UFOs Tracked on Military Radar by Wing Commander Alan Turner

[wolram]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ufos/article1682846.ece

AN RAF expert yesterday revealed how he tracked a whole fleet of “spaceships” on military radar — but the Ministry of Defence told him to keep quiet.

Wing Commander Alan Turner, 64, said colleagues sat stunned when 35 super-fast vessels appeared on their screens.

 

[cristo]

Come on.. that's an article in The Sun!

 

[russ_watters]

One thing about radar - and the older it gets the more often this is the case - is that it produces a lot of clutter. Again, as with photographic evidence not improving with improving camera technology, these types of sighting used to be very common, but are getting more rare as radar technology improves, with higher resolution and better ability to distinguish real from anomalous returns.

This "revalation" is 37 years old.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The Sun is not an acceptable source. Note also that RADAR evidence is only interesting if we actually have the evidence. Without any hard data, it is still just an unsupported claim. Note also that in the Napster, we have documented military cases directly from government files that often involve RADAR contacts, sometimes by multiple stations, and sometimes in conjuction with multiple credible witnesses.

Russ, perhaps you can present evidence supporting your claim? What are the historic and current rates of anamalous detections misidentified as UFOs?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Btw Wolram, stories from major news sources like the BBC, London Times, Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, etc., in addition to stories in local newspapers, are appropriate for the UFO News thread.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=8406

 

[russ_watters]

Russ, perhaps you can present evidence supporting your claim? What are the historic and current rates of anamalous detections misidentified as UFOs?

Cute, but a misdirection, Ivan.

In any case, the problem of clutter in radar returns is a well-publicized, common-knowledge part of history. Any good high school history teacher touches on it when discussing Pearl Harbor.

The advances in radar technology are pretty complicated, but if you wish to learn more, please feel free to start a discussion about it in the engineering forum or just google it. Here are a few good nuggets to get you started, though:

Many UFOs have been tracked on RADAR, especially in the earlier years of the technology.

http://www.ufology.ca/Content/R-01.htm

During the 1960s radar technology progressed in leaps and bounds as more powerful systems were invented to handle the steady increase in air traffic. Digital computers were then drafted into take over the complex task of simultaneously tracking dozens of aircraft of all shapes and sizes. In order to sort the wheat from the chaff which clutter air traffic control screens, today noise caused by weather systems, birds, insects and other “spurious echoes” such as might be generated by true UFOs (whatever they may be) are automatically removed by computers at source. This explains why the vast majority of reports of UFOs on radar were made during the 1940s and 1950s, before improved radar and computer technology eliminated them from modern equipment. [emphasis added]

http://www.uk-ufo.org/condign/secfilghosts1.htm