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It was a perfect black equilateral triangle.

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Tonight on Unidentified, the hunt for answers to one of the greatest UFO mysteries.

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Until I put binoculars on it, I would have never known it was a triangle.

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Strange triangles are being seen in our skies by people all over the world.

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This craft made no sound whatsoever other than a sound.

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Made no sound whatsoever other than a very slight humming noise.

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The slow speed is a very creepy aspect to this.

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You have this large, stealthy object moving very slowly through the sky.

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Are the mysterious triangles top secret military aircraft,

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or UFOs on a possible mission that threatens our national security?

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If it's ours, that's great.

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If it's not, well, you've got an awful lot to worry about.

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Everything we know about UFOs is changing.

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Thanks to a team led by former Pentagon UFO investigator, Lou Elizondo.

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That is real, whatever that is.

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And former top intelligence official Chris Mellon.

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This is a current continuing phenomenon. It's happening. It continues to happen.

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They discovered five unique characteristics that UFOs have in common,

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called the five observables.

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They also released groundbreaking videos

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that forced the Navy to admit its pilots were coming face to face with unidentified objects.

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The US Navy made a shocking admission today.

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Strange flying objects caught on tape by their own fighter pilots are in fact UFOs.

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Now a new wave of military witnesses is coming out of the shadows.

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I've never seen anything move like that.

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Shape, size, speed, it's clearly unidentified.

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The team is united on a new mission.

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Connect the dots to reveal the truth about UFOs.

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This thing had no capability, like anything on Earth.

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And warn the world about the dangers they might represent.

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Carl Sagan once famously said,

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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

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He was absolutely right.

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But now we have the proof.

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Throughout history, unidentified flying objects of various shapes and sizes have appeared in our skies.

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Thousands have witnessed mysterious flying saucers, orbs, cubes and tic-tacs.

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But unidentified triangle shaped craft have been reported by thousands of witnesses over the last four decades.

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So the team has launched a new investigation.

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Hello, how are you?

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Thank you.

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Good, come on in.

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Take one, Carter.

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I was in the Army for 24 years.

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I got to Fort Bragg in January of 1990.

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Come August 1990 is when Sodom Hussein invaded Kuwait.

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What Iraq has done violates every norm of international law.

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In December 1990, on the eve of the Gulf War,

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a veteran who has to be called JT is deployed to a large American outpost in the Saudi desert.

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I was deployed north to Hafer Al-Bateen.

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It's in heavily scanned, restricted airspace.

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It was Super Bowl Sunday.

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It was just past sunset.

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Everybody else was watching the pregame show, and I was the only one out there.

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As I looked up into the sky, I saw something that really caught my attention because it was the only thing there.

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It was a triangle of three orange-ish white lights drifting silently and slowly through the sky.

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They moved as though they were part of an Isosceles triangle.

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This was not a high altitude object.

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Probably between a thousand and two thousand feet is what I would estimate.

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It was following a perfect due east course, drifting elegantly through the sky.

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There was absolutely no sound at all.

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I mean nothing.

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I was stunned.

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I was straight up stunned.

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I went back inside the tent, and I told my best friend about it, only him.

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And he had told me that he had heard others talking about similar things.

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And we really didn't go into it too much because the Super Bowl started, and Whitney Houston sang the National Anthem, and...

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That was it. Everybody else was sucked into the game.

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I've never seen anything like it since then, or before then.

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JT's citing matches descriptions the team has heard before.

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He had a very clear view of lights on the corners of the triangle.

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It's part of a stunning global pattern that's reported by people from all walks of life, as well as military and law enforcement personnel.

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That doesn't fit any type of known aircraft that I'm aware of.

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Another Gulf War veteran believes he witnessed a similar triangle UFO just over a year later in the same area.

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It was 1992 in the central Persian Gulf.

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I was a Navy cryptologic technician trained in Persian Farsi, the national language of Iran.

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I often deployed to the Persian Gulf where we provided theater level support to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

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This is probably one of the more highly trained individuals that the U.S. military and the intelligence community has.

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For all intensive purposes, this gentleman is a spy on the combat field.

