FAA Weighs in On Amherst UFO Report (Clearing Up Nothing)

Example of "triangular/diamond-shaped UAV
(US Navy’s X-47B drone)

According to a story in today's print edition of the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the "Federal Aviation Administration says a military aircraft was flying over Amherst Jan. 8 when residents reported seeing a mysterious object flying silently overhead." The spokesman for the FAA, James Peters, wrote in an email that "the only aircraft that was operating in the area was a military aircraft doing practice approaches to Westover (Air Reserve Base)." 

Example of "military or other surveillance drone" at night?

Westover’s chief of public affairs, Lt. Col. James Bishop - who originally said "there was no record of an aircraft flying in the area" - has subsequently confirmed the FAA's report, saying that a C5 cargo plane took off from Westover at 5:30 p.m. that evening and came back into the local area around 9:30 pm. Of course, it's ludicrous to imagine that anyone could confuse a C5 cargo plane with the object described by multiple eye-witnesses as 2-3 cars in size, triangular/diamond-shaped, essentially silent, and close to the ground. Amherst residents are very familiar with C5 cargo planes, as they noisily traverse our skies just about daily as they fly in and out of Westover, and even Bishop is quick to point out the difference between a C5 and the UFO as described. One thing in the story did strike me as odd - the FAA spokesman talks about a "military aircraft doing practice approaches to Westover," but the Westover spokesman only confirmed that a C5 cargo plane was leaving the area around 5:30 pm. "Leaving the area" and "practice approaches" don't exactly sound like the same behaviors. And while I can well imagine that some kind of aircraft was practicing approaches that evening, it seems unlikely, given the frequency of their flights, that a C5 would be engaged in "practice approaches." Perhaps it was just a slip of the keyboard, or maybe something was indeed "practicing approaches" out there - but whatever was seen silently flying over Amherst was no C5 cargo plane.

Photo of the Navy's new bat-winged
experimental drone, X-47B

Readers continue to provide some interesting reports of similar sightings. Some of the accounts (especially those of colored lights blinking quickly in the darkness) could certainly be bona fide UFOs, but they could also be a whole host of other things, from helicopters, to normal lights in the sky, to optical illusions that occur in certain kinds of light conditions, etc. But other accounts (like the January 8 accounts) are so specific and detailed as to defy obvious explanation. A few days ago, Head in the Clouds Amherst received this account from a reader describing a somewhat similar sighting about a year ago, also near the area around the old landfill:

"I would like to share that a year or so ago, when I was driving down route 9 across from the old capped off Amherst landfill, I was paralleled on the left by a small aircraft. I was shocked at how low it was flying and looked to see who was controlling it but there was no one. It traveled quite some distance and then suddenly angled itself to ascend and flew above the treetops and off into the sky until it went out of sight in the direction of Hadley/ Mt. Holyoke range. I went home and looked to see if there were any reports of drones being tested by Westover but there were none. I scratched my head and let it go. After looking up the Teledyne Ryan photos of some (not all of the) drones manufactured for the military and seeing some images to what I observed, I am questioning whether there are drones in use around here and if the information is not made public. One of the most recent internet images for drones in the photos resembles a diamond shape rounded in the middle similar to what some people have mentioned."

Clearly, there are bona fide UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) that currently exist in our world and which resemble some of the objects being spotted around here, including the "UFO" seen on January 8. I've included just a few photos of these "triangular/diamond shaped" objects in this post, and I think it's safe to assume there are probably myriad variations of these "triangular" shaped models out there. And we also know that domestic UAVs are becoming quite common. But knowing that only raises more questions - possibly opening a whole Pandora's Box. Who is flying these UAVs? The military? University researchers? Some entity from this planet? Beings from another planet? (While I dwell in the most likely scenario, I have to concede to my UFO-believing friends that piloted or unpiloted aircraft from another planet are still within the realm of possibility, however unlikely.) And once we learn who is flying these UAVs, then we have to ask why. And once we know that, we can figure out what we as a community want to do about it. This is Amherst, after all - I'm pretty sure lots of folks will have something to say about UAVs flying alongside our cars, above our trees, and across our sky.