Post by swamprat on Feb 17, 2018 11:12:23 GMT -6
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You Need To Hear These FAA Tapes From That Oregon UFO Incident That Sent F-15s Scrambling
New evidence offers great detail of the bizarre event and provides unprecedented insight into how such a unique incident is dealt with in real time.
By Tyler Rogoway
February 15, 2018
(NOTE: If the audio/video links don't work, go to the article URL shown at the bottom of page 2)
Last November, The War Zone posted an exclusive story detailing a bizarre incident involving an unidentified aircraft that transited the skies of the Pacific Northwest in the early evening of October 25th, 2017. What started as a radar target moving at very high speed over Northern California turned into a series of eyewitness accounts made by nearby airline pilots traveling northward over Oregon. Even F-15 fighters were launched to intercept the mysterious intruder that quickly became invisible to radar.
Now, through the Freedom of Information Act, we present what could be one of the most insightful instances of official documentation surrounding such an encounter that had already been confirmed to have occurred by both the FAA and the USAF. These materials include fascinating audio recordings of radio transmissions and phone calls made as the incident was unfolding, as well as pilot interviews, and conversations between FAA officials made in the aftermath of the highly peculiar incident.
For proper context, make sure to first read our original post linked here: www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/16079/airliners-and-f-15s-involved-in-bizzare-encounter-with-mystery-aircraft-over-oregon
This details the event, how our report came to be in the first place, as well as the rare confirmations as to its authenticity from both the FAA and the USAF.
Fast forward three months later, and now we have so much more evidence that adds incredible depth and color to our original report and the limited radio recordings we originally had to go off of. Via our Freedom of Information Act Request we received hours of audio, all with unique elements that add to this story. What we have done is packaged that audio, as well as the radar data provided, into four separate videos. We will highlight some of the big takeaways from each video in our piece, but we cannot stress enough how interesting and eye opening this audio is to listen to in full, so we highly recommend you do so by watching each video in its entirety.
The first video includes audio from the initial spotting of the object as it ripped its way across Northern California at high speed, before it took a turn north and merged with nearby air traffic and disappeared from radar. Once again, beyond becoming invisible to radar, this aircraft had no transponder broadcasting nor did it ever communicate verbally with air traffic controllers. The audio in the video goes on to be sync'd in real-time with radar data obtained via our FOIA request.
Listen to the conversations here: blob:http://www.thedrive.com/727e5da3-d8cf-4891-b32d-fd41876039d3
Oakland Center Sector 31 first detected the target around 4:30pm PST. Below is a chart showing where Oakland Center's high altitude sectors are situated around Northern California. Sector 31 spans roughly from Sacramento up towards Redding, before its northern edge, which is near the border with Oregon, terminates and Seattle Center's airspace begins. To the east, the airspace sits along the California-Nevada border. This makes sense as the craft was eventually tracked by airline pilots as it made its way up over Crater Lake and towards the Willamette Valley.
In the audio the Oakland Center controller notes that it is near his boundary, so it seems the aircraft's first appearance officially occurred near the border of Oakland Center Sector 31 and Seattle Center Sector 13 or 14. The target was moving "very fast at 37,000" feet when it was first detected.
The "intruder" quickly dropped off radar and that's when the visual sightings made by airline crews began. They continued for roughly half an hour and over hundreds of miles. The exchanges between nearby pilots and air traffic control regarding the unidentified aircraft were constant in the audio, with the same description coming back time and again—that of a white aircraft cruising at around 37,000 feet that is too far away to tell the type or if it has markings of any kind on it.
At roughly 27:30 into the video we get our first indication that the F-15s out of PDX are about to scramble, with the air traffic controller noting this while talking to another FAA controller, during which the controller also reiterates that there has still been no radar contact with the aircraft. The controller also repeatedly asks aircrews nearby to check their Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) for the aircraft, which all come back negative.
The F-15s first appear on radar as they climb out of Portland to the south at time index 33:33 as "Rock" flight—a common callsign used for the alert F-15s stationed at PDX. Alaska 439 asks for an update on the unidentified aircraft and the controller notes they still have nothing on him, saying colloquially that it must be in a kind of "stealth mode or something." It's also interesting that the F-15s first went south when it seems as if the object would have been north of PDX by the time they finally launched.
This second video is just the radar data in its raw form. It starts before the sync'd recording begins above so we thought we would post it in full so our readers can take a closer look if they want: blob:http://www.thedrive.com/9edc41cb-0919-47b4-949d-362ec39bd41f
Next we move into some very interesting recordings of FAA phone calls that occurred as all of this was taking place. We edited out dead space in the audio between phone calls and bleeped the names of those who named themselves. Aside from that, the audio is unedited by us, although we cannot be certain if parts were redacted by the FAA or not. There were a few strange areas where conversations went mute and it's not clear if this was edited or just an anomaly. The primary person talking in most of these calls is the Operations Manager In Charge for Seattle Center at the time that the incident took place:
blob:http://www.thedrive.com/63bd2843-a1d4-449e-8925-b581022fe2c1
The first call is to Oakland Center, and it occurs early on after the initial radar detection and as pilots began spotting the craft visually. He also mentions that "air defense" is looking for the target now too (on radar), so it shows how early the military was involved in the encounter.
See next post for page 2