Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 12 YEARS AND 10 MONTHS.
ON 06/04/2024 MORE THAN 1.951.050
VISITORS FROM 134 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
25-04-2024
Did Chris Mellon just confirm U.S. UFO crash retrievals?
Did Chris Mellon just confirm U.S. UFO crash retrievals?
UFO historian Michael Schratt joins Richard during the second half of this special episode, which was sparked by a powerful statement from Christopher Mellon on April 22.
On his substack page, Mellon shared a redacted and annotated screenshot of an exchange he had on Signal with a senior government official from around 2020. This official discussed access to a U.S. alien technology recovery and exploitation program.
The official also mentioned that progress was being made in accessing a classified program related to a UAP that landed in Kingman, Arizona, in the 1950s. In addition, he referred to the program's management, security controls, and the recovery process for landed or crashed UAPs.
Finally, he mentioned a classified memo from the 1950s by a Secretary of the USAF as as still being in effect to maintain secrecy this matter. All of this is new information. Most importantly, it is supported by longstanding UFO research into the matter, an abundance of which is provided by Michael Schratt.
We are talking about the 1953 UFO Kingman incident.
The UFO flew through an experimental high powered radar range, and was forced to land South of Kingman. This craft was in perfect condition.
A group of 40 people (15 specialists and 25 scientists) boarded a General Motors Model 3301 bus (with blackout windows) in Phoenix, and made a four hour trip to the site where the craft had come down.
After arriving at the site the bus parked approximately 50 feet from the object, the team members were told that they were here to examine a secret Air Force vehicle that had come down.
Not one but three UFOs came down at the same time.
Over the course of a decade-long investigation, Historian and researcher Harry Drew meticulously sifting through archival materials, newspapers, and records, came to the conclusion that actually three unidentified crafts crashed near Kingman.
One craft met its demise upon crashing into the mountainside near Kingman, igniting a fierce blaze. Another was discovered fully intact amidst the desert terrain, while the third craft endured a turbulent landing, scraping against rocky terrain before coming to rest near a small reservoir.
Military personnel swiftly secured the crash sites, guarding them until a specialized recovery team could transport the unidentified crafts to a Nevada base.
Drew asserts that his research not only illuminates the details of the crashes themselves but also unveils the covert operations involved in transporting the crafts to Nevada. The preservation of one of the machines, largely intact, offering a tantalizing glimpse into alien technology.
Timothy Gallaudet—former Chief Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy—believes the U.S. government should study “unidentified submersible objects.”
USOs are similar to UFOs, but sighted in the world’s oceans.
The retired rear admiral claims that these USOs could be a threat to maritime security.
A retired U.S. Navy admiral believes that the government should look to the oceans to help solve a mystery in the skies. Rear Admiral Timohy Gallaudet, former Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy, cited a 2019 sighting by a Navy warship as evidence that the phenomena of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified submersible objects (USOs) are linked.
The sighting, recorded off the coast of San Diego, involved a hovering spherical object that appeared to abruptly enter the water.
“Transmedium” UFOs Jeopardize U.S. Security
Gallaudet made the case for studying underwater UFOs, or what the government calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), in a recent paper titled, “Beneath the Surface: We May Learn More about UAP by Looking in the Ocean.” Gallaudet writes that “transmedium” USOs and UAPs, defined as unidentified objects that appear to travel both in the atmosphere and the water, “jeopardize U.S. maritime security.” The retired rear admiral makes the case that the under-surveyed underwater realm is a threat to maritime security—the oceans form the bedrock of international trade and the American economy, and are where the U.S. Navy operates.
Gallaudet argues that the lack of knowledge about the undersea world poses hazards for submarines such as collisions with other submarines—such as the independent crashes of the submarines USS San Francisco and USS Connecticut, both of which were incidents that resulted in severe damage to the ships and one crew fatality—and undetected underwater seamounts. Further study of this realm, he believes, could shed additional light on these UFO/UAP sightings.
The Omaha Incident
One incident to which Gallaudet points in particular is a July 19, 2019 encounter between the Independence-class littoral combat ship USS Omaha and a so-called transmedium UAP. In the incident, the crew of the Omaha (sailing off the coast of San Diego) used their AN/KAX-2 electro-optical sensor to record a spherical UAP hovering just over the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The AN/KAX-2 is a stabilized sensor turret built for maritime environments that includes a digital video camera, night vision camera, and laser rangefinder.
The video, seen here, is a recording of a screen showing the output of the AN/KAX-2. The video appears to have been taken with the night vision camera, which uses imaging infrared to record objects in darkness. The object seemingly moves, tracked by the sensor operator, and then stops to hover. The object stops and hovers a short distance above the surface of the ocean. At the end, the object disappears, with sailors remarking that it made a splash as it entered the water. Meanwhile, one sailor off camera radios the other ships in the area—the guided missile destroyers Pinckney, Kidd, and Rafael Peralta—asking for a MH-60 helicopter to be launched as soon as possible.
The video was leaked to UFO investigator Jeremy Corbell Lockyer, and was later verified as genuine by the Navy. A search of the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (the Pentagon’s web site for releasing official photos and video) shows three of the warships in the encounter—Pinckney, Kidd, and Omaha—in formation in the Eastern Pacific six days later, on July 25.
Sightings in Puerto Rico and Elsewhere
Gallaudet also references another sighting from 2013, spotted by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel. The sighting—which took place near Aguadilla, Puerto Rico—was filmed using a similar imaging infrared camera. The video, shown here, depicts another spherical object appearing to enter the water and then re-emerge without losing any speed. The retired admiral writes, “Over three minutes, the object appears to fly at speeds between 40 and 120 miles per hour, enter and exit the Atlantic Ocean without any significant deceleration, reach a maximum underwater velocity of 95 miles per hour, and at one point split into two parts before entering the water again.”
Other possible evidence cited by the admiral includes an incident in 2022, in which the NOAA underwater exploration ship Okeanos Explorer discovered an unusual series of holes on the North Atlantic seafloor at a depth of 1.6 miles. The centimeter-sized holes were in an unusually straight line and scientists are apparently at a loss to explain their origin.
No Ordinary UAP Advocate
NOAA Ocean Exploration
NOAA image of the holes found in 2022 in the North Atlantic. NOAA states: "A close look at the sublinear sets of holes in the sediment observed during Dive 04 of the second Voyage to the Ridge 2022 expedition. These holes have been previously reported from the region, but their origin remains a mystery. "
Gallaudet entered the U.S. Navy in 1989 after attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Gallaudet, according to his official biography, received “masters and doctoral degrees in oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1991 and 2001 respectively.” He served with a number of naval oceanography and meteorology commands, and was superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory. He assumed command of the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command in 2014, and served as Oceanographer of the Navy from 2016 until retirement in 2017.
After his Navy career, Gallaudet served for two years as acting administrator in charge of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Today, he sits on the advisory board for Americans for Safe Aerospace, which describes itself as a “nonprofit organization dedicated to aerospace safety and national security with a focus on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).” ASA is led by Ryan Graves, a former U.S. naval aviator who reports having his own UAP sighting on active duty in 2014. In a 2023 op-ed published in The Hill, Gallaudet called UAPs the “story of the century,” and clearly did not rule out an extraterrestrial cause for them.
It’s rare for a high-ranking U.S. military officer to directly address UAP issues, even in retirement, and the incidents Gallaudet calls attention to are unusual, to say the least. Barring flat-out hoaxing by military and civilian government personnel, the videos and photographic evidence are not easily explained. Whether this will result in greater research to the same extent as the UFO/UAP issue remains to be seen.
Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.
UFOsand their pilots might not be 'extra-terrestrials' from a distant planet at all, but 'spiritual entities' who have inhabited Earth for as long as humanity itself.
At least, that's the 'supernatural' theory Fox News vet and one-time MSNBC host Tucker Carlson put forward this week on comedian Joe Rogan's podcast
'There's a ton of evidence that they're under the ocean and under the ground,' Carlson told Rogan's listeners during the show's usual, sprawling, three-hour-long chat format, adding: 'They've been here for a long time.'
UFOs and their pilots might not be 'extra-terrestrials' from a distant planet at all, but 'spiritual entities' who have inhabited Earth for as long as humanity itself - according to Fox News vet and one-time MSNBC host Tucker Carlson who spoke this week on The Joe Rogan Experience
Above, Rep. Tim Burchett (left) next to fellow 'UAP Caucus' member Rep. Eric Burlison during a press conference held by members of the House Oversight committee ahead of a public UFO hearing last July. Both Congressman have compared UFOs to Biblical entities in the past year
'The first chapter of Ezekiel is pretty clear of a UFO sighting,' Rep. Burchett told reporters in January of 2023, ahead of his push to bring UFO whistleblowers to testify before Congress last summer.
'Whenever I use the term "angels,"' added Rep. Burlison, who has been privy to classified briefings on the UFO phenomena, 'to me, it's synonymous with an extradimensional being.'
Tucker Carlson appeared to earnestly cosign these notions on his April 19 podcast appearance, while pleading ignorance on many unanswered questions surrounding the issue, now more commonly called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP.
'They're from here and they've been here for thousands of years,' Carlson said, 'whatever they are.'
'And it's pretty clear to me that they're "spiritual entities,"' he continued, 'whatever that means.'
The veteran broadcaster explained that by 'supernatural' he meant that the beings were 'above the observable nature' and that they 'don't behave according to the laws of science.'
'With that fact set,' Carlson put it rhetorically, 'what do you conclude?'
Earlier in 2024, Rogan commented on Carlson's growing public interest in UFOs, wondering ahead of Carlson's appearance on his program: 'What does he know?'
But speculation linking UFOs to religious visitations and/or theories about interdimensional beings have been a recurring feature within the discourse on the topic since the early 20th Century.
Above the 16th century painting titled 'The Madonna with Saint Giovannino' believed to be the work of Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio. Some believe the painting includes a reference to 'ancient' UFOs with a skybound object seen above the Virgin Mary's left shoulder
Above, a closer look at the mysterious glowing aerial object depicted in Ghirlandaio's painting
President Biden signed into law a December 2022 amendment to investigate a UFO case from 1945. The 1945 UFO sighting was dubbed the 'Roswell before Roswell' and involved an 'avocado-shaped' craft that crashed in New Mexico. Jaques Vallée, a former contractor for the government's UFO office, wrote a book about the case and described the August 1945 crash to DailyMail.com. Vallée and his co-author interviewed witnesses who were just young children at the time of the crash, on the edge of the atomic bomb testing site near San Antonio, New Mexico - about 100 miles from the infamous Roswell crash two years later.
The concept gained its highest and arguably most reputable profile with the publication of the book 'Passport to Magonia: from Folklore to Flying Saucers' by the astronomer and Internet pioneer Jacques Vallée in 1969.
Vallée, who later served as the inspiration for François Truffaut's character in Steven Spielberg's UFO blockbuster 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' had spent years pouring over volumes of ancient texts for the groundbreaking tome.
He paired 1180 encounters with 'luminous' flying 'earthenware vessels' reported over Japan, Roman accounts of hovering 'shields' and Native American stories of 'baskets from heaven' to argue a continuity with modern 'flying saucer' cases.
In more recent years, Vallée, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and computer scientist, published a study of physical evidence from a UFO crash in a peer-reviewed science journal, Progress in Aerospace Sciences.
As he told Wired, Vallée hopes that research will become 'a template [...] for what serious UFO research could be in the future, if one plays by the rules.'
But similar arguments, linking UFOs to demonic entities or angelic miracles, have also been made in less scholarly form on cable TV shows like 'Ancient Aliens,' and online by conspiracy theorists and evangelical Christians, among others.
The editor for Phenomena Magazine, Brian Allan, to cite one account, spoke to Anglican Pastor Ray Boeche who claims that a faction within the Pentagon deeply believes that UFOs are the product of demonic forces.
'The Defense Intelligence Agency were looking at this demonic element, and they labelled these sorts of aliens as 'non human entities,' Allan said.
'They believed that there was a demonic component to the UFO phenomenon: they are not invading us, it's Biblical.'
An unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) was filmed from the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019. CREDIT: Jeremy Corbell/WeaponizedPodcast
UFOs that have shown the ability to seamlessly transition from air to sea without a splash or crash debris are an "urgent" national security concern with "world-changing" scientific ramifications, an ex-Navy officer said.
In July 2019, the USS Omaha recorded a UFO – or UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) – that buzzed a Navy fleet off San Diego and disappeared into the ocean without a trace.
The video, first released by Jeremy Corbell and verified by the Pentagon, displays capability that "jeopardizes U.S. maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean," oceanographer and retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet said.
"The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering US water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is a sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena," Gallaudet wrote in his March 2024 report.
A recording of a UFO flying by the USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego in July 2019 and then vanishing into the ocean without a splash or crash debris.
(Jeremy Corbell/Weaponized Podcast)
Gallaudet sent the strong warning message in a 29-page report for the Sol Foundation, a think tank focused on researching UAPs and their implications, that was published last month.
He told Fox News Digital that it's "scientifically valid" to explore these unexplained transmedium (between the atmosphere and the ocean) events involving objects displaying abilities that have never been seen before.
"Pilots, credible observers and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air–sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans," Gallaudet wrote in his report.
A Fox News Digital-created UFO hotspot map based off information by the Department of Defense.
(Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital based on AARO's Data)
They defy physics while being far superior in terms of engineering and materials needed to create this type of craft that could revolutionize virtually every aspect of human life from air and maritime transportation to energy generation to agriculture, he argues.
"To meet the security and scientific challenges, transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities," Gallaudet argues.
WATCH JEREMY CORBELL'S VIDEO OF UFO GOING FROM AIR TO SEA
The Department of Defense or NASA still haven't been able to explain the UFO seen in the 2019 video that Corbell, an investigative journalist and leading civilian voice about UFOs, released in 2021.
How the object was able to move that fast and seemingly vanish remains a mystery.
Former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, ex-Navy commander David Fravor and former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch testify before the House of Representatives subcommittee focused on UFOs.
(House subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs)
The DoD created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) tasked with getting answers, but the AARO's reports have concluded there's no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Experts have criticized the reports as "underwhelming" and directly conflict with former intelligence officer David Grusch's testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee national subcommittee hearing in July 2023.
READ TIM GALLAUDET'S FULL REPORT
Grusch testified that he had knowledge of secret government-run crashed-UFO-retrieval program to reverse-engineer the technology.
He also said the government "absolutely" has UFO tech and "biologics" of "non-human origins" since the 1930s and knows the exact locations where they're being held.
"The underwhelming document, which lacked any NASA data, appeared to be a perfunctory appeasement of congressional concerns regarding UAP," Gallaudet wrote, referring to AARO's most recent report.
Going back to focusing on underwater UFOs, Gallaudet said there's been legislative acknowledgment of their potential existence but "the literature on this subject is sparse and unsystematic."
WATCH HIGHLIGHTS OF DAVID GRUSCH'S CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY
Tim Gallaudet, CEO, Ocean STL Consulting, LLC / Explorer's Cub Fellow / Former Deputy / Acting NOAA Administrator (2017-2021) Former Oceanographer of the Navy (2014-2017).
