Tag: close encounters

British Parliament Discusses Pentagon UFO Report

The much-discussed Pentagon Report on UFOs wound up becoming a topic of conversation in Britain’s Parliament this week as multiple politicians questioned an official with the country’s Ministry of Defense about the potential threat posed by the phenomenon. The enlightening exchange reportedly occurred during a House of Lords session on Wednesday when MP Lord Sarfraz detailed how the DoD assessment “does not rule out that these could be military aircraft with very fast capabilities or even extraterrestrial phenomena.” He then asked defense minister Baroness Goldie if she could “reassure members of the public that the Ministry of Defense takes reports of unidentified objects in our airspace very seriously?”

In response, she acknowledged the findings of the report and indicated that the MoD “holds no reports on unidentified aerial phenomena, but constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity, and is confident in the existing measures in place to protect it.” Goldie went on to express what appeared to be a fairly skeptical take on the phenomenon, stressing that “the MoD deals with actual threats substantiated by evidence.” The conversation continued when another MP, Viscount Ridley, argued that “the idea that in an era of mobile phone cameras, drones and frequent travel there could possibly be alien spaceships whizzing about undetected in our atmosphere on a regular basis is not, I think, very plausible.”

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Former Intel Chief Calls For “Larger Discussion” On UFOs, Warns They Display Technology US Doesn’t Have

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), also known as UFOs, appear to display technology that the United States does not have and could not defend against.

Ratcliffe made the remarks in an interview on Fox News that aired Saturday, one day after the public release of a much-anticipated government report on UAPs or UFOs (pdf), which found “no clear indications that there is any non-terrestrial explanation” for the aerial phenomena, although it left open the possibility of an alien origin.

“I’m actually glad that there’s a report out there,” Ratcliffe said in the interview, adding, “the bottom line is, unidentified aerial phenomena—many, many cases we’re able to explain it away for reasons like visual disturbances, or weather phenomenon, or foreign adversaries and their technologies, or even our own experimental technologies with certain aircraft and vehicles.”

At the same time, he said were are a number of cases where none such explanations applied.

“What this report really underscores … is that there are a number of instances—and the specific number remains classified—but a number of instances where we’ve ruled all of that out,” he said.

“And there are technologies that we don’t have and frankly that we are not capable of defending against—based on those things that we’ve seen, multiple sensors, in other words, where not just people visually see it but where it’s picked up on radar, where it’s seen on satellites,” Ratcliffe said, adding that, “it’s an issue of national security.”

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NASA administrator reacts to new UFO report: ‘Are we alone? Personally, I don’t think we are.’

The long-awaited unclassified report on the government’s preliminary assessment on UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena, from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence hit the internet Friday. It revealed that the U.S. government reported 144 incidents of UAPs spotted between November 2004 and March 2021. However, 143 of those UAPs remain unexplainable. The only identified incident was a large, deflating balloon.

NASA Director Bill Nelson, a former Florida Democratic senator and onetime astronaut, spoke to CNN about the report Monday and revealed both his national security concerns and his belief that we are not alone in the universe.

Nelson, who has read both the classified and unclassified reports, told CNN that he has told NASA scientists to research possible explanations “from a scientific point of view” and report back.

He added that he “talked to the Navy pilots” who saw the UAPs and “that there is clearly something there.”

“It may not necessarily be an extraterrestrial, but if it is a technology that some of our adversaries have, then we better be concerned,” Nelson said.

Though he said he does not believe the United States’ foreign adversaries can create the technologies the government is looking into, the nation had better be prepared.

Then Nelson addressed the one-eyed, one-horned giant purple people eater in the room.

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Long-awaited UFO report mentions no aliens, but asks for more money for US spies

The newly released US intelligence community report on unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) offers more questions than answers. It doesn’t mention aliens, says UAP might be a national security threat – and asks for more funding.

Released on Friday afternoon by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the entire unclassified report clocks in at only nine pages, including two pages of appendices with definitions of terms. 

The dataset it is based on relies on US government reports of incidents between November 2004 and March 2021. However, no standardized reporting mechanism existed until the US Navy set one up in 2019, and the Air Force adopted it the following year.

We were able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained.

The report mentions 144 reports, of which 80 “involved observation with multiple sensors.” While some UAP “may be attributable to sensor anomalies,” most “probably do represent physical objects” given they were “registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation.”

If and when the incidents are resolved, the report said, the US intelligence community believes they will break down into five potential categories: “airborne clutter” such as birds, balloons, drones or plastic bags; natural atmospheric phenomena such as ice crystals; US government or industry research projects, foreign adversary systems, and “other.” 

ODNI was “unable to confirm” that classified research and development programs by the US government or industry “accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected.” Some UAP sightings “may be” technologies developed by China, Russia or someone else.

If that is the case, UAPs would “represent a national security challenge” as well as a threat to flight safety, but US spies said they “currently lack data to indicate any UAP are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary.”

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Congressman Argues That If UFOs Are Real, They Are Likely Extraterrestrial

During a recent conversation regarding the UFO phenomenon and government secrecy, a United States Congressman from Tennessee provocatively mused that, if they exist, the mysterious objects are likely extraterrestrial in nature. Interviewed by website TMZ on Tuesday, Representative Tim Burchett responded to indications that the forthcoming Pentagon UAP report will suggest that UFOs spotted by Navy pilots could have originated from Russia. “I think that’s ridiculous,” he declared, postulating that “if the Russians had UFO technology, they would own us right now.” Having dismissed that possibility, the congressman went on to argue that the phenomenon “has to be something that’s [from] out of this galaxy, just has to be, if in fact it is real.”

