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.
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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!!!
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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 Ontdek de Fascinerende Wereld van UFO's en UAP's: Jouw Bron voor Onthullende Informatie!
Ben jij ook gefascineerd door het onbekende? Wil je meer weten over UFO's en UAP's, niet alleen in België, maar over de hele wereld? Dan ben je op de juiste plek!
België: Het Kloppend Hart van UFO-onderzoek
In België is BUFON (Belgisch UFO-Netwerk) dé autoriteit op het gebied van UFO-onderzoek. Voor betrouwbare en objectieve informatie over deze intrigerende fenomenen, bezoek je zeker onze Facebook-pagina en deze blog. Maar dat is nog niet alles! Ontdek ook het Belgisch UFO-meldpunt en Caelestia, twee organisaties die diepgaand onderzoek verrichten, al zijn ze soms kritisch of sceptisch.
Nederland: Een Schat aan Informatie
Voor onze Nederlandse buren is er de schitterende website www.ufowijzer.nl, beheerd door Paul Harmans. Deze site biedt een schat aan informatie en artikelen die je niet wilt missen!
Internationaal: MUFON - De Wereldwijde Autoriteit
Neem ook een kijkje bij MUFON (Mutual UFO Network Inc.), een gerenommeerde Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in de VS en wereldwijd. MUFON is toegewijd aan de wetenschappelijke en analytische studie van het UFO-fenomeen, en hun maandelijkse tijdschrift, The MUFON UFO-Journal, is een must-read voor elke UFO-enthousiasteling. Bezoek hun website op www.mufon.com voor meer informatie.
Samenwerking en Toekomstvisie
Sinds 1 februari 2020 is Pieter niet alleen ex-president van BUFON, maar ook de voormalige nationale directeur van MUFON in Vlaanderen en Nederland. Dit creëert een sterke samenwerking met de Franse MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP, wat ons in staat stelt om nog meer waardevolle inzichten te delen.
Let op: Nepprofielen en Nieuwe Groeperingen
Pas op voor een nieuwe groepering die zich ook BUFON noemt, maar geen enkele connectie heeft met onze gevestigde organisatie. Hoewel zij de naam geregistreerd hebben, kunnen ze het rijke verleden en de expertise van onze groep niet evenaren. We wensen hen veel succes, maar we blijven de autoriteit in UFO-onderzoek!
Blijf Op De Hoogte!
Wil jij de laatste nieuwtjes over UFO's, ruimtevaart, archeologie, en meer? Volg ons dan en duik samen met ons in de fascinerende wereld van het onbekende! Sluit je aan bij de gemeenschap van nieuwsgierige geesten die net als jij verlangen naar antwoorden en avonturen in de sterren!
Heb je vragen of wil je meer weten? Aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen! Samen ontrafelen we het mysterie van de lucht en daarbuiten.
Of all of the types of UFO encounters out there, pilot reports have always been held up high as particularly believable. These are seasoned professionals with a good bead on what might be strange up in the sky, so when they report something anomalous, people tend to listen. Such pilot reports go back decades, and I have recently written of cases from the 1950s of note, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let us jump into the 1970s and look at even more utterly bizarre cases of mysterious pilot encounters with UFOs.
Our first case here comes to us from the year 1972, from a witness who claims that at the time he was part of a police helicopter crew with the police department at Pasadena, California. On October 15 of that year, he was flying on a routine night patrol as a Helicopter Observer, along with pilot Pat Spafford, and as they approached the foothills to the northeast of the city, he claims they saw the lights of what they at first took to be a military helicopter hovering low over a residential area, apparently turning its landing light on and off intermittently in a very weird manner. They decided to investigate, but as they approached, the other “helicopter” then flew off and began gaining altitude. They approached, and it was then that they could see that this was no helicopter. The witness says of what happened next in a report to MUFON:
Then about 300 meters past it, we saw what first appeared to be a large object looking like bunch of big balloons tied together. The object was going at our exact airspeed, which was about 60 mph. The object was round and appeared to be rotating. I saw no lights on it. Pat began yelling over the intercom that he was seeing a UFO. I immediately shut off our running lights so I could activate our “night star” search light. The running lights were shut off because there would be too many amps going through the system with all the lights on and pop a breaker. The military helicopter then appeared to lose altitude quickly as if it was going into auto rotation.
Shutting off the running lights to power up the searchlight was S.O.P. (Standard Operating Procedure). Pat questioned what I was doing, and when I told him I was going to “light it up”, he said, “No,” and turned the running lights back on. We had a short argument about doing this or not, but he got the final word because he was the pilot. We watched the object for a few minutes and it flew abeam us going west. We then noticed that there was some fog coming in the L. A. basin, which was a signal for us to fly back to Bracket Field in Pomona, where we hangered the helicopter so as not to get caught in the fog. As we approached the west end of the city near the Rose Bowl, this object gained speed and in just a few seconds accelerated towards the L. A. skyline and disappeared out of sight. The speed it went was faster than supersonic. We were both amazed at how fast it accelerated.
As soon as they landed, they went about making calls to various agencies in order to try to make sense of what they had seen. Los Angeles International Airport claimed that they had seen nothing unusual on their radar in the area, and there were found to have been no test flights of any kind at the time. A report was filed of the incident, but it seems that nothing ever came of it, and by the time the witness retired from the force in 1979 he says that it had been completely forgotten. What did this helicopter crew see out there and why wasn’t it investigated further? Who knows?
In February of the following year, we have a strange case from Richard Hall’s book Volume II, The UFO Evidence, A Thirty-Year Report, which occurred in the area of McAlester, Oklahoma, in the United States. In the very early morning hours of February 14, 1973, at approximately 2:30 a.m., a DC-8 cargo flight was on its way from St. Louis to Dallas, and it was as they passed over Oklahoma that strange things began to happen. The co-pilot saw the lights of what he had first thought to be another aircraft off to the right and somewhere below them, seemingly on the same course as they were, and going at the same speed, with a single amber-colored light upon it. At this point they still thought it was just another airplane, but then the object suddenly rose vertically straight into the sky to make a sharp turn and take up a position above them nearby. The crew could now see that it was a disc-shaped object with a transparent dome on top, the whole of it made of some highly reflective metallic material. It was now rather obvious to them that this was no normal aircraft, and the captain turned on their weather radar to see it appear as a solid object. Whatever the unidentified object was, it did not seem to like being on radar, as it immediately shot straight up and disappeared from view, after which it was visible again dropping down to take up a new position near the airplane about 300 feet below them. As the baffled crew looked down at the mysterious object, they claimed that they had seen through the dome “two or three shadowy entities moving around.” After this, the object shot in front of them, did an impossibly sharp bank, and sped off out of sight. What was this thing?
Also in 1973 we have another encounter from a helicopter crew, this time from the area of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. On October 18 of that year, at approximately 11:10 p.m., Army Reserve helicopter pilot Capt. Lawrence Coyne, of the 316th Medical Detachment stationed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport, was flying in a Huey helicopter over the area of Mansfield on his way back to Cleveland from Columbus when he had a bizarre encounter with forces he could not comprehend. As he approached Mansfield, he claimed that he had spotted a red light in the sky, first spotted by his crew chief, Sgt. Robert Yanacsek. Coyne would say of what happened next:
The light was traveling in excess of 600 knots. It came from the horizon to our aircraft in about 10 seconds. We were on a collision course. At 1,700 feet I braced myself for the impact with the other craft. It was coming from our right side. I was scared. There had been so little time to respond. The thing was terrifically fast. We looked up and saw it stopped right over us. It had a big, gray metallic-looking hull about 60 feet long.” “It was shaped like an airfoil or a streamlined fat cigar. There was a red light on the front. The leading edge glowed red a short distance back from the nose. There was a center dome. A green light at the rear reflected on the hull. I had made no attempt to pull up. All controls were set for a 20-degree dive. Yet we had climbed from 1,700 to 3,500 feet with no power in a couple of seconds with no g-forces or other noticeable strains. Red navigational lights aren’t located in the front of an aircraft. That’s what was moving toward us. I don’t know what it was.
Image by Steve Baxter
The object then sped off to the west and disappeared. It is unknown just what was going on here, or why the helicopter had been sort of lifted up, but what has gone on to be called the “Coyne Incident” has long been touted as one of the more intriguing pilot reports of all time. An interesting case comes to us from 1976, when there was a harrowing encounter between a fighter pilot and a UFO in the country of Iran. On September 19 of 1976, the Iranian Air Force began getting a deluge of calls from frightened citizens reporting a strange light in the skies in the vicinity of Tehran. At first it was thought that this was just a misidentification of the planet Venus, but when the Assistant Deputy Commander of Operations saw the object for himself there was a sense of urgency and alert.
In response to this mysterious object, an F-4 fighter jet was scrambled from Shahrokhi Air Force Base at 1:30 a.m. in order to investigate and intercept if need be. As the jet sped closer to the object, which was reported as very large and bright, it allegedly experienced numerous technical difficulties, to the point that the pilot began heading back and full function of his plane was restored. This plane came into base, but in the meantime, another F-4 was deployed, and was able to make radar contact with the object, deducing that it was about the same size as a 707 jet, but it was so bright it was hard to get a visual size estimate. The UFO then suddenly shot away at great speed, rapidly accelerating from the F-4 even though it was going an estimated Mach 1 at the time. The plane followed it for some time, experiencing some technical difficulties but able to see it clearly enough to describe it as roughly rectangular in shape, with strobing lights that alternated from red, blue, green, and orange. Then things would get even stranger still.
It was reported by the F-4 pilot that this object then dropped a smaller object, which headed directly at them at a rapid pace. Thinking that this was some sort of aggressive action or weapon of some sort, the pilot targeted the incoming object with a missile, but the weapon system then cut out and went offline, and all radio communications with base were lost. Unable to engage the missile, the pilot took evasive action, taking a deep dive but still followed by the object. This smaller UFO tailed the F-4 for some time before then allegedly returning to the larger object, the jet’s systems going back online as it did so. After this, the smaller UFO merged with the larger one, and the whole of it sped off out of sight. What was going on here? Was this some sort of weapon or warning from the UFO? It is impossible to say.
In 1978, there is the case reported by veteran Navy pilot Floyd P. Hallstrom of Oxnard, California, who at the time was flying in a Cessna 170A bound to San Diego from Oxnard, California. At the time he was following another plane piloted by a friend, Jim Victor. The plan at the time was for Victor to deliver the plane to San Diego, after which they would both fly back, but things were not destined to go according to plan. As the two approached Santa Monica in perfectly clear conditions, Hallstrom noticed something very odd. He would say in his report to MUFON:
At this time, I was looking for Jim straight ahead, when I spotted the UFO just on the edge of the haze area above LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] slightly to the east side. I thought it was Jim so I watched it for about a minute because he had just given me his position report, but it seemed to get larger and coming toward me so I naturally realized that it wasn’t Jim. I started looking to see what it was, but I could see no wings on this aircraft although at this time I could see windows which appeared to be passenger windows in the aircraft. As it drew nearer though, I was able to determine that there were no wings or horizontal empennage assembly to the aircraft as a conventional aircraft.
All of a sudden, I was able to make out the complete form of a saucer shape or round object… I could see the dome, also very vividly clear, including all the windows. I observed it to be of a very bright metal… it was more of a nickel or highly polished chrome or stainless-steel type of metal than aluminum, because it had more of a mellow glow than if it was of the type finish on a high finish aluminum. About 16 to 20 evenly spaced windows were visible around the circumference of the dome, located just above the base. The dome appeared to be a perfect hemisphere about 20 feet in diameter resting on the base which was about 30 feet in diameter.
Image by Steve Baxter
Hallstrom observed the object for around a minute before it disappeared from view behind his plane. Hallstrom, who had at that time 37 years of military flight experience under his belt, was adamant about what he had seen, and would later admit that the encounter had deeply affected him and given him nightmares for years. Another case from 1978 comes to us from the country of New Zealand, where on December 30 of that year a Captain Bill Startup was piloting an Argosy freight plane over the Cook Strait, accompanied by an Australian TV crew which hoped to capture video footage of a UFO that had been seen in the area at the time. They would apparently not be disappointed.
During the flight, the crew saw a strange light in the sky out over the ocean, which they found had radar confirmation from ground control in Wellington. It soon turned out that what was being seen were actually five bright lights in a line that seemed to be pulsating in some sort of pattern, and which passed under the aircraft to travel over the town of Kaikoura. The plane tried to turn around to get a better look at the objects, and in the meanwhile, they received a warning from air traffic control that told them the target was pacing them and increasing in size. Everyone in the plane was witnessing these lights by this time, but the TV crew was unable to get a good shot for footage. It was only when the plane’s navigational lights were turned off that footage was able to be taken with a handheld camera of a large bright light outside. The airplane then deviated from course towards Christchurch, and managed to land safely. After this, the plane headed off on its return flight and saw two more mysterious objects, with one of them appearing as “a spinning sphere with lateral lines around it.” Once again, the objects appeared on radar, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force even put Skyhawk jet fighters on standby ready to scramble.
When the film of the strange objects was released, it created quite a stir, but was immediately picked apart by skeptics, who suggested everything from experimental aircraft, to shrimp boats, to the planet Venus. In the end, the sighting has never been explained. Indeed, none of these have ever been fully explained, and they come to us with these impeccable witnesses who have no reason to lie and who know what sorts of strange things go on in the sky. Could they be wrong, even in those cases in which they have radar confirmation? How are we to explain such cases away? This is only a sampling of such reports from the era, and it is rather unfortunate that many others were either buried or simply never reported due to the pilots wanting to protect their reputations and jobs. Yet rest assured there are many others where these came from, and it all paints a picture of something very strange going on in the skies above our heads.
Special thanks to Steve Baxter for his artwork on this, including the cover image.
ALL RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011
Largely unknown, however, is that the UFO taboo – and an array of outlandish alien conspiracy theories – are vestiges of Cold War paranoia.
Shortly after the development of nuclear weapons, waves of UFO sightings began sweeping the United States. At first, military and intelligence officials took such reports seriously.
According to a declassified Air Force document, the sheer volume and geographic distribution of sightings meant that the UFO phenomenon “cannot be disregarded.” A 1947 memo from a top Air Force general noted that UFOs are “real and not visionary or fictitious.”
With striking parallels to more recent encounters, Air Force analysts determined that many UFOs exhibited “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability … and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar.” Such characteristics, the Air Force concluded, suggest that “the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.” (A CIA director would go on to state that UFOs “are operating under intelligent control.”)
