Ever wonder what kinds of unusual objects pilots see from the air?

With a truly unique vantage point, they’ve reported a range of strange sightings, including geoglyphs, drones and… UFOs.

Unidentified flying object (commonly abbreviated as UFO or U.F.O.) is the popular term for any apparent aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily or immediately identified by the observer.

The term UFO is popularly taken as a synonym for alien spacecraft and generally most discussions of UFOs revolve around this presumption. For this reason, some investigators now prefer to use the broader term unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP), to avoid the confusion and speculative associations that have become attached to UFO.

UFO sightings while flying the F-14

Pilots have claimed to see UFOs for decades – sightings usually involve objects flying in a formation or bright lights, as Doyle Borchers, former US Navy F-14 Tomcat test pilot, recalls on Quora;

‘Once as an F-14 test pilot flying a night mission returning from White Sands range in New Mexico to NAS Pt Mugu. The weather was bad in Mugu so we were diverted to NAS Miramar in San Diego. We were at 24,000 ft and both my Radar Officer and I saw a string of lights well below us on what we thought was the desert floor, but the continued to follow us at almost 500kts. As we turned, the lights followed us, and finally after about 10 minutes broke off and departed. I wanted to make a report, but my RIO wouldn’t back me up.’

UFO’s are real

He continues;

‘Second one was when I was flying and F-14 from Palma/Majorca to RNAS Yeovilton for an airshow back in 1976. Both my RIO and I saw a bright silver disk well above our altitude of 35,000ft. I would guess it was at about 70,000ft. It moved very quickly from our 10 o’clock high position to 3 o’clock, and I mean like a flash, and then was out of sight.’

Borchers concludes;

‘No doubt in my mind that UFO’s are real.’