(Tim Gallaudet/X)
"There are only a handful of books and scattered accounts by largely nonprofessional researchers, in contrast with the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of books published about UAP sightings in the sky," Gallaudet wrote.
He lists a handful of sources that describe "luminous orbs, silver and gray discs, and triangular and cigar-shaped objects with various lighting configuration …. (and) their movement seems to defy known physical laws."
Gallaudet called on the U.S. government, academics, philanthropies and the private sector to invest in in-depth research about undersea UAPs.
"Sometime in the future, the government may start openly researching UAP to a greater degree than the perfunctory categorization effort underway at AARO," he wrote. "When that occurs, subsequent exploration for UAP on and under the sea will have the benefit of making new ocean science discoveries as well.
"Any hunt for USOs or supporting undersea infrastructure will almost certainly identify new marine species, geologic features, and oceanic processes."
Tom DeLonge, the former lead vocalist and guitarist of the popular band Blink-182, has always had a keen interest in UFOs. He has spent many years researching and studying the topic. He has even formed a company, To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science (or To The Stars) to investigate and promote research on UFOs and other related phenomena.
DeLonge’s To The Stars is behind publishing the three footages (captured in 2004 and 2015 by the US Navy) that were released in 2017 and 2018. They depict UFOs and include audio recordings of the pilots. These videos gained a lot of attention when they were released.
His interest in UFOs began at a young age. As a child, DeLonge was fascinated by stories of alien encounters and sightings. He used to spend hours reading books and watching documentaries about UFOs, and was particularly interested in the famous Roswell incident of 1947, where a UFO allegedly crashed in New Mexico.
DeLonge’s research led him to conclude that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin. He believes that there is a wealth of evidence to support this conclusion, including reports of sightings and encounters, as well as physical evidence such as radar tracks and photographs.
During a podcast with Daniel P Carter of BBC Radio 1 Rock, DeLonge disclosed that he has a secret official Pentagon document from a UFO program that shows telekinesis is a real ability. He believes that telekinesis has been proven in the lab and that consciousness precedes matter, and once we discover that, life is going to get very interesting.
Tom DeLonge with Former Pentagon UFO official Luis Elizondo and Former Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon
He suggests that we have the ability to heal ourselves and create new types of Sciences and Engineering tweets. He also believes that telepathy is going to be a part of it, and that they have found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens. He thinks that once people accept all of the stuff that they have been talking about, it’s going to change the world. Below is the transcript of his conversation with Carter:
“I always tell people there is this really cool document (that I have) that was a part of the UFO program where they were studying a kid in China who can move objects with his mind. He is around 10 years old, so they wanted to figure out how that’s possible, and they recreated it in the lab.
I have the whole Department of Defense document, and it goes through it and says they were able to put a piece of paper in a glass jar, screw the lid on it, and move the paper through the lid and then six feet across the floor, all with their mind. 100 people can do this, only 10 have mastered it, and it was just wild.
So telekinesis has been proven in the lab, but no one knows about it. I’m like, to be able to move things with the force, like in Star Wars, is a big deal. It sounds ridiculous, that’s why, and within the current paradigm, it sounds ridiculous. I’m sure, or you won’t remember, but we had a conversation at the Reading Festival many years ago where I think I probably came across as a total maniac, even to someone as open-minded as yourself. But, I was talking about reading a bunch of different things, which means nothing, but I was looking at different realms of consciousness because that’s the basis of everything I believe.
I believe that consciousness precedes matter and I highly agree with you. Because the current paradigm is that consciousness is a facet that’s created by matter, which is just this weird thing that’s come about because our brains are complicated and that’s nonsense. I think it’s exactly the opposite and once we discover that stuff, life is going to get very interesting.
Once we discover that mind over matter, not the other way around, we will have the ability to heal ourselves, create new types of Sciences and Engineering, and become a civilization where telepathy is a part of it. I believe that’s all going to happen. There is one person, who was up for the Nobel last year, is one of the top geneticists in the world, at one of the Ivy League schools that we are working with, who worked on part of the UFO program at the Pentagon. I was talking to him, and they found an area in the brain that they believe is where telepathy happens, and he believes he can create something to enhance it by a thousand times, like some type of drug that targets that area of the brain.
So, that’s the thing, people do think it’s ridiculous, but not the people who have an open enough mind to research and jump in. These guys are like World leading PhDs, and that’s been the kind of the story of my life, is everything I’ve told, even on Rogan, is not made up, it’s coming from somewhere, and I can’t say where it’s coming from, but at the end of the day, it’s all real. I think it’s going to be a very exciting time once people accept all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about here on this interview, I think it’s going to really change the world.”
Moreover, as in the January 2022 Thrasher Magazine issue, DeLonge was asked: “Would you say UFOs are driven by aliens or do you think it’s more like a drone?” He replied: “I think both.” He suggested that it is important to note that while studying UFOs, we must be aware of the fact that they could be remotely controlled and may have occupants. (Source)
“I think the biggest misconception is that they are coming from other planets. Evidence doesn’t really support that. The evidence supports that it’s dimensional and that it’s parallel timelines that exist with frequency. It’s really complicated, different, and interesting. But once you understand that, you have no way out of reexamining the religious world and wondering what the Star of Bethlehem really was,” DeLonge explained.
Further, he was asked if UFOs or aliens are coming from the oceans. He said that while the origin of UFOs is a separate conversation, it is believed that they do exist in our oceans. With the use of sensors placed throughout the ocean to detect submarines and other objects, it has been reported that there have been sightings of unidentified submerged objects (USOs).
In one instance, a helicopter pilot was testing torpedoes, and a navy SEAL was sent down on a wire to retrieve the torpedo. However, as soon as he touched the water, a large craft came underneath him, took the torpedo, and left at the high speed. The navy SEAL was in shock and panicked, requesting to be pulled up immediately. Although there were initial plans to have the witnesses speak on television, they later backed out, and some of them testified to the committee. Nonetheless, similar incidents continue to occur frequently, and it is, indeed, extraordinary.
DeLonge’s views on UFOs have been met with both praise and criticism. Some people believe that his research is valuable and that it is important to investigate and study UFOs in an open and honest manner. Others believe that DeLonge’s opinion is misguided and that there is no evidence to support his conclusions.
Despite the criticism, DeLonge remains committed to his research and wants to continue promoting the truth about UFOs. He believes that UFOs are real and that they are of extra-terrestrial origin, and that the truth about UFOs should be investigated and studied openly and honestly. Through his work To The Stars, DeLonge hopes to bring more attention to the topic of UFOs and to promote research and discussion about this fascinating phenomenon.
The 5 most believable UFO sightings ever reported in North Carolina
The 5 most believable UFO sightings ever reported in North Carolina
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
By Ryan Pitkin
Read about five alien encounters that may forever remain unexplained.
When you think of the most common places where you might hear a UFO sighting reported, what comes to mind? Area 51? The vast plains of the Midwest? Anywhere with a cornfield?
North Carolina ticks one of those boxes, so perhaps it’s not surprising that our great state lands in the Top 10 states where sightings have been reported, according to the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC).
As it turns out, the number of sightings reported in any given state corresponds relatively closely to where the state ranks in population. So as the ninth most populous state in the country, it could be expected that North Carolina ranks as No. 10 in sightings. (As the 32nd most populous state, Nevada isn’t in the Top 10 for UFO sightings.)
These sightings get published on the NUFORC’s Data Bank, where they’re indexed based on location, description, and date. In early 2022, WBTW in Wilmington reported that dozens of sightings were logged over just a few months. These reports spanned from two cigar-shaped objects in Edenton to a glowing disc near the Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
But alas, all of these reports are entered anonymously, and as far as we know, none of them are subject to any follow-up investigation. But what about the stories that have names attached, with more details than a brief description in an anonymous database?
We went looking for those, and here are the most credible — or at least most detailed — accounts we could find.
1. The Greys
Sev Tok is an author, co-owner of the Spirit Shack in Oriental, and field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), an international organization that investigates UFO reports around the world.
“I came [into] face-to-face contact with these beings, they’re what we call The Greys, the small ones with the big eyes,” Tok told Greenville’s WNCT last summer. “I was paralyzed on this bed and I was lying on my side and I could feel there was something behind me.
“When I moved my head and turned around, there was a Grey standing behind me doing something to my back,” she continued. “Then I turned my head back around and I found myself back in my bedroom.”
Tok said the Greys left two red X marks on her back, pictures of which can be found in her book. She sold copies of the book and hosted UFO Talks to discuss alien encounters in a judgment-free space at her shop, The Spirit Shack, though the business sadly closed in November.
2. Lumberton Alien “Attack”
Back in 1975, before the NUFORC Data Bank existed, a string of well-documented sightings sent UFO investigators from around the country flocking to the southeastern NC town of Lumberton.
People reported more than eight sightings in the course of just a few days in the first week of April that year, including two incidents of UFOs being followed by state troopers. News reports from the area allegedly inspired some of the earlier sequences in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The most credible report came from a soybean field off Philadelphus Road just north of the Pembroke town line on the afternoon of April 6, where The Robesonian newspaper reported a total of seven people, most from the Strickland family, saw something land in a field near their home.
It reportedly looked like five large, triangular-shaped metallic objects, with some witnesses claiming they flew in formation while others rerpoted seeing chrome-like attachments connecting them. A young boy “said he saw the object kick up a cloud of dust as high as a house” when it landed in the newly plowed field. The object stayed only a few minutes before lifting off again and disappearing into the sky.
The objects reportedly left circular impressions at the landing sight with a strange blue-gray “ash,” while surrounding plants did not appear harmed or burnt. This and other incidents that week — about 80 witnesses total, 40 of whom were police — led many in the town to believe they were facing an “alien attack,” though sightings dropped off as the month progressed.
3. The Asheville School for Boys
In the early morning hours of May 9, 1964, two students at the Asheville School for Boys spotted a silver, saucer-shaped craft with a blue light emanating from its windows hovering over the school’s water tower. A golden disk “moved wildly” atop the craft as it hovered, according to the boys’ matching accounts. Then, suddenly, sparks rained down from the saucer before it took off in the direction of the rising sun at an “amazingly fast speed.”
Declaring themselves to be of “sound mind and body,” the students attested to their encounter the following day in signed statements, their names and signatures later redacted by the bureaucrats charged with declassifying the case files of Project Blue Book, which was released in 2015. Upon the release of the findings, which included illustrations by the boys, Asheville school administration officials told WLOS it was the first time they’d heard of the sightings.
Investigators at the time chalked the boys’ sightings up to the “imagination of the observers” and the “misinterpretation of conventional objects” like aircraft and various stars and planets.
4. Salisbury Shapes
Project Blue Book also included around 700 sightings that not even investigators could explain away, including an occurrence in Salisbury in 1966. On Feb. 2 of that year, shortly after 11 p.m., a woman who remained unnamed in the files reported that she had just gotten into bed when her dog began barking in a panicked manner. When she threw open her curtains, she saw a silver, diamond-shaped object hovering just 300 feet away from her window above a cluster of trees in her neighbor’s backyard.
Though the craft didn’t actually move when she first spotted it, the woman described it as remaining in “a tremendous state of activity,” with a dozen smaller objects “resembling balls” orbiting around the central body, each taking its own path and flashing red, green, and white lights. Small “explosions” emanated from the craft, these also exhibiting fantastic color changes. With pen and paper in hand, the observer sketched as best she could what she saw in the sky.
The craft hovered for three or four minutes before shooting to a new position nearby. “The speed with which it moved was so rapid that I could not begin to estimate it,” said the woman, a trusted teacher in the community who declared that she had been a lifelong skeptic until the incident.
As time passed, the object slowly moved away, though it remained in sight long enough for the woman’s husband to return home from work close to midnight and also view the object. Viewing the flying diamond through binoculars, the man also reported seeing small, colorful explosions and brilliantly flashing lights surrounding the object. The craft remained in view until around 1 a.m., a full hour and a half after it was first sighted. “I do not know what the object was,” the woman confessed, “but I hereby swear that I saw the object as described.”
5. Greensboro Balloons
While a series of lights recorded and reported over the Outer Banks in 2019 can most likely be identified as flares from military jets doing exercises nearby, another video captured over Greensboro earlier that year is not as easily explained.
Photographer Bret Jones, who goes by Space Bret on YouTube, said he went out to try to document the behavior of birds when he spotted a “random flashing” object floating in the sky above. The five-minute video — magnified and slowed down — shows the pill-shaped object soaring through the sky and producing a series of flashes.
“I noticed a strange flashing light in the sky near an airplane. It was moving slowly in the sky, a little slower than the planes flying around,” Jones said on YouTube. “I did not think I captured it at all, because the focus would only hunt and not lock on.”
He later magnified the video by 900x and saw the pill-shaped object, which appeared to emanate flashes from both ends. The video sparked debate online between those who thought it was a large balloon — a theory strengthened by the sudden appearance of a Chinese spy balloon over the United States in 2023 — or a visit from some other far more foreign entity.
This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The U.S. Naval Research Lab (NRL) is assisting an investigation into unexplained arctic phenomena associated with the sudden formation of intense “polar lows” that are known to lead to hazardous conditions at sea.
Since late February, a field campaign, the Cold-Air outbreak Experiment in the Sub-Arctic Region, or CAESAR, has been collecting data on the phenomenon underlying these potentially dangerous arctic events by observing cloud formations and other Arctic meteorological conditions.
“These subjectively beautiful clouds serve as a natural lab to study cloud dynamics at a wide range of scales,” said Bart Geerts, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming and a CAESAR principal investigator, last month.
Based in Kiruna, Sweden, CAESAR is comprised of an international team of scientists and is attempting to determine the meteorological processes underlying Arctic cold-air outbreaks (CAOs), events that pose a threat to sailing vessels and can potentially cause disruptions to Arctic weather systems.
UNDERSTANDING COLD-AIR OUTBREAKS
Recognized as one of the most extreme and sudden forms of meteorological transformations in air mass known to occur, cold-air outbreaks are the result of freezing Arctic air moving from over regions of icy ocean or frozen land masses to areas where warmer ocean waters exist.
When this occurs, extreme wind conditions can lead to dangerous seas as convective boundary layers create small, localized regions of intense Arctic cold known as “polar lows.”
These abrupt spikes in cold temperatures not only create potentially dangerous conditions for sailing vessels that include military operations conducted by the U.S. Navy and other world militaries but also significantly impact ocean circulation and weather conditions throughout the Arctic.
To aid in CAESER’s research effort, the NRL has assigned James Doyle, Ph.D., an NRL research meteorologist, to participate in the campaign.
“Despite the profound impact that CAOs have on atmospheric and oceanic circulations in the Arctic, as well as the important implications for Navy operations, surprisingly little is known about the nature of intense surface flux impacts on the atmosphere and ocean boundary-layer structure,” Doyle in a recent statement.
A HAZARD TO NAVAL OPERATIONS
Understanding what causes CAOs to occur is particularly important for Navy operations, not only for safety reasons but also because of the way these sudden, often unexpected changes in atmospheric and ocean conditions can greatly impact the behavior of acoustic and electromagnetic propagation, thereby creating difficulties for Naval officers who rely on instrumentation that monitor these frequencies.
