UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Documents released by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) have revealed new details about incidents involving the unauthorized operation of unmanned aerial systems near American nuclear sites and sightings of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

The documents, comprised mainly of Operations Reports filed by the Protective Force Division of the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), involve suspected unauthorized drone incidents near Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and other DOE facilities that occurred between May 2018 and April 2021, along with a series of correspondences that include historical references to UAP observations and related subjects.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

(Credit: LLNL/Public Domain)

A semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE), the NNSA is responsible for maintaining the security of the U.S.’s nuclear weapons and responding to nuclear emergencies, along with providing the U.S. Navy with nuclear propulsion and maintaining the safety of its reactors.

According to the DOE documents, Site 300, an experimental site 15 miles east of LLNL’s main site used in the testing of high-explosives and materials to aid research into the development of nuclear weapons, was the location of several of the recent UAS incidents.

The documents were included on a page that also included links to other U.S. government resources related to UAP that appeared on the DOE’s website in late September 2023.

UNAUTHORIZED DRONE ACTIVITY OVER NUCLEAR SITES

One Operations Report filed in September 2021 describes an incident that occurred on the morning of April 1 of that year, where an LLNL employee reported seeing a suspected drone operating over the facility.

“At approximately 0635 hours I was driving on West Perimeter Drive and noticed a possible drone hovering 50-75 feet off the ground in the buffer zone,” a portion of a witness statement included in the report reads. “Due to the darkness I only saw the red and white lights.” The employee notified the Central Alarm Station following the observation, but no security camera footage or other corroborating evidence for the sighting could be found.

A similar incident that occurred at LLNL on July 22, 2020, described a “white fixed wing drone flying over at approximately 100 feet above building 271 heading west bound.” The aircraft was monitored until it left the area, after which Oakland Flight Standards District Office, the FAA, and other regional authorities were notified.

Another Operations Report describing events that occurred in the early morning hours of October 18, 2019, describes a sighting of a UAS with “two red lights and one white light” believed to be equipped with a camera that was observed by an LLNL Site 300 Maintenance Mechanic. The object passed between 20 and 30 feet above the employee’s vehicle, and despite the close distance, no identifying marks could be seen on the UAS.

Another incident involving a possible drone observed near Site 300 was also reported on July 3 of that year, which followed a June 24, 2019 incident involving a “four rotor propeller drone” with blue and red lights observed 40 feet above building 583 that “appeared to be recording.”

RESTRICTION OF DRONE FLIGHTS OVER U.S. NUCLEAR FACILITIES

In the U.S., drone flights over designated national security sensitive facilities is prohibited.

On December 18, 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) first announced that it would begin restricting drone flights up to 400 feet within the lateral boundaries of several U.S. Department of Energy facilities.

Although Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was not among the sites listed by the FAA at that time, a joint announcement by the FAA and the DOE later that month restricted drone flights above all DOE facilities, which includes the agency’s nuclear assembly facilities, laboratories, and research centers.

Despite the FAA restrictions, FOIA documents later obtained by researcher Douglas D. Johnson revealed sightings of swarms of large drones that were observed on September 29, 2019, at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Maricopa County, Arizona. Subsequent FOIA documents Johnson obtained revealed additional incidents that occurred at a total of 24 nuclear sites, involving 57 drone incursions reported between 2015 and 2019.

suspicious drones

(Image Source: Stock Image)

Although the FAA had already issued a Notice to Airmen as early as 2004 advising pilots to avoid airspace over nuclear power plants (with later updated versions also extended to include drone operations), in late 2019 ongoing drone incidents over nuclear facilities prompted the nuclear industry to begin working with the FAA and the DOE to try to impose formal flight restrictions over nuclear power plants.

A classified technical analysis produced jointly by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Sandia National Laboratory in October 2019 found that nuclear power plants in the U.S. did not appear to possess any significant vulnerabilities that were believed to be exploitable by foreign adversaries employing drones near such facilities (an unclassified summary of that analysis can be found here). The assessment also concluded that the NRC’s design-basis threat, which the agency employs “as a basis for designing safeguards systems to protect against acts of radiological sabotage and to prevent the theft of special nuclear material,” already accounts for the potential of information that may be obtained through aerial surveillance using drones.

In July 2020, an incident involving a modified unmanned aircraft that crashed near a Pennsylvania power substation was determined to have been intended as an attempt to disable or disrupt the facility’s electrical equipment, according to a federal law enforcement memorandum.

Similar incidents involving sightings of drones near nuclear facilities have been reported in other countries around the world as well. In January 2022, sightings of unidentified drones were reported near several nuclear power facilities in Sweden, giving rise to speculations that Russia may have been behind the incidents.

