back to article Aliens, spy balloons, or drones? SUV-sized mystery objects spotted in US skies

Unidentified flying objects said to be the size of sports utility vehicles have been spotted flying over parts of the northeastern US, prompting investigations by law enforcement and the FBI as elected officials urge the public not to panic. The Federal Aviation Administration, meanwhile, has temporarily banned drone flights …

  1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge
    Alien

    Aliens...

    To (mis)quote prof. Brian Cox... "It's ALWAYS never aliens"

    1. Killing Time

      Re: Aliens...

      'The Register welcomes our new alien overlords and would like to remind them that as a trusted tech news website, our staff could be helpful in rounding up others to toil at whatever tasks they require.'

      Please include me in this group and would just like to add I already have a pre prepared list of suitable candidates for 'gang probing'!

      Salutations!

      1. Vikingforties

        Re: Aliens...

        You've got a little list?

        They will none of them be missed!

        (Up to date memes, direct from the nineteenth century.)

      2. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

        Re: Aliens...

        No it's ingenuity. Mutated in an alien environment and come back to earth at the behest of martian aliens.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Aliens...

      Or to quote Arnold Rimmer, it IS always Aliens!

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: Aliens...

        It's the Quagaars!

        That or the forerunners of a Vogon construction fleet

        1. Rich 2 Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: Aliens...

          Double A!!!

        2. David 132 Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Aliens...

          "Give me an R.. give me an E... give me a Red Dwarf Garbage Pod???

          This isn't an alien craft, it's one of our garbage pods with the writing burnt off! Holly, why didn't you tell Rimmer?"

          "Well. It's a laugh, innit?"

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Aliens...

        Remember that time we went through an entire roll of toilet paper in a day?

        That was aliens, too, wasn't it?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Aliens...

          It was cats, so of course aliens.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Aliens...

      "It's never aliens"

      Unless their name is Dee-ehn-ess, of course.

  2. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
    Alien

    Sociological studies

    I would imagine that any alien life-forms who have discovered the Earth are now queuing up in high orbit to study the final dying days of what for the sake of argument I will call our civilisation.

    I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords.

    GJC

    1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

      Re: Sociological studies

      and checking out the digital watches as they are retro-cool....

  3. KayJ

    If I were an alien on a nefarious mission to Earth - or even one of Winnie's friends - I'd _probably_ turn off the external lights on my sneaky stealth probe.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Alien

      I dunno

      Buzzing unsuspecting victims that nobody is going to believe so they go mad is the kind of thing that appeals to a certain mindset.

      Whether aliens would be stupid enough to send crew like that on a five-year mission is a different question.

    2. Little Mouse

      "I'd probably turn off the external lights"

      I dunno - Stealth can backfire if not thought through properly.

      Back in the days when getting home at 3:00am would incur the wrath of parents, a friend of mine had the bright idea of killing the car engine whilst still on the approach to the house, intending to just coast into the driveway, minus engine noise and lights.

      Unfortunately he was also minus power steering, made an unholy mess of the lawn and hedge, and woke everyone up in the process.

      1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

        Quite often it'll also be minus the power assisted brakes!

        1. mcswell

          that's the brakes

          IIRC, when you turn off the engine, you still get one use of the power assistance on the brakes, because there's a one-way valve in the line to the brake vacuum assist. After that, you're on your own.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: that's the brakes

            Most sane vacuum-assist braking systems have a vacuum bell of one kind or another, so you have a bit of a vacuum reserve. Essentially just enough to easily halt the vehicle in an emergency. Note that even without the vacuum, the vehicle can still be halted, it just takes quite a bit more foot pressure.

      2. ian 28

        Commander Fravor - the fighter pilot that filmed the tictac ufo video - told a similar story. He said they used to fly with infrared googles and could see heat sources miles away. One time over the desert he could see a campfire 10mi away so he killed the engines and turned off all the lights and just glided in until he was 100yds directly above the campsite and made the plane point straight up. He’d then start the engines and put on full afterburners and fly away vertically.

        Seems completely made up now I’m thinking about it.

