Geographical Analysis of NUFORC Triangle Reports: 2010 to 2012

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1 Geographical Analysis of NUFORC Triangle Reports: 2010 to 2012 Edward Halerewicz, Jr. October 26, 2012 Summary In order to propose educated hypotheses regarding the purpose of craft known by the terms: flying triangles, stealth blimps, and big black deltas a geographic analysis is performed utilizing publically available data. As the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) offers recorded triangle reports online at no charge that information is used in conjunction with other public geographic data so that results presented within may be reproduced or carried out further. Upon invetigating a two year sample group it is illustrated that unknown triangular craft appear most active during fall months and on average prefer to avoid regions of high air traffic. Preferences of flight paths and distance intervals between triangular craft sightings are also discussed. Introduction In 2002 the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) preformed a geographical analysis of Flying Triangle craft termed Big Black Deltas (BBDs), which concluded that BBDs are Department of Defense (DoD) aircraft [NIDS 2002a]. I have had an on and off interest in BBD going back almost two decades ago after witnessing an illuminated flyby of such a craft. Long since that time I have obtained a background in geography and have decided to carry out my own geospatial analysis of BBD sightings but by using publically available information. The goal of this work is to illustrate areas of interest of BBDs within the lower 48 states of the continental United States which may suggest the operational purpose of these craft. The purpose of this report is to take the geographic analysis done by NIDS in 2001 [NIDS 2001b] a step further by using publically available information. Specifically BBDs listed as triangle reports within the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) website are geographically analyzed. The main motivation for this is that the NUFORC data is available online at no charge at the present so that the methods presented here may be duplicated and or extended. The 2001 NIDS geographic analysis plotted points of BBDs from three databases [NIDS internal, Larry Hatch documentation, and Mutual UFO Network data], which were presented alongside triangulations of Air Mobility Command (AMC) bases and Air Force Material (AFM) bases [NIDS 2001b]. The conclusion of the 2001 NIDS geographic analysis was that triangular craft sightings were mostly located along or near AMC bases. Although with 1

2 the exception of AFM bases no other reference locations were plotted for comparative analysis nor were there any numerical analysis done on BBD plotted points from one another or in relationship to AMC bases thus leaving obtained results open to interpretation. Methods Having had and on and of interest in the subject of BBDs/stealth blimps, I occasionally read aerospace sources such as Jane s (Jane s 2010a), and have found two consistent design purposes for large delta-shaped blimps: heavy lifters, and reconnaissance craft. I found the 2001 NIDS geographic report to be lacking in considering reconnaissance the applications of such craft and wanted to produce reproducible geographical analysis so anyone could reproduce my findings or to perform additional analysis, none of which are possible with the methods discussed by NIDS in To accomplish the goals discuses above all maps presented within this report may be reproduced by anyone making use of the open source program Quantum GIS (QGIS) which can be found at Through public sources it was only possible to find exact coordinates of airports through the National Atlas [National Atlas 2012c] 685 of which were plotted with the accuracy of degrees, hours, minutes, and seconds. Approximate coordinates for USAF bases with accuracy up to degrees and hours were found through a Wikipedia entry [2012b]. Remaining addresses were geocoded typically by city and state name degree of accuracy using an online geo-coder at Due to the 1000 per day geo-coding limit imposed by the online gps-visualizer software only 1000 of the most recent triangle reports from NUFORC were processed, after clipping out coordinates outside the continental United States only 918 BBD were plotted. At the time of geo-coding NUFORC listed 7,449 reports so the plots in this work only represent 12.32% of the NUFORC triangle reports which lie between the dates of March 1, 2010 to August 19, From Wikipedia it was possible to plot the locations of 123 USAF airbases within the United States [Wikipedia 2012b]. This allows one to generate a map from public databases that not only include sightings of triangular craft but of commercial airports along with airbases so that geographic comparisons between civil and military installations can be carried out with meaningful interpretations. Results On the surface plotted data from NUFORC look similar to the NIDS generated map using data from the Larry Hatch database [NIDS 2001b]. Aside from differences in the software behind the generated maps the map in Figure 1 is very similar to the three geographic maps produced by NIDS [NIDS 2001b], just with more data points plotted. 2

3 Figure 1: NUFORC national BBD "triangle" locations (red) March 1, 2010 to August 19, 2012 and interpretive triangulated routes (black) in comparison to civil (pluses) and military (yellow) air installations along with BBD counts per state (shades of blue). One conclusion reached by NIDS is apparent, BBD counts are not attributed solely by population of a state, since BBDs should in principle be spotted over the plains states which were found to be lacking associated AMC bases [NIDS 2001b]. On that note we can compare the BBD counts in Figure 1 represented by shades of blue to that of the US population density shown by shades of green in Figure 2 below. 3

