Black triangles: Encyclopedia - Black triangles

Black triangles

Black triangles are a kind of Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) that have been observed in the skies since the 1970s (and possibly earlier), to the present day. They have appeared more commonly over cities of the United States, and England, but have been spotted world wide including a mass sighting over St. Petersburg, Russia on February 19, 1997.

Since then, hundreds of observers have reported enormous, totally silent, black triangular craft hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities and highways, usually at night. Making no attempt to evade detection, the craft are even described by many observers as having some sort of "running lights", either bright white lights or flashing colored lights. These lights usually appear at each corner point of the triangle. Sometimes a red pulsating light can be seen at the center.

These objects are also sometimes known by the names "Big Black Deltas" (BBDs) or "Flying Triangles."

Black triangles - Reported sightings

By mid-2004, there were almost 400 separate reports of flying triangles, wedges, or boomerangs clearly visible over densely populated areas and highways, mostly near the East and West Coast of the United States. This geographic distribution also matches the locations of U.S. Air Force bases, leading to suggestions that the craft either belong to the U.S. Air Force or are investigating Air Force installations.

Black triangles - Typical sightings

Most black triangle reports indicate that the craft are at least 200 ft (60 m) long. They usually move very slowly or linger hovering in one place in the sky for several minutes. Sometimes they even land on the ground. They typically appear silently, and seemingly "out of nowhere", drifting a few hundred feet or less above the ground. Sometimes the craft are reported to be capable of sudden, very fast acceleration, as are often mentioned in the descriptions of other kinds of UFOs.

Many recent UFO sightings have turned out to be unmanned aerial vehicles, which are currently under rapid development by the military and contractors as security and surveillance tools, and often look very different from manned aircraft. On the other hand, the common observation that these craft appear over populated areas and make no effort to evade detection negates any argument that they are some sort of advanced United States military craft under development, like the F-117 Nighthawk or B-2 Spirit stealth aircraft which were sighted only occasionally during testing over sparsely populated areas of the Southwest, usually at night.

Black triangles - Illinois police sighting incident

On January 5, 2000, beginning shortly after 4:00 am, five on-duty Illinois police officers in separate locations sighted and reported a massive, unidentified triangular aircraft. Two of the five officers reported flight characteristics that do not conform to currently known technologies, as the object appeared to move at incredible speeds without making any sound. Sightings occurred in Highland, Illinois by a civilian who first reported to the local police department and subsequent sightings took place in Lebanon, Summerfield, Shiloh, Millstadt, Dupo and O'Fallon, Illinois. Local Scott Air Force Base public relations office denied any knowledge of the event. The incident was featured in Peter Jennings final ABC television special, "UFOs: Seeing is Believing". The event has been addressed by several U.S. cable television programs and one independent documentary. The case remains unexplained and theories of so-called TR3B technology have provided no substantiated evidence for dismissal.

This story was featured in 2005 on a segment of the SciFi Channel paranormal investigation series "Proof Positive" (episode #108). To help prove that the police officers did in fact witness the same unexplained aircraft, and their reports correlated together, all five were given a lie detector test and asked various questions about the incident. All five officers passed the test and the show gave the story a "proof positive".

Black triangles - Rendlesham Forest incident

Triangular craft were reported to have landed during the December 27, 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO incident near an American Air Force Base in Suffolk, England. Military personnel even reported to have approached at least one of the landed craft in the forest and observed it in great detail before it once again took flight. Another craft was observed landing in an open field near the base and then taking off at incredible speed.

See Rendlesham Forest Incident for more details.

Black triangles - Phoenix lights incident

One of the more famous appearances of these craft was during the event known as the "Phoenix Lights", where multiple unidentified objects, many of them black triangles, were spotted by the residents of Phoenix, Arizona and videotaped by both the local media and residents with camcorders across multiple evenings beginning on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Some lights drifted as low as 1000 feet and moved far too slowly and silently for conventional aircraft. If they were helicopters, they produced no sound. Some of the lights appeared to group up in a giant "V" formation that lingered above the city for several minutes. Many residents reported one triangle to be over a mile wide that drifted slowly over their houses blocking out the stars of the night sky. Other reports indicated the craft were spotted flying away from Phoenix as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada and Los Angeles, California.

An official report made by the Air Force about the incident concluded that the military had been testing flares launched from conventional aircraft during that time. Eyewitnesses confirmed military jets were scrambled from nearby Luke Air Force Base, but instead of launching flares, they were seen chasing after some of the objects.

The next few nights, in an attempt to recreate the incident, local pilots flew prop-planes over the city in a "V" formation, but the sounds of their engines were easily heard. The original lights made no sound. Flares were also deployed above Phoenix. Comparison of the video taken of the lights (which appeared at night) against daytime images of the same scene show that the lights "disappear" at the exact moment they are shown to fall behind a mountain range. The mountains were invisible against the night sky. There were also no reported radar sightings of the objects which is consistant with the flare theory.

Afterward, as a joke, the mayor of Phoenix, Skip Rimsza, and Arizona's Governor at the time, Fife Symington, appeared before news cameras with a costumed alien being who claimed responsibility for the incident. This caused outrage and criticism from some local residents and many in the UFO community who took the event seriously.

Black triangles - The Belgian Air Force report

On March 30, 1990, citizens of the city of Ans, Belgium spotted a large black triangular craft that hovered silently over the city for several minutes. Local police officials arrived on the scene and reported observing the object as it hovered over apartment buildings. One officer reported the object released a red glowing disk of light from the center that flew down to the ground and darted around several buildings before disappearing. The larger craft eventually took off at high speed.

