Tag: ufo

DISCLOSURE AND NATIONAL SECURITY: SHOULD THE U.S. GOVERNMENT REVEAL WHAT IT KNOWS ABOUT UAP?

Imagine you were just elected President of the United States. During one of your first classified briefings, you learn that the US military has recovered advanced extraterrestrial technology. You are told we’ve made only modest headway in understanding how this technology works, where it is from, or why these intelligently controlled machines are here. What would you do in that circumstance?

As President, your top priority is to keep the American people safe from all threats, both foreign and domestic. Hundreds of millions of people, including tens of millions of children, place their faith in you. Are you going to hold a press conference revealing that aliens are visiting planet Earth, but we don’t know where they’re coming from, why they are here, or whether we can defend ourselves from them?

It is hard for me to imagine any of the politicians I’ve worked for over the years leaping at that opportunity. The sudden, unexpected confirmation of an ET presence on Earth would not only unsettle but inevitably terrify millions—if not billions—of people. And for what purpose? What chance would you have as President of moving forward on other vital issues on your agenda, given the tumult that would result? What reason is there to believe the net effect for society would be positive rather than negative?

These are questions that need to be addressed by those advocating the release of information confirming an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Such information has the potential to be a genuine Pandora’s box, and it is, therefore, vital we think this through carefully before proceeding.

This is a pressing issue, as various committees and members of Congress are seeking to determine whether the US government has incontrovertible proof of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Such a revelation would undoubtedly be the most shocking, profound, and transformative discovery in human history. Yet, despite the gravity of the issue, Congress has been proceeding without holding any hearings or requesting any studies to assess the impact of this potential bombshell. It appears that our legislators are failing to heed the maxim, “Don’t ask the question if you aren’t prepared for the answer.”

Strangely, there is little discussion of this critical issue among proponents of disclosure in the UAP community. Perhaps advocates of disclosure simply assume that truth and transparency are always for the better. Although I applaud the sentiment, the issue is not so simple for government officials bearing the weighty responsibility of governing. I therefore thought I would offer some thoughts from the standpoint of a former national security official because national security concerns are inescapably central to this discussion.

The first question that arises is, “How can we make a fair determination about the potential risks and benefits of disclosure without access to all the facts?” Suppose the US government recovered extraterrestrial technology decades ago. In that case, there has inevitably been some progress in assessing it and, hopefully, some insights gleaned regarding the nature and intent of its designers. However, no credible individuals purporting to have access to such information have provided any details. One of the only things we can say with certainty is that unless ETs prove to be angelic, which is not what our military is reporting, disclosure would undeniably frighten, if not terrify, large segments of the population.

Moreover, what if disclosure precipitated a change in the behavior of an alien civilization, given that they no longer had an incentive to remain elusive and clandestine? What is the risk potential that disclosure might cause some governments to overreact, precipitating fearful and aggressive interactions? If these risks are substantial, does it still make sense to release such disruptive information?

When I first became publicly involved in the UAP topic, the alleged recovery of ET technology was not an issue. My immediate goal was to alert policymakers to a dangerous intelligence failure, namely, the fact of serious and recurring intrusions into restricted DoD airspace by strange, unidentified aircraft. It was shocking to learn our vaunted multi-billion-dollar intelligence system was paralyzed by ineffable stigma, as effectively as any electromagnetic warfare (EW) weapon, placing US personnel and the nation at risk. This situation reminded me of both Pearl Harbor, where vital warning information was not forwarded up the chain of command, as well as 9/11, when intelligence agencies failed to share vital information that could have saved the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. Having survived the attack on the Pentagon myself, this was not a purely theoretical consideration.

Admittedly, I was also hoping to generate enough Congressional pressure to compel the DoD and the Intelligence Community to use their vast capabilities to study UAP. Knowing our technical intelligence systems well, I was tantalized by the prospect of what we might learn if these sometimes mind-boggling capabilities were brought to bear on the UAP mystery. Therefore, it was also an opportunity to potentially solve this fascinating and profound mystery.

At the time, the ET issue was present but remained unspoken for good reason; if we had approached Congress with an explicit focus on aliens, we would have quickly been shown to the exit. Many legislators were privately curious about UAP, but we needed to focus on the national security angle to provide a politically viable justification for engaging on the UAP issue. Nevertheless, as time passed and new information became available, Congressional interest expanded to include credible allegations of recovered extraterrestrial materials.