4 Figure 2: US population density by state per square mile by state according to 2010 census, darker shades of green indicate states having the highest population densities. While there is a wealth of useful information from the previous two maps unless a proper geoanalysis is performed one cannot make definitive conclusions as to whether or not BBD prefer locations near airbases, shoe stores, or anything else for that matter. In order to take the 2001 geographic analysis of NIDS a step further I compared the percentage of time BBDs were reported near airbases verses civil airports at distances from 5 km to 100 km. Most of the time BBDs were found closer to civil airports than to airbases in overall percentages (see Table 1), but that is to be expected since in there are more airport locations plotted than airbase locations. In order to attempt to account for that discrepancy I also created a third set of location points, simply labeled as sports having a count much closer to the airbase locations by having a collection of 123 points. The locations in the sports label contain 50 of the largest US universities by enrolment size, followed by 30 Major League Baseball teams, and 48 state capitals. N Points 5 km 25 km 75 km 50 km 100 km Airbases Airports Sports Table 1: Ratio of various locations at given distances from the location of BBD sighting locations. Table 1 tabulates shows that civil areas by percentage are again favored by visits more than military installations, but it also must be pointed out that the table is also somewhat misleading. Foremost it must be reasoned that civil regions will be favored more than military simply because there are more civilian locations than military bases, in addition most citizens are not members of the armed services further skewing results. A more telling statistic comes from nearest neighbor analysis which is a method 4

5 to measure the clustering of points, an index of 0 means all points are at one location, while an approximate maximum value of 2.15 indicates a random distribution of data points in space. N Points Observed Mean Distance Expected Mean Distance Nearest Neighbor Index BBDs km 59 km 0.43 Airbases km 151 km 0.83 Airports km 68 km 0.77 Sports km 150 km 0.49 AMC km 444 km 1.01 Table 2: Mean distance of data points with Nearest Neighbor index indicating the degree to which various data points are clustered in space. Included in addition Table 2 above are the locations of 12 AMC bases as sourced from Wikipedia [Wikipedia 2012a] as a reference for the NIDS generated maps [NIDS 2001b]. Overall Table 2 would seem to suggest that BBDs are clustered more near sporting locations than say military airbases or civil airports. This however does not reasonably prove that BBDs prefer civilian areas over airbase locations, just that the data sets largely exist in civilian areas skewing results. This is shown by the fact that BBDs are about as clustered as sports locations, followed by airports and then airbases. There is yet one more additional matter not yet mentioned accuracy, BBD locations where geo-coded by city and state name alone using online software, sports locations were approximated only by zip code, exact coordinates for airports from the National Atlas, and airbases with accuracy by degrees and hours of longitude and latitude. The limiting and weakest factor is clearly being that only approximate locations for BBDs locations were plotted due to the limited quality of geographic information in the NUFORC database which is self described as is. It is therefore likely the 2001 NIDS geographical article [NIDS 2001b] suffers from a lot of the geo-analysis problems discussed in this report so far especially since the NIDS geographical methods and data accuracies were not even addressed. Still with the data from NUFORC it is clear BBDs have citylike clustering and are much closer to one another than airbases, airports, or major cities, which suggest these craft routinely cover a large areas of the country, in addition if they were observed more near airbases one would expect BBD clustering patterns to resemble that of airbases especially if the purpose of said craft is indeed to act as a heavy transport carriers for AMC bases. Another method to analyze the geo-spatial data discussed above is through visual means, NIDS sought out to compare BBD locations with AMC and AFM bases [NIDS 2001b], when beginning this report I was initially was interested BBD location of civil airports as means of assessing where or not BBDs may be reconnaissance craft. If one plots the distribution of USAF airbase locations and civil airport locations as density rather than a dot map it can be easier to test each hypothesis at once where plotted points may be hidden due to overlap. 5

6 Figure 3: Left distribution of USAF bases, right distribution of civill airports. So if the NIDS hypothesis is correct one would expect the NUFORC BBD distribution to match the left side of Figure 3, while if they are more interested in civil airports their distribution should match the right side of the figure. Figure 4: Distribution of BBDs according to NUFORC from March 1, 2010 to August 19, From Figure 4 it looks like both initial hypotheses should be rejected since the BBD distribution patterns do not match the distribution patterns of either airbases or airports. The immediate question is why are BBDs distributed the way they are in Figure 4? From census data it appears that red regions in Figure 4 correspond to populations with five million or more as illustrated in the next figure. 6

