Near Puerto Rico, a warship’s radar picked up a fast-moving object. A fighter jet was in the area, and the object came within a few miles of it.
Radar tracked the object for 21 minutes, and the pilot saw it, too. The briefing gives two different estimates of its speed but doesn’t explain what it was. The incident was documented in a briefing prepared for a senior aide to the director of the CIA.
21 Minutes on the Radar Screen
On November 19, 1964, radar aboard the warship Giat detected an object in the area. Giat is the ship’s name, not a type of vessel. Radar detects objects using radio waves.
According to the briefing, radar tracked the object for 21 minutes at more than 7,000 kilometers per hour. During that time, the object moved away from the fighter jet, then approached it again. At one point, it was only a few miles away.
The Pilot Saw a Triangle in the Moonlight
The fighter pilot saw the object under a full moon. He described a triangular shape about the size of a fighter jet. The briefing noted that the weather and visibility were good.
The pilot estimated that the object was traveling at more than three times the speed of sound. That was his estimate, separate from the speed recorded by radar. The ship photographed the radar image to document the tracking.
The briefing was prepared for Walter Elder, a senior aide to the director of the CIA. The document was released to the public in 2026.
What Remains Unknown
The object’s identity is unknown. The briefing says the Navy had no further information about it and offers no conventional explanation for what appeared on radar and what the pilot saw.
For 21 minutes, a mark on a screen tracked something that approached an aircraft. Even after the tracking ended, the object’s identity remained unknown.
