The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
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Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
10-03-2024
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
The 63-page-long document is part of an investigation into U.S. government programs that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity.
No, the United States government does not have alien bodies hiding somewhere, nor has it ever tried to reverse-engineer flying saucers. Really.
That’s one of the main stances that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), an organization created in 2022 to resolve sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), asserts in a report published Friday.
UAP is the modern moniker for UFO. Intelligence officials avoided reusing the popular term because it’s too closely associated, nowadays, with little green men.
UAP refers to sightings from pilots and members of the military, who haven’t been able to explain why they’ve seen objects that appear to reject the laws of motion and physics. Many have been proven to be weather balloons and tricks of perception. Several, however, remain unexplained. That has given credence to people who believe the U.S. government is hiding aliens.
The 63-page-long document is the first volume in a series of investigations into U.S. government programs through history that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity. “Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” AARO officials wrote in an announcement published on Friday.
“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the statement says.
KONA BLUE NEVER EXISTED
The report makes several assertions, including a debunking of KONA BLUE.
KONA BLUE, as the report explains, was allegedly a top-secret program to investigate “human consciousness anomalies,” retrieve and exploit “non-human biologics,” and reverse engineer any alien craft they found.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract Performers,” the report authors emphasized.
As the authors do throughout the report, they take an instance of a program and explain where the pseudoscience claims may be emerging. In the case of KONA BLUE, the contract for a $22 million program, greenlit in 2008 to assess aerospace threats on the horizon — and which was never explicitly tasked with researching UFOs — was awarded to a private sector organization. But the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency canceled it in 2012, “due to lack of merit and the
utility of the deliverables,” though this didn’t stop non-government program advocates, who renamed the proposal as KONA BLUE, from seeking to investigate paranormal activity.
“KONA BLUE’s advocates were convinced that the USG [U.S. government] was hiding UAP technologies. They believed that creating this program under DHS would allow all of the technology and knowledge of these alleged programs to be moved under the KONA BLUE program,” according to the report.
This program was never rubber stamped, and as the report says, “was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
In the Friday announcement, AARO officials stipulate that they’ve approached their review of KONA BLUE and other topics “with the widest possible aperture,” that it is committed to reaching conclusions based on verifiable evidence, willing to “follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads.”
“To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress,” the report said.
Citing investigations that revealed most sightings to result from the “misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena,” the report acknowledged that “many UAP reports remain unsolved,” though adding that better data could lead to the resolution of some of the currently unresolved cases.
In advance of the report’s release, Tim Phillips, acting director of AARO on assignment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), provided a briefing to a limited number of reporters on Wednesday, where he discussed the new report and revealed details about a new system called “Gremlin” designed to acquire real-time data on UAP. The Debrief did not participate in Wednesday’s media briefing.
Following the release of the report, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said in an email to The Debrief that “AARO reviewed all official USG investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted dozens of interviews and site visits, and partnered with the Intelligence Community and DoD officials responsible for special access program oversight.”
“AARO created a secure process in partnership with the highest-level security officials within the DoD, IC, and other organizations to research and investigate these claims,” Gough said. “AARO was granted full, unrestricted access by all organizations.”
Major Jesse Marcel poses with mysterious wreckage associated with the purported crash of a flying saucer near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. AARO’s recent historical report says the incident involved a once-secret U.S. covert operation called Project Mogul, as determined by the USAF in the 1990s (Public Domain).
Although there were notable exceptions, most media coverage of the new AARO report focused almost entirely on the lack of evidence linking UAP sightings to extraterrestrial technologies, as well as the absence of classified programs involved in the recovery of crashed vehicles of non-human origin.
Also commanding media attention had been revelations involving the existence of a proposed program pitched to the Department of Homeland Security in the 2010s under the codename “Kona Blue,” which involved a prospective reverse engineering program for any extraterrestrial technologies acquired by the U.S. government.
According to the AARO report, Kona Blue had been proposed by former members of a DIA program called the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program (AAWSAP), whose personnel are identified in the report as some of the main proponents behind ongoing assertions involving secret U.S. government UAP programs.
The report says that AARO investigators found no evidence that extraterrestrial craft or their occupants had ever been acquired by the U.S. military and that Kona Blue was ultimately rejected by DHS leadership due to a lack of merit.
Friday’s report was met with significant criticism online following its release, with many arguing that its findings were invalid, while others expressed skepticism over its assertions that no evidence of cover-ups involving crashed UAP retrieval programs had been found.
The report’s findings appear to run in stark contrast to whistleblower allegations that first received widespread public attention last June, involving an official complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General by David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence officer whose duties included participation in the U.S. government’s investigations into UAP in recent years.
In January, Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Thomas Monheim spoke with members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a classified briefing on UAP, with some who attended claiming it left them with more questions than answers regarding ongoing claims of secret programs and exotic technologies.
Following the release of AARO’s report on Friday, amidst all the attention surrounding what AARO investigators did or did not find, and programs that were proposed but never came to fruition, few mainstream outlets discussed the numerous intriguing allusions to legitimate advanced capabilities the U.S. possesses that are peppered throughout the report—many of which, in likelihood, actually have contributed to UAP sightings over the years.
These seemingly went unnoticed, as well as several factual errors that appear throughout the new report that, for some, potentially undermine the level of rigor AARO appears to have applied in its investigations.
FACT-CHECKING AARO’S HISTORICAL REPORT
Among the many mistakes that appear in the new report, one of the most glaring appears in references to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his involvement in helping acquire funding for a controversial UAP investigative effort run out of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the early 2000s. The report refers to the Democrat Senator’s home state as being New Mexico, whereas Reid was a U.S. Senator from Nevada.
In another instance, a famous sighting reported by pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mount Rainer, Washington in the summer of 1947 is described as having taken place on “June 23,” one day earlier than Arnold’s sighting occurred.
The report similarly claims Arnold described the objects he observed as being “saucer-like aircraft”, although this now-famous characterization was only later applied by members of the media who, at the time, were referencing Arnold’s description of their movement resembling “saucers” skipping across water.
In yet another example, the AARO report repeatedly refers to a statistical analysis of sightings collected by the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book conducted by the Battelle Memorial Institute as “Project BEAR,” which had, in fact, only been a nickname given to the program by Blue Book’s original director, Edward J. Ruppelt. The project’s actual name—one that has now been known publicly for decades—was Project STORK.
“The name Project BEAR was an intentionally false name made by Edward Ruppelt,” wrote Robert Powell, an Executive Board Member with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, in a posting on X, “so as not to reveal the true name of the project.”
Powell also noted that the recent AARO report seemingly misstated the date of the Battelle project as having been issued in late 1954, whereas the date on the folder in the Air Force’s Project Blue Book files indicates a date of May 5, 1955.
