I’m a professor of astronomy who has written extensively on the search for life in the universe. I also teach a free online class on astrobiology. I do not believe that the new Pentagon report or any other sightings of UFOs in the past are proof of aliens visiting Earth.

But the report is important because it opens the door for a serious look at UFOs. Specifically, it encourages the U.S. government to collect better data on UFOs, and I think the release of the report increases the chances that scientists will try to interpret that data. Historically, UFOs have felt off limits to mainstream science, but perhaps no more.

What’s in the UFO report?

The No. 1 thing the report focuses on is the lack of high-quality data. Here are the highlights from the slender nine-page report, covering a total of 144 UAP sightings from U.S. government sources between 2004 and 2021:

• “Limited data and inconsistent reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP.”

• Some observations “could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception.”

• “UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security.”

• Of the 144 sightings, the task force was “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.”

• “Some UAP many be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or non-governmental entity.”

UFOs are taboo among scientists

UFO means unidentified flying object. Nothing more, nothing less. You’d think scientists would enjoy the challenge of solving this puzzle. Instead, UFOs have been taboo for academic scientists to investigate, and so unexplained reports have not received the scrutiny they deserve.

One reason is that most scientists think there is less to most reports than meets the eye, and the few who have dug deeply have mostly debunked the phenomenon. Over half of sightings can be attributed to meteors, fireballs and the planet Venus.

Another reason for the scientific hesitance is that UFOs have been co-opted by popular culture. They are part of a landscape of conspiracy theories that includes accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. Scientists worry about their professional reputations and the association of UFOs with these supernatural stories causes most researchers to avoid the topic.

But some scientists have looked. In 1968, Edward U. Condon at the University of Colorado published the first major academic study of UFO sightings. The Condon Report put a damper on further research when it found that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge.”

However, a review in 1998 by a panel led by Peter Sturrock, a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that deserves scientific study. Sturrock also surveyed professional astronomers and found that nearly half thought UFOs were worthy of scientific study, with higher interest among younger and more well-informed astronomers.

If astronomers are intrigued by UFOs — and believe some cases deserve study with academic rigor — what’s holding them back? A history of mistrust between ufologists and scientists hasn’t helped. And while UFO research has employed some of the tools of the scientific method, it has not had the core of skeptical, evidence-based reasoning that demarcates science from pseudoscience.

A search of 90,000 recent and current grants awarded by the National Science Foundation finds none addressing UFOs or related phenomena. I’ve served on review panels for 35 years, and can imagine the reaction if such a proposal came up for peer review: raised eyebrows and a quick vote not to fund.

A decades-long search for aliens

While the scientific community has almost entirely avoided engaging with UFOs, a much more mainstream search for intelligent aliens and their technology has been going on for decades.

The search is motivated by the fact that astronomers have, to date, discovered over 4,400 planets orbiting other stars. Called exoplanets, some are close to the Earth’s mass and at just the right distance from their stars to potentially have water on their surfaces — meaning they might be habitable.

Astronomers estimate that there are 300 million habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and each one is a potential opportunity for life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge. Indeed, most astronomers think it very unlikely that humans are the only or the first advanced civilization.

This confidence has fueled an active search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI. It has been unsuccessful so far. As a result, researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?” to “Where are the aliens?” The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called the Fermi paradox. First articulated by the physicist Enrico Fermi, it’s a paradox because advanced civilizations should be spread throughout the galaxy, yet we see no sign of their existence.

The SETI activity has not been immune from scientists’ criticism. It was starved of federal funding for decades and recently has gotten most of its support from private sources. However, in 2020, NASA resumed funding for SETI, and the new NASA administrator wants researchers to pursue the topic of UFOs.

In this context, the Pentagon report is welcome. The report draws few concrete conclusions about UFOs and avoids any reference to aliens or extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, it notes the importance of destigmatizing UFOs so that more pilots report what they see.

It also sets a goal of moving from anecdotal observations to standardized and scientific data collection. Time will tell if this is enough to draw scientists into the effort, but the transparency to publish the report at all reverses a long history of secrecy surrounding U.S. government reports on UFOs.

