The IAF soon after receiving information about the sighting of unidentified flying objects near the Imphal airport, dispatched its Rafale fighter aircraft to search for them. The sighting of the UFO over the Imphal airport happened around 2:30 pm.
UFO Sighting Near Imphal Airport
The Indian Air Force (IAF) scrambled its Rafale fighter aircraft to check for unidentified flying objects near the Imphal airport on Sunday after receiving information about them.
“The aircraft equipped with advanced sensors carried out low-level flying over the suspected area to look for the UFO but it did not find anything there,” they said, adding that after the first aircraft returned, one more Rafale fighter was sent for the search but the UFO was not seen around the area.
“The agencies concerned are trying to find out the details of the UFO as there are videos of the UFO over the Imphal airport,” they said.
Soon after the Imphal airport was cleared for flight, the Indian Air Force’s Shillong-based Eastern Command said that it had triggered its Air Defence reaction system without providing any specifics on the steps taken.
Eastern Command, in a post on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), said, “IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport. The small object was not seen thereafter.”
The Indian Air Force’s Rafale fighters are stationed at the Hashimara air base in West Bengal and continue to fly from several air bases in the eastern sector along the China border.
Unidentified Flying Object
According to the US Air Force Declassification Office, UFOs “is the popular term for any apparent aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily or immediately identified by the observer.” The United States Air Force coined the term in 1952, just five years after pilot Kenneth Arnold added “flying saucer” to the world’s lexicon. In 1947, Arnold flew past Mt. Rainier in Washington state where he saw “nine bright saucer-like objects.” Though he denied initially describing them as saucers, the name had already made its mark in popular culture.
