Did Iranian Air Force Encounters UFOs?

Iranian Air Force apparently tried to shoot down aerial objects that have unique features, not normally found in any known aircraft. The news was featured not in a conspiracy website but in a Combat Aircraft Monthly article published in October 2013. Combat Aircraft Monthly is a magazine of military aviation that has some well-respected writers.

The news also came out in an article on Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighters. It was written by Babak Taghvaee, who is a respected writer on the Iranian Air force. In the article, Taghvaee narrates how Iran tried to intercept UFOs overflying its nuclear facilities.

According to Taghvaee’s write up, Iran describes the UFOs as luminous objects and Iranians believe that the mysterious objects were emitting light to enable photography even at night. Iranians recount that the UFOs have astonishing flight characteristics such as the ability to fly beyond the atmosphere with maximum speed of Mach 10 and minimum of zero. They can hover above the target and use advanced ECM to jam enemy’s radars and eventually disrupt navigation systems.

In November 2004, it was reported that Iranian F-14 Tomcat attempted to lock its radar on to a luminous object over the Arak nuclear facility but the radar beam was disrupted. According to the pilot’s description, the object was spherical with green afterburner that created a considerable amount of turbulence behind it. The UFO flew at tremendous speed and disappeared like a meteor, according to the article.

In January 2012, an F-14 tried again to intercept an intruder moving above the Bushehr nuclear power plant. The tale took a deadly turn as seconds after take-off, the F-14 exploded and killed both crewmen. The tragedy’s cause is still unknown.

How fast is Mach 10? It is ten times the speed of sound or 7,612 miles per hour. So, what known aircraft can fly such tremendous speed? The closest known aircraft that can fly close to that speed was the NASA’s experimental hypersonic aircraft called as X-43, which flew at Mach 9.68 in 2004 but the project was terminated. The program was resurrected as the Air Force X-51 but the aircraft only flew at Mach 5 in less than four minutes before it plunged into the Pacific last May.