However, gaining a deeper understanding of CAOs has been hindered both by the challenging conditions they induce, as well as how suddenly and unexpectedly they can occur.
“The nature of the air-sea-ice interaction and cloud processes in CAOs are rapid with abrupt transitions,” Doyle says, “which have been a roadblock to process understanding and model predictions.”
A specialized C-130 aircraft provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) will assist in the CAESAR campaign’s investigations
(Credit: Dan Zietlow/NSF/NCAR).
To successfully investigate CAOs, part of the CAESAR campaign’s strategy involves focusing on atmospheric boundary layer properties, as well as clouds that are known to develop coinciding with CAOs. Additionally, storm conditions that have been identified with CAOs are also being investigated.
UNEXPLAINED ARCTIC PHENOMENA
Based on current data, Doyle says that hazardous conditions normally develop when interactions between air pockets and the ocean begin to intensify, which leads to the production of convective cells, and in some cases, the extremely intense, yet very small polar lows.
“Conventional theories and model parameterizations in Arctic CAOs have been lacking this vital data,” Doyle says, adding that “CAESAR will provide a detailed characterization that will form the basis for NRL boundary layer and coupled modeling studies.”
Although CAESAR will conclude in April, its current efforts to resolve these unexplained arctic phenomena include the use of a specialized C-130 Hercules aircraft provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) center that is equipped with remote sensing capabilities and deployment of dropsondes that will collect information on the Arctic air mass.
The C-130 also showcases airborne radar, LiDAR, and aerosol and cloud precipitation probes which can be activated when conditions matching CAO events are identified.
Forget the Skies, the U.S. Military Is Looking for UFOs Below the Waves
Forget the Skies, the U.S. Military Is Looking for UFOs Below the Waves
No matter how much is learned about UAP in the atmosphere, a complete understanding of anomalous phenomena will remain hidden absent dedicated research in our largely unknown oceans.
Throughout the early stages of the Cold War, there was a significant focus on unidentified flying objects (UFOs)—more recently known as an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP). Most UFOs/UAPs have been identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, yet, a small number remained unexplained
That fact has led to wild conspiracy theories, but UAPs are still seen as a very serious source of concern as these objects could pose a clear and present danger to the security of the United States. That fact was highlighted in a Department of Defense (DoD) report released last month, which found that while there is no evidence of “extraterrestrial technology,” official records and public reporting are filled with evidence of unknown craft that exhibit what appears to be extraordinary technology.
However, there has been a focus not just on what has been seen in the skies, but also on what may be lurking below the waves. Rear admiral and oceanographer Tim Gallaudet recently authored a white paper for the Sol Foundation think tank and called for greater attention on unidentified submersible objects (USOs). He suggested that while past research and attention have been on aerial occurrences, instances of UAP at sea, whether under the surface or traveling “transmedium”—between the atmosphere and the ocean—are also occurring.
“We have less research on transmedium UAP and USOs than is ideal, yet what data there is points to a few conclusions. First, these underwater anomalies jeopardize US maritime security, which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean. Second, their presence in the oceans at the same time presents an unprecedented opportunity for maritime science. Third, to meet the security and scientific challenges, transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities,” wrote Gallaudet.
He further suggested that the security implications of UAP and USO and the scientific ramifications are nothing short of world-changing.
Mysteries of the Deep
For eons, sailors have claimed to have spotted the seemingly unexplainable at sea, and that included mythical creatures like the Kraken and mermaids, as well as phantom ships such as the infamous “Flying Dutchman.” The mysterious creatures were attributed to misidentified marine life, while the Flying Dutchman was actually fabricated by the British as propaganda in retaliation against the Dutch East India Company.
Yet, there remain countless mysteries of the deep—which isn’t all that surprising as 95 percent of the ocean remains unexplored. There is no doubt that some undersea life has yet to be seen.
As the U.S. Naval Institute noted in 2022, “to date, there has been no documented damage to a plane caused by a UFO,” yet, the report identified multiple incidents where vessels have had all too close encounters with aquatic life that in another time might have been described as “sea monsters.”
That included the 1978 incident involving the Knox-class destroyer escort USS Stein (DE-1065) and an unknown species of giant squid. The “NOFOUL” rubber coating of the vessel’s AN/SQS-26 sonar dome was damaged by multiple cuts. While that might not seem all that unusual, the cuts contained remnants of sharp, curved claws found on the rims suction cups of some squid tentacles—and these were far larger than any squid that had ever been encountered!
What Is Under the Sea?
The number of unexplained incidents at sea is as great as those seen in the sky.
“The underwater and transmedium UAP reported in these sources are as diverse as their aerial counterparts, including luminous orbs, silver and gray discs, and triangular and cigar-shaped objects with various lighting configurations. Large lighted craft are often seen under the sea surface without ever emerging,” explained Gallaudet.
He added that subsequent research has shown that many such phenomena often have a down-to-earth explanation—bioluminescent organisms excited by near-surface turbulence—and that this serves to “remind us that prosaic explanations for phenomena should always be considered to avoid jumping to conclusions about alien craft.”
Yet, Gallaudet added that there is still much we can’t easily explain, and worse, perhaps not enough is being said or done about it.
“The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering US water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is another sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena,” wrote Gallaudet.
He further warned that the focus shouldn’t be just what is seen in the heavens above, which is finally getting the attention it may deserve.
“Not so in Neptune’s realm,” Gallaudet concluded in his paper. “No matter how much is learned about UAP in the atmosphere, a complete understanding of anomalous phenomena will remain hidden absent dedicated research in our largely unknown oceans. Without gazing into the abyss, one will never know if the abyss does indeed return the gaze.”
Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu
Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also aContributing Writer for Forbes andClearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter:@PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.
Men in Black The Men in Black conspiracy theory suggests that mysterious individuals or groups monitor and suppress information related to UFOs and extraterrestrial encounters. They are believed to intimidate witnesses and researchers, ensuring the secrecy surrounding these phenomena.
According to this theory, these mysterious individuals dressed in black suits allegedly visit UFO witnesses, warning them to remain silent about what they saw, or they would erase their memories of the UFO encounter. The concept of Men in Black has also been popularized through movies and books.
Alien Manipulation of Human Genetics Conspiracy theories argue that extraterrestrial beings genetically engineered humans or altered human evolution for their own purposes. In fact, believers of this theory think that advanced beings from other worlds have even intervened in our evolutionary process.
However, it is important to note that the concept of alien manipulation of human genetics lacks substantial scientific evidence.
Government Knowledge and Secrecy Many conspiracy theorists argue that governments worldwide possess knowledge about extraterrestrial life and UFOs but keep it hidden from the public. They suggest that governments conduct secret investigations, such as the rumored Area 51 in the United States.
In the US, in December 2020, Congress passed the Intelligence Authorization Act, which required intelligence agencies to provide an unclassified report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) within 180 days. That report, released in June 2021, acknowledged UAP sightings by military personnel, but did not provide definitive explanations for the observed phenomena.
Reverse Engineering Alien Technology It is speculated that governments have acquired crashed UFOs and alien technology, allowing them to reverse engineer these technologies for military and technological advancements. This theory suggests that some advanced human technologies have extraterrestrial origins.
Reverse engineering is related to the process of dismantling and analyzing a technology to understand its components. The idea of reverse engineering alien technology suggests that humans have acquired extraterrestrial objects or devices and successfully deciphered their advanced technology.
Suppression of Advanced Energy Technologies It is speculated that governments or corporations suppress advanced energy technologies obtained from extraterrestrial sources. Their goal, according to believers of this theory, is to maintain their control over traditional energy industries.
These entities allegedly block the development and dissemination of revolutionary energy technologies. These innovations could potentially replace traditional fossil fuel-based energy systems in the future.
Collaboration with Extraterrestrial Beings This theory suggests that governments have established secret agreements or alliances with extraterrestrial beings. In these alliances, authorities would exchange technology and knowledge with aliens in undisclosed treaties.
However, there is no credible scientific evidence or documentation to support claims of collaboration with extraterrestrial beings.
Hybridization Programs Some conspiracy theories propose that extraterrestrial beings are engaged in hybridization programs. These kinds of programs consist of creating a hybrid species that combines human and alien DNA.
With that being said, it is virtually impossible to achieve that kind of hybridization. The study of genetics and reproductive biology indicates that successfulinterbreeding between species with major genetic differences is unlikely due to fundamental incompatibilities.
Secret Space Programs Some conspiracy theorists believe that governments operate secret space programs that explore extraterrestrial civilizations and engage in interstellar travel. These programs allegedly involve advanced spacecraft and interactions with alien species.
Space exploration and activities are typically carried out through publicly known programs. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the United States, Roscosmos in Russia, ESA (European Space Agency) in Europe are examples of international space agencies.
Alien Infiltration of Governments This theory posits that extraterrestrial beings have infiltrated human governments at high levels. According to this theory, aliens have the power of manipulating global events and controlling world leaders for their own agenda.
Governments and institutions try to maintain security, protect national interests, and address potential threats. While governments do have top-secret operations, the claim of alien infiltration in those remains unsupported by meaningful evidence.
Staged Alien Invasions Some theorists propose that governments plan to stage fake alien invasions. The argument behind this theory is that authorities stage these invasions to create a global crisis and unite humanity under a single world government.
The notion of using a simulated alien invasion for political or social purposes has been mentioned in science fiction literature and films. However, there is no substantial evidence to support staged alien invasions in real life.
Alien Abductions and Experiments Some conspiracy theories propose that extraterrestrial beings visit Earth to abduct humans and conduct experiments on them. These theories often involve claims of missing time, strange markings, and repressed memories.
A popular theory about alien abductions is related to The Betty and Barney Hill case in 1961. Betty and Barney Hill were an American couple who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrial beings in rural New Hampshire.
Secret Underground Bases This theory suggests that governments have constructed hidden underground bases. In those bases, authorities conduct research, house recovered UFOs, and interact with extraterrestrial beings.
It’s worth mentioning that there are known underground facilities such as military bunkers or research laboratories. However, there is no major evidence regarding secret underground bases where research about UFOs is conducted.
UFO Disinformation Campaigns It is suggested that governments actively spread disinformation about UFOs and extraterrestrial life. The goal behind this, according to believers of this theory, is to confuse the public and discredit genuine sightings and encounters.
However, it is important to highlight the difference between deliberate disinformation campaigns and the complexities of investigating UFOs. Whether it is because of national security concerns, lack of definitive scientific conclusions, possibilities of hoaxes or public panic prevention, the government could inadvertedly cause disinformation or misinformation when trying to explain UFO investigations.
The Roswell Incident Cover-Up One of the most well-known conspiracy theories revolves around the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Some believe that the US government covered up the existence of the crash and the recovery of extraterrestrial beings.
The official explanation provided by the U.S. military at the time stated that the debris recovered from the incident was actually from a top-secret research project known as the Mogul balloon. This secret project was designed to monitor Soviet nuclear tests during those early years of the Cold War.
Global Alien Cover-Up This theory argues that governments worldwide collaborate to suppress information. It also argues that there’s a global alliance to delete evidence of extraterrestrial life to maintain social stability and prevent widespread panic.
Governments have increasingly shown transparency and released previously classified information related to UFO sightings and investigations. There hasn’t been any concrete evidence about a global deliberate cover-up of extraterrestrial investigations.
Suppression of UFO Sightings It is claimed that governments actively suppress and discredit UFO sightings to prevent public panic and maintain control over the narrative surrounding extraterrestrial life. Authorities argue that they do it over national security concerns or the protection of sensitive military technology.
With that being said, this does not necessarily imply a deliberate suppression of information about UFO sightings. Governments, in general, decide to protect themselves and prevent any unwanted information, even in relation to UFO sightings, from coming to light because it is a “state secret”.
Moon and Mars Conspiracies Some conspiracy theories involve claims of secret alien bases on the moon or Mars. The argument is that governments are aware of these bases but keep them hidden from the public.
Theories surrounding these alien bases in other planets often rely on interpretations of anomalies or unusual features observed in images captured by spacecraft. However, these interpretations often lack scientific evidence of those bases, and can be easily confused with natural geological processes, lighting effects or image artifacts.
This theory argues that extraterrestrial beings visited Earth in ancient times and influenced human civilization. It says that aliens played a role in the construction of ancient monuments and shaping human history.
The claims of ancient astronaut theorists are based on interpretations of ancient texts, artwork, and archaeological sites, which they believe have evidence of extraterrestrial influence. However, the detractors of this theory refer to these claims as “pseudoscience.”
Crop Circles as Alien Messages The crop circles phenomenon is often attributed to extraterrestrial beings leaving encoded messages or symbols in fields. These crop circles would indicate their presence and intentions.
One example of alien-made crop circles is the Chilbolton crop circle that appeared in 2001 in Hampshire, England. However, it was later revealed that the circle was human-made and it was a publicity stunt.
Alien Influence on Religious Beliefs Some conspiracy theories propose that religious texts and beliefs were influenced by extraterrestrial beings, shaping human spirituality and religious practices. It starts from the linking of ancient religious texts and beliefs to encounters with advanced beings from other worlds.
The argument is primarily based on interpretations of ancient texts, artwork, and cultural myths. However, there isn’t any legitimate evidence of alien influence on religious beliefs of any kind.
A group of UFO researchers with backgrounds in science have come together to analyze an alleged UFO video they have confirmed comes from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The object in the video was captured by a thermal imaging camera on a DHS aircraft, and according to the researchers, it exhibits characteristics that cannot be explained by any known aircraft or natural phenomenon.
The video is overlaid with the sort of telemetry one would expect from a military or law enforcement thermal image video. It shows an object apparently moving very quickly over land and then into the ocean. It seems to be tumbling or changing shape. It moves over buildings, through trees, and eventually over the ocean. Then things get weird. The object appears to go in and out of the ocean without slowing down, and at the end of the video is either joined by another object or breaks in two.
All of the primary witnesses have requested anonymity. However, several communications from alleged DHS employees indicate that the video caused quite a stir on the base.
A still from the video in which the unknown objects appears to be flying through trees.
Research on the video began when an acquaintance to the pilot of the aircraft that captured the video contacted Daina Chaviano, a famous Cuban-born fantasy and science fiction author. She is also a volunteer with the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Florida, where in her spare time she investigates UFO reports. She took the UFO case to her colleague, Morgan Beall, who runs the Florida MUFON chapter.
Chaviano and Beall were so impressed by what they saw they assembled a small group of skeptical researchers with backgrounds in various fields of science and technology. The pilot’s acquaintance requested strict control of the information provided and that knowledge of the investigation be limited to a very few people, so until now, the researchers have not shared any information regarding their investigation.
Today, the group released a 161-page report detailing their findings.
The object was filmed over Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.
(Credit: Google Maps)
They are vague when it comes to the identity of Chaviano’s informant. They say this person and others who provided information wanted to remain anonymous “to ensure no issues arise with the source’s employers.”
However, the group says: “The source of this video evidence was vetted and identified.”
