The E-4B 75-0125 Overflight
An open-source correlation between a National Airborne Operations Center transit and a documented 22-object aerial event over West Alton, Missouri — 10 May 2026.
§ 00 — Executive SummaryThe sequence, in one paragraph
On the morning of 10 May 2026, a USAF Boeing E-4B Nightwatch — one of only four "Doomsday Plane" airframes in the strategic command fleet — transited westbound over West Alton, Missouri at FL240, passing 2.13 nautical miles from my drone position. The aircraft, tail 75-0125 (hex ADFEB6), had departed Wright-Patterson AFB earlier that morning, was operating with reduced electronic signature (MLAT-only, no broadcast callsign), and was carrying the military squawk code 6726. During the same overhead pass, my drone captured 22 distinct moving objects in the surrounding airspace — none of which appear in the ADS-B record of that moment. The same E-4B then deployed two days later to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa — the heart of the AARO-designated Western Pacific UAP hotspot — inside the same week that the U.S. Department of War released the largest publicly-acknowledged UAP file tranche in American history. This report documents the sequence, the geometry, and the open-source context.
What this report does not claim: that the 22 objects are of non-human origin, that the E-4B's transit was a response to or escort of them, or that the contemporaneous missing-scientists pattern (McCasland, Garcia, others) is causally linked.
§ 01 — The EventWhat was filmed, when, where
At 15:06 UTC (10:06 a.m. Central Daylight Time) on Saturday, 10 May 2026, I flew a DJI quadcopter from West Alton, Missouri — a community in St. Charles County at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, north of the St. Louis metropolitan area. The drone's onboard GPS placed the launch point at:
- GPS LATITUDE
- 38.9028° N
- GPS LONGITUDE
- -90.2664° W
- BAROMETRIC ALTITUDE
- 110 m above MSL (≈ 361 ft)
- CAMERA
- 4K, 60 fps, H.265, gimbal pitched upward toward the sky
- RECORDING DURATION
- ~2 minutes 23 seconds (original); ~25 second segment of interest
Across the recording window the camera caught a high-altitude condensation trail (contrail) traversing the upper-overhead portion of the frame, plus a population of small, fast-moving, brightly-contrasted features scattered through the surrounding clear-sky region. Frame-by-frame manual annotation isolated 22 distinct moving objects with consistent multi-frame trajectories. Each object was hand-tracked across the frames it appeared in, with a red arrow placed at the object's apparent position on every frame.
UFO_highlights_O1-O22_4K.mp4). A small bright object is clearly visible against an otherwise empty patch of blue sky. The red arrow and label box are from my frame-by-frame annotation overlay.
Source video (full annotated recording)
The full ~24 second 4K source video, with every tracked object's red arrow burned in across each frame it appears. Every arrow position was hand-placed by frame-by-frame manual annotation.
ufo_annotated_2026-05-12-23-07-49.mp4 · 4K 60fps, ~25 seconds, ~46 MB. All 22 hand-tracked objects with red arrows burned in.Per-object clips (fast then slow motion, zoomed)
Each tracked object is presented below as its own zoomed-in clip. The clip is structured as fast-motion sweep first (showing the trajectory at speed) immediately followed by a heavy slow-motion replay (4× to 14× slowdown depending on the object's lifespan in the source recording). Short clips were slowed more aggressively so the object can actually be studied. Labels at the top of each clip show the object identifier and the speed multiplier for that segment.
Note: 13 objects shown here. The full annotation count is 22; the other 9 tracks fell below the 15-frame minimum for inclusion in the highlight reel and are visible only in the full source video above.
§ 02 — The AircraftE-4B Nightwatch, tail 75-0125
The contrail visible in the drone footage is associated with one of the most restricted-mission aircraft in the United States inventory: USAF tail 75-0125, hex ADFEB6, a Boeing E-4B "Nightwatch". The aircraft is one of only four in the fleet, and each one is purpose-built as the National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC).
What it does
- Airborne nuclear command post for the Secretary of Defense and the President
- Survivable against EMP and nuclear effects (Faraday-shielded, no fly-by-wire)
- Hardened communications relay to all strategic nuclear forces
- Air-refuelable for week-long airborne missions
- Crewed by mission specialists from the 1st Airborne Command & Control Squadron, 595th Command & Control Group, based at Offutt AFB, Nebraska
Why a sighting matters
- Only four exist (73-1676, 73-1677, 74-0787, 75-0125)
- One is on continuous ground alert at all times
- One typically accompanies SecDef on overseas movements
- Its flight schedule is operationally sensitive and not publicly published
- Its presence is interpreted by defense analysts as a signal of strategic positioning
ADS-B verification
The aircraft's identity is confirmed via the public ADS-B Exchange historical archive. The screenshot below shows the same airframe being tracked at the moment of overflight: hex ID matched, registration matched, type matched, military flag set.