I confess I was partly responsible for this change of emphasis because I brought physicist Eric Davis to Capitol Hill to meet with oversight committee staff in October of 2019. This was, to my knowledge, the first time a Congressional oversight committee had been provided credible information on the issue of allegedly recovered non-human technology from an individual with knowledge of such operations. Later, I played a role in helping bring other witnesses forward, including whistleblower David Grusch. In doing so, I was forced to wrestle with the same simple but critical question that guides everyone in the national security community: “What is in the nation’s best interest?”

Eventually, members of Congress began to realize that the alleged recovery of off-world materials was a serious issue. Consequently, they enacted a provision requiring the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which reports jointly to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, to investigate this sensational allegation. Congress understandably did so without deciding in advance whether to make the report’s findings public. Although it is true that some key members of Congress, such as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), have expressed support for releasing the facts, whatever they prove to be.

However, it is not clear how many of their colleagues agree. It is also conceivable their views might change if confronted by disturbing revelations in the event such allegations prove to be true. For example, Senator Gillibrand has young children, and it is conceivable that if sufficiently alarming information emerges, she might reconsider her admirable desire to share as much information as possible with the public.

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Air Force scrambled Rafales after ‘UFO’ sighting near Imphal airport

The Indian Air Force scrambled two Rafale fighter jets after getting information about the sighting of an ‘unidentified flying object’ (UFO) near Imphal airport in Manipur on Sunday.

The Rafales, launched from Hasimara air base, could not spot anything, top sources told India Today.

The first aircraft returned to the base and the second was deployed towards the area to check again, but it could not ascertain anything.

The Eastern Command of the Indian Air Force said that it had activated its Air Defence response mechanism.

“IAF activated its Air Defence response mechanism based on visual inputs from Imphal airport. The small object was not seen thereafter,” it tweeted on Sunday.

“The UFO was visible with bare eyes moving westwards of the airfield till 4 pm,” a CISF official said.

Flight operations at Bir Tikendrajit International Airport in Manipur’s Imphal were halted for several hours after an unidentified flying object was sighted above the airport.

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Cops swamped with 1,805 UFO reports in 3 years – but won’t publish ‘sightings’

A police force has been swamped with 1,805 reports of UFOs and aliens in the last three years, but won’t make the details public after deeming collating them for publication is too costly.

Since 2020, West Yorkshire Police had the staggering number of cases where ‘UFO’, ‘alien’, ‘UAP’ or ‘spaceship’ has appeared on their logs. It works out at 56 a month or more 13 per week, or nearly two per day. The county – which includes Leeds and Bradford – has always been a hotbed for alleged extraterrestrial sightings.

A Freedom of Information request was submitted for details of the reports from January 2020 to August 2023 to be released. But the force said it would cost too much money to do so. It did give one example, which read: “Male caller reports seeing four flashing lights hovering above his property in the street before a female was beamed into the sky.”

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Which Presidents Have Seen UFOs? Yep, It’s More Than One.

Early in Ronald Reagan’s second term, he asked his Soviet counterpart a seemingly off-the-wall question. Ostensibly, he and Mikhail Gorbachev had come to Lake Geneva for an arms control summit. But on a private walk around the lake, Reagan turned to his Cold War enemy and said:

‘What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?’” Gorbachev later recounted. “I said, ‘No doubt about it.’ He said, ‘We too.’ So that’s interesting.”

To the U.S. president, the question was an opportunity to recognize a shared desire to protect humanity on Earth, a species that might very well succumb to the horrors of nuclear war. But his reference to aliens as a possible shared enemy wasn’t as random as it might sound. Reagan was a lifelong fan of science fiction and he’d had an encounter with a UFO while riding in plane in the 1970s.

Reagan, it turns out, wasn’t the only president who has had a more than passing interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

For the past half-century, almost every president has come to office pledging — publicly or privately — to get to the bottom of UFOs. Ever since the modern UFO age began during Harry Truman’s administration, presidents have nosed around hoping to find the truth. In 1947 and 1948, waves of “flying saucer” sightings captured the public imagination — the Pentagon feared they represented not aliens but secret Soviet spacecraft built by kidnapped Nazi rocket scientists — and as the sightings increased month and month, Truman’s own interest piqued. One afternoon in 1948, Truman summoned his military aide, Col. Robert Landry to the Oval Office and “talked about UFO reports and what might be the meaning for all these rather way-out reports of sightings, and the subject in general,” Landry recalled. “All manner of objects and things were being seen in the sky by people.”

