Travelers in the UK encountered one of the worst holiday occurrences imaginable last week: a completely closed airport just days before Christmas. All flights in and out of Gatwick Airport in southeast England were halted on December 20 and again on December 22 due to what was initially described as “mysterious drones” flying dangerously nearby.

Multiple unidentified small aircraft were seen in the skies above the airport, and they seemed to reappear each time the airport attempted to open. While dangerous drone activity near airports is nothing new, the investigation following these incidents has only led to more questions which make me suspect something stranger may be in the skies over England.

While drone sightings at airports are increasing dramatically, there are too many loose ends in this case to write it off as another errant civilian-level drone.

The UK Ministry of Defence immediately began searching for the aircraft after the airport closures, bringing in specialized equipment to help defend the airport and identify what the drones may be. Soon after, Sussex Police issued a statementclaiming the drones witnesses described seemed to be “of an industrial specification.” In other words, these aren’t some kid accidentally losing control of a $30 quadcopter – these drones appeared to be large, sophisticated aircraft.

On December 23, Sussex Police arrested a couple they believed were related to the drone sightings, but those individuals were shortly after released and exonerated, leaving no other suspects to be found. Perhaps most curiously of all, the lead investigator on the case then publicly questionedwhether there has been any drone incursions into the airport’s airspace at all. If they weren’t drones, then what exactly was seen in the skies near Gatwick Airport?

Or, what type of unknown drone might these objects have been?

While it might be easy to write this off as a case of amateur drone operators flying unintentionally near an airport – and it very well may be – there have been several other curious cases of unidentified flying objects in the skies over the UK lately. The Royal Air Force scrambled fighters just a few weeks ago to intercept an unidentified aircraft above eastern England, and multiple pilots reported strange objects in the skies over Ireland just a few months back. Could they be related to this airport closure?

Whether they are or not, this incident highlights the growing security threat drones pose. Gatwick Airport’s chief executive Chris Woodroofe called the incident an “unprecedented issue,” adding that “this isn’t a Gatwick Airport issue. It’s not even a UK issue. It’s an international issue.” Anti-drone systems have become a chief priority for both civilian and military airports, and even government installations and buildings aren’t safefrom the inexpensive, tiny aircraft. How can we keep the skies safe from these minuscule nuisances?

Maybe it’s best we all just start shooting indiscriminately at anything flying overhead.

More importantly, what exactly happened in England this week? With no answers to go on, it makes me think something fishier than just a few wayward quadcopters was responsible for this airport closure. 

For advice about living on Mars, who would you turn to? Elon Musk? Jeff Bezos? Matt Damon? How about someone who has actually lived beyond the orbit of the Earth? That small and sadly diminishing list includes Bill Anders and Frank Borman, two of the first three astronauts to leave Earth’s orbit and circle the Moon on the Apollo 8 mission – an event whose 50th anniversary we’re now celebrating. While Anders and Borman never set foot on the lunar surface, they certainly have more experience with living far from Earth than an electric car driver or a cardboard box mailer, right? So, what does former astronaut Bill Anders think about living on Mars?

“What’s the imperative? What’s pushing us to go to Mars? I don’t think the public is that interested.”

That was one of the nicer things Anders said about sending humans to Mars in a recent interview with the BBC celebrating the Apollo 8 anniversary. He was referring more to the exorbitant costs of human space exploration versus less expensive and safer missions using robots, rovers and other remote exploring machines. He’s probably right about the public’s predicted reaction to the costs, but he saves his stronger words for his assessment of sending humans to work and live on Mars in general, calling it “stupid” and “almost ridiculous.”

“NASA couldn’t get to the Moon today. They’re so ossified… NASA has turned into a jobs program … many of the centers are mainly interested in keeping busy and you don’t see the public support other than they get the workers their pay and their congressmen get re-elected.”

Apollo 8 crew: James Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman

(NASA)

Anders obviously isn’t happy with the organization he worked for as an astronaut and later worked with as the Executive Secretary for the National Aeronautics and Space Council. He knows firsthand the scientific progress that has been made since then and the challenge of dealing with the politics of space, having worked for the Atomic Energy Commission, the joint U.S./USSR technology exchange program for fission and fusion power, General Electric’s Aircraft Equipment Division and as Textron’s Executive Vice President for aerospace. It’s no wonder he says that “I’m not a very popular guy at NASA for saying that.”

“I’m not as critical of NASA as Bill is. I firmly believe that we need robust exploration of our Solar System and I think man is part of that. I do think there’s a lot of hype about Mars that is nonsense. Musk and Bezos, they’re talking about putting colonies on Mars, that’s nonsense.”