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The Gulf War had ended only a year earlier. Tensions remained high.

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Michael Vai was on the USS Mobile Bay, patrolling the Persian Gulf, not far from the location of JT's Saudi Arabia Citing.

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I was temporarily assigned and I was taking some time to come get some fresh air and see what was going on.

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I made my way up to the 06 level about as high as you can get on this particular warship.

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I was up there just sightseeing, skylarking as they say in the Navy.

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There were no fly-dups underway and all of a sudden there was a pulsing sound that I felt as much as heard.

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It was a very low frequency rumble between a rumble and a pulse.

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Like a thud.

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I looked up and there it was. It was the most pristine, equilateral black triangle flying directly over our ship.

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As if it had flown right up our wake, each corner were these bright, round areas.

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The altitude of this thing was about 10,000 feet and its relative speed appeared to me to be somewhere between 3 and 500 miles per hour.

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The aircraft did not leave a contrail.

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It was absolutely stunning, majestic.

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From the time that I first saw the craft until it faded from view, it was no more than 10 seconds.

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I went back down below deck and I saw no indication that this thing was being tracked on radar.

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At the speed at which I had seen this thing passing overhead, it should have still been on the radar picture.

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It was in broad daylight a direct overflight of some of the most sensitive airspace on the planet.

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I was astounded by what I saw.

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Though Michael Vai's Gulf War sighting is similar to JT's, the team notices one striking difference.

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Once again here we have this black triangle that shows up and this was in broad daylight by the way. This wasn't that night.

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It's unusual.

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Yes, two aircraft at that time that I can think of that would fit that pattern of a triangle, one being the F-117 and the other one may have been some sort of stealth bomber.

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With a silent profile, we'd reduce observability.

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A low-flying triangle with lights on each corner, no contrails, no sound of jets and no visible source of lift.

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Could the triangle spotted by JT and Vai be explained by a top secret US warplane?

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Triangle-shaped aircraft are a part of US stealth plane history.

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America's first stealth warplane, the hypersonic SR-71 Blackbird, first saw action in the late 1960s.

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The B-2 stealth bomber was unveiled in 1989.

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In the F-17 Nighthawk, a stealth attack aircraft played a crucial role in winning the Gulf War.

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All three aircraft used a radical new triangle-shaped design.

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But the military witnesses are certain these are not what they saw.

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It was not an F-117 Nighthawk. It was not a B-2 bomber. It had no sawtooth edges.

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It was a perfect black equilateral triangle.

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Even at a thousand, two thousand feet, you're going to hear something from a F-117 or any other aircraft.

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As it moved through the sky, there was absolutely no sound at all. Not even a whisper. I mean nothing.

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I have an advanced degree in aviation science. I worked government aerospace for 20 years.

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This didn't fit anything that had previously been rolled out publicly.

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The triangle mystery deepens when a similar object is seen over American skies in Utah 30 years later.

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I'm on my way to Moab, Utah to meet with an individual.

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He's former military, highly credible, who saw one or more triangular UFOs inside the National Park.

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Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon is investigating triangle-shaped UFOs.

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This witness has never before spoken publicly about his UFO encounter.

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I'm expecting to gain some new insights into the issue of whether or not these are U.S. manufactured military vehicles,

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or in fact, foreign or of some even more exotic origin.

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Due to his background in Army Intelligence, the witness has asked to remain anonymous.

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I'm expecting the witness to arrive at nightfall.

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Hey there.

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Hi Mr. Mellon, how are you?

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Good, how are you doing?

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Good, nice to meet you.

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Thanks for coming out.

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Well, thank you.

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The former intelligence analyst was with his father shooting night sky photography in September 2019, when they noticed an unusual light.

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I had wanted to get Milky Way photos for a long time, so I was pretty focused on doing that.

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We got here around 10 o'clock.

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I was setting up this way.

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My dad saw a light that was very, very active.

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I mean, it was just a quick streak, and I didn't think much of it that it was probably a meteor.

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And it was within three or four seconds that it did it again.

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And it kind of stopped, and I was like, Dad, I think that's a UFO.

