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NIDS Investigations of the Flying Triangle Enigma
National Institute for Discovery Science
4975 South Polaris Avenue
Las Vegas
Nevada 89118
"Comments or questions about this article"
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 3 here at URL
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 here at URL
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 here at URL
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 here at URL
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 here at URL
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, 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.”
Belgium sightings/Map 5 here at URL
(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 here at URL
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 WestchesterCounty
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 here at URL
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 here at URL
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
http://www.nidsci.org/articles/8_25trireport.php
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