        1. Giles C Silver badge

          I’ve been at an airshow when a Vulcan did that, came in on a dive until it was really low, then the pilot pulled the nose up and went full throttle. Once seen never forgotten…

          1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
            Happy

            During the tralfalger 200 thing here a tornado pilot was'nt told about the above 500 feet and no afterburners rule while over the city.

            Needless to say he flew over at about 500 on full afterburners.

            Tornados are LOUD when during that.

            Only thing louder I've heard was the Washington national air guard reserve or whatever they're called playing with a pair of F-15s at 8am on a sunday morning.... I think they were calling the faithful to prayer..... and everyone else to the base commander's phone.....

            1. Giles C Silver badge

              That tornado would have been loud……

              The loudest one I heard and saw was at a Mildemhall airshow but it was a Harrier howevering about 10 feet off the ground, that thing is loud with all the sound reflecting off the runway, can’t remember how far it was away but it wasn’t that far (this would have been in the 80s so not so much health and safety).

              The other one (heard not seen) was about 10-15years ago when a eurofighter went supersonic over Peterborough due to needing to intercept an unresponsive aircraft over the North Sea. Only time I have felt a sonic boom, even with growing up on the RAF Wittering flight path so we had the harriers going over multiple times a day.

              1. The commentard formerly known as Mister_C Silver badge

                I think the only time you might hear a sonic boom from a Harrier would be just before the boom of lithobraking.

            2. jake Silver badge

              Back in the late '60s I was taking an early morning golf lesson at Sunnyvale Municipal. I was getting ready to tee off on the 10th when four Marine Corps. Phantoms screamed into view from roughly the south east, at about tree-top level. Mid-runway, they pointed their noses straight up & kicked in the afterburners and kept going up until out of view ... in perfect finger-four. They repeated the maneuver eight or ten times over the next couple hours. Practicing for the Moffett Field Air Show the following weekend. (I found out later they were refueling off the coast.)

              Now keep in mind, Sunnyvale Muni is right at the end of Moffett's runway, so most of us were used to aircraft flying low overhead on a regular basis ... usually it was Orions (P-3) practicing takeoffs & landings, occasional small trainers and cargo planes, and sometimes even a couple of F4s would grace us with an overflight. But four of the things, about 150 feet up, at roughly 650 MPH just as I was addressing my ball was somewhat surprising to say the least :-)

              No, this wasn't the Navy's Blue Angels ... they were still flying F11s at the time, and practiced later in the same day.

          2. xyz Silver badge

            Yup, them Vulcans can't half fart.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
              Coat

              Because today is a good day to fly?

          3. DoctorPaul Bronze badge

            Once HEARD never forgotten!

        2. Philo T Farnsworth Silver badge

          I think I "met" that guy. . .

          Late one night I was on the freeway headed toward Phoenix from San Diego when Nature began calling quite insistently. There were no service stations, or, indeed, "services" for at least 50 miles, so I pulled off the highway at the first overcrossing I could find to have a word with Nature.

          Just as I finished, a fighter jet passed overhead, "on the deck" as I believe it's called, with a roar and thunderclap that nearly caused Nature to come calling again.

          I'm not sure what lesson there is to be learned from the experience other than "always go when you have the chance."

      3. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
        Happy

        Stealth Return to Family's House in the Countryside

        When I was in college, I successfully did this with my dad's pickup truck. Rolling down the highway, then clutch in, engine off, lights off, left turn off the highway, straight, left, right, left, and barely enough kinetic energy to make it to Dad's parking spot in our driveway.

        I never tried this with our car because, (a) it was a heavy, full-sized sedan, which we called, "Tuna-Boat"; (b) I'd once had the experience of having to drive it with a power steering failure -- it was okay-ish when I was rolling at speed, but very-tough when moving slowly; and, (c) I still would have had to raise our noisy, jointed garage door, then push the car up the slight hill into the garage. Tuna-Boat had a curb weight of 4000+ pounds!

    3. TheFifth

      I was just thinking that it's nice of these aliens to use the FAA mandated collision avoidance lights.

      1. StudeJeff

        Which would be equally odd if it was someone like the North Korans, Chicoms or Iranians.