Live fleet tracker
The map below auto-refreshes every 30 seconds with live ADS-B data for all four E-4B Nightwatch airframes, both VC-25A Air Force One airframes, and four C-32A SAM / Air Force Two airframes. When an aircraft is airborne and broadcasting, its colored marker leaves a tracer trail across the map. When it's not currently broadcasting (on the ground or transponder off), its most recent flight from the ADS-B Exchange historical archive is shown as a greyed-out dashed line ending at a translucent marker.
75-0125, type Boeing E-4B, military flag set, squawk 6726, altitude 24,025 ft, ground speed 430 kt. Position 38.867°, -90.317° — approximately 2 nautical miles southwest of my launch point.§ 03 — 5-Day Flight TrackWhere 75-0125 was, May 9-13 2026
Full historical traces for 75-0125 were retrieved directly from ADS-B Exchange's globe_history archive. The dated trace JSON endpoint — available without authentication or premium subscription — returns complete second-by-second flight data for any aircraft that broadcast Mode-S or ADS-B that day. Five days were pulled: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 May 2026.
Reading the purple line: the plane flew west out of Anchorage on a great-circle route across the North Pacific to Okinawa. This is the shortest path between those two points on the globe (only ~83 degrees of longitude going west, versus 277 degrees going east). The line appears curved on this flat projection because great-circle routes on a globe look curved when projected to a flat map — the same reason airliner routes between North America and Asia appear to "go north over Alaska" on standard world maps. The aircraft did not, at any point, travel east toward Europe.
May 10 — cities flown over
| City / Area | Approx CDT overhead | State | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dayton, OH (KFFO Wright-Patterson) | 09:20 (takeoff) | OH | Origin — NASIC, AFRL, historic UAP analysis HQ |
| Richmond / Muncie corridor | ~09:30 | IN | Climb-out to FL240 |
| Indianapolis area (north of) | ~09:40 | IN | At cruise altitude |
| Terre Haute / Marshall | ~09:45 | IN / IL border | |
| Effingham, IL | ~09:50 | IL | |
| Vandalia / Greenville corridor | ~09:55 | IL | |
| Belleville / O'Fallon | ~10:00 | IL | ~38 nm east of you |
| WEST ALTON / North St. Louis County | 10:07:36 | MO | 2.13 nm overhead — your position |
| Columbia, MO (south of) | ~10:18 | MO | |
| Sedalia / Marshall corridor | ~10:25 | MO | |
| Kansas City / Lee's Summit area | ~10:35 | MO / KS border | |
| Atchison / Falls City corridor | ~10:45 | KS / NE | Beginning descent |
| Omaha / Bellevue (KOFF Offutt AFB) | 10:55 (landing) | NE | Destination — StratCom HQ, NAOC home base |
May 12 — cities flown over (departure leg)
| City / Area | Approx CDT overhead | Region | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Omaha, NE (KOFF Offutt AFB) | 14:17 (takeoff) | NE | Departure |
| Norfolk / Sioux Falls corridor | ~14:45 | NE / SD | FL320 cruise |
| Pierre, SD area (north of) | ~15:00 | SD | |
| Rapid City, SD area (north of) | ~15:15 | SD / WY | |
| Sheridan / Billings corridor | ~15:30 | WY / MT | |
| Great Falls, MT (south of) | ~15:50 | MT | Approaching US-Canada border |
| Crosses into Alberta, Canada | ~16:00 | AB | Leaves US airspace |
| Calgary / Banff corridor | ~16:30 | AB | |
| British Columbia interior | ~17:00-18:00 | BC | |
| Gulf of Alaska (over water) | ~18:30-20:00 | Pacific | Coverage gap region |
| Anchorage, AK (PAED Elmendorf-Richardson) | 20:30 (landing) | AK | Refueling stop |
| Date | Status | Route | Key facts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 May | grounded | — | Ground day at Offutt AFB |
| 10 May | flying | Wright-Patterson → West Alton transit → Offutt | MLAT-only, no callsign, squawk 6726, FL240, 1h 43m |
| 11 May | grounded | — | Ground day at Offutt AFB |
| 12 May | flying | Offutt → over BC Canada → SE Alaska | Callsign HANK99, squawk 2634, ADS-B fully active, FL320, climb-out 14:17 CDT |
| 13 May | flying | Anchorage PAED → Kadena AB Okinawa | 2.5h ground time, then trans-Pacific great-circle ~8h 50m, callsign HANK99 |
How we know it was running undercover
The phrase "reduced electronic signature" is not subjective. It is determined by exactly which fields are populated in the aircraft's broadcast and how it was detected. The two relevant facts:
1. Source field: MLAT, not ADS-B
Every aircraft position in the ADS-B Exchange historical record carries a source tag identifying how that position was obtained. Modern airliners broadcast their own GPS-derived position every second on ADS-B Out (Source: adsb_icao); this is the cooperative-surveillance standard the FAA mandates. Multilateration (MLAT) is a different mechanism entirely: ground receivers detect the aircraft's Mode-S return (an older transponder reply that does not contain position) and triangulate its location from the time-difference-of-arrival across at least four receivers. MLAT is a fallback method used precisely when an aircraft is not broadcasting position via ADS-B.
