Tag: ufo

Heavily Redacted UAP Briefing Between UAP Task Force and NASA Released

A recent release of documents obtained through two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by The Black Vault in 2021 and 2022, has shed light on a briefing about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (now referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena [UAP]) by the UAP Task Force (UAPTF) for NASA.

The UAPTF was a U.S. Department of Defense program established to investigate UAP reports, running from 2020 until its transition to the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG) in 2021.

The requests specifically asked for “all communications, emails or otherwise, between the UAP Task Force, and NASA,” after it was revealed in NASA FOIA Case 21-HQ-F-00507 that the UAPTF had requested NASA brief them on UAPs in September 2020. That case sought all communications between the task force and NASA. A second case was filed in 2022 to specifically request a “classified slide deck on Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), created by Jay Stratton, that was shown to NASA and likely other agencies in October of 2020” also revealed by previously released documents.

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NASA Denies Existence of Classified Briefings on James Webb Telescope Discoveries

In recent weeks, rumors spread rapidly on social media suggesting that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) had made an extraordinary discovery—potentially alien life—and that members of Congress had been briefed about it.

The rumors intensified after U.S. Representative Andre Carson, who had previously chaired a congressional hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), declined to answer a question about classified briefings when asked by @AskaPol_UAPs run by journalist Matt Laslo on X.

The speculation prompted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed by The Black Vault on September 22, 2024, seeking any records—classified or unclassified—about JWST briefings provided to Congress, particularly related to the telescope’s findings. The request aimed to clarify whether any congressional briefings had been held about significant discoveries made by JWST, which has been in operation since 2021.

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Report names ‘Immaculate Constellation’ UAP program: Journalist

A leaked whistleblower report says the Pentagon is operating a secret UFO retrieval program called “Immaculate Constellation,” according to independent journalist Michael Shellenberger.

The report revealed for the first time the name of an alleged UAP program, stating that the executive branch has been managing UAP issues without congressional knowledge or oversight, possibly for decades.

Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough denied records of the alleged program in a statement to NewsNation Tuesday evening.

“The Department of Defense has no record, present or historical, of any type of SAP called ‘IMMACULATE CONSTELLATION,’” she wrote.

Shellenberger told NewsNation’s Ross Coulthart he has been in touch with the whistleblower, whose exact role and other identifying details, including gender, he has withheld because they fear what could happen if they were publicly known.

“I don’t think that they’re faking it or that they’re lying about their fear,” he said. “This person discovered this material accidentally. This was not something they had expected to encounter.”

That fear is why Shellenberger said the whistleblower did not share intelligence imagery showing UAPs.

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Pentagon Is Illegally Hiding Secret UFO Program From Congress, Whistleblowers Allege

There is no evidence that any non-human or extra-terrestrial intelligence has visited Earth, according to a May 2024 report by the office the Pentagon created in 2022 to study unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly called UFOs.

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) “assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part,” the report concluded, “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”

The former Director of AARO has since resigned his position and has repeatedly dismissed and ridiculed the topic, claiming that talk of the phenomenon is due mainly to a small group of individuals in the grip of a rumor-based religion.

But critics say that AARO’s 63-page history of the US government’s investigation into UAPs since the end of World War II was riddled with factual errors and poor referencing, including to Wikipedia. And the document was missing historical information that appeared in the 117-page “UAP Timeline” document created by a former or existing US government intelligence officer that Public published last year.

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How This Remote Utah Ranch Became a Paranormal Activity Hotspot

Ihave been warned. This much is clear within minutes of ducking out of a helicopter onto the high-desert oasis of Skinwalker Ranch in northeastern Utah one searingly bright October afternoon. As a visitor approaching the dark and inscrutable paranormal forces patrolling this property, I could be targeted.

The admonition has come in several forms. There was the prayer for safe deliverance given by chopper pilot Cameron Fugal, brother of property owner Brandon Fugal, as we approached the ranch. This didn’t necessarily rattle me, as I’d recently watched Cameron deliver a similar invocation on season one of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, the hit History channel show that has generated mainstream attention for the property.

There was the surreal experience of being greeted on the helipad by about half the show’s cast, whom I felt I’d come to know during my hours of binge watching—standing stone-faced and shoulder to shoulder like some official tribunal ready to deliver grim news. Long-suffering ranch superintendent Thomas Winterton, looking typically Marlboro Man, shook my hand first, followed by glowering security chief Bryant “Dragon” Arnold. Erik Bard, the spritely scientist, and red-bearded security man Kaleb Bench chatted nearby. It was as if my arrival was the only thing holding up the start of the season five shoot. When we go inside, Winterton presents me with a liability waiver, which strikes me as highly unusual—there’s nothing on the day’s agenda beyond an in-depth conversation.