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So then we started watching it, and it was here for a long time.

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Really?

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At times it would be gone, and it would look like a streak, and then it would peer over here.

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Until I put binoculars on it, I would have never known it was a triangle.

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Did you subsequently think about reporting it to any authorities?

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Yeah, I did think about calling it, but I didn't think it would do any good.

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We kept thinking they're going to be gone in any second.

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Was it hovering at that point?

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Yes, it was kind of stationary.

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There was no sound out of it, so you heard nothing that would keep it hovering.

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He says the triangle moved methodically around the canyon, as if it had a purpose.

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Did you have a hypothesis about what these things were?

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Or they were searching for something.

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I think it was searching.

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Either searching or it was taking some kind of detailed map.

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It was crazy.

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I've always wondered if that might be what's occurring with these objects.

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The surface of the earth isn't being mapped extensively, comprehensively, and in minute detail.

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So it corroborates to some degree my own thinking.

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It's interesting to see another intelligence officer having a similar reaction.

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Mellon examines the photos for further evidence, any similarities between this sighting and other triangle events.

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This is the one that appeared to be one bright light. Until you put binoculars on it, then you could see it was a triangle.

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My lens was set up for about a 10 second exposure.

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The witness's camera was set for long exposures, ideal to capture the stars above, but anything moving becomes a blur.

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Afterwards, he took the photos to a friend who is a graphic artist to help create a composite of what he says he witnessed.

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Wow.

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I showed it to my dad. He was like, wow, it's dead on.

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Thank you so much for sharing that.

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How has this experience affected you?

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For one thing, I realized we're not alone now. To me, it's fact.

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I don't mean to be cliche, but it went from science fiction to science fact for me that night.

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The story was absolutely believable. He had a security clearance, held a sensitive and responsible position.

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The Utah sighting occurred in September 2019. For Chris Mellon, that's key because it means the object was not the triangle shaped F1-17, which was retired in 2008,

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or the B2, which flew its most recent combat mission in 2017.

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But could the object over the Canyonlands National Park that night have been some kind of still classified secret military technology?

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Folks in Texas are a bit concerned over something mysterious floating above their heads.

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Watch the spotlight. I'll tell you when to look. It shines back at you.

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For years, there have been rumors of an alleged triangle shaped spy plane, codenamed the TR-3B.

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Speculation about its existence has long fascinated many in the UFO and aviation communities.

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Everybody from hikers in the Sierra Nevada mountains to airline pilots were starting to see things, and they were reporting them to people like us at Aviation Week.

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Bill Scott is a former Air Force Flight Test Engineer and pilot, who spent years as a reporter trying to solve the triangle mystery.

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The reports varied considerably in quality, but what we found trying to piece all these things together were some of it was correlating with known programs.

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It very quickly became almost a cottage industry. We know for a fact there were a whole lot of these flying triangle type vehicles.

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Out in Groom Lake, Area 51, they're still very classified.

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The rumored TR-3B spy plane was said to have a massive wingspan and fly extremely slow at low altitudes.

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But for Chris Mellon, these stories are more legend than fact.

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Every source that I've gone to and spoken with in the aerospace industry, in the Pentagon, has denied that we have a TR-3B or anything matching the performance even remotely of what's being observed.

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The new witness believes the mysterious triangle was hovering above the ground, mapping the area.

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If these hovering flight characteristics can't be explained by modern aviation or decades old conspiracy theories, then Mellon believes we might be facing a new and uncertain national security risk.

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The fact that somebody's operating these craft directly inside the United States in close proximity to sensitive locations is alarming.

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Mellon dedicated his career to protecting America from unconventional threats, serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

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I was really concerned with dealing with insurgencies, with terrorism, unconventional threats.

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As the senior civilian official at the Defense Department responsible for intelligence, Chris Mellon was essentially a king of the intelligence community in the military.

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He had access to anything he wanted.

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Chris is the kind of guy that doesn't like unknowns.

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He's always thinking, he's always trying to figure out, and I think from Chris's perspective, this may be one of the greatest mysteries yet that need to be solved.

