When covering stories of flying saucers and unidentified lights in the sky, generally the context is one which suggests they may be of extraterrestrial origin. But the recent string of sightings where UFOs are seen following traditional aircraft has been particularly interesting lately, and there is a theory rarely proposed in the field that may warrant mentioning yet again. Are these mysterious lights in the sky a recent manifestation of the phenomenon known as foo fighters? But even this explanation still leaves much to the imagination about the cause of such phenomena.
The Foo Fighter, as it has been colloquially referred was an object that allied forces commonly reported following their aircraft during bombing raids and attacks on axis troops and installations. The term “foo” generally was used to reference nonsensical equipment or devices. As the sightings predated the 1947 sighting of flying saucers by Kenneth Arnold, the term was generally used to describe any unexplainable aerial phenomena seen by pilots of the time. Flying saucers eventually were replaced generally by the term UFO which is agnostic in its etymology and suggests any phenomenon which cannot be explained or remains unidentified.
But the phenomenon of mysterious objects in the skies also evolved itself. As the incidents became more integrally linked to aliens, pilots reported them less and observers on the ground reported them more frequently. While there were several reports of incidents which do suggest intelligent control and even such control by beings from another world (testimony such as that of the Hill Abduction Case of 1961 went a long way toward this) there may be multiple thus far unexplained causes for such aerial anomalies.
Foo fighters specifically were seen as glowing objects that followed nearby aircraft generally during combat exercises. As it so happens, more recently several observers on the ground have observed mysterious objects hovering in the skies and following conventional aircraft such as one reported just recently to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) to have occurred on the seventh of this month. In this case a jet airliner was led by a mysterious ball of light which traveled around the craft and made a hard right turn before disappearing. The element of the mysterious ball of light suddenly breaking from the aircraft after following it seems almost perfect for a typical report of a Foo fighter. If not every UFO is a flying saucer, and Foo Fighters were to be proven different than flying saucers, it seems possible that we could categorize incidents such as these differently from the more intelligently controlled incidents of actual metallic craft being observed in the sky.
And while we may never be able to fully explain UFOs categorically, if this phenomenon were somehow different, we may be able to understand this one aspect of an overarching and enigmatic mystery that pervades today and likely will for quite some time. At least until we can find conclusive proof of alien visitation or electrical phenomena that seems sentient.