I don’t see any convincing evidence of alien spacecraft, but as a curious scientist, I hope the subset of UFO sightings that are truly unexplained gets closer study. Scientists are unlikely to weigh in if their skepticism generates attacks from “true believers” or they get ostracized by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the truth is still out there.

Quelle: INDEPENDENT

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How to Decipher the Pentagon’s UFO Report

The crucial, missing context for what military pilots might actually be seeing.

In the early 1960s, Cuban radar operators witnessed a strange phenomenon: Peering at their screens, they could see targets screaming toward their airspace at tremendous velocity. But when fighter planes were launched to intercept them, the targets simply vanished. The elusive craft showing up on their screens appeared to be the product of hyperadvanced technology — perhaps, even, an advanced civilization from another planet.

But what the Cubans were seeing was not alien technology. It was the result of human, and specifically American, technology — something called electromagnetic warfare, or EW. Knowing what EW is all about is crucial for putting into context the report released last week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Entitled “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” the document had been eagerly anticipated by those who hoped it would finally provide definitive official evidence that UFOs are real. While those hopes didn’t pan out, the report was nevertheless revealing, if given a close reading.

A tight six pages in length, the document tallies 144 incidents reported by U.S. government sources, most of them in the Navy, since 2004. Of that total, 18 events involved unknown aircraft that showed “unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics,” such as appearing “to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.”

For many, aerial objects moving in impossible ways immediately brings to mind alien visitors. But for those working in the electronic warfare industry, strangely manifesting phenomena are their stock-in-trade. The field is tasked with the detection of adversaries across the electromagnetic spectrum, from visual light to infrared and radar, as well as manipulating signals so that your forces are not detected by the enemy. “By radiating electromagnetic energy, one can deny, deceive, disrupt, delay or deceive that energy to confuse an observer about what you’re doing,” says Glenn “Powder” Carlson, president of the Old Crows Association, the EW professional organization.

The field traces its beginnings to the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, when both sides interfered in the other’s wireless telegraphy. But EW really took off in World War II with the invention of radar, which works by beaming microwave energy at inbound enemy planes and detecting the reflected echo. Almost as soon as radar became operational, both sides started figuring out countermeasures.

“Early electronic countermeasures, called ‘jamming,’ involved putting out so much noise at the frequency of the radar that the real target was obscured,” says former Air Force test pilot Thomas Tilden. “Or you could drop lots of ‘chaff’ [tiny metal strips] to flood the radar with returns.”

As technology advanced, the number of countermeasure techniques multiplied, which then spurred counter-countermeasures. “It’s an ongoing chess game,” Carlson says. “As soon as you make a move, somebody will make a counter-move or countermeasure.”

One advance was to build aircraft in certain shapes, out of particular materials, so that they reflect very little radar energy back to the sender. Stealthy F-35 and F-22 fighters do this, as do the Chinese J-20 and the Russian Su-57. Another trick is to record an enemy radar’s electromagnetic pulses and then play it back with delays, to make it seem like an aircraft is further away, or with a shifted frequency, so it appears to be traveling at a different velocity. It was this kind of trick, called Doppler spoofing, that enabled the U.S. to baffle Cuban air-defense personnel.

The new ODNI report doesn’t provide any details on individual UAP events, so it’s impossible to independently weigh underlying causes. But among the incidents it tallies is presumably a 2014 event that has previously been described by the New York Times. At the time, pilots from a Navy squadron operating out of Virginia repeatedly detected strange targets on their newly updated radar systems. The objects appeared to drop abruptly from 30,000 feet to sea level, slow down, and accelerate to hypersonic speeds. In one incident, one of the pilots, Lieutenant Danny Accoin, turned to intercept one such target, but when he flew underneath its supposed location there was nothing to be seen.

It’s possible that strange observations like this are a result of extraterrestrial activity, but what’s more worrying to the Pentagon is the possibility that one of its potential adversaries stole a march on America’s EW capabilities. The U.S. has long been at the technical forefront of electronic warfare, but there are no guarantees that that will continue to be the case. As electronics and data processing have become vastly more sophisticated, they have also become more widely available. Adversary nations like China and Russia have their own systems, and so do smaller nations such as Israel, Turkey, and Iran.

