Ridgecrest, California - 01-19-12

UFOs ascended to a height of approximately 35K ft., descended beyond the mountains which are only at about 3K ft. Circled by jet @ high rate of speed - sky was clear, temp at about 82F.

I have never contacted MUFON in the past. I had heard of your organization through a National Geographic sponsored event. I believe 99% of all sighting are either misidentification, military secret technology or?

With that statement in mind, I’m an Applications Engineer by profession. I call-on military bases including Edwards AFB, 29 Palms Marine Base, Ft. Irwin and Naws China Lake in Ridgecrest.

While returning home from the Trona Area after visiting Searles Valley Minerals, I took the cut-off which is the Trona Road; an isolated 22 mile cut-off back to Highway 395 to Red Mountain.

On this stretch of road at or about the cross street of Randsburg Wash (military road), I witnessed a jet, possibly an F-16 circling at tremendous speeds. Quite frankly, I didn’t know our aircraft had the capability to turn in such a way.

Propulsion on a straight-away I have seen many times and turns as well, but not such tight turns at the speed it was traveling.

It was also creating the tight circle smoke plumes that was being generating. I and 2 other automobiles stopped as well - as I was having electrical "flashing" on my dashboard electronics and pulled over (this is a brand new truck).

The view was such a unique site. Several sonic booms were heard during this flight process in a very tight circle.

I started to take pictures of the circular patterns as they crisscrossed in a spiral upward motion from about 12K ft. to almost 30K feet in approximation.

The jet paused mid-air, and dropped to the lower altitude similar to a Harrier Jet and began the spiral once again. This time, there were glowing circular objects going straight up in the middle of the plumes.

They weren’t weather balloons, in the traditional sense, as they would stop mid-air, descend and then accelerate at a high rate of speed upward and then stop as the jet came closer.

This happened over the China Lake "Echo" range which is a communications and radar jamming system. The coordinates seemed to be somewhere above the area of 35 degrees 33 08.32" X 117 degrees, 26 38.77" in approximation.

I was able to capture photos of the circling jet, plumes of smoke and upon initial review, couldn’t pick up the circular objects, which seemed to fade-in and out with an almost reflective mirror quality.

I thought initially it could be weather balloons made of a highly reflective Mylar, as most balloons are produced this way.

Balloons do have the capability to travel by radio control, so I am not so naive to think and understand that side-to-side and up-and-down movement would not be possible with our current technology.

The speeds, however, and dead stopping in mid-air at a rate that the jet could not match left me thinking it might be something else.

Upon careful review and clicking on the depth of field clarification on my HTC cell phone picture I was able to see very clearly the 7 each circular objects.

These objects were witnessed by other vehicles that had stopped; they too were taking pictures with their cell phones. The day was clear, the temp about 83F, mid-day at about 11:20 AM. I have a mountain view in the background of the pictures as a contrast.

The circular objects went up and down a few more times, stopped at a certain elevation (approximately 12K ft.) and ascended straight-up, accelerating to a point of vanishing.

The military jet seemed to attempt to follow, and then travelled in an accelerated speed at almost a vertical climb. The aircraft disappeared from view into the stratosphere.