Throughout the 10 May 2026 transit, every single trace point for 75-0125 was tagged as MLAT-derived. The aircraft's ADS-B Out was either turned off, set to "position not available", or selectively configured to broadcast only the Mode-S squawk and identity without GPS position. This is the same airframe that, two days later on 12 May, broadcast full ADS-B with a clear track field populated — meaning the equipment is fully functional. The May 10 configuration was a mission-profile choice.
2. Callsign field: blank
Every commercial aircraft and every routine military training flight broadcasts a callsign — e.g. DAL189, HANK99, REACH712. The callsign is a mandatory ATC identifier. On 10 May 2026, the callsign field for 75-0125 was empty for the entire 1h 43m flight. The aircraft was tracked only by its anonymous hex code ADFEB6, which a civilian observer would have to cross-reference against the FAA registry to identify.
On 12 May 2026, the same airframe broadcast HANK99 — a known USAF Global Strike Command tactical callsign — openly, throughout the entire 6+ hour flight to Anchorage. The configuration difference was deliberate.
3. Squawk code: military discrete
Squawk 6726 is a military-discrete transponder code, assigned by a military controller (not by civil ATC). It signals "this is a military mission, do not interfere with this routing". Combined with the absent callsign and MLAT-only tracking, this signature is consistent with an aircraft operating under a special-mission profile rather than as a routine training or repositioning flight.
By contrast, the same aircraft's 12 May departure for Anchorage broadcast its identity openly. The aircraft chose visibility on that leg. It chose invisibility on the leg that passed over me.
§ 04 — Closest Approach AnalysisThe geometry of the overflight
Using the historical trace data, the closest approach of E-4B 75-0125 to my drone GPS coordinate (38.903° N, 90.266° W) was computed via haversine distance for every trace point on 10 May. The minimum was reached at 10:07:36 a.m. CDT (15:07:36 UTC) at a slant distance of 2.13 nautical miles — 2.46 statute miles — horizontally, at an altitude of 24,025 ft. The aircraft was traveling at 429 knots on a heading of 267 degrees true (West-Southwest).
Bearing line for the contrail
An aircraft cruising westbound at FL240 leaves a contrail extending from where it was previously to where it currently is. At a track of 267°, the contrail in the sky over my position should run from approximately East (87°) toward West (267°). The contrail visible in Fig. 01-A and Fig. 01-B traverses the upper portion of the frame in a roughly east-west line — consistent with the predicted geometry. This is the basis for identifying the contrail in the video with the E-4B.
