Sailors on a commercial cargo vessel crossing the Atlantic reported a late-night encounter with “glowing” UFOs that moved at “hypersonic speeds,” vanished, and reappeared, according to a submission to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
Encounter details
The NUFORC filing, dated October 11, describes how the crew spotted an intensely bright orb at around 3.25am on October 11 while travelling east at about 20mph roughly 400 miles south of Nova Scotia. For about 40 minutes, two sailors watched through binoculars as the object appeared 12 to 16 miles away and “rose and fell rapidly, bearing right and left,” periodically “shooting at hypersonic speeds, for about 5-10 minutes.”
According to the report, posted publicly on October 21, the spectacle escalated when more lights joined in. The witness wrote: “The others appeared, 3-4 more. They were like the first in every respect.” The orbs were “all twisting and turning, rising and falling together in no set pattern,” and seemed to “go somewhere else altogether, at a speed I can only call unreasonable, and then were simply there again.”
No radar targets
Despite the dramatic movements, the crew reported that the ship’s navigation radar showed nothing. “We picked up no targets on the radar,” the report states, adding that the sailors captured radar screenshots as part of their documentation. The witness stressed that conditions were ideal for spotting anything unusual, with clear skies and only a thin crescent moon: “Visibility was great.” The vessel wasn’t noticeably rocking and there was “no traffic whatsoever” nearby.
In the NUFORC filing, the witness described the first object as moving “very slowly and irregularly, like it was in a daze.” They said: “It seemed to move arbitrarily with no clear path. The movements were jerky and at varying speeds.” The object also appeared to pulse as it travelled for about 15 minutes. The report further stated: “The striking thing was its great brightness and irregular shape and path.” They added: “Tonight is the new moon - so it was definitely not the moon, and in any case was much brighter than even a full moon.”
Possible explanations
NUFORC has not provided a definitive explanation. However, descriptions like these often point to two possibilities: advanced military testing or drones, potentially using radar-cloaking or electronic countermeasures, or atmospheric and optical effects such as Fata Morgana mirages, which can make distant lights appear to dart, drop, and “teleport.” Bright satellite flares or space debris can also play tricks on the eye when viewed through binoculars over a dark ocean horizon.