They say they are absolutely certain that the information comes from sources on board the DHS aircraft and the video is genuine. Their investigation also confirmed what they were told.
Their sources told them that the UFO incident began at about 9:20 pm on the evening of April 25, 2013 at the Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. It involved the crew of a DHC-8 Turboprop aircraft from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of DHS.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bombardier DHC-8Q200.
(Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
The DHC-8 took off on a routine flight and soon after takeoff they noticed “a pinkish to reddish light over the ocean that was in their vicinity and approaching toward the south.”
The crew was concerned the tower had not told them about the incoming traffic, so they called it in. The tower told them they also had a visual on the object, but they were unsure of its identity.
Once the object got close to land, its lights turned off, but at this time the DHC-8 was able to begin tracking and filming the object with their onboard thermal imaging system. The DHC-8 did not approach the object, but circled the area and filmed it.
The DHC-8 did not pick up the object on radar. However, their radar was looking downward to track ships on the ocean, not objects in the sky.
According to the source, a flight was delayed by the presence of the object. The research group was able to confirm from airport records that a FedEx flight scheduled to leave at 9:10 pm was delayed until 9:26 pm.
Image of the flight log from the UFO reporting showing the a delayed flight at the time of the UFO event.
(Credit: SCU)
The researchers also confirmed the flight time and path of the DHC-8 via radar data they obtained from a Freedom of Information Act Request to the U.S. Air Force 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron (RADES) group. The radar data confirmed that the DHC-8 took off at approximately 9:16 pm and circled the airport twice before leaving the area about 10 minutes later.
Flight path of the DHC-8 according to the radar data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act Request.
(Credit: SCU)
The researchers note that there was an unknown object or objects tracked on radar a few minutes prior to the DHC-8’s take off, but it is not known for certain that this was the same object that was later caught on video. The unidentified radar strikes were just off the shore to the north and northwest of the airport and lasted about 16 minutes from 8:58 pm to 9:14 pm.
When reading the times, the radar data is presented in a different time zone than the local times. The researchers explained this on their website: “Aviation times reflect Zulu time which corresponds to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The video displays the Zulu time April 26th at 1:22 AM at the top left of the initial frames. Converting this Zulu time to Puerto Rico’s local time gives April 25th at 9:22 PM. Puerto Rico uses Atlantic Standard Time and does not use daylight savings time.”
Radar data showing the flight path of the DHC-8 and the unknown radar hits between 8:58 pm and 9:14 pm.
(Credit: SCU)
The research group also thoroughly analyzed the video to determine the nature of the object in the film. They consulted thermal imaging experts to determine the capabilities of the system used for the filming, and broke the film down frame by frame to determine the object’s approximate size, speed, temperature and flight path.
The video (seen at the top of the story) is just under 4 minutes long, but the unknown object was tracked for about 2 1/2 of those minutes. Although it was difficult for the group to calculate the exact location of the object on the first half of its flight, they are confident of its position in the second half.
They have determined that the object came in from the ocean, from the north or northwest of the airport’s airstrip, and then flew over the airstrip, then turned back to the north and headed back out into the ocean.
Estimated flight path of the unknown object. The thinner lines estimate possible paths of the object in the first part of its flight. The thicker line shows the path the researchers believe is most likely. The researchers are more confident of the location of the object during the second half of its flight. This data corresponds with what the SCU researchers found.
(Credit: SCU)
During this time the DHC-8 was circling the airport. As can be seen in the map created by the researchers, the aircraft was moving along the shore, turning to the south, and eventually lost site of the object over the ocean as they continued south.
The flight path of the DHC-8 during the filming of the unknown object posted on Reddit by an anonymous user. This path was calculated using the data in the video. It is marked “heli,” because the Reddit user believed the aircraft to be a helicopter and was unaware it was a DHC-8.
The report states: “The object was between three to five feet in length and its speed varied between approximately 40 mph to 120 mph. Its median speed was roughly 80 mph.”
The report goes on to note that an interesting characteristic at the end of the flight was when it apparently submerged into the ocean, traveled for over half a mile, and then flew back out.
According to the report: “Its speed through the water reached a high of 95 mph and average 82.8 mph.”
The unknown object returning to the ocean.
One suggestion has been that the object was merely a balloon. However, the researchers reject this idea for several reasons. They say the wind speeds at the time were 8 to 13 mph at ground level and 12 to 18 mph at 400 to 3200 feet. This means the object was moving too fast to be carried by wind currents. It also changed directions from heading south back to the north, and it went underwater with minimal loss of speed.
Another possibility is that the object was actually a bird. The object appears dark on the screen, and for this type of thermal imaging that would mean it was warmer than the ambient air. This is how a bird would appear. However, the researchers note that the object was moving much too fast to be a bird. They note that peregrine falcons, which do occasionally visit Puerto Rico, have an average horizontal speed of 40 to 56 mph, and a maximum of 65 to 69 mph.
The researchers also examined the possibility that the object was a drone. Their research did discover that the Navy is working on a drone that can fly through the air and dive into the ocean and become a submarine. It is called a “Flimmer.”
They found that current Flimmer drones have not been tested underwater and have an airspeed of 68 mph. They also noted that the fastest known underwater battery powered torpedo travels at 50 mph.
The researchers do acknowledge that it could be possible that the Navy is secretly testing a Flimmer drone that is much more advanced. However, they question why the military would so recklessly test it over a civilian area and airport runways.
In conclusion they state: “There is no explanation for an object capable of traveling under water at over 90 mph with minimal impact as it enters the water, through the air at 120 mph at low altitude through a residential area without navigational lights, and finally to be capable of splitting into two separate objects. No bird, no balloon, no aircraft, and no known drones have that capability.”
A still image from the video just after the object apparently split into two separate objects.
They do not profess to know what the object was, and they welcome “reasonable” suggestions.
However, as to be expected, there are those who have suggested that “they know” the object is extraterrestrial in nature, and at least one of those suggestions has come from an anonymous source who has intimate knowledge of this event.
An anonymous letter was sent to one of the researchers that is very similar to one that was sent to John Greenewald, owner of the website TheBlackVault.com. The only thing Greenewald knew about the video was related to a low resolution copy that was leaked to a Puerto Rican UFO researcher. Many assumed the video was taken from a helicopter.
The letter references the exact type of thermal system and aircraft that was used to capture the video. The message was accompanied by a high resolution version of the thermal video, which was then posted on YouTube by Greenewald. The anonymous letter states: “Alien technology is no doubt under the ocean near Puerto Rico!”
Is alien technology being demonstrated in this video? This careful report, which the researchers say took over 1000 man hours to complete, indicates that whatever took place, it is certainly unusual. The entire report is 161 pages long, and thoroughly explains their work, and how they came to the conclusions they did.
The report on the Puerto Rico incident can be found at ExploreSCU.org. Click the image to go to the site.
Even if the report had come to a mundane conclusion, the effort put into the investigation is remarkable. However, the fact that they could not determine what the object was, and have determined that it displayed characteristics that cannot be explained, makes the report remarkable.
Robert Powell, a retired engineer who worked in the semiconductor industry, who helped author the research paper, says although they have finally released their report, “work on this video will continue.”
Powell, Beall, Chaviano, and the rest of the researchers working on the report posted a high resolution version of the video, their report, and an animation of the radar data they obtained on a website called the Scientific Coalition for Ufology.
Powell says they have reached out to other scientific organizations that have shown an interest in the UFO phenomenon, including 3AF Sigma2, a group that is part of the French National Aeronautical and Astronautical Association. The French scientists have agreed to review their work and provide input.
Powell says, “We hope that this report will generate ideas and thoughts from other scientists that may provide more insight into the characteristics of the object seen in the video.”
To download the report, view the video, and find out more about the investigation, visit: ExploreSCU.org.
From sightings by U.S. submarines to mysterious humanoids in the depths of Russian lakes, there is an even more mysterious cousin to the UFO - the USO, or Unidentified Submerged Object.
There are multiple reports of USOs from around the world, often from respected military and academic professionals - with some claiming that underwater ‘fast movers’ are a common part of life on board submarines.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Nigel Watson, author of Captured by Aliens? A History and Analysis of American Abduction Claims, said: ‘We live on an ocean planet, so it is not surprising that UFOs are seen over or in the vicinity of the great expanses of water that surround us.
'Concentrations of USO sightings indicate bases in the North Sea, and off the coasts of California and Puerto Rico.
'USOs are as intriguing as UAPs but they are even more difficult to substantiate - and often get mixed with dreams about Atlantis and aliens living in the hollow Earth.
'Personally, to me, they are a myth, like mermaids or the Loch Ness Monster.'
Pilot sights ‘dark mass’ in the water
Retired Navy commander David Fravor
Retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, who famously spotted the ‘Tic-Tac’ UFO in 2004, described how a fellow pilot had revealed to him an encounter with a USO.
The pilot said he had seen a ‘dark mass’, which he described as ‘big’ and ‘kinda circular’, and was not a submarine.
Fravor told the Joe Rogan podcast that the helicopter had dropped a swimmer in the water to pick up munitions.
He said: 'The first time they were out and they were going to pick up a munition, he’s sitting in the front—in the CH-53 you can see down by your feet—and as he’s looking down, they’re 50 feet above the water, he sees this kind of dark mass coming up from the depths.”
'He’s looking at this thing going, "What the hell is that?" And then it just goes back down underwater. Once they pull the kid and the munition out of the water, this object descends back into the depths.'
The pilot who was retrieving spent practice munitions out of the sea in a U.S. Navy MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter said that a practice torpedo he was sent to recover was ‘sucked down’ into the sea by another object.
The torpedo never resurfaced.
The encounter occurred in the sea near Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, on Puerto Rico, Fravor said.
The UFOs of Guantanamo Bay
Did Marines see USOs in the late Sixties?
In the late Sixties, ‘heavy UFO traffic’ was seen at the Guantanamo Bay base.
An ex-Marine said: ‘'All of us Marines were amazed at the amount of UFO activity over and around this base,' the witness said.
'Virtually every night UFOs were flying overhead with altitudes of less than 300 feet.’
'Most of these UFOs were approximately 50 to 100 feet across, but to the naked eye came off as a dull, hazy hull with a small red light trailing behind it,'
The marine - who wished to remain anonymous in an interview with the paranormal sighting website MUFON - said that he was unsure of the exact dates
The Marine claims he was instructed not to discuss the sightings, and said he saw one UFO which looked like a 'big beautiful cloud with a blue and white pulsating light'.
Underwater craft buzzes U.S.S. Hampton submarine
The Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Hampton
A craft moving through the water faster than the speed of sound ‘whizzed by’ the submarine U.S.S. Hampton, a professor has claimed.
Professor Bob McGwier of Virginia Tech and the Institute for Defence Analyses, said the craft’s onboard sonar detected a USO moving through the water faster than the speed of sound.
McGwier was on the submarine doing classified work, and says that the crew opted not to investigate so as to focus on their mission, but did not tell him that he could not talk about the strange encounter.
In an interview with the YouTube Channel UAP Encounters, he said: 'We were underway, and, all of a sudden, I heard a sound. It is really strange and clear that something is whizzing by us.
'When I left there with the knowledge in my head, not having been told to be quiet, not having been told it was classified... It is mine to tell whoever I want. They blew it,'
The encounter with the fast-attack submarine lasted just a few seconds, McGwier says.
Alien-hunters spotted what many described as an ‘alien base’ 2,000 feet beneath the waves off Malibu in 2014.
When Google Earth revealed what appeared to be a ‘structure’ beneath the waves, conspiracy fans went wild.
UFO author Preston Dennett said: 'I have collected probably 50 or 100 reports of people who have seen UFOs going in and out of the water there.
‘My problem is that the Google images are coming out different, depending on what viewpoint you're looking at this thing from. Some show a tunnel. Some don't.
"I'm very intrigued by the possibility. 'm convinced there's something down there."
Geologists however have dismissed the idea that the structure is an alien base, describing the structure as ‘perfectly ordinary’.
The USOs of Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal has seen multiple bizarre sightings over the years
Lake Baikal in Siberia has been the site of multiple sightings of USOs and UFOs, beginning in the Soviet era.
Russian former Navy officer turned UFO researcher Vladimir Azhazha said, "Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more - with lakes. So, UFOs tend to stick to the water,.”
Azhazha has claimed that humanoid beings in strange shiny suits were seen in the water by military divers in 1982.
In more recent years, photographers have captured strange lights and mysterious craft over the lake.
The chairman of the Union of Photographers of Buryatia, Sergey Konechnykh, said in 2009, When I saw it, it was flying low. Until it disappeared over the horizon, I kept looking at it. I call it a fireball, and what it really was - I cannot know.'
Thirty four years ago, thousands of Belgian citizens reported mysterious platforms flying silently over rooftops. The Royal Belgian Air Force got involved and cooperated fully with civilian investigators. To this day, however, the origins of these craft remain unknown.
It’s hard to convey the excitement caused by the Belgian UFO wave if you were not following UFO news back in 1989 and the early 1990s. There was no shortage of UFO reports back then, and interest in the phenomenon was at a high. The sightings and photos from Gulf Breeze, Florida, dominated the American scene, wild UFO reports and stories coming out of the old Soviet Union received huge international media attention, and the Mexican video wave took off in 1991. Yet the Belgian wave seemed to top all of these stories for awhile. The reports out of this small country, headquarters of both the European Commission and NATO, received unprecedented coverage, making even the front page of the Wall Street Journal on October 10, 1990, with a story entitled, “Belgium Scientists Seriously Pursue A Triangular UFO.”
The classic triangular-shaped UFO described by hundreds of eyewitnesses during the Belgium wave: sketch by witness used to create reconstruction of the object seen at the top of story.
Credit: SOBEPS
There were many reasons for the interest generated by the Belgian wave. One was the quality of the reports themselves, the bulk of which were registered in the French-speaking region of Wallonia. There were no landings or humanoid sightings but lots of detailed multiple-witness sightings of flying platforms moving slowly and silently above rooftops. Shapes varied, but the predominant form was triangular or delta-shaped crafts. Some of the descriptions were so precise that traditional explanations of misidentified natural phenomena or conventional aircraft were ruled out. Instead, stealth fighters and other U.S. secret military aircraft became the favorite explanations suggested by skeptics, but these were quickly ruled out by the Royal Belgian Air Force (RBAF). Another reason for the wave’s importance was that it was carefully investigated and documented by a local UFO organization called SOBEPS (Belgian society for the study of space phenomena).
SOBEPS was formed in 1971 by Lucien Clerebaut, Michel Bougard, and others, and built a small but highly dedicated cadre of field investigators. By the end of the wave in 1993, SOBEPS had collected over two thousand eyewitness reports comprising twenty thousand pages, four hundred hours of audio tapes, and six hundred full inquiries. Five hundred and forty cases remained unexplained. SOBEPS also had the assistance of top-notch scientists, including Léon Brenig, a nonlinear dynamics theorist at the Free University in Brussels, and Professor Auguste Meessen, a physicist from Catholic University at Louvain. Regarding his work with SOBEPS, Dr. Brenig has said, “here is an opportunity where we can apply the scientific method.” Brenig himself became a witness of the so-called Belgian triangle while driving in the Ardennes on March 18, 1990. The whole dossier was eventually published by SOPEPS in two massive volumes, five hundred pages each, entitled Vague d’OVNI sur la Belgique (UFO Wave ver Belgium), published in 1991 and 1994 respectively. Due to financial difficulties, SOBEPS dissolved on December 31, 2007, but some of its members formed a new, smaller organization called COBEPS (Belgian committee for the study of space phenomena) to preserve the archives and work done for thirty-six years.
The two volumes published by SOBEPS entitled, “UFO Wave Over Belgium.”
Credit: SOBEPS
A final and key element in the credibility of the Belgian UFO wave was the participation and validation by the RBAF, which showed an unusual degree of openness. As the Belgian wave gained steam, the Belgian Ministry of Defence was deluged with queries from the public and the media. The task fell upon the chief of operations of the air force, Col. Wilfried De Brouwer, who was later promoted to major general and deputy chief of the RBAF. Now retired from the service, Gen. De Brouwer has continued to speak about the wave. He was one of the many international officials who spoke at the famous event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, in November 2007, organized by filmmaker James Fox and journalist Leslie Kean. “The Belgian UFO wave was exceptional and the air force could not identify the nature, origin and intentions of the reported phenomena,” said De Brouwer at the NPC. He also gave a detailed presentation on the wave at the MUFON International UFO Symposium in San Jose, California, in July 2008, and was one of five generals to write an essay in Leslie Kean’s new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.
Although the RBAF scrambled jets on three occasions during the wave, Gen. De Brouwer has explained on various occasions that they didn’t have the manpower or resources to mount a full-fledged investigation of their own, so instead they took the unusual route of cooperating fully with SOBEPS. The radar data was turned to Prof. Meessen for analysis, and Gen. De Brouwer agreed to write the postface for SOBEPS’s first volume when he was still in the service. “I must acknowledge that I somewhat hesitated when SOBEPS asked me to contribute my share to this book,” he wrote. “Indeed, I am not a UFO specialist and, moreover, it is quite delicate for somebody who occupies an official function to put on paper his personal ideas on such a disputed issue. However, I estimate that I would not have been honest towards the SOBEPS if I had refused. The air force always played a fair game on this subject and I regard this postface as a complementary element to the exceptional file written by the people of SOBEPS.”
THE EUPEN INCIDENT
Although some sightings were reported in October 1989, the first important incident of the Belgian wave took place a month later on November 29 around the small town of Eupen, which is in a region of Belgium near the German border. This initial case put the so-called “Belgian triangle” on the map and led to the start of the RBAF’s involvement. There were both daytime and nighttime sightings, although the latter were lengthier and more detailed. Gen. De Brouwer explained in his essay for Leslie Kean’s book, “a total of seventy reported sightings made on November 29 were fully investigated and none of these sightings could be explained by conventional technology. The team of investigators and I estimate that approximately fifteen hundred people must have seen the phenomenon at more than seventy different locations from different angles during this afternoon and evening.” There were a total of thirteen gendarmes (policemen) who saw the UFO from eight different locations around Eupen. Prof. Meessen summarized the case in SOBEPS’s book:
On November 29, 1989, a large craft with triangular shape flew over the town of Eupen. The gendarmes von Montigny and Nicol found it near the road linking Aix-la-Chapelle and Eupen. It was stationary in the air, above a field which it illuminated with three powerful beams. The beams emanated from large circular surfaces near the triangle’s corners. In the center of the dark and flat understructure there was some kind of “red gyrating beacon.” The object did not make any noise. When it began to move, the gendarmes headed towards a small road in the area over which they expected the object to fly. Instead, it made a half-turn and continued slowly in the direction of Eupen, following the road at low altitude. It was seen by different witnesses as it flew above houses and near City Hall.
In his 2008 MUFON lecture, Gen. De Brouwer provided additional details on this sighting: “The UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon] emitted repeatedly and simultaneously two red light beams with a red light ball at the spearhead of the beam. Subsequently, the red balls returned to the craft.” There was also apparently a second triangular craft, which made “a forward tilting maneuver, exposing the upper side of the fuselage,” continued De Brouwer. “They [gendarmes] saw a dome with rectangular windows, lighted up at the inside. It then disappeared to the North.” Two more gendarmes saw one of the craft from a monastery nearby; “one is currently the head of the police in that area, he was scared like hell,” added De Brouwer.
Statistical chart of Belgian sightings between October 1989 and September 1990, showing peaks in the November-December period and a second one in April.
Credit: SOBEPS
The Eupen incident was followed by many other UFO sightings, including several reported on December 11, 1989. One of the witnesses that evening was a personal acquaintance of Gen. De Brouwer, Col. André Amond, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army. Col. Armond worked next door to Gen. De Brouwer and wrote a detailed report for the Ministry of Defence. Col. Armond was driving with his wife around 6:45 p.m., when they noticed a strange object with flashing red lights. They stopped the car and got out to see it better. “Suddenly, they saw a giant spotlight, about twice the size of the full moon, which approached them to an estimated distance of 100 meters,” wrote De Brouwer, adding that “the colonel’s wife was frightened and asked to leave.” In his report to the Ministry, Armond “ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized Ultra Light, or any other known aerial vehicle.”
Various shapes were reported throughout the wave, including round, rectangular, and cigar-shaped, but the majority were triangular objects. Gen. De Brouwer notes that the differences may also be due to the eyewitnesses’ viewing angles. Researcher Marc Valckenaers listed some of the characteristics of the UFOs in SOBEPS’s second volume about the wave, including: irregular displacement (zig-zag, instantaneous change of trajectory, etc.), displacement following the contours of the terrain; varying speeds of displacement (including very slow motion), stationary flight (hovering), overflight of urban and industrial centers, and sound effects (faint humming to total silence).
Reconstruction of the incredible rectangular flying platform seen by two factory workers on April 22, 1990, described as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.”
Credit: SOBEPS
One of the strangest reports came from two factory workers from the town of Basècles, southwest of Brussels, who saw a huge trapezoid flying platform (330 x 200 feet) just before midnight on April 22, 1990. The object moved slowly and silently, covering the entire factory courtyard. In the SOBEPS report, the factory workers described the UFO as “an aircraft carrier turned upside down.” Despite the science-fiction quality of this sighting, an almost identical report was filed nearly a year later, on March 15, 1991, by an electronic engineer in Auderghem, near Brussels, who woke up in the middle of the night when he “heard a barely audible, high-frequency whistling tone. He looked out the window and saw a large rectangular craft at very low altitude with irregular structures on the bottom,” wrote Gen. De Brouwer.
One characteristic of the Belgian wave was how close the objects were flying above the rooftops, as shown with this flying rectangular platform.
Credit: SOBEPS
Another view of the rectangular flying platform above the rooftop and sketch showing where the witness saw it.
Credit: SOBEPS
THE F-16 SCRAMBLE EPISODE
If the Eupen multiple-witness sightings of November 1989 triggered the Belgian wave, the jet fighter scramble incident during the night of March 30, 1990 marked the peak of public interest and global media coverage. The Belgian Air Force had scrambled jets on two prior occasions without positive results. The December 5, 1989 scramble was unsuccessful; when the jet reached the sky, the UFO was gone. Additionally, the December 16, 1989 case turned out to be a false alarm; the authorities quickly determined that it was a laser projection reflected by a cloud layer. Following these two fiascos, the RBAF implemented a new policy that jets would be scrambled only when a sighting was detected on radar and was visually confirmed on the ground by the police.
The SOBEPS team visiting the Royal Belgian Air Force radar facility at Glons: in the center group, left, the Society’s chairman Lucien Clerebaut and right, physicist Prof. Auguste Meessen, next to military officer.
Credit: SOBEPS
As put in a preliminary report prepared by Major P. Lambrechts of the RBAF, entitled “Report Concerning the Observation of UFOs During the Night of March 30 to 31, 1990,” the incident began at 10:50 p.m. on March 30 when the gendarmerie telephoned the radar “master controller at Glons” to report “three unusual lights forming an equilateral triangle.” More gendarmes confirmed the lights. When the NATO facility at Semmerzake detected an unknown target at 11:49 p.m., a decision to scramble two F-16 fighters was made. The jets took off at 12:05 a.m. from Beauvechain, the nearest air base, and flew for just over an hour. According to Major Lambrechts’s report:
The aircraft had brief radar contacts on several occasions, [but the pilots]…at no time established visual contact with the UFOs…each time the pilots were able to secure a lock on one of the targets for a few seconds, there resulted a drastic change in the behavior of the detected targets…[During the first lock-on at 12:13 a.m.] their speed changed in a minimum of time from 150 to 970 knots [170 to 1,100 mph] and from 9,000 to 5,000 feet, returning then to 11,000 feet in order to change again to close to ground level.
When Col. De Brouwer showed the computerized radar images of the UFO tracked by the F-16 onboard radar system in a heavily attended press conference at the Ministry of Defence on July 11, 1990, the international media went into a frenzy. Transcripts of the radio communications between ace fighter pilots, Capt. Yves Meelbergs, Lt. Rudy Verrijt, and the Glons Control Reporting Center near Liege, were also released and provide some dramatic moments. The transcripts paint a picture of the jets chasing ghost radar echoes that appear and disappear and then reappear again, but at no time are the pilots able to establish visual contact with the supposed objects. Belgium’s Electronic War Center (EWC) eventually undertook a detailed technical analysis of the F-16 computerized radar tapes, completed by Col. Salmon and physicist M. Gilmard in 1992, and later reviewed by Prof. Meessen.
An F-16 jet fighter of the Royal Belgian Air Force like the ones scrambled on the night of March 30-31, 1990.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Although some aspects of this case still remain unexplained, Meessen and SOBEPS accepted the Gilmard-Salmon hypothesis that most of the radar contacts were really echoes caused by a rare meteorological phenomenon. This became evident in four lock-ons, explained Meessen, “where the object descended to the ground with calculations showing negative altitude…. It was evidently impossible that an object could penetrate the ground, but it was possible that the ground could act as a mirror.” Meessen explained how the high velocities measured by the Doppler radar of the F-16 fighters might result from interference effects. He pointed out, however, that there was another radar trace for which there is no explanation to date. As for the visual sightings of this event by the gendarmes and others, Meessen suggested that they could possibly have been caused by stars seen under conditions of “exceptional atmospheric refraction.”
One frame from the F-16 onboard radar system showing the UFO lock-on during the March 1990 scramble episode, shown by the RBAF at a famous press conference in July 1990.
Credit: RBAF/ Bernard Thouanel
In a 1995 telephone interview, Gen. De Brouwer summarized his reflections on this complex case: “We always look for possibilities which can cause errors in the radar systems. We can not exclude that there was electromagnetic interference, but of course we can not exclude the possibility that there were objects in the air. On at least one occasion there was a correlation between the radar contacts of one ground radar and one F-16 fighter. This weakens the theory that all radar contacts were caused by electromagnetic interference. If we add all the possibilities, the question is still open, so there is no final answer.” De Brouwer took a more detached view of the F-16 scramble episode, however, in his 2008 MUFON lecture and his 2010 essay included in Kean’s book: “The conclusion of the Air Force, therefore, was that the evidence was insufficient to prove that there were real crafts in the air on that occasion.”
THE PETIT-RECHAIN PHOTO
The famous color slide of the Belgian triangle photographed in Petit-Rechain in early April 1990.
Seldom has the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words become more true than in the case of the extraordinary photograph of a flying triangle taken in the small town of Petit-Rechain in April 1990. This color slide became the emblematic symbol of the Belgian UFO wave. It has been published and broadcast in television programs all over the world, and it appears on the cover of the two SOBEPS volumes on the Belgian wave. It’s also one of the most analyzed UFO photos in the history of ufology. During my trip to Brussels in 1995, I had the opportunity to talk at length with Patrick Ferryn, the investigator who researched the case initially and wrote the chapter about it in the SOBEPS book. Ferryn gave me copies of the photo and samples of computer enhancements made by Marc Acheroy, professor of electricity at the Royal Military School, where the image was analyzed by the Signal Treatment Center. The details of how the photo was taken are fairly simple and straightforward.
The photographer, P.M. (who wants privacy, but has fully cooperated with SOBEPS), was a twenty-year-old factory worker, who lived in the small community of Petit-Rechain, near Verviers. He was at home with his girlfriend on the night of either April 4 or 7, 1990 (he can’t pin down the exact date), when his girlfriend first noticed the object between 11:00 and 11:30 p.m. as she took the dog to the courtyard. According to P.M.’s statement to Ferryn, he was alerted by his girlfriend, went outside, and “saw the object practically stationary towards the southwest, at about a forty-five-degree elevation. It consisted of three white round lights on a barely perceptible triangular surface. In the center there was a blinking spot of the same color, or maybe a bit more reddish than the other lights.” P.M. grabbed his camera, a Praktica model BX20 with a 55-200 mm zoom and a “Cokin” 1A 52 mm skylight filter. He shot the last two frames of a roll of 36-200 ASA Kodak color slide film. The UFO then moved slowly towards Petit-Rechain, until it was hidden by the roofs in the village. The entire episode took about five minutes.
The roll of film was sent by mail to a development house offering a special discount, and when P.M. received the slides, he noticed only frame #35 had captured the UFO; frame #36 was entirely black. Ferryn estimated that “the photo was probably taken with a focal distance between 55 and 200 mm, and with exposition time ranging from 1 to 2 seconds.” P.M. showed the photo to his factory coworkers (all of whom were later interviewed by Ferryn), but otherwise didn’t do anything to analyze or commercialize the picture. One of his coworkers knew a local photo-journalist from Verviers, Guy Mossay, who immediately saw the image’s potential value. P.M. sold the photo rights to Mossay for a small fee. Mossay then proceeded to copyright it with SOFAM (Belgium’s multimedia society for visual arts authors).
Skeptics have naturally pointed to the possibility of a hoax with profit motive. However, if that is the case, why did P.M. sell the rights to Mossay for a minor fee? Moreover, hoaxers never supply original slides or negatives for scientific analysis, as was done by P.M. Having checked his background, interviewed acquaintances, and so on, Ferryn noted that “the account of the main witnesses was coherent.” Gen. De Brouwer spent quite a bit of time explaining the details of this case during his MUFON lecture, saying of the witness that, “this guy is genuine, he is a guy who would not fake at all, I can assure you of that.” More importantly, the Petit-Rechain photo has been subjected to more scientific analysis than practically any other UFO photo in history.
When the Petit-Rechain photo is overexposed, the triangular outline of the object appears clearly.
The list of experts and institutions that have analyzed this photo include Prof. Acheroy of Belgium’s Royal Military Academy; Prof. François Louange, an expert in photo interpretation of satellite images for the French space agency, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior NASA scientist and respected UFO researcher; Belgium’s Royal Institute of Artistic Patrimony; and André Marion, a nuclear physicist with France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who conducted an analysis in 2002 with improved technology. The technical details of these analyses are too numerous for this article, but suffice it to say that evidence of photographic trickery has never been found. Furthermore, of several efforts to duplicate the photo using a dark cardboard triangular model with holes and light bulbs, only one made by members of the Astrophysics Institute at Liege University somewhat resembled the Petit-Rechain photo. But the luminosity of the spots in the replica was uniform, while those in the original exhibited different shapes and spectral effects. The most recent CNRS study by Dr. Marion confirmed the previous analysis and found, as put by Gen. De Brouwer, a “halo around the craft with patterned structure,” which could have been caused by the object’s “propulsion system” of “magnetoplasma dynamic.” Marion also stated that “it would be extremely difficult to fake such a photograph.”
