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What it doesn't explain is their purported sudden appearance/disappearance. I'm thinking along the lines of the Philadelphia experiment which is somewhat related to this technology, I think.
Popular Mechanics (August 1964)
Major De Seversky's Ion-Propelled Aircraft
by Hans Fantel
An ion-generated wind will lift and propel this incredible magic carpet of the future
It was downright spooky. Without a sound, the peculiar, spiky contraption rose straight up, hovered awhile, climbed higher. Then it did a few graceful turns, stopped again, and just sat there silently in midair.
It seemed like levitation --- some trick to overcome gravity. I could not shake off the feeling that I was attending a kind of spiritual seance, or maybe a Buck Rogers show, instead of an engineering demonstration. The eerie scene took place in the big barn like laboratory of Electron-Atom Inc., research firm in Long Island City, New York, devoted to the development of a new kind of flying machine. I had been invited to watch a scale model being put through its paces by remote control. What we saw was by far the oddest aircraft since the Wright Brothers' motorized kite.
It had no prop. No jet. No wings. In fact, it had no moving parts at all looking somewhat like an old-fashioned bedspring, the rectangular rig is the nearest thing to a magic carpet. It needs no runway, takes off vertically and is expected to climb as high as 60 miles. It can crawl through the air like a snail, or go faster than a jet. Nobody yet knows the speed limit.