Strange Air Force Convoy

I'm a Navy defense contractor at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility. Today we had a massive power outage and got to leave work early. We were told the power could be out for a day and a half.

As my friend and I were driving home he decided to go to the NASA credit union located on the main NASA base. We were coming up on a small town we drive through to get from the Navy facility at Wallops to the NASA base when we saw a large white trailer being pulled by a semi pull out from a side street. The trailer was escorted by a red SUV that had yellow lights on top of it in the front, and a red SUV, a small silver foreign car, and a silver pickup behind it. At first the three vehicles behind it appeared like normal vehicles, they weren't marked in any way.

The side street it came off of is a country road that has a lot of twits, turns, and bumps. It's not a forgiving road, certainly not for a semi. There is a road coming off the main highway that is traveled by NASA trucks all the time, but this one didn't take it.

The trailer was all white and had US Air Force on the side of it. It was shaped weird, it was taller in the back than in the front, kind of like a big hump on the back of it. It was made out of a ridged, corregated kind of metal and had some ladders and some kind of arm on top of it. It had some other stuff on the sides, cables or hoses and some access panels.

As we approached the intersection, the lead SUV pulled out with a Wide Load sign on top and the flashing yellow lights. Then the trailer pulled out. The three vehicles behind it pulled out after the trailer, and my friend had to hit the brakes and swerve because the silver pick up truck at the end came right out in front of him forcing himself in between us and the rest of the convoy. At first we thought the pickup was just a bad driver until I noticed the truck had it's flashers on.

As we went into the town the road widened. It has a double yellow line painted down the center, but is wide enough for two cars to fit on either side. As we got to the wide road, the red SUV behind the trailer kept pulling next to the rear of the trailer on the right and the silver import would cross the double line and ride next to the rear of the trailer on the left. The pickup slowed up a lot and kept us away from the trailer. Whenever a car came towards us on the other side of the street the trailer would stop until the car passed, then start moving again.

I wanted to follow the convoy but my friend was in a hurry so he turned down a side street and went to the NASA credit Union off-base instead of to the one on it.

I wouldn't have thought anything of the convoy if it wasn't for the extremely aggressive driving of the people in the three unmarked cars behind the semi. They were clearly intent on keeping all vehicles away from the trailer and were doing a good job at it. The three vehicles in the rear looked like privately owned vehicles. The silver pickup directly in front of us had Maryland tags and a big golf sticker in the back window. The silver import had Virginia tags and it looked like the red SUV directly behind the trailer had MD tags.

I want to know what was in that trailer. As my friend and I were driving behind we started developing a conspiracy theory that the power outage was planned to get everyone off the base while they unrolled a secret UAV from the trailer or did some other kind of secret testing. I'm not 100% sure the trailer was going to the main NASA base, but when it got to an intersection ahead of it, it could either turn left and go back to the main highway, go straight to the main NASA gate, or turn right and go to Chincoteague Island, which is loaded with tourists the week after Memorial Day.

Any ideas what was in that trailer?

[edit on 31-5-2005 by PeanutButterJellyTime]

Since you have worked there, how many incidents have there been, such as all staff to be sent home?

I've been here seven years. The base gets shut down for more than 12" of snow, hurricanes that threaten the Virginia coast (Isabelle in 2003 was the last one we got off for), and for the occassional power outage. I'd say I've got to leave early for a loss of power maybe three times, counting this one. It's been several years since the last one. The building I work in is a huge Tempest enclosure- no windows, shielded so transmissions don't get in or out (cell phones drop off the network as soon as you walk inside), etc. The site has a backup generator for lighting, but if the power is out for more than two hours and doesn't look like it will be up anytime soon we go home because there is no air flow inside.

For power outages the base is normally only closed for a single shift. We have never been told a day and a half before. In my seven years here the only times the base has been closed for more than a day was during hurricane Isabelle and on and after 9/11.

Another question for you!

What does it officially work on/produce, at the place you work?
I know its NASA, but if you could elaborate, we might be able to work out what it is you see.