Beyond mere problems with dates, AARO’s report makes further assertions that Battelle’s study, the results of which were published in a report titled Project Blue Book Special Report #14, “concluded that all cases that had enough data were resolved and readily explainable.” Quite the contrary, the study actually found that among the UFO sightings categorized within a reliability group of reports deemed “Excellent,” only 4.2% had “insufficient info,” whereas 33.3% of these cases remained “Unknown.”
In a posting on X, Marik von Rennenkampf, an analyst who worked with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, called the error “Blatantly, demonstrably false.”
INTRIGUING ACCOUNTS AND UNSOLVED CASES
Despite the number of factual errors that appear throughout the final AARO report, there are nonetheless a handful of intriguing references in it that appear to describe advanced U.S. technologies, although again, few of these have received significant attention in mainstream coverage.
In one example, which describes an individual’s account provided during an interview with AARO investigators, the report states that “AARO was able to correlate this account with an authentic USG program because the interviewee was able to provide a relatively precise time and location of the sighting which they observed exhibiting strange characteristics.”
Test flight during the 1970s of Lockheed’s then-secret Have Blue, the code name for its stealth fighter (Public Domain).
AARO concluded the technology mistaken for being an exotic UAP technology by the unnamed witness correlated with DoD tests “of a platform protected by a [Special Access Program]” occurring at roughly the same time. “The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform’s characteristics,” the AARO report’s authors state, “which was being tested at a military facility in the time frame the interviewee was there.”
“This program is not related in any way to the exploitation of off-world technology,” the report’s authors emphasize, offering no further details on the technology that is believed to have been mistaken for a test involving an exotic craft.
The report’s authors later add that “All the programs assessed to be authentic were or—if still active—continue to be, appropriately reported to either or both the congressional defense and intelligence committees.”
In another instance, material believed to have been retrieved from a UAP was subjected to analysis by the U.S. Army, with subsequent analysis conducted by AARO and “a leading science laboratory,” concluding that “the material is a metallic alloy, terrestrial in nature, and possibly of USAF origin, based on its materials characterization.”
Although most of AARO’s reported findings dismissed any verifiable connections to exotic craft or genuine unexplained phenomena, linking them instead to known U.S. government programs, there are a handful of incidents AARO said it was still investigating, which included a series of widely discussed UAP events that occurred at U.S. strategic sites during the 1960s and 1970s.
“AARO is researching U.S. and adversarial activity related to these events,” the report states, “including any U.S. programs that tested defensive ballistic missile capabilities.”
The report also maintains AARO’s past positions regarding the likelihood that prosaic explanations exist for the majority of UAP sightings, although its authors nonetheless acknowledge that there are still some cases the Pentagon’s UAP investigative office has been unable to solve.
“A small percentage of cases have potentially anomalous characteristics or concerning characteristics,” the report’s authors write. “AARO has kept Congress fully and currently informed of its findings. AARO’s research continues on these cases.”
Historic image of an A-12 test flight at Area 51 in 1962
(Public Domain).
QUESTIONS OF ACCESS AND ONGOING PROBLEMS
Last April, during a Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing led by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, then-Director of AARO, agreed when asked about AARO’s Title 50 accessibility by Senator Gillibrand that “having additional authorities for collection, tasking, counterintelligence… those are all things that would be helpful, yes.”
In the U.S., most activities conducted by the Intelligence Community, including covert action missions, foreign espionage, and other activities best suited for combating unconventional external threats, operate under what is known as Title 50 authority.
Although Dr. Kirkpatrick emphasized having “good relations” with other agencies during last April’s hearing, his statements gave the distinct impression that AARO had been operating solely under Title 10 authority for the duration of its mission at that time, which would seemingly place limitations on its ability to acquire information related to the Intelligence Community’s involvement with UAP investigations, including but not limited to exchanges of data and tasking collection assets.
Responding to questions from The Debrief, Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough clarified that AARO does have access to U.S. intelligence information that falls under Title 50 authority.
“There is no impediment to AARO receiving all UAP-related information, past or present, regardless of level or origin of classification,” Gough told The Debrief. “By law, AARO may receive all UAP-related information, at all levels of classification, regardless of whether the original classification authority for such information is within DoD or the Intelligence Community.”
Although AARO does appear to have access to all the intelligence on UAP that it required, contrary to what was conveyed during last April’s Senate hearing, the Pentagon nonetheless continues to face challenges in its collection and management of information about UAP.
Earlier this year, an unclassified summary of a DoD Inspector General report evaluating the Pentagon’s activities related to UAP was released, which argued that the DoD lacks any comprehensive, coordinated means by which it can currently address UAP. The report further argued that the DoD’s apparent lack of coordination on the UAP issue could pose a threat to U.S. military forces and, more broadly, to national security.
“We determined that the DoD has no overarching UAP policy,” a portion of the DoD Inspector General report read, “and, as a result, it lacks assurance that national security and flight safety threats to the United States from UAP have been identified and mitigated.”
In a statement on Friday following the new AARO historical report’s release, Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder said the second volume of AARO’s historical review will be forthcoming later this year.
“AARO will publish a second volume that will provide analysis of information acquired by AARO after Nov. 1, 2023, including information received via interviews with current and former U.S. government personnel who contacted AARO via the secure reporting mechanism on AARO’s website,” Ryder said.
“Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies, and the department thanks the contributing departments and agencies, as well as the interviewees who came forward with information,” Ryder added.
Massive explosion on Sun, enough energy to destroy a hundred planets 🪐 UFO Sighting News. 📰
Massive explosion on Sun, enough energy to destroy a hundred planets 🪐 UFO Sighting News. 📰
This explosion is so big that it could easily wipe out our planet and if we are in its line of fire then it will take a few days to get to Earth for us to know for sure, so lets hope if we are in the line of fire...that those egg heads at NASA will do their job for the first time in their life and tell the public whats about to hit. The fastest material from the sun could take 13-18 hours to hit Earth, the slower would take a few days.
UFO caught over Oklahoma City but Pentagon says UFOs and Aliens don't exist
UFO caught over Oklahoma City but Pentagon says UFOs and Aliens don't exist
A mysterious object and event was seen in the metro sky Monday night. NewsNation affiliate KFOR has been trying to track down where it came from. It is still a mystery. “What is that?” a voice can be heard on the video.
NewsNation special correspondent and investigative journalist Ross Coulthart joins "NewsNation Prime" with more about the Pentagon's highly anticipated UFO report that claims there is NO evidence of alien contact.
The report specifically addresses U.S. government investigations into sightings since 1945 and documents from secret government archives.
According to the Dailymail, the director of the Pentagon's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told reporters that AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology, read more...