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With the triangle over Utah still an unknown, Mellon seeks out the one man who may have answers.

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I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico today, heading to the home of David Marlar, who's the world's leading authority on the phenomenon of black triangle UFOs.

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This is something that is being reported globally and has been for many years, so there's actually a considerable amount of data.

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Some think the triangles are secret U.S. military aircraft. Others believe they could be here to map their Earth's surface.

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Chris Mellon believes a mapping mission by an unknown entity could pose a serious risk to American national security.

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He hopes David Marlar might have fresh insights into the phenomenon.

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David!

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Chris!

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How are you?

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Nice to finally meet you.

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Hey, thank you. Such a pleasure.

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I'm interested in showing you some of my research.

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Incredible.

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30 years in the making.

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So, here we are, the research room.

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Wow, this is incredible.

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This is rather interesting. This was one of the witnesses that I interviewed. He does woodworking, and he developed a actual model.

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Interesting.

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Not only depicting the object, but the lighting characteristics.

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These are case files, news clippings, scrapbooks. Here we have a database, and there's over 17,000 case files.

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17,000?

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Which, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Most people don't even report their sightings.

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No.

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David Marlar combines methodical research with Gumshoe detective work, making him the world's leading author and lecturer on triangular UFOs.

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Okay, Dave, so let me ask you, why triangles?

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When we look at the 1960s and the 1970s, there was a massive increase in triangular UFO reports, and this pattern has even continued to this day.

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There was a fantastic series of sightings in southern Illinois that I personally investigated.

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In the early morning hours of January 5, 2000, a strange object was spotted by a truck driver in Highland, Illinois, a small town southeast of St. Louis.

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This is a secret call from Highland PD.

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The truck driver just stopped in and said there was a shrine object.

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It was like a two-story house, and it was last seen southwest over Levinon.

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Could you check the area?

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Just a quick question. If I have to find it, what am I supposed to do with it?

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Levinon police officer, Ed Barton, pulled his squad car over, and he observed a large, triangular, silent platform moving over his head.

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The big part is a very bright, white light Easter town.

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As the craft made its way across southern Illinois, multiple police departments began to call in sightings.

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25, there's the Ashley Center for the Outer Molden.

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Officer David Martin of the Shiloh Police Department looked up, and he said, I see something, but I don't know what the heck it is.

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Shortly thereafter, it disappeared and continued to move to the southwest.

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The unique aspect of the southern Illinois case is we have multiple police officers from neighboring municipalities in radio contact with each other at the time of the sightings.

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I've got that object in sight also.

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Are you serious?

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It's huge. It's kind of decent.

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Officer Craig Stevens of Milstod, Illinois, tried to take a Polaroid picture of the object, which did not come out very well.

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He then radioed to another police officer in a neighboring town of DuPo, Illinois, to see if that police officer could see anything.

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This object was about me about my life. It was huge.

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The police reported it was out of here since the line was not by 20, 30 miles per feet up right now.

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It rapidly accelerated to the southwest. We had the complete absence of sound coupled with the large size.

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Most of the police officers stated the object was only 500 to 1,000 feet altitude.

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The characteristics of the Illinois Triangle are consistent with what Mellon has heard from other eyewitnesses.

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The question remains, what are the triangles doing?

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If this is a military aircraft, what's its mission? I assume that there's a mission. It is surveillance of some nature or scanning or analyzing the terrain, the topography.

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Well, they do seem elusive as though perhaps they're collecting intelligence.

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And I have wondered whether they might be doing some kind of highly, highly detailed mapping.

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When we look at the behaviors associated with some of these reports, the low altitude flight, the slow speed, it could be a mapping operation of the geography.

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They could be mapping something subterranean, below ground, below surface. We simply don't know. Unfortunately, there's a lot of data, but that doesn't necessarily equate to answers.

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If the triangles are on a mapping mission, why would this craft be interested in detailing the farmlands of southern Illinois?

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The triangle flew within an estimated 1 to 2 miles of Scott Air Force Base, but it flew by the base. It was not reported taking off or landing there. It simply did a little bit of a fly-by.

