1999-01-15 - Owings Mills, MD - Other

Overflight of strange craft with chase plane

My son and I were out playing in our front yard when we witnessed a small, single-engine plane circling the neighborhood at only a few hundred feet elevation. It caught my attention, so I watched it for a while. It had no apparant markings, and I recall it being dark grey in color. It was still light, and visibility was good except for scattered clouds. There were some clouds to the West of us. After the small plane circled for a few minutes, an object came out of the clouds. It was either the size of a fighter plane at about 1000 feet, or something larger much higher. My 7-year-old son who has very sharp eyes said it looked like a fighter plane to him, but I couldn't make out the exact shape. It didn't look like any fighter I was familiar with, but was roughly that shape. What was odd was that there were two glowing orange circles on the back of the object like it was a fighter jet on afterburners, but it was completely silent. It was not that far away nor that far up -- a fighter on afterburners sounds like a freight train. After the object came out of the clouds, the small plane stopped circling and they both headed off to the East. If it was a fighter on afterburners, it was moving much too slowly. I estimate it was going only about 2-3 times as fast as the small plane. It looked all the world to me like the small plane was waiting for the object, and then escorted it somewhere. An army base is in the approximate direction that the two craft were heading.