The Belgian Air Force scrambled F-16's to pursue the craft once it was spotted on ground radar systems. Both the fighter pilots and radar operators reported the objected would dart ahead at incredible speeds everytime they finally had a radar lock on the craft. One pilot reported the object's speed at over 900 knots. After 9 confirmed target locks the object finally vanished off their screens.

The Belgian Air Force has gone on record with the details of its Black Triangle pursuit. It released its radar video footage and its conclusions, ruling out the following origins of the object in question:

1. Balloons. Impossible due to the highly variable speeds (confirmed visually and by radar).
2. ULM. Same as for balloons.
3. RPV. Impossible due to the hovering characteristics.
4. Aircraft (including Stealth). Same as for RPV. No noise.
5. Laser projections or Mirages. Unlikely due to lack of projection surface (no clouds). Light spots have been observed from different locations. Light spots moved over distance of more than 15 nautical miles (28 km). Form of unlighted part of spots has been observed with spectacles. Laser projections or mirages can not be detected by radar.

The report concludes that the Belgian Air Force was, "unable to identify neither the nature nor the origin of the phenomena".

It should be noted that some subsequent studies present a much more cautious and sceptical view of the events discussed in the Belgian Air Force report - disputing both the accuracy of some of the statements made in that report, and the interpretation of the events described (see for example the detailed summary at http://members.aol.com/TPrinty/Belg.html, which also provides references to other sources).

Black triangles - The TR-3A and TR-3B

A speech given at the International UFO Congress, in Laughlin, Nevada in 1998 by Edgar Rothschild Fouche, (an engineer who claims to have worked at Area 51), suggests that the Black Triangle is a Top Secret, experimental, U.S. Air Force vehicle known as the TR-3B, code named "Astra".

The TR-3B is supposed to be a 600 foot wide (180 m), triangular aerospace vehicle that utilizes a nuclear reactor to generate an intense magnetic field that negates Earth's gravitational forces on the mass of the vehicle by 89%, rendering it extremely lightweight. It also manipulates this field for propulsion and can maneuver on the spot, vertically and horizontally, at incredible speeds up to Mach 9, and climb to an altitude of 120,000 feet. The aircraft is also equipped with advanced Electromagnetic Counter Measures ECM systems that render it nearly invisible to radar, or makes the craft appear as an aircraft of smaller size than it really is.

If a conventional nuclear reactor is used it must be designed in an unconventional way which looks suspiciously like impossible technology for this time period. The reactor would need bulky shielding, and the heat produced would have to be converted into electricity to run the coils that produce the magnetic levitation field for the aircraft. The machinery needed would likely make the aircraft much too heavy to fly.

There is also mention of the TR-3A, code named "Black Manta", which is reported to be similar to the 3B but smaller in size, with a boomerang shaped wingspan of 60 feet (18 m) and a tapered length of 45 feet (14 m).

The TR-3A/B may be the most classified aerospace development program in existence. Fouche reported that the development of the crafts were funded by black project monies, and overseen by the NRO, CIA, and NSA. Design of the vehicles were part of the Aurora Project, and was spawned by technologies developed in the 1980s for other classified aircraft such as the SR-75 Aurora. Some speculate the technology behind such crafts were the result of reverse engineering captured or exchanged alien technology, such as that reported to have been retrieved after the Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash incident in 1947.

The TR3B theory has been flaunted by some as an explanation for many triangle sightings; however, no evidence has been presented to prove this theory accounts for the hundreds of sightings of trianglular-shaped aircraft with odd aerodynamic flight characteristics that have been documented as early as the 1930s.

Black triangles - Other theories

The remaining possibilities are

• that they are previously unknown American aircraft, manned or unmanned, which are being deployed in a 'high-visibility' fashion, but without public notice for some reason;
• that they belong to some nation or organization other than the United States, which wishes to display itself in this fashion;
• that they are some sort of common error of identification of some 'conventional' aircraft or other phenomenon; however, this could not explain why their observation started only in the 1990s;
• or that they are of extraterrestrial origin.

One possibility is that the craft represent some form of advanced technology lighter than air craft. This would account for their size, low speed, low altitude, and silence. Such a vehicle would be advantageous in terms of payload size, fuel efficiency, extended time aloft, and ability to remain close to a location on the ground or a ground vehicle or group of vehicles for long periods. However, this would not explain why they would be displayed so freely, but with no official comment of any kind, or the reports of sudden high acceleration as in the Illinois case [1]. This possibility must however be weighed against the "Belgian Triangle" sightings involving Black Triangles identical to the objects sighted in American airspace. These Belgian Triangles demonstrated flight performance characteristics beyond the fighter jets used by the Belgian Air Force in their attempt to intercept them. The Wallonia Triangles were both photographed, filmed and tracked on radar, ruling out mass delusion as the source of the sightings.

Obviously, the other possibilities, that these sightings are either genuinely 'paranormal' in some way, or, conversely, merely some sort of mass delusion or error possibly stemming from heightened anxiety over terrorism (in the American cases at least), open the door to almost any sort of speculation. Until more evidence of a different kind appears, or an American military or other group officially claims responsibility, what reality lies behind the American reports will remain unknown.

Black triangles - Black triangles in fiction

A few black triangle ships have been featured in the X-Files televison series.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Black triangles", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki