Tag: close encounters

Ex UFO chiefs claim their Pentagon bosses misled Congress by claiming a swarm of mysterious objects that buzzed around Navy ships in 2019 were mere drones – not a national security threat

The inside story of a 2019 UFO investigation by two top former intelligence officials was revealed in a jaw-dropping talk at a conference in Los Angeles.

The former head of the government’s UFO task force Jay Stratton and his chief scientist Travis Taylor spilled the secrets of their official probe into a swarm of objects that buzzed around a fleet of eight Navy ships off the US West Coast in July 2019.

Speaking at AlienCon in Pasadena on March 5, Stratton and Taylor said their investigation left them fearing Russia or China could have achieved incredible drone battery technology – or may have launched quadcopters from submarines that somehow evaded the Navy’s best radar just miles from the mainland.

But when the incident was recounted by their high-ranking Pentagon bosses to politicians and the public last year, it was presented as a very different story.

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‘Ain’t Your Grandma’s Rocket’: ‘UFO Footage’ Filmed by US Drone Over Iraq Emerges Online

The “UFO” in question was apparently filmed by a US military drone operating in Iraqi skies, with the footage recorded in May 2022.

As public interest in UFOs dies down after it became apparent that there was nothing extraterrestrial about the flying objects the US military downed in American and Canadian airspace last month, a batch of images supposedly depicting a UFO in Iraq has emerged.

The images appear to be stills from a video recorded by a US MQ-9 Reaper drone in the vicinity of Baghdad in May 2022.

These images feature some sort of flying object that has no visible wings or fins, with a source in the US Air Force reportedly saying that the object also had no visible propulsion and appeared to be “under intelligent control.”

Documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who disclosed this visual information on his and investigative journalist George Knapp’s podcast, said the object seen in the video definitely “isn’t your grandma’s rocket.”

“It shows an anomalous object which has been designated as UAP by our own air force,” he told one UK newspaper, with the UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) being how UFOs are often officially referred to nowadays.

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Canadian Government Launches UFO Study

Taking a page from the United States, the Canadian government has launched their own official study on UFOs in the hopes of getting a better understanding of the mysterious phenomenon. The intriguing effort has reportedly been dubbed the ‘Sky Canada Project’ and will be overseen by the country’s Chief Science Advisor. Believed to be the first government-sponsored UFO research project in almost three decades, the endeavor is similar in scope to studies currently being conducted in America wherein determining how reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are being collected by the government is at the center of the work rather than answering the question of what these objects might be.

To that end, an official document detailing the creation of the study stresses that “it is not meant to prove or deny the existence of extraterrestrial life or extraterrestrial visitors.” On the contrary, the project will seek to “identify the key Canadian players and how they deal with UAP observations.” As such, researchers will be seeking input from various government departments within Canada including the country’s space agency as well as the Royal Mounted Police. The project will also consult with American counterparts in the US Department of Defense and NASA who are also examining the UAP issue. Ultimately, they aim to issue a public report on the study sometime next year.

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Air Force Vets Testify UFOs Have Turned Off Nuclear Warheads & Shot Test Missiles Out Of Sky At US Bases

Pentagon investigators have recently interviewed multiple veterans about their experiences allegedly witnessing UFOs tampering with American military equipment, including the nuclear arsenal.

According to a Daily Mail report, a pair of Air Force vets testified to the U.S. military’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) about their encounters.

Robert Salas, who was a US Air Force ICBM launch officer, told the Pentagon he witnessed “an orange flying disc” disarm 10 nuclear warheads at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana in 1967.

The other Air Force officer, Dr. Robert Jacobs, showed AARO a 35mm film reportedly showing a UFO shooting a test missile out of the sky in 1964 on a U.S. base.

Salas, who is now 82 years old, was happy to finally have the government reach out, telling Daily Mail, “I’ve been wanting to tell a government agency my story for over 50 years. It was a great big relief.”

Following his interview with AARO, a representative sent Salas a letter thanking him and telling him, “I’m hopeful the collective contributions of patriots like you and the current level of government interest and investment will provide answers to the questions the citizens of our country have demanded for such a long time.”

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US Military Spy Plane Spots Metallic-Looking Orb UFO over City in Iraq

A tantalizing image, said to have come from footage captured by a US military spy plane, shows a metallic-looking orb UFO over a city in Iraq. The peculiar picture was released by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and C2C’s George Knapp in conjunction with the launch of their new podcast Weaponized. “This is an example of the UFOs that our military and intelligence community is looking at,” Corbell said, explaining that the image is a still from an approximately four-second-long video which has yet to be released.

Detailing the circumstances surrounding the strange UFO encounter, he revealed that it occurred over the Iraqi city of Mosul in April of 2016. According to Corbell, the video features the moment when “this orb or metallic ball runs alongside a spy plane, and it’s shown moving beside the plane without dropping altitude at all.” The footage of the incident was reportedly included in a classified briefing to Congress by the Pentagon’s UAP task force and the object, dubbed the ‘Mosul orb,’ is believed to have been under some kind of intelligent control when it was caught on film.

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UAP Report Reveals 171 UFOs That Seem to Defy Natural Laws

The August 2022 Unclassified Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) has surfaced, revealing a number of unexplained UFO sightings. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 required the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense to submit a report on UAPs to Congress. The renewed interest in UAPs comes on the heels of the May 2022 House Intelligence Committee hearing requiring transparency on UAPs and their potential threats to national security. A classified version of the report has also been presented to Congress. UncoverDC reported on the 9-page preliminary report that was released in June 2021. 

A Department of Defense news report from December 17, 2022, detailed the formation of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Established in July 2022, the Office is tasked with identifying and analyzing UAPs that might pose a threat to the military and other federal agencies. It is an “interagency” effort “to document, collect, analyze and, when possible, resolve reports of any unidentified anomalous phenomena,” said Sean M. Kirkpatrick, the Director of AARO.