§ 05 — Air Picture at 15:07:36 UTC (10:07:36 CDT)Everything else that was in the sky
For every other aircraft visible in the broader ADS-B record at the moment of closest approach, the historical trace JSON was pulled and the position was looked up at the target timestamp. The complete air picture within 100 nm of my GPS at 15:07:36 UTC (10:07:36 CDT):
| Hex | Reg | Type | Altitude | Distance | Bearing | Elevation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ADFEB6 | 75-0125 | Boeing E-4B | 24,025 ft | 2.13 nm | 163° SSE | 61.6° |
| A68CFD | N521DN | Delta Airbus A350 | 28,000 ft | 23.8 nm | 130° SE | 11° |
| AA2BDD | N7544V | Cessna 177 (GA) | 2,100 ft | 8.3 nm | 280° W | 2° |
| ADECB6 | N997AT | Delta Boeing 717 | 28,000 ft | 14.6 nm | 165° SSE | 18° |
| AC76C8 | N902BW | Bombardier Challenger 60 | 38,000 ft | 11.9 nm | 345° NNW | 28° |
| AA7DD6 | N775YX | Republic E175 | 3,275 ft | 13.9 nm | 169° S | 2° |
By elimination, none of the 22 objects in the video are transponder-equipped aircraft. They are not commercial flights, not military jets running ADS-B Out, not registered drones above 250 g (which require Remote ID broadcast). They are not visible to civilian air traffic control. The remaining categories are: sub-Remote-ID hobbyist drones, balloons or debris, very-near-camera optical artifacts, or "non-transponder craft" — the formal category the FAA and AARO have established for unidentified aerial phenomena.
§ 06 — UAP CorrelationsWhat was happening when, and where
The flight path was cross-referenced against publicly reported UAP sightings, declassified UAP intelligence releases, and adjacent missing-persons investigations active in the same time window. The matches by location and time are below.
Origin: Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio
war.gov/ufo. 162 UAP files released — the largest publicly-acknowledged UAP disclosure in U.S. history. Includes NORTHCOM IR footage of "small specks moving through the air". [DoW release] [war.gov/ufo] [Stars & Stripes]Transit: St. Louis area, Missouri / Illinois
Destination: Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan
§ 06.5 — Independent Public CorroborationWhat other observers logged along the same corridors
An exhaustive cross-search of Reddit, NUFORC, Enigma Labs, MUFON, local-affiliate TV news, ufobc.ca, ufoindex.com, X, and Korean/Japanese-language UAP communities for the May 9-13 window returned one strongly relevant independent public sighting, plus contextual regional matches. The full search log is preserved separately; the high-signal findings are below.
Strong match — E-4B GORDO61 over northeast Missouri, 9 May 2026
GORDO61. The sighting was independently amplified by local outlet 101.9 The Eagle (Mark Twain Radio) and KICK AM 1530.
Why this matters: Kirksville, MO sits roughly 75 miles northwest of Hannibal MO on the same east-west corridor that 75-0125 flew from Wright-Patterson to Offutt the following day. The callsign
GORDO61 is distinct from HANK99 (75-0125's callsign on the May 12-13 Pacific deployment) and from the silent / no-callsign profile 75-0125 used on the May 10 transit — meaning this was a different E-4B fleet aircraft visible in the same regional corridor 24 hours earlier. Two E-4Bs in the same theater over consecutive days is consistent with coordinated NAOC fleet positioning ahead of a major presidential movement (see § 06.6 below).
Regional context (pre-window, same corridors)
| Date | Location | What was seen | Source | Why it's relevant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08 Apr 2026 | Rainbow Lakes, Fairborn OH (~4 mi from Wright-Patterson) | Cluster of glowing orbs in silent triangle formation; no nav lights; split mid-flight | Liberty Line · Britannia Daily | One month before E-4B 75-0125's May 10 departure from this same base |
| 01 May 2026 | Pacific Northwest corridor (OR → BC, Spokane WA included) | Bright fireball, 135+ American Meteor Society witness reports | KOMO News (AMS-archived event) | Same airspace 75-0125 transited on May 12 (HANK99) heading to Anchorage. Likely meteoric, but it primes the same observer base for follow-on sightings. |
| 05 May 2026 | BC + AB interior (Williams Lake, Prince George, Ft. St. John, Kamloops, Vancouver Island, Sherwood Park AB) | Large slow-moving white shape, multiple community video posts | CBC News BC | One week before HANK99's overflight of the same airspace. Probably a SpaceX launch trail; included for context. |
Enigma Labs database — 12 confirmed sightings along the corridors
A direct query of Enigma Labs' /api/map-features/cards endpoint (the same call the map UI makes) was run against the global bounding box with an "Occurred" date filter of 2026-05-09 through 2026-05-13 inclusive, then re-filtered by each sighting's local timezone to lock the witness's local date inside the window. 87 sightings worldwide matched the date window; 12 were inside the aircraft-corridor states. Asia (Korea, Japan, China) returned zero — not a query failure, just genuine absence (Enigma's user base is heavily US-centric).
