. Only a tiny number
of eyewitnesses in the NIDS database have
reported
seeing occupants. CE3 and CE4 are defined by Vallee (4)
as the subset
of CE
reports in which occupants of UAPs are reported. We calculated
the numbers of CE3
and CE4 in
the NIDS Triangle database. CE3 and CE4 are generally a tiny percentage
of all
CE and this holds
true in the NIDS database. We then compared this with
the
numbers of CE3 and CE4 in other categories of UAPs,
also in the NIDS
database.
Figure 4 shows that the numbers of CE3 and CE4 reports in most UAP
classes are
almost the same as the number in the Triangle database.
Therefore, we
find that
the number of CE3 and CE4 reports
as a ratio of total Triangle reports
conforms
to the ratio of CE3+CE4 to total UAP reports.
Figure 4:
Ratio of CE3/CE4 cases to Total Cases for
Triangles and for Other Categories of UAP in the NIDS Database.
The
Timing of Boomerang and Triangle Waves
The famous wave
of flying
boomerang reports in New York
and Connecticut was
studied by, among
others,
the distinguished investigators J. Allen Hynek, Philip J
Imbrogno and
Bob Pratt (7). Pratt’s online description (9) of
the boomerang wave
from
1982-1986 remains one of the most compelling. In those four years, Bob
Pratt
says, about
five thousand people reported seeing the large objects.
Pratt
writes (9): “Sometimes called the Westchester boomerang
because some of
the
earliest reports came from Westchester County in New York state, it was
huge
and often flew
close to the ground, so low that a grey superstructure
could be
seen linking numerous multi-colored lights. Numerous
sightings were
also
reported in neighboring New York
counties as well as in nearby Connecticut.”
It is currently
unknown whether
the “Westchester Boomerang” sightings of 1982-1986 in New
York and
Connecticut
had any relationship with the more recent, post 1990, wave of Flying
Triangle
sightings in the United States,
documented in the present report.
The NIDS
Triangle database by definition is self-selected.
The majority of cases have been received in the late
1990s, simply
because NIDS
opened the hotline in late 1999. NIDS also reviewed the MUFON and Hatch
databases
and a comparison of the frequencies of Triangle sightings in
all
three databases is seen in Figure 5. Both NIDS
and MUFON Triangle
sightings
appear to cluster towards the latter part of the 1990s, whereas Larry
Hatch’s
Triangle
sightings predominate throughout the early and mid-1990s.
Currently,
not much is known about data pre-1990
in either the MUFON or Hatch
databases,
although NIDS has very few Triangle cases pre-1990.
Figure
5. Flying Triangle Reports 1990-2003 in NIDS,
MUFON and Hatch Databases
In an effort to look at the
overall frequency of Triangle sightings as a function of time, NIDS
also
consulted the NUFORC database (10) of Triangle sightings. This
comprises the
largest publicly available
database of Triangle sightings. Figure 6
shows the
annual frequency of NUFORC Triangle sightings plotted by year
since
1980. In
Figure 6, the NUFORC data are overlaid with the data in Figure 5 for
comparison. Again,
the frequency of reported sightings of Triangles in
the
NUFORC database increases towards the latter part
of the 1990s. For
temporal
comparison the times of the other waves of boomerangs and Triangles in
other
countries are also shown in Figure 6.
Figure
6: Flying Triangle Frequencies from Multiple
Databases as a Function of Time.
It should be
stressed that NIDS
has control over the NIDS database alone and quality control of
cases
has been
conducted. For example, because it is known that a triangular formation
of NOSS
satellites
(11) regularly flies across the night sky, NIDS generally
excludes
reports that conform to this description from
our database. It is not
known
whether this exclusion of NOSS-like sightings is done for other
databases.
Secondly,
we are confident that there is little overlap between the
NIDS, MUFON
and NUFORC databases because we
routinely ask eyewitnesses for
information on
their reports to other organizations.
Acknowledgements
NIDS
thanks Don Weatherby, John Schuessler, Larry Hatch,
Roger Pinson and Bruce Cornet for their
contributions to this report.
We also
appreciate the online presence of the NUFORC database,
run ably by
Peter
Davenport.
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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