US Army missile test sparks UFO reports in Southwest

Three unarmed rockets fired from New Mexico to test Patriot defense system

People across the Southwest got an early-morning show in the sky Thursday, courtesy of a trio of unarmed missiles fired from New Mexico, one of which left a brilliant contrail that changed colors as it was illuminated by the rising sun.

The twisting cloudlike formation was visible in southern Colorado, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas just before sunrise, and led to hundreds of calls and emails to area TV stations.

Law enforcement agencies in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado received some reports of a crash, but those were quickly discounted. A sheriff's deputy in northern New Mexico who saw one of the missiles leaving behind a contrail as it lifted into the pre-dawn sky said he spotted what appeared to be an explosion and a part falling off the craft.

"When I saw it, it surprised the heck out of me, and I thought, 'Wow, that's not something you see every day,'" said San Juan County deputy J.J. Roberts. "So I pulled over, pulled out my iPhone and started taking some pictures and video."

The "explosion" was a normal separation of the first and second stages of the unarmed Juno ballistic missile that was fired at 6:30 a.m. MT from Fort Wingate near Gallup, N.M., said Drew Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range. The expended first stage landed in a designated area of U.S. Forest Service land.

The Juno missile was then targeted by advanced versions of the Patriot missile fired from White Sands, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) away, as part of a test. Two of the missiles were fired and hit the incoming Juno missile, said Dan O'Boyle, a spokesman for the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, which was in charge of the Patriots used in the test.

The Patriot missiles kill incoming targets by direct strike and don't explode.

The rising sun backlit the Juno missile's contrail and provided a spectacular morning sight for early risers across the region.

"It's one of those things it does not happen every time — the weather and light conditions have to be just right, and this was one of those times," Hamilton said. "We even had people calling from (Los Angeles) asking about it. They want to know about it. Apparently this thing really lit up the sky really well."

Roberts said he was driving between Aztec, N.M., and Farmington, N.M, before sunrise when he saw the missile heading into the sky.

"It was pretty obvious. The first thing that came to mind, it was some sort of a missile or a jet or something like that," Roberts said.

Calls began coming in to dispatchers, and two deputies on the other side of San Juan County were dispatched to look for a crash. But Roberts said he quickly waved them off.

"We had gotten reports that there was an explosion or a UFO or missile or whatever, and people thought it was real close so they were concerned there would be debris falling from the sky," Roberts said. "To me, it was obvious when I saw it, it was real high altitude. It wasn't something real close."

'UFO' at bottom of Baltic Sea may be Nazi anti-submarine device

A former Swedish naval oficer and World War II expert Anders Autellus has said that sonar scans suggest that the "UFO" at the bottom of the Baltic Ocean could be part of a World War II Nazi anti-submarine device.

According to Autellus, the object could be the base of a device the Nazis developed as part of the war effort. Autellus said the Nazis built anti-submarine device using wire mesh to confuse submarine radar and lead the enemy craft to crash.

Autellus explains that the "UFO" structure could be an anchor or base of one of the German Nazi military devices for blocking British and Russian submarines in the area.

The Daily Mail reports that Autellus says the steel and concrete structure could be a very important World War II history find. An expert said: "The area was vital to the German war machine because most of the ball bearings for its tanks and trucks came from here. Without them the German army would have ground to a halt. This device dwarfs anything ever found before and is an important weapons discovery."

Autellus told the Swedish newspaper Expressen, that the Germans built anti-submarine devices to make navigation more difficult for Soviet submarines during World War II. He said the British also built similar structures during World War II.

Autellus said the object was possibly constructed using "double-skinned" concrete which serve as anchor for holding steel wire mesh structures designed to interfere with radar signals. He said that the wire mesh structures might have have eroded away over the years leaving the holes shown on the images provided by the Ocean X team.

Stefan Hogeborn, a professional diver and member of the Ocean X team, agrees with Autellus. He said: "It is a good candidate for the answer to this mystery. The object lies directly underneath a shipping route. It would be of enormous weight in steel and concrete." He notes, however, that the known "Nazi anti-sub anchoring devices were nowhere near as large."

According to Guerrilla Explorer, during World War II, the Nazis were in control of the Baltic Sea. But Soviet submarines would sneak into it from the Gulf of Finland. The Soviets had destroyed more than 20 German ships by 1942. In March 1943, the Nazis installed a 30 nautical mile long anti-submarine net across the Gulf of Finland, using two layers of steel mesh.

Guerrilla Explorer explains that what Autellus is saying is that the circle of the Baltic UFO was an old anchor for one of these nets with the actual net either removed or rusted away. The website says that according to Autellus's theory, "The strange 'egg shaped' hole found on the Circle could be an old attachment for the net... Also, the net could've caused the tracks... it might've dragged along the seabed at one point. Or it might've just sank and spread out."

Although Hogeborn thinks Autellus's theory is credible, Peter Lindberg, a member of the Ocean X team, expressed doubt in an interview, saying that he was 99% certain the "Circle" was a natural formation. He says the anti-submarine anchor theory doesn't explain the blackened interior of the "Circle," nor does it explain the lack of silt in the area.

Guerilla Explorer also points out that the major difficulty in Autellus's theory is that the circular anchors the Germans used were very small (see video above, at 0.33) compared with the "Circle" in the Ocean X object which is about 200 feet in diameter

Digital Journal reported that the Ocean X team investigating the underwater object say they have had difficulty conducting a close scrutiny of the object because their electrical equipment stop working when they approach within 200m.