As last week’s report put it, “UAP would … represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.”

Also concerning is the possibility that the sophisticated software running on American detector systems might conceal bugs or glitches. In the olden days, a radar operator’s display showed the actual strength of the signal being returned. Today’s systems electronically filter and enhance the data to make it more useful. But that processing creates the possibility that information could be missed or created erroneously. Similarly, if your countermeasures make incorrect assumptions about your opponent’s equipment, that too could lead to errors.

“If you know the logic of your opponent’s sensor, you design measures to defeat that logic,” says Tilden. “The concern when we test is whether we have tested against the actual logic to be encountered with an enemy or we have only tested against our own computers. As our measures and countermeasures and counter-countermeasures get more complex, there is always the chance of a programming error, which can lead to unexpected events.”

So just as Silicon Valley requires beta testers to report bugs in new software so they can be ironed out, the military needs its EW users to report malfunctions in order to make its equipment fully effective. That being the case, it would be a real problem if flight crews saw strange phenomena on their screens but failed to report the incidents because they worried about being laughed at.

The ODNI report notes, “Sociocultural stigmas and sensor limitations remain obstacles to collecting data on UAP… Narratives from aviators in the operational community and analysts from the military and IC describe disparagement associated with observing UAP, reporting it, or attempting to discuss it with colleagues.”

By opening up discussion of mysterious aeronautical encounters to the general public, even to the extent of endorsing the idea that alien UFOs are real, the military hopes to encourage the regular reporting of potentially worrisome anomalies. “One of the reasons we’re so open is we want the aviators to give us the feedback, to provide the data that we need to look at this objectively,” says Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher. “The more data you have, the better you are to analyze it and turn that data into information into knowledge.”

To Jonas Peter Akins, who served as an intelligence officer aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise in the ‘00s, a main takeaway from the military’s UAP initiative is that it’s bringing all branches of the military into a single, standardized approach to the problem. “The services fly different jets, with different sensors, often built by different contractors,” he says. That means that anomalies will tend to manifest differently depending on who’s looking at them. “Making sure that there’s a consistent form for reporting these encounters requires some sort of standardization that has to happen at not the service level, but at the Department of Defense level,” Akins says.

If the Pentagon is essentially stoking the public’s belief in UFOs in order to encourage reporting of electronic warfare attacks or sensor glitches, then that raises the question: Why didn’t it just tell everyone that what it’s really concerned about is gaps in its electronic warfare capabilities?

Akins has a theory. “One of the great difficulties of a large, multimillion-person organization is admitting that you don’t know what the hell is going on without undermining morale,” he says. “There’s probably a little bit of, ‘We need to get our house in order, but we don’t want to admit that our house isn’t in order.’”

Quelle: Intelligencer

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Whistleblower threatens run for Congress if Pentagon UFO report watered down

Luis Elizondo, ein Whistleblower, der behauptet, eine geheime UFO-Einheit im Pentagon für die Division of Protection geleitet zu haben, sagt The Put up, dass er im kommenden Bericht der Behörden mit einer Knappheit einer vollständigen Offenlegung rechnet.

Elizondo, der das Superior Aerospace Risk Identification Program (AATIP) leitete, rechnet jedoch nicht mit der ungeschminkten Realität. Und wenn der Bericht so verwässert zu sein scheint, wie er es für wahrscheinlich hält, plant er, die Probleme mit einer Kandidatur für den Kongress in seine persönlichen Arme zu nehmen.

“If the Pentagon’s Public Affairs officers, and those that give them orders, proceed to obfuscate and mislead the American individuals concerning the actuality of UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, a k a UFOs] and what our authorities is aware of about them, I’ll don’t have any alternative however to place my boots again on and run for Congress,” Elizondo tells The Put up. “If that’s what it takes to get the reality out, that’s what I’ll do.”

“If I get a seat [in Congress], I’ll be certain that [there is] complete transparency on all the pieces, not simply UAPs, however all the opposite crap that I do know that goes on behind these closed doorways,” he mentioned this week in an interview with John Greenewald on the Black Vault. “I can guarantee you that there are parts within the Pentagon proper now that don’t want a cat like me sitting in Congress.”

