A newly released police report reveals NPAS pilots said they were forced to 'take emergency evasive action' during the late-night encounter with the unidentified objects over RAF Lakenheath
But newly released video and incident logs of the November 22, 2024 event now tell a very different - and far more alarming - story, the Daily Mail can exclusively reveal.
Witness even described one of the unidentified flying objects as a 'tic-tac' - the same oblong shape reported by Navy aviators in a now infamous 2004 encounter.
The Daily Mail obtained images taken from a National Police Air Service (NPAS) EC135 chopper of one of the unidentified craft, which was said to have 'targeted' and come close to colliding with the helicopter mid-air around RAF Lakenheath, a US military base in England.
The incident occurred amid weeks of reports of drones and unidentified objects breaching airspace over US military bases in New Jersey, the wider northeast, and overseas.
A report by a UK aviation safety board attributed the chopper's close encounter to pilots misidentifying an American F-15 fighter jet flying in the area.
Comment: Surprised they didn't blame swamp gas, a weather balloon, or Venus reflecting off the moon.
But British police logs released under the Freedom of Information Act describe multiple, hi-tech drones 'targeting' and appearing to pursue the law enforcement helicopter at high speeds.
'They were forced to take emergency evasive action in relation to a drone which came within a dangerously close proximity to them,' said an incident log from Suffolk Police, recounting a debrief of the chopper pilots.
'They had to perform an emergency dive and described that they were pursued in the dive by two drones who matched their speed approx 165 knots and then pursued them for several minutes out of the area.
'They feel that drones have targeted them and chased them off at approx 140 knots [161mph].'
A UK military source, who has viewed the entire 30-minute video captured by the chopper's infrared camera, said there was more to the incident than a close brush with a fighter jet.
'In the 30-minute video with pilot audio, nobody mentions F-15s,' the source said.
'They only talk about the drones. How they're basically mirroring the helicopter's movements. How fast the drones are going. That they're basically forcing them out of the area.'
The source added that the footage shows one object pursuing the craft performing maneuvers impossible for a fighter jet.
'A fixed-wing craft is caught on the video, where you can see a corkscrew move,' the insider said. 'An F-15 cannot make a small corkscrew turn like that.'
The Daily Mail obtained a short section from the chopper video showing a small object, no more than a blob on the infrared camera, slowly moving towards the top right of the screen.
The local police incident logs from November 20-22, 2024 reveal a slew of drone sightings across three bases used by the US Air Force in the English counties of Suffolk and Norfolk: RAF Feltwell, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall.
'Over past 2 nights there have been approx 20 drones flying over RAF's Mildenhall, Feltwell and Lakenheath. This has been between 1800-0000 hrs,' said a Suffolk Police log from November 21.
'They report that due to the size of said drones, the pilots could be 'miles and miles' away,' the log added, with 'they' appearing to refer to UK military police protecting the airbases.
'Mildenhall/Lakenheath/Feltwell - believed 10-15 drones have been at each one - and appear not to be "hobby drones",' the logs said.
One police report from Lakenheath said an officer had 'night vision goggles and can see 5-6 drones [near the highway] A1065 coming back over airfield'.
An 'informant' in the logs told police they saw 'multiple drones' which were 'very large and they make a lot of noise'.
The witness in the November 22 logs described what they saw around the airbase as 'large stationary things - tictacs - they are not birds.'
'The drones are well lit - they are not trying to hide themselves and they are flying very low now,' another log from November 22 said.
'Informant opened the door of his house while on the line to me and call taker could hear one of the drones going over. It sounded like an aircraft.
'The drones are flying over Informant's property in both directions.'
A crime report from November 21 summarizing the incidents stated that there were '10-15 drones flying around bases and potentially into the base airspace.'
'This is third occurrence this week according to MOD police and US base have stated they have had to ground aircraft due to going across flightpaths,' the report added.
The investigation was handed over to the UK Ministry of Defence Police, which has not published the findings of its probe.
The police logs were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by researcher Rowland Hume, who shared the material with the Daily Mail.
Mike Morgan, a retired senior police detective who has also been researching the incident, told the Daily Mail he was disappointed in the lack of transparency from authorities.
'There is a whole series of question marks about what went on in November 2024.
'I have run into repeated efforts by the authorities to avoid answering even the most basic questions, such as, how many people have been detained or how many drones seized,' Morgan said.
'What is so secret about this investigation?'
The incident was largely written off when the UK Airprox Board, the official body that investigates mid-air near misses, published a report concluding that the 'drones' seen by the NPAS crew were actually the lights of a US Air Force F-15 Eagle jet.
Radar data cited in the report showed the chopper and jet coming within 1,700ft of each other. But the report said nothing else unknown was picked up on radar.
Trained British meteorologist Stuart Onyeche, who works for a defense company and has researched the incident, told the Daily Mail that he believes the fighter jet and police chopper were both pursuing the advanced drones.
'I'm inclined to trust the initial detail and assessment of the experienced helicopter pilots that we see noted in these logs, which was that they were forced to take evasive action due to the close proximity of some kind of unmanned drone,' Onyeche said.
'It's unarguable that an F-15 was also in the vicinity as reported in the airprox, but an unanswered question is what was the F-15 being tasked to do or look for?' he added.
'Were the helicopter and F-15 in fact both converging on the unidentified 'drones'?'
Craft encroaching on airspace at US bases both home and abroad have shown signs of using advanced technology, capable of confounding anti-drone measures used by the authorities.
A joint report by the FBI, US Department of Defense and NASA obtained by the Daily Mail last year warned that their detection and signal jamming equipment had 'failed' to stop incursions by advanced drones, including at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
The base was swarmed with dozens of drones for weeks in December 2023, creating a security panic.
The incident was kept secret until it was revealed by defense magazine The Warzone in March 2024.
a similar event from the future
Article title:
Police chopper was forced to take 'emergency evasive action' after UFO began kidnapping their crew.