7 Figure 5: States with populations greater than 5 million colored by shade of blue, plotted with the mean centers of various locations. To reinforce that the BBD sighting are more attributable due to residences of observers another map is presented showing BBD distributions as a contour map overlaid on night-time satellite image of the United States. Figure 6: NUFORC BBD distribution presented as contour map at 10 level intervals of reported counts overlaid on an inverted night-time satellite image of the US, each interval indicates a 10 fold increase in reported BBD sightings. 7

8 In addition the distribution pattern seen in Figure 4 resembles the distribution pattern of the 128 data point labeled as sports. Figure 7: Distribution pattern of "Sports" label; 50 universities, 30 Major League Baseball stadiums, 48 state capitals. So from a visual perspective it would appear that BBD sightings tend to be clustered near civilian locations because that is where populace resides and not necessarily because these locations are favored by BBDs. So far plotting the locations and distributions of BBD doesn t appear to give useful information about the preferences of flight paths, but one bit of us useful information is provided. The unsolicited bias of the NUFORC data largely matches US population densities, which means the data is robust even if not a true random sample. That is to say, after population is taken into account one region of the US does not appear to be weighted more or less than any other. Thus there is hope to reveal the flight preferences of BBD when weighted and averaged out over a national level. The reason as we discussed earlier and pointed out by NIDS [NIDS 2001b] is that BBD counts are not based solely by population, thus if one weighs the BBD counts as random points by state area and population size a new distribution pattern emerges. When this is done as in Figure 8 BBDs overall seem to prefer a northwest pattern which might be nicked named the Oregon Trail for lack of a better description. 8

9 Figure 8: Top distribution of NUFORC BBDs March 1, 2010 to August 19, 2012 when normalized by state population and area size by 2010 census. Bottom combined map of airport and airbase locations overlaid with BBD approximated contours from above placed at 80 level intervals. Our earlier investigations may lead to a possible explanation of why BBDs may have a flight preference for the Oregon Trail, because with compassion to airport and airbase locations the Oregon Trail is seen to have the lightest density of air traffic. While definite conclusions about the preference of civil versus military interests is problematic at best there defiantly appears to be a preference for BBDs to congregate in areas of light air traffic. Of course another possibility for the preference for the Oregon Trail corridor may be the jet stream, if some of the triangles are hypersonic craft they may fly with the jet stream. To consider this all one has to do is compare the plots of summer to winter months, if there is general dip towards the south during winter months the jet stream may be an alternative explanation for the appearance for the Oregon Trail. 9

10 Figure 9: Left image winter distribution as random point plots, right summer distribution as random point plots from NUFORC triangle data September 16, 2010 to August 19, 2012 weighted by state population and square area. Although from Figure 9 it appears that modulating observed BBD locations to a random distribution of points based on population and area of the states leads one to reject the premise that the preference for the Oregon Trail has to do with the location of the jet stream. For clarity the distribution of winter and summer months of BBDs by recorded location appear in the next figure. Figure 10: Left image reported locations during winter months BBD locations, right reported locations during summer months BBD location, from NUFORC triangle data March 1, 2010 to August, By comparing Figure 9 and Figure 10 it appears that there are few areas with persistent BBD sightings (with the exception of locations near Los Angeles and New York City), but in general the pattern of BBD sightings do appear to change over time and only on average yield the pattern seen in the top of Figure 8. It is also apparent form Figure 9 and Figure 10 that wider areas are covered over winter months than in summer months. Reviewing the plotted points it is also evident that more craft are reported in winter months. During winter months 228 locations were plotted, while during summer months 107 points were plotted from the NUFORC database. For a complete seasonal look in spring months 87 points were plotted (not shown) and during fall 256 were plotted (not shown) yielding potential seasonal preferences of BBDs in fall months. Seasonal dates had a time frame of September 16, 2010 to August 19, 2012 with a total dataset of 678 locations. Before summarizing the available data additional geo-spatial analysis would be helpful, earlier geo-spatial analysis turned up results that were misleading due to incomplete and or skewed datasets. In a state by state level the accuracies greatly improve, and while fine points may be difficult to derive general trends are likely to stand out. If we compare the distance of BBD from their mean center (see Figure 5) using concentric radii of 666 km separating the continental United States into five buffered rings, previously hidden data among points of interest may become apparent. 10