      2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        FAIL

        Given that these large drones seem to be everywhere, every day, would it be too much to ask to get a steady, in focus, correctly exposed video of them?

        Because the one in TFA appears to be a very shaky overexposed b&w video of a helicopter.

        1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
          Black Helicopters

          A black 'copter?

    4. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

      “Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises.”

  4. Bebu sa Ware
    Coat

    If they have a couple of dozen Pandorica

    there are a few of our contemporary 'Great and Good' they might preserve for posterity preferably until the end of the Universe (and don't bother to reboot it.)

    I always imagined SUV stood for urban assault vehicle in some language other than English but thanks to the possibly unintentional educational value of the Vulture I now know SUV stands for sports utility vehicle which given the US national sport appears to be whacking fellows americans basically amounts to the same thing.

    When one considers whom the US constituency have elected it is quite easy to believe these deluded souls imagining armadas of Great Wall Motors SUVs (Havals?) suspended from balloons ready to be dumped on the US market (and heads) just as the orange floridan predicted.

    Space aliens might not be a bad outcome if we can convince them the US citizen is finest on hoof comestible the planet can offer to the discerning extraterrestrial palate. After wolfing down 300 million head of the finest I shouldn't be surprised if the diners all perished from some alien lifestyle disease or at least retreated without a thought of seconds.

    1. Groo The Wanderer

      Re: If they have a couple of dozen Pandorica

      The aliens will die of heart attacks after eating all that fat...

      1. David 132 Silver badge

        Re: If they have a couple of dozen Pandorica

        Dunno about die, but I just drifted into a life-threatening coma after wading through BsW's dense, prejudiced, and near-AmFM1-level prose.

  5. Tubz Silver badge
    Gimp

    All hail the 8ft furry female lizard overlords and their unquenchable lust for male company, even some of the basement trolls here will get lucky and finally have their V tickets stamped :D

    1. TheWeetabix Bronze badge

      Ill take a male please, though being lizards the external arrangement is equally dissatisfying.

    2. Kane
      Joke

      The mind and spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak and spongy

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "some of the basement trolls here"

      You write from direct personal knowledge?

  6. Bebu sa Ware
    Windows

    The Register welcomes our new alien overlords

    Collaborateurs! Quislings! Or just vutures?

    "our staff could be helpful in rounding up others to toil at whatever tasks they require"

    I am certain the commentard vulturatii would gladly scour their "little lists" (of those who would never be missed) and donate names to a rota of those others requiring rounding up.

  7. AVR Bronze badge
    Devil

    It's obviously Santa and the elves taking a new sleigh design for test flights. If you look too closely into the flights then you can expect a coal in the stocking, naughty ones (not valid in Europe; GDPR prevents collecting data on 'naughty' or 'nice').

  8. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Pirate

    If they flew over Texas, Louisiana, or Florida

    If they flew over Texas, Louisiana, or Florida, we'd be finding their carcasses scattered all over the place.

    Easy to get rid of: Just declare "open season" on the things, and let Bubba and Bo get out there with shotguns and blow 'em away!!!

    [and STOP acting like a bunch of drenched female cats]

    1. Dostoevsky Bronze badge

      Re: If they flew over Texas, Louisiana, or Florida

      Crowd-sourcing air defense!

  9. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Lights in the sky

    It's the Chinese. Those Chinese lanterns.

  10. Mike 137 Silver badge

    Realistic outcome?

    " what happens if the lights in the sky turn out to be spacecraft sent from another planet"

    If they're flying over the Orange Man's plot and have any common sense, the occupants will take one good look and leave again fast.

    1. fg_swe Silver badge

      Sure Lefty

      You are still not over the loss of your lunatics ? Those who think that man and woman are "social constructs" ?

    2. Groo The Wanderer

      Re: Realistic outcome?

      If they're here to save humanity, they'd be vaporizing that location while The Orange Menace is home...

  11. Stoic Skeptic

    Jersey?

    If you were an alien that just drove 18 trillion miles to get here, would you really want to hang out in Jersey?

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Jersey?