But what truly tweaked my antennae was a conversation I’d had an hour earlier, at the Fugals’ hangar in Provo. Brandon was on the phone, tending to his day job as a commercial real-estate titan, and Cameron and I were chatting amiably when he suddenly pivoted from a story about becoming a grandfather. “Every time we bring somebody new, the ranch interacts a little different,” he said. “Usually it’s been mostly mild. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” This struck me as a roundabout way of saying I should at least be a little worried.

“We’ve had some guys that are like, ‘This is so stupid—we’re gonna show those aliens who’s boss…’” he continued. “And it’s messed with them.”

“What happened to those guys?” I asked. “Something physical, or their cell phones wigged out, or—?”

It was indeed bodily harm, Cameron said. The previous owner, Robert Bigelow, was haunted by the place, both during his time there and after, when “all the negativity followed him home,” Cameron explained. This sounded a little like the aftermath of a bad Red Lobster meal, but I’d seen the entire series at that point, and I knew what he meant. I’d just never thought of it happening to me.

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Police reveal 10 years of Wiltshire UFO sightings first time

Police have revealed all the UFO sightings in Wiltshire over the last 10 years for the first time.

Following a freedom of information request, Wiltshire Police published all the reports they have received mentioning UFOs, UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena), aliens and more.

The results are both bizarre and intriguing, telling of mysterious and largely unreported experiences of the unknown.

As well as your common and garden UFO sightings there are alleged physical interactions with aliens, even inside people’s own homes.

The first log from September 11, 2016, describes a UFO in the sky and an alien in someone’s living room in Swindon.

Further information on why an alien would visit a living room in Swindon is not known, as the logs provided in the FOI are brief.

Down in Salisbury, a woman reported she was abducted by aliens the very same month.

There were a quiet three years with no incidents before another abduction was reported in Chippenham on April 5, 2019 – this time a man, naked.

Six months later a UFO was sighted in Trowbridge.

The last log is from January 17, 2021, again in Chippenham, and is not so much a sighting as a hearing. It simply states: “Ex-friend talking about aliens”.

Wiltshire Police’s slogan is “Keeping Wiltshire safe”, but it is not known what actions the local force take to tackle extraterrestrial tampering.

Wiltshire is not alien to unexplained phenomena as the county is famed for its crop circles which some people think are the result of otherworldly interference.

It had the most crop circles in England in 2023 and Honey Street, near Pewsey, is the home of the Crop Circle Centre.

Until 2009 the British government published an annual report on UFO sightings.

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The Chicago O’Hare UAP Incident: Physics Team’s Analysis Offers a Fresh Look at This Famous 2006 Case

Shortly after 4:15 pm CST on November 7, 2006, it might have seemed like any ordinary overcast winter afternoon for United Airlines employees outside Gate C17 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD). Ordinary, except for what looked like a hole in the sky above one of the country’s busiest hubs for international air travel.  

Visible in the 1,900 ft cloud base was an almost perfect hole, the apparent footprint left by a round unidentified object that had been seen hovering there just moments earlier before it rapidly ascended, punching through the clouds on its departure.   

What unfolded over Chicago that afternoon would become one of the most talked about UAP incidents of the new millennium. Today, what is remembered as the 2006 O’Hare International Airport UAP incident also remains a stark reminder of the potential hazards that aviators face amidst reports involving unrecognized objects that seemingly invade America’s most sensitive airspace with utter disregard for federal aviation ordinances.  

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said nothing had been detected on radar that afternoon. Still, several employees—and possibly even a few of the pilots and crew aboard outgoing flights—all observed something in the skies above O’Hare.  

One of the earliest witnesses was a United Airlines employee assisting the pushback of a Boeing 737-500 from gate C17. As the witness would later tell investigators, he was “compelled to look straight up for some reason and was startled to see the craft hovering silently.” Upon seeing the object, the employee radioed to notify the United Airlines Zone 5 control coordinator, then alerted the cockpit crew in the plane next to him about the object, who reportedly opened their windows to observe the object.  

Meanwhile, another employee that would soon become a witness learned of the hovering object after hearing his coworkers discussing it over company radios.   

“I’m a management employee for a major airline and was sitting in my office at around 1630 on Nov. 7th when an employee made a radio call to our station operations center concerning an object hovering over gate C17,” read a report the witness later anonymously filed with the Seattle, Washington-based National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). 

“I ran out of my office and saw a relatively small object hovering in place over C17,” the employee’s account read. “The METAR was reporting OVC 1900 and I initially estimated the object hovering at about 1000 feet.” 

