So this is something I witnessed one night in February 2022.

I was at the time a full-time Firefighter, and that night we were deployed to a Level 3 Emergency Fire in the South West. I also had specialist training in an Air Attack role working with the aerial firefighting aircraft when required (as a Ground Controller).

That night we'd been getting smashed, it was a hectic blaze. Deployed around 3pm, and finally got a short break to eat around 2am. My crew and I (myself and 4 others in 2 appliances) found a safe spot in an already burnt forest a couple kms away from the fireline, and proceeded to eat our meals sitting in the dark. The only real light was the glow of the fire a couple kms away, and a dimmed down lantern we had.

It was dead silent except for the crew chatting, and for some reason I felt the urge to look up. And that's when I saw some sort of craft, approximately 120-150 feet above us. A massive black triangle, maybe half the size of a footy field. It was absolutely silent, moving very slowly directly overhead. I couldn't see any forms of lift or propulsion or anything you'd normally see on an aircraft.....I had no idea what this thing was.

Suddenly, I remembered I was on the job, and that whatever it was shouldn't have been there, as the airspace above a fire like that is completely closed to any aircraft excepting bombers or fire intelligence/geospatial aircraft etc, and even then they won't operate in the dark (it was about 2am at this point) - whatever it was shouldn't have been there.

So I grabbed my radio to put in a call to the Control Point, hoping to grab an Ops Officer or an Air Attack Supervisor, to report an unauthorised aircraft, and no sooner had I held the transmit button of my radio that the black craft stopped dead immediately overhead, and a fraction of a second later it shot into the distance with incredible speed & acceleration.

I dunno what it was, but I know what it wasn't. I couldn't identify any lights, but weird as it sounds, I initially identified something was there by a complete absence of light...something blocking out the stars. Then when my eyes focused I started noticing things. It was casting a slight shadow in from the glow of the fire. It had a lot of depth, and a lot of straight lines (straight lines like that rarely appear in nature). As my eyes adjusted I could tell that there were small features on it, but I couldn't actually discern what those features were.

There were a select few people at that incident with specialist training in aviation platforms, myself being one of them... meaning if anybody was able to identify what it was, it was me. I'm also ex-Army, where I served in my battalion's reconnaissance platoon, so I've spent a fair chunk of my working life as a trained & experienced observer.

I'm also a super evidence based person, I rarely pay heed to conspiracy theories and other kooky shit, but the incident rattled me. No wings/rotors/other forms of creating lift....no props/jets/other forms of generation thrust....all the things that are required in order to maintain heavier-than-air flight possible (according to our understanding of aviation).

It was a very profound experience, and I've spent the ensuing nearly 18 months trying to track down any info I can about it, and was relieved to see many others around the world reporting similar things.