Fellow Apollo 8 crew member Frank Borman – experienced in the politics of space as the only astronaut on the Apollo 1 fire review board and experienced in both the costs and benefits of air travel as the CEO of Eastern Airlines – is less critical of NASA than Anders but agrees that the costs of human habitation on Mars far exceeds the benefits to the point of “nonsense.”

Earthrise from the Moon

(NASA)

While he didn’t comment on the Martian colony controversy, third Apollo 8 crew member Jim Lovell – one of only three humans to visit the Moon twice – waxed philosophical about the real purpose of space exploration:

“When I looked at the Earth itself… I started to wonder why I was here, what’s my purpose here … it sort of dawned me. And my perspective is that God has given mankind a stage on which to perform. How the play turns out, is up to us.”

It’s up to us. Who are you going to listen to for advice on living on Mars – the battery and cardboard box guys or three experienced space travelers?

No humans will live on Mars
These astronauts guarantee
Even if Jeff and Elon
Build a fancy B-and-B

The 387-mile (623 km) Bureya River flows southward in the Khabarovsk region of far-eastern Siberia – well, ‘used to flow’ might be a more appropriate description today. At some point in early December, an unexplained force from space slammed into a one-kilometer hill, pushing 800 tons of dirt, debris and vegetation into a mound that now dams the Brureya River. Its remoteness has made the cause a mystery – there are no witnesses to the explosion that some investigators now at the site say could not have been caused by a meteorite. With the usual government denial that it was a wayward rocket or a bomb test, some people are beginning to believe far-fetched claims that it was the result of a UFO crash. Is it possible?

“It cannot be man-made.”

Locals who have nothing to hide have already decided that any explanations other than a meteorite or UFO are impossible, based on what they’ve found at the site that hunters Anton Ivanov and Alexander Makan stumbled onto on December 14th. They have good reason to be suspicious, since the massive and violent event took place in early December, was not found (at least officially) until December 14th and was not revealed to the public until December 24th. Who or what wants this event kept under such tight wraps?

“The height is from 80 to 160 metres above the ice level. There is no radiation. An object entered at a sharp angle, pulled down a mound and spread it along the river bed. It is not clear what it is: maybe an explosion, a bomb, or a falling airliner.”

Local government official Alexey Maslov described the mound of dirt created by something to the Siberian Times. (Photos and video here and here.) There were no official reports of airline crashes, bombs or other manmade events that could have caused such carnage. However, Evgeny Zubko, a cosmic dust expert (nice work if you can get it) from the School of Natural Sciences of the Federal University of the Far East, talked to local residents who had noticed “the arrival of a blast wave” and to the two hunters, who said they arrived to find that:

“It smells like hydrogen sulphide and vapour comes out in some places. We even found a spot on the very top where there are warm stones, we used them to keep our hands warm. It looks like it was very hot there. The ice edges are slim as if they were in boiling water.”

All of that says “meteorite” to cosmic dust expert Zubko, but not to Aleksei Makhinov, regional chairman of the Russian Geographic Society, who believes this was a “seismic landslide” caused by an earthquake.

‘It happens very often in the (Russian) Far East. The entire coast of the Sea of Okhotsk is covered with these landslides when half a mountain falls down.”

However, there’s no record of an earthquake in the matching time-span. Nor is there a record of a meteorite either, says Boris Shustov, the head of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who says nothing was picked by Russia’s extensive network of ground-based tracking systems and thinks it was “just a landslide.”

The mysterious river-blocking mound of dirt is keeping water from this power plant

As of right now, there’s no crater and no debris –just an 800-ton mountain of dirt that wasn’t there a few weeks ago and is now blocking a river that drives the downstream Bureyskaya hydro power station. That means it’s costing someone money – which means it won’t be blocking the river much longer. Will it be cleared before the mystery of its cause is solved? A cause that experts and witnesses say can’t be manmade, can’t be a meteorite, but could be a UFO?

It’s a lightly-populated area in Siberia and the secretive government and big money are involved … what do you think?

Is NASA getting ready for some kind of disclosure of what it and the U.S. government know about aliens, UFOs and the other stuff conspiracy theorists believe is hidden in real X-files? Here’s a sign the answer may finally be yes – the agency announced last week the hiring of a communications department executive whose mother claims to be an alien abductee and recently ran for Congress. Couple that with her connection to another announcement last week that the Pentagon is putting plans in place for the president’s Space Force and the Christmas wishes of conspiracy theorists may be coming true … whether they believe in Santa or are just marginal about it.

On December 17th, Bettina Inclán was named by Administrator Jim Bridenstine to be NASA’s Associate Administrator for Communications. Inclán definitely has the right background for the job with over 15 years of experience as a communications specialist and strategist working with major technology firms and non-profit organizations, and has held senior roles with government leaders at the federal, state and local levels, including one who said this:

“I went in. There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship — not like airplanes.”