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Scott Air Force Base is home to Air Mobility Command, a crucial part of our nation's military, coordinating troop transportation across the globe.

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There have been many instances in which these vehicles have been observed over bases such as Scott Air Force Base. And that level of intrusiveness is something that we're not engaged in over Russia and China and surprised and pleasantly to find occurring here.

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A 2001 study by a UFO research group founded by space entrepreneur Bob Bigelow documented reports of triangles near 50 different Air Force installations across the U.S., including eight sightings near Scott Air Force Base.

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It's a pattern Mellon finds disturbing.

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I was in shock. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was the size of a football field.

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From 1983 to 1986, giant triangle-shaped craft were repeatedly seen flying just 50 miles north of America's most populated city.

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We have one of the highest concentrations of UFO activity specifically regarding these triangular UFOs.

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In the early 1980s, New York's Hudson Valley was the scene of possibly the largest mass sighting of UFOs in history.

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We're very close proximity to roughly 14 million people, you know, absolutely busiest parts of the country, both in terms of avionics, air flights.

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This is one of the heaviest traveled air corridors within our country. We have these unusual objects moving in our airspace. It begs to be answered.

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I'm retired lieutenant from the Yorktown Police Department. This sightings burns into my mind.

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Police officer Kevin Suravilla was one of the first witnesses.

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In the spring of 1983, I was on routine patrol on Route 118.

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I observed a large craft, approximately 100 yards from wingtip to wingtip. It then stopped over the business district and made a 45-degree turn and started to head westbound along Route 202.

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So I was taking my dog out for a walk and all of a sudden I noticed something sitting above my head.

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I was so in awe of this object, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This craft made no sound whatsoever other than a very slight humming noise.

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Completely silent. It hovered and then it banked immediately doing a 45-degree turn and a shot across is the only thing I could say. Very fast. It was gone within a second.

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When I responded to the police station, the phones were ringing off the hook.

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Myself, desk officer in the highway department employee went out to the courtyard and in about five minutes the craft moved directly above us, right over our heads, less than 500 feet in elevation.

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At this point I was totally confused. I had no idea what this was. I didn't know whether it was maybe a military craft or possibly a UFO.

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If it was a military craft, the most likely source would be Stewart Air National Guard Base in nearby Newburgh, New York.

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Stewart Air Force Base is right nearby and they were housing at the time the C-5s and the C-5's wingspan is 220 feet wide.

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The C-5, seen from below, could be mistaken for a triangle.

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I directed the desk officer to call Stewart Airport if they had any type of object on radar.

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The desk officer got back to me indicating that nothing was indicated on the radar.

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Stewart reported no flights in or out of the base that night.

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Later, in the fall of 1983, the triangles allegedly returned to the Hudson Valley area, this time hovering over a major highway.

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These were so significant that we had multiple motorists pulling over off the Taconic Parkway that was literally causing a traffic jam because everyone was getting out of their cars to look at these objects.

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When we got near the object, it was huge and everybody that was driving on the Taconic Parkway pulled off to the side of the road.

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The interstate had come to a complete stop and I could see about 50, 60 people outside of their cars looking up above their heads.

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For Marlar, these sightings are significant because the witnesses didn't just report seeing lights as with many UFO sightings, but the clear outline of a triangle-shaped craft moving slowly at a hover.

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Definitely a triangular shape and going very, very slowly. I almost felt I could almost walk faster than it. So, so slow.

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It was in the shape of a V for Victor. We were thinking, was it extraterrestrial?

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I mean, if it was some kind of a new spy ship, what were they doing hovering over the Parkway?

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But had the residents of the Hudson Valley mistaken something commonplace for something extraordinary?

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I think there's got to be a connection between what people were seeing on TV and in films and what they said that they were seeing in the sky.

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Leading UFO expert David Clark says civilian witnesses are often highly susceptible to cultural influences.

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From the 1970s onwards, you get this increasing trend for people to see giant triangular objects or wedge-shaped objects.

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And I think the easiest place to look for an answer is popular culture.

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Now, the film that I remember seeing from childhood which had a huge triangular shaped or wedge-shaped object was the very first Star Wars film.