METALLIC SPHERES, THE DOE, AND AARO

Arguably one of the more intriguing incidents logged in the recent Operations Reports released by the DOE occurred on April 30, 2019, involving an observation of a “drone like object” over LLNL described as a “round silver drone flying around the Process Area and periodically stopping and hovering for several seconds.” The object then moved toward the north, stopping and hovering again for a short period.

“It flew over [the] area for several minutes and departed south east [sic]. It was really high up and it looked like it was just under the clouds,” the observer’s report states.

Senate hearing on UAP and AARO

Diagram presented by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick during April’s Senate hearing on UAP detailing common characteristics attributed to UAP

(Credit: DOD/AARO).

During an April 2023 Senate hearing, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of the DoD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), acknowledged that more than half of all UAP reports collected by his Office involved observations of objects characterized as orbs or round/spherical objects possessing white, silver, or translucent coloration. Other typical characteristics of UAP in reports collected by AARO include a size range of 1-4 meters, movement at speeds of up to Mach 2, no evidence of propulsion, and intermittent signature detectability.

“That’s what we’re looking for and trying to understand what that is,” Kirkpatrick said during the hearing, just before sharing a short video obtained by an MQ-9 Reaper Drone operating over the Middle East in 2022 featuring a flying object resembling a metallic sphere. A briefing slide that accompanied the footage characterized the object as “consistent with other ‘metallic orb’ observations in the region,” adding that the object presented “No demonstration of enigmatic technical capabilities and no apparent threat to airborne-asset safety.”

Screen shot of an unreconciled UAP captured with electro-optical sensors aboard an MQ-9 Reaper, shown during Wedesday’s hearing (DOD/AARO).

Intriguingly, similar descriptions of metallic, white, or translucent spherical objects date back several decades. A December 14, 1944 New York Times article titled “Floating Mystery Ball Is New Nazi Air Weapon” described Allied pilot encounters with objects remarkably similar in description.

“Airmen of the American Air Force report that they are encountering silver colored spheres in the air over German territory,” the brief Times report read. “The spheres are encountered either singly or in clusters. Sometimes they are semi-translucent.”

Over the decades, several other incidents involving purported UAP sightings near U.S. strategic sites, some of which resulted in formal investigations, have hinted at the possibility of surveillance being undertaken by unknown parties employing unconventional aerial technologies.

The DOE is not the only U.S. agency to have recently joined the effort to release records involving unexplained incidents involving suspected drones or other aerial objects. Recently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection also released several videos related to unidentified aerial phenomena, some instances of which had already been previously available online. In May 2022, The Debrief reported on several videos that were reportedly obtained by the agency’s personnel, and subsequently leaked online.

The documents recently released at the DOE and CBP websites come in advance of the delivery of AARO’s next periodic report that will provide an update on its ongoing efforts to analyze and attempt to resolve UAP sightings.

“No single explanation addresses the majority of UAP reports,” reads a FAQ page on AARO’s official website, which was launched last month. “We are collecting as much data as possible, following the data where it leads, and sharing our findings whenever possible.”

“We will not rush to conclusions in our analysis,” the FAQ page reads.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on Twitter: @MicahHanks.

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The US Navy's engagement with UFO encounters is not a recent phenomenon. UFO sightings by the Navy can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s. However, during that period, these sightings were shrouded in secrecy. Crew members were explicitly instructed to remain silent about the incidents, and when pressed, they were often provided with vague or nonsensical explanations regarding the nature of these mysterious objects.

Even with the latest official announcements of supposed UFO/USO encounters such as the

USS Nimitz UFO Incident (2004)

USS Theodore Roosevelt UFO Incident (2014-2015)

USS Kidd UFO Incident (2019)

USS Russell UFO Incident (2019)

USS Omaha UFO Incident (2021)

You can imagine that the US Navy has experienced many more UFO / USO encounters over the years but these events are kept secret.

Here are five UFO / USO incidents in which the US Navy has been involved during the 60's, 70's and 80's.

1. Azores Islands, Early fall 1965, USS Albany GC10

Late at night, lights out, watch shift. Technician and air traffic controllers observed 3 unidentified objects on radar following the fleet at a distance of about 40-50 miles for over an hour.
Three jets deployed to investigate. The pilots flying at speeds of around 1350 nots, but failed to make visual contact with the unknown objects. The technician, however, could spot the bogies on the height-finding radar, SP530.
As the jets attempted to approach the UFOs, the objects moved away rapidly, maintaining their triangular formation.
Then, within seven radar sweeps, the UFOs had completely disappeared from the radar, while the jets remained visible.

