Indonesia: Salatun's 1964 radar week and an F-16 pilot's contact
Air Marshal J. Salatun, a founder of Indonesia's space agency, wrote that for a week in September 1964 objects over East Java were seen by eye and on radar, and air-defence guns fired at them without bringing any down. Decades later a decorated F-16 pilot, Fajar Adriyanto, described a radar contact at about 5,000 km/h that he could not see when he closed on it. LAPAN later treated UFOs as pseudoscience.
How plausible · High
A retired Air Marshal and space-agency co-founder wrote of a week of radar and gunfire, and a named F-16 pilot independently described a fast radar target decades later.
- ●●Access Salatun was a senior Air Force officer at the time.
- ●●No gain sought Called for study, not sales.
- ●●Character record Air Marshal, LAPAN co-founder.
- ●○Cost of speaking Wrote openly in a serious career.
- ●○Restraint "None fell" and no explanation offered.
- ●○Independent convergence An F-16 pilot's separate radar contact (2023).
Plausibility weighs how well an account fits where secrecy hides the documents by design, so missing records never count against it. Strength measures what is documented. Assessed 2026-10-23.