Suad Hamzić has been sharing his memoirs as a former Yugoslavian Army jet fighter on Tango Six, a website that reports on the Serbian Air Force. In his latest installment he writes about his belief in UFOs, and he shares the personal encounters that have convinced him of their existence.

Hamzić has a unique background. Before becoming a jet fighter Hamzić attended the Yugoslavian Air Force Academy and the RAF staff college in Great Britain. In 1980, he came to the United States where he worked evaluating the F-5 fighter jet. From 1986 to 1990 he served as a military attaché of the armed forces of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Turkey. He then retired as a colonel in 1993.

Hamzić starts of his latest memoir entry by commenting on how unpopular the UFO topic can be, and how reluctant people can be to write about it. He says that the approach by authorities is to be "generally restrained, incomplete, vague and mysterious, which further complicates any rational debate on UFOs."

However, he says authorities in the army, and in particular the air force, cannot ignore that "something" exists because many of their most advanced fighter jets have not been able to "cope" with the unidentified objects. He says when he was a jet fighter these encounters happened repeatedly over the southern Adriatic Sea.

He also says there have been many accounts by highly credible people. Along with his own personal experiences, these are the reason Hamzić says he is convinced "they are no optical phenomena, fiction, hallucinations, and the like."

Hamzić's first UFO encounter was in the spring of 1972 in the early afternoon. He was flying a Mig-21 on a routine reconnaissance flight in the region on Delcina. The jet was a two-seater and in the back was Captain First Class Stipić Dušan. On takeoff they were asked to check something out. When they flew to the coordinates they saw a bright luminous object.

Hamzić could not determine the altitude of the object, but he knows it was much higher than he was. Because it was a routine reconnaissance flight, they were not equipped with the proper equipment to fly at high altitude or at a speed greater than Mach 1.6.

Hamzić began to climb to get a closer look and the object got bigger and bigger as he got closer. He climbed at Mach 1.4, and reached 13,000 meters, but could still not be sure how much higher the UFO was.

Just then the object zipped out to the west, decreasing in size and luminosity, and then it was gone. Hamzić says what impressed him was that the craft must have been moving between 4 to 6,000 km/h (the equivalent of around 2,500-4,000 mph).

Hamzić said he and Stipić talked about the sighting for a little while, but they didn't discuss it with anyone else. Not even their colleagues. They made no official report, and they figured the event was just part of their job.

A couple of months later, on a beautiful summer day, Hamzić had his second sighting. He was enjoying the day, lying on a park bench and looking up in the sky. He was in a square filled with pilots, technicians and other members of the 352 reconnaissance squadron.

Hamzić then noticed a round silvery object above one of the runways. He thought it was early for weather balloons to be launched, but he still assumed that was what it was. Then he realized it was not floating upwards like it should be. Suddenly he realized it was a UFO, and in his excitement he said so out loud.

Everyone looked up, and some people made jokes about aliens. He says most people didn't pay much attention, but a few continued to watch the object. It remained hovering in place. Then, similar to what he had witnessed a few months earlier, the object began moving to the west and zipped off out of sight.

The few people watching the object looked at each other puzzled, but there was very little said. Hamzić says, soon after, exactly on time, a weather balloon was released and it rose into the sky as routinely as usual.

His third encounter was in late 1973 or early 1974; he could not remember the exact date. It was a night training flight. After the training he was asked if he had enough fuel to check something out. He said he did and when he got the coordinates he saw a glowing light. He thought at first it might be a commercial plane, but after examining the object he changed his mind. He says the light changed between light green, yellow, and "slightly" purple. He then lost sight of it in the clouds. He says, again, no one wanted to talk about what he had seen.

Hamzić says since he left the Army, he has had other sightings. He says he even recorded strange lights on two occasions, once in 2008 and once in 2011. Each time he watched the news reports to find out if other people had seen the lights, but the sightings were never mentioned. He says it was as if they never happened.

You can read more on this story and other UFO news at OpenMinds.tv.