“After about a minute, I saw the aircraft zip to the east and disappeared.” 

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Did a US F-22 shoot down a UFO? Photo of aerial object adds to mystery

Remember February 2023? It was a wild time. There were cocaine-addled bears, mushroom zombies and Air Force fighters shooting sketchy, inflatable objects out of the sky left and right.

That month began with a Chinese balloon — the U.S. said it was loaded with spy equipment; Beijing claimed it was just a weather balloon blown off course — drifting across much of the contiguous United States and igniting a furor. That was before it was blowed up real good — the technical terminology — by an F-22 off the coast of South Carolina.

But February’s bizarre occurrences didn’t stop there. U.S. pilots soon shot down three more mystery objects over Alaska, Canada’s Yukon territory and Lake Huron in as many days.

None of those subsequent objects were ever recovered, with the official line indicating they were probably hobbyist or research balloons.

But one grainy image — it’s always a grainy image, isn’t it? — of the object shot down over the Yukon has now emerged, and it’s giving significant “I want to believe” vibes.

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Alien Visitation Beliefs Are “Spiraling Out of Control,” Becoming a Societal Problem, Warns Prominent Philosopher

The topic of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and the possibility that some form of alien or non-human intelligence is visiting Earth has captured immense public interest in recent years.

However, in a thought-provoking paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, Scottish philosopher, and professor at King’s College London, Dr. Tony Milligan, argues that this increased belief in alien visitation is fast becoming a widespread societal issue, posing challenges to science communication, government policy, and even cultural integrity. 

In his forthcoming paper, Equivocal Encounters: Alien Visitation Claims as a Societal Problem, Dr. Milligan suggests the rise of social media and the increasing influence of UAP claims in public and political discourse demands a more robust response than the periodic debunking efforts traditionally employed by the scientific community.

“This belief is slightly paradoxical as we have zero evidence that aliens even exist,” Dr. Milligan wrote in an article published by The Conversation. “If beliefs of this sort, in conspiracy, concealment, and collaboration, have made it into the mainstream, then periodic debunking has simply not worked.” 

Dr. Milligan contends that the alien visitation narrative, once confined to countercultural fringes and conspiracy theorists, is now making serious inroads into the political mainstream. 

In the past year, the belief in alien visitation has only intensified, largely fueled by several former government officials who have claimed that the U.S. government has secretly recovered crashed vehicles of non-human origin.

In 2023, The Debrief was the first media outlet to report that David Grusch, a former Air Force officer and intelligence specialist with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), had filed an official complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). 

Grusch alleges that the U.S. government has recovered several vehicles “of exotic origin—attributed to non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or otherwise unknown—based on their unique vehicle morphologies, material science analyses, and distinctive atomic arrangements and radiological signatures.” 

In July 2023, Grusch reiterated his claims under oath before the Congressional Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. In response, the Pentagon has denied that the Department of Defense (DoD) has recovered any “exotic technologies” or operates secret alien reverse engineering programs.

Because Grusch’s assertions of recovered alien craft are closely tied to classified information and national security programs, it remains virtually impossible for journalists, scientists, or the general public to verify or refute his statements.

While much of the fascination with aliens is harmless or confined to bickering on social media, Dr. Milligan argues that its expansion into mainstream belief systems can also have troubling consequences. 

The persistence of these beliefs—and the increasing pressure on governments and scientific institutions to address them—has stretched beyond simple curiosity into a problem that touches various societal sectors.

Dr. Milligan suggests that the traditional approach to handling alien visitation claims—periodic public debunking—is no longer sufficient. He further argues that dismissing alien visitation narratives without engaging in deeper discourse may even be counterproductive. 

“If we hold that the practice of science in a democratic society requires the answerability of the science community to sustained public concerns, then something more robust may be due,” Dr. Milligan asserts. “This will be the case even if the end story that is told (‘no aliens, no cover-up, no conspiracy’) is likely to be the same.” 

The exponential rise in social media platforms has amplified the potential for unsubstantiated claims, making it harder for scientific facts to break through the “background noise” that detracts from serious scientific discourse.  The focus often shifts to debunking sensational claims rather than fostering meaningful scientific dialogue.

Dr. Milligan acknowledged that social media or news outlets, like The Debrief, have played a particular role in shaping the conversation surrounding alien visitation beliefs. However, he says that science, as a whole, could do a better job addressing unscientific populism. 

“There are responsibilities that all of us have. I don’t think that we could police social media even if we wanted to. It’s too big, too varied and too entrenched,” Dr. Milligan explained to The Debrief in an email. “But people from the sciences could do much more outreach and aim for a stronger ongoing presence so that people can start to see the difference between real science and plausible imitations.”