Adding to the mystery, a 1948 Air Force intelligence memo stated that UFOs “are not of domestic origin.” At the same time, the Air Force assessed the likelihood of the Soviet Union developing such advanced technology as “extremely remote.”
Unsurprisingly, the Air Force was not the only government entity with an interest in UFOs. An urgent 1952 memo from the CIA’s scientific branch to then-director Walter Bedell Smith sounded the alarm: “Reports of [UFO] incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention.”
A 1952 FBI memo notes that analysts were “fairly certain that [UFOs] are not ships or missiles from another nation in this world.” Mirroring frequent reports of UFOs evading nearby aircraft, the FBI learned that “when the pilot in [an intercepting] jet approaches the object it invariably fades from view.”
In short, U.S. intelligence analysts concluded that intelligently controlled objects – often flying in restricted airspace and capable of eluding fighter jets – were not developed by the United States or any foreign power.
Indeed, the aforementioned FBI memo states that the Air Force – like Swedish air intelligence – entertained the extraordinary possibility that UFOs may “be ships from another planet.”
Another FBI memo notes that after years of Air Force study, “a small percentage of extremely creditable [sic] sightings have been unexplainable.” As a result, “some military officials are seriously considering the possibility of interplanetary ships.”
But such objective, open-minded analysis was not to last.
Amid intensifying Cold War hostilities, America’s spies and defense planners worried that mass UFO sightings could again overwhelm emergency reporting channels, giving the Soviet Union “a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack.” Officials also feared that the Soviets would use “UFOs as a psychological warfare tool” to sow “mass hysteria and panic.”
The agency began by recruiting academics to join a “Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects.” The group, which – importantly – was not shown the most compelling UFO data, recommended a “broad educational program” to “debunk” UFO reports and “train” observers “in proper recognition of unusually illuminated objects.”
According to the panel, the “training” program would “result in a marked reduction of [UFO] reports.” At the same time, the “debunking” effort would decrease “public interest in ‘flying saucers’” and reduce Americans’ “susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.”
As investigative journalist Leslie Kean notes, the CIA-organized meetings “would forever change both the course of media coverage and the official attitude toward the UFO subject.”
The full extent of the “educational program” – which suggested “spread[ing] the gospel” through “television, motion pictures, and popular articles” – is unclear.
But the “debunking” effort had extraordinary consequences.
Objective analysis that once suggested astounding explanations for UFOs rapidly morphed into a public relations effort determined to debunk and discredit sightings, no matter how credible.
Perhaps worse, as astronomer and long-time consultant to the Air Force’s UFO project J. Allen Hynek bluntly stated: The CIA panel “made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable.”
Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, summarized the situation: “Through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe [UFOs] are nonsense.” “Behind the scenes,” however, “high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned.”
To be sure, classified U.S. aircraft accounted for some UFO sightings. But once-secret aircraft were almost certainly not behind the most compelling historical UFO incidents. Indeed, dozens of credible witnesses and multiple sensor platforms observed objects engaging in movements that no American or Soviet plane was capable of.
Unsurprisingly, the Air Force’s bungling attempts to explain away UFO sightings led to accusations of a sweeping cover-up. This dynamic created fertile ground for an array of conspiracy theories.
But far-fetched claims of alien autopsies or a vast government plot to conceal extraterrestrial visitation are not supported by historical context and must be viewed with utmost skepticism.
Ultimately, instead of a nefarious cover-up, the government was guilty of a “grand foul-up” on UFOs. This conclusion is substantiated by the two scientists who spent decades studying UFOs while enjoying extraordinary access to government records.
James McDonald, the renowned atmospheric physicist, was particularly infuriated by the government’s shoddy work on UFOs, stating “I have never seen such superficiality and incompetence in an area of such potentially enormous scientific importance.”
Indeed, much of the Air Force’s effort to catalogue and analyze UFO reports was crippled by a woeful lack of interest and resources. Perhaps worse, it was managed by an ever-rotating cast of low-level officers determined not to “rock the boat.” The shift from investigating to discrediting UFO sightings only made matters worse.
But there is a silver lining. The government is no longer mounting a disingenuous UFO debunking campaign. It has no reason to.
Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.
UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace, report on the phenomena due next month
UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace, report on the phenomena due next month
Bill Whitaker reports on the regular sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, that have spurred a report due to Congress next month.
We have tackled many strange stories on 60 Minutes, but perhaps none like this. It's the story of the U.S. government's grudging acknowledgment of unidentified aerial phenomena— UAP—more commonly known as UFOs. After decades of public denial the Pentagon now admits there's something out there, and the U.S. Senate wants to know what it is. The intelligence committee has ordered the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense to deliver a report on the mysterious sightings by next month.
Bill Whitaker: So what you are telling me is that UFOs, unidentified flying objects, are real?
Lue Elizondo: Bill, I think we're beyond that already. The government has already stated for the record that they're real. I'm not telling you that. The United States government is telling you that.
Luis Elizondo spent 20 years running military intelligence operations worldwide: in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Guantanamo. He hadn't given UFOs a second thought until 2008. That's when he was asked to join something at the Pentagon called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or "AATIP."
Lue Elizondo
Lue Elizondo: The mission of AATIP was quite simple. It was to collect and analyze information involving anomalous aerial vehicles, what I guess in the vernacular you call them UFOs. We call them UAPs.
Bill Whitaker: You know how this sounds? It sounds nutty, wacky.
Lue Elizondo: Look, Bill, I'm not, I'm not telling you that, that it doesn't sound wacky. What I'm telling you, it's real. The question is, what is it? What are its intentions? What are its capabilities?
Buried away in the Pentagon, AATIP was part of a $22 million program sponsored by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to investigate UFOs. When Elizondo took over in 2010 he focused on the national security implications of unidentified aerial phenomena documented by U.S. service members.
Lue Elizondo: Imagine a technology that can do 6-to-700 g-forces, that can fly at 13,000 miles an hour, that can evade radar and that can fly through air and water and possibly space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet still can defy the natural effects of Earth's gravity. That's precisely what we're seeing.
Elizondo tells us AATIP was a loose-knit mix of scientists, electro-optical engineers, avionics and intelligence experts, often working part time. They combed through data and records, and analyzed videos like this.
A Navy aircrew struggles to lock onto a fast-moving object off the U.S. Atlantic Coast in 2015.
Recently released images may not convince ufo skeptics, but the pentagon admits it doesn't know what in the world this is or this or this.
Bill Whitaker: So what do you say to the skeptics? It's refracted light. Weather balloons. A rocket being launched. Venus.
Lue Elizondo: In some cases there are simple explanations for what people are witnessing. But there are some that, that are not. We're not just simply jumping to a conclusion that's saying, "Oh, that's a UAP out there." We're going through our due diligence. Is it some sort of new type of cruise missile technology that China has developed? Is it some sort of high-altitude balloon that's conducting reconnaissance? Ultimately when you have exhausted all those what ifs and you're still left with the fact that this is in our airspace and it's real, that's when it becomes compelling, and that's when it becomes problematic.
Former Navy pilot Lieutenant Ryan Graves calls whatever is out there a security risk. He told us his F/A-18F squadron began seeing UAPs hovering over restricted airspace southeast of Virginia Beach in 2014 when they updated their jet's radar, making it possible to zero in with infrared targeting cameras.
Ryan Graves
Bill Whitaker: So you're seeing it both with the radar and with the infrared. And that tells you that there is something out there?
Ryan Graves: Pretty hard to spoof that.
These photographs were taken in 2019 in the same area. The Pentagon confirms these are images of objects it can't identify. Lieutenant Graves told us pilots training off the Atlantic Coast see things like that all the time.
Ryan Graves: Every day. Every day for at least a couple years.
Bill Whitaker: Wait a minute, every day for a couple of years?
Ryan Graves: Uh-huh.
Ryan Graves: I don't see an exhaust plume.
Including this one – off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida in 2015, captured on a targeting camera by members of Graves' squadron.
Soundbites from pilots: Look at that thing, it's rotating! My gosh! They're all going against the wind, the wind's 120 knots to the west. Look at that thing dude!
Bill Whitaker: You can sorta hear the surprise in their voices.
Ryan Graves: You certainly can. They seem to have broke character a bit and were just kind of amazed at what they were seeing.
Bill Whitaker: What do you think when you see something like this?
Ryan Graves: This is a difficult one to explain. You have rotation, you have high altitudes. You have propulsion, right? I don't know. I don't know what it is, frankly.
He told us pilots speculate they are one of three things: secret U.S. technology, an adversary's spy vehicle, or something otherworldly.
Ryan Graves: I would say, you know, the highest probability is it's a threat observation program.
Bill Whitaker: Could it be Russian or Chinese technology?
Ryan Graves: I don't see why not.
Bill Whitaker: Are you alarmed?
Ryan Graves: I am worried, frankly. You know, if these were tactical jets from another country that were hangin' out up there, it would be a massive issue. But because it looks slightly different, we're not willing to actually look at the problem in the face. We're happy to just ignore the fact that these are out there, watching us every day.
The government has ignored it - at least publicly - since closing its project "Blue Book" investigation in 1969. But that began to change after an incident off Southern California in 2004, which was documented by radar, by camera, and four naval aviators. We spoke to two of them: David Fravor, a graduate of the Top Gun naval flight school and commander of the F/A-18F squadron on the USS Nimitz; and flying at his wing, Lieutenant Alex Dietrich, who has never spoken publicly about the encounter.
Alex Dietrich and Dave Fravor
Alex Dietrich: I never wanted to be on national TV, no offense.
Bill Whitaker: So why are you doing this?
Alex Dietrich: Because I was in a government aircraft, because I was on the clock. And so I feel a responsibility to s-- to share what I can. And it is unclassified.
It was November 2004 and the USS Nimitz carrier strike group was training about 100 miles southwest of San Diego. For a week, the advanced new radar on a nearby ship, the USS Princeton, had detected what operators called "multiple anomalous aerial vehicles" over the horizon, descending 80,000 feet in less than a second. On November 14, Fravor and Dietrich, each with a weapons systems officer in the backseat, were diverted to investigate. They found an area of roiling whitewater the size of a 737 in an otherwise calm, blue sea.
Dave Fravor: So as we're looking at this, her back-seater says, "Hey, Skipper, do you..." And about that got out, I said, "Dude, do you, do you see that thing down there?" And we saw this little white Tic Tac-looking object. And it's just kind of moving above the whitewater area.
As Deitrich circled above - Fravor went in for a closer look.
Bill Whitaker: So you're sort of spiraling down?
Dave Fravor:Yep. The Tic Tac's still pointing north-south, it goes, click, and just turns abruptly. And starts mirroring me. So as I'm coming down, it starts coming up.
Bill Whitaker: So it's mimicking your moves?
Dave Fravor: Yeah, it was aware we were there.
He said it was about the size of his F/A-18F, with no markings, no wings, no exhaust plumes.
Dave Fravor: I want to see how close I can get. So I go like this. And it's climbing still. And when it gets right in front of me, it just disappears.
Bill Whitaker: Disappears?
Dave Fravor: Disappears. Like, gone.
It had sped off.
Bill Whitaker: What are you thinking?
Alex Dietrich: So your mind tries to make sense of it. I'm gonna categorize this as maybe a helicopter or maybe a drone. And when it disappeared. I mean it was just…
Bill Whitaker: Did your back-seaters see this too?
Alex Dietrich: Yeah.
Dave Fravor: Oh yeah. There was four of us in the airplanes literally watching this thing for roughly about five minutes.
Seconds later, the Princeton reacquired the target. 60 miles away. Another crew managed to briefly lock onto it with a targeting camera before it zipped off again.
Alex Dietrich: You know, I think that over beers, we've sort of said, "Hey man, if I saw this solo, I don't know that I would have come back and said anything," because it sounds so crazy when I say it.
Bill Whitaker: You understand that reaction?
Dave Fravor: I do. I've had some people tell me, you know, "When you say that, you can sound crazy." I'll be hon-- I'm not a UFO guy.
Bill Whitaker: But from what I hear you guys saying, there's something?
Alex Dietrich: Yes.
Dave Fravor: Oh there's, there's definitely something that… I don't know who's building it, who's got the technology, who's got the brains. But there's, there's something out there that was better than our airplane.
The aircrew filed reports. Then like the mysterious flying object, the Nimitz encounter disappeared. Nothing was said or done officially for five years, until Lue Elizondo came across the story and investigated.
Lue Elizondo: We spend millions of dollars in training these pilots. And they are seeing something that they can't explain. Furthermore, that informations being backed up on electro optical data, like gun camera footage. And by radar data. Now, to me, that's compelling.
Chris Mellon
Inside the Pentagon his findings were met with skepticism. AATIP's funding was eliminated in 2012, but Elizondo says he and a handful of others kept the mission alive until finally, frustrated, he quit the Pentagon in 2017, but not before getting these three videos declassified and then things took a stranger turn.
Chris Mellon: I tried to help my colleague, Lue Elizondo, elevate the issue in the department and actually get it to the Secretary of Defense.
Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence for Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush and had access to top secret government programs.
Chris Mellon: So it's not us, that's one thing we know.
Bill Whitaker: We know that?
Chris Mellon: I can say that with a very high degree of confidence in part because of the positions I held in the department, and I know the process.
Mellon says he grew concerned nothing was being done about UAPs, so he decided to do something. In 2017, as a private citizen, he surreptitiously acquired the three Navy videos Elizondo had declassified and leaked them to the New York Times.
Chris Mellon: It's bizarre and unfortunate that someone like myself has to do something like that to get a national security issue like this on the agenda.
He joined forces with now civilian Lue Elizondo and they started to tell their story to anybody who would listen: to newspapers, the History Channel, to members of Congress.
Chris Mellon: We knew and understood that you had to go to the public, get the public interested to get Congress interested, to then circle back to the Defense Department and get them to start taking a look at it.
And now it is. This past August the Pentagon resurrected AATIP, it's now called the UAP task force; service members now are encouraged to report strange encounters; and the Senate wants answers.
Marco Rubio: Anything that enters an airspace that's not supposed to be there is a threat.
After receiving classified briefings on UAPs, Senator Marco Rubio called for a detailed analysis. This past December, while he was still head of the intelligence committee, he asked the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon to present Congress an unclassified report by next month.
Bill Whitaker: This is a bizarre issue. The Pentagon and other branches of the military have a long history of sort of dismissing this. What makes you think that this time's gonna be different?
