SIGHTING: INDIAN OCEAN

Witness Testimony

"Light over military aircraftI am a U.S. Navy Commander, with 3,000 hours in the E-2C Hawkeye. In late 1993 my crew and I were waiting to recover onboard the aircraft carrier. The ship was located roughly 200nm West of the Maldives. We were at about 22,000 feet flying at 250 knots, so a medium altitude and slow speed. What was most important is we were in the middle of nowhere, and being a radar surveillance plan had a good track on everything around us. With no nearby tracks from multiple sensors, a bright light shown into our aircraft from directly above. It was an intensely bright white light that illuminated the cockpit and shown through the small cracks in the radar shielding in the rear aircraft windows. It traveled with us for about 5 seconds and then vanished. We submitted a report to a Naval Intelligence Officer we debriefed after the flight. It wasn’t a light from a metal aircraft, we had good systems and were tracking everything around us.((NUFORC Note: Source of report indicates that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))"