The UFO phenomenon has always had a strange, tangled relationship with the world’s militaries. Skeptics often argue that many of these mysterious sightings—those unexplained blips in the sky—are nothing more than secret test runs of cutting-edge, human-built warplanes. But then there’s the other camp: the conspiracy theorists who swear the U.S. government, in particular, has struck some kind of deal with alien beings. They’re convinced that the military’s high-tech arsenal owes a debt to extraterrestrial know-how.
One of the earliest big names to step forward with a UFO story was Commander Robert B. McLaughlin, a U.S. Navy man with an engineering background. Back in the 1940s, he was deep into guided missile research, stationed at White Sands, the military’s proving ground in New Mexico. It was there, in May 1949, that he saw something he couldn’t explain. While tracking a rocket test aimed at the upper atmosphere, McLaughlin spotted a white object tearing through the sky at about a mile a second, roughly 25 miles up. At first, he figured it was the rocket gone haywire. But then it kicked in at a speed no normal craft could touch, zipping along without a hint of a vapour trail. It wasn’t just him—other folks at White Sands had seen similar things, too, matching the look and behaviour of this bizarre intruder.
Rewind a year to January 1948, and you’ve got another wild tale. Captain Thomas Mantell, piloting an F-51 Mustang over Kentucky with three other planes, got a call from Air Force command to check out a strange object hovering high above. Mantell pursued the object in broad daylight. Suddenly, his plane began to spiral downward towards Earth. The official word later was that he’d chased a “Skyhook” balloon—an experimental weather gadget—and passed out from lack of oxygen at altitude. But that doesn’t quite line up with Mantell’s final radio call, where he described closing in on a massive, metallic thing. Regardless of the nature of the object, the Air Force remained cautious in the aftermath. They began to maintain fighters on high alert for any additional anomalies in the sky, while the specifics of crashes and encounters in the subsequent years remained confidential.
In Britain, the Royal Air Force hasn’t experienced as many UFO encounters. An American, Captain William Schaffer, a U.S. Air Force pilot on exchange, played a pivotal role in their first truly perplexing case. He was flying an F6 Lightning over the North Sea when radar picked up something unknown. Sent to investigate, Schaffer got close—then went silent. Radar crews watched as the blips of his plane and the mystery object merged into one, only to split apart again. When they finally got him on the radio, he sounded dazed. Orders came to ditch the plane in the sea and wait for rescue. Other aircraft saw him pull off a controlled landing, even popping the cockpit canopy, but somehow, he didn’t make it out. Later that year, the RAF secretly removed the wreckage, making it difficult to obtain clear answers.
Then there’s the Belgian UFO flap—the one that really grabs you. It kicked off on November 29, 1989, when hundreds of people spotted a massive, dark grey triangle drifting through the night sky. Word spread fast, and soon, similarly weird crafts were popping up all over Europe. By 1990, the Belgian Air Force got in on the action, sending two F-16s to chase one down. They locked onto it—or tried to. The object executed manoeuvres and speeds that left the pilots in a state of disbelief, effortlessly slipping past their radar. What makes this case stand out is how open Belgium was about it. The military shared all their data with the public and even promised to keep fighters ready for the next sighting. The reports eventually tapered off, but researchers still pore over what they collected.
Stories like these fuel the idea that militaries worldwide are tangling with something unearthly up there. Sure, skeptics have their explanations, but the sheer number of incidents—and the risks and costs tied to them—hint that governments aren’t just shrugging it off. Rumour has it that the U.S. Department of Defence scrambled fighters 23 times between January and August 1996 alone, all for unknown objects, though they’ve never confirmed it. Belgium’s transparency in ’89 might make them seem like the honest ones, but who knows what any government really understands about these potential visitors? Despite the military’s tendency to conceal information, the number of well-documented cases continues to increase. It’s enough to make you wonder if we’re actually brushing up against UFOs—and what that might mean.