Marco Rubio: We're gonna find out when we get that report. You know, there's a stigma on Capitol Hill. I mean, some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kinda, you know, giggle when you bring it up. But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.
Bill Whitaker: What do you want us to do about this?
Marco Rubio: I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously. I want us to have a process to analyze the data every time it comes in. That there be a place where this is cataloged and constantly analyzed, until we get some answers. Maybe it has a very simple answer. Maybe it doesn't.
Produced by Graham Messick. Associate producer, Jack Weingart. Broadcast associate, Emilio Almonte. Edited by Craig Crawford.
With the renewed attention that UFOs have seen in recent years, a new series of questions—and challenges—have emerged.
According to the U.S. Navy’s UAP Task Force in its preliminary assessment sent to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) earlier this year, “UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security. Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain.”
The report also adds that “UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”
Of course, opinions held by longtime advocates for the study of unusual aerial phenomena may differ with the notion that such objects could simply belong to a “foreign adversary,” as the flight capabilities of these objects since recorded since at least the Second World War describes nothing comparable to even the best U.S. technologies at the time.
However, along with the many questions people have about these mysteries of the skies, many are also now confused about what they should be called.
With the renewed interest the subject has seen in recent years, largely following revelations in 2017 about a Pentagon program that looked at aerospace threats, the United States military has preferentially labeled these objects unidentified aerial phenomena, or more simply, UAP. While some have mistakenly viewed this as a recent creation, UAP has been used as a descriptor for the phenomena now for decades.
“Use of the abbreviation UAP has increased in recent years due to the term’s appearance in government and media reports,” reads an entry for the term “UAP” at dictionary.com. “The term unidentified aerial phenomenon/phenomena have been used in US government reports since at least the mid-1960s,” the entry reads, noting that the term mostly appears in “reports of military pilots’ accounts of witnessing objects that appear to be traveling at speeds or performing maneuvers not thought to be possible by known aircraft or with current technology.”
Similar references to unusual airborne objects as unidentified aerial phenomena may have occurred even earlier, although the more commonly accepted name for these objects in popular usage over the last several decades has been unidentified flying objects or UFOs. This name was coined by Edward Ruppelt, the first director of the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, as a more ambiguous alternative to the term “flying saucer,” which had seen frequent usage in the American media prior to 1952.
“For a while after the Arnold sighting the term ‘flying saucer’ was used to describe all disk-shaped objects that were seen flashing through the sky at fantastic speeds,” Ruppelt wrote in 1956 in his book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.
“Before long, reports were made of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying saucers. Today the words are popularly applied to anything seen in the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object.”
Edward Ruppelt (Public Domain)
“Thus,” Ruppelt explained, “a flying saucer can be a formation of lights, a single light, a sphere, or any other shape; and it can be any color. Performance-wise, flying saucers can hover, go fast or slow, go high or low, turn 90- degree corners, or disappear almost instantaneously.”
Herein, of course, we see the problem, since even in the early days of the U.S. Air Force’s involvement with collecting data on these objects, only a small number actually appeared to resemble discs or saucers.
“Obviously the term ‘flying saucer’ is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance,” Ruppelt said. “For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.”
On an interesting side note, those who have argued about whether the term UFO is an acronym or an abbreviation (yes, there actually are people who concern themselves with such things) will note that Ruppelt gave us his own pronunciation key, identifying “UFO” as indeed being an acronym, although his recommended “Youfoe” pronunciation never seems to have really caught on.
The expression UFO does have its problems, as well as its own degree of baggage, and many commentators from over the years have taken issue with this label for the objects. One primary issue with the term involves the inclusion of the word “flying,” which may be difficult for an object possessing no wings or visible propulsion system to achieve in the same sense that flight is recognized in conventional aircraft. This, in addition to the fact that reports logged for decades appear to convey that these objects can enter the water as easily as they can pass through the air. In other words, these objects may more appropriately be described as craft capable of “moving” through air or water, rather than performing anything comparable to flight as we know it.
Despite the questions over whether unidentified “flying” objects are really flying or not, UFO remains the more popular expression used to describe these objects even today, although the shift toward replacing it with UAP has been notable. Obviously, for the time being, it really seems to remain a matter of preference, and in likelihood, people are going to keep calling these things whichever name appeals to them the most.
Perhaps the most important thing to recognize is that, no matter what one chooses to call them, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore their presence. Whatever they may ultimately represent, UAP/UFOs do appear to represent a tangible phenomenon, as they have now for decades already… and there’s no sign that interest in these aerial mysteries is going anywhere any time soon.
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There have been many alien encounter and abduction reports over the years, and these vary widely across the spectrum from the merely odd to the downright outlandish. On occasion, there have been cases that seem to be particularly weird, playing out like some sort of twisted dream and having a decidedly surreal, ofttimes nightmarish quality to them. These are the cases that are even more bizarre than most, and one little known report comes to us from the country of Germany, where one man came face to face with forces beyond his understanding in an encounter that really pushes the boundaries of the weird.
One morning in August of 1981, an unnamed 55-year-old Polish immigrant living in Germany took a bicycle ride from his home in the city of Rheda-Wiedenbruck on a clear, sunny day. He was rather fond of these leisurely rides, during which he would just meander about and enjoy nature, and on this day, he decided to head to a small lake called Lintel, not far from where he lived. He often went to this lake to enjoy the peaceful serenity of the area, and although his bicycle chain broke and he was forced to walk, it wasn’t far and it was such a lovely day that he kept on going. As he sat looking out over the placid water, his attention was drawn to movement out across the lake on the opposite shore. He could see an old shed out there, and nearby it a figure who seemed to be moving around in a strange manner.
The witness apparently thought this was just a fisherman getting supplies from the shed, but as he peered across the water at this person, his attention was drawn to something else. According to the report, the witness saw a massive metallic object, about 10 meters high and 30 meters in diameter, that looked somewhat like an “upside down plate” hovering silently about 50 feet over the surface of the lake, with no apparent windows, seams, or propulsion device. It sort of hovered there for a time, never making a sound, and when the witness looked back to the fisherman he had been observing, he could now see that the man was in the company of several other figures dressed in some kind of suits that seemed to sparkle and glint in the sunlight. When he looked back at the flying object, he could see that it seemed to be moving towards that shed, eventually hovering low over a grassy clearing near it.
As he looked on at this bizarre sight, he still had no idea what he was looking at, and when he saw a woman walking her dog pass right past the object, the witness began to think that it was perhaps some sort of super advanced transport aircraft accepting passengers. He took it upon himself to approach the strange craft, and as he got closer, he could see there was some type of oval opening in its side, and he went even closer, meaning to ask how much admission was for a ride on this wondrous aircraft. It would appear that aliens were the furthest thing from his mind at this point, but this was about to change.
There was a platform leading from the opening down to the ground below, and as he approached the witness noticed one of the figures in the sparkling suits examining the bicycle he had left not far away. He could now see that the being was somewhat translucent, but this was still not enough to deter him from stepping aboard the craft. Once inside, he found himself in a room with what seemed to be surrounded with nearly transparent walls, and he was led to sit on an “invisible bench” by another of those strange figures. He could now smell a very unpleasant smell like burning rubber, and noticed that the fisherman he had seen earlier was sitting nearby in some sort of daze and was half-naked, being examined by one of the entities. The one near him then telepathically demanded that he hand over his satchel, which he did. The surroundings were now filled with that smell of burning rubber, now so potent that it made him feel dizzy, and he also became aware of some other rather unsettling sights around him. He says of what happened:
In my way toward the being I was somewhat light as if there was no floor below. I saw a cut off head of a cow without left eye and a half of its horn that was also cut off. There were some chains in it jaws. There were also childish shoes and glasses. They put me on some table. I felt lightness as if I was devoid of some internal organs. The interior part of the object was light with pinkish-violet glow.
He was brought into a “misty, blue-grayish room” with more of the beings, and he was undressed and forced to lie down on another table. He was then examined, dressed up again, and his bag was returned to him. He was also given some sort of belt, that seemed to transform into different shapes and had strange symbols on its side. The belt would also hover over the floor if dropped and return to his hand, and would always return to its original position no matter how much he tried to fold it up. As all of this was going on, the ship seemed to be moving, and he would say:
I could see many lights and I don’t know if in the ceiling or by a transparent floor I saw an enormous city with illuminated tower blocks – sometimes I was observing them from various positions. And maybe I was in some big machine or over it, somewhere far away when it was a night and everything around resembled very much an illuminated city.
The witness also says that a “small, transparent ball as big as a tennis ball” suddenly materialized in his hand, which “sparkled with many colors.” He could see when it shone that the bones in his hands were visible, like an x-ray, and this frightened him enough to make him want to throw the ball away, but he found he could not, as every time he threw it hovered back to him in much the same way that the belt did. The ball seemed to be weightless, and when he looked within it, he could see various strange things. The original report by UFO researcher Marcin Mizera would say of this:
The ball was emitting an image from inside – something like a three-dimension show. There were impossible things inside. From a chaos [a multitude of colorful stains divided by lines] there formed some images. There appeared: a tower [measuring pressure] from the town where he lived and then a town hall and a tower block standing in vicinity of his house. Then other similar elements were seen, for example: church towers, playing fields, parking lots etc. Mrs. X saw even himself holding the ball and looking into it. He wanted to turn it in his hands but it transformed into a big, glass circle [7-10 m.wide] that got smaller immediately and transformed into the original ball.
What in the world was going on here? It is all so bizarre that it is hard to say. All through this, one of the mysterious figures just looked on with an inscrutable expression, as if observing, and the witness would say of what happened next:
I smiled foolishly because it was weird, cool and funny. I haven’t seen something like it before. The humanoid was looking at me as a king at a clown. Anyway, I found myself unexpectedly on a scrapheap.
He was just suddenly there on the ground, around 5 km from the lake, with a severe headache and his watch inexplicably broken. His skin was red, as if suffering a sunburn, and he also noticed that both the orb and the belt he had been given on the craft were gone. A search of the area also showed that his bicycle was gone, and so he walked home. He felt a sudden exhaustion upon arriving, and fell into a deep sleep. From that day on, he claims that he suddenly had an incredible affinity and talent for painting, and went on to become a well-known artist in the area, although it is unclear if this had anything to do with his surreal encounter or not. The whole thing is incredibly bizarre, and it is really hard to make sense of. What happened to this man and what did he experience out there? It is hard to say for sure, but it is certainly one of the weirder alien encounter reports there is.
For the better part of the last century, pilots have reported sightings of unusual aerial objects or vehicles that they could not identify.
Students of the history of this subject will recognize that it has an integral relationship with aviation. During the summer of 1947, civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold had been inadvertently responsible for bringing widespread public attention to what thereafter, for a time, became known as “flying saucers,” following his observation of a group of objects whose movement reminded him of how a saucer might look skipping across the water.
Kenneth Arnold
Arnold wasn’t the first pilot to report seeing such uncanny objects in the skies. It would come to light years later that on April 5, 1943, aviation writer and pilot Gerry Casey had been supervising a student pilot in a BT-13A when he observed a peculiar, radiant orange object nearby. The aircraft was elliptical in shape with a rounded hump visible on the top and bottom, and the object appeared to wobble slightly as it flew alongside them and then suddenly accelerated and left their sight.
Casey, who had been carrying a camera with him during the flight, was concerned that what he had observed was one of Lockheed’s new experimental aircraft, and out of concern for national security, refrained from photographing the object.
Such sightings have continued into the present day, and regardless of what the source of these objects may be, one thing remains clear: whether directly or indirectly, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) as the U.S. military now prefers to call them, represent a concern for aviators.
Some have expressed concerns in recent days about UFOs being categorized as “threats” by our military. How much evidence is there, after all, that these objects actually display any kind of threatening behavior?
“The military and intelligence establishments remain the guardians of our most profound secrets on UFOs,” wrote journalist Leslie Kean in a recent opinion piece. “Their current narrative frames UAP as a national security threat, which is understandable since the mysterious vehicles operate with impunity in restricted airspace.”
However, Kean asks whether the “threat” narrative is all that should be considered, asking “what about the deeper implications of this mystery? Can we find out what UFOs actually are?”
The challenge these objects represent for science is of equal, if not greater consideration than the assessment by our military about any threats they might represent. However, if we were to base their threat potential on recorded observations of the behavior over time—namely by pilots who have encountered these aerial objects—it appears that while UFOs may not be directly threatening, they do pose a safety concern for aviators.
“Aircrews and Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) have been reporting UAP and UFOs throughout the history of powered flight,” reads an Advisory for Pilots at the website of The National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP). The advisory, written by the organization’s Director of Research Ted Roe, outlines many of the safety issues related to UFOs, and what can happen when pilots encounter them.
“Many of these observations and incidents involve safety factors,” Roe’s advisory states. “While the government, usually the military, has had a passing interest in UAP the data has moved away from the aviation community and safety planners, leaving no support for aircrews and ATC.”
There are many ways a UFO sighting could possibly result in dangers to pilots, airborne crews, and also passengers aboard commercial aircraft. Namely, these involve distractions UFOs may present to pilots or even incidents where the behavior of an unidentified aerial object may result in pilots taking evasive action that could lead to possible damage to aircraft, or even injury of those on board.
Roe’s advisory notes that “The Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, offers no leadership or guidance to civil or commercial aviation and suggests that aircrews and ATC that want to report UAP observations and incidents can do it to somewhere other than the FAA or the US government.”
The FAA’s aversion to being involved with pilot observations of UFOs has long been a sticking point among advocates of greater awareness of the safety concerns these objects represent to aviators. In recent days, the FAA did finally confirm that it documents pilot sightings of UFOs that can be corroborated on radar, and supplies information it collects to the Navy’s UAP Task Force. The admission marked a notable shift by the FAA, whose own policies have for years stated that UFO sightings should be reported to civilian groups like the Washington-based National UFO Reporting Center.
UFOs may not represent a direct “threat” in the same sense that the military’s current efforts toward studying the phenomena may entail. In fact, there is very little evidence that this is the case. However, this does not mean that UFOs aren’t a concern, especially for aircraft operated by both civilian and military pilots who must apparently share the skies with them. It is time that government agencies and aviation authorities take note of this reality, and begin taking it seriously.
