NEW JERSEY— UFOs and the possibility that aliens from another galaxy could be sending emissaries to check things out on planet Earth have captivated Americans for decades; New Jersey residents make dozens of reports annually of strange happenings in the sky. Navy pilots recently spoke of seeing mysterious objects — with no discernible engine or exhaust fumes — flying at hypersonic speeds, which brought the phenomenon back into the headlines.
So far, there have been 65 reports of unexplained things in the night sky over New Jersey this year, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.
Several reports — including sightings in Sicklerville and Lakewood — are as recent as last week. The most recent report was June 18, when a Sicklerville resident reported seeing flying objects in groups of six or eight. They “seem to be oval in shape” and had an “orange light or beam,” the report said.
Earlier this month, three reports were made in Harrison over five days. Reports of UFO sightings in Harrison were made on June 1, June 4, and June 5.
On May 17, an Egg Harbor Township resident reported seeing a “cluster of bright lights flying very fast over neighbor’s house almost like a giant star.” The lights stopped and hovered for a few minutes, and then the light got dimmer and it disappeared, the resident wrote in the report.
A resident made this report after driving through Heightstown: “My stepmother and I were driving on Indian Hill Road, when we experienced a light gray triangle shaped UFO with red and white lights.”
Other New Jersey residents reported seeing lights in the sky, fireballs, disks and more. You can check out more New Jersey UFO reports on the National UFO Reporting Center website.
President Donald Trump recently said he was briefed on UFOs. A group of Senate lawmakers received a classified briefing this week about such objects. And let’s not get started on that strange Facebook video that seems to show a creepy-looking alien doing some sort of jig down someone’s driveway.
Virginia Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Warner wants answers on UFOs, whether it’s “weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely,” Rachel Cohen, his spokeswoman, told CNN. And the Navy has drafted guidelines to allow pilots to report UFOs, and so that the military can track them, though the military branch prefers not to use the term “UFO.”
“So, we don’t actually use that term,” Joseph Gradisher, a spokesman for the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told Patch last week. “We use ‘Unmanned Aerial System.'”
The term, shortened to UAS, refers to things like recreational flying drones people can buy at a store. For the “other” things, the Navy uses the term UAP, meaning “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.”
“We constitute anything unknown or unidentified in the airspace as an ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,’ no matter what it is,” he said.
In that spirit, Patch took a peek at the most recent UFO sightings in Virginia — or UAP, if you prefer — using a database compiled by the National UFO Reporting Center. Spoiler alert: So far, no little green men have been seen running around.
According to data compiled by the Center, there were nearly 500 sightings across the country in May and more than 300 in January, March and April.
The Navy seems convinced of the existence of UFOs, telling POLITICO in a statement there were reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft “entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.”
“For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report,” the statement said.
And Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who reported his sightings to the Pentagon and Congress, told The New York Times last month he was one of multiple pilots who saw UFOs. The pilots began seeing the objects in 2014 and 2015 after receiving upgraded equipment.
Initially they believed they were getting bad readings. But the sightings kept happening, showing up at 30,000 feet, 20,000 feet and even at sea level. The objects could speed up, slow down and then reach hypersonic speeds.
“These things would be out there all day,” he said. “Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”
Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report. Thanks tohttps://patch.com
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