Barrow Alaska Arctic Circle UAP 1986

On March 22, 1986, operators at the DEW Line radar station near Barrow, Alaska — the northernmost point of the US mainland — tracked an unidentified luminous object performing sustained maneuvers above the frozen Arctic Ocean for 50 minutes. The DEW Line station, part of the North American early warning network designed to detect Soviet bomber incursions, tracked the object both on radar and visually. Alaska Air National Guard F-4 Phantoms were scrambled from Elmendorf AFB. Before the intercept aircraft arrived, witnesses observed the craft descend toward the Arctic Ocean ice surface and apparently submerge. The phenomenon of objects emerging from and returning to Arctic waters was consistent with Soviet USO reports from the same period. NORAD classified the incident and the DEW Line operators' statements were taken under classification oath. The incident was one of multiple Arctic-region transmedium contacts documented across both US and Soviet Arctic monitoring systems during the 1980s.