One of the most mysterious UFO cases in Scottish history began on August 4, 1990, when two hikers were out in the remote Scottish Highlands, close to Calvine, north of Pitlochry, when they saw something very bizarre in the sky above. There hovering in the air above was an enormous diamond-shaped object estimated as being around 100 feet in diameter, and which oddly seemed to have some RAF Harrier jets circling about it, making passes, and following it as it moved slowly over the highlands and passed over the A9 expressway, where it was seen by some motorists. The men were able to take a series of six very clear color photos of the mysterious craft, one of which allegedly shows a fighter jet companion during the 10 minutes they spent observing the bizarre sight. After this, the UFO allegedly then shot straight up at breathtaking speed. After this, the photos they took would become one of the stranger odysseys of government cover-ups, shadowy conspiracies, and missing evidence that could very well shake the world of Ufology to its core.
The area of the sighting
The excited witnesses turned over the photographs to the Scottish Daily Record who then, perhaps foolishly in retrospect, contacted the Ministry of Defense (MoD) for some comment on the images. From here, it gets a bit shadowy, as officials from the MoD then allegedly arrived at the newspaper’s office and confiscated the photographs and the negatives without explanation, merely stating that the material was “sensitive.” The newspaper never would get them back and the photographs of what was being called the “Calvine Incident” were never published. Indeed, the newspaper never saw them again. However, the strangeness was only just starting.
At the time, one of the men involved with the MoD’s investigation into UFOs, sort of like America’s Project Blue Book, was a man by the name of Nick Pope, who has claimed that the photographs had attracted the attention of the military all the way up to the highest levels. Pope claims that these negatives that they had confiscated were analyzed in great depth, that the MoD also commissioned a series of line drawings of the images, and according to him these pictures were the clearest, most impressive UFO photographs anyone had ever seen. One of the photos in particular was considered to be of outstanding quality, and conclusively showed something beyond explanation. He would explain of all of this:
The MoD has all sorts of equipment and expertise that we used to analyze and enhance imagery to tell whether there were any signs of fakery. This picture was assessed by our digital experts, who concluded it was a real photograph showing a solid-structured craft which was estimated as being around 25m in diameter. There were no wings and no visible signs of any propulsion system. It was exotic and unknown in a way far beyond even the most modern stealth aircraft being trialed at that time. Even now, years after these events, I can’t discuss the details of this process, as so much of the information is top secret. The Defence Intelligence staff sent these images to JARIC that’s the Joint Air Reconnaissance and Intelligence Centre. Now this is the UK’s military centre of expertise when it comes to imagery analysis. These Intelligence personnel come to the conclusion that these photographs are real – it’s a solid craft and no one has the faintest idea what it is.
I remember going to a briefing with the defense intelligence staff where the photograph was discussed. Most of the details of our conversation are classified and must remain secret. While I took early retirement from the MoD in 2006, the Official Secrets Act binds me for life. But I can reveal the sensational conclusion to our top secret briefing. Summing up, the intelligence officer ran through the possibilities. Gesturing to the left with his finger, he said the object in the photograph wasn’t Russian. Jerking his hand to the right, he said it wasn’t American. He looked at us intently and said that only left one other possibility. He pointed straight up. My boss and I couldn’t help looking up too. Then we looked at each other and then we looked back at the intelligence officer. His face was inscrutable. Nothing further was said and my boss and I walked back to our office in silence.
Nick Pope
The official conclusion, according to Pope, was that what was shown in the pictures was an alien spacecraft, which would have been groundbreaking, as the MoD had traditionally shied away from this line of reasoning, almost always finding a rational explanation or at the very most filing a report away as unknown. However, this time was different, the Calvine photographs shaking up the MoD and causing much excitement. Pope also would explain that the MoD took its investigation into UFOs more seriously than they let on, and that they rarely let the public know what was going really going on. He would say of this and the confusion the Calvine Incident had caused:
The MoD’s standard line on UFOs was that the phenomenon was of ‘no defence significance’ – a meaningless Whitehall soundbite that meant whatever we wanted it to mean. At best it was misleading and at worst, it was a downright lie. We consistently played down the true level of our interest in UFOs, telling parliament, the media and the public that the subject was of little interest, while all the time, behind closed doors, we struggled to make sense of cases like the Calvine incident. Despite an extensive investigation, we never found a definitive explanation for what was seen at Calvine.
Nevertheless, according to Pope there were still skeptics within the MoD, who believed that what was shown in the photos was not aliens, but rather some sort of top-secret experimental aircraft designed by the Americans, and he even claims that this started a bit of an incident between the two countries. Pope would explain:
One time, they nearly caused a diplomatic incident that threatened to unravel the UK’s Special Relationship with the United States. By the mid-Nineties a bitter struggle had erupted within the MoD in relation to UFOs. A sceptic versus believer dogfight was raging. In relation to the Calvine photos, the only remotely possible skeptical theory was that the object was a secret prototype aircraft or drone. We knew what we did and didn’t have when it came to such things, so realistically, that only left the Americans. At the same time as this row was raging, speculation arose that the Americans had developed a secret prototype aircraft codenamed Aurora – a hypersonic replacement for the iconic SR-71 Blackbird. We asked the US authorities if they’d been testing such an aircraft over the UK, but received firm denials. With the Calvine photos in mind, some MoD officials didn’t believe the US assurances, so asked again.
The Secretary of the Air Force, Donald Rice, was ‘incensed’ by the questioning and the implication that he’d lied to the US Congress when he told them Aurora didn’t exist. Our Air Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington wrote to senior RAF officers, pleading with them to defuse the row. As a result of this diplomatic bust-up, my Head of Division removed the Calvine incident photo from our office wall. He, like my immediate boss, was a sceptic, and clung to the belief that the object had to be American, because the concept of extraterrestrial visitation was too terrible a truth for him to face.
A supposed degraded photocopy of one of the images
Pope claims that shortly after this, the negatives of Calvine photographs were all locked away and classified, with even his own copy of one of the photos taken away from him and all known existing copies of the photographs shredded and destroyed. In 1996, a Freedom of Information Act request was filed by a journalist, only to receive the following response:
A number of negatives associated with the sighting were examined by staff responsible for air defense matters. Since it was judged they contained nothing of defense significance the negatives were not retained and we have no record of any photographs having been taken from them.
This seems to suggest that they are gone forever, but according to Pope, there is no way that the negatives were destroyed, and they will almost certainly still be in the files. The only evidence he has for the existence of these alleged photographs that caused such waves in the MoD are mock ups of what was seen in them that Pope had made from memory, as well as a photocopy of of one of the images, but the real photographs have remained locked away. Even after retirement, Pope would champion efforts to get the MoD to declassify its UFO files and release the Calvine images, but just as these files were about to be released in 2021, the government suddenly blocked this, and ended up resealing the files for a further 50 years, not to be opened until 2072. For now, all there are lines drawings, a photocopy, and Pope’s recreations from memory. The Calvine photographs remain hidden from us, and not a single one of the real images has ever seen the light of day. Pope has said:
Plenty of other copies survived and when I came out of retirement in 2008 to help publicize the declassification and release of the MoD’s UFO files, I was looking forward to the Calvine photos seeing the light of day. Sadly, it wasn’t to be. All that remained were some poor-quality black and white photocopies of a line drawing of one photo. Intelligence analysts use line drawings in their work, but to the media and the public, they look cartoonish. It was almost as if the MoD wanted to ridicule the subject. A few years ago, I teamed up with a graphic artist in Los Angeles and we reconstructed the photo for a TV show, using the line drawing and my memory as a guide. The result was spot-on, but it’s still not the real thing.
We are left here with an intriguing story, indeed, photographs which by Pope’s estimates would virtually prove that UFOs are real. Yet, as with many such promised pieces of evidence they have disappeared, and it is hard to tell just how amazing these purported photographs might be or even whether they ever existed at all. We have only Pope’s assurances that they do, but no way to see them and analyze them for ourselves. There is also sadly the fact that we now live in an era in which photographic evidence doesn’t go very far, making it unlikely that these images would be accepted as real even if we had access to them. What is going on here? Were these really such incredible images and if so, what happened to them? Were they buried by the MoD and covered-up? Are they locked up somewhere hidden away, and what exactly do they show? It seems that we only have to wait until 20172 to find out how exciting any of this really is or whether these photos even exist, so in the meantime, it is left to debate and speculation.
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Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, shown in the aircraft she flew between 2001 and 2007, was one of the Navy fighter pilots who reported seeing a UFO in 2004. (Family photo)
She picked up the kids after finishing her last call at work — there was some whining in the back seat — and raced to her home near Annapolis for family dinnertime. In between, she answered questions about the UFO.
“My life right now is very surreal,” said Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, who is a 41-year-old mother of three, a retired fighter pilot and one of the few people who gets regularly hauled into the Pentagon or before Congress for further questioning about the day in 2004 she saw a UFO — the Pentagon prefers to call them unidentified aerial phenomena — from the seat of her Super Hornet in the skies near San Diego.
Dietrich is pragmatic, forthright and has a swaggery, pilot’s sense of humor about this thing she’s been living with for nearly 17 years.
Thanks to a bizarro little line in last year’s coronavirus relief bill, the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense are ordered to generate a report on everything the government knows about UAPs — including Dietrich’s sighting. It’s coming next month, and it’s going to be D.C.’s hottest summer read.
“Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will,” says the retired fighter pilot. (Michael Greene)
And now that UFOs join the pandemic and insurrection on the congressional agenda (when it comes to the weird year contest, 2021 is telling 2020 to “hold my beer”), Dietrich’s callers have moved from mostly the fringe, stalkery UFO fanatics who just want to be near her, to mainstream media freaks like me. She patiently plays along.
“I do feel a duty and obligation,” Dietrich said, when I asked her why she took my call and why she agreed to talk to “60 Minutes,” her national media debut. “I was in a taxpayer-funded aircraft, doing my job as a military officer,” she said. “Citizens have questions. It’s not classified. If I can share or help give a reasonable response, I will. I don’t want to be someone who’s saying ‘no comment.’ ”
Dietrich in an undated photo in her aircraft. (Family photo)
So, on to the events of Nov. 14, 2004.
She was a newly winged pilot on a regular training flight with the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group that day when something moving fast and erratically came into view.
Dietrich’s boss, Cmdr. Dave Fravor, told her to hang back and be his wingman while he flew closer in to check it out. The object began mirroring his movements and then just disappeared.
“Some days your boss asks you to swab the deck. Some days he asks you to keep high cover while he spars with a UFO,” Dietrich wrote in a tweet.
A video, just one of the recordings from that day, captures a white object shaped like a Tic Tac and the howls and exclamations of the pilots who were tracking its otherworldly motion. The video was released by To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science in 2017 but has gained a lot of traction after the Pentagon verified it as authentic. It will be included in that UAP report.
“I’ve never had a Twitter,” Dietrich said, but she created an account this month as a way to step out and connect with the thousands of people obsessed with the event — and her. (Her first tweet was a charming “Radio Check,” a pilot’s version of “Is this thing on?”)
“People have found me throughout the years,” she said. “I just was an eyewitness to something in the course of my normal duties . . . that somehow makes me a portal.”
They’ve tracked her down and called her. “I’ll give you 10 minutes on the phone, then I have to go feed my kids,” she’ll tell them and then patiently recounts the events of that day in 2004.
As soon as they returned to their aircraft carrier they reported everything they saw and how it happened.
“We all collectively lost our minds,” she said. “There was no denying it, everybody had heard us on the radio.”
Over beers, during the many reunions she’s had with her commander that day, they look at each other and shake their heads. “We agree that if we had been solo, we wouldn’t have said anything,” she said.
Naval aviator humor can be brutal. And in the days after the sighting, their colleagues were merciless. They looped alien-invader movies “Men in Black” and “Independence Day” to show on the ship’s channels. They left tinfoil hats all over the place. The daily newsletters had little green men cartoons.
They had to laugh it off, she said. Because it was so weird and because even back at the ship, they saw it, too, on their radar.
Dietrich said she’s decided to be open about it now because she knows other pilots have seen similar UAPs and have kept quiet about them, afraid of the stigma. Because let’s be honest — UFOs are still firmly in the realm of conspiracy and kooky.
She’s been low-key about it all these years, answering questions on the Hill and at the Pentagon, listening patiently as debunkers found her private number and screamed at her over the phone.
She’s been teaching at George Washington University and the U.S. Naval Academy, not staring into the heavens, wondering who is out there or putting herself in the public eye — “not when I’m active duty, not when I’m teaching. I don’t want to be the faculty UFO freak.”
Plus she’s been a little busy dealing with the mess we have right here on Earth, flying more than 200 combat missions and 57 mounted combat patrols and ground assault convoy missions over two deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Navy sent her to language school, and she became the strategic architect for the civil-military stability operations team in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province.
She’s been working to promote three causes: her beloved magnet high school, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy; the foundation to help diversify aviation founded by a former classmate, Legacy Flight Academy; and Wings for Val, the foundation to promote women in aviation dedicated to Valerie Delaney, a Navy pilot from Ellicott City, Md., who died in 2013 during a training mission in Washington state.
And Dietrich is also too busy with her three kids, now 2, 4 and 6, to focus much on UFOs.
One of them was the hit of that day’s pre-K show-and-tell. He brought in the “UFO Box” she keeps, the one with the red-and-white helmet she was wearing that day in 2004.
Another was commanding her from the back seat as we spoke: “Window open!” There was a chorus of squeals and shrieks from the back seat, the soundtrack of every working mom’s life.
“No, I didn’t have time to think about it too much,” she sighed. “But I will pay someone to abduct me right now.”
There have been countless pieces of photographic evidence of alleged UFOs put forward over the decades. At times they seem to be pretty much a dime a dozen, some of them held up as possibly real, others obvious hoaxes. Over the years there have been some photos that, regardless of their credibility, have managed to become much discussed and iconic, even after they have been proven to be faked. One series of such controversial photos emerged in 1993, and would cause quite the stir that reverberates through the field of Ufology to this day.
One morning in March of 1993, 69-year-old Eric Thomason got up and headed out to Maslin Beach, in Southern Australia, along with his son’s camera equipment, a Kodak S50 with a Fuji 100 ASA-film. His destination was an old abandoned mine called the Maslin Old Quarry, in order to take some photographs, as well as take some photos of the sunrise at a cliff called Ochre Point. Despite having no formal photography training and being a complete novice, he was planning to submit his photos to a photo contest in the magazine Southern Times-Messenger, but he was immediately disappointed to arrive at the beach to thick cloud cover that obscured the sunrise. He decided to come back and try again the next day, but it was similarly cloudy, useless for taking photos, but as he stared out over the cloudy grey sea in frustration, he saw something very odd.