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IT’S TIME TO RETHINK SOME COMMON ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT UFOS

Sightings of UFOs may challenge our entire worldview, but the facts are too compelling to ignore, and they’re not going away. So, it’s time to wash off the sticky stigma and engage in serious discussion about the evidence, and its implications. 

Most UFO sightings are attributable to man-made objects like experimental aircraft or satellites, innocent misidentifications of Venus and other celestial objects, or outright hoaxes. However, we now know that in a minority of cases, there appears to be something else going on: something quite extraordinary and beyond our current comprehension. 

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there are objects of unknown origin, evidently under intelligent control, which behave in ways that seem to challenge our understanding of physics. These objects don’t just “fly” without any apparent lift surfaces or means of propulsion; according to some military testimony, they would appear to be the fastest technological objects on Earth, capable of accelerating so quickly that they should create sonic booms, superheat the air around them into a glowing plasma, and instantly kill any occupants on board. 

Instead, they silently maneuver with perfect agility through the atmosphere and, according to some eyewitness reports, underwater, as if basic rules of inertia and friction simply don’t apply to them. 

There’s general acknowledgment that these phenomena have been documented in America since at least the late 1940s, and probably much earlier. Hence, many longtime UFO advocates, as well as those newer to the subject, are now asking why it has taken 70 years for government offices to openly regard UFOs as a subject of serious inquiry. This is a question that deserves a lengthy public discussion. 

Today, serious researchers are beginning–sometimes grudgingly–to admit that UFOs (or UAPs if you prefer the rebranded version) are a valid area of study, and pockets of scientific enthusiasm are emerging. After the New York Times made the revelation of a secret Pentagon UFO study their front page story, the Department of Defense subsequently admitted that leaked UFO videos were in fact real (and that it has others it’s not showing us). Since that time, a NASA UFO research initiative headed by Princeton’s former chair of astronomy has been launched, former Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project wants to determine if the strange phenomena are extraterrestrial. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is now investigating UFO phenomena across all the branches of the military; the US Navy has revised its protocols to counter stigmas against UFO reporting and encourage sighting reports by pilots (like this one); and there have been briefings in the US Senate and House regarding the more than 650 sightings now being studied by AARO, marking an almost singular point of bipartisanship in a traditionally fractured Congress.

This explosion of interest and influx of expertise, credibility, and funding into UFO research will create a flow of ideas between old-hat UFO researchers and establishment newcomers to the subject. As some scientific communities shift to incorporate the nascently-legitimate subject of UFO research, they may have to accommodate elements of the other’s conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and research agendas, and this will require questioning old assumptions about what sort of evidence actually exists and how to interpret it. Likewise, it is the perfect moment for UFO-interested folks to pause and evaluate their own assumptions about the subject, many of which seem to have been in place since the very beginning of the Flying Saucer craze that in 1947 began simultaneously in both America and Canada. As career researchers and academics (like me) join the conversation, the contours of the conversation itself will inevitably shift–I think for the better. 

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‘There appear to be true UFOs’: Expert skewers U.S. for not taking search ‘more seriously’

For years, the U.S. military, in conjunction with NASA, has been gathering information to write a report about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), a phrase less recognizable than unidentified flying object (UFO). But as information is gathered, most of what is shared with the public is slim as most becomes classified intelligence.

Politico Magazine published a report Thursday complaining that the American public is being kept in the dark. The only thing that is clear, it said, is that there is a team of national security experts and military personnel dedicated to finding the truth about what is being observed in the skies by the FAA and military planes.

“But there’s always been a stubborn percentage of UFO and UAP sightings that can’t be dismissed as known phenomena or technology” — or even national security threats like spy balloons, author Garrett Graff wrote.

“Depending on the exact data set and timespan, the percentage of true ‘unknown unknowns’ ranges from around 5 percent up to 20 percent. No one knows what those sightings actually are. Put another way: There appear to be true UFOs and UAPs, mysteries we can’t solve.