The Daily Mail reports that according to the professional diver Hogeborn, some of the team's cameras and the team's satellite phone stop working when they are directly above or close to the object, and start working only after they have sailed away. Hogeborn said: "Anything electric out there - and the satellite phone as well - stopped working when we were above the object. And then we got away about 200 meters and it turned on again, and when we got back over the object it didn’t work."

It is uncertain, however, why an anchor for a wire mesh anti-submarine device should disable electrical equipment.

Expert denies UFO hitting Shenzhou 9

Beijing Planetarium curator Zhu Jin has denied that the two flying objects swooping against Shenzhou 9 four minutes after its launch on June 16 were UFOs.

According to Zhu, who also the vice executive director of Beijing’s UFO Research Society, the two glistening objects caught onscreen during the live broadcast of China’s first manned space docking mission last Saturday, were probably birds, planes or other flying modules.

Yet Zhu elaborated that because of the temporary lack of access to the technological figures and infrared video images, it is difficult to identify the flying objects as well as to measure their velocities and actual distances to the spacecraft. The approximate-one-second television appearance of the objects is insufficient to provide any evidence backing up the UFO claims, Zhu said.

In stark contrast to Zhu’s scientific analysis, some Weibo users (China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform) were more imaginative in their assessments of the unidentified objects in the sky.

Many of them believed that the shining objects were indeed UFOs, while other bloggers suggested that the objects could be supernatural phenomena predicting disaster.

Baltic ‘UFO’: New dive, new details

A “UFO-shaped” object, found at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last year, has puzzled many. And a Swedish expedition that plunged into the deep eventually surfaced with more questions than answers.

­Covered in soot, with little “fireplace”-like structures and lying at the end of a 300-meter “runway” – this is not something you would expect to find sitting on the sea floor. And whatever you think about extraterrestrial life, “the thing” is still there and there has to be an explanation. So what could it be?

On June 19, 2011, a team of Swedish treasure hunters was exploring the bottom of the Baltic Sea with their sonars when they noticed a bizarre, disc-like structure at a depth of 90 meters. Back then, international experts failed to explain the sonar images. In 2012, after months of preparation, the Ocean X Team, as they call themselves, went back in order to unveil the mystery.

“We've heard lots of different kinds of explanations, from George Lucas's spaceship – the Millennium Falcon – to ‘It's some kind of plug to the inner world,’ like it should be hell down there or something,” The Daily Mail quoted one of the founders of the Ocean X Team, Peter Lindberg, as saying.

The massive object rises three to four meters above the seabed and is about 60 meters in diameter. Members of the expedition describe it as something round, with rugged edges and concave sides – resembling a “huge mushroom” or, if you will, the Millennium Falcon spaceship from Star Wars.

The central part of the object has an “egg-shaped hole” leading inside. Surrounding the hole, they found odd-looking circular rock formations which looked almost “like small fireplaces” with stones covered in “something resembling soot.”

“Since no volcanic activity has ever been reported in the Baltic Sea, the find becomes even stranger,” said Lindberg in a press release at OceanExplorer.se. “As laymen, we can only speculate how this [could be] made by nature, but this is the strangest thing I have ever experienced as a professional diver.”

Another observation that the crew made in person was the 300-meter-long “trail” that they described as a “runway or a downhill path that is flattened at the seabed with the object at the end

The group says that they passed samples from the object to scientists for further examination. Other experts are studying the sonar images and processing the rest of the data from the ship. It is worth mentioning though, that sonar-based imagery has been known to become a source of confusion, when natural rock formations have been taken for foreign objects.

Being the scene of numerous battles in the past and remaining a busy maritime route, the Baltic Sea is a renowned treasure trove for shipwreck hunters. An estimated 100,000 objects are thought to rest on its floor.

Mysterious Object in Illinois Identified

There was a lot of speculation and curiosity surrounding the mysterious UFO-looking object on a semi trailer that was at a rest stop North of Tuscola on I-57 in Illinois this weekend.

It turns out it was a X-47B tailless strike fighter-sized unmanned aircraft.

One of only two in existence. The X-47B is designed to be the first unmanned plane to take off and land on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It is currently on its way to Maryland for more tests.

WATCH: Israelis report seeing unidentified flying object glowing in the sky

According to Lebanese sources the object was a meteor though the Israeli Astronomical Association rejects this, suggesting it is a man made object.

Hundreds of Israelis called the Israel Police hotline on Thursday reporting they had seen an unidentified flying object glowing in the sky, leaving behind it a stream of smoke. The police's northern district said it was looking into the incident together with the Israeli Defense Forces but at this point they do not know what to make of it.

Israelis from across Israel – from Kiryat Malachi, Ashdod, Jerusalem, Givatayim, Petach Tikva and the Dead Sea reported seeing the object in the evening sky. The object was also seen outside Israel; in Lebanon, the news website Naharnet reported it that people across the country had also seen the object. Similar reports have also been reported as far north as the Syria-Turkey border.

According to Lebanese sources the unidentified flying object was a meteor though this is rejected by Yigal Pat-El, chairman of the Israeli Astronomical Association and director of the Givatayim Observatory.

"From rough calculations I made I reached the conclusion that it was a few tens of kilometers above the ground and a few tens of kilometers north of the border with Lebanon, possibly over Syria. It might have been a satellite making entry and fallowing apart suddenly. I don't know. It's hard to tell. A satellite doesn't leave a plume like this, and it isn't a plane," Pat-El said.

Natan Levi who was driving home with his daughter in the northern Galilee when he saw the object. "Suddenly, coming from the north, we saw a giant cone of light open up in the sky in what look to me the sky above Mt. Hermon and Har Dov. It was crazy, and after 15 seconds it began spinning light a florescent spiral, which dispersed into a giant plume of smoke blanketing the entire mountain."