Military Times Blog: UFO deployed to Afghanistan?

Gina Harkins, Military Times - 3/20/2012

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A recently filed report on a UFO tracking website discusses an alleged sighting at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province. ...A second Marine confirmed with Marine Corps Times that he saw the same lights at Camp Leatherneck in May or June of 2011.

Forget “The X-Files.” This is “The Afghanistan-Files.”

A recently filed report on a UFO tracking website discusses an alleged sighting at Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province.

The report, submitted Feb. 26 by an unknown individual, describes an event on or about Feb. 7, 2010, when seven equally spaced lights were spotted in the sky. Through the duration of the sighting, none of the lights appeared to move or change. The report states that the lights were at a high altitude and didn’t blink, move or make any noise.

The witness was sitting in his office at the Marine logistics group compound when a Marine issued an alert about the lights. They stayed in the sky so long that people just started leaving.

“I hate to say it, but after maybe 45 minutes we just went back inside to work,” the witness wrote in his report to the Mutual UFO Network, a nonprofit that reviews reports of sightings and hosts a UFO database on its website.

A second Marine confirmed with Marine Corps Times that he saw the same lights at Camp Leatherneck in May or June of 2011.

Robert Hastings, a UFO expert and author of “Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites,” said there is a history of UFO sightings in war zones dating back to World War II, when both sides reported seeing secret enemy weapons. Sightings were also reported during Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War.

After reading the report and viewing the photos, Hastings said he believes what hovered above Camp Leatherneck was a bona fide UFO.

Jason McClellan, editor of Open Minds Magazine, a publication about UFOs, said military flares or Chinese lanterns can produce this effect in the night sky. But the length of time the lights stayed put, plus the witness report, make both of these unlikely, he said.

Hastings agreed.

For a more skeptical view, Marine Corps Times turned to military analyst Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank.

After reading the report, Thompson scoffed at the idea aliens would choose Afghanistan, of all places, to visit.

“It can’t be aliens, because they usually go to places that have leaders,” he said.