Maslin Beach, Australia
As he looked out over the water from his vantage point high on the cliff, he claims that a strange object rose up from beneath the waves, and he could see it so clearly that the water dripping off of it was clearly visible. He would estimate it as being about 40 meters in diameter, He watched in awe as the mysterious object floated over the water and began hovering in his direction, and he would say of the appearance of this bizarre sight to the Swedish UFO magazine UFO-Aktuellt :
I saw a movement on the surface on the water, and something looking like the tower on an atomic submarine emerged. I could feel water dripping from the craft. When the object rose from the water, I was able to see how three legs were pointing out from the hull. I was also able to see how it was spinning, and how the three legs were pulled in.
He took his first photograph of the object, which was at this point apparently about 400 meters away, and things would only get stranger from there. As it grew closer, he says that he was afraid that the object would do something to him, perhaps even abduct him, as it was getting a little too close for comfort, so he started making his way down the slope. It was then that he saw a second smaller object, which took up a position under the larger object, after which it rose up into it. Throughout this all, Thomason was taking photos, and he explains how the scene played out:
I had heard of people being abducted by UFOs, so I climbed down a slope nearby. From there I could see how the light-grey object came flying somewhat south of me, and came to a halt over the mine. At that very moment I spotted yet another object, north of the first one. That’s when I snapped my second picture, but since the light from the sunrise was straight into my view-finder I moved a little to the left. I could see three lights on the exterior of the larger object and how it shone around the opening. Shortly after I’d taken the fourth and last photograph the larger object rose straight up and disappeared over me. When that happened, I could feel water dripping from the craft down on me.
One of the photographs
After this he hurried home, not telling anyone about what he had seen. He quickly had his film developed, wondering if the objects had even managed to show up in his pictures at all, but the photos proved to be remarkably clear. He even managed to notice a third object in the pictures that he had not noticed in his initial excitement during the encounter. He would say of this:
When the film had been developed, I noticed yet another object on the first photograph, which I hadn’t seen during the incident itself. A black dot in the distance, halfway between the object and the edge of the photograph, which might have been an airplane several kilometers away, or the smaller object on its way to intercept with the larger one.
Despite the amazing photos he had taken of what he claims to be UFOs, he did not come forward with his story for two months, not even telling his own wife, thinking that no one would believe him and wanting to avoid ridicule. It was only after watching a UFO program on TV that he decided to come forward to tell his strange story, first going to UFO-Aktuellt, after which his story made the rounds in other news services. The pictures he had taken were widely circulated and they had people mystified at the time, as they were some of the clearest photographs of alleged UFOs ever taken up to that point. To the general populace it was all pretty damn spectacular, and he even claimed to have sent the negatives to be analyzed by Kodak, drumming up even more interest. However, of course the skeptics were not far behind in all of this.
Another of the Maslin Beach photographs
One of the main criticisms of the Maslin Beach photographs is that they are almost too clear, and appear to be very staged, indeed they seem to be pretty well-shot for a man who claims to have had no photography experience, snapping pictures at moving objects while cowering in fear of his life. Making the startling clarity even more suspicious is that the camera he claims to have been using was a Kodak S50, which was a cheap camera with limited features, featuring pretty much a shutter button and that’s about it. No focus control or zoom in feature, nothing, and they have a large depth of field. In the first photo, which was allegedly taken from a distance of 400 meters away, the object is perfectly clear, while the background is fuzzy, but this doesn’t make sense because on that particular type of camera the object and horizon should both be equally in focus. Another criticism was that several people brought up the fact that the objects look suspiciously like a part of the ventilation system for private boats, nearly identical, in fact, although no one has been able to find a part like this that is an exact match. There were even those who pointed out that a string is vaguely visible in the first of the series of photos. In short, they just look really fake. The consensus was that he had built fake UFOs from both parts and staged the fake pictures, possibly even using some sort of remote-controlled craft but through it all Thomason has stood by his story and insisted his photos are genuine.
Looking at these photos now, they seem to be certainly faked, despite those who still continue to defend them. However, they are important in that they show just how far some hoaxes can go. At the time these were released, they made huge waves, and a lot of people bought it. Such fakes serve to dilute the worth of photographic evidence, especially in more modern times in which it seems to be getting easier and easier to fake such things. It has all caused us to be more vigilant and to keep our wits about us. Hopefully, this will make us better able to ferret out the hoaxes from what is possibly real, but it is still unfortunate that these hoaxes continue to happen, and because of them it doesn’t seem like photos alone will ever be accepted as hard evidence for UFOs.
Less than two weeks after the blockbuster revelation that a Canadian company responsible for providing air traffic control monitoring to commercial pilots has been hiding UFO reports and just a few months after an independent investigation found numerous Canadian UFO sightings by pilots not known to the general public comes yet another unusual sighting near Canada’s Atlantic coast and this one has reports from both commercial AND military pilots. Are aliens spending more time in the Great White North now that border restrictions have lessened and close encounters with American military pilots may be getting too close for comfort?
2021-08-11 The Gander area control centre (ACC) reported that, at 0155Z, a Government Of Canada, Department of National Defence flight (CFC4003) from Trenton, ON (CYTR) to Cologne/Bonn, Germany (EDDK) and a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Airbus A330-300 (KLM618) from Boston/Logan, MA (KBOS) to Amsterdam/Schiphol, Netherlands (EHAM) reported seeing a bright green flying object. It flew into a cloud, then disappeared. No impact to operations.
The incident referred to in this report was posted on August 11th by CADORS (the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Report System), the organization providing to the public digital access to its database of airline incidents and UFO reports from airlines, but actually occurred on July 30th, giving the military, airlines and government plenty of time to investigate it before posting. Why the delay? The CANDOR report gives probable causes as “Weather balloon, meteor, rocket, CIRVIS/UFO” – CIRVIS is the Canadian-United States Communications Instructions Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings required to be filed by U.S. ands Canadian military pilots after “all unidentifiable, suspicious, or hostile air or seaborne traffic” incidents. VICE.com, which has been doing an outstanding job revealing the UFO goings-on in Canada recently, requested additional information from an unnamed Canadian military spokesperson and got this response:
“In this particular incident, there is nothing to indicate that what the crew saw posed any kind of safety risk to the aircraft. We believe that they saw something—they would not have filed a report otherwise.”
This sounds like the verbiage in the Pentagon’s recent UFO report – they saw something and they don’t know what it was but it was no safety risk. Isn’t that contradictory? A spokesperson from Nav Canada, the private company that operates Canada’s air traffic control system, told VICE it had nothing to add. However, Steffan Watkins (@steffanwatkins), an “open source research consultant focused on debunking #misinfo|#disinfo about planes, ships, & #OpenSkies,” had some interesting observations which he posted on Twitter:
“RCAF CC-177 177705 #CFC4003 (49.059, -60.787) @ 28k ft, had just made a change in course and had climbed 1000ft when they reported seeing the UFO.”
“PH-AKD #KL618 #KLM618 (48.023, -59.422) 39,000ft made no change in course.”
He wondered if the RCAF pilot changed course to avoid something or to get a better look, or was this just a normal swerve-like course correction. What’s normal about a swerve? Does the police officer EVER take that as your alibi and not write a ticket? (Asking for a friend.) And before you point out that the Perseids meteor shower could be the cause of the green object seen, this was still early in 2021 cycle (it doesn’t peak until Aug 11-13). Would a military pilot ‘swerve’ to see a meteor – especially when he or she was on their way to help out in Afghanistan?
“We believe that they saw something.” That’s the best we can say at this point, but the circumstantial evidence warrants more investigation. Will that ever happen? Kudos to VICE for their coverage of these mysterious Canadian encounters between Military and commercial flights and UFOs.
Some of the more remarkable UFO encounters on record have involved pilots of various types, both civilian and military. These reports tend to resonate because they come from well-trained professionals with impeccable observation skills, so when they say they have seen something truly strange, people tend to listen. Such reports are actually quite numerous, stretching back through the decades, and here we will look at a selection of particularly notable pilot UFO encounters from the 1950s.
Starting off, 1952 seems to have been a rather busy year for strange pilot UFO encounters. First, we have the case of Commander Edward P. Stafford, of the US Navy, who says that in August of that year he was in charge of a detachment of three Naval patrol planes flying out of an air base at Thule, in northwest Greenland, which was integral to the chain of arctic radar stations called the DEW (distant early warning) line. At the time they were doing what is called “ice reconnaissance,” which entailed flying around the Kennedy Channel looking for large icebergs or pack ice so that this data could be relayed to the supply ships that arrived during the summer. They also had the secondary mission of helping Arctic scientists doing cosmic ray research, by helping them to retrieve the data packages from their high-altitude research balloons when the balloons came back down to earth. They would relay the location of the fallen packages, after which helicopters would go in to retrieve them. Stafford describes these as easy missions, but on this day things would get strange. Stafford would say:
These were easy flights, always in good weather and always at an altitude safely above the tall, cloud-shrouded bergs and coastal rocks we often had to dodge on ice patrol. Each of us had two or three of those “milk runs” while deployed to Thule, and we rather enjoyed the change of tactics and routine, as well as the virtuous feeling that we were helping to advance the cause of science. This is why I was surprised to find one of the other plane commanders as tense and pale on return from a balloon chase as though it had been a hairy combat mission or a close encounter with a berg or a mountaintop. Lt. John Callahan was a salty, steady professional pilot, so I knew when I saw him walking in from his plane that something serious had happened on that flight. “What the hell’s the matter John?” I asked him. “You look as if you’d just survived a midair!” “Ed, you’re not going to believe it. I’m not even sure I do… and I SAW it. And so did O’Flaherty and Merchant. At least most of it. And I don’t think they believe it either.”
The obviously heavily distressed and scared Callahan was then brought into the ready room and began to explain just what “it” had been. He claimed that he had been on a balloon run, flying at 10,000 feet in the clear with the balloon in sight high above and the radio compass needle locked on to the balloon’s transmitter, with he and his co-pilot Bill O’Flaherty occasionally taking turns checking the balloon through their binoculars. It was as they were doing this that they had noticed something very unusual, indeed. On one of these binocular checks, Callahan noticed three bright silver discs attached to the instrument pod of the balloon, and he pointed them out to O’Flaherty, who also saw them. They hadn’t been there minutes before, so both men were baffled as to what these objects could possibly be. Stafford would describe of what had happened to them next, saying:
Callahan took the glasses back and looked again. They were still there exactly as the copilot had described, three shining, saucer-shaped metallic objects clustered on the hanging trail of the balloon just above the black dot of the science package. On the intercom Callahan called the plane captain to the cock- pit and handed him the binoculars. “Take a look Merchant. What do you think?” The captain’s reaction was the same as the copilot’s. “What the hell are they? Where did they come from?” Callahan took the glasses back and studied the strange objects for several minutes while O’Flaherty maneuvered the Privateer to keep the target in sight. Suddenly Callahan sucked in his breath and held it. What he was seeing could not be happening. The three objects had detached themselves from the tail of the balloon and formed up into a compact vee. As Callahan watched incredulously, they executed what looked at that distance like a vertical bank to the left and accelerated to a blinding speed that took them out of sight, climbing in about three seconds. Callahan handed the glasses back to O’Flaherty. “They’re gone,” he said slowly, “CLIMBING from 90,000 feet. Never saw anything turn so tight or move so fast.” Back in the ready room after the instrument pod had landed and its position had been reported, this was the aspect of the phenomenon that most affected Callahan. “Jesus, Ed,” he told me, “from the angle of the sky those things passed through in the three seconds they were in sight, at that distance, they must have been going tens of thousands of miles an hour. They must have pulled a hundred Gs in that turn. And what the hell climbs out, ACCELERATING from 90,000 feet?”
The witness then apparently wrote a full report of the incident, but after that it was apparently just sort of buried and forgotten by the higher ups. There was never any explanation given, and the report was never brought up again. The only record of this happening is Stafford’s testimony, which originally appeared in Naval History Magazine, and that’s it. It is a strange case to be sure, but it wasn’t the only incident to happen in 1952. Just the month before, in July of 1952, there was another high-profile case involving a passenger airliner in the United States. On the evening of July 14, 1952, a Pan American World Airways DC-4 with a crew of three and 10 passengers, was on a routine flight from New York to Miami and things were going smoothly until just after sunset, when things would get very strange, indeed. At the time, the plane was on autopilot over Chesapeake Bay approaching Norfolk, Virginia, at an altitude of 8,000 feet, when all three crew members, consisting of Captain F. V. Koepke, First Officer William B. Nash and Second Officer William H. Fortenberry, saw a bright “red-orange brilliance” low near the ground in the distance. None of them could figure out what it could be, it had just suddenly appeared from nowhere, and as they studied the phenomenon it got even weirder still, when they could discern that it was in fact a series of bright objects. First Officer Nash would say of what they saw:
Almost immediately we perceived that it consisted of six bright objects streaking toward us at tremendous speed, and obviously well below us. They had the fiery aspect of hot coals, but of much greater glow, perhaps twenty times more brilliant than any of the scattered ground lights over which they passed or the city lights to the right. Their shape was clearly outlined and evidently circular; the edges were well defined, not phosphorescent or fuzzy in the least and the red-orange color was uniform over the upper surface of each craft. Within the few seconds that it took the six objects to come half the distance from where we had first seen them, we could observe that they were holding a narrow echelon formation, a stepped-up line tilted slightly to our right with the leader at the lowest point, and each following craft slightly higher. At about the halfway point, the leader appeared to attempt a sudden slowing. We received this impression because the second and third wavered slightly and seemed almost to overrun the leader, so that for a brief moment during the remainder of their approach the positions of these three varied. It looked very much as if an element of “human” or “intelligence” error had been introduced, in so far as the following two did not react soon enough when the leader began to slow down and so almost overran him.
The mysterious objects then shot forward at great speed, like “a stream of tracer bullets” approaching to pass under the plane, and the crew all excitedly took up positions that allowed them to look outside to watch them as they did. Nash would say of what they saw beneath them:
All together, they flipped on edge, the sides to the left going up and the glowing surface facing right. Though the bottom surfaces did not become clearly visible, we had the impression that they were unlighted. The exposed edges, also unlighted, appeared to be about 15 feet thick, and the top surface, at least, seemed flat. In shape and proportion, they were much like coins. While all were in the edgewise position, the last five slid over and past the leader so that the echelon was now tail-foremost, so to speak, the top or last craft now being nearest to our position.