| Sighting | Date / Time (local) | Location | Shape / Duration | Witnesses | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #331851 | May 9 · 5:40 PM MDT | Missoula, MT | FIREBALL · 5 min | 2 | Witness: "A plane flew by at high altitude... and then the person with me noticed a flame moving quickly in the same spot, then it slowed down and burned like a flaming bright star, then started blinking and moved away slowly." Same descriptive pattern as filer's footage. |
| #331895 | May 9 · 9:30 PM EDT | Rocky River, OH (Cleveland area) | LIGHT · 30 sec | 1 | Multi-colored orb moving west to northeast. ~14 hours before 75-0125's KFFO departure to Offutt. |
| #331938 | May 10 · 15:07 UTC 10:07 AM CDT |
West Alton, MO | CIRCLE · 25 sec | 2 | FILER'S OWN SIGHTING. Voice recording + drone video. White jet with descending white dot. Geographic and temporal centerpoint of the May 10 corridor. |
| #331904 | May 10 · 9:18 PM PDT | Poulsbo, WA (Puget Sound) | FORMATION · 4 hours | 3 | Pyramid formation of orbs hovering. Persistent multi-hour event. Pacific Northwest corridor (75-0125 transits this airspace 36 hours later). |
| #331905 | May 10 · 11:27 PM CDT | Millersville, MO | CIRCLE · 1 hour | 2 | Bright glowing disc hovering and slowly moving. Same day, same state, ~230 mi south of West Alton. |
| #331972 | May 11 · 8:00 AM PDT | Edmonds, WA (Seattle area) | LIGHT · 1 min | 2 | Multiple white lights flashing in a row. Witness recorded twice 20 minutes apart (see also #331953). Pacific Northwest. |
| #331953 | May 11 · 8:20 AM PDT | Edmonds, WA (Seattle area) | SPHERE · 25 sec | 2 | "Small white dot vanishing instantly". Same witnesses as #331972. |
| #331963 | May 11 · 4:00 PM CDT | Antioch, IL (north of Chicago) | CHANGING · 20 min | 1 | Orange disks moving rapidly, multiple "invisible to eyes but appeared on video". Same camera-vs-eye effect filer reported. |
| #332024 | May 11 · 9:00 PM EDT | Gallipolis, OH | SPHERE · 45 sec | 1 | Spinning sphere zooming through sky. |
| #332025 | May 12 · 4:12 PM MDT | Black Hawk, SD (near Rapid City) | LIGHT · 10 min | 1 | Bright orb moving around. Directly on the 75-0125 May 12 flight corridor (Offutt → Alaska crosses South Dakota). |
| #332084 | May 13 · 11:30 PM CDT | Blue Hill, NE | LIGHT · 4h 30m (multi-night) | 2 | Voice-recorded extended event. "Bright lights just appear, go across the sky a little bit and then disappear... once I saw five in a vertical line going across. The top two started to fade out, so I hit the middle one of the bottom three with my laser and then all of them like disappeared." Central NE — same state as Offutt AFB, the E-4B home base. |
| #332082 | May 13 · 11:22 PM CDT | Galena, MO | LIGHT · 8 min | 2 | "Aurora-looking" patch plus dim white orbs moving from west toward the aurora, some flashing before disappearing. Same night as Blue Hill #332084 above. |
Regional summary from the Enigma sweep
| Region (corridor leg) | Enigma sightings May 9-13 |
|---|---|
| OH (May 10 corridor — KFFO origin) | 2 |
| IL (May 10 corridor) | 1 |
| MO (May 10 corridor + West Alton) | 3 |
| NE (May 10 corridor — Offutt destination state) | 1 |
| SD (May 12 corridor) | 1 |
| MT (May 12 corridor) | 1 |
| WA (May 12 corridor) | 3 |
| IN, KS, ID, AK (corridor legs) | 0 |
| South Korea, Japan, China (May 13 East Asia convergence) | 0 |
| Total along all aircraft corridors | 12 |
- The Missoula MT sighting (#331851) is described in nearly identical language to the filer's: a high-altitude plane was visible, AND a separate moving anomalous object was seen at the same time. This is exactly the geometric scenario this report documents at West Alton on May 10.
- The Antioch IL sighting (#331963) notes objects "invisible to eyes but appeared on video" — the same camera-vs-eye phenomenon present in this report.
