Not alien–that is so far inconclusive. But in the literal sense of the term. Unidentified–no one seems to know what they are. Flying–fantastically so. Objects–solid physical matter that people have actually observed.
Since I was a boy I have always stared into the night sky and wondered about alien life–desperately wanting to believe that on some planet around one of those stars there was another little boy looking back and thinking about me. But, taking my cues from Carl Sagan and his generation of space buffs, I never believed that aliens had visited the Earth. UFOs were nothing more than fun ghost stories.
My views began to change after The New York Times began reporting in late 2017 on current and on-going government studies of UFOs. Several videos have been released, and the military has publicly confirmed that they are in fact UFOs, although they renamed them UAP (unidentified arial phenomena).
Perhaps as a result of the public and political interest generated by this recent wave of reporting, the Pentagon is about to release a report in June detailing their official views on the evidence of UAP.
For the past year, and especially this spring, there has been a slew of new reporting and commentary on the subject. Having consumed much of it, I have come to the conclusion that UFOs are real–by which I mean truly, genuinely unidentified. I want to lay out three fact patterns that support this conclusion.
- UFO Capabilities
The most significant reason that UFOs remain unidentified and mysterious is because their observed capabilities are genuinely inexplicable. People in the military and U.S. government (and allied governments) have been saying for decades that these crafts have capabilities that are simply not possible with present-day technology of any nation.
No doubt a lot of so-called UFO videos on the internet are in fact drones. Commercial drones have proliferated since 2015. But the capabilities ascribed to genuine UFO/UAP have been described consistently for longer than we have had current drone technology.
On 5/14/21 this video was released of a spherical craft entering the ocean. This was recorded by the USS Omaha on 7/15/19.
Debunkers might claim it’s a simple drone that someone splashed into the ocean, or even that someone has developed an advanced drone that can move through both air and water. But consider this. One of the UAP sightings that helped kick off the recent wave of reporting in 2017 was recoded by the USS Nimitz in November 2004 (showcased in last week’s 60 Minutes report). Read the conclusions about craft capabilities from the report that was produced after that encounter, especially the last one:
- The ‘Anomalous Aerial Vehicle’ was of unknown origin and represented technology not currently in the possession of the U.S. or any other nation.
- It featured broadband RF stealth making the use of radar against it largely ineffective.
- The craft manifested extreme performance but did not have lifting structures or control surfaces required for traditional flight.
- It showed that it has some kind of advanced propulsion capability making it able to go instantly from hovering to very high speed and to make very abrupt course changes.
- It was able to ‘cloak’ itself, becoming invisible visually to the naked eye.
- Possibly capable of operating undersea without being detected by the most advanced sub-surface sensors.
At the time, even though the sailors and pilots who witnessed the craft did not see it enter the water, the Navy had enough reason to suspect it did that the submarine USS Louisville was sent to search for it. So we have two crafts exhibiting similar capabilities 15 years apart.
Just to pull one of many examples that goes back even farther, here is an account from an eyewitness to a series of UFO sightings over Loring Air Force Base in 1975: …Then the Lt Colonel said: “This damn thing was there one second and gone the next, vanished….then radar analysis showed this bogey was so far away and at such a high altitude…..let me tell you this -… there is NOTHING on THIS PLANET that can do the things this aircraft or damn UFO did….”
Witness claims of UFO capabilities based on inexplicable technological prowess has been consistent for a long time.
2. Military Intentions
Recent reporting on UAP, and on-the-record statements by military officials and people in Congress like Senator Rubio, indicate that the government views this issue as a national security threat. For obvious reasons the military cannot just blithely accept foreign operators entering our airspace, buzzing our ships, and spying.
The way the national security apparatus has handled the UAP issue leads me to believe that they are telling the truth when they say that they genuinely do not know what these things are. From 2007-2012 the Pentagon budget allocated 22 million dollars for a special office dedicated to studying UAP. In 2019 the Navy began drafting guidelines for what to do during UAP encounters. And on 5/1/2020 the Office of Naval Intelligence convened a briefing on UAP. According to someone involved, the goal was “to de-stigmatize the UAP problem and to promote more intelligence collection regarding UAP incursions and encounters with active military deployments.”
Ask yourself: why should there be a need to de-stigmatize sightings among military personnel? What are other examples in a military context of sightings that require an official push to be de-stigmatized? (Sexual assault is the only example I can think of). No one needs to be de-stigmatized about seeing a missile launched over the horizon. If our intelligence officers concluded that these sightings were actually most likely experimental Chinese technology, the Pentagon would simply adjust training to account for that fact: Here is what the craft can do; this is who we think it is; here is the checklist you follow when you encounter it.
The fact that they are unidentifiable–and repeatedly classified as unidentified by the military–cannot be glossed over. The term has a specific meaning and implications. One of which is the stigma. Now the military is essentially saying: You are going to see something you will not be able to explain. It may shake your worldview. You may be afraid to report what you have seen, and you must resist that fear.
