Stars winking out in the shape of a giant triangle. A beam of light that found him alone at his hot tub, with no source in sight. A sphere of plasma that stopped behind his house. And a veteran journalist’s warning: they’re tracking you.

In this part two of a two-part series, and the conclusion of Dan Isbell’s story.

Dan Isbell flew the F-111 on Cold War nuclear alert, graduated first in his Air Force Test Pilot School class, flew more than 70 types of aircraft, and later taught test pilots at Edwards before a career in directed-energy weapons. In part one, he described the silent triangular craft he saw near a NATO base in England in 1980 and kept to himself for 43 years. In part two, he walks through the three encounters that followed, spread across 35 years and three states, none of them from an aircraft.

I sit down with Dan to hear all of it: a roughly 300-foot black triangle that blotted out the stars over a classified range at Edwards in 1990, moving so slowly it unnerved him; a defocused beam of blue-green light that surrounded him at his Florida hot tub in 2014, its source expanding in discrete steps into a white sphere before accelerating out of sight in under half a second; and a silent plasma sphere that moved down a retention pond and stopped behind his Tampa-area home in 2016. He also describes sitting across a table from journalist George Knapp and filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, and the four words Knapp said to him that he could not shake.

Dan does not claim to know what any of it was. He says he ruled out the prosaic explanations he could, and as an engineer he has spent decades theorizing about propulsion, optical stealth, and the physics that might make such objects possible, wherever those theories lead. Whether these were unacknowledged programs, a natural phenomenon, or something genuinely outside our science, his account returns to the question this show keeps asking: how many credentialed observers have stayed silent for fear of their careers, and what would we understand about our own skies if they felt safe to speak?

Missed part one? Watch it here: https://youtu.be/MJHO8iB6tDw

Learn more, become a member, and support our work at: https://www.safeaerospace.org

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode to help us continue producing independent aviation-safety research and conversations.

A red Corvette alone on a dark English road. Strange lights closing fast in the rearview mirror, then stopping dead. A silent, color-shifting craft hovering just above a golf course.

Dan Isbell spent his career at the leading edge of American airpower. He went straight into the left seat of the F-111, the first variable-sweep-wing fighter, flew nuclear alert for NATO at the height of the Cold War, graduated first in his Air Force Test Pilot School class, and eventually flew more than 70 different types of aircraft. He later helped shape the F-22 program and pioneered the fiber-laser work behind today's directed-energy weapons. On the night of December 26, 1980, driving home from alert duty at RAF Upper Heyford, he saw something he could not explain, and told no one for more than 40 years.

In part one of a two-part conversation, I sit down with Dan to trace that career from a poor kid who had never set foot on an airport to a test pilot who talked his way into Georgia Tech and never looked back. We discuss the F-111 and the jets that followed, the near-fatal moments he survived, the lung injury he still carries from an F-16 ground fire, and then the encounter itself: a roughly 50-to-60-foot triangular craft ringed with shifting, plasma-like color, completely silent, that descended toward him as he walked closer before he thought better of it and drove away.

Dan does not claim to know what he saw. He says he worked through every prosaic explanation he could, from a helicopter to a Soviet or NATO aircraft to a reverse-engineered platform of our own, and none of them fit. His sighting also falls within hours of the late-December nights now known as the Rendlesham Forest incident. He kept all of it to himself for decades, convinced that reporting it could end his flying career. Whether the object was an unacknowledged craft, an atmospheric phenomenon, or something genuinely outside our physics, his account raises the question this show keeps returning to: how many credible aviators have stayed silent, and what do we lose as a nation when the people best equipped to observe our skies are the ones with the most to lose by speaking?

Learn more, become a member, and support our work at: https://www.safeaerospace.org

Please like, subscribe, and share this episode to help us continue producing independent aviation-safety research and conversations.

What are pilots reporting, and how do we turn those accounts into evidence we can study?

I sit down with Jonathan Miller, known as JMill, to discuss his work on sensemaking and MIT's Confronting Unknowns program. We explore how researchers can study ambiguous data, separate signal from noise, and stay open to new information without jumping to conclusions.

Then we turn the tables. JMill asks me about the encounters that led me to speak publicly, my 2023 congressional testimony, and the work underway at Americans for Safe Aerospace. We discuss pilot reporting, witness privacy, the development of a structured research database, and a longer-term vision for connecting witness accounts with sensor data.

We close with accounts reported to ASA, including luminous spheres, objects described near aircraft, and black triangles. I discuss what witnesses have described, how satellite effects can complicate observations, and why credible testimony still needs careful investigation. These are reported experiences and open questions, not established explanations of what the objects are.

Learn more, report an encounter, become a member, and support our work at https://www.safeaerospace.org/

Learn more about JMill's sense making work at: https://www.sensemaking.wtf

Subscribe and share this episode to support independent aviation-safety research and conversations.

Chapters
00:00 Opening: pilot reports and unanswered questions
01:05 Introducing Jonathan Miller (JMill)
04:27 MIT's Confronting Unknowns and sensemaking
08:21 Finding signal in ambiguous data
11:57 Discussing government UAP releases
18:39 Turning the tables: JMill interviews Ryan
20:06 Navy encounters and the road to Congress
24:46 Pilot reporting protections and state policy
29:47 What ASA's reports can tell us
32:15 Building a structured research database
34:37 Oshkosh plans and membership support
39:40 Sharing witness accounts through the podcast
42:36 Protecting witness privacy
43:57 How ASA's mission has evolved
46:41 A vision for connected sensor networks
51:30 Confirmation bias and independent analysis
58:56 Patterns in the reports: spheres and lights
01:00:44 Satellite effects and ambiguous observations
01:04:08 A close-range account from Marines
01:05:57 Black triangles and reported near-misses
01:09:24 Why reporting matters and how to help