By Jeffrey Kluger January 22, 2025 10:58 AM EST N obody expected anything special when the squadron of Navy F/A-18 fighter jets headed out for routine aerial maneuvers off of the coast of Virginia Beach one day in 2013. The F/A-18s, a Naval workhorse, owned the local air space that day—but only until they didn’t.  All at once, the jets’ radar picked up a cluster of half a dozen objects flying along with them, moving erratically—and entirely acrobatically. At some moments they ripped along side-