The objects then all sped off in formation to the west while making erratic maneuvers like “a ball ricocheting off a wall.” Two more objects they hadn’t noticed then sped under them to join the others, and went out over the darkened bay at low altitude, before lifting off to disappear into the sky. Nash would say of their ascent:
As they climbed, they oscillated up and down behind one another in a irregular fashion, as though they were extremely sensitive to control. In doing this, they went vertically past one another, bobbing up and down, just as the front three went horizontally past one another, as the initial six approached us. This appeared to be an intelligence error, ‘lousing up the formation’—they disappeared by blinking out in a mixed-up fashion, in no particular order. We stared after them, dumbfounded and probably open-mouthed. We looked around at the sky, half expecting something else to appear, though nothing did. There were flying saucers, and we had seen them. What we had witnessed was so stunning and incredible that we could readily believe that if either of us had seen it alone, he would have hesitated to report it. But here we were, face to face. We couldn’t both be mistaken about such a striking spectacle.
It would later turn out that none of the passengers had witnessed the strange spectacle, but when they radioed in their report, they would find that eight unidentified objects in the of vicinity Langley Field has also been seen by another pilot in the area, as well as several witnesses on the ground. In fact, there had apparently been seven additional reports from persons who had witnessed similar incidents within 30 minutes of the encounter in the same area. Air Force investigators would later try to explain it away as five jets that had been purportedly operating in the area at the time, but the crew were experienced pilots who knew they had not seen jets. At the time, Project Blue Book would look at the case and concur that it was likely not jets that had been seen, eventually filing it away as “unknown.” Interestingly, the case would be dusted off in 1962 by the Director of the Harvard College Observatory, astrophysicist Donald H. Menzel, who would conclude that it had all been due to simply a reflection in the cockpit windows, from either an internal or external light source, which had then been misidentified as UFOs. Menzel would doubt the credibility of the pilots, claiming that they gotten overexcited, had exaggerated what they had seen, and made a simple mistake of perception, falling for an optical illusion. This would be challenged by Nash, who lashed out at Menzel in a letter, saying:
Dr. Menzel, regardless of your figures the western horizon was not quite bright, and regarding your “reflection theory,” in the first place the objects were between us and the West. In the second place, they would have had to be damned persistent, consistent and impossible reflections to have manifested in three cockpit windows in exactly the same way. We first observed them through the front window. As they approached and I moved across the cockpit, I kept my eyes on the objects and saw them through the curved window of the windshield, and we both finished our observations looking through the right side window. That is why there is no evidence that the pilots considered that what they saw was a reflection; and you state that we were too excited by what we saw to make the most elementary scientific tests. Again, Doctor, pilots do not excite easily or they would not be airline pilots—please—a little respect for us?
Menzel would concede that perhaps it had not been reflections, instead changing his explanation to some sort of optical illusion caused by a temperature inversion, or even a spotlight that had been refracted off of a cloud layer, both of which he would hold up as “a highly probable explanation that is consistent with all observations and does not depend on the presence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.” However, Nash would adamantly deny that this could have accounted for what they had seen, and indeed neither a spotlight nor a temperature inversion seems to have been able to explain every aspect of what was seen by multiple qualified witnesses. To this day the case remains unsolved.
Another report from 1952 comes to us from the Gulf of Mexico, where on December 6, 1952 a crew aboard a USAF B-29 bomber would have a hairy encounter of their own. The bomber was moving out across the gulf towards Texas when they picked up something bizarre on their radar scopes, which appeared to be several unidentified objects moving at incredible speed. The objects rapidly approached the bomber, after which they became visible as they streaked past, much to the astonishment of the crew. These mysterious objects then did a series of acrobatic aerial maneuvers around the bomber for several minutes, before merging with another massive object that appeared, after which this giant UFO sped off at speeds estimated to be in excess of 9,000 miles per hour. One of the crew that day, a 1st Lt Norman Karas, would explain of the incident:
On 6 December 1952, while flying over the Gulf of Mexico towards Galveston, Texas, the flight engineer finished transferring fuel and I then turned on my radar set. I noticed an unidentified target approaching our aircraft at terrific rate of speed. I timed it as best as I could with my stopwatch over a known distance and the instructor flight engineer computed the speed at 5,240 mph. I alerted the entire crew to look for the object visually and some flashes of light were noticed. The closest the objects came were approximately 20 miles. I saw about 20 objects in all, sometimes as much as two and three on the scope at one time. I re-calibrated the set and there was no change. The object was small and possibly round. I also noticed a large return come up to within 40 miles of our tail from behind, and then disappeared. To the best of my knowledge, I believe that this object was real and moved at an extremely high speed and was not a set malfunction or optical illusion. Contact was broken off at 05:35 after a group of the blips merged into a ½ inch curved arc about 30 miles from our aircraft at 320 degrees and proceeded across the scope and off it at a computed speed of over 9,000 mph.
B-29 bomber
What was going on here? Who knows? The following year, we have a 1953 case that allegedly happened near Ellsworth AFB, just east of Rapid City, South Dakota. On August 11 of that year, the Air Defense Command radar station at Ellsworth AFB got a strange call from the local Ground Observer Corps filter center just after dark. It turns out that a spotter about 10 miles from the base had reported a very bright light moving low on the horizon, and ground control also picked it up, reporting the object as being at an altitude of 16,000 feet and stating that it “was well defined, solid, and bright.” A F-84 pilot who had been on maneuvers in the area was diverted to investigate. The pilot made visual confirmation of the object and began to approach, but when he was about 3 miles away it began to pull away and ascend even as the fighter tried to keep up, getting brighter as it did. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt former Director of Project Blue Book, would say of what happened next:
There was always a limit as to how near the jet could get, however. The controller told me that it was just as if the UFO had some kind of an automatic warning radar linked to its power supply. When something got too close to it, it would automatically pick up speed and pull away. The separation distance always remained about 3 miles. The chase continued on north out of sight of the lights of Rapid City and the base – into some very black night. When the UFO and the F-84 got about 120 miles to the north, the pilot checked his fuel; he had to come back. And when I talked to him, be said he was damn glad that he was running out of fuel because being out over some mighty desolate country alone with a UFO can cause some worry.
Both the UFO and the F-84 had gone off the scope, but in a few minutes the jet was back on, heading for home. Then 10 or 15 miles behind it was the UFO target also coming back. While the UFO and the F-84 were returning to the base – the F-84 was planning to land – the controller received a call from the jet interceptor squadron on the base. The alert pilots at the squadron had heard the conversations on their radio and didn’t believe it. “Who’s nuts up there?” was the comment that passed over the wire from the pilots to the radar people. There was an F-84 on the line ready to scramble, the man on the phone said, and one of the pilots, a World War II and Korean veteran, wanted to go up and see a flying saucer. The controller said, “OK, go.”
After the second plane was in the sky the mysterious light proved to be very evasive and elusive, foiling all attempts to get near it, climbing, diving, and generally maneuvering in a way that was well beyond the capabilities of the fighter.Ruppelt would explain of this cat and mouse chase:
In a minute or two the F-84 was airborne and the controller was working him toward the light. The pilot saw it right away and closed in. Again, the light began to climb out, this time more toward the northeast. The pilot also began to climb, and before long the light, which at first had been about 30 degrees above his horizontal line of sight, was now below him. He nosed the ’84 down to pick up speed, but it was the same old story – as soon as he’d get within 3 miles of the UFO, it would put on a burst of speed and stay out ahead.
Even though the pilot could see the light and hear the ground controller telling him that he was above it, and alternately gaining on it or dropping back, he still couldn’t believe it – there must be a simple explanation He turned off all of his lights – it wasn’t a reflection from any of the airplane’s lights because there it was. A reflection from a ground light, maybe. He rolled the airplane – the position of the light didn’t change. A star – he picked out three bright stars near the light and watched carefully. The UFO moved in relation to the three stars. Well, he thought to himself, if it’s a real object out there, my radar should pick it up too; so he flipped on his radar-ranging gunsight. In a few seconds the red light on his sight blinked on – something real and solid was in front of him. Then he was scared. When I talked to him, he readily admitted that he’d been scared. He’d met MD 109’s, FW 190’s and ME 262’s over Germany and he’d met MIG-15’s over Korea but the large, bright, bluish-white light had him scared – he asked the controller if he could break off the intercept. This time the light didn’t come back.
Ruppelt claims that every aspect of the case was subsequently looked into, but no rational explanation was every found, leaving it to be filed as “unknown.” A similar aerial chase occurred in August of 1956, this time in the region of Bentwaters AFB, in the UK. On the evening of August 13, several radar operators at two military bases in the east of England, one of these being Bentwaters, picked up multiple anomalous objects that moved very rapidly and performed inexplicable maneuvers. These objects were showing some very strange behavior, and seemed to converge on one very large object described as “several times larger than a B-36 aircraft,” which then continued to fly out over the countryside at a speed of around over 12,000 mph. Other objects were picked up as well, all of them moving at speeds of between 4,000 and 6,000 mph. These objects were also visually confirmed by a C-47 twin-engine military transport plane over Bentwaters, which reported that “a bright light streaked under my aircraft travelling east to west at terrific speed.” It was all enough to scramble a deHavilland Venom jet interceptor, which streaked off to investigate, and a later report filed by a Captain Edward L. Holt would say of what happened next:
Pilot advised he had a bright white light in sight and would investigate. At 13 miles [20 km.] west he reported loss of target and white light. Lakenheath radar vectored him to a target 10 miles [16 km.] east of Lakenheath and pilot advised that target was on his radar and was ‘locking on.’ Pilot then reported he had lost target on his radar. Lakenheath GCA reports that as the Venom passed the target on radar, the target began a tail chase of the friendly fighter. Radar requested pilot acknowledge this chase. Pilot acknowledged and stated he would try to circle and get behind the target. Pilot advised he was unable to ‘shake’ the target off his tail and requested assistance. One additional Venom was scrambled from RAF station. Original pilot stated: ‘Clearest target I have ever seen on radar.
The jets would lose the object and it has gone on to become a very puzzling case. It would be thoroughly investigated by The Condon Report, which was a Air Force-funded study at the University of Colorado under Dr. Edward U. Condon, the case remains unexplainable, and would conclude:
The probability that anomalous propagation of radar signals may have been involved in this case seems to be small. One or two details are suggestive of AP, particularly the reported disappearance of the first track as the UFO appeared to overfly the Bentwaters GCA radar. Against this must be weighed the Lakenheath controller’s statement that there was “little or no traffic or targets on scope,” which is not at all suggestive of AP conditions, and the behavior of the target near Lakenheath – apparently continuous and easily tracked. The “tailing” of the RAF fighter, taken alone, seems to indicate a possible ghost image, but this does not jibe with the report that the UFO stopped following the fighter, as the latter was returning to its base, and went off in a different direction. The radar operators were apparently careful to calculate the speed of the UFO from distances and elapsed times, and the speeds were reported as consistent from run to run, between stationary episodes. This behavior would be somewhat consistent with reflections from moving atmospheric layers – but not in so many different directions.
Visual mirage at Bentwaters seems to be out of the question because of the combined ground and airborne observations; the C47 pilot apparently saw the UFO below him. The visual objects do not seem to have been meteors; statements by the observers that meteors were numerous imply that they were able to differentiate the UFO from the meteors. In summary, this is the most puzzling and unusual case in the radar-visual files. The apparently rational, intelligent behavior of the UFO suggests a mechanical device of unknown origin as the most probable explanation of this sighting. However, in view of the inevitable fallibility of witnesses, more conventional explanations of this report cannot be entirely ruled out.
What was going on here? It is hard to say. In our last case here, we have one more case from 1956, concerning a Navy R7V-2 transport, a 4-engine Constellation, that was flying west across the Atlantic Ocean at the time on its way from Newfoundland to the Naval Air Station at Patuxent, Maryland. The aircraft was under the leadership of the very experienced Commander George Benton, who had made more than 200 flights across the Atlantic, and flying under incredibly clear, ideal conditions at the time. Along for the ride were nine Naval personnel returning home from foreign duty, and along with Benton’s regular and relief crews there were nearly 30 airmen-pilots, navigators and flight engineers aboard, many of whom were asleep when things began to get strange.
It started when Commander Benton noticed “a cluster of lights, like a village” on the sea ahead, which should have been completely dark. He verified this with his co-pilot, Lieutenant Peter W. Mooney, who also also saw the lights and said they looked “like a small town.” There was not supposed to be land there, so at first they thought that they had somehow gone off course, but a check of their navigation instruments showed that this wasn’t the case. They then thought that perhaps they were seeing a fleet of ships, but they didn’t look like ships, and a radio enquiry showed that there were no known such shipping operations scheduled in the area. As the aircraft approached, several colored rings appeared to spread out from the lights, and it appeared to get larger. They could now see that it was one massive object, 350 and 400 feet in diameter, apparently metallic, and it was hovering over the water below.
As they all tried to make sense of what they were seeing, the object began to rise towards their plane. It was much larger than the aircraft, and moving at such a clip towards them that they took evasive action to avoid a collision. As they braced for impact, the enormous disk tilted and veered off, only to circle back around and pace them. It was then that they could get a clear look at it, and in a report on the incident made by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) he says of this:
Its sheer bulk was amazing; its diameter was three to four times the Constellation’s wing span. At least thirty feet thick at the center, it was like a gigantic dish inverted on top of another. Seen at this distance, the glow along the rim was blurred and uneven. Whether it was an electrical effect, a series of jet exhausts or lights from opening in the rim, Benton could not tell. But the glow was bright enough to show the disc’s curving surface, giving a hint of dully reflecting metal. Though Benton saw no signs of life, he had a feeling they were being observed. Fighting an impulse to dive away, he held to a straight course. Gradually, the strange machine pulled ahead. Tilting its massive shape upward, it quickly accelerated and was lost against the stars.
The men would subsequently be interrogated and debriefed, with the Air Force apparently keenly interested in what they had seen but refusing to answer any questions by the crew as to what was going on. It was then sort of just brushed under the carpet. Then, a week later, there would be a new and rather strange development, of which Keyhoe would say:
Five days later, Commander Benton had a phone call from a scientist in a high government agency. “I’m informed you had a close-up UFO sighting. I’d like to see you.” Benton checked, found the man was cleared by the Navy. Next day, the scientist appeared, showed his credential, listened intently to Benton’s report. Then he unlocked a dispatch case and took out some photographs. “Was it like any of these?” At the third picture, Benton stopped him. “That’s it!” He looked sharply at the scientist. “Somebody must know the answers, if you’ve got photographs of the things.” The other man took the pictures. “I’m sorry, Commander.” He closed his dispatch case and left. At the time when I learned of this case, I had served for two years as Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.
