Er … that actually makes it a little stranger. RAF Lakenheath is North East of London in Suffolk, roughly 300 km from Wales. That’s not a long range for a jet, but not exactly locals. (So why were they flying over Wales instead of out over the North Sea? )
Doing air-to-ground training, or flying against radar emitters, or doing training with JTACs, or doing training in areas where the terrain is a suitable mimic of some overseas threat area.
There are absolutely scenarios that make sense, but you’d still think someone would have told the locals! I’m assuming there isn’t an RAF base near the area in question, else they likely wouldn’t have paid too much attention except to watch the show. I was stationed at the next RAF base over from Lakenheath (Mildenhall) and it wasn’t unusual to see fighter jets doing training.
Or, my favorite, the SR-71 taking off from our base. Despite those never being announced, every time it went up there would be locals already setup with cameras and binoculars in the observation area on the public road closest to the flight line. They knew what 3 fuel tankers going up about 10 minutes apart signaled.
Pretty close to where the aircraft were seen.
That plus this from the article: “The UK Ministry of Defence has a number of tactical training areas in Wales, including Low Flying Area 7”
And it starts to make a lot more sense. Fighter jet training can be noisy, I get that, but the only thing I can see that would be really unusual is that this was happening at night which may not be as familiar to the locals. Add in a nice opportunity for sensationalist news and you get a variation of the New Jersey “drone invasions.”
The police do more of their helicopter training at night, since fewer people make complains at night.
Since the complaint process requires identifying the owners of the gorram helicopters which is impossible in the day and more impossible at night.
The Government posts a timetable of when the area is in use
I cannot see one planned for USAF recently.
But the RAF fly really low in the area (the video is dated admittedly).
Plenty of people have ideas, they just don’t agree.
[obvious dick joke]
Has anyone asked Boeing yet?
He thinks it’s probably something or other the US military is working on.
Irresistable. So smooth and shiny!
I had dinner last night with a friend who was in that area & shot some video. Definitely not planes.
Do the “authorities” not realise that people damn well know what planes and helicopters look like? And drones, at this point. Claiming that people are mistaking helicopters for these things is ludicrous.
I’ll acknowledge that there’s not really much trump could say that would make me happy (with the exception of “Urk! My heart!”), but reading the quotes of him talking about this is just an embarrassment. Seriously, this guy makes George W Bush look articulate!
…and wise.