      Why not? It's a nice little island, low tax rates and the early spuds are second to none.

      1. dmvjjvmd

        Re: Jersey?

        New Jersey is… it’s not an island, my dude. :(

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Jersey?

          New Jersey isn't an island. Jersey is, mate: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@49.2403943,-2.0619738,96906m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIwOS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

          1. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
            Mushroom

            Re: Jersey?

            Jersey War Tunnels – Temporarily Closed. But I heard NATO chief, Mark Rutte, making war talk yesterday. So maybe the tunnels will be open for business again soon.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Jersey?

        Been there, got the sweater.

        1. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
          Boffin

          Re: Jersey?

          Other Bailiwicks are available

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Clue's in the name

    "Trump National Golf Club Bed-Minster"

    Those ain't just drones, they're Storm-bringers!

    1. Rich 11
      Alien

      Re: Clue's in the name

      The flying objects have also been spotted near president-elect Donald Trump's New Jersey golf club

      If Trump is on the green when they land, their ambassador will waddle over to him, take one look, and say, "Take me to a leader!"

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Obviously got the wrong end of the stick, it's US citizens entering Mexico and Canada to claim asylum.

  14. Dizzy Dwarf

    Avoiding Alien Tentacle Rape

    1. You cannot, sorry. You can only delay it.

    2. If you're in Tokyo, get the fuck out.

    3. Avoid bodies of water. This includes hot-tubs.

    4. Wear jeans. Avoid miniskirts.

    5. ???

    6. Profit!

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Re: Avoiding Alien Tentacle Rape

      5. Rig webcam to auto-post to Only Fans!

      FTFY!

  15. fg_swe Silver badge

    Electronic Warfare Soldier Bu11$h..

    Always funny to see how the Groom Lake guys mess with the minds of electronic-idiots.

    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51

    Then their collaborators in HorrorWood latch onto it.

  16. CapeCarl

    Welles....

    Obviously any actual alien invasion of New Jersey would include a broadcast from Orson Welles.

    1. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: Welles....

      Which of course was non-event made up by the Newspapers to try and get rid of this new fangled radio

  17. naive

    Aliens recruited by Putin invade US airspace

    Who else could have given him the technology for the Oreshnik rocket coming to a place near you with ten times the speed of sound when the Neo-Cons get their way before January 20.

  18. herman Silver badge

    Maybe, instead of asking the FBI, they should ask the Secret Service about the UAVs?

  19. steviebuk Silver badge

    Might be

    DavesElectricStuff from YouTube. Many years ago he said he was involved with a UFO project that flew down the Thames :) was an advert for a company. Can't fully remember the details.

  20. Conundrum1885

    I for one welcome our alien Overlords

    To be honest I will be relieved if these are in fact ETI 'vehicles'.

    Anything able to go Mach >10 and move from air to water and back in an eyeblink is already well beyond state of the art and the fact that we are still here suggests that they are benevolent or more than likely not even aware of our existence.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: I for one welcome our alien Overlords

      in an eyeblink

      It's far more likely that there was a glitch in the radar tracking software when some combination of circumstances triggered an unhandled edge case. It's the machine equivalent of an optical illusion being generated in a human brain.

  21. Tron Silver badge

    If you tied a weather balloon to an SUV and sent it skywards...

    ... I hope there was nobody in it.

    1. Dizzy Dwarf

      Re: If you tied a weather balloon to an SUV and sent it skywards...

      There's prior art: Lawnchair Larry.

  22. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
    Trollface

    Trollers ...

    ... used AI to deepfake the video, then created flash-meme groups to report the "UFO".

  23. breakfast
    Alien

    Perturbing possibilities

    I've often thought that UFOs are as likely to be coming from our distant future as from other distant worlds, in which case they might be paying attention to areas of historical interest, so perhaps history is in the making out that way...

  24. Winkypop Silver badge
    Alien

    “spacecraft sent from another planet”

    Our alien overlords have decided that with the re-election of Trump, our evolution has clearly crashed.

    It’s a great opportunity to take over.

    I’d rather take my chances with the aliens instead of Herr Trump.

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