According to a memo from Ronald Moultrie, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, AARO will “leverage” DoD capabilities in coordination with the Intelligence Community to “tackle the unique challenges posed by the presence of anomalous objects across all domains…following along [6] lines primary lines of effort.”

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US government has received more than 360 new UFO reports

The US government has received 366 new reports of “unidentified aerial phenomena” — commonly known as UFOs or unidentified flying objects — since March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noted in an unclassified report released Thursday.

The 11-page document noted that about half the sightings remain unexplained.

The new sightings are in addition to 144 reports during the previous 17 years, bringing the total to 510.

According to the report, “initial analysis and characterization of the 366 newly-identified reports, informed by a multi-agency process, judged more than half as exhibiting unremarkable characteristics.”

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Pentagon Releases Annual Report on UFOs

A highly anticipated report on the Pentagon’s efforts to study UFOs has been released to the public and, sadly, it seems that the phenomenon remains as mysterious as ever. Meant to serve as an update to their preliminary assessment issued in June of 2021, the annual report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) for 2022 provides an enlightening look at the progress that has been made by the DoD’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Remarkably, they indicated that the group have received an additional 366 cases since their initial assessment, bringing the total number of UAP accounts collected by the office to a whopping 510.

In noting the increase in reports, the office seemed to indicate that this did not necessarily mean that there were suddenly more UFOs in the skies, but that witnesses are now encouraged to share their accounts “due to a concentrated effort to destigmatize the topic of UAP and instead recognize the potential risks that it poses.” Breaking down their investigation into the fresh batch of reports, the AARO revealed that their analysis “judged more than half as exhibiting unremarkable characteristics.” To that end, they explained that 26 were drones, a staggering 163 were “characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities,” and 6 were simply classified as “clutter.”

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Questions remain 75 years after mysterious Fort Knox UFO incident, downed pilot

His 2,867 flight hours, much of it in combat, and Distinguished Flying Cross and four Air Medals weren’t enough to avoid a fatal crash near a Franklin, Kentucky farm.

Exactly 75 years later, Capt. Thomas Mantell’s flight that afternoon still remains shrouded in mystery. He died while pursuing a UFO that was seen in the skies over Godman Army Airfield by countless people throughout the region surrounding Fort Knox.

On Jan. 7, 1948, Mantell sat in the cockpit of his F-51D Mustang as flight leader headed north from Marietta Air Force Base in Georgia back to Louisville’s Standiford Field. He and three other pilots from the Kentucky Air National Guard’s Flight C, 165th Fighter Squadron had been participating in a low-altitude navigational training exercise when the request came from Godman Commander Col. Guy Hix to investigate the sightings.

The 25-year-old World War II hero acknowledged the request, and he and two other pilots climbed to 15,000 feet to intercept it. The fourth, a “Lt. Hendricks”, continued on to Standiford Field.

According to a Jan. 6, 2005 article by Turret editor Larry Barnes, several hundred people in Central Kentucky had already witnessed the UFO by 1:15 p.m. on that Wednesday, a day described by some observers as partly cloudy with high-altitude feathery cirrus clouds. That day is recorded by Wunderground.com as also having relatively calm winds, mild temperatures — a high of 49 degrees — zero precipitation, and visibility for at least 10 miles.

“It would have been probably a typical winter day. If they had cirrus clouds in the sky, the visibility would have been great,” said an area weather forecaster. “There was just nothing much else going on weatherwise, so it probably made for a pretty good day.”

News agencies wasted no time turning the crash into front-page news. The big questions on everyone’s minds: What did Mantell encounter, and why did he crash?

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Government UFO report timed for Halloween seems to downplay spooky sightings

Right in time for Halloween, U.S. intelligence agencies were due on Monday to deliver a classified progress report on UFOs to Congress, with an unclassified summary of the report expected to be posted online later this week. Earlier this month, NASA also announced the 16 members of its new unclassified independent team, consisting of prominent scientists, an astronaut and a science journalist, to look at the phenomenon from “a scientific perspective.” 

Monday’s report comes after Congress called for the establishment of a permanent office to study UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena, the government’s new and improved term for UFOs) at the Pentagon last year and then held its first public hearing on the topic in more than 50 years this spring. That hearing discussed an unclassified report issued by a Department of Defense task force in 2021. 

Many UFO investigation proponents like myself were underwhelmed by the Pentagon’s unclassified 2021 report, which offered an explanation for only one of the 144 incidents the department said were being investigated. But at least it correctly acknowledged that it couldn’t rule out any explanation, including extraterrestrial origins. After all, in some of the incidents, Navy pilots publicly stated that they’d encountered exotic objects that were “not of this world” and “accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

But leaked details and communications from officials ahead of Monday’s report and the announcement of NASA’s new team suggested that some in the government are eager to put the issue to rest without a full, open-minded investigation — just as it did in the last open attempt to get to the bottom of the phenomena back in the 1960s. 

It’s particularly frustrating that NASA seems to be drawing its conclusions before even really getting started. In its tweet announcing the UAP panel members 10 days ago, NASA declared: “There is no evidence supporting the idea that UAP are extraterrestrial in origin.” This statement seems to prematurely signal its conclusions so no one will be surprised when the final report repeats the same finding.

Meanwhile, the headline of a New York Times article on Friday based on what it said was classified information from the intelligence report read, “Many Military U.F.O. Reports Are Just Foreign Spying or Airborne Trash.” Nodding to the Halloween timing, the author of the article, Julian Barnes, tweeted what might have been the subtext: UFOs are nothing “spooky or hypersonic” — in other words, just ordinary things, there’s nothing to see here and it’s time to move on.

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