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When was that released? 1977. You get the huge Imperial Star Destroyer coming into view.

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Strangely enough, this is the same period of time that people start seeing these huge, dark triangular shaped objects with pulsing lights moving silently across the countryside at night.

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For David Marlar, the volume of sightings, their consistency and the craft's alleged hovering behavior, coupled with sudden accelerations, leads him to believe this was not American military technology.

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There are some unusual characteristics that argue against the military explanation.

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You look at that and in addition to that, the ability to hover and then rapidly accelerate.

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And as many witnesses have stated, within the blink of an eye, it went from one portion of the sky clear over to the other.

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It just doesn't make any sense from conventional aerodynamic principles.

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David Marlar has delivered crucial new information to Chris Mellon's triangle investigation.

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But Mellon still has questions.

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Could the Hudson Valley mass sighting be of something else developed by the military?

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Something so top secret that it might even require covert testing over an unsuspecting population.

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Hey, Lou. How are you, man? Good.

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Chris Mellon is debriefing Lou Elizondo on his investigation into triangle UFOs.

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So how did Utah go?

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Outstanding. Met a gentleman named David Marlar, who is a treasure trove of information on UFOs.

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These reports from a former Army soldier in the desert to a police department in Illinois find the same precise description time and time again.

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Hundreds of cases at a minimum. The evidence is very persuasive and compelling.

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Triangles have been spotted in the skies all over the U.S. According to eyewitness reports, they fly low, display lights in each corner,

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and are capable of hovering and instantaneous acceleration, all with little to no sound.

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It's highly credible information.

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Instantaneous acceleration is one of the five observables identified by Lou Elizondo while at the Pentagon to track flight characteristics common to UFOs.

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These objects fit very neatly within some of the observables. The five observables at my program, ATIP, was able to identify.

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That is, first one being instantaneous acceleration.

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Some speculate that the Hudson Valley sightings, which occurred 50 miles north of New York City and were witnessed by hundreds of civilians,

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might be explained by military testing. Chris Mellon wants to know if the U.S. military would ever have any reason to fly a top secret plane over a heavily populated civilian area.

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The stealth fighter, the F-117 Nighthawk, because of their mission, had to start flying over populated areas.

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The V-winged F-117 was designed to bomb urban areas.

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So former test flight engineer Bill Scott says the military would have good reason to test it over cities.

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Guys flew right over big city Los Angeles at night. They had a certain way of doing it.

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They spaced out each airplane like six minutes apart.

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Sometimes you want to see what the reaction is. How many reports do we get?

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Are the phone lines and 911 lines flooded? That's great data if you're developing something that you may want to use in an urban environment.

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But the Hudson Valley witnesses didn't describe a fast-moving bomber. They saw a giant slow-moving aircraft.

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Very similar flight characteristics to what was described by Gulf War veteran J.T.

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It was a triangular formation. There was absolutely no noise associated with it. And it was moving so slow, like a blimp or something.

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I'm just moving just that quietly and slowly.

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Bill Scott says a military source told him he witnessed something at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1980s that may hold the key.

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The test flight of a craft similar to the large hovering triangle spotted in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere.

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He watched this thing slowly climb, going a little faster than he was.

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He described it as a very large triangle, but with very blunt wing tips and nose.

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And he said it was kind of thick, too. And we're pretty certain that it was part of a new type of vehicle that we called a near-neutral buoyancy rigid hull airship.

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Rigid hull airships are similar to the Zeplins of old, powered by hydrogen gas, but reimagined with incredible new technology.

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During the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force spent $200 million to develop a reconnaissance airship called the Blue Devil.

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It was outfitted with sensors, cameras, and listening devices. The program was scrapped in 2012.

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The original airships of last century may have been blimp-shaped, but the rigid hull airship design described to Bill Scott was triangular.

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What would it be good for? Well, it could be a very stealthy vehicle.

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So the best guess, and that's all it was, was that maybe these were vehicles being used by the special ops guys.

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They could get them in behind the lines and not be detected and get out.