2. Azores Islands, May 23, 1968, USS Monrovia APA-31

Witness was on board the USS Monrovia APA-31 and observed a large submerged object on the starboard side of the ship, just behind the stern.
This USO had an elongated oval shape and emitted a luminescent orange glow. It appeared to have a translucent quality.
The USO seemed to mimic several changes in the ship's compass, radar, and radio equipment to malfunction, rendering them inoperable.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the USO vanished.
The sighting lasted for about 90 minutes and was witnessed by around 1,100 members of the ship's crew, including a contingent of US Marines.

3. Mediterranean Sea, Summer 1974, USS Forrestal CV-59

Signalman on duty during a regular night-watch spots an unusual reflection appearing as an underwater light, approximately 8 miles away and reports the sighting to the control tower.
Despite sonar failing to confirm the contact, the visual sighting was strong enough to bring the captain, executive officer, flight boss, and several intelligence officers to the deck. Over the next 20 minutes, they watch the object moving at high speed across the ship's bow.
The object zigzagged from 60 to over 100 miles per hour until it halted directly in the ship's path at one point within 4 miles of the Forrestal, before disappearing into the depths of the sea.
In the aftermath, the witness was ordered by the executive officer to remain silent.

4. Bermuda Triangle, June 15, 1977, USS Glover AGFF-1

Early morning of June 15, 1977 witness's watch duty above the bridge interrupted by a bright red-orange circular object that dropped from the sky and neared the ship and almost simultaneously, another watch also spotted the object.
Within moments, two more similar objects appeared, compelling them to report 3 unidentified contacts to the bridge and the Combat Information Center (CIC).
Suddenly, the ship lost all power, including radar and sonar, and came to a standstill in the water while the 3 objects conducted astonishing maneuvers across the sky before forming a triangle directly above the ship.
The 3 objects then converged to form a single bright orange light circle about 200 yards directly above the ship. Then vanish and the ship regains full power, and all systems reboot.
Later that night, ship encounters a surface contact that moved at an estimated speed of 70 mph and dove underwater without any slowdown, eventually, it plunged into depths of the Atlantic, disappearing both from the sonar and radar screens.
The following morning, the crew was assembled and ordered to forget everything they had witnessed and told they had seen 'an experimental Russian helicopter.'

5. Caribbean Sea, Summer 1980 or 1981, USS W.S. Sims FF-1059

An urgent dispatch was relayed to the USS W.S. Sims to head to Puerto Rico where there were reports of a Russian submarine exhibiting suspicious maneuvers in the area.
Onboard were divers, scientists and other experts, all brought together to investigate the unusual underwater activity.
The crew spent several intense weeks working to determine what exactly they were dealing with.
Witness heard "whispers" from the divers who were part of the investigation. They referred to the incident as another "Shag Harbor."
The final outcome of the mission remained elusive and the crew were told they had been studying a natural phenomenon of undetermined origin.
The phenomenon had the uncanny ability to elude detection at will, only to reappear again, this pattern continued for about six weeks.

The Shag Harbor UFO incident was the reported impact of an unknown large object into waters near Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia, a fishing village on the Atlantic coast, on 4 October 1967.

At least eleven people saw a low-flying lit object head towards the harbor. Multiple witnesses reported hearing a whistling sound "like a bomb," then a "whoosh," and finally a loud bang.

Two days after the incident had been observed, a detachment of navy divers from Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic was assembled and for the next three days, they combed the seafloor of the Gulf of Maine off Shag Harbor looking for an object.

The final report said no trace of an object was found but it is suggested that they kept this UFO incident secret.

Several years ago I began researching the phenomenon of ball lightning since it comes up so frequently in discussions of the UFO phenomenon. (Or unidentified anomalous phenomena, UAP, as the U.S. government insists we say these days.) In recent months I have gone back to investigate some of the more current research material and reports available on this topic and I'll provide some updates on both the historical and newer information that has become available here.

It's worth noting that "ball-shaped" UFOs (as ball lightning is typically described) are among the most common sightings reported. This is no longer just an anecdotal assumption. The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) website confirms this in a recently published morphology chart. They even provide a verified and still unidentified video of one of them filmed by a drone over the Middle East. Those "orbs" are frequently described as being silver or metallic in appearance, but recently advanced theories suggest that in some cases, particularly at night, they might exhibit some sort of field around their surface, giving them the appearance of fire or even electrical "lightning."

