A recently released report by the Office of National Intelligence places one of the multi-state region’s most significant unidentified flying object sightings over Zanesville.

The report, ordered by Congress after the viral Navy ‘Tic Tac’ video, has raised more questions than answers and left senior military officials saying, at least publically, that they can’t explain the phenomenon.

The reporting and fascination by the public around unidentified flying objects have existed for nearly as long as human flight when it began more than 100 years ago.

At least historically, research has proven time and time again that nearly every sighting initially reported can be explained, often decades later, following either the declassification of military projects or the correlation of data that wasn’t previously available.

Take the Roswell incident, for example, even responding military personal to arrive on the scene weren’t authorized to be told of the true nature of their mission.

Military leaders instead opted to allow the idea that visitors from another world had crash-landed than admit they have the technology to track Soviet nuclear weapons tests from afar.

Materials found in the crash, believed to be so advanced they had to be ‘out of this world’ were in fact highly sophisticated weather balloons that when operated in connected networks using attached equipment could detect and pinpoint locations of nuclear detonations.

It wasn’t until nearly half-a-century later that most of the full details about that program were declassified allowing for a more reasonable explanation, including why the material and equipment were kept under heavily armed guard as it was transported back to Dayton Air Force Base.

More locally, in February 1967 reports across Ohio, including from residents in Zanesville, identified a ‘silver, egg-shaped object traveling across the sky.’

It would take nearly 50 years for Project Blue Book to identify the sighting as nothing more than a weather balloon launched from Page, Arizona.

The report shows that tower personnel at both the Indianapolis and Dayton airports verified that the object was ‘a high-altitude ballon of some type,’ but those details never got shared to residents who observed it across Ohio, at least not until 2015.

Projects designed to explain away unidentified objects often do just that, once-secret military planes such as the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird or F-117 Nighthawk, for example, explained many such amateur and professional sightings alike.

The question remains then, the Navy ‘Tic Tac’ video, ousted to the public by military fighter pilots, shows aircraft conducting maneuvers currently thought to be impossible with present military technology, leaving many to once again claim aliens.

While publically the military continues to say the sightings are unexplained there are a few potential rational explanations apart from visitors literally from out of this world.

One is that the entire object that is seen on the footage is actually a complicated optical illusion caused by the aircraft’s onboard sensors.

A second, seemly more likely explanation, at least in tight military circles, is that the objects detected were and are in fact highly advanced yet-released-to-the-public military aircraft or drones.

The USS Nimitz, from which the pilots launched in one of the first ‘Tic Tac’ case encounters in 2004, had been recently outfitted with highly advanced upgraded sensors.

Not only did the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group have some of the most highly advanced sensors the world had to offer at the time, but its ships also enjoyed what was considered, again at the time, the most advanced networking and computer battle management capabilities of any such system.

If members of any secret military black budget project wanted to test out their stealth and evasion flight technology it would seem likely the best way to do that would be going against the USS Nimitz and her other ships.

Additional information appears to also back up those claims as uniformed U.S. Air Force officers showed up soon after and confiscated both devices and hard drives containing the captured flight data.

However, that solution doesn’t explain a more recent, think 2010 onward, number of smaller aircraft sightings that have been detected around U.S. military bases, ships and land.

A more concerning school of thought is that these sightings may very well likely be highly advanced Chinese drones.

Almost all consumer-grade drones today are produced exclusively by Chinese companies.

American companies have tried – all of which have failed – and exited the business.

One drone maker, DJI, is not only considered the international leader but has an almost exclusive market monopoly on their production.

It would seem highly plausible that a company, backed by the Chinese government, would also have the technology to produce highly advanced fix-wing craft as well.

In July of 2019, off the coast of California, numerous drones swarmed US Navy ships.

The ships, nearly 100 miles away from land, would be hard-pressed to be reached by consumer-grade drones with much fewer long-range capabilities.

Analysts aren’t exactly clear as to who was operating them, but they do believe they had the capabilities of a nation-state.

National level coverage of these incidents resulted in members of Congress calling for a more thorough investigation into the matter.

A recently released report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on these unidentified aerial phenomena leaves more questions than answers but details many potential ‘sightings.’

Numerous reported incidents, required by the FAA to be filed by pilots, scatter the country with such sights.

Many are or can be easily explained as consumer-grade drones that while posing a risk to other aircraft don’t rise to the level of highly advanced drones or alien visitors.

Searching through thousands of pages of reports and spreadsheets, an encounter in Zanesville has become more puzzling and harder to explain.

On March 27, 2019, at around 11:35 a.m. local time, a pilot flying at 15,500 feet observed what he described as a ‘fairly large and stationary object.’

He goes on to say he believes it to be a black drone carrying a red object.

The problem is drones, at least ones on the civilian marketplace, are incapable of those actions.

Take a modestly expensive consumer drone, a DJI Mavic Pro, it can theoretically fly as high as 500 meters or 1,640 feet, though FAA regulations require an operator to stay much lower.

Of all the reports in a multi-state region around Ohio, the Zanesville encounter is one of only a few sightings above a few thousand feet.

No drone currently available for purchase, even to police departments, is capable of achieving that height.

Another oddity, most if not all military drones known to exist that can get to that height are fixed-wing aircraft that need to constantly be in motion.

Other craft, such as quadcopters, which have four rotating blades, are not known to hover at anywhere near those altitudes because of the lack of air and power requirements.

According to a summary report available, the pilot allegedly informed local county law enforcement about the encounter.

According to Muskingum County Sheriff Matt Lutz, no such report still exists in his department’s records.

Y-City News has filed a Freedom of Information Request with the FAA for that particular report, but any report, should it be released, will likely take months.

A military installation, the Zanesville Air National Guard Base, could have been a target of the unidentified craft.

The Joint Surveillance System, which provides data to both the FAA and military on aircraft, would have been able to track the plane from which the report was made.

The United States Government does not disclose the granular capabilities of its air defense systems, including its ability to track smaller craft or drones.

Multiple sources Y-City News spoke to all agreed the report was ‘significant’ and should be further investigated.

The pilot and the company for which he worked did not return a request for comment.

Do you have additional information about this encounter? Y-City News would like to hear from you. Contact us at (740) 562-6252, email us at contact@ycitynews.com or mail us at 247 Market Street, Zanesville, Ohio 43701. All sources are kept strictly confidential.