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These new airships could carry large numbers of troops and equipment and were designed to fly nearly silently under the cover of night to avoid detection.

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They could account for some triangle sightings, but Kenneth explained them all.

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The trail of triangular UFOs has led Chris Mellon to the Canyonlands of Utah and to investigate mass sightings in Illinois and New York.

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Now he wants to see if his partners can help him put the pieces of the puzzle together.

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Jim Semophan is a former CIA operations officer. Steve Justice helped run Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, which built some of America's most advanced warplanes, like the SR-71 Blackbird and F-117.

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Would you agree that it would be extremely difficult to hide this?

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If it's as large as what they're describing, yeah, it's just that much harder.

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The team is tackling the central question at the core of Mellon's investigation.

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Are triangle UFOs the work of a long-running, still classified government program?

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Early days of stealth, there were just tons of rumors of something going on before the airplane showed up. And so it's not unprecedented.

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You're intimately familiar with test and development of cutting-edge stealth aircraft. When we look at the pattern of observations of these triangles in the United States, continental United States, in and around municipal areas, urban areas, is that the kind of thing we did?

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The testing that I'm familiar with, we were restricted to test areas. This is the pattern of behaviors of these things just makes no sense to me from a test standpoint.

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Why would you want this thing flying over populated areas, which they have, and over military bases, which they have? Why would you want to expose your technology?

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Right, so if you're trying to keep something secret, why would you fly it over a major populated U.S. city?

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It doesn't make any sense that it's ours.

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There's a social aspect and a legal aspect of this too. So you're driving home, you're with mom and pop and two kids in the back seat, and all of a sudden at 200 feet, a massive triangle comes over your head and scares the living daylights out of everybody in the car.

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How would they possibly justify that?

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The group of former insiders is unanimous in their belief the U.S. military wouldn't test highly sensitive, experimental planes over civilian areas.

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But Mellon's investigation discovered another possible explanation, an airship designed for the war on terror.

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The slow speed, the relative silent nature that these things are traveling, could it be some sort of semi-rigid airship that we're seeing?

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Are they capable of accelerating in the way that people are describing?

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No, these are giant lumbering elephants.

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These triangular aircraft, whatever these are, have the ability to float silently like a balloon, and then all of a sudden now they've achieved this incredible acceleration and hypersonic velocities and are absolutely gone.

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With the alleged ability to hover silently and then instantly achieve hypersonic speeds, the team concludes triangles to fight any known aviation technology.

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They typically have a configuration of lights, one in each corner and one in the middle underneath. One in the middle underneath is often red.

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The three cornered lights were found in each case Mellon investigated, from the recent sighting in Utah to the Hudson Valley 40 years earlier.

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He believes these lights are key, permitting detailed and triangulated data collection.

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Why would you build an operator craft in that manner? Why would you want something that large that flies that low and flies slow, has that triangular shape?

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If you wanted to map a surface in exquisite detail, you'd fly low, you'd fly slow.

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For Mellon, a mapping operation would be at the center of any potential reconnaissance mission.

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Triangulation is a way to measure things in extraordinary detail, and if it's really as advanced as it appears to be, it might be able to collect information for not only what's on the surface below it, but perhaps the subsurface.

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It might collect on the wiring, the plumbing, the 3D.

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Well, Chris, we call it triangulation because exactly that. You're using three points, data collection points, to collect pinpoint accuracy on a point.

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So, I don't believe these are ours.

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I'm hopeful that we can make headway in discovering where at least some of these things are coming from, and how they work.

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After investigating multiple sightings of triangles, Mellon has urgent new questions.

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Are the mysterious vessels on reconnaissance missions, and if they are, what are the national security ramifications?

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One of the lessons of history is when you detect a potential threat, you need to pay attention and investigate it.

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When Cortez landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he was viewed as potentially the fulfillment of an ancient Aztec prophecy, and possibly as a god.

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But unfortunately for the Aztecs, they didn't take the trouble to investigate to understand a potential threat, a potential adversary, and they lost everything as a result.

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It's a matter of trying to help the people in government understand that this is something that is real and needs to be taken seriously.