“I also think that analytic skills (especially argument building and recognition of the difference between good and bad arguments) could be taken more seriously across academia,” he added. “In recent years, it has been watered down. Pseudoscience thrives upon bad argumentation, weak analogies, fallacies, and grudge argumentation. But without a solid analytic background, it is hard for younger academics to recognize the box of tricks that get used, and so rather than being easily recognized as bad reasoning, pseudoscience can sound a lot like fearless thinking.” 

In fields like biology and astronomy, where public understanding is already limited, the intrusion of alien visitation narratives can further complicate the communication of scientific findings.

“Particular difficulties get in the way of astrobiology outreach,” Dr. Milligan notes. “We are making progress towards understanding the origins, emergence, distribution, and survival of rudimentary life forms. However, discussions about ‘life’ and ‘space’ can easily be confused with storytelling about aliens crashing into hillsides.”

For Dr. Milligan, this is particularly concerning in the context of cultural astronomy—where astronomy intersects with indigenous cultures. He points out that Indigenous storytelling, which is deeply respected by many astronomers, is increasingly being muddled with alien visitation narratives. This fusion of indigenous origin stories with modern UFO claims can distort traditional narratives, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

“Astronomy faces a specialized problem because it requires ground infrastructure in indigenous areas where local people may have been worked over pretty badly by the ‘ancient aliens’ people and convinced that ‘the scientific establishment’ is concealing the truth about ancient indigenous technologies,” Dr. Milligan said. “Responsible siting of astronomy infrastructure draws upon a sense of the importance of cultural astronomy, but that becomes really tough when authentic cultural astronomy gets intermingled with new age tales and suspicions.”

Despite his criticisms, Dr. Milligan does not call for an immediate dismissal of the legitimate study and investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena or possible near-Earth evidence of alien life. 

Instead, he advocates for a more measured yet engaged response. He suggests that while current responses may not be sufficient for much longer, it is not yet time for a full-scale paradigm shift in how science tackles the issue.

In his paper, Dr. Milligan points to scientists like Harvard’s Dr. Avi Loeb, and his establishment of the Galileo Project, or Dr. Martin Elvis, who have advocated for scientific research programs exploring alien visitation claims in a more structured manner.

In his paper, Dr. Milligan notes about the Galileo Project and Dr. Loeb, “Rather than targeting the wilder horizons of dubious testimony about abduction, they have focused upon equivocal material evidence in forms such as possible derelict craft and possible physical residues.” 

Critics have suggested that Dr. Loeb’s scientific approach to hunting for alien visitors is “shaped too much by wanting to believe” and “too entangled in the kinds of populist narratives.”

However, Dr. Milligan points out that based on current attitudes towards topics like UAP or alien visitation, “it may simply be difficult to build any robust SRP program dedicated to [the] evaluation of artifact claims without involving a disproportionate number of people who also want to believe, and who have a certain attitude towards the conservatism of more mainstream lines of scientific research.”

While Dr. Milligan does not necessarily endorse scientific research programs focused solely on hunting for near-Earth alien life, he acknowledged that such programs could have merit, provided they maintain scientific rigor.

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Image released of mysterious object shot down over Yukon in 2023

An image of the unidentified object shot down over Canada’s Yukon territory in February 2023 has been obtained by CTVNews.ca.

Released through a Canadian freedom of information request, the grainy image appears to be a photocopy of an email printout.

Heavily redacted documents show how the image was approved for public distribution within days of the headline-grabbing incident, but then held back after a public affairs official expressed concerns that releasing it “may create more questions/confusion.”

CTVNews.ca has requested a higher resolution copy.

A U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down the object on Feb. 11, 2023, shortly after it entered Canadian airspace in the Yukon territory, which borders Alaska. It was one of three unidentified aerial objects(opens in a new tab) blasted out of the sky that month following the high-profile Feb. 4, 2023 downing of an apparent Chinese surveillance balloon(opens in a new tab). Shot down over Alaska, Yukon and Lake Huron between Feb. 10 and 12, 2023, the three objects were reportedly much smaller than the towering Chinese balloon.

At the time, officials described the Yukon object(opens in a new tab) as a “suspected balloon” that was “cylindrical” in shape. A reported Pentagon memo(opens in a new tab) said it appeared to be a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it.”

Released as part of the freedom of information request package, an email from a Canadian brigadier-general offered what they described as the “best description that we have” of the Yukon object.

“Visual – a cylindrical object,” they wrote in an Feb. 11, 2023, email. “Top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20-foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended from it.”

The image appears to have been taken from an aircraft below it, although that has not been confirmed.

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