People have been reporting sightings of such objects for quite some time. Rather than being a recent phenomenon, something fitting the description of ball lightning was first reported in the 12th century, written by Benedictine monk Gervase of Christ Church Cathedral Priory, Canterbury in 1195. Suggesting that the phenomenon has an affinity for religious institutions (or just that churches had most of the people who were literate back then), ball lightning reportedly struck the church of St. Pancras in Widecombe-on-the-Moor, England during a severe thunderstorm in 1638. Church records indicate that the fireball came through a window, knocked the minister off of his feet, and singed his clothing. While it melted metal around him, it left the wood of the church untouched. The event was considered to be potentially miraculous.

Ball lightning isn't only seen over land. Ships at sea have reported similar sightings and even alarming damage for centuries. In 1726, while sailing along the Gulf Coast off of Florida, the sloop Catherine and Mary reported being struck by a ball of fire from the sky that "blew the mast into a thousand pieces." One witness wrote that three men were struck down with one of them being killed. Similarly, in 1809, ship's records from the HMS Warren Hastings told of three fireballs striking the ship, killing two of the crew. Thunderstorms and rough seas were reported in both cases.

During my initial investigation, I sought out some sort of scientifically verifiable, plausible explanation for such a phenomenon that wouldn't involve UFOs or anything paranormal. And many scientists have engaged in similar pursuits dating back to at least the 1940s. Since it is described as "lightning," I interviewed one of the chief meteorologists for NBC News. Could this actually be lightning as we currently understand it? He pointed me to the current description of ball lightning offered by the American Meteorological Society. They are willing to admit that ball lightening is "considered controversial due to the lack of unambiguous physical evidence" and the exact mechanisms for how it might take place are "unknown." He further confessed that "Not a lot is known about it.”

That comment speaks volumes because we actually do know quite a bit about lightning and electricity in general after centuries of study. NOAA can mostly accurately predict which storms are more or less likely to produce lightning within a window of a few hours. We know that "balls of electricity" will not "float" through a glass window if there is any less resistive path because glass is such an amazing insulator. The reason that "ball lightning" is unverifiable is that it doesn't act like lightning or other typical electronic activity.

That's not to say that scientific investigations into the phenomenon haven't continued. I reviewed a more recent, peer-reviewed paper from M. Sanduloviciu and E. Lozneanu of the Department of Plasma Physics at the University of Ias in Romania, titled, "Ball lightning as a self-organization Phenomenon."

In a laboratory, they were able to reproduce the effect impressively and they included many photographs and explanatory charts. But they almost all require very controlled conditions and the introduction of an electrical anode. Happening in nature, they described it as a "sudden injection of matter and energy in a well-located hot plasma generated by a lightning stroke."

This ties back nicely to my original findings, indicating that so-called ball lightning is typically associated with fireballs that are observed immediately following a lightning strike on the ground in an area where combustible materials are located. You can see a video of such an event here. Commercially created fireballs are also common. But they all share certain properties in common. They are the obvious combustion of fuels and they typically are very short in duration and they travel in predictable ways, generally upward. They do not zoom around and track over the wings of fighter jets like the foo fighters of yore.

So are we any closer to knowing if ball lightning is "real" today? If we are assuming that the phrase means that people are seeing balls of light doing remarkable things in the skies, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that it certainly is. But it's a phrase of convenience. Is it actually "lightning" as we currently understand that meteorological phenomenon? Almost certainly not. That's not how electricity works. But there's something going on and plenty of evidence continues to accumulate.

Reports are piling up to this day. The Weather Channel saw fit to publish a video of one example from 2013. CBS News in Sacramento California published a highly intriguing video in 2021. Some other relatively recent reports include one from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where a witness reported a green ball of light hovering outside of his house for approximately ten seconds, whereupon it exploded. The power to his house was knocked out until the next morning. A second from Jordan, New York involved a glowing red ball seen inside a person's house that hovered in the air for more than three minutes.

Those last two are related because they are part of a collection of sightings being assembled by a team at New Mexico Tech University labs. They set up a site specifically for people to report ball lightinng sightings a few years ago and they have many examples. Their goal is to take a scientific approach, matching witness testimony to meteorological data from the time and location reported, seeking patterns. They hope to identify the conditions most likely to spawn ball lightning, hopefully increasing the chances of capturing it on film in the future.

So what are these flaming balls? Personally, I think they look very much like UFOs, but that simply means that we haven't yet identified precisely what they are or where they come from. But all of the data thus far suggests that they really aren't "lightning" and we have a very solid understanding of how that natural phenomenon operates.

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