Tic‑Tac‑Type UAP Buzzes TROY21 Surveillance Flight

Name	Troy21 Incident
Date	September 17, 2024
Location	Eastern California, near Reef Station
Investigated by	NUFORC, independent investigator Ben Hansen, and MADAR radar analyst Francis Ridge

The TROY21 incident is fast becoming a case study in how modern aviation, national security, and unidentified aerial phenomena collide in one unsettling near miss, and it is exactly the kind of case UFO Connect exists to unpack calmly and honestly for truth seekers who are tired of noise and sensationalism. It gives us a rare, well-documented look at what really happens when a government surveillance aircraft encounters something in the sky that nobody can immediately explain, including the people whose job it is to monitor and control that airspace.

What Actually Happened During the TROY21 Incident?

On the afternoon of September 17, 2024, a Beechcraft King Air 350iER flying a Homeland Security mission under the call sign TROY21 was cruising at roughly 20,000 feet over eastern California, near a navigation fix known as Reef Station, in controlled airspace. Conditions were clear, visibility was good, and the crew was performing a routine surveillance profile typical for this type of aircraft.

According to the written report filed with the National UFO Reporting Center and subsequent media coverage, the routine flight changed in an instant. The pilot suddenly saw a dark gray, cylindrical object, which he later described as about the size of a football pass, directly beneath the aircraft. He estimated that it passed approximately 10 feet under TROY21’s right wing, close enough that a slightly different flight path could have resulted in a collision.

The crew’s split-second reaction is important for understanding how professionals actually experience events like this. The pilot did not label it a UFO or UAP at the moment. He thought it might be a missile. Instinct and training took over. He banked the aircraft left to lift the right wing, effectively moving it away from the area where he believed the object was traveling. That maneuver speaks to how real the perceived threat felt inside the cockpit.

Shortly after the near miss, the crew radioed Los Angeles Center and reported what they had seen. In the recorded conversation, the pilot tells the controller that this will “sound weird” and then explains that a football-sized object just passed under his wing. That mixture of professionalism and hesitancy will be familiar if you have ever spoken privately with pilots or controllers about something unusual. They know what they saw matters, but they also know how easily they can be dismissed.

This was only the beginning. Within about a minute, the crew reported that their onboard radar picked up a target roughly 60 miles away. They believed this could be the same object they had just seen. From there, the radar picture became stranger. Investigators later reported that the radar contact appeared to change range rapidly, at one point jumping roughly 20 miles closer, then shifting to about 30 miles away, and then moving in to around 10 miles, all over a short period of time.

Based on those reported ranges and timing, NUFORC estimated that if these radar returns had all come from a single physical object, it would have had to reach speeds of Mach 4 to cover about 60 miles in roughly a minute. Independent reporting from NDTV reached similar conclusions that the apparent speed would have exceeded Mach 2, far beyond what a typical small drone could sustain. Those calculations depend heavily on the exact timestamps and the assumption that the same target was being tracked throughout, which is why radar data became such a focus for investigators.

For UFO Connect’s community, what matters here is that this is not just a story told in a bar. A controller at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale called NUFORC’s hotline the same afternoon to report the incident and later submitted a written account. That gave this event an immediate documentary backbone that many UFO reports lack.

Who Was TROY21, and Why Was This Flight Different?

To understand the TROY21 incident, it helps to understand who TROY21 was. The call sign belonged to a Beechcraft King Air 350iER, a twin-engine turboprop configured for surveillance and intelligence missions and linked to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This is not a sightseeing aircraft or a basic trainer. It is the type of platform used to monitor borders, track smuggling operations, and conduct quiet surveillance work in coordination with other agencies.

According to NDTV’s reporting, the pilot was a U.S. Air Force aviator on a Homeland Security mission. That does not automatically make every observation perfect or infallible, but it means you are dealing with a crew that is comfortable operating complex systems, communicating precisely with controllers, and scanning the environment intentionally. They are used to looking for small, hard-to-see targets such as low flying aircraft or other illicit traffic.

In this role, the King Air 350iER is equipped with advanced sensors. That likely includes a surveillance radar optimized for detecting small targets at considerable distances. In other words, TROY21 was better positioned than a typical civilian aircraft to detect a small object visually and on radar. That context matters if you are trying to assess the event’s credibility.

There is also a detail in the NUFORC summary that often gets lost when people retell this case. When investigator and pilot Ben Hansen first presented the story on television, the TROY21 crew later saw that coverage. Instead of staying silent, they reached out to him directly and volunteered additional clarifications, including the fact that they initially thought the object was a missile and details about their evasive maneuver. That sequence reveals something about the human side of this event. These were professionals who did not want their experience sensationalized or distorted, and they were willing to engage to ensure the record more accurately reflected what they lived through.