However, the report's limited distribution to a select audience prior to its public release has faced scrutiny from other journalists and UFO researchers for its perceived lack of transparency.
In summary, despite the yet another Pentagon/AARO report, it's evident that the UFO/Alien cover-up persists.
The Enigmatic UFO Encounter: A Pilot’s Brush with the Unknown and the Men in Black
The Enigmatic UFO Encounter: A Pilot’s Brush with the Unknown and the Men in Black
In the annals of UFO lore, few incidents are as compelling as the experience of a captain who claimed a close encounter with an unidentified flying object. This intriguing event took place on December 5th, 1948, marking a significant chapter in the study of aerial phenomena and the mysterious figures known as the Men in Black.
The Encounter Above the Clouds
The incident began on a routine flight from Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. What was expected to be an uneventful journey soon turned into an extraordinary tale of mystery and intrigue. The captain reported seeing a “large ball of fire” darting across the sky. Initially dismissed as a meteor, the object’s subsequent actions defied all logical explanations. It maneuvered with astonishing agility, moving upwards and causing the captain to question the nature of what he was witnessing. This sighting was not isolated; a commercial airline pilot reported a similar encounter, describing a bright object that abruptly changed direction and accelerated away.
The Investigation by Unidentified Intelligence Officers
Following these sightings, both pilots were approached by intelligence officers. These individuals, who did not disclose their affiliations, conducted interviews with the pilots, diving deep into the details of their encounters. The presence of these enigmatic figures, often referred to as the Men in Black due to their attire, adds a layer of mystery to the incident. Their interest in the case suggests a level of concern or knowledge about UFOs that goes beyond public understanding.
The Legacy of the Encounter
The Idaho sighting of 1948 is more than just a tale of a pilot and an unexplained phenomenon. It represents a critical moment in the ongoing dialogue between humanity and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The involvement of the Men in Black in the aftermath of the sighting raises questions about the extent of government awareness and secrecy surrounding UFO phenomena.
Conclusion: Unanswered Questions and the Search for Truth
Decades have passed since the captain’s fateful encounter, yet the incident remains a topic of fascination and speculation. It serves as a reminder of the unexplained mysteries that persist in our skies and the lengths to which certain entities will go to investigate and perhaps conceal these phenomena. As we continue to explore the cosmos, both through technological advancements and through the study of reported encounters, the story of the captain and the Men in Black stands as a testament to the enduring human desire to understand the unknown.
VIDEO:
Captain Who Had A UFO Encounter Is Questioned By ‘Men In Black’ | UFO Witness
This incident encapsulates the intrigue and complexity of UFO sightings, blending eyewitness accounts with the shadowy involvement of intelligence officers. It underscores the ongoing quest for clarity in a realm that remains shrouded in secrecy and speculation.
Pentagon Report Rules Out UFO Cover-Up, But the Debate Goes On The Pentagon
References to an F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, shown here on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, were apparently misconstrued as a discussion about an encounter with alien technology, according to a newly released Pentagon report.
Pentagon Report Rules Out UFO Cover-Up, But the Debate Goes On
The Pentagon office in charge of investigating UFO reports — now known officially as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — today provided its most detailed explanation for what it said were false or misconstrued claims of alien visitations over the decades.
The first volume of a historical record report released by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, in response to a congressional mandate did include a fresh disclosure: During the 2010s, U.S. government officials considered a proposed program code-named “Kona Blue” that would have looked into the possibility that extraterrestrial technology could be reverse-engineered. But the Department of Homeland Security rejected the idea because it lacked merit, the report said.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers,” according to the report. The same assumptions were made by outside investigators who delved into UAP reports as part of an earlier Pentagon-funded program, AARO said.
One of the investigators involved in that program — which was known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program or the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AAWSAP/AATIP) — made clear that he’d continue trying to keep the alien angle in the public eye.
“Today the Pentagon and its current UAP investigative program, AARO, issued a public report that is intentionally dishonest, inaccurate and dangerously misleading,” Lue Elizondo, who helped spark renewed interest in UFO reports in 2017, said in a posting to X / Twitter. “Myself and others who are aware of the truth are going to keep working to help Congress in their efforts to achieve disclosure.”
But Mick West, a retired software engineer who specializes in analyzing UFO/UAP reports, said the newly released report shows how a belief in alien phenomena can be self-reinforcing. “A belief in the supernatural … is what led to the current UFO flap that AARO is trying to pour cold water on,” West said on X / Twitter.
The ups and downs of UFOs
The 63-page report traces government-funded efforts to investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects going back to before the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, which was the subject of a “Case Closed” report on the 50th anniversary in 1997. Pages and pages are devoted to recounting projects that are well-known to the UFO community, including Project Blue Book and the Condon Report.
AARO acknowledged that there was “about a 40-year gap” in official efforts to investigate UAP sightings after Project Blue Book was terminated in 1969. The efforts resumed in earnest in 2009, primarily due to the interest of the late Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who was Senate majority leader at the time.
For several years, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency funded the AAWSAP/AATIP’s investigation into anomalous sightings. The review of aerial sightings by military personnel was conducted by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, which was created by Nevada billionaire Robert Bigelow.
When the funding for AAWSAP/AATIP ended in 2012, some of the people who were associated with the project — including Elizondo — continued their work in other roles. They also unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Department of Homeland Security to set up the Kona Blue program.
It took until 2020 for the Department of Defense to get back into the business of official UFO/UAP investigations. A series of initiatives focused on the possibility that some anomalous sightings might be due to novel technologies developed by Russia or China that might pose a threat to national security. Perhaps the best-known sightings of that type were last year’s reports about a Chinese spy balloon that crossed the U.S. and was eventually shot down by an Air Force fighter jet.
Highlights from the UFO files
In its previous reports, AARO has said it found no evidence of extraterrestrial explanations for UAP sightings. Instead, the office has traced all but a few of the sightings to more mundane causes such as balloons, drones, aerial clutter and natural phenomena. It said that some of the alien claims misconstrued sensitive national security programs — and that a small number of sightings remained unexplained, but did not merit being considered evidence of extraterrestrial activity.
“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” the Pentagon’s press secretary, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said today in a statement about today’s report. “AARO assesses that all of the named and described alleged hidden UAP reverse-engineering programs provided by interviewees either do not exist; are misidentified authentic national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation; or resolve to a disestablished program.”
Today’s report addressed some oft-debated UAP cases:
One of the people interviewed by AARO claimed that a military officer explained in detail how he touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft. But the officer, now retired, recounted a story about touching an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter — and said that tale could have been misconstrued by the person who heard the story.
Another interviewee claimed that he witnessed what he believed to be the testing of extraterrestrial technology at a government facility. AARO said that “almost certainly was an observation of an authentic, non-UAP-related technology test that strongly correlated in time, location and description provided in the interviewee’s account.”