In response to Elizondo’s claims, a Division of Protection spokeswoman says “Luis Elizondo had no assigned tasks for the Superior Aerospace Risk Identification Program (AATIP) whereas assigned to the Workplace of the Below Secretary of Protection for Intelligence.”

As for Elizondo’s Congressional ambitions, she declines to remark.

Elizondo believes the data within the UFO report shall be deceptive as a result of the timeline to complete the report isn’t lengthy sufficient.

“It takes, in some circumstances, longer to transform a kitchen than to supply one 180-day report,” he says. “The final time we had an intelligence failure of this nation, a serious one, which was 9/11, it took us virtually three years to provide you with the 9/11 Fee Report.”

Within the meantime, Elizondo hopes the report reveals what he claims is the reality: that “somebody, from someplace, [is] displaying past next-generation expertise” — which permits craft to fly with out wings or apparent airworthy development — “in our managed airspace,” he mentioned.

When requested what he would disclose to the American public relating to UFOs, Elizondo replied:

“Every little thing that may be safely disclosed with out harming our nationwide safety,” he mentioned. “Our tax {dollars} have paid for solutions. It’s about time the American individuals begin to get them.”

Quelle: Gruntstuff

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Are UFOs from outer space? Key questions the UAP report left unanswered

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena report. The report analyzes 144 reports of UAPs, what the government calls UFOs, being sighted by military personnel between 2004 and 2021. Eighty of the reports referred to objects that were tracked by multiple sensors. Twenty-one of the reports describe 18 incidents in which the objects displayed unusual flight characteristics.

“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”

These incidents have caught the attention of many UFO enthusiasts who wonder if they describe alien spacecraft propelled by an advanced technology. Nevertheless, the report makes no conclusions. Among the possibilities include airborne clutter such as balloons, other aircraft, or birds, atmospheric phenomena, United States government experimental aircraft, foreign government experimental aircraft (i.e. Russian or Chinese) or “other” (i.e. aliens.) The report suggests that further study is needed to identify what military pilots are seeing. It suggests that not one explanation exists for all of the UAPs or UFOs.

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As the nine-page report stands, it seems to be a rather thin gruel. Some portions were left out, resulting in accusations of a coverup. On the other hand, accusations of government coverups of the real origins of UFOs have cropped up for decades. The accusations have been part of popular culture, such as in the long-running TV series “The X-Files.”

Leaving aside the pop-culture-fueled suspicions of a secret government conspiracy, the report suggests that the examination of these UFOs (or UAPs, being the preferred, approved label) is an ongoing process. While American intelligence organizations are reluctant to draw any definitive conclusions, they seem to be particularly interested in the small number of incidents in which the objects demonstrated weird behavior that seemed to violate the laws of physics.

Let us propose, as a hypothesis, that some kind of alien intelligence is responsible for some of these sightings. What kind of conclusions can we draw? 

First, the aliens don’t seem to be particularly interested in making direct contact with Earth humans. No indications exist that spacecraft are about to land on the White House lawn (or at the United Nations, depending on which science fiction story one favors) or send a signal from afar (as in the film “Contact” based on the Carl Sagan novel.) On the other hand, they also seem to be uninterested in keeping their existence a secret.

That last point is a key. A civilization that is capable of crossing the interstellar gulf would likely also have the technology to conceal its spacecraft from prying eyes. “Star Trek,” after all, posited a cloaking device as well as a warp drive. Indeed, contemporary aerospace stealth technology has become quite advanced.

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Does the fact that the aliens (if these are aliens) don’t mind that we see them suggest that they want us to at least suspect they exist? For what purpose? To keep us on our toes?

Presuming that the hypothetical aliens are not hostile and, the speculations of the late Dr. Stephen Hawking aside, we have no reason to suspect they are, what is their ultimate purpose? Are they even going to establish first contact?

Most science fiction scenarios imagine the aliens landing on the Washington Mall (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”) or at the UN (“Childhood’s End”) and announcing themselves. However, would an advanced civilization view the president of the United States or the UN general-secretary as the person most worthy of establishing first contact? 