11 Distance from BBD BBD Observed Mean BBD Expected Mean BBB NN Index Mean Center 666 km 29.7 km 48.3 km km 30.2 km 70.9 km km 23.4 km 95.2 km km 21.5 km km km 21.1 km km Table 3: BBDs spatial distribution patterns as concentric rings radiating from the mean center of BBD locations. Distance from Airbases Observed Mean Airbases Expected Mean Airbase NN Index BBD Mean Center 666 km km km km km km km km km km km km km km 66.8 km Table 4: Airbases spatial distribution patterns as concentric rings radiating from the mean center of BBD locations. Distance from BBD Sports Observed Mean Sports Expected Mean Sports NN Index Mean Center 666 km km km km 92.9 km km km 40.3 km km km km km km 54.6 km 66.5 km Table 5: Sports label spatial distribution patterns as concentric rings radiating from the mean center of BBD locations. As can be seen from Table 3 to Table 5 the airbases and sports label have varying degrees of tightness and sparseness in their clustering as given by the Nearest Neighbor (NN) Index. Locations of airports were excluded due to time constraints of their processing and from earlier analysis which showed the patterns not be too fundamentally different from the distribution of the sports label. Although BBD locations generally get more clustered with distance the average mean distance varies only slightly, both of which may be skewed due to population densities increasing along the coast of the United States and land area decreasing with radial distance. Another point of interest was brought by another BBD report speculating about BBD interest in bodies of water [NIDS 2002a]. A simple geo-analysis of 453 large bodies of water as given by the National Atlas [National Atlas 2012c] shows that only 92 BBD were within a 50 km buffer any large lake, 11

12 or 20.31% of the BBD locations plotted in this article. It may be that BBD have an interest in bodies of water although bodies of water are not likely to be primary areas of interest. Discussion So what conclusions can drew from of the data presented? One shouldn t be rushed to draw conclusions; a non careful person might assume that all BBDs are B-2 Stealth Bombers if looking for easy answers. One might see that BBD and USAF bases are centered in the state of Missouri, near Whiteman Air Force Base home of the B-2 Stealth Bomber, see that the Oregon Trail equates to the jet stream and draw dubious conclusions. That argument doesn t hold much weight when examining the data as BBDs are fact more scattered near Missouri than anywhere else, and over time the Oregon Trail doesn t move north and south over the seasons as the jet stream would. Caution is the word, accuracy is a limiting factor, and at best only general trends can be demonstrated with the data used within this report. The relevant trends demonstrated is the BBD flight patterns appear to change over time, yet are seen by observers in locations separated by distances less 30 km on average after a two year span. On average the plotted distribution patterns also seems to demonstrate that BBDs prefer to avoid areas of high air traffic, which may be a good thing considering BBDs have been described as a safety hazard [NIDS 2001a] but at other times are well within areas of high air traffic. With the given accuracy of the data sources utilized within it is not really possible to state whether BBDs preferences are dictate flight over civilian or military locations. It could be argued that BBD employ two flight preferences, a basic grid area is surveyed and could be categorized as low interest, and repeated flight preferences for areas of high interest. During the two year sample period March 1, 2010 to August 19, 2012 the highest BBD reports were during fall months (by the September to August 19, 2012 sampling time frame), possibly suggesting the fall locations may be of higher interest for BBDs. Although holistically it would appear the BBD scout the nation as a whole, change areas of interest over time, and survey areas with the least amount of air traffic the most often. One must therefore be careful with drawing conclusions, with better data one may be able infer whether or not the craft are heavy lifters, reconnaissance craft, or both, or neither. References and Sources 2001a. Low Flying Triangular Objects: A Safety Hazard. National Institute for Discovery Science. April, b. Comparison of Unidentified Triangular or Deltoid Aircraft Location Patterns in Three Independent UFO Databases: NIDS, MUFON and Larry Hatch. National Institute for Discovery Science. June, a. "Hypothesis: The Illinois Flying Triangle is A Department of Defense, Not An ET Craft". National Institute for Discovery Science. July,

13 2010a. Jane's All the World's Aircraft (Ed: Jackson P., et al.). Alexandria, Virginia: HIS Global Limited. 2012a. Air Mobility Command. Wikipedia. URL: < August, b. List of United States Air Force installations. Wikipedia. URL: < August, c. National Atlas. URL: < August, d. "Report Index For Craft Shape TRIANGLE". National UFO Reporting Center. URL: < < August,