Yet another claim had to do with a metallic material that was reportedly tested by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. Some suggested that the material couldn’t be identified by scientists and might have had extraterrestrial origins. But the AARO said further tests found that the material was a “manufactured, terrestrial alloy and does not represent off-world technology or possess any exceptional qualities.” AARO said the sample is possibly of U.S. Air Force origin — and is primarily composed of magnesium, zinc and bismuth, plus trace elements including lead.
What’s next on the UAP frontier
AARO said that it’s continuing to investigate unresolved UAP cases. The historical review in today’s report takes the story only as far as last Oct. 31 — and information gathered since that time will be addressed in a second volume to come.
Today’s report notes that UAP investigations have been challenged by insufficient data and the limitations of sensor technologies. “In terms of military reporting the sensors on which UAP most frequently are captured are calibrated and optimized for combat,” AARO explained. “UAP are not routinely captured by exquisite, high-definition, multi-capability, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection platforms — a threshold which is often required to successfully resolve a case.”
To address that shortcoming, AARO is developing a new surveillance capability known as the Gremlin System, which should be able to track anomalous phenomena with hyperspectral imaging.
“We’re working with some of the government labs, such as the Department of Energy labs, and we have a great partner with Georgia Tech,” DefenseScoop quoted acting AARO Director Tim Phillips as saying. “And what we’re doing is developing a deployable, configurable sensor suite that we can put in Pelican cases.”
hillips said the portable kit is being tested in Texas and will enable long-term collection of hyperspectral data in the field.
There’s also a chance that Congress will schedule a sequel to last summer’s House subcommittee hearing on UAPs, during which witnesses claimed that the Pentagon knew more than it was telling lawmakers. Today’s AARO report said such claims were in large part “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.” But Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who was in on last year’s hearing, criticized the report in a posting to X / Twitter:
The Pentagon releases footage of unexplained UFOs spotted around the world - from a spherical object in the Middle East to a milk bottle-like item over the US
The Pentagon releases footage of unexplained UFOs spotted around the world - from a spherical object in the Middle East to a milk bottle-like item over the US
New Department of Defense website uploads UFO clips that it cannot explain
The Pentagon has long been secretive regarding what it knows about UFOs.
But that's all changing as the government department has added an incredible selection of videos to its dedicated UFO website.
The clips, some just a few seconds in length, show aerial phenomena that it cannot explain, in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
They include a spherical object over buildings in the Middle East, a milk bottle-like item over the US and the famous Tic Tac captured by the US Navy in 2004.
A Department of Defense document reveals characteristics of the typical UFO
This was one of the clips presented by AARO director Dr Sean Kirkpatrick to the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2023 – but the office thinks there is an innocent explanation.
'AARO assesses that the object likely is a commercial aircraft and that the trailing cavitation is a sensor artifact resultant of video compression ,' it says.
SPHERE #1
The next clip was taken by an MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle in the Middle East in July 2022.
The vehicle's camera is pointed down towards the ground, with buildings and people in view.
All of a sudden, an 'apparent silver, orb-like object' crosses the sensor’s field of view.
The MQ-9's camera detects the orb and tracks it as it flies in a north-easterly direction, seemingly quite close to the ground.
The office gives its verdict: 'While AARO assesses the object in the clip is not exhibiting anomalous behavior, the object remains unidentified.'
'This video is a representative example of many of the cases AARO receives where there is limited data surrounding the observation.'
UFO captured in the Middle East: Mote the 'orb-like object', spherical and a bit like a ball bearing, crossing the sensor’s field of view
SPHERE #2
This UFO, captured in an undisclosed location in 2021, shows a similar-looking sphere from the cockpit of a Navy fighter jet.
The jet is calmly flying through blue skies before the object suddenly bursts past the right of the cockpit.
The fleeting pass is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it event and leaves little time for interpretation of what it might be.
AARO says: 'This video, captured by the pilot in the cockpit of a Navy fighter jet, demonstrates the typical speed at which military aircraft may approach an unknown object.'
Sphere #2: This still is from the video of a US Naval aviator encounter with an unknown object (UAP) in a 'fleeting pass'
A bizarre face-shaped object changed colour while in the sky
TIC TAC
The original 'Tic Tac' is probably one of the most famous UFOs of them all.
Named due to its physical similarity to the oblong breath mint, it was captured in November 2004 by pilots aboard a US Navy fighter jet.
The pilots were conducting a routine training mission with the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off the Southern California coast when they noticed it.
The smooth, white oblong object flew at high speed over the water, maneuvering and accelerating in ways which seemed to defy the laws of physics.
'It appeared to respond in a way that we didn't recognise', Navy Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, one of those on board, told Reuters in 2021.
She added that it seemed to lack 'any visible flight control surfaces or means of propulsion'.
'We don't know what it was, but it could have been a natural phenomenon in human activity,' she said.
'But the point was that it was weird, and we couldn't recognise it.'
Other members of the public have since seen a Tic Tac-shaped UFOs in the sky, including people in the UK.
One of the most famous and unusual UFOs to date, spotted by the US Navy in 2004, was compared with the Tic Tac breath mint due to its white, oblong appearance (pictured)
MILK BOTTLE
This UFO, also captured by the US Navy, can only be described as looking like a 'milk bottle' or a bowling pin.
As the clip shows, Navy personnel have the object well under their sights as it moves serenely at an angle with the clouds underneath.
However, as it moves along, its shape appears to shift into a more of a saucer and its silhouette changes from white to black.
It's unclear when and where this clip was taken, although it's been on the internet since 2020 or potentially earlier before it was added to the AARO site.
MailOnline has contacted the AARO for more information.
This UFO, also captured by the US Navy, can only be described as looking like a 'milk bottle' or a bowling pin
However, as the mysterious object moves, its shape appears to shift into a more of a saucer
FAST SPECK
Little is known about the last clip, which shows a tiny speck of white travelling fast across choppy waters in an undisclosed location.
It was taken by crew aboard a US Navy F/A-18 jet who laugh and shout in amazement when the system's trackers focus in on it.
One crew member says: 'What the f*** is that?'
UFO stands for 'unidentified flying object' and so the term doesn't necessarily describe an object with an extraterrestrial origin.
This means there could be an innocent explanation for all the objects in these videos.
The world's UFO hotspots are revealed - as Pentagon admits hundreds of objects have been spotted 'all over the world'
The US government is notoriously secretive when it comes to sharing what it knows about extraterrestrial life.
But in a possible bid for transparency, the Department of Defense has released a new document disclosing the 'world's UFO hotspots'.
It includes a map disclosing where the most sightings of unidentified objects have been recorded, based on reports between 1996 and 2023.