That’s Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, who Bettina Inclán calls ‘Mama’, describing the alien spaceship she was taken to at age 7 by “three blond, big-bodied beings — two females, one male” who continued to communicate with her telepathically at various times later in her life. While she readily admitted to her extraterrestrial encounters earlier in life, she denied them at first when they came out during her recent campaign for a Congressional seat in Florida. Although she finally admitted to the abduction and later encounters, they didn’t prevent her from being endorsed by the Miami Herald but didn’t help her get elected.

Did her mom’s revelations help Inclán get her job with NASA? It didn’t hurt … nor did the fact that her brother-in-law is Jarrod Agen, Deputy chief of staff and communications director for Vice President Mike Pence …

… who last week announced at the Pentagon that President Trump will sign a new space policy directive in the coming days that will lay out plans and a timeline to create a U.S. Space Force as a sixth branch of the armed forces. Pence then received a briefing on space operations and cyber defense and on the proposal the Pentagon is drafting to establish the Space Force.

Is Bettina Inclán, with her family ties to aliens and the Space Force and her new job in NASA’s communications department, the long-awaited focal point for full disclosure of government secrets about aliens and UFOs? Will she introduce her mother’s alien friends to the Space Force or will she warn them to leave town before they start shooting?

To conspiratorially paraphrase a famous Star Wars quote — the dots are close together with this one.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be conducting interviews with leading UFO researchers from countries around the world in an effort to paint a picture of global UFOlogy today.

Piotr Cielebiaś was born in 1986 in Czestochowa, Poland. he holds an MA in history and a BA in political sciences. He is a well known Polish writer and journalist specializing in fringe science and paranormal phenomena. He is co-founder of the infra.org.pl website, which collects UFO reports. He is a ufological publisher and contributor to English-language UFO magazines and websites. He writes regularly for Onet.pl–the most popular Polish web portal–and for “Nieznany Świat,”the oldest Polish monthly publication devoted to fringe science and paranormal phenomena. He is the author of “The True UFOs,” a book in Polish summarizing the UFO phenomenon as a whole, and UFOs Over Poland (2016, Flying Disk Press)

RG: Who have been the defining figures in Polish UFOlogy over the past 70 years (for better or for worse), and why?

PC: UFO studies in Poland emerged in the 1950s, but the most influential researchers began their work in 1970-80s in a time of heightened UFO activity. Krzysztof Piechota and Bronisław Rzepecki are worthy of mention. The former was one of the most prolific UFO writers in Poland; the latter partnered him and co-authored one of best Polish books in the field: “UFOs over Poland” (1996). Originally, Piechota and Rzepecki leaned toward the ET hypothesis, as did Kazimierz Bzowski, another well-known ufologist from Warsaw who assumed that UFOs are “energetical” and informational in nature and that they use “channels” or portals which could be detected by means of radiesthesia (in other words, aliens would be sending their crafts as galactic e-mails). The late Zbigniew Blania-Bolnar, another prominent ufologist, criticised Bzowski’s views and applied more scientific methods.

Among present day researchers I would include Arek Miazga, Damian Trela and Robert Leśniakiewicz. They differ considerably in their opinions about UFOs but they remains the most experienced and prolific ufologists.

Warsaw, Poland.

RG: What do you consider to be the most compelling Polish UFO incident on record, and why?

PC:  It’s hard to choose one particular case. Many UFO enthusiasts in Poland would surely say that the most compelling close encounter is the famous Emilcin case of 1978 when a farmer from Eastern Poland met olive-skinned aliens who took him onboard their strange craft. Others think that the most compelling cases are those witnessed by military pilots. Bronisław Rzepecki wrote a book about such encounters in Poland that were quite frequent, and former pilots often speak about their experiences publicly. The openness ended after Poland joined NATO in 1999. Another case that is worthy of special attention is a close encounter from Bedzienica-Nockowa (described by Arek Miazga) when a family from a small village in South-Eastern Poland observed a strange “screen” with huge, greenish aliens peering from inside. Also quite unique is the 1979 case from the Tropy Sztumskie area when an ambulance was stopped by spherical UFO blocking the road.

An artist’s impression of the alien from the Emilcin UFO case of 1978.

RG: What is the Polish government’s official stance on UFOs? When was the last time it issued a statement on the subject?