Aha!
On the website for the NASA base www.wff.nasa.gov... it has on the public schedule that begining tomorrow for two weeks is an NFIRE-PATHFINDER event that includes a Minuteman II launch vehicle. A google search showed that NFIRE is Near Field Infra Red Research. It's the name of a space-based missile defense test system. The Air Force is putting up several NFIRE satellites and plans to shoot down a ballistic missile next year.

In July 2004, a four-stage Minotaur rocket carrying the initial NFIRE satellite will be launched from the Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. Once in low-Earth orbit, the satellite will spend up to one year testing its two main components: an infrared sensor and a releasable kill vehicle. The experiment will track target missiles launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, gather information on ballistic missile conditions in space, and eventually attempt to intercept a target missile using its kill vehicle. NFIRE might even test MDA’s hypertemporal imager (still under development), a device that could potentially detect a hostile missile shortly after its launch.

Source

I guess what we saw was either a trailer with the satellite itself in it or some type of telemetry equipment for tracking the launch of it. I still don't understand why the drivers were so aggressive though. I've never experienced that before, and I've seen a lot of classified stuff come through here. Maybe the trailer was unrelated to NFIRE, or there is more to NFIRE than what is released to the public.

Awesome
By chance did you notice if the silver pickup was a late 90's Nissan Frontier?

Too bad there was no UFO that crashed into the power lines... 'You are the Navigator!!'

The silver pickup was definitely late 90's or newer but I was too busy looking at the behavior of the vehicles to remember the make of the pickup. The pickup had a big golf bumper sticker in the back window that had crossed golf clubs. It looked like a parody of the VMI logo, the one with crossed sabres.

I had a co-worker tell me that the Saturday before the blackout and my trailer sighting he saw a large flatbed at a truck rest stop down the road from my house. The flatbed had a 'weird looking missile' on it as he described it and it was surrounded by other vehicles.

That must have been the converted Minuteman II launch vehicle coming in.

This has all been pretty cool for me. I didn't think they did anything interesting on the NASA side of the base.

tisk, tisk, tisk, with nearly every cell phone now has a camera on it, you should of at least snapped a couple images of the trailer.

I would have loved to but we are not allowed to take cameras onto the base I work on so we didn't have one in the car.

Ive seen exactly what you are talking about at vandenburg air show. It holds missiles. Case closed

Train

Yeah, its sounds like it could be a probe or space vehicle.

The vehicle you saw is called a Transporter Erector (TE) it is used to transport minuteman II boosters that are now utilized for spacelift missions. The one you saw was for the NFIRE mission pathfinder. The drivers on a pathfinder being the highly trained professionals they are, carry out all aspects of the pathfinder as if they had an actual solid propellant booster stack in the TE. They "aggressively" keep motorists away from the TE for safety and for the security of the booster. This TE is different than all the other TEs in the Air Force's inventory. It has a funky shaped removable top so the booster stages can be lifted by crane after the TE rotates them to vertical. The unmodified TEs just rotate the stages to vertical and lower them into a silo. This one will allow the booster stages to be crane lifted onto a pedestal launch site...like the one on at NASA's Wallops Island launch facility. This is where the NFIRE satellite was launch from.

The TE mentioned in this thread was empty. Sorry no weird alien tech here.

I can back up the previous poster on the aggressive driving by the escort vehicles. I see alot of big boats and manufactured homes on the roads around here and the escort vehicles will herd drivers to the side of the road. They have a big responsibility in both protecting the moving asset from damage and protecting the poeple sharing the public roads during the move.

I crave a bushel of spiced steamed blue crabs and some good beer in the company of friends. Beautiful area that Eastern Shore.

well, it might sounds a bit strange, but as a nasa employee i wouldn't dare to talk about anything relating to my work doesn't matter what i see or hear. i would be afraid that something like they did with the nasa guy in movie "Capricorn One" could happen to me

Search and Destroy information leaks.

oh dear, according to the last visit of PeanutButterJellyTime which was the 26th Sep 2005, something must happend to him




[edit on 22-3-2008 by buckrogers]