The map discloses where the most sightings have been recorded based on reports between 1996 and 2023 - naming Japan and the coasts of the US as particular hotspots
Among them Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, the east and west coasts of the US including California, as well as parts of the Middle East.
We are back! Open Minds UFO Radio is now Open Minds UAP News. It has been a wild ride the last few years for those interested in UFOs, or UAP? In this episode, we will talk about the difference. Despite the government finally coming out and admitting UAP demonstrates a potential threat that should be taken seriously, UFO researchers seem to be unhappy with anything the Pentagon or NASA does or says. Meanwhile, the UFO crowd feels all of the work that’s been done to get us to a place where the issue is taken seriously, is being dismissed, and that the mainstream community still has an overall dismissive attitude. We’ll talk about how we got to this place of stagnation, the players (The Pentagon, Congress, NASA, and the UFO Community) and their current positions, and how we’ll be moving things forward…together.
PLUS…COOL ENIGMA LABS UAP VIDEO Link to Enigma Labs UAP:
I'm sure I'm not alone here. Others must be seeing this in the news media across the globe. 95% of all UFO media articles are now about how the US gov says "UFO evidence," is actually wrong. That they are pushing an anti campaign of mental manipulation of the public in order to control their desire for the truth. This is something the US think tank must have come up with and yes, it always works to a high degree. Now that they are using social media, their efforts are now 1000X stronger with 10,000X more reach. This will intimidate actual eyewitnesses into not reporting what they saw and recorded.
Its basically the same as the 1950s repeating itself all over again, with claims that something seen is a weather balloon, Venus, Jupiter and oh...this is a new one...a truck in the middle of the ocean...never heard that one until today.
Just saying, don't allow the gov to manipulate you. Think for yourself.
Five Transformative Theories on Extraterrestrial Existence
Five Transformative Theories on Extraterrestrial Existence
In the vast expanse of the universe, humanity stands on the brink of the unknown, perpetually curious about what lies beyond the stars. The concept of alien life forms and their potential visitations to Earth has been a source of fascination and debate for centuries. As we gaze up at the night sky, numerous theories circulate, offering speculative insights into the nature of extraterrestrial beings and their interactions with our world. Here, we explore five transformative theories that challenge our understanding of the cosmos and our place within it.
1. Visitors from Antiquity
One of the most compelling theories posits that extraterrestrials have not only visited Earth but did so in the distant past. Advocates of this theory point to ancient artifacts, monumental structures, and millennia-old texts as potential evidence of alien influence. Could the architectural wonders of ancient civilizations, from the majestic pyramids of Egypt to the intricate Nazca Lines, be remnants of extraterrestrial contact? This theory suggests that early humans may have encountered these cosmic visitors, immortalizing them as deities in their cultures and religions.
2. Earth: A Cosmic Exhibit
Imagine a universe where advanced civilizations quietly observe us, akin to spectators at a zoo. The Zoo Hypothesis presents a scenario where alien life forms are aware of our existence but choose to remain unseen, allowing humanity to evolve without interference. This galactic non-intervention policy posits that Earth and its inhabitants are part of a vast, uncontacted nature reserve, watched over by extraterrestrial beings who ensure our natural development.
3. Navigating the Great Filter
The silence of the cosmos, as highlighted by the Fermi Paradox, raises an intriguing question: where are all the aliens? The Great Filter theory offers a possible explanation, suggesting a critical developmental stage that few, if any, civilizations surpass. This filter could represent a technological, environmental, or social challenge insurmountable for most. Are we approaching this filter, or have we unknowingly passed it, making us one of the rare exceptions in the galaxy?
4. Beyond the Bounds of Our Dimension
Rather than traversing vast interstellar distances, could extraterrestrials be visiting us from adjacent dimensions? This theory proposes that what we perceive as aliens might be beings capable of moving between dimensions, explaining their elusive presence and sudden appearances. Such a concept expands our understanding of the universe, suggesting that it comprises more than just the three-dimensional space we inhabit.
5. The Legacy of Artificial Intelligence
In a universe teeming with mysteries, another theory speculates on the nature of potential extraterrestrial visitors. Could the entities exploring our galaxy and possibly making contact with us be not organic life forms but advanced artificial intelligences? These AIs, survivors of civilizations that have long since vanished, might roam the cosmos, carrying the knowledge and ambitions of their creators. This theory prompts us to reconsider our definitions of life and consciousness, highlighting the potential for non-biological entities to exist and explore the universe.
As we continue to search the skies and delve deeper into the mysteries of the universe, these theories serve as a testament to human curiosity and our endless quest for understanding. Whether any of these theories hold the key to unlocking the secrets of extraterrestrial life remains to be seen. Yet, they undoubtedly enrich our imaginations and expand our perception of the possible, reminding us that in the grand tapestry of the cosmos, we may not be alone.
The report — which came in classified and unclassified formats, with the latter now available to the public online — claims that the office found 'no verifiable evidence that any UAP [i.e. UFO] sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.'
The UFO office, which did not enjoy subpoena power for its inquiries, reported that c-suite executives at US defense contractors 'denied the existence' of any top secret UFO crash retrieval programs 'on the record.'
But it did reveal at least one proposed top secret project, dubbed 'Kona Blue,' reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the 2010s, and pitched as an effort to reverse-engineer hypothetically recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft.
'AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology,' Phillips told select reporters in a closed setting.
But in the past week, the exclusive, invite-only nature of the report's pre-release has been criticized by other journalists and UFO researchers for its lack of transparency.
The Pentagon 's embattled, but official, UFO investigations office released it's Congressionally mandated report on 'historic' UFO cases dating back to 1945, Friday. Above, the office's first-ever director, former CIA laser physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, who retired this December
But whistleblowers with knowledge of a classified UFO 'reverse engineering' program have opted to testify to the Senate intelligence committee, in part over their reported mistrust of Dr. Kirkpatrick and his Pentagon UFO office. Above, a page from Project 1794 declassified in 2012
'They've pledged openness and transparency to Congress on the subject of UAPs, but they're not following through on their actions,' said NewsNation correspondent Ross Coulthart, who secured the first televised interview with Grusch last summer.
UAP, short for 'unidentified anomalous phenomena,' has become the term of art for UFOs in recent years, deployed by Pentagon brass, NASA experts and academics.
The Pentagon, he said, is 'trying to constrain what people are allowed to know.'
Tim Phillips (above), current acting director of the Pentagon 's UFO-hunting All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told press his office's new report casts doubt on the public testimony of UFO whistleblowers
But privileged reporters for the New York Times, the Washington Post and other hand-picked outlets were treated to news about Kona Blue, an aborted secret government proposal to reverse engineer UFOs.
That effort, apparently spearheaded by members of a previous Defense Intelligence Agency effort that investigated UFO cases from 2007-2012, according to AARO's acting director Phillips, never got off the ground.