In the end, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the authenticity of a UFO image. There will always be a difference of opinions, but the verdict in the Petit-Rechain case appears highly favorable. Triangular UFOs were seen throughout Belgium during the early 1990s. Dozens of fuzzy videos and grainy photos were taken, but they were generally not impressive. Petit-Rechain was the great exception.
Note: Since the writing of this article, the photo turned out to be an admitted hoax.
NO EVIDENCE OF SECRET AIRCRAFT
Due to the high credibility of most witnesses in the Belgian wave and their descriptions of a silent, triangular craft being so precise, trying to explain the wave in terms of hoaxes, misidentified natural phenomena, or conventional aircraft seemed fruitless. Therefore, a number of skeptics and aviation journalists focused on trying to prove the hypothesis of secret U.S. aircraft flying over Belgium. A series of candidates were proposed, from the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to secret airships, from the F-117A stealth fighter to some other revolutionary U.S. secret military aircraft such as the alleged TR-3A Black Manta. First, you have to ponder why the U.S. would conduct tests of their most-secret aircraft in such a highly populated area like Wallonia, which is not only a U.S. ally, but also headquarters of the NATO alliance. Gen. De Brouwer put it bluntly in a 1991 interview with the French magazine, OVNI Présence: “Why would the Americans conduct tests here in Europe, without permission and with the risk of having an accident that could create a diplomatic incident on a global scale? This doesn’t involve only Belgium, but NATO, where its concept itself could be put in question. I don’t believe that the Americans could take such a risk, it’s evident.”
Major General (Ret.) Wilfried De Brouwer, who was the Royal Belgian Air Force point man for the UFO wave, during his trip to Washington, DC to participate at the National Press Club event in 2007.
Credit: Bernard Thouanel
Guy Coeme and Leo Delcroix, the two Belgian Ministers of Defence during the wave, denied emphatically the theory that the UFOs were actually U.S. aircraft and based their denial on official inquiries with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels. In a 1993 letter to French researcher Renaud Marhic, Minister Delcroix wrote: “Unfortunately, no explanation has been found to date. The nature and origin of the phenomenon remain unknown. One theory can, however, be definitely dismissed since the Belgian Armed Forces have been positively assured by American authorities that there has never been any sort of American aerial test flight.” A declassified 1990 document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) entitled, “Belgium and the UFO Issue,” supports Delcroix’s position. After describing the basic events of the wave that had transpired up to that point, the unnamed U.S. official wrote at the very end of this memo: “The [U.S. Air Force (USAF)] did confirm to the [Belgian Air Force] and Belgian [Ministry of Defence] that no USAF stealth aircraft were operating in the Ardennes area during the periods in question. This was released to the Belgian press and received wide dissemination.”
Thirty years have now passed since the Belgian UFO wave, and no new significant evidence has been produced to prove that the sightings were caused by secret military aircraft. The reported cases remain unexplained. It seems certain that something massive and technologically advanced flew over Belgian territory during the 1989-93 period. Why and who was behind it are questions that remain to be answered. A suitable conclusion, for now, is to repeat what Gen. De Brouwer wrote at the end of his famous postface to the SOBEPS’s first volume: “The day will come undoubtedly when the phenomenon will be observed with technological means of detection and collection that won’t leave a single doubt about its origin. This should lift a part of the veil that has covered the mystery for a long time. A mystery that continues thus present. But it exists, it is real, and that in itself is an important conclusion.”
The author (left) with SOBEPS’ chairman Lucien Clerebaut at the Society’s headquarters in Brussels in 1995. The map in the background shows the locations of sightings in Belgium.
Credit: Antonio Huneeus
A version of this article originally appeared in Issue #5 (December/January 2011) of Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
Some view Carl Jung as a UFO debunker, others as a UFO believer, but the truth is he was somewhere in the middle. Either way, it is certain that Jung was an avid UFO researcher and fascinated with the topic. He wrote a book about the psychological symbolism and the role the UFO mythos plays in the unconscious mind.Moreover, on several occasions Jung complained that his studies would have been much easier if the UFO phenomenon was not real.
Jung the Psychologist
Jung was born in Switzerland in 1875. His father was a pastor in the Swiss Reformed Protestant Church, and his mother was from a wealthy Swiss family. He was the Jungs’ fourth child, but was the only child who survived into his childhood. As such, he grew up as an only child. Later, he wrote that he remembered enjoying his solitude.
His first experience with neurosis was at the age of twelve when a fellow student shoved him, causing him to fall and hit his head on the ground very hard. He remembered associating this experience with schoolwork, and whenever he had to go to school or do schoolwork he would faint. Overhearing his parents’ concern that this condition would cause him to be unable to support himself as an adult, Jung fought to overcome the problem and eventually returned to academics.
Although Jung had a profound interest in spirituality, his experiences triggered an interest in psychology and he decided to pursue a career in medicine. It wasn’t long before he realized that studies in psychology would allow him to combine his interests in medicine and spirituality, and in 1902, he completed his doctoral dissertation, which was titled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena.” He graduated with a medical degree from the University of Basel.
After graduating, Jung went to work with psychiatric patients at the University of Zurich asylum. He wrote a paper on word association that he sent to Sigmund Freud. Freud was impressed with Jung’s work, and they quickly became very close. Freud considered Jung his successor. However, after several years, Jung began to develop his own ideas beyond the work of Freud, and due to their disagreements, the relationship turned adversarial.
Carl Jung (bottom right), Sigmund Freud (bottom left), and others at a 1909 celebration of the founding of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Credit: Library of Congress
Freud’s work with the ego and unconscious served as a foundation for Jung’s work. They both felt that disconnects between the conscious and unconscious minds caused neurosis in people. They also both relied on dream interpretation to explore a person’s unconscious mind as a method for subsequently resolving neurosis. In fact, one story holds that Jung and Freud interpreted each other’s dreams and both completely disagreed with the other’s analysis, thus hastening the dissolution of their friendship.
A major area of disagreement between the two was that Jung did not believe a person’s unconscious was driven solely by sexual desires, as Freud did. Jung believed other strong emotions such as fear and aspiration were just as influential. He also conceived of a deeper level of the unconscious called the collective unconscious, which he believed is a part of our unconscious mind that holds ideas and concepts shared by all humankind. He believed these base ideas are then shaped by our cultural perceptions and personal experience. For example, we all have ideas around the notions of mothers, fathers, wise elders, etc. Jung called these shared notions archetypes. Jung felt that these archetypes not only would manifest in dreams, but could be seen in people’s creative works and behavior, including art, religion, and mythology.
Jung’s contributions to psychology are numerous. Even today his ideas of extraversion and introversion are a mainstay in personality psychology. He also came up with the idea of psychological complexes and synchronicities. All of these ideas and terms are commonly used in everyday conversation today, and all were made popular by Jung.
Jung and Alchemy
It is the idea of the archetype that brought Jung to have a particular interest in UFOs. When Jung interpreted psychological meaning he would search for archetypal figures. As mentioned earlier, such figures could be a mother or father.But, in a mythological story, the archetype may be the hero, a dragon, or even a planetary entity such as the sun. However, Jung also had an interested in alchemy.
Alchemy is typically connected to legends of ancient mystics attempting to unravel the secret of turning lead into gold. The work of alchemists is credited with the development of modern chemistry. However, another side of alchemy is spiritual in nature, relating to personal transformation. Jung had a passion for alchemy in this sense, and felt that the metal lead was a metaphor for an impure soul, whereas gold was a metaphor for a perfected soul. Jung’s interest in alchemy was thus as a method of purifying the soul.
The Tabula Smaradina (Emerald Tablet), a print by Mathias Merian from the 1600s displaying alchemical symbols and imagery.
Credit: Mathias Merian
Jung wrote a couple of books focused on interpreting alchemical symbolism and processes as different stages of personal growth that mirrored his ideas. He felt these symbols were archetypes that were unconsciously manifesting in the work of alchemists. Although he acknowledged the physical goals of alchemy (an attempt to transmute lead into gold), Jung did not give it much attention in his writing and focused on the non-physical aspects that related to his psychological theories. This is very similar to the way he approached the topic of UFOs.
Jung and UFOs
In 1951, Jung wrote to a friend in the United States: “I am puzzled to death about the phenomena, because I haven’t been able yet to make out with sufficient certainty whether the whole thing is a rumour with concomitant singular and mass hallucination, or a downright fact.”
Book cover to Jung’s Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
(Credit: Princeton University Press.)
Although Jung showed an interest in the mystery of the physical reality of the UFO phenomenon, professionally he stated, “As a psychologist, I am not qualified to contribute anything useful to the question of the physical reality of Ufos.” However, Jung could contribute by analyzing the unmistakable psychological side to the UFO phenomenon. In 1958, several of Jung’s papers regarding the psychology of UFOs were published in a book. It was originally published in German, but in 1959 it was translated to English under the title, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.
In the book, Jung argued that although there may be a physical reality to UFOs, there is certainly a portion of the phenomenon that is fantasy. He examined the difficulty many have in accepting fantastical stories of UFOs, even when they come from pilots, and points out, “What is worse, most of the stories come from America, the land of superlatives and of science fiction.”
For the sake of argument, and to examine the psychological aspects of the phenomenon, Jung presumed that UFOs are fantasy. This is an important aspect that many critics overlook when they characterize Jung as dismissive of the phenomenon altogether. UFO researchers also tend not to appreciate the portions of Jung’s book in which he examined the UFO phenomenon in regards to archetypal imagery and alchemic symbolism. Jung himself assures his readers that although his work may appear to be “unbridled fantasy” to those unfamiliar with psychology, it is actually based on “thorough research into the history of symbols.”
In his book, Jung observed that most UFO sightings describe the objects as disc shaped, which is a symbol that is often seen in alchemy and existed in the mythology of other cultures. For example, the Hindu and Buddhist symbol of the mandala is a circular disc-shaped symbol. Jung believed that the mandala is a protective sphere, which is elicited in the unconscious in times of emotional tension. Jung noted that, around the time of many of the UFO sightings, the world was under a collective stress due to “Russian policies and their still unpredictable consequences.” In short, he felt that perhaps UFOs were appearing in visions at the time because of the world’s Cold War jitters, and that the UFOs were a manifestation of a need for protection and salvation.
Jung’s book also provided detail of the analysis of particular sightings and art. One of the significant contributions to ufology made by the book is a focus on two historical broadsheets, a type of ancient newspaper, that recorded mysterious apparitions that many have speculated to be UFO related. Although Jung asserted that these reports were in the UFO literature prior to the publication of his book, Jung clearly made them popular as potential ancient UFO sightings.
The first is referred to as the Basel Broadsheet, and it dates back to 1566. It was written by Samuel Coccius and is a report of “many large black globes” that were seen flying in front of the sun “with great speed.” The Basel Broadsheet notes, “Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards faded and went out.” Jung noted the similarity of this phenomenon to modern UFO accounts.
The Basel Broadsheet from 1566 analyzed by Carl Jung in his Flying Saucer book.
The second report is called the Nuremberg Broadsheet and dates back to 1561. This report chronicles a “very frightful spectacle” that was witnessed by several people. Again, “globes” were seen near the sun, “some three in a row, now and then four in a square, also some standing alone.” There were also “two great tubes.” Jung noted that in UFO literature large tubes are considered “motherships,” and have been reported to have smaller discs that appear to fly out of them.
The Nuremberg Broadsheet from 1561 analyzed by Carl Jung in his Flying Saucer book.
In his book, Jung also examined the possibility of the physical reality of UFOs. He noted that, “unfortunately,” UFOs cannot be dismissed as purely psychological in nature. He pointed to numerous sightings, some of which have been caught in photographs and on radar. Jung even poked fun at astronomer Donald Menzel, a UFO debunker, saying that he “has not succeeded, despite all his efforts, in offering a scientific explanation of even one authentic UFO report.”
Jung was well-versed on UFO research. He wrote, “since 1947 I have collected all of the books I could get a hold of on the subject.” He was also a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), an early civilian UFO organization that included many credible members. In fact, in his book, Jung often referred to the work of Major Donald Keyhoe, a cofounder and director of NICAP.
Prior to releasing his book, Jung was considered by UFO researchers to be a proponent of the physical reality of UFOs. In 1955, he wrote an article on UFOs for a British journal called the Flying Saucer Review. In the article, Jung stated that he had never seen a UFO himself, but that “I can only say for certain: these things are not a mere rumour: something has been seen.”
He went on to argue that the U.S. Air Force “despite its contradictory statements,” considers the phenomenon to be real and they conduct official investigations. He warned that, by concealing information on the topic, the military is making it more likely that people will panic since the public is denied “an adequate picture of what is happening.”
Jung also stated that “the ‘disks’ (that is, the objects themselves) do not behave in accordance with physical laws, but as though without weight, and they show signs of intelligent guidance, by quasi human pilots, for their accelerations are such that no normal human could survive.”
Not much was made of Jung’s 1955 article until it was reprinted in 1958 by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in the organization’s bulletin in July 1958. APRO posted the story as part of an announcement that Jung had agreed to become an official consultant for the organization. The New York Herald Tribune quickly picked up on the report and printed a story with the headline, “Dr. Jung Says ‘Flying Disks’ Suggest Quasi-Human Pilots.”
APRO Bulletin from July, 1958 with reprint of Jung’s article on UFOs.
Credit: APRO
Jung was not happy with the implication that he believed UFOs represented a physical phenomenon and later wrote a letter to United Press International news agency clarifying his position. He wrote: “I expressly state that I cannot commit myself on the question to the physical reality or unreality of the UFOs since I do not possess sufficient evidence either for or against.” He then stated, “Something is seen, but it isn’t known what.” Jung later repeated this statement in his 1958 book and in several letters.
Although Jung was clearly embarrassed by the public perception that he conclusively believed flying saucers were physical in nature, he later reiterated his prior statements and earlier criticisms of the U.S. Air Force’s handling of the matter in very strong words. He wrote:
In spite of the fact that I hold my judgment concerning UFOs—temporarily let’s hope—in abeyance, I thought it worthwhile to throw a light upon the rich fantasy material which has accumulated round the peculiar observations in the skies. Any new experience has two aspects: (I) the pure fact and (2) the way one conceives of it. It is the latter I am concerned with. If it is true that the [American Air Force] or the Government withholds telltale facts, then one can only say that this is the most unpsychological and stupid policy one could invent. Nothing helps rumours and panics more than ignorance.