- Blue Hill NE (#332084) is a 4.5-hour multi-night audio-recorded event with formation behavior, occurring three days after the corridor flight and in the same state as Offutt AFB, the E-4B home base.
- Three Washington sightings in 36 hours precede 75-0125's transit through the same airspace by ~1 day.
- Sightings 331938 (filer), 331905 Millersville, and 332024 Gallipolis are all geographically along the May 10 transit corridor and inside or directly adjacent to the same calendar day.
What the cross-search did NOT find
- Zero Enigma sightings in Korea, Japan, China, or Alaska for May 9-13. Verified via global bbox query with ±2 day UTC buffer — this is genuine absence, not a query failure. Enigma's user base is heavily US-centric.
- NUFORC's recent-data endpoint is not exposed at the URL pattern the public archive uses. Direct Reddit API access remains blocked to automated tooling (though u/jamesonbar's Kirksville GORDO61 post was independently captured by local outlets).
- The 8 May 2026 Pentagon UAP disclosure event saturated every search index for the window, drowning fresh first-person posts under disclosure commentary.
Geographic distribution — all 12 sightings overlaid on the flight corridors
Per-sighting detail cards
Each report below includes the full unedited witness description and the direct Enigma URL so you can verify and view media (photos, voice recordings, videos) yourself. Sightings flagged with PATTERN MATCH describe the same geometric scenario (high-altitude aircraft + separate moving anomalous object, OR camera-vs-eye phenomenon) as the filer's footage. Sightings flagged with CORRIDOR are within ~100 mi of an aircraft track point at a relevant time.
Document is now self-contained: it can be hosted online or distributed as a folder and the evidence will display without needing access to Enigma's servers.
§ 06.6 — The Beijing summit contextWhy 4 strategic airframes converged in East Asia on 13 May 2026
A factual correction from the open-source sweep changes the framing of the 13 May 2026 East Asia convergence: the destination was not Kadena — Kadena was a forward-positioning stop. The actual destination was Beijing, where President Trump arrived on a state visit on 13 May 2026.
What's confirmed from open sources
- President Trump arrived in Beijing on 13 May 2026, landing at Beijing Capital around 7:49 PM local. Sources: CNN live coverage.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at Incheon Airport's VIP lounge on 13 May 2026 to finalize the Trump-Xi summit agenda. Sources: Korea Times, Seoul Economic Daily, South China Morning Post.
- An aircraft spotter on X (@ArmchairAdml) published a manifest of US aircraft involved in the POTUS visit: 92-9000 (Air Force One) · 75-0125 (HANK99 / Nightwatch) · 09-0016 (SAM 47) · 98-0002 (SAM 366) · multiple C-17 cargo. Source.
What this means for the timeline
- The 4 airframes in our roster that were in East Asia on 13 May (75-0125, 92-9000, 98-0002, 09-0016) were the presidential travel package for the Trump-Xi summit.
- This is the standard pattern: AF1 carries POTUS, an E-4B accompanies as the airborne command post, C-32As ferry support staff, C-17s carry vehicles and equipment.
- The 10 May 2026 KFFO → KOFF transit by 75-0125 was almost certainly a pre-positioning movement from Wright-Patterson back to its home base of Offutt, ahead of the 12 May westbound deployment to support the China visit.
- The "MLAT-only, no callsign" electronic profile on 10 May is consistent with the aircraft repositioning quietly ahead of a high-visibility deployment, where operational security on the lead-up flight may be prioritized over normal-traffic transparency.
§ 07 — Institutional ContextWright-Patterson, NASIC, and what was happening that week
The aircraft did not depart from a generic Air Force base. Wright-Patterson AFB (KFFO) houses the most concentrated set of foreign-aerospace and anomalous-aircraft analysis functions in the U.S. defense establishment:
- National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) — the Department of Defense's primary technical assessment center for foreign and anomalous aerospace technology. Lineal successor to the Foreign Technology Division (FTD), which served as the technical analysis arm of Project Blue Book.
- Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) — advanced aerospace R&D, where retired Maj. Gen. McCasland served as commander 2011-2013. AFRL is one of two AF labs the General Accounting Office has named in connection with classified anomalous-aerospace technology programs.
- The historical home of the U.S. government's UFO investigations, from Project Sign (1947) through Project Grudge (1948-1952) through Project Blue Book (1952-1969). Whether or not the "Hangar 18" folklore is accurate, the institutional reality is that Wright-Patt is where foreign and unidentified aerospace material has been studied for 78 years.
