Originally Posted by chiglet
I have seen [unknown] "lights in the sky"......as have a great percentage of Pilots/ATCers. that the What/Who/From Where,
I dunno....Does any one?
watp,iktch
I suspect that they will (may?) turn out to have a variety of different explanations.
The small bright lights close to the surface (such as the one that shot past one of our inbounds some time back) might well turn out to be natural phenomena, which have as yet not been investigated or recognised as such (not related to, but in the same vein as St Elmo's Fire and Ball Lightning).
Some other types of sighting may well be stealth technology of one sort or another.
Lights are always a bit difficult, and my stock response to 'UFO Enquiries' is that unless there is very compelling evidence to the contrary, lights in the sky within 20 miles or so of airports are aeroplanes, albeit seen in unusual or unfamiliar configurations (such as the lights bursting through a halo of previously unseen cloud on short final etc.).
When all these have been dismissed however, there do still seem to be a small number of sightings by reputable, professional witnesses (including pilots and ATCOs) which are not readily explainable by the above.
I Include in this, sightings in CAS by ATCOs, which can not be correlated with any known traffic, and which are not visible on either PSR or SSR.
Maybe the answer really is out there somewhere.....!
RC