It is no wonder that many have been confused as to Jung’s official stance on UFOs. He seems to have believed the phenomenon and sightings to be real, but is uncertain whether UFOs are a physical reality or are limited to a psychological phenomenon. He stated that although “by all human standards it hardly seems possible to doubt this any longer,” in the decade or more he had been studying the topic, neither he nor anyone else seems to have learned much from the study of the physical aspect of UFOs. Jung said that this is precisely why he found it much more fruitful to study the psychological aspects of UFOs, an area in which he felt he had gained an abundance of knowledge.
Jung may be right. Concrete physical proof of UFOs continues to elude us to this day. Yet, Jung is another example of a luminary who garners a great amount of respect in his field of study, who also had the vision to seriously consider the UFO phenomenon. His UFO interest is a story that should not be forgotten, and his insights into the phenomenon may help guide us today, just as his insights into the human mind continue to be a part of the bedrock of modern psychological understanding.
A version of this article originally appeared in Open Minds UFO Magazine. Back issues can be found here.
A big revelation in the 1990 Calvine UFO incident has recently happened. The most awaited UFO photo that was set to be released on January 1, 2072, was somehow found and released by UAP Media UK. This new discovery is a shock to those who always bring skepticism to the field of UFOlogy. Vinnie Adams of the UAP Media UK disclosed that his team not only found the original print of the Calvine “UFO,” taken directly from the negatives, but also the original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time.
Brief Information About Calvine UFO Photo
There are many videos and photographs of UFOs on the Internet, and some of them have credibility. But there is one photograph sent to the UK defense ministry, the MoD, which is considered to be the most spectacular UFO photo although somehow, it has disappeared. The photograph contains a 100-feet diamond-shaped flying saucer, hovering over a village named Calvine in the Scottish Highlands. The photo was taken in 1990.
Nick Pope worked for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) for 21 years. From 1991 to 1994, he was the head of the MoD’s UFO project. He said that during his time in the MoD, he came across several credible UFO cases. One such case involves the photograph from the Calvine Incident.
The story of how the photograph reached the MoD’s office is phenomenal. Mr. Pope said that when he began his investigation into UFOs in 1991, it led him to a poster, hanging on the wall near his desk. The poster was an enlarged-colored photograph of the UFO from the Calvine Incident.
“The X-Files first aired in the UK in 1994 and I acquired the same nickname (Spooky) as Fox Mulder, for obvious reasons,” Nick said. “Mulder famously had his ‘I want to believe’ UFO poster on his office wall and though uncaptioned, I suppose this was my equivalent.”
Most of the UFO photos are either fake, blurry, or just a small dot in the sky, but this particular photo was clear and taken in broad daylight. According to Mr. Pope, the photograph contained an 80-foot diamond-shaped craft with a military jet in the background.
Two unnamed hikers from the Perthshire region allegedly took the photo of a large UFO while walking near the village of Calvine on August 4, 1990. “The photos were then sent to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) who then sent them on to imagery analysts at JARIC (Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre). Yet at the time, the MoD hadn’t even publicly acknowledged that there was any intelligence interest in UFOs at all,” Mr. Pope explained.
Interestingly, the photo disappeared without any trace when the UFO investigators questioned the MoD whether Americans were testing secret prototype aircraft in the area. Mr. Pope asked the US if the craft belonged to them but they refused to admit it.
According to a 30-year rule in the UK, the MoD was supposed to release the secret UFO dossier on January 1, 2021, but the UK government banned the release for another 50 years. This secret file is said to contain the infamous UFO photo from the Calvine incident. Now, it is set to be released on January 1, 2072.
Photo found after 32 years
UAP Media UK is working hard to bring a serious resource to the British media outlets on the discussion of UFOs. One of the members of this project named Vinnie Adams has been working with Dr. David Clarke and a small team of researchers on the Calvine case from 1990 in Scotland for the last 11 months. (Source)
The original Calvine photograph, showing the diamond-shaped craft and a Harrier aircraft in what appears to be close proximity. credit: VINNIE ADAMS From UAP Media UK
This led him to discover an original print of the Calvine “UFO,” taken directly from the negatives that were sent by the witnesses to the Scottish Daily Record back in 1990, just after the event occurred.
He also found the original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time.
Original envelope which was sent from the Scottish Daily Record to Craig Lindsay who was the MOD Press Officer that dealt with the case at the time. Credit: VINNIE ADAMS
Mr. Adams wrote: “According to the copy of the hand-written sighting report that was released by The National Archives (TNA) in October 2008, the witnesses gave an account of their sighting plus the color photographs to what was the joint RAF/Royal Navy Headquarters at Pitreavie, near Dunfermline (which closed in 1996).”
Nick Pope mentioned the details of the Scottish sighting in his 1996 book “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” which prompted a British Parliamentary Question in July 1996 from Martin Redmond, Former Member of Parliament for Doncaster, about the incident:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what assessment his Department made of the photograph of an unidentified craft at Calvine on 4 August 1990; who removed it from an office in Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a; for what reasons; and if he will make a statement.”
Nicholas Soames, Minister of State for the Armed Forces, gave a written reply to the MP’s question:
“A number of negatives associated with the sighting were examined by staff responsible for air defence matters. Since it was judged they contained nothing of defence significance the negatives were not retained and we have no record of any photographs being taken from them.” (Hansard HC Deb., 24 July 1996, vol.282, col 39248W)
Journalist Dr David Clarke, who is also a member of UAP Media UK, was put in touch with retired RAF press officer Craig Lindsay. Craig was involved in the Calvine case back in 1990 as the go-between for the Daily Record and the MOD.
Retired RAF Press Officer Craig Lindsay and Dr. David Clarke. Credit: VINNIE ADAMS
During his involvement in the case, Craig acquired an original print of the elusive photograph. Along with the photo, Craig also kept the original envelope containing the photograph sent by the Daily Record to the MOD.
In May 2022, David interviewed Craig in Scotland and was shown the original print. In June, Craig agreed to donate the photograph to the Sheffield Hallam University Archives, handing it to Dr. Dravid Clarke and Vinnie Adams. The image now resides in its new home at the Sheffield Hallam University folklore archives.
Authenticity of Calvine UFO Photo
Andrew Robinson, a senior lecturer in Photography at Sheffield Hallam University claims the authenticity of the 1990 Scottish highlands UFO photo. In his detailed analysis, he found the image showing no evidence of negative or print-based manipulation, and all visible signs suggest this is a genuine photograph of the scene before the camera. (Source)
Robinson concluded in his study:
The photograph is a color print from XP-1 or XP-2 chromogenic Black and White C41 film printed on a standard;
It is not possible to identify the object in the center of the frame. However, the evidence present suggests that this object was in front of the camera in the position shown when the photograph was captured;
Thus it follows that this is either a genuine unidentified flying object in the sky OR that any construction or manipulation used to create this effect occurred in front of the camera and not in the capturing of the scene on film nor in the subsequent processing and printing of the image;
The results of this analysis are consistent with, and support the claimed heritage of the print.
Check the video below by Nick Pope, speaking about how insiders view the Calvine UFO incident
An unidentified object that was traveling under the ocean at a speed greater than the speed of sound came dangerously close to a nuclear submarine. This claim was made by a researcher who was working on a classified operation aboard the USS Hampton when he made the statement. For many years, Bob McGwier worked in clandestine intelligence. He disclosed two incidents aboutunderwater UFOs or USOs, that he saw while performing covert operations. This claim was made several months after a video had been made public by the United States military, in which it appeared to show an unidentified flying object moving from the sky into the water in the year 2019.
UFO researcher and former fighter pilot Chris Lehto heard the story from Bob McGwire, who said that the submarine passed at incredible speed while “going deep and fast” in the late 1990s. McGwire stated that this encounter was corroborated by a member of the crew who was surprised by the speed of the Unidentified Submerged Object, also known as the USO. (Source)
“We were underway and all of a sudden I hear the sound it was really strange… it was moving so fast. I just cannot believe it because this submarine is limited in the speed it can go by the incompressibility of the water in front of it and this thing blew by us like we were standing still. I’m not going to throw anybody else under the bus here but I guarantee you the following happened: a person with knowledge of onboard systems came out and said ‘oh my God’ this goddamn thing is going faster than the speed of sound underwater but that’s faster than the speed of sound in air.”
Robert G. McGwier is the founder and Technical Advisor at Hawkeye 360. He serves as Technical Director of Federated Wireless, Inc. Dr. McGwier is the Director of Research for the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology, and Research Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. At Virginia Tech, he leads the overall execution of the Center’s research mission and leads the university’s program development efforts in national security applications of wireless and space systems. His area of expertise is in radio frequency communications and digital signal processing.
UFO researcher Chris Lehto with Scientist Bob McGwier: Image credit: YouTube screencap
McGwire had another USO encounter that took place onboard the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) in 2008 while it was in a violent Typhoon. “I wanted to look outside and see what I could see and I was on the bridge so I was right up there underneath the American flag looking out the windows. When I noticed that even though we were in a typhoon and it was raining like mad there was no rain hitting the ship and I’m going what the heck and I looked out the window and looked up and I could see a glow above us in the sky. It was not very bright but I could see it and whatever it was blocking off the rain from the entire ship stem to stern.”
McGwire continued: “I believe I was on the port side and the reason I say that is because I took a peek outside and I could do that because I was Leeward in other words the winds were from behind me and the bulkhead of the ship were blocking the winds. So, I could look up easily so anyway it suddenly grew brighter and took off straight up and the rain returned.”
Similar to McGwire’s second encounter, in 1991, USS Kirk FF108 USO Encounter took place off the west coast of South America. The witness stated that at that time, he was a Chief of Operations and Intelligence serving aboard the Knox-class escort destroyer USS Kirk FF1087 and that they were part of a drug interdiction force consisting of the USS Kirk and three other Navy ships. Their main task was to patrol using a network of radars to track and then intercept drug planes flying out of Colombia, Panama and Guatemala, as well as to seize any smuggling ships that they could find. (Source)
USS Kirk (FF-1087). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
The witness said that his primary position was at the CIC Combat Information Center, which he and 22 other specialists maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rotating in two shifts of 11 people.
At 2 a.m. on December 16, he was on duty at CIC. The night was calm and nothing unusual happened. He said he used the break to go up to the bridge. At this time, the entire ship was in a status called “darkened ship,” when all external lights were turned off, as well as on the bridge, that is, everything around was dimly lit only by instrument panels. His friend was on deck duty that night, and they chatted when they had some free time. And suddenly, everything around was lit up in the red color:
“All of a sudden and out of nowhere, like a huge flash from a camera, emanating from the starboard bow sea level upward was a huge flash of red glowing light, which lit up our entire ship. It only lit up our ship, not the surrounding ocean, just our ship. It happened so fast, that the OOD, the navigator and I were speechless for about 5 seconds, at which time I looked at the OOD and asked him if he just saw that light. He stated yes in a sullen voice.
I then asked the navigator and he replied yes. I then took the navigator’s sound powered headset, and asked the forward and aft look outs, if they had just seen the same red flash, to which the forward look out stated, “YES! WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”
After lookout said yes as well. I then immediately contacted CIC, and asked the CIC officer if we had any aircraft or surface ships in our vicinity, to which he replied clear as a whistle. I asked if we had any submarine activity in the area, to which he replied, no. At this point I looked at the OOD and asked him if we should wake up the captain or as we would call him, The Old Man. The OOD sat there stunned for a minute, as did I and everyone else.
What had just happened did not make any sense. The flash emanated from the sea, directly off of our starboard bow (like it was touching our bow), and ascended upwardly so rapidly, creating the effect of the bright red flash. The other weird aspect of this event was that only our ship was lit up within the red flash, not the surrounding sea, but our vessel only. The OOD elected not to wake the captain, and the entire incident was logged in our ship’s log as an unexplained phenomenon.
Up until this event, I did not believe in UFOss or USOss. I have no doubt that our ship, steaming along at 12 knots, came right up on a submerged unidentifiable aircraft. I don’t think the aircraft or USO had any idea we were sailing up to them. I think whatever it was, took off in a very unplanned and fast manner, and wanted to quickly identify us, thus the flash.”
In the end, after much deliberation, they decided not to wake the captain up, but simply to register it in the ship’s log as an “unexplained phenomenon.”
Many members of the United States Navy have reported fascinating sightings, and video showing UFOs entering water has even been made public. A video that was shot by the sailors of the USS Omaha in July 2019 off the coast of San Diego is one of the pieces of evidence that are being put up to support this claim. A spherical object is seen soaring over the ship and then plunging into the ocean in a video that was shared by UFO researcher and investigative director Jeremy Corbell. During this time, a member of the crew can be heard saying, “Wow, it splashed!”
The video generated considerable interest online, and when Corbell revealed that a Navy submarine had been dispatched to look for the object without success, things got even more intriguing. It is interesting to note that at around the same time, American submarines also spotted other mysterious anomalous objects that defied the laws of physics in the water nearby. The Navy has verified the authenticity of the video but claims to have no explanation for its existence.
More specifically, Luis Elizondo, a former director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, said:
“Imagine a technology that can do 6-700 g-forces, which can fly at 13,000 miles per hour, which can evade radar and which can fly through air and water and eventually. in the space. And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet can still defy the natural effects of Earth’s gravity. This is precisely what we are seeing.” (Source)
When the Pentagon's UAP Task Force released an initial report in April of 2023, UFO researchers expressed frustration that a figure allegedly showing the shapes of anomalous craft being reported had been redacted. But when former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick appeared before a congressional committee later that year, he brought the goods with him. He displayed a pie chart describing the various shapes of craft that had been reported, with a significant majority of them being depicted as "round" or "orbs." Many other less frequently seen shapes were listed as well, including triangles, cubes, and even classic saucers, described as discs. But there was one shape missing. There was no mention of egg-shaped UFOs.
You don't hear much about UFOs of that shape in the modern era, but that wasn't always the case. There was a time when such reports were quite common. If you do a search for the phrase "egg-shaped" in the Project Blue Book files in the National Archives, quite a few pages of results are returned, but they are almost entirely from the 1950s or early 1960s. Among the first, biggest, and most widely reported took place in the first week of November 1957. It started in the vicinity of Levelland, Texas on November 2nd and 3rd. Many people reported seeing the oddly-shaped, glowing objects flying around at various altitudes and distances. The media seized on the story, starting with the Lubbock Morning Avalanche (Page 1 and Page 2.) and it was soon being reported across the country on the newswires. The event wasn't restricted to the Levelland area, however. Soon sightings were being reported across the state and even by ships in the Gulf of Mexico. More reports came in from as far away as Chicago and other locations around the western half of the United States.
Not all of the witnesses described the objects as "egg-shaped," but many did. And the incidents had something else in common. Frequently, when motorists were approached by the objects too closely, they reported that the engines in their cars would mysteriously shut down, similar to Roy Neary's truck in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One has to wonder if Steven Spielberg got the idea from the Levelland event. He has been quoted in interviews saying that some of the concepts in the film were inspired by the work of J. Allen Hynek. (Dr. Hynek makes an appearance later in this story.)