'It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected,' Phillips noted, according to ABC News, speaking on the 'Kona Blue' UFO plans.
'This material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers,' he clarified.
The 'Kona Blue' proposal, according to Phillips, was rejected by DHS leaders 'for lacking merit.' No other-worldly craft, he said, were recovered by the planned effort.
The new Pentagon report also detailed over two dozen once top secret programs and less secret US space programs that 'most likely accounted for some portion of UAP sightings.'
The list included everything from NASA's Apollo missions to Lockheed Martin's 'Have Blue,' its early proof-of-concept for the angular, futuristic stealth fighter, the F-117.
Best moments from new UFO government file release
A months-long tease has preceded AARO's 'Historical Record Report' on UFOs since the retirement of the office's first-ever director, former CIA laser physicist Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, last December.
Dr. Kirkpatrick appeared on CNN analyst Peter Bergen's podcast, 'In the Room,' late last January, revealing that his office intended to double-down on the Air Force's evidence-poor explanation for the infamous Roswell UFO case of 1947.
In fact, multiple ex-NASA scientists, as well as former US Air Force personnel, including the Air Force Colonel who authored the Pentagon's official 1994 Roswell report have cast doubt the 'Project Mogul spy balloon' explanation that Dr. Kirkpatrick and his AARO successors still maintain is correct.
In its official report today, AARO wrote of the Roswell UFO case: 'The materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul.'
Dr. Kirkpatrick's successor, acting director Phillips described Friday's release of AARO's historical review as the most comprehensive government-wide investigation of US government UFO records, classified and unclassified, ever conducted.
But critics of AARO have long maintained that the office has lost the trust of past and present government officials, military personnel and US defense contractors with any knowledge of the alleged top secret UFO crash retrieval programs.
On page 715 of the Air Force's 881-page report on the Roswell crash, a transcribed journal entry by Project Mogul's Field Operations Director, geophysicist Dr. Albert Crary, states that the key scheduled balloon launch never took place - and thus couldn't be confused for a UFO
Above,documents from Project 1794: a Cold War-era US Air Force effort to build a supersonic flying saucer in collaboration with a Canadian defense contractor
Prior to Grusch's sworn Congressional testimony last summer, which covered his UFO program knowledge, other ex-Pentagon officials came forward to corroborate his claims.
Chris Mellon, a former official with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and an advocate for increased government diligence and transparency on UFOs, told NewsNation's Chris Cuomo, that similar information had been revealed to him.
'I've been told that we have recovered technology that did not originate on this Earth,' Mellon told NewsNation, 'by officials in the Department of Defense and by former intelligence officials.'
This summer, Dr. Kirkpatrick called Grusch's congressional testimony on a hidden and illegal UFO crash retrieval program, delivered under oath, 'insulting [...] to the officers of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.'
The public sparring between Grusch and Dr. Kirkpatrick has left other sources with firsthand testimony on purported top secret UFO programs skittish about delivering what they know to AARO, sources told DailyMail.com last year.
US Customs and Border Patrol, the agency responsible for keeping terrorists and weapons out of the country, uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies. The videos document a fighter jet pursued by an apparently baffling flying orb, as well as something that appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider, and another apparent orb hovering near a parked 16-wheeler truck
As Daniel Sheehan, the Harvard-trained lawyer who represented past UFO whistleblower Luis Elizondo in his formal complaint to the DoD's Inspector General, explained: 'What they were doing is they were going straight through to the Senate Intelligence Committee.'
'That's where the queue is forming of people who have real direct immediate knowledge — and Dave Grusch is in communication with these people, and our people are in communication with these people.'
'None of the whistleblowers want to go in there,' Sheehan told DailyMail.com last year, 'because they don't view it as stable or safe.'
Sheehan, whose history litigating progressive civil rights law cases dates back to the Vietnam War-era 'Pentagon Papers,' is now chief counsel, president and co-founder of the New Paradigm Institute.
The institute, a branch of the 501(C)(3) nonprofit Romero Institute, describes itself as dedicated to public policy advocacy on 'societal, environmental, and cosmic objectives,' which presumably includes UAP transparency.
In the unclassified version of AARO's new UFO report — technically titled 'Historical Record Report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume One' — the office concluded that many sincere UFO whistleblowers had simply become confused.
In some cases, the report argued, defense personnel had misidentified genuine top secret programs involving advanced, but all too terrestrial, aerospace hardware.
'AARO concludes many of these programs represent authentic, current and former sensitive, national security programs,' the report reads.
'But none of these programs have been involved with capturing, recovering, or reverse-engineering off-world technology or material.'
This is a developing story and will be updated throughout the day.
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
KONA BLUE: Top-Secret Government Program To Investigate “Human Consciousness Anomalies” Doesn’t Exist, New Report Says
The 63-page-long document is part of an investigation into U.S. government programs that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity.
No, the United States government does not have alien bodies hiding somewhere, nor has it ever tried to reverse-engineer flying saucers. Really.
That’s one of the main stances that the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), an organization created in 2022 to resolve sightings of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), asserts in a report published Friday.
UAP is the modern moniker for UFO. Intelligence officials avoided reusing the popular term because it’s too closely associated, nowadays, with little green men.
UAP refers to sightings from pilots and members of the military, who haven’t been able to explain why they’ve seen objects that appear to reject the laws of motion and physics. Many have been proven to be weather balloons and tricks of perception. Several, however, remain unexplained. That has given credence to people who believe the U.S. government is hiding aliens.
The 63-page-long document is the first volume in a series of investigations into U.S. government programs through history that have been a springboard for alleged paranormal-related activity. “Analyzing and understanding the historical record on UAP is an ongoing collaborative effort involving many departments and agencies,” AARO officials wrote in an announcement published on Friday.
“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” the statement says.
KONA BLUE NEVER EXISTED
The report makes several assertions, including a debunking of KONA BLUE.
KONA BLUE, as the report explains, was allegedly a top-secret program to investigate “human consciousness anomalies,” retrieve and exploit “non-human biologics,” and reverse engineer any alien craft they found.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by KONA BLUE advocates and its anticipated contract Performers,” the report authors emphasized.
As the authors do throughout the report, they take an instance of a program and explain where the pseudoscience claims may be emerging. In the case of KONA BLUE, the contract for a $22 million program, greenlit in 2008 to assess aerospace threats on the horizon — and which was never explicitly tasked with researching UFOs — was awarded to a private sector organization. But the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency canceled it in 2012, “due to lack of merit and the
utility of the deliverables,” though this didn’t stop non-government program advocates, who renamed the proposal as KONA BLUE, from seeking to investigate paranormal activity.