How Did the TROY21 Incident Unfold in Real Time?

Reconstructing the TROY21 incident in real time depends on three main sources: the NUFORC case report, the recorded ATC audio, and subsequent media coverage. Taken together, they paint a consistent picture.

In the early afternoon, around 2:30 pm local time, TROY21 was flying at about 20,000 feet over eastern California. The aircraft was in controlled airspace, talking to Los Angeles Center, in what by all accounts was typical surveillance work.

The first critical event was the visual near miss. The pilot saw a dark gray, cylindrical object roughly the size of a football pass just under the right wing, at a distance he later estimated at about 10 feet. From his perspective, it happened extremely fast, yet close enough for him to get a clear sense of shape and color. His immediate reaction was to bank the aircraft left, raising the right wing and moving away from where he believed the object was traveling.

Soon after, he radioed Los Angeles Center. In the audio, you can hear his effort to frame what just happened without sounding dramatic. He tells the controller that it will sound strange and then explains that a football-sized object just passed under his wing. The controller responds by asking follow-up questions and checking for any known traffic or drones in the area, but there is nothing in the system that matches what TROY21 reported.

The next phase involves the radar. Within roughly a minute of the visual encounter, the crew reported that their onboard radar detected a target at about 60 miles range. They believed it might be the same object. Over the next short period, the radar contact appeared to change range quickly. NUFORC’s write-up describes the target jumping around 20 miles closer, then out to about 30 miles, and then in to around 10 miles.

This sequence is where much of the controversy and fascination comes in. If you take those ranges and the approximate timing at face value and assume they all represent the same object, you end up with very high implied speeds, on the order of Mach 2 to Mach 4, depending on exact timing. That is well beyond typical small drone capabilities and more in line with missiles or high-performance aircraft.

What Evidence Supports the TROY21 Incident Beyond Pilot Testimony?

One reason the TROY21 incident resonates with open-minded skeptics and serious researchers is the layered evidence supporting it. This is not a single witness report that lives only on social media. It is a case that started inside the air traffic control system and then passed through formal investigative channels.

The first public record is the NUFORC case file. An air traffic controller from the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center in Palmdale phoned the NUFORC hotline the same day as the incident to report what happened. At NUFORC’s request, that controller later submitted a detailed written report. That document captures information from the ATC side: time, location, flight data, and the controller’s own assessment that this was a serious and unusual event.

From there, investigator and pilot Ben Hansen filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain official records. The request produced a recording of all relevant communications between ATC and TROY21 during the incident. Portions of this audio have been played publicly, and you can hear both parties working through what is happening in real time. It is not sensational. It sounds like professionals trying to describe something they cannot immediately classify.

The FOIA process also produced radar data associated with the incident. NUFORC notes that these data were forwarded to the MADAR project, led by Francis Ridge, for technical analysis. MADAR normally focuses on anomalies recorded by a distributed sensor network, so its involvement reflects the seriousness with which this data set is being treated. As of NUFORC’s latest public update, that radar analysis is still ongoing, and no definitive public conclusion has been announced.

Mainstream media have also played a role in corroborating the core details. NDTV, for example, reported on the event as a close encounter between a U.S. Air Force pilot and a mysterious football-sized object at 20,000 feet, drawing on the ATC audio and NUFORC documentation. That kind of coverage does not automatically prove every claim, but it does show that the story has been cross-checked outside the usual UFO echo chambers.

Why Does the TROY21 Incident Matter for Aviation Safety?

Even if you strip away every speculative layer, the TROY21 incident is a serious near miss in controlled airspace. A small object passing within roughly 10 feet of a manned aircraft’s wing at 20,000 feet is a genuine safety hazard. The fact that the crew initially thought it might be a missile underscores the immediacy of the perceived risk.

From an aviation safety perspective, several aspects of this incident stand out:

First, the object appears to have been untracked before the visual encounter. There was no transponder signal associated with it, no flight plan, and no indication on ATC systems that it should have been there. That alone would concern any controller or pilot, regardless of their views on UFOs.

Second, the size and altitude make the situation more difficult. A football-sized object is extremely hard to see until it is very close, even in clear conditions. Traditional radar systems are optimized for larger aircraft, not tiny targets that might have a low radar cross-section. That combination makes this sort of object hard to detect in advance and hard to track once it appears.

