re: #71 sagehen

The stealth bomber was a UFO for quite some time. A number of commercial pilots saw oddly-shaped craft from their 30,000 ft vantage point, craft that were faster than any known human plane, went up and down in ways that human planes didn’t… and the airline would send the pilot for a psych exam if he insisted on reporting it. Because ABQ ATC (and a number of others) were absolutely vehement that their radar showed no such thing.

There’s no big mystery why there are a lot of UFO sightings in Nevada. Although civilian ATC not picking up a military aircraft wouldn’t be unusual, if the aircraft had its transponder off and was in restricted areas or high enough that It’s None Of Your Damn Business.

There were a few funny stories about some research balloons a number of years ago. Scientists would release balloons to the upper atmosphere with GPS units attached to them, and the GPS would stop working and they didn’t know why. They then figured out that civilian GPS chips were programmed to stop responding if they recorded over a certain speed or altitude, since at that point GPS receivers were considered munitions and subject to export and usage restrictions. I think they’ve relaxed this in the last few years to allow more of this type of use.