 

The hypothetical aliens may not view a political leader as the most significant person on our planet. Instead, they may want to establish first contact with a technological visionary, someone who has demonstrated the ability to imagine a future better than the present and is working diligently to achieve that goal. He harbors no petty, political ambitions nor any of the outrageous, Twitter-fueled passions that have blighted civilization.

The hypothetical aliens will not appear in the skies over Washington or New York (or Beijing, thank God.) Instead, perhaps first contact will occur at the hitherto obscure hamlet of Boca Chica, Texas, where the future is being born. We can only hope that Elon Musk is ready if and when they do come. The task of speaking for the human species will be a heavy one indeed.

Quelle: The Hill

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The alien economy: Roswell powered by UFO mania

 

ROSWELL, N.M. | It’s easy to miss amid the racks of UFO T-shirts and shelves jam-packed with alien memorabilia.

But just inside the door of Max and Luana Stacy‘s downtown Roswell shop hangs a small photo of several glowing orbs in the sky. It was taken through the window of a Southwest Airlines flight in 2015, about a year after the couple opened their store.

“Something kind of told me to sit by the window and I just happened to look out and see that,” Mr. Stacy, 55, told The Washington Times in an interview.

In the years since he took the eerie photo, Mr. Stacy said he‘s been approached by UFO research organizations asking him to file formal reports and share more information about the strange sighting.

He‘s refused.

“Being born and raised in Roswell … I don’t need the men in black coming to visit me,” he said. “Because they do exist.”

Max and Luana Stacy opened their store, Alien Invasion T-Shirts & More, in 2014. It has since become a staple of the alien-powered economy in Roswell, which boasts one of America’s most unique downtowns.

An estimated 15,000 tourists flocked to the city this week for its annual UFO Festival, which combines serious lectures on a host of paranormal subjects with Americana offerings, such as an alien-themed scavenger hunt and a pet costume contest. At the costume contest, several dogs were painted extraterrestrial green.

Most famous as the site of an alleged flying saucer crash in 1947, Roswell has fully embraced its legacy and uses it to draw tourist dollars— and virtually everyone in town has gotten in on the action.

Just around the corner from the International UFO Museum and Research Center sits a bakery with paintings on its facade of aliens holding cakes and donuts.

Up the street, the city’s barbershop has window drawings of aliens getting haircuts. A downtown clinic advertises “health care, alien style” with a blow-up alien in its window dressed in a nurse’s uniform. Banks, print shops, restaurants, and gas stations all have at least a small nod to aliens, UFOs, and the unexplained.

“That’s just the identity of the town,” Mr. Stacy said.

Even the city’s street lamps and official Roswell logo feature aliens and UFOs, respectively. City officials say they’ve worked hard to cultivate Roswell’s reputation as the official UFO capital of the world.

“We’ve got everything from the freaks with the tin-foil hats to the non-believers. And we welcome everybody,” said Andrea Moore, president and CEO of the Roswell Chamber of Commerce.

Ms. Moore said this year’s UFO Festival — the 25th iteration of the yearly event — has drawn a record crowd thanks to a perfect storm of factors. The event was postponed last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and attendees have seemed eager to return to summertime gatherings. And this year’s UFO Festival came on the immediate heels of last week’s major federal government report on unmanned aerial phenomena (UAP), which has fueled a major uptick in public interest in aliens.

The report did not rule out extraterrestrials as the cause of more than 100 unexplained UAP sightings by U.S. military personnel. Many festival-goers this weekend were well aware of the federal study and many said they believe the government is still hiding information from the American people. Mr. Stacy, for example, referred to the report as “the one that came out last week that didn’t really say anything.”

‘Now I know it’s true’

To say that Roswell welcomes conspiracy theorists and alien enthusiasts would be an understatement. Even Mayor Dennis J. Kintigh — a retired FBI agent with a degree in aerospace engineering — embraces UFO culture.

“Yes, I am a retired FBI agent … rocket scientist, FBI agent, mayor of Roswell. And the question is: Coincidence? Or all part of a master plan?” he jokingly said Friday evening at the UFO Festival’s opening ceremony.

For those who aren’t UFO believers, Roswell seems to have a way of changing their minds.

