These weeks will go down in UFOlogical lore – the unexplained spate of drone sightings across the UK and US that's still ongoing as I write. Since the middle of November, eyewitnesses had been reporting lights in the sky over RAF Mildenhall, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Feltwell in eastern England night after night for 16 days. Though some were aircraft, helicopters or military drones, the majority of what was reported did not fit into any explicable category. This anomalous activity over Britain tailed off after almost three weeks, but since then, there has been even more intense drone activity in the night skies over New Jersey.
The UK government and media had been generally silent over the sightings. In the US, however, it's quite different right now. Mainstream media outlets , from CNN to Fox News, have been all reporting this phenomenon. We see once-sceptical journalists accepting that they're seeing things that are hard to explain, we see law-enforcement officers talking about swarms of lights flying in from the ocean, mayors and legislators are angry that they're not being told what's going on. Pentagon and White House press conferences that try to reassure ("they're not foreign adversary drones, they're not our technology"), but this only serves to deepen the mystery.
Applying Occam's razor to this phenomenon doesn't help. One way or another, it's bad news for America. Russian or Chinese 'sleeper' agents? An Iranian ship launching drones from offshore? Malicious hoaxers and pranksters? Black-budget projects from rogue groups within the government? The failure of anyone in authority to suggest any plausible explanation as they try to play down the seriousness of the situation in which a nation's airspace security is so evidently compromised, is a major concern for the public.
Meanwhile, social media is full of testimonies and footage of anomalous lights in the sky, and plenty of conspiratorial theories and warnings of doom. A strange, unreal atmosphere (especially on X).
"Because something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones"
A likely outcome once this is over is that like the mass sightings over Washington DC (1952), in the Hudson Valley (1983-84), Gulf Breeze (1987-88), Phoenix (1997), it will just fizzle out. A suitable explanation will be found (Doug and Dave, the British crop-circle makers; the Gulf Breeze UFO model found in an attic; military exercises; flares; top-secret high-altitude balloon experiments, sensor/equipment faults or mass hallucinations. The word will go out via trustworthy journalists, newspaper articles and TV items will appear, and in the end Johnny Sixpack and Eddie Punchclock will shrug their shoulders and say, "well that's been debunked, then – it was swamp gas all along" before going back to their favourite show.
It's just that it doesn't feel like it right now.
[Update 15 December: BBC website summary of the story so far here.]
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