“KONA BLUE’s advocates were convinced that the USG [U.S. government] was hiding UAP technologies. They believed that creating this program under DHS would allow all of the technology and knowledge of these alleged programs to be moved under the KONA BLUE program,” according to the report.
This program was never rubber stamped, and as the report says, “was never approved or stood up, and no data or material was transferred to DHS [Department of Homeland Security].”
In the Friday announcement, AARO officials stipulate that they’ve approached their review of KONA BLUE and other topics “with the widest possible aperture,” that it is committed to reaching conclusions based on verifiable evidence, willing to “follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads.”
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification."
A sign in Roswell, New Mexico advertising a UFO crash site.
(Image credit: Getty Images/David Zaitz)
The Pentagon's UFO office has once again stressed that it has found no evidence of alien technology in the skies, in space or crashed in the American desert.
The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was created to help the U.S. government study and resolve reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), a new term that includes UFOs not only in the sky but also in space as well as under water, or even those that appear to travel between these domains.
On Friday (March 8), the office released its long-awaited "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume I." The report is sure to cause controversy among the UAP disclosure movement that argues the U.S. government does, in fact, know a lot more about alleged alien presence than it publicly admits.
"AARO found no evidence that any USG [U.S. government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology," the report's executive summary notes.
While the report notes, importantly, that many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, it adds that AARO believes this is mainly due to a lack of data. If more and/or better quality information were available, many of these sightings could be identified as "ordinary objects or phenomena," AARO's report states.
"The vast majority of reports almost certainly are the result of misidentification and a direct consequence of the lack of domain awareness; there is a direct correlation between the amount and quality of available information on a case with the ability to conclusively resolve it," AARO writes.
NASA's UAP study team reached similar conclusions in its first public report, which was published in September 2023. "The NASA independent study team did not find any evidence that UAP have an extraterrestrial origin, but we don't know what these UAP are," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the time.
AARO's report goes on to state that, despite widely publicized claims made in a July 2023 congressional hearing that included testimony from former U.S. military and intelligence community personnel, the office found no evidence suggesting the U.S. government is in possession of crashed or reverse-engineered alien technology, nor that any hidden "UAP reverse-engineering programs" actually exist, either in the U.S. government or in private industry.
"AARO determined, based on all information provided to date, that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents allegedly involved in or related to the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology, are inaccurate," the report states. These claims are mostly "the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence," it adds.
David Grusch, former National Reconnaissance Office representative on the Defense Department's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, testifies during the House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency," in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. (Image credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of AARO, published an op-ed in Scientific American on Thursday (March 7) arguing that while it is important for the U.S. government to study UFOs, it needs to do so from a scientific perspective and without resorting to conspiracy theories.
"Many outside observers nonetheless have criticized AARO as supposedly part of a continuing government cover-up of the existence of aliens," Kirkpatrick wrote in the op-ed. "Interestingly, they have not provided any verifiable evidence of this, nor are some of the more outspoken willing to engage with the office to discuss their positions or offer up the data and evidence they claim to possess."
Instead, Kirkpatrick wrote, these critics have relied on secondhand reporting without "rigor in their critical thinking."
The former AARO chief conceded that the report's conclusions are sure to be criticized by those who believe the Pentagon and private aerospace companies possess crashed alien technology that they are hiding from the public, but notes that his former office has given every opportunity for witnesses and whistleblowers to come forward with any evidence they might have.
"While those who came forward have provided valuable information (albeit not of extraterrestrials or cover-ups), those who chose to instead titillate the national interest only stir division and hatred against the credible men and women of AARO who are working faithfully to address this mission," Kirkpatrick wrote in the op-ed.
However, according to some accounts, many U.S. government or military personnel who refused to share their eyewitness testimony with AARO.
"This report is not going to satisfy critics in part because there are many witnesses who did not trust AARO and would not speak with them," says Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and Bush administrations.
"However, what I find most concerning is the false conflation in some news coverage of the assertion 'There is no recovered alien technology' with the notion that 'we don't have evidence of craft doing things beyond our present understanding of science and technology,'" Mellon told Space.com via email. "In fact, hundreds of credible military reports remain unexplained and are continuing to pour in."
Mellon added that "the public needs to understand why it is imperative to continue to aggressively investigating UAP, for both national security and science, regardless of the accuracy of this report."
A guard gate at the Nevada Test and Training Range that includes the Area 51 test facility near Rachel, Nevada. (Image credit: Barry King/WireImage/Getty Images)
AARO's new report goes on to list U.S. military and space programs that could have accounted for some UAP sightings. At least "some portion of these misidentifications almost certainly were a result of the surge in new technologies that observers would have understandably reported as UFOs," the report states.
Some of the examples include Project Mogul, a high-altitude balloon program designed to spy on Soviet nuclear tests that reportedly was responsible for a balloon crash outside of Roswell, New Mexico. That incident led to the widely known story of a crashed flying saucer that persists to this day.
Another example is the Gambit project, which launched photographic spy satellites into orbit that jettisoned film canisters in reentry vehicles that were then recovered by U.S. Air Force (USAF) aircraft as they descended by parachute. Many of the USAF's formerly classified aircraft are also cited, including the U-2 spy plane, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber and the SR-71 Blackbird.
The AARO report points out that UAP sightings and beliefs that UFOs represent alien technology have tended to spike at times of growing concern about national security and technological surprise, such as during the Cold War. The report found that at least some UFO sightings since the 1940s represent "never-before-seen experimental and operational space, rocket and air systems, including stealth technologies and the proliferation of drone platforms."
"It is understandable how observers unfamiliar with these programs could mistake sightings of these new technologies as something extraordinary, even other-worldly," the report concludes.
Update: This article was updated at 3:30 p.m. ET on March 8 to include comments from former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon.
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WASHINGTON (AP) - A Pentagon study released Friday that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades.
The study from the Defense Department´s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office analyzed U.S. government investigations since 1945 of reported sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena, more popularly known as UFOs. It found no evidence that any of them involved signs of alien life, or that the U.S. government and private companies had reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology and had conspired to hide it from the public.
It dispelled claims, for instance, that a former CIA official had been involved in managing the movement of and experimentation on extraterrestrial technology and said a purported 1961 intelligence community document about the supposed extraterrestrial nature of UFOs was actually inauthentic.
"All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification," said the report, which was mandated by Congress. Another volume of the report will be out later.
U.S. officials have endeavored to find answers to legions of reported UFO sightings over the years, but so far have not identified any actual evidence of extraterrestrial life. A 2021 government report that reviewed 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories found no extraterrestrial links but drew few other conclusions and called for better data collection.
The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims, and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects - the same one that released Friday's report - had received "several hundreds" of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life.
