Another UFO sighting off San Diego: what we know, and the gear for amateur sky-watching

May 16, 2024. A US Navy F/A-18 intercepted a fast white cylindrical object off San Diego. The pilot couldn't get a positive ID. The object disappeared. Another data point for the AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) files. The big question isn't whether it's aliens. It's whether we're going to keep getting half-released information forever.

What the Navy actually said

Not much. A short statement confirming the intercept, no imagery released, no follow-up on the object's likely origin. The pattern is familiar by now — these reports surface, get a 48-hour news cycle, and then disappear into the AARO queue where they're either declassified in 5 years or never.

The 2023 NDAA UAP Disclosure Act forced more transparency than the Pentagon was used to, but "more" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. AARO's public reports release a few dozen incidents per cycle. Roughly half get explained as drones, weather balloons, satellites, or sensor artifacts. The rest remain on the books as genuinely unidentified.

San Diego is a hot zone. The Navy uses it for training. Civilian air traffic is dense. There are commercial drone operators, hobbyist drones, and a steady stream of weather phenomena. The intercept rate is high because the volume of sky activity is high.

What "unidentified" actually means

Not "alien." Not "secret military project." Just: insufficient data to assign a known cause. That's it. The framing of these as proto-alien events is mostly media-driven. Most pilots I've read transcripts from sound bored, not awestruck.

What's interesting about the recent batch of reports is the consistency of the descriptions — speed, lack of visible propulsion, ability to change direction without obvious deceleration. Whether that's a sensor quirk, a classified US program, an adversary's program, or something else, the data is starting to look less like noise than skeptics used to claim.

If you want to actually contribute to the data

Forget the wobbly phone footage. The serious amateur sky-watchers buy real gear and submit observations to organizations like MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) or NUFORC. The phone footage that goes viral is almost always misidentified Venus or a Starlink train.

What you actually need for usable observation:

A Celestron NexStar 8SE telescope or similar 8-inch computerized scope. Around £1,200, but it's the entry point for resolving objects beyond what a phone camera can see. Tracks stars automatically, has the optical resolution to actually distinguish a satellite from something else.

A mirrorless camera with a long telephoto lens — Sony, Canon, or Nikon all make good ones in the £800-1,500 range. The 200-600mm zoom range is what you want for sky targets.

A portable star tracker mount (Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer or similar) for long exposure work without star trails. £350.

If you're starting cheaper, a decent pair of 10x50 binoculars for £80-120 is the most useful first purchase for any sky-watching. More aperture than the human eye, easy to hand-hold.

Apps that help you not get fooled

Before reporting anything as a UFO, check whether it was an obvious known. Stellarium (free desktop, paid mobile) shows you exactly what's in the sky from your location at any given time. ISS Detector and similar apps tell you when the space station passes overhead. Flightradar24 tells you which planes are above you.

The serious observers eliminate every known cause before flagging an anomaly. Most "UFO" footage on social media takes about 30 seconds to debunk with these apps.

The real question

San Diego will keep producing intercepts because the operational tempo there means real military assets meet real strange things at real high frequency. The Navy will keep filing reports. AARO will keep publishing summaries. Most of it will be drones and weather. Some won't be.

The part that matters isn't whether one specific object on May 16 was alien. It's whether the disclosure process keeps inching forward or freezes. The base rate of "unidentified" reports isn't going down. The rate at which the public learns about them is going up. That's the story.

Bring binoculars. Stay sceptical. The Venus footage is always Venus.