My UFO story

In 1996-1997, I was in the US Army stationed in Republic of South Korea (ROK). I was in an Air Defense unit stationed near the DMZ, which separates the North and South. I remeber the day clearly, mainly because it was my birthday (March 5). We had been pn an exercise and in the field for about two weeks and getting pretty gamy, I might say. My team, which consisted of me and another soldier (2 man team) were tasked with providing short range air defense for the exercise (war game). What we would do is to find the highest place with the best field of fire and hide. That was my job...to avoid detection. And to search the sky for enemy aircraft.

In order to further our chances of detecting aircraft, I had two tools at my command. One was a big set of binocculars. The other was a sophisticated radar that I can't really talk much about that sends updated broadcasts over a burst modem via a radio. That radar terminal unit, basically a really expensive laptop, would give a radar picture out well over 40 miles. On that day, I happened to be approx. 8 miles from the DMZ.

The morning of this incident was especially foggy, for spring Korean standards. To understand what I'm talking about, think of Korea as W. Virginia with Michigan weather. We couldn't see more than 100 feet in the soup when all of the sudden, we see a track on our radar screen. My gunner and I thought this strange, since there was a ground halt on all aircraft due to the fog. The best thing about the radar was that it gave both vector (travelling direction) and speed of the signature. The speed indicated was about 550 knots. The vector was heading south from a distance of about 20 miles to the north...well within North Korea. Now this is not unusual, the North would typically fly near the DMX.

We began to track the target...waiting for it to veer when getting close to the DMZ. It continued to travel south after passing the DMZ, passing east of our position. At this point, all hell broke loose. The radio began buzzing with all sorts of people wanting to know what was going on. At one point, someone directed another team located within the flight path to get away from their vehicles and listen for the target. They heard nothing as the target passed directly over them.

The target traversed approximately 15 miles into South Korea, then as suddenly as it had appeared, changed direction 180 degrees in one second. Now, as I said earlier, the track was moving at 550 knots then, within one second, did a 180 and continued back at 550 knots, according to the radar. Because it was so foggy, no one could see the target, but nothing was flying from the South. It is possible it was an aircraft that got lost from the North, but the North had, and still has nothing that could move in that way. Officially, the incident was categorized as a UFO.

I'll bet things got real exciting for a while. Bet the Brass chocked on their waffles.



Roper

I was in 5/7 ADA, PATRIOT, in Germany. We too ended up with some rather bizarre things showing up on Radar from time to time.

I saw something odd on guard duty one night, still have no clue what the offical verdict was.

But thanks for reporting this stuff. I have no clue what you saw on your radar. It would scare the holy hell out of me too though, especially in that region of the world.