FILE - The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One as it flies over Washington, March 2, 2022. A new Pentagon study that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century has found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence. That conclusion is consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades.
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The authors of Friday's report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public's imagination.
"AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information," the report said.
"The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic, and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population," it added.
Archaeologists have dated an assemblage of ancient stone tools excavated from the archaeological site of Korolevo on the Tysa River in western Ukraine at 1.42 million years old. As such, these artifacts — which are associated with Homo erectus — provide the earliest evidence of hominins in Europe and support the hypothesis that the continent was colonized from the east.
A stone tool from Korolevo I, Ukraine.
Image credit: Garba et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
“To the east of Europe stands the key site of Dmanisi, Georgia, where layers containing hominin skull remains and stone tools are dated securely to around 1.85-1.78 million years,” said first author Dr. Roman Garba, an archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology and the Nuclear Physics Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues.
“A trail from Africa to Dmanisi via the Levantine corridor accords with the Mode-1 stone artifacts documented in Jordan’s Zarqa Valley, as early as around 2.5 million years ago.
“The earliest precisely dated evidence of humans in Europe occurs at two southwestern sites: Atapuerca, Spain, where the oldest human fossils at Sima del Elefante are reported at around 1.2-1.1 million years; and Vallonnet Cave, southern France, where stone artifacts are constrained to around 1.2-1.1 million years.”
“However, the vast spatial and temporal gap that separates the Caucasus and southwestern Europe leaves key aspects of the first human dispersal into Europe largely unresolved.”
The Korolevo site was first discovered by the Ukrainian archaeologist Vladyslav Gladylin in 1974.
It lies close to where the Tysa River — a tributary of the Danube — leaves the eastern Carpathian Mountains and spreads southwestward across the Pannonian Plain.
“We know that the layer of accumulated loess and paleosol here is up to 14 m deep and contains thousands of stone artifacts. Korolevo was an important source of raw material for their production,” said co-author Dr. Vitalii Usyk, an archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
“We identified seven periods of human occupation in the stratigraphic layers, although at least nine different Paleolithic cultures were recorded at the locality: hominins lived here from 1.4 million years ago to about 30,000 years ago.”
Selected stone tools from Korolevo I, Ukraine: (a) chopper core; (b) flake with bifacial treatment; (c) multi-platform core; (d) Kombewa flake; (e) flake with parallel scar pattern. Scale bars – 3 cm.
Image credit: Garba et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
The Korolevo stone tools were made in the Oldowan style, the most primitive form of tool-making.
“We applied two complementary dating approaches to calculate the age from the measured concentrations of cosmogenic beryllium-10 and aluminum-26,” said senior author Dr. John Jansen, a researcher with the Institute of Geophysics at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
“But the most precise age came from our own method based on mathematical modeling, known as P-PINI.”
“This study is the first time our new dating approach has been applied in archaeology.”
“I expect our new dating approach will have a major impact on archaeology because it can be applied to sedimentary deposits that are highly fragmented, meaning there are lots of erosional gaps.”
“In archaeology we nearly always find fragmented records, whereas the traditional long-range dating method, magnetostratigraphy, relies on more continuous records.”
First peopling of Europe: (a) archaeological sites and dispersal routes noted in the text; the maximum extent of the Eurasian ice sheets is indicated with gray dashes; blue arrows indicate possible early human dispersal routes; (b) Korolevo I, Gostry Verkh, viewed from the Beyvar hill with excavation XIII (red box), Ukraine.
Image credit: Garba et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3.
According to the team, the Korolevo site is the northernmost known presence of Homo erectus.
“The radiometric dating of the first human presence at the Korolevo site not only fills in a large spatial gap between the Dmanisi site and the Atapuerca site, but also confirms the hypothesis that the first pulse of hominin dispersal into Europe came from the east or southeast,” Dr. Garba said.
“Based on a climate model and field pollen data, we have identified three possible interglacial warm periods when the first hominins could have reached Korolevo following most likely the Danube River migration corridor.”
A paper on the findings was published in the journal Nature.
R. Garba et al. East-to-west human dispersal into Europe 1.4 million years ago. Nature, published online March 6, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07151-3
Coulthart Exposes Pentagon’s Selective Silence on UFOs
Coulthart Exposes Pentagon’s Selective Silence on UFOs
In an evolving narrative that intertwines government secrecy with journalistic integrity, the Pentagon’s approach to disseminating information on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) has raised eyebrows and sparked debate. At the heart of this discourse is Ross Coulthart, a seasoned investigative journalist and special correspondent for NewsNation, who has voiced concerns over what he perceives as the Pentagon’s efforts to steer the conversation on UFOs through a strategy of selective briefing.
Coulthart’s analysis points to a deliberate choice by the Pentagon to invite a restricted group of journalists to attend briefings on UAPs, a decision that, according to him, aims to curate the narrative that reaches the public. This method of information dissemination, Coulthart argues, effectively sidelines reporters who are known for their probing inquiries and refusal to shy away from tough questions. The implication is that by controlling the media presence at these briefings, the Pentagon can ensure that the narrative remains favorable or, at the very least, non-confrontational.
The backdrop to Coulthart’s critique is his own pioneering work in the realm of UAP reporting. It was Coulthart’s interviews with whistleblowers and his investigative efforts that catalyzed a broader public discussion on UFOs, ultimately leading to congressional hearings and the introduction of legislation aimed at enhancing transparency regarding UAPs. Despite this significant contribution, NewsNation found itself excluded from a recent Pentagon briefing on the subject, a move that Coulthart and others view as a snub that speaks volumes about the Pentagon’s desire to control the flow of information.
Coulthart’s concerns extend beyond the realm of personal grievance. He sees the Pentagon’s selective briefing strategy as symptomatic of a larger issue — an attempt to quell public curiosity and skepticism through media manipulation. This, he warns, could have the opposite effect, fueling suspicion and distrust among the public towards the Department of Defense and the intelligence community at large. The core of Coulthart’s critique lies in the belief that transparency and open dialogue are paramount, especially on matters of significant public interest like UAPs.
Through Coulthart’s lens, the Pentagon’s approach is not just about UFOs; it’s about the broader principles of accountability, transparency, and the public’s right to know. His experience underscores the challenges journalists face in piercing the veil of government secrecy, reminding us of the vital role investigative journalism plays in a healthy democracy. As the conversation on UAPs continues to evolve, Coulthart’s voice serves as a critical reminder of the need for vigilance in the pursuit of truth, encouraging both the public and the press to question, explore, and demand transparency in all matters of national interest.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 74 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
Op deze blog vind je onder artikels, werk van mezelf. Mijn dank gaat ook naar André, Ingrid, Oliver, Paul, Vincent, Georges Filer en MUFON voor de bijdragen voor de verschillende categorieën...
Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