These are just but a few of the pilot reports from the era, and they paint a rather amazing picture. These are reports that come from very trained witnesses, with the phenomena viewed by multiple people and often with radar corroboration and reports from the ground. What are we to make of such reports? Just what is going on here and can it so readily be written off? Why were so many of these reports buried by their superiors in order to fade away into the background? This is also just one era, a few reports in one decade, but such accounts expand well beyond this, right up into the present day. It is all a very sobering look at a phenomenon we barely understand, and which seems to be relegated by those in control to the shadows. Whatever truth there is to any of this, and what it all means, looks likely to remain hidden from us for some time to come.
A UFO expert and filmmaker from Nova Scotia says the latest American report could be a subtle way to show how the U.S. is experimenting with new technologies.
(Mike Blake/Reuters)
At the end of June, the U.S. government issued a long-awaited report on UFOs. The unclassified nine-page report, released to Congress and the public, includes 144 observations — mostly from U.S. navy personnel — of what the government officially refers to as "unidentified aerial phenomenon," or UAP, dating back to 2004.
Since the acronym UFO, standing for Unidentified Flying Objects, is generally associated with the possibility of extraterrestrials, the government uses UAP.
The government's report on what these objects are is inconclusive. U.S. intelligence services suggest these objects might be technology belonging to Russia or China, for example.
Paul Kimball has other ideas about what's going on with this report.
Kimball is a Nova Scotia filmmaker, television producer and historian. His first film from 2002 was a documentary called Stan T. Friedman Is Real. It was about his uncle, the New Brunswick UFO researcher Stanton Friedman.
Friedman was one of the world's foremost investigators and lecturers on the UFO phenomenon, and broke the story of the Roswell, New Mexico, crash back in the 1970s.
"I was always interested in talking to him at family reunions," said Kimball. "He was the cool uncle who was talking about space aliens."
Kimball spent a decade researching UFO phenomena before stepping back from the subject, but he still keeps tabs on what's going on.
"These kinds of things have happened every now and then for about the last 70, 75 years. And they call them 'flaps,' when interest in UFOs break out into the broader public consciousness," Kimball said.
The current flap started with a series of videos that were taken by the United States military and shared with the public a few years ago.
In this 2015 video declassified by the U.S. Department of Defence, U.S. navy pilots track an unidentified flying object off the coast of Jacksonville, Fla. 0:35
"The U.S. navy has come out and said, 'Yes, these are real videos. Our guys took them and we're not exactly sure what they represent,'" said Kimball. "And that's kind of it. You know, I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but at the moment that's as far as it goes. Then there's the UFO media machine, as I like to call it, that latches on to that and drums up interest in the subject and says, 'Well, OK, space aliens.' And it's a very long leap to get from these videos to space aliens.
"We have some anomalies. We can't necessarily explain them. No evidence to say that they're space aliens, but no evidence to say that they're not, you know, so leaving the door open."
As far as what else the U.S. government might be up to with the release of this current report, Kimball tells a story his close friend, Karl T. Pflock, told him.
The late Pflock was deputy assistant secretary of defence in the Ronald Reagan administration, a strategic planner, a CIA officer, UFO researcher, and author of Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe.
"Karl actually believed that space aliens had visited Earth," said Kimball. "So we weren't talking about somebody who said there were never any space aliens. But, he said, 'Look, most of these cases can be explained by testing advanced weapon systems. The government is working on technology that is 10 or 15 years in advance of what they'll admit to.'
"You're sort of seeing in many of these cases, like the Belgian triangle flap that occurred in the 1980s, that was probably delta-wing aircraft being tested by the United States military. Well, you would mistake that potentially for a UFO."
Kimball suggests governments have been experimenting with hypersonics, the kind of technology that, theoretically, could be what these navy pilots may be seeing but not actually know anything about. If it represents tech being developed by the United States, these videos are a way to let America's enemies know what's coming soon without being overt about it. But if it's the tech of another superpower, that would be a problem.
"That would be very concerning from a national security point of view, which is, I think, why members of Congress are really interested in it," said Kimball.
Retired Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield has been following the conversation about UFOs, but says the idea that they're alien technology 'doesn't even pass the basic common sense test.' 1:03
For the record, Canada's Department of National Defence doesn't have a dog in this fight. Spokesperson Jessica Lamirande sent a statement to CBC News on the subject of the American report.
"The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) do not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue," the statement said.
"Although we collaborate closely with the U.S. for aerospace control, we are not aware of any Canadian nexus or participation in the U.S. Department of Defence's UFO studies at this time, nor does the CAF have a unit dedicated to investigating UFOs."
Kimball remains an agnostic about extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, but he also thinks the subject is worth serious consideration.
"I'm very open to the idea of the paranormal or the supernatural or things beyond our understanding, however you want to frame it," he said.
"The odds are there are extraterrestrials in our galaxy. So could they be coming here? Yeah. Have I seen anything yet that absolutely convinces me that they have been coming here? No. But I've seen enough to make me think this isn't a subject that you should laugh at."
My previous article was titled: “The Space Brothers of the 1950s: Were They Russian Agents Promoting Communism in the U.S.?” It was a study of the possibility that the so-called “Space Brothers” of the 1950s were actually Russian agents and not aliens. Their goal: to try and advance communism in the United States – and to do it under what we might call a “UFO guise.” Today’s article follows on. The previous feature addressed such matters in the early years of the Cold War. This one, however, looks at the connection between UFOs, aliens and Russian agents in more recent times. With that said, read on. In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper, which is focused on the 1970s-1980s.
Haines wrote something eye-opening: “During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.” The Soviets, then, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also said: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings .”
Also on this issue of Russia and UFOs, there are the following words of long-time ufologist Bruce Maccabee: “After I spoke at a UFO conference near Washington, D.C. in February 1993, I was contacted by an assistant military attaché who was stationed at the Russian Embassy [italics mine]. He wanted to know how to obtain U.S. government files on UFOs. You can imagine my surprise and amusement when, about six months later, while I was at work I got a call from the ‘dreaded’ FBI. It became obvious to me that the agent didn’t know much about the UFO phenomenon and was amused to learn about the FBI files on the subject. But he was especially interested in my interactions with the military attaché.” Moving on…
Interestingly, there have been strange rumors to the effect that the controversial, so-called Majestic 12 documents might have played a role in all of this. One theory is that the Russians created the documents. Yes, I know: that sounds very strange, but read on. If the combined intelligence community found anything more about Majestic 12 documents in the late 1980s, then it is yet to appear under the FOIA. We do know something of deep interest though, thanks to a man named Richard L. Huff. He served as Bureau Co-Director within the Office of Information and Privacy. In correspondence with him, Huff informed me of the existence of an FBI “Main File” on Majestic 12, now in what is termed “closed status.” Not only that: I was told that the FBI’s file on the Majestic 12 papers was titled nothing less than “Espionage.” Author Howard Blum said the FBI’s reasoning for suspecting the Russians might have been at the heart of the Majestic 12 debate revolved around “…muddying the waters, creating dissension, spreading paranoia in the ranks – those were all the day-in, day-out jobs of the ruthless operation.” Soviet revenge against U.S. Intelligence for having spun their own UFO-themed operations during the Cold War.”
During the first half of 2021, the United States had been overcome with a case of UFO fever (or “UAP”, as these unusual aerial objects now seem to be preferentially called by both the American military, and the media).
However, in recent days, much of this interest seems to have waned, following the publication of a widely anticipated report delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June.
This, despite the recent passing of a bill by the Senate that may significantly expand access to information about UAP collected by the intelligence community for a small unit within the U.S. Navy that has been tasked with studying these unexplained phenomena.
Much of the interest in the topic, which began with earnest in 2017 following revelations in the New York Times about the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, was further fueled by the appearance of a new task force within the U.S. Navy, specifically assigned to study anomalous aerial objects observed by the military.
The establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was officially announced in early August 2020, following its approval by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist. “The Department of the Navy, under the cognizance of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, will lead the UAPTF,” read a Pentagon press release announcing the establishment of the task force.
As the Pentagon had outlined at the time, the UAPTF had been established to help improve the U.S. government’s “understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs,” with a specific mission “to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
With the subsequent passing of the Intelligence Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2021, the UAPTF was given the go-ahead to proceed with the creation of a preliminary report on its findings regarding UAP, to be delivered to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June of this year.
The buzz this all managed to generate had been impressive, to say the least. Almost every day, news items, opinion editorials, and blog posts speculated on what the contents of the widely anticipated government report on these aerial mysteries might contain.
However, once it finally arrived in late June, the contents of the report hardly lived up to all the hype it managed to generate.
The nine-page report, titled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” was delivered to the ODNI on June 25, 2021. Not counting the cover page, and a pair of appendixes found on the last two pages, the main body of the report comprised just six pages of material that provided no specifics on the 144 unresolved incidents involving UAP cited in the document. These incidents, the majority of which occurred within the last two years, appeared to represent encounters by personnel from the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and other areas of government with what the UAPTF believed to be physical objects or phenomena of some kind.
“Our analysis of the data supports the construct that if and when individual UAP incidents are resolved they will fall into one of five potential explanatory categories,” the report stated. These five categories included “airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin.”
In addition to its designation of multiple types of phenomena that comprised the UAP observed by the U.S. military, another key focus of the report involved the possible threat these objects might represent to aviators, as well as to U.S. interests and security more broadly.
“UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue,” read one portion of the report, “and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security. Safety concerns primarily center on aviators contending with an increasingly cluttered air domain.”
Significantly, the report added that “UAP would also represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”
The preliminary report seemed to convey at least one thing starkly: how seriously the Pentagon appears to be taking the UAP issue. Despite this renewed interest shown in the subject by the U.S. government, the general response to the report had been lackluster, with many complaining that it offered little information of any substance, or that wasn’t already publicly accessible.
However, what many seem to have overlooked about the report had been that in its preliminary assessment, the UAPTF was essentially presenting frontmatter for what would be ongoing studies of UAP by the Navy’s task force, drawing on information collected by a number of agencies within the intelligence community in the years ahead. But where do things go from here?
As with last year’s Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA), provisions were included again in this year’s bill related UAP and the efforts of the Navy’s UAP Task Force. According to Section 345 of the newly-passed FY 2022 IAA, titled “Support for and Oversight of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force,” the Secretary of Defense and Director of National Intelligence will now require “each element of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense with data relating to unidentified aerial phenomena to make such data available immediately to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center.”
Among the most significant developments since the release of the preliminary report in June, it also presents us with ideas about the future direction of the Navy’s UAP Task Force, and that of other agencies within the government who are collecting data about unidentified aerial objects.
Whether or not the UAP subject holds the public’s attention, it appears that the government and its focus on collecting and analyzing reports have not changed. In the years ahead, perhaps there will be more significant findings on these unusual aerial objects that have perplexed governments and militaries around the world now for several decades.
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A United States Space Force flag hangs from a pole, with flags of other armed service branches, outside the Minnesota State Capitol building on May 22, 2021 in St. Paul, Minnesota. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
By Theodore Bunker
Space Force is reportedly wary of taking over investigating the Pentagon’s reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena,” multiple current and former officials told Politico on Monday.
"It makes perfect sense," one official who is currently advising the military on the issue said, noting that Space Force’s responsibilities are more global than the other branches of the military, which gives U.S. Space Command access to advanced surveillance technologies.
"There is no limit to the Space Force mission. It doesn't have a geographic boundary like the other services,” this official added.
They went on to note that some opposition to the idea exists within Space Force, which has been widely mocked since its debut under former President Donald Trump.
"They really are sensitive to that," the former official said. "They want people to take them seriously. They don't want to do anything that is embarrassing. But this is national security. This is their job."
Chris Mellon, a former top Defense official for intelligence who has advised the military on the issue of UFOs, recently wrote in a post on his blog that whichever organization is ultimately charged with the investigation will have to work alongside the military, law enforcement, and the intelligence, academic and scientific communities, as well as the general public.
He notes that North American Aerospace Defense Command “would seem to make sense, but again its willingness to share information with other organizations is questionable. Still, they have money and contracting authority and the heft needed to make changes to the status quo if they were willing to aggressively pursue the issue.”
Mellon writes that "regardless, the first and most important step for Congress to take is to either identify a permanent home for the mission or require [the Department of Defense] and the CI [intelligence community] to do so and to explain their resulting rationale with the oversight committees."
A report issued to Congress in June by the director of national intelligence came to the conclusion that only one of the 144 UFO sightings investigated could be explained, noting that 18 of the cases included details that appeared to indicate advanced properties at work.
The report says that "we currently lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations,” and noted that UFOs "clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security."
A Pentagon spokesperson told Politico that "planning for an activity to take over the [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force’s] mission is ongoing. Spokespeople for Space Force and the Department of the Air Force referred Politico to the Pentagon’s spokesperson when asked for comment.
UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?
UFOs, UAPs—Whatever We Call Them, Why Do We Assume Mysterious Flying Objects Are Extraterrestrial?
For better or worse, sightings of unidentifiable things in the sky have become inextricably linked to spacecraft from outer space.
Still unidentified: Navy pilots tracked and photographed what appeared to them to be a fast-moving object off the Florida coast in 2015. (U.S. Department of Defense)
Earlier this summer, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a much publicized nine-page report titled, with deliberate blandness, “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” Although the report was requested by Congress, in many ways it was the culmination of three-and-a-half years of public attention to military reports regarding unidentified flying objects. ODNI did not use the acronym “UFO,” which dates back to the 1950s (government officials now prefer “UAP,” for unidentified aerial phenomena), and never even mentioned the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin for the sighted objects. But that didn’t keep news outlets from concluding that the report “stops short of ruling out aliens.”
Military and intelligence officials have consistently framed these mysterious incidents in terms of national security. The Preliminary Assessment stated that ODNI’s charge from Congress was to provide policymakers with an overview of “the challenges associated with characterizing the potential threat posed by UAP.” The office was directed to focus on “identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the unidentified aerial phenomena to national security, and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.” Even those who promote the study of UFOs agreed that possible military threats—not extraterrestrials—were the focus of the new report.
