5 Black Choppers Hovering over I-5 in Southern Oregon

Watched 5 huge, black, unmarked helicopters fly into the Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon near Ashland last night about 6pm...they were only a couple hundred feet off the ground, windows blacked-out, flying in formation until they stopped and hovered over I-5 (only major freeway connecting CA, OR and WA) for almost 1/2 hour, then moved slowly north up the I-5 corridor.

There was no "event" on I-5 that warranted this much attention...no mention of black choppers in news...

Any clue what's going on here?

I'm up in Wolf Creek about 20 miles north of Grants Pass just off I5-I neither heard nor saw anything.
I wonder what this is all about. I'll be keeping eyes and ears open for awhile.

Gotta take those puppies out for test flights and drills sometimes. Even if something were going on, you would have
A. Already heard about it
B. You will NEVER hear about it
but I will go with
C. Just training

Have seen groups of four and five Black Hawks all day in Upstate NY today. Saw them about a month ago as well.
The strange thing is, I heard them coming last time, now they are VERY quiet, if I hadn't been looking out the window I would not have known they were flying over.

You know you should have driven there, now that would have been a thread speculating on. This could be anything.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

if i may make a bad joke.


perhaps the government needs to burn the fuel budget before the end of the month.
i mean, its not like it rolls over to the next. gotta make use of it.

I'm sure there are more threads on this but does anyone else find it odd that there are reports of quiet black helicopters like this one? This is very interesting indeed. OP please keep us informed with any further happenings in your neck of the woods.

Anybody out there know of anything strange happening in the area recently?

They aren't black, and they aren't unmarked. The green that they're painted looks black from a distance, and the markings are low visibility. You can barely see them from fairly close sometimes.

Define "huge". Are we talking Blackhawk size? Chinook size? Little Bird size? Kiowa size?

Blackhawk:



Chinook:



Little Bird:



Kiowa:



Edit to add: It looks like the Army National Guard in Oregon flies the HH-60M Blackhawk, and one of their missions is Search and Rescue and Medevac. They wouldn't have been on a SAR or Medevac with five flying in formation though.

Thanks for the reference images...these were definitely blackhawks, painted glossy black with back-tinted windows--no visible markings...I was golfing with friends and they flew right through the golf course, 100-200 feet overhead, so we all got a pretty good look and said "what the # was that?"

We heard them hovering, just out of sight, until we hit the eighth fairway, the saw them right over the highway, barely moving.

Considering I5 is just a big slab of pavement I can't imagine what interesting things they could be doing.

Probably just training, got lost, stopped to regroup, stopped to discuss something before continuing on their way.

If they were in a more interesting area I'd be more suspicious, but the highway is a pretty benign place for them to be hovering.

I've also heard that pilots sometimes use roads and highways in order to navigate, not sure how true that is, but they could possibly have just been doing that with I5, and then just stopped for some boring reason.

Who knows.... I'm sure I would have raised an eyebrow if I was there and saw them hovering over the highway, but unless there is anything else to the story it just seems like one of those "hmmm, strange' kind of moments.

reply to post by Zoyd23




Did they look anything like that? The only operator of a glossy black aircraft is Customs. I'm not sure how many they have, or why they would have that many in Oregon, the only thing I can think of is a training mission.

No markings on these choppers at all...just shiny black

reply to post by Zoyd23


All aircraft, even military have markings, you just can't always see them from any kind of distance because they're low visibility, and only about 3 inches high.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Come on Zap. You and I both know that they had markings, but, it sounds more sinister to say that they don't.

reply to post by JIMC5499


I know, just like I'm willing to put money on them being military green. I'll keep beating my head on this wall though. Sooner or later I'll break it down, or break my head. Hah.

reply to post by Zaphod58


The funny thing is that the green and black is harder to see at night than just plain black.

reply to post by JIMC5499


That's like the reason that the Air Force went to the dark grey. They painted the F-117 and B-2 dark black, and they stood out at night, and it made them easier to see in the daytime too. I read somewhere that if you want to hide a plane at night, instead of painting it a dark color, light it up. If you turn the lights on, most people, if they even see it, will ignore it, or think that it's a star or something depending on the angle they are to it.

reply to post by Zaphod58


This is one of the guys who figured that out.

Jasper Maskelyne

Worth reading up on.