PC: To be honest, I have no idea what Polish special services or military agencies know about UFOs. Politicians have never touched the problem, though I’m sure they’re interested. It’s hard to believe that they don’t bother about cases involving unauthorised intrusions in Polish aerospace. The government remains silent about UFOs and that’s a continuation of Eastern, post-Soviet mentality assuming that society shouldn’t be interested what’s going on behind the official curtain. I think that something really unusual must happen for the Polish government to issue a statement about UFOs. But years of research has shown that even the most concerning cases were swept under the carpet. For example, in 2013 flying saucers appeared several times in vicinity of civilian and military airport in Cracow. In 2013-2015 many sightings of flying triangles/boomerangs took place in Poland and there was a suggestion that they were connected with US Army or USAF activity. No one from the government or from the mainstream media seemed interested.

RG: Does the Polish Ministry of National Defence have an official UFO investigations unit?

PC:  No, but reports about encounters with UFOs circulated amongst Air Force officials. Under the socialist regime, any information about unexplained activity in airspace above Poland was shared with Moscow. One man called Ryszard Grundman—who was once a chief of staff in Air Force—gathered reports about unexplained events on his own. It wasn’t an official unit but rather a “private X files.” He collected reports from pilots and military counterintelligence. For example, in the 80s, two counterintelligence agents received reports from concerned locals of Kobyłka (Warsaw region) of strange lights coming out of the forest. Two agents entered the trees encountering a huge flying saucer over a clearing that soon shot up and disappeared.

The Presidential Palace, Warsaw, Poland.

RG: Has the Polish government shown more or less transparency on the UFO subject than the US government?

PC: The Polish political system and culture is closely related with political parties and their members are mostly interested with holding power and sponging from the state budget. They don’t bother with such things as UFOs, or even the future of the country. Crucial for them is to look after their own private interests. Sad but true.

RG: Does Poland have a national UFO investigations organisation today, and how many smaller Polish UFO groups are you aware of?

PC: We have currently a few organizations, but I don’t think they are comparable to professional groups from the past (or to those from abroad, like MUFON, for example). Most Polish ufologists work independently and they get on. Also, our magazine “Nieznany Swiat,” has been gathering reports about anomalous phenomena (involving UFOs) for nearly 30 years.

Rural Poland.

RG: What are the most active regions of Poland for UFO sighting reports (hotspots)?

We tend to call them “anomalous zones.” They can be both local and regional. For example, regions of two big cities in southern Poland—Wrocław and Rzeszów—abound with reports about UFOs, while there are also areas with virtually no sightings. The Rzeszów area is especially interesting because lot of high strangeness events have occurred there which were researched by Arek Miazga—author of very interesting book, “UFOs over Subcarpathia.” Inside the Rzeszow anomalous zone there is a smaller zone in Glinik village where very unusual sightings have taken place (people reported small, atypical UFOs and strange flying beings). I’m also living in some kind of “UFO hotspot” because Częstochowa and the Jura region are known from various incidents, including high strangeness events. A long history of encounters with balls of light and other strange phenomena is connected with Osson’s Hill (Częstochowa). For many years also Warsaw was a prominent UFO hot spot with very interesting cases involving the landing of a saucer in Czerniaków district (1982) witnessed by police officer.

RG: Have you personally had any UFO sightings?

PC: Of course, and so therefore I’m sure that the phenomenon exists. I was 6 years old. I woke up (probably to get something to drink) and soon noticed a funny flying saucer amongst the clouds. It wasn’t big and was probably quite close. I still remember its colourful lights and distinct shape. It just hovered in mid-air and then flew away. I saw it very clearly but at that time I wasn’t a UFO expert and I just took it for a funny aircraft.  As an adult I also saw several interesting things as well as some phenomena that can be easily mistaken for UFOs. But the earliest sighting was the trigger for my interest in paranormal.

Piotr’s latest book, UFOs Over Poland (2016, Flying Disk Press), is available at Amazon.

RG: How long have you been involved in the UFO subject; roughly how many cases have you personally investigated; and what conclusions, if any, have you drawn about the underlying nature of UFO phenomena?

PC: I entered the UFO field in 2005, but it must be said that I’m more a journalist than ufologist, focussing on other “fringe phenomena” too. Since then I’ve interviewed many UFO witnesses. Some were interesting but the best part of it involved just lights/things in the sky. For me, the most interesting aspect of the phenomenon is the high strangeness. I think that cold analysis of those bizarre, grotesque and sometimes funny cases could tell us much more about the nature of real, paranormal UFOs than any military-funded projects. The biggest mystery of the phenomenon is the connection between those objects and human consciousness. But in my opinion there’s no simple answer to the question about nature of the phenomenon which is also probably evolving with us. UFO is just like a huge river consisting of various tributaries.

RG: How can Polish UFOlogy better itself?

PC: Very hard to say. UFOs are elusive and, in fact, all we can do is to describe and analyse their appearances the best we can. Polish ufology would be better if refrained from disinformation and bullshit, but the fact is that for decades we’ve dealt with the same theories and approaches. Ufology is in stagnation and it’s hard to say anything about the future.