The E-4B's 10 May 2026 transit from KFFO to KOFF therefore connects, in a single one-hour-forty-three-minute flight:
- The institutional home of U.S. anomalous-aerospace analysis (Wright-Patterson)
- The home base of all four E-4Bs and the Strategic Command headquarters (Offutt)
- My location in West Alton, Missouri (the route's mid-point)
war.gov/ufo and released 162 declassified UAP files — and three days before the same aircraft arrived at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, the heart of the AARO-designated Western Pacific UAP hotspot, where Japan's government had just publicly committed to analyzing U.S. UAP intelligence.
§ 08 — FindingsWhat is confirmed, what is not
Confirmed by data
- USAF E-4B Nightwatch 75-0125 (hex ADFEB6) passed 2.13 nautical miles from my drone's GPS at 15:07:36 UTC (10:07:36 CDT) on 10 May 2026, at FL240, on a westbound heading of 267 degrees.
- The aircraft was operating with reduced electronic signature — MLAT-only tracking, no callsign field, squawk 6726 (military discrete).
- The aircraft had departed Wright-Patterson AFB approximately 47 minutes prior to the overhead pass.
- 22 distinct moving objects were captured in 4K 60fps drone footage in the same airspace during the same minute.
- None of the 22 objects are present in the ADS-B record for that time and place.
- The same aircraft deployed to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan within 48 hours.
- The Department of War launched
war.gov/ufoand released 162 UAP files two days earlier.
Not established by this report
- That the 22 objects are not insects, debris, low-Reynolds-number particulate, or sub-Remote-ID hobby drones.
- That the E-4B was responding to, escorting, or in any way operationally connected to the 22 objects.
- That the deployment to Kadena was motivated by UAP rather than ordinary Indo-Pacific posture.
- That the McCasland and Garcia disappearances are related to UAP, to each other, or to this event.
- Any causal relationship among the documented facts.
§ 09 — MethodologyHow the data was collected and verified
Drone video
Original DJI 4K H.265 source file retained unmodified. Frame-by-frame manual annotation of objects via a custom HTML/Canvas tool: each tracked object received a red arrow placed at its apparent position on every frame the object was visible, with a small label box (O1, O2, ...) identifying the track. The arrow overlay is rendered live on top of the original video pixels and exported into the published MP4. The original source frames carry no annotation; the arrows are the human-tracked annotation layer.
Flight data
ADS-B Exchange historical trace JSON, fetched directly from globe.adsbexchange.com/globe_history/<YYYY>/<MM>/<DD>/traces/<hexsuffix>/trace_full_<icao>.json with HTTP Referer: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/. No paid subscription used. Returned 826 trace points for the day of interest. Five dates fetched (May 9-13). Each trace point encodes (offset_seconds, latitude, longitude, barometric_altitude_ft, ground_speed_kt, track_deg, flags, baro_rate, source).
Distance and bearing calculations
Haversine formula for great-circle distance, standard spherical trigonometry for bearing. Earth radius 3,440.065 nautical miles.
UAP context corroboration
Open-source news (CNN, Snopes, CBS News, NewsNation, Stars and Stripes, Japan Times, Britannia Daily, The Liberty Line, NewsRescue, DefenseScoop, Reuters/AP wire stories), and the official war.gov/ufo presidential UAP unsealing system and AARO public-facing materials.
§ 10 — SourcesOpen-source references
- ADS-B Exchange — aircraft ADFEB6 (75-0125)
- U.S. Department of War — Presidential Unsealing & Reporting System for UAP Encounters
- Department of War — UAP files release, 8 May 2026
- AARO — All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
- DefenseScoop — FY2026 NDAA UAP intercept disclosure mandate
- CBS News — Pentagon begins releasing UFO files
- CNN — Retired Air Force major general missing, ties to Wright-Patterson
- The Liberty Line — UFO triangle 4 mi from Wright-Patterson, 8 April 2026
- Britannia Daily — Light formation near Wright-Patterson + McCasland
- Snopes — 11 missing or dead scientists tied to sensitive research
- NewsNation — Steven Garcia / Neil McCasland disappearance parallel
- Japan Times — Tokyo analyzing Pentagon UFO files with Japan sightings
- CBS News — Japan UAP investigation, US says region is hotspot
- 101 The Eagle — St. Louis "brighter than Venus" UAP, 3 April 2026
MAY 2026
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UAP / OSINT
OPEN SOURCE