So why do the press and social media keep bringing up aliens? Because, for better or worse, sightings of unidentifiable things in the sky have become inextricably linked to visitors from outer space. Aliens are now our default explanation for such events, and the reason is no accident: For nearly 75 years, people have worked hard to make it the default.
When reports of flying saucers first began to surface during the summer of 1947, extraterrestrials were hardly brought up. Yes, there were some who took seriously the prospect that Martians or other beings from outer space were behind all the commotion. Kenneth Arnold—the man credited with first reporting a UFO sighting—is said to have encountered a distraught woman in an Oregon café, who ran out sobbing and shouting, “There’s the man who saw the men from Mars,” adding that she “would have to do something for the children.”
Most people, though, didn’t take this possibility seriously. Opinion writers tended to think it most likely that the U.S. or Soviet Union were testing experimental rockets or aircraft. The general public also seemed dubious that flying saucers might be the work of extraterrestrials. In August 1947, George Gallup published the results of a poll in which he asked those surveyed—all Americans—what they thought the flying objects reported in the newspapers might be. Twenty-nine percent thought witnesses had been mistaken, 15 percent thought they were secret American weapons, and one-third said they didn’t know. If there were people who believed they were ships from outer space, their responses were included among the nine percent who answered “other.”
A Dutch survey in October 1952 revealed similar sentiments in the Netherlands, with no apparent support for the idea of alien visitors. And 43 percent confessed that they had no idea what the flying saucers were.
The fact that almost half the general public in the late 1940s and early 1950s were undecided about the nature of UFOs meant that, in principle at least, they were open to different explanations. This provided an opportunity in 1950 for pulp and entertainment writers Donald Keyhoe (The Flying Saucers are Real), Frank Scully (Behind the Flying Saucers), and Gerald Heard (The Riddle of the Flying Saucers) to find receptive readers for their claims that unidentified flying objects were visitors from outer space. Over the course of the 1950s, first local, then nationwide flying saucer clubs and groups sprouted up across the United States. These offered subscribers both a way to keep up with UFO news through newsletters and bulletins, and a forum for speculating about the intentions of the extraterrestrials free from fear of public ridicule.
By 1956, the terms “unidentified flying object” and “UFO” were being used in place of “flying saucer” by some military officials and amateur civilian researchers. Within a decade and a half, the acronym UFO had effectively replaced its predecessor. If the new terminology was meant to bring precision to reports of sightings, however, it achieved nothing of the kind. Just as any account of an odd thing in the sky had been quickly branded by media outlets to be a potential flying saucer, so too “UFO” served as a convenient rubric under which the media categorized just about any perplexing observation. All the while, “UFO” continued to carry with it the same association with aliens that “flying saucer” once had. The current term, “unidentified aerial phenomena” is a prisoner of this same past.
What then, should we make of this most recent report? Does it add anything new to the long history of UFOlogy? How does it compare with previous official statements?
Unfortunately, the document is thin on details, so there is much we don’t know. What we have been told, however, is that the Department of Defense has formed an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) to study the issue. For the purposes of the report, this task force examined 144 incidents involving U.S. government personnel and assets, all of which occurred between November 2004 and March 2021. Most of the cases are considered explainable, though they haven’t all been completely explained due to the fact that “the reporting lacked sufficient specificity.”
The most worrying UAP episodes for national security-minded readers involved 18 outlier instances in which it was reported that the object displayed “unusual flight characteristics.” In these cases, investigators could not rule out the possibility that it was the result of sensor errors, cyberattack, or misperception. In the end, intelligence authorities recommend increased funding to the task force to develop a more robust data collection and analysis system.
This is by no means the first government fact-finding effort in this arena. After 1947, the U.S. Air Force established a series of UFO investigation task forces, the most prominent being Project Blue Book during the years 1952-1969. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency convened a small panel of consultants to look into the matter. Finally, the Air Force sponsored a scientific study of the UFO phenomenon by the University of Colorado between 1966 and 1968.
Civilian UFO researchers and enthusiasts have soundly criticized these undertakings for what they see as evidence of bias and secrecy. Nevertheless, in all these cases, officials publicly concluded that most reports of UFOs were explicable and presented no reason for concern, and that the residue of inexplicable cases did not pose a national security threat.
In short, the ODNI Preliminary Assessment is all too familiar. Modern investigation of UAPs has been hampered by inconsistent standards of reporting and limited resources, and as in the past, officials on the whole appear unruffled by such reports. And once again, government agencies leave room for ambiguity in admitting that there are a number of anomalous incidents.
ODNI’s preliminary report does break some new ground, however. It clearly states that most unidentified aerial phenomena reported are physical objects. It also admits that a culture of dismissiveness and ridicule within the military and intelligence communities has inhibited witnesses from coming forward, which may partly explain the shortcomings in reporting. In fact, the Preliminary Assessment appears to open the way for more scientists and technical experts to join the discussion, although how they should do that remains unclear.
We can expect that intelligence analysts will continue to monitor the situation. Activists will take to social media to demand full disclosure by government agencies. And both skeptics and believers in alien visitation will come away feeling that their side has won the day. Far from the end of the UFO controversy, this is just the beginning of a new chapter.
UK's top military brass refuse to rule out existence of extraterrestrial UFOs
UK's top military brass refuse to rule out existence of extraterrestrial UFOs
A senior defence source told the Daily Star Sunday that the government was having to very carefully word its statements on the existence of aliens and the presence of UFOs in our skies
By Sean Rayment
Aliens may well be shooting through the skies above us
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Military bosses have refused to rule out the existence of extraterrestrials.
The Ministry of Defence admitted it had been receiving reports of UFO sightings for more than 50 years.
But the Government said that because none of them posed a threat to UK security it had “no opinion on the existence of extraterrestrials”.
One senior defence source said last night he believed the Government was worried about commenting on alien life.
He said: “The MoD can’t deny the existence of UFOs because there are reports coming in every week, so it tries to fudge the issue by saying that no UFOs have posed a military threat.
Unidentified Flying Objects have been spotted in the skies above the UK with worrying frequency
“It’s interesting that it doesn’t mention anything about UFOs which don’t represent a threat.”
Details of the Government position was revealed in a Freedom of Information request.
An MoD spokesman said: “While I note your interest in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, you may wish to be aware that the MoD has no opinion on the existence of extraterrestrials.
The MoD did not rule out the existence of UFOs(Image: Getty Images)
“This is because, in over 50 years, no UFO sighting reported to the department has indicated the existence of any military threat to the UK.”
Author Nick Pope, who used to run the British Government’s UFO Project, said: “The MoD’s response is disappointing, but predictable.”
Back in June, the Star reported how more than 200 close encounters have been reported in Yorkshire over the past two decades.
The latest came at the end of May, when a jet passenger filmed a long cigar-shaped object flying close to their aircraft as it cruised over the county.
If you’re into UFOs, you’ll know of the wave of activity that occurred in the skies of the United States in the latter part of the 1890s. Then, during the Second World War, there were the Foo Fighters. And, when the Second World War was over, we had the Ghost Rockets of Scandinavia. Flying Saucers followed within a year. In the early 1990s, the Black Triangles put in appearances, but never really went away. There’s another important time-frame to all of this, however. I’m talking about the very earliest years of the 1900s. You may not know, but there are some classic cases from that period, and particularly from 1909. Let’s begin. Nigel Wright is a long-time UFO researcher based in England, and – with Jonathan Downes, the director of the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology – the co-author of the book, The Rising of the Moon, which is a fine study of paranormal phenomena that I recommend to one and all. In their book, Nigel cites a report that he found within the May 21, 1909 edition of England’s Exmouth Journal newspaper, and, to which, are attached definitive M.I.B. overtones. Titled Invasion Scares – Queer Stories from Humberside, the article reads as follows: “A strange story was told the Yorkshire Post, Grimsby correspondent by workmen from Killingholm near Immingham new dock works on Tuesday night. They declared that they were seated at noon on the roadside at Killingholm, when a large motor car drove up and two men alighted who walked to the bank on which the workmen were seated and asked if any airships [italics mine]had been recently seen near. The workmen replied: ‘No,’ whereupon the motorists asked the distance between Killingholm and Spurn, and whether any mines were laid in the Humber between the two places. The workmen referred their interrogators to a coastguard, saying he would be able to answer them. It does not matter,’ replied the motorists, and, after enquiring the way to the nearest refreshment house, they jumped into their car and drove quickly away.” Now, onto another case from that early period:
Brett Holman, who has extensively studied this issue, says: “On the night of 23 March 1909, a police constable named Kettle saw a most unusual thing: a strange, cigar-shaped craft passing over the city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. His friends were skeptical, but his story was corroborated, to an extent, by Mr Banyard and Mrs Day, both of nearby March, who separately saw something similar two nights later. In fact, these incidents were only the prelude to a series of several dozen such sightings throughout April and especially May, mostly from East Anglia and South Wales.” In May of the same year, the LondonStandard newspaper told its readers that with “few exceptions” the witnesses described seeing “a torpedo-shaped object, possessing two powerful searchlights, which comes out early at night.”
Artist’s rendering of the airship purportedly seen during late 1896 and into the summer of 1897.
May 18, 1909 was the night on which one of the most amazing encounters occurred. A Mr. C. Lethbridge was walking to his Roland Street, Cardiff home, via the 271-meter-high Caerphilly Mountain. As he did so, Lethbridge was astonished by the sight of a cigar-shaped vehicle – in excess of forty-feet in length – which was sitting on the grass, at the edge of a mountain road. In his very own words… “When I turned the bend at the summit I was surprised to see a long tube-shaped affair on the grass on the roadside, with two men busily engaged with something nearby. They attracted my close attention because of their peculiar getup; they appeared to have big heavy fur coats and fur caps fitting tightly over their heads. I was rather frightened, but I continued to go on until I was within twenty yards of them, and then my idea as to their clothing was confirmed.
“The noise of my little spring cart seemed to attract them, and when they saw me they jumped up and jabbered furiously to each other in a strange lingo — Welsh or something else; it was certainly not English. They hurriedly collected something off the ground, and then I was really frightened. The long thing on the ground rose up slowly. I was standing still at the time, quite amazed, and when it was hanging a few feet off the ground the men jumped into a kind of little carriage suspended from it, and gradually the whole affair and the men rose in the air in a zigzag fashion. When they had cleared the telegraph wires that pass over the mountain, two lights like electric lamps shone out, and the thing went higher into the air, and sailed away towards Cardiff.” It seems that 1909 was a hotbed for UFO activity in the U.K.!
Fastwalker UFOs Are So Fast They Appear As Mere Streaks To Unaided Human Eye
Fastwalker UFOs Are So Fast They Appear As Mere Streaks To Unaided Human Eye
They are called Fastwalkers (or Fast Walkers) and travel at speeds well over 20,000 miles per hour making these UFOs mere “streaks” of light to the unaided human eye.
Their name comes from a 1984 NORAD incident which tracked an unidentified Fastwalker UFO moving at speeds over 22,000 MPH as it screamed towards the earth.
The May 1984 NORAD Fastwalker event
In May of 1984 at 1400 hours Zulu time, an alert was triggered at the North America Air Defense Command (NORAD) when ultra-sensitive orbiting USDSP military satellites (highly-classified satellites that serve as early ICBM launch detection systems) spotted a mysterious UFO heading towards earth at a mind-boggling 22,000 miles per hour.
As it passed in front of Earth and less than 20 miles from the USDSP satellite, officials determined it was not a ballistic missile nor a meteor. After classifying it as “unknown”, it was given the code name “Fast Walker”.
NORAD data revealed the unidentified object was a hot, fast, solid object that swept in quickly from space, approached Earth, then sped off into space.
The event was intended to be kept secret but an official (a retired military official) leaked details about the event to an investigator (special agent Joe Stefula) along with a diagram of the incident. According to Stefula:
“I haven’t been able to determine that the document’s absolutely authentic but I have been able to confirm that the DSP printout for that date shows an event at the same time with the same characteristics.
“What makes this particular Fast Walker so peculiar is that it came in from outer space on a curved trajectory, passing within three kilometers of the satellite platform, and then disappeared back into space. Whatever it was, it was tracked for nine minutes.”
The 1984 Fastwalker event obviously alarmed government officials – the sighting resulted in a 300-page internal report which basically “looked at every possibility and couldn’t explain [the unidentified object] by natural or man-made means.” A researcher explained whey the NORAD sighting was significant:
“Where it appeared in the (satellite’s) sensor field would indicate that the object came into the sensor field from outer-space, went in front of the sensor, and left, departing back into deep space. It would indicate that it was some type of craft that had the ability to maneuver. And there you have hard evidence.
“You have telemetry from that satellite, you have information, you have systems, you have data that you can go back and investigate and check and verify. In the past, usually UFO events are of just eye-witness testimony…
“There you have a very sensitive defense system that sent you information to the ground. I don’t even know if you can solve it… maybe it’s one of those enigmas that’s just gonna be with us forever. What type of craft would have that ability? Some people might say, ‘A UFO’.”
In 1993, after word of Fastwalkers had leaked to the public, the Department of Defense declassified unrelated satellite information which confirmed that satellites were routinely picking up unidentified hi-speed moving objects in space which were neither missiles nor meteorites/asteroids. According to the official who leaked the documents, an average of two to three Fastwalkers are detected each month.
The Observatory Journal documents a “candidate for an alien probe”
Additional stunning evidence was presented in April 1995, when The Observatory journal published an article by Duncan Steel (University of Adelaide, Australia), an expert on the danger of near-Earth objects, that described a recently sighted Fastwalker.
The article revealed that a December 1991 object passing near earth was designated a “candidate for an alien probe”. For all intents and purposes, the object looked and moved like an artificial satellite – only much faster.
Fastwalkers – alien surveillance probes
Below is a FOIA request submitted in 2013 which confirms NORAD’s search for “Fastwalkers” and “Slowwalkers” in internal document databases produced a representative hit. However, as noted in the response below, information on Fastwalkers is still classified and unavailable for public review.
For reference, Fastwalkers travel much faster than orbiting satellites but much slower than deep space asteroids. When discussed together, slower anomalous flying objects are termed “Slowwalkers”.
Many in the UFO community theorize the Earth may be under surveillance by advanced alien races whose motives are unclear. They believe Fastwalkers are alien surveillance vehicles or probes which conduct routine surveillance missions gathering data on our planet and its inhabitants.
They surmise that governments know of their existence, and their intent, but choose to keep details of their activities from the public.
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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.
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