Burchett also lamented about the lack of transparency from the government regarding the UFO phenomenon, noting that politicians “always say they’re going to do something about it and then they get into office” and the only files that get released are redacted with “a big blob of Wite-Out. Clearly, something’s going on that we can’t handle.” Indicating a belief in the idea that the phenomenon has been a part of human history since the beginning, the congressman observed that “UFOs are in the Bible. Read Ezekiel, it talks about the wheel flying around. They’ve been around since we’ve been around and somebody’s gotta come up with answers.”

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‘There is stuff’: Enduring mysteries trail US report on UFOs

The blob, captured on distant, fuzzy video by Navy pilots, seems to skitter just above the ocean waves at improbable speed, with no discernible means of propulsion or lift. “Oh my gosh, man,” one aviator says to another as they laugh at the oddity. “What … is it?”

Is it a bird? A plane? Super drone? An extraterrestrial something?

The U.S. government has been taking a hard look at unidentified flying objects like this one. A report summarizing what the U.S. knows about “unidentified aerial phenomena”—better known as UFOs—is expected to be made public this month.

There won’t be an alien unmasking. Two officials briefed on the report say it found no extraterrestrial link to the sightings reported and captured on video. The report won’t rule out a link to another country, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it.

While the broad conclusions have now been reported, the full report may still present a broader picture of what the government knows. The anticipation surrounding the report shows how a topic normally confined to science fiction and a small, often dismissed group of researchers has hit the mainstream.

Worried about national security threats from adversaries, lawmakers ordered an investigation and public accounting of phenomena that the government has been loath to talk about for generations.

“There is stuff flying in our airspace,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, one of the senators who pressed for the probe, recently told Fox News. “We don’t know what it is. We need to find out.”

Congress late last year instructed the director of national intelligence to provide “a detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data” from multiple agencies and report in 180 days. That time is about up. The intelligence office wouldn’t say this past week when the full document will be out.

The bill passed by Congress asks the intelligence director for “any incidents or patterns that indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic or conventional forces at risk.”

The chief concern is whether hostile countries are fielding aerial technology so advanced and weird that it befuddles and threatens the world’s largest military power. But when lawmakers talk about it, they tend to leave themselves a little wiggle room in case it’s something else—whether more prosaic than a military rival or, you know, more cosmic.

“Right now there are a lot of unanswered questions,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California told NBC this week. “If other nations have capabilities that we don’t know of, we want to find out. If there’s some explanation other than that, we want to learn that, too.”

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Upcoming UFO report to Congress creating lots of buzz

Later this month, U.S. intelligence agencies will present to Congress a highly-anticipated unclassified report about what they know about UFOs, or as the Pentagon now calls them, Unexplained Aerial Phenomena (UAPs).

However, the jury is still out on whether the report will contain the answers that UFO enthusiasts are looking for: that recent military encounters with UAPs may be proof of contacts with extraterrestrial life.

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US Navy Detects Crafts That Travel “Hundreds Of Knots” Undersea Ahead of Pentagon UFO Report

In recent months, we’ve been learning more about U.S. military sightings of unknown aerial phenomena (UAPs), including strange spherical unidentified flying objects sighted by the U.S. Navy that defy knowledge and could be seen plunging into the ocean.

And now, a journalist knowledgeable about these matters claims that the Navy has also detected bizarre underwater crafts capable of traveling “hundreds of knots” beneath the sea.

Could it be that these underwater objects and UFOs are somehow connected?

According to Washington Examiner journalist Tom Rogan, who was appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to speak about UFOs, the U.S. Navy has detected strange anomalies both in the air and underwater – including inexplicably fast crafts found via sonar that appear to be rapidly shooting through the ocean depths.

So far, it would be premature to conclude that these belong to extraterrestrials, but the technology far outpaces any that belongs to the major militaries of the world.

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Everything Keeps Getting Weirder And Weirder

Back in 2019 I wrote an article titled “Things Are Only Going To Get Weirder“, and from Covid to the 2020 election to the steadily increasing regularity with which UFOs are now mentioned in the mainstream media, that has indeed proved to be the case.

Our ongoing slide into the abyss of infinite weirdness may have eclipsed this from your memory by now, but there was once a time not too long ago when frequent mainstream news stories about the possibility of extraterrestrial aircraft in our skies would not have sounded like something from real life. Lately it’s been a daily occurrence, and the president of the United States is now being asked about it at news conferences.

“President Obama says there is footage and records of objects in the skies — these unidentified aerial phenomena — and he says we don’t know exactly what they are. What do you think that it is?” a reporter asked Biden near the end of a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday. Biden brushed off the question in his trademark almost-but-not-quite-lucid way with the comment “I would ask him again,” and hustled off the stage.

The question followed comments by Barack Obama earlier in the week on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

“But what is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory,” Obama said. “They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”

This follows a recent high-profile 60 Minutes special on UFOs (or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena as the cool kids are calling them nowadays), while the Pentagon continues to release “information” to the public about the existence of these encounters and the US Senate prepares to receive a mandated report on the matter next month.

A new Telegraph article titled “The Pentagon thinks UFOs may exist after all… and the evidence is growing” just trended on Twitter under the much more click-friendly title “The Pentagon strongly suspects aliens exist – and we’ve got the evidence”, and it ominously warns us that there is “a growing acceptance among defence officials around the world that there may indeed be something ‘out there’ – and that it might pose a genuine global security threat.”

These are just a few of the many, many mainstream news reports that have been pouring out lately on a subject which until recently was the sole purview of fringe “crackpots” and “conspiracy theorists”. Speaking of which, another weird thing we’re seeing is the roles between mainstream reporters and UFO enthusiasts being almost reversed: we now see MSNBC pundits openly musing that “UFO’s are clearly real? And have been hanging around our airspace for a while?”, while influential UFOlogists like Steven Greer are warning that this is a hoax by the US military to get a bunch of dangerous weapons into space.

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