Other notable sightings were recorded in the following days and reports began flooding into the US Air Force. In Sacramento, California, an egg-shaped object was reported and the engine of the witness' car shut down. An almost identical report came in from El Paso, Texas, with another car engine being disabled. A mass sighting took place in Orogrande, New Mexico, where between six and ten cars lost power after a "pearl-colored, egg-shaped object" passed over. One of the witnesses was a naval Chief Petty Officer with decades of experience. On the same night, November 4, three police officers and a fireman in Elmwood Park, Illinois, near Chicago saw a huge, 200-foot-long, glowing egg-shaped object that seemed to "play tag" with them for nearly an hour. Before dawn on November 5, an oval or egg-shaped object circled a Coast Guard Cutter off of New Orleans for at least half an hour. The ship picked the object up on its radar for 27 minutes in addition to visual sightings by the crew. Two military patrols reported sightings of egg-shaped objects over the Trinity nuclear detonation site. That sighting was picked up in the New York Times.
The response from the Air Force and the offices of Project Blue Book was probably predictable for anyone who closely follows this topic these days. The final Blue Book file that eventually rounded up many of these sightings is massive, with more than eighty pages attached. But smaller files were also created for many of the individual reports generated by this flap. Those files are linked above and they are instructive in terms of how the Air Force attempted to explain these incidents away and how the witnesses were treated. Within two days of the initial events, the Air Force released another official report to the press saying that ten years of investigations of more than 5,700 reports had produced "no physical or material evidence that such things exist."
The sighting in Sacramento was written off as "mass hysteria" from the coverage of the Levelland event, with no explanation offered as to why the witness' car had died. The El Paso witness was written off as being "unreliable," despite working as a U.S. Border Patrol agent. For the mass sighting at Orogrande, Texas, the Navy veteran reporting it was similarly described as being a "suspect" and potentially unreliable witness. They blamed that one on a temperature inversion and claimed that his car had likely undergone an unremarkable, normal mechanical failure. No effort was made to explain how as many as nine other cars simultaneously experienced the same failure or how they all started again after the object departed.
The reports of the police officers in Illinois were initially dismissed as "optical phenomena." Other incidents were similarly waved away as wildlife. ATIC tried to blame this huge cluster of sightings on anything possible. They blamed planets, stars, erroneous data errors, balloons, and "unreliable witnesses." They blamed nearly everything but swamp gas... anything but a truly anomalous event. They even insulted the reputations of witnesses, including military members, police, and firemen. But in the end, they were forced to come up with a more cohesive explanation because there were simply too many sightings and too many witnesses. So, in the final Levelland report, they acknowledged that many of these people had probably seen "something." They then declared that after "detailed investigations," they had concluded that "the sighting was due to a very rare phenomenon, ball lightning."
Was that really the best they could come up with? Assuming you even believe that ball lightning is real (and that's certainly debatable), we are regularly assured that it's as scarce as hens' teeth. But suddenly the Air Force was suggesting that it's as common as falling autumn leaves after a huge UFO sighting flap that they were unable to simply explain away with the usual excuses. Blaming the media for covering the stories and causing "mass hysteria" obviously wasn't going to fly either.
People were still contacting the Air Force about these events years later. In August of 1959, someone from CUFORO (the Civilian UFO Research Organization) contacted the Air Force asking about several of these sightings, as well as some others from early 1959. Major Lawrence Tacker wrote back to him, claiming to have never heard of one of the incidents and offering prosaic explanations for the others.
In June of 1965, Project Blue Book was still talking about this spate of reports. J. Allen Hynek wrote a four-page letter to Major Hector Quintanilla describing some of the events and struggling to come to some sort of conclusion. He concluded by recommending that all similar reports be collected and studied as a whole. Hynek asked that the case not be closed until he could locate and interview some of the witnesses more thoroughly. There is no record showing that he was ever able to do so and the file was eventually closed.
The majority of these reports all unfolded in less than two weeks. Then, they tapered off as suddenly as they began. A few others were reported from time to time, such as one from Baltimore, Maryland in October of 1958. But the appearances of the "egg-shaped UFOs" seemed to fade into memory. Not every object sighted was described exactly the same way, but many were too similar to ignore what appeared to be a pattern. Was it a case of a few craft rapidly zipping around and covering the entire country or had a fleet of them arrived all at once? Or is it possible that the use of the phrase was simply a fad describing something that we assigned a different name to later? We may never know, but for ufology fans, November of 1957 must have been a very exciting time to be alive.
Back on October 3, 1958, the crew of a freight train traveling through Indiana had a remarkable experience in the middle of the night. Their train was buzzed and then pursued by four glowing, disc-shaped craft that flitted back and forth across the tracks at a low altitude in an encounter that lasted for more than an hour. Despite the impressive credentials of the witnesses, including one retired Air Force bomber pilot with extensive experience, the incident never wound up generating significant attention from the media. The event, hereafter referred to as the Indiana incident, is similarly rarely mentioned in documentaries that examine the history of the UFO phenomenon, which is surprising. But the response from the US Air Force when people eventually began requesting information from the offices of Project Blue Book may be even more shocking.
I will first note that I learned of this event while browsing through the Project Blue Book files entirely by accident. When the Blue Book files were originally collected at the National Archive, they were unfortunately assembled in a haphazard fashion. Among the more than 10,000 files are many that have pages completely unrelated to the event described on the file's record card stuffed into them. Such is the case with the Indiana incident, which is buried inside a file describing an unrelated sighting near Cameron, Arizona that took place during the same month. If you click through and review the file, you will see that it contains 18 pages. Only the first four relate to the event in Arizona, while three others deal with similarly unrelated reports from Oregon, Kentucky, and Illinois. But the rest tell the remarkable tale of the Indiana incident. A thorough search of the archives for a record card or other pages related to the Indiana incident produced no results, so either a record card was never created (unlikely), it was lost, or it was too damaged to be legible. No incident number was assigned, which is also not unusual with cases from the later stages of the project.
On the date in question, a freight train identified as Monon No. 91 was traveling from Monon, Indiana to Indianapolis. The crew consisted of three men in the engine and two in the caboose. In the cab were the train's engineer, Harry Eckman, the fireman, Cecil Bridge, and Morriss Ott, the brakeman. In the caboose were Paul Sosbey, the flagman, and Ed Robinson, the conductor. Cecil Bridge was a retired Air Force bomber pilot with more than 450 hours of flight experience. At roughly 2:00 am, the men in the engine cab observed four glowing lights in the sky well ahead of the train darting around in an erratic fashion. The crew had flashlights in the cab with them and they began flashing them at the objects. As if in response, the four objects immediately began moving toward the train.
The witnesses never described the craft as "flying saucers," but they did say that they were "large round things, circular shaped on the bottom." They estimated that the objects were "about forty feet in diameter and maybe ten feet thick." They glowed with a seemingly phosphorescent light that shifted in color from white to yellow to orange. Curiously, the men said that the light from the craft did not illuminate anything around them or below them. They were flying just above treetop level, so these were not simply "points of light in the sky."
The craft shot off to the east, returning to the tracks again before flying off rapidly to the west. They disappeared from sight again, only to show up behind the train, approaching the caboose. The conductor picked up what he described as a five-cell sealed beam flashlight that "throws a good beam a long way." He began shining the light on the objects that "dodged" out of the beam when it illuminated them, seeming to behave as if they were intelligently controlled and did not wish to be hit with the flashlight beam. This pattern continued for a time until the craft took off to the northeast and did not return.
Bridge and Robinson were interviewed for the newswires the next day, but after that, they were informed by Monon rail officials that they needed to "keep quiet" about it. This request apparently originated from the Bunker Hill Air Force Base near Kokomo, Indiana. They requested that any similar sightings in the future be reported directly to them and even set up a hotline for such reports to be called in.
If the Air Force didn't want people talking about this event, it was too late. Word had gotten around and some people began to raise questions. Later that year, someone from Brooklyn, New York (whose name has been redacted) wrote a letter to the Air Force requesting information about the incident and the military's conclusions about it. The letter was forwarded to Blue Book. Not having received an answer, he sent a second letter in March of the following year. In that missive, he stated that he was sending copies of the letter to "certain members of Congress, including Senator Lyndon Johnson." (The same Lyndon Johnson who would later go on to be President.)
The letter was fielded by Major Lawrence Tacker who was working on the program at the time. He sent a memo to his colleagues at ATIC simply asking. "Do you have this" with multiple question marks. Someone named Ted Hieatt responded, saying that they had "no report, either official or unofficial, of the incident in Indiana." Tacker dutifully wrote back to the original correspondent, simply stating, "The United States Air Force has no record of this sighting." But the Blue Book file tells a very different tale. The citizen requesting the information was given that answer despite the fact that Blue Book had already assembled numerous published reports of the sighting and had obviously discussed it. Also, the Bunker Hill Air Force Base command was clearly aware of the Indiana incident and had taken steps to monitor the situation. Stating that the Air Force "has no record" of the incident was clearly not accurate and it seems unlikely that such a breakdown in communications would happen by accident.
How much of this was going on during the later stages of the program before Project Blue Book was finally shut down in 1969? While the Indiana incident never seemed to garner major headlines in the mainstream press, the story did show up periodically, such as in this article from the Detroit Free Press in December of 1958. The nature of the events in Indiana should have made this incident of tremendous interest to the Blue Book investigators. Rather than someone catching a fleeting glimpse of a fireball in the sky, this event lasted for more than an hour and was reported by multiple credible witnesses. They were able to interact with the objects using flashlights and seemingly generated an intelligently controlled response. The objects were large and barely above the level of the surrounding trees. Short of photographs or video, what more could they ask for in an incident report? And yet they appeared to sweep it away into the dustbin of UFO history.
We Need to Investigate UFOs. But Without the Distraction of Conspiracy Theories
We Need to Investigate UFOs. But Without the Distraction of Conspiracy Theories
A former government official calls for investigating unidentified anomalous phenomena without succumbing to conspiracy theories about extraterrestrials
Little else titillates and piques the national interest like unidentified flying objects and space aliens. After more than a century of films featuring intelligent creatures from other worlds, and over seven decades after the U.S. government began investigating them, UFOs remain a flashpoint for conspiracy theorists and science deniers. By any name, UFOs or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) conjure the most vivid images and plots allowed by Hollywood and novels alike. Who doesn’t want to believe?
However, reality, as inconvenient as it can be, remains fundamental. In 2022 Congress found the courage to put into law the creation of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), jointly managed by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Its mission is quite straightforward. Apply an unbiased scientific method and intelligence tradecraft to review existing information and data on historical UAP and investigate new data as these are provided to the office from military, federal, state and local entities as well as private citizens.
AARO’s underlying raison d’être is to investigate, evaluate, analyze and provide actionable information for use by our national security leadership. Its purpose is not to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life, but to address the safety and security of our people, our operations and our nation.
Unfortunately, it is also meant to investigate a conspiracy saturated with the distrust between our legislative and executive branches. It is time for the American people to understand that, and for the DoD, ODNI and Congress to step up to the plate and enable AARO to finish its mission absent this distraction.
AARO’s interest—all-domain phenomena (sea, air and space)—remains an ongoing concern to our national security enterprise, particularly when the phenomena are observed near our nation’s sensitive military and critical infrastructure facilities. Observations by experienced military personnel as well as data from highly capable sensors are being reviewed by AARO, accordingly, to weed out explainable observations and expose truly difficult-to-explain phenomenology using the most rigorous scientific analysis available. This is its real job: to minimize the risk of intelligence and technical surprise.
Many outside observers nonetheless have criticized AARO as supposedly part of a continuing government cover-up of the existence of aliens. Interestingly, they have not provided any verifiable evidence of this, nor are some of the more outspoken willing to engage with the office to discuss their positions or offer up the data and evidence they claim to possess. Too often these critics and their supporters rely on secondhand “friend of a cousin” reporting with no personal firsthand knowledge or rigor in their critical thinking. Some claim that those with firsthand knowledge of this supposed cover-up have relayed it to AARO, but no source in my tenure as director of the office had firsthand knowledge of anything to do with an alleged reverse-engineering program of extraterrestrial spacecraft. While those who came forward have provided valuable information (albeit not of extraterrestrials or cover-ups), those who chose to instead titillate the national interest only stir division and hatred against the credible men and women of AARO who are working faithfully to address this mission. The AARO continues to offer anyone an opportunity to provide their personal knowledge of an alleged program involving extraterrestrials for the record in a safe and nonadversarial environment. It remains perplexing that some critics are hiding behind their own cloak of secrecy and legal maneuvering, refusing to engage with the AARO when the office has been given full authority by Congress, DoD, ODNI and others in the interagency process to review all information regardless of its classification while legally protecting those who provide it.
If people claim to have evidence involving aliens, they need to come forward to AARO to enable the office to investigate it. Otherwise, hearsay in a scientific and fact-based investigation serves only as a distraction.
There also is the possibility that some observed and reported phenomena are associated with past or ongoing national security programs completely unrelated to extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, some who have been peripherally involved in these programs are taking advantage of the lack of understanding of security compartmentalization among the public—and some members of Congress—and feel that exposure of national security activities is a public right.
The harm of such exposure would be incalculable: billions of dollars and decades invested in military capabilities exposed to our potential adversaries to satisfy ill-informed curiosity. While some staffers and members of Congress may claim that they and the American people have a right to know of every classified research program, Congress already has an established process for notification of sensitive programs to the bipartisan leadership of both the Senate and House as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, often referred to as the Gang of Eight. It is incumbent on both the speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader and both chairs of the intelligence committees to ensure that there is no risk of exposing any national security programs in a rush to find extraterrestrials, and that documents are reviewed within appropriate channels. If these members of Congress deem it appropriate not to share classified information, they are doing their job. These are not town hall topics.
Lost in the hyperbole about a government conspiracy to hide the existence of alien spacecraft and physical remains is the real potential that the unexplained phenomena represent a dangerous technological leap by our peer competitors, China and Russia (it could be weapons testing, spying or just technology testing). Such a leap would present a national security crisis. As mandated by Congress, DoD and ODNI must fully engage with and support AARO to ensure that it is receiving the resources and government-wide collaboration required. Likewise, critics of AARO must step up and become part of the solution by collaborating and providing the full disclosure of any and all information they hold.
While future book deals or selling a story to Hollywood may be hard to resist for some, they are not what this effort is about. Sensationalism and the politicization of science do not aid in finding the truth. While everyone wants an answer now, the truth will take time. Physics cannot be reinvented to fit a desired outcome, and analytic conclusions cannot be made based on questionable data and the word of “credible witnesses” alone. And when the data do not fit your theory, the theory is wrong, not the data.
In the multiple reports to Congress that I oversaw, full insight into AARO’s methodology, status and results, both unclassified and classified, has been provided. Anyone saying otherwise is not part of the 12 committees that oversee AARO’s mission; critics need to learn how access to information within Congress works. If the true issue is the scope of government classification and congressional notification, that should be addressed in the appropriate fora, not by chasing ET. This is a serious, national, fact-based scientific effort to avoid the potential for a grave intelligence failure that could lead to a devastating strategic surprise to our nation. Only science and objective evidentiary-based investigation will prevent that.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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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 73 jaar jong.
Mijn hobby's zijn: Ufologie en andere esoterische onderwerpen.
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Veel leesplezier en geef je mening over deze blog.
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