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Pentagon UFO boss says strange sightings are either ‘aliens’ or a foreign power – and he hopes it’s extraterrestrials

According to the director of the Pentagon‘s UFO investigation office, ‘the best thing that could come out of this job is to prove that there are aliens.’ 

The alternative to what would be a literally Earth-changing discovery of extraterrestrial life exploring our own planet would be that a rival foreign power could be ‘doing stuff in our backyard,’ he said. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick added: ‘And that’s not good.’

The longtime laser and materials physicist and head of the Pentagon’s UFO-chasing All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) delivered this bracing assessment as news broke of his impending retirement from government service. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick’s 18-month tenure as AARO’s first ever director has been laced with controversy, as expected for a mandate once relegated to the scientific fringe. 

While some UFO whistleblowers now accuse Kirkpatrick of fostering an ‘atmosphere of disinterest,’ others have suggested his superiors are holding AARO’s efforts back even though a few have described ‘really positive’ experiences with the office.

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UFO hunter who has studied ‘alien’ mummy for over a decade claims remains are an ancient species of tiny, cave-dwelling human

Chile’s mysterious, oblong-headed ‘Atacama skeleton’ may have once been a small class of terrestrial humanoid living in the high caves of the South American Andes, at least according to the man who has spent a decade studying the being.

This Spanish businessman and researcher who now owns the eerie, but tiny, skeletal mummy dropped his new theory on Spain‘s Mitele TV network late last week. 

Sensational origin stories have trailed Chile’s ‘Atacama skeleton’ ever since the six-inch-long ‘alien‘ mummy was first taken from an abandoned church in the ghost town of La Noria, 3,225-feet above sea level in the arid Atacama Desert. 

But seven experts in infant anatomy and anthropology maintain that there is nothing at all unusual about the skeleton, nicknamed ‘Ata’ — even as other small mummies have been presented before Mexico’s Congress as proof of extraterrestrial life.  

One expert called the new theory ‘absurd,’ telling DailyMail.com it was ‘not based on scientific evidence, or just knowledge of normal anatomical development of babies.’

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Air Force officer breaks silence on ‘red, glowing UFO the size of a football field’ hovering at low altitude over US space launch base in California – in event witnessed by over half a dozen military personnel: ‘People were screaming and scared’

Twenty years ago this October, military contractors working for Boeing reported ‘a gigantic floating red square’ UFO — over 100 yards long — hovering in the morning air over a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The eerie 2003 event first exploded into public view this July, in sworn testimony before Congress, but now an ex-US Air Force security officer has come forward to detail his official, rapid-response investigation into the UFO on the day it occurred.

‘This is not a joke,’ ex-USAF senior patrolman, Jeff Nuccetelli, told the Merged podcast Tuesday. ‘These are contractors with top secret clearances.’ 

Nuccetelli also revealed a second reported encounter with the ‘red square,’ in which two of his fellow USAF police patrol officers ‘got buzzed by the UFO.’

‘When I showed up, it’s just mayhem,’ as Nuccetelli recalled it. ‘Everybody’s excited. They’re scared. Everyone’s freaked out.’ 

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‘Alien Bodies’ Revisited at Second Mexican Congressional Hearing on UFOs

A second Mexican Congressional hearing on UFOs held this week saw further discussion surrounding a pair of peculiar mummified bodies which some contend are aliens. The eyebrow-raising remains said to have been discovered in Peru spawned worldwide headlines back in September when journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan unveiled them to politicians at the first gathering devoted to exploring UFOs. On Tuesday, Mexico’s Congress tackled the topic for a second time and, once again, the mysterious ‘alien’ bodies took center stage with multiple witnesses testifying to their unusual nature.

Sharing new photos and x-rays of the bodies, Dr. Daniel Mendoza reportedly posited that they were of “non-human beings,” while Maussan took it a step further and argued that they were some kind of “new species” and asserted that these entities possessed neither lungs nor ribs. As to suggestions that the remains were cobbled together in a fashion similar to a Fiji Mermaid, anthropologist Roger Zuniga reportedly declared that “there was absolutely no human intervention in the physical and biological formation of these beings.” He also furnished a letter signed by 11 of his colleagues from San Luis Gonzaga National University who echoed that assessment, though they stopped short of calling the beings extraterrestrial.

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