Vegas Helicopter Pilot Reports UFO Visible Only With Night Vision
At about 9 pm on Saturday, March 16, a bizarre exchange between an air ambulance helicopter and ground control in Las Vegas revealed a pilot’s sighting of a UFO, which he claims was only visible with the aid of night vision. When the pilot reports the situation to an air traffic controller, he excitedly responds with “oh, that’s awesome…”
According to a recording of the interaction, the pilot flying an Agusta 119 Koala helicopter radioed in to ask if ground control had anything on their radar flying at about 7,000 feet, nine miles west of Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport. The pilot refers to this vicinity as the “Southern Hills area,” a corner of the Vegas metro area.
The air traffic controller quickly responds saying he does not have anything in that area, to which the pilot responds telling him he can only see it with his night vision goggles on.
The short interaction was recently uploaded to SoundCloud and can be heard below. But the real investigative digging thus far, has come from Tyler Rogoway at The Drive, who has consistently kept his finger on the pulse of all things strange and unexplained going on in the aviation world.
While the pilot guesses that the object could have been a balloon, it seems it would have to have been a rather large balloon to be at that altitude and be observable from nine miles away – the distance the pilot claims he was flying at when he witnessed it.
What makes Rogoway’s investigation into the matter even more mysterious is that when he attempted to contact Air Methods, the helicopter’s company headquarters and the operations base, to speak to the pilot, he was met with resistance.
Rogoway says he was told the company couldn’t comment and that the pilot was prohibited from speaking to anyone about the event. Instead they redirected him to someone else within the company who hasn’t given any response in “well over 24 hours.”
So, what could it have been that the pilot witnessed?
Several commenters on Rogoway’s article who appear to have various degrees of experience in aviation bring up the possibility that the pilot may have witnessed a hot air balloon. Though it seems highly unlikely a hot air balloon would be floating at 7,000 feet in highly trafficked airspace in the middle of the night. Also, the average altitude that hot air balloons typically reach is somewhere between 1,000 to 3,000 feet.
Others point to the relatively obvious fact that Vegas is not far from the notorious Groom lake Air Force base, a.k.a. Area 51. Was this some type of secret aircraft with cloaking technology being tested by the military?
Or could it be the possibility that everyone secretly wants it to be? The response from Air Methods certainly doesn’t seem to support any of the mundane explanations.
About the Author
John Warner IV Discusses the State of UFO Disclosure
Over the past several years, the disclosure movement has taken some interesting turns as videos of UFOs (or UAPs) tracked by the Navy have been made public. With esteemed media outlets reporting on the matter, and credible Navy pilots coming forward to describe their experiences, motley groups of researchers, celebrities, and government insiders have banded together to steer the narrative.
Within that group is Christopher Mellon, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, who also happens to be a member of one of the most highly influential families of bankers and politicians in American history.
Mellon first announced his role in the recent alleged disclosure movement through his involvement with To The Stars Academy, a bizarre amalgam of scientists, intelligence officials, and former Skunk Works engineers led by eccentric rockstar Tom Delonge.
While Mellon’s rhetoric around the UFO/UAP topic has been relatively conservative and pretty much what one would expect from a former intelligence bureaucrat, his cousin John Warner IV has recently begun to discuss his views on the subject from a more radical perspective.
Warner IV is the son of former Sen. John Warner III who served as Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 in the Nixon administration. During his storied career in military and politics, Warner III married Catherine Mellon, before divorcing and starting a second marriage with the immensely famous Elizabeth Taylor.
Needless to say, Warner IV was privy to a stimulating upbringing, rubbing elbows with famous movie stars, top military brass, royal families, and banking moguls, including his grandfather Paul Mellon who was a fox hunting buddy of the legendary Gen. George Patton. In fact, this is one of the relationships in which Warner IV says he was given his first drips of disclosure about UFOs.
According to Warner IV his grandfather was cold and distant from his mother, but the two shared a male bond that led to some interesting conversations, especially regarding his time in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s.
“He said, ‘I was with Patton at the end of the war in Czechoslovakia… I was with Patton in Pilsen and we went into a warehouse and looked at all the Wunderwaffe stuff. You know rocket works, V2, maybe some V3 parts, the Flugelrad with the jet engines and all this stuff. And you know I saw this big disc aircraft,’” Warner IV said his grandfather told him.
“And I said, ‘Oh, is that the Flugelrad with the BMW jet engines?’ and he was like, ‘No…no’ and that was the end of the conversation,” Warner IV said.