And the stigma is a real barrier for intelligence gathering in the military. The pilots in the Nimitz encounter were mocked into silence for a long time. One of them only went public with her story this month in that 60 Minutes interview. There was no follow up investigation. It was officially ignored. The military seems to be coming around to the idea that they can’t operate that way any more.
The Air Force originally defined a UFO’s unidentified nature this way: “unusual features does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object” An updated definition for UAPs reads in part: “remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making … a full technical identification.”
In other words, unidentified does not mean probably Chinese or probably a drone. Experts have already ruled out those possibilities.
It’s easy for laymen and People on the Internet to watch the recently released videos and think that someone with a toy-store drone could film it, or it’s a camera trick like sweeping the camera away from a stationary object. It’s one thing to debunk random videos people post online with that kind of analysis, but the videos we are talking about are the product of U.S. military tools. And not just video. There are radar data and other measurements of each craft’s observed capabilities, as well as numerous eyewitness accounts. I for one assume that the military did their own math and did it well. And they are saying they don’t know what these things are. If they were most likely drones, they would say that.
I presume this is why Congress asked the Pentagon for the report that is to be released in June. They want the military to share its conclusions and show its math. If they ere on the side of disclosure, it may settle this question one way or the other. Their math could support that idea that there is simply no way man-made technology is involved. It could even show–as some insiders believe–that the crafts break known laws of physics. The results could be more inconclusive than that.
Whatever the report says, Congress’s demand for a public report will force the military to show its hand. They can no longer get away with a no-comment.
3. Recovered UFO Material
Evidence of the UFO phenomenon is not limited to sightings and flight data. Many people believe that UFO materials may have been recovered from one or more crash sites. These debris are often described as chunks, shards or fragments of nondescript metal.
Diana Walsh Pusulka is the Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina. In her book American Cosmic (published in 2019), she recounts how she and another researcher were blindfolded and driven deep into the desert where, they were told, a UFO had crashed in 1947. They used specialized metal detectors and found several pieces of the debris, which are presumably still being studied.
Pasulka wrote: “It was analyzed by research scientists, who concluded that it was so anomalous as to be incomprehensible. According to these scientists, I was told, it could not have been generated on Earth.”
Materials like these, or perhaps the same ones they collected, are currently part of a peer-reviewed study that may someday be published in a refereed scientific journal.
On 7/23/20 The New York Times reported on these materials: “a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who, without presenting physical proof, say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on earth with materials retrieved for study.”
Senator Harry Reid, former senate majority leader and the most powerful politician in Nevada, believes these artifacts exist and tried to get a look at them. He recently said in an interview published in The New Yorker: “I was told for decades that Lockheed [Martin] had some of these retrieved materials. And I tried to get, as I recall, a classified approval by the Pentagon to have me go look at the stuff. They would not approve that. I don’t know what all the numbers were, what kind of classification it was, but they would not give that to me.”
Assuming Reid is not fabricating this story, it’s telling that the Pentagon’s response was not, “Sorry Senator, we can’t let you see the materials because they don’t exist.” The response was that his position in the government was not high enough to grant him access to the materials, whatever they are.
All of these elements add up to something that cannot be so easily dismissed. When the typical UFO story is a farmer seeing some strange lights in the sky while driving alone down a dark road , it’s easy to ignore. But the UFO phenomenon is not limited to that story and it never has been.
If one accepts that many of the people who have witnessed and recorded UFOs actually did see something, and that something is unidentifiable because it represents technology that is impossible to have originated from present-day humans, one can’t help but ask: What is the origin of these things? To take this question seriously is like standing on a ledge, peering over it into the unknown. Do you take the leap, or do you turn and run as fast as you can back into the comfort of boring reality? The implications of this leap are so consciousness-shattering that most of us want to stay as far away from that ledge as possible, so we won’t be faced with the choice. But the ground may be shifting and the ledge may be rushing at all of us sooner than we think.
There is clearly something out there along with the truth. What it is, who can say? To prove that we are not alone in the universe, I would like very much to believe that the sightings are of an extraterrestrial origin, but that is a difficult leap for me. First, all of the images of UAP’s that I have seen have been faint, fuzzy or far away images that are nondescript. Surely the technology exists to obtain clear, close up images. Second, it is nearly impossible to know or say what advanced amazing technology that the military may be developing. If the truth, which is out there, turns out to be extraterrestrial, I wish that it would soon make contact!
Well the military videos released so far are from military weapons systems, and the reporter who released them explained that they are actually have better imaging than video. They show the complete shape of the crafts whereas a video would be a blob of light. And there are rumors that the UAPs were filmed with standard camera from the deck of the ship, which may be released soon.
The people reporting this are not saying its aliens. They are only saying they are so far unidentifiable. This is also what the military is saying: we do not know what they are. Now I suppose it’s possible they are lying to cover up the fact that they actually do know exactly what they are, either our own advanced tech or from another nation. We may know more when the congressional report comes out.
I’m curious, as someone who … ahem… would have been a boy when the first UFO reports were made, has the public perception of UFOs changed over the decades? Do you think it used to be a much less taboo subject?