Third, the mission context suggests TROY21 was operating in an area where civilian and government operations intersect. Any uncoordinated object in that airspace, whether a drone, test article, or something else, introduces the risk of collision. From a policy angle, that raises questions about how agencies deconflict sensitive operations and how they monitor for small, non-cooperative objects.

These concerns line up with what the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has been warning about. In its most recent public report, AARO noted that it received 757 new UAP reports between May 2023 and June 2024 and highlighted a small group of 21 cases that involved unusual characteristics near national security sites. At the same time, AARO emphasized that it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology in the data it has examined.

The TROY21 incident sits right in the space between those two statements. It is a documented safety risk that occurred in a national security context, and that cannot yet be neatly explained.

How Does the TROY21 Incident Compare to the 2004 “Tic Tac” and Other UAP Cases?

The TROY21 incident is often linked to the 2004 USS Nimitz “Tic Tac” encounter, which brought the term “Tic Tac” into UAP vocabulary. In the Nimitz case, U.S. Navy pilots, including Commander David Fravor, reported a smooth, white, wingless object that performed abrupt changes in altitude and direction, appearing to defy conventional flight envelopes. Infrared video and radar data captured parts of that encounter, which the Pentagon later confirmed as authentic.

There are real parallels between the two incidents. Both involve trained government or military pilots operating in or near sensitive airspace. Both describe objects that lack obvious wings or propulsion and appear to move in ways that strain conventional explanations. Both rely not only on eyewitness accounts but also on sensor data.

At the same time, the differences are significant. TROY21’s object was small, dark gray, and extremely close. The Nimitz object was larger, white, and generally observed at some distance, even if its accelerations seemed extraordinary. In the TROY21 incident, the most dramatic aspect is the near miss, whereas in the Nimitz case, it is the overall flight behavior over a longer period.

Beyond the Nimitz comparison, TROY21 fits into a broader pattern of pilot reports involving small cylindrical or “Tic Tac-like” objects. NDTV points out that former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao has described a similar experience with metallic cylinder-shaped objects passing close under his aircraft over Texas. AARO’s public reporting acknowledges that a subset of UAP cases, especially those near national security sites, remain unresolved even after review.

Is the TROY21 Incident Proof of Anything About UFOs?

From a strict evidence perspective, the TROY21 incident is not proof of extraterrestrial technology. It does not contradict AARO’s statement that its current data show no sign of nonhuman craft or beings. What it does provide is a high credibility, multi-source case that remains unresolved in important ways.

We can say with reasonable confidence that a professional crew on a Homeland Security-linked mission reported a very close encounter with a small cylindrical object at 20,000 feet. We can say that an air traffic controller viewed the event as significant enough to document officially, and then again with NUFORC. We can say that FOIA produced ATC audio and radar data that investigators and radar specialists continue to examine. We can also say that identical cases are rare, but the broad pattern of small cylindrical UAP reports from pilots exists across multiple incidents and years.

We cannot yet say exactly what the object was. We cannot say whether the radar track genuinely reflects a single object moving at extreme speeds or a combination of real movement and sensor artifacts. We cannot say whether any official internal investigations have reached conclusions that have not yet been made public.

If you are part of the UFO Connect community, you probably know what it feels like to sit in that uncertain space. You sense that there is more to the story than simple dismissal, but you also do not want to leap to conclusions. The TROY21 incident is, in many ways, a mirror of that emotional landscape. It asks you to hold space for more than one possibility at once, to care about safety and truth without clinging to the comfort of absolute answers.

FAQs

What is the TROY21 incident?

The TROY21 incident refers to a near‑miss on September 17, 2024, when a Homeland Security surveillance aircraft, call sign TROY21, encountered a small, dark gray cylindrical object at about 20,000 feet over eastern California. The crew reported that the object, roughly the size of a football, passed within about 10 feet under the aircraft’s right wing and was later associated with unusual radar returns suggesting very high speeds.

Was the TROY21 object confirmed to be a UFO or alien craft?

No, the TROY21 object has not been confirmed as an alien craft. It is classified as a UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon), meaning that, based on current data, it has not been conclusively identified as a drone, aircraft, missile, or any other known object. Investigators continue to explore conventional and anomalous explanations.

Why is the TROY21 incident important for the UFO and aviation communities?

The TROY21 incident matters because it sits at the intersection of flight safety, national security, and UAP research. For the UFO community, it offers a rare, well‑documented case involving trained professionals, while for aviation and policy circles, it highlights the real risk posed by small, unidentified objects in controlled airspace and the need for better reporting and data integration.

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