But my money is on this just being a military test—some SR71-like replacement (probably air-breathing, maybe even unmanned). It's not really out of the question, but a big hole in this idea is that merging with general air traffic is usually a no-no even by military standards.
Anyways, on a somewhat unrelated note, it just reminds me of this[0] story, for anyone even remotely interested in flight.
I mean, it's been identified as aircraft by pilots nearby. And it has the ability to disguise itself from radar. That's all you really need to conclude spy plane. I know that people had made sightings of previous US planes before they were declassified. A slightly scarier possibility is that its not American.
ATC primary radar is pretty weak. Not showing up (particularly after changing flight direction) doesn't mean much. It's very odd (and illegal) for something to be up in flight levels without a transponder though.
Military test of a stealth plane is the simplest explanation, but why would it not talk to ATC? As a test to see whether it could make it a few hundred miles in a busy air corridor without being noticed?
The altitude is the curious part to me. 37,000 feet is right in the commercial aviation region, though it sounds like they were staying well away from established corridors.
I like the context of the written one better. Seems like the focus/slant/whatever changed from the one-upmanship of the written one to let's-piss-off-center of the spoken one.
This thing disappeared from radar. So if it was a secret military aircraft the it appears to have the ability to hide and unhide its radar signature. Also, if you listen to the FAA telephone calls you'll hear the air traffic controller mention that the object was heading south bound, at a fast clip, and then did an abrupt maneuver and took off north bound. Now, you could say the object just did an Immelmann, but I'm not aware of anything that can perform an Immelmann that fast in an object that large.
I think the next “SR-71” is hypersonic, part of the “cancelled” HTV-X3 successor program under FALCON. There would be no “chasing” something like that, and it would be.... striking.
But my money is on this just being a military test—some SR71-like replacement (probably air-breathing, maybe even unmanned). It's not really out of the question, but a big hole in this idea is that merging with general air traffic is usually a no-no even by military standards.
Anyways, on a somewhat unrelated note, it just reminds me of this[0] story, for anyone even remotely interested in flight.
[0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-10791270...