Lucy Dominguez, 53, moved to the city from Chicago about eight years ago. Five years ago, she and her husband, Gus, opened “Gus and Lucy’s Place,” a popular downtown gift shop that sells all sorts of alien-themed clothing and gifts.

But even after opening the store, Ms. Dominguez wasn’t necessarily a true believer.

“In the beginning I didn’t believe, or I was in the middle,” she told The Times. “When I opened the shop I started believing little by little. Now I know it’s true for sure.”

She credits the transformation to a 2019 car trip from Albuquerque to Roswell. She said she witnessed a small light in the distance that came closer and closer before eventually following their car.

“And then in a minute, it disappears,” she said. “From there, I said, ‘This is true.’”

Like virtually all other businesses in Roswell, Ms. Dominguez’s store has seen a massive uptick in traffic during this weekend’s UFO festival.

“For a lot of our businesses, this could very well make their year in the next few days. This is like their Black Friday,” Ms. Moore said.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Stacy said his store enjoyed its best year to date in 2019. Hecredits the explosion of the downtown Roswell economy to the growing acceptance of UFOs across American culture.

“There’s more and more being exposed,” he said. “Everybody walks around with a camera.”

 Quelle: The Washington Times

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Update: 6.07.2021

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Congressman Urges Government to Hold Public Hearings on UFO Sightings

 

Democratic Congressman André Carson said on "Face the Nation" that the UFO or "UAP" sightings that the Pentagon has confirmed should be further examined as, he said, they pose a risk to national safety.

 

Democratic Congressman André Carson of Indiana said that he hopes to have public hearings in regards to UFO sightings.

Carson, chair of the House Intelligence Committee’s counterintelligence and counterproliferation subcommittee, said in a recent interview with “Face of the Nation” he wants these hearings to occur in the “very near future.”

 

A recent report was released from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responding to instances of "unidentified aerial phenomena" or UAP sightings, but was largely inconclusive. 

Carson said in the interview that these unidentified objects pose a risk, especially considering that many of the sightings have been near military zones.

"We don't want our adversaries to have, one, a technological advance over us in terms of what they can do with their capabilities," he said.

The Congressman questions the origin of the objects, saying that a wide range of potential explanations should be taken into effect. “...we still can't rule out that 2-6% that could be something we can't explain, maybe even otherworldly." he said.

Quelle: INSIDE EDITION

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Update: 9.07.2021

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The government acknowledges UFOs after years of denial, but local UFOlogists aren't satisfied by the answers

No, that's not a real photo of flying saucers; it's a stock image someone created, but... it's not too far from what a pilot described seeing over Mount Rainer in 1947.

It was a beautiful early summer afternoon at about 9,500 feet overlooking Mount Rainier. "The sky and air were clear as crystal," Boise-based pilot Kenneth Arnold said of the conditions that day, June 24, 1947. Arnold, a fire control engineer who sold fire fighting equipment in the rural Western states, was flying out of Chehalis, Washington, with a final destination of Pendleton, Oregon. His trip had been delayed slightly when he was asked to help locate a military transport that had crashed into the side of Mount Rainier the previous winter.

Flying in his CallAir Model A, Arnold made a couple passes of the mountain, but was unable to see the downed transport. He was making one final pass of the area before heading to his next destination, Yakima, when a flash of light reflected off his plane. Startled, he checked to see if any other airplanes had snuck up on him. He didn't see anything until he looked out his window to the left. Just north of Mount Rainier were nine unusual looking aircraft flying south toward Mount Adams, moving at about 1,200 miles per hour, according to Arnold's estimate.

Later that day, Arnold told his colleagues and acquaintances about what he described as thin saucer-like aircraft without tails. Word got around, and the next day the June 25 edition of the East Oregonian ran a story of Arnold's sighting with the headline: "Impossible! Maybe, But Seein' Is Believin', Says Flier."

The story spread like wildfire and is credited with kicking off the UFO craze in the United States. Shortly after the story broke, eyewitness reports of "flying saucers" were everywhere. Famously, there was the "Roswell Incident" just a couple weeks after Arnold's sighting, which many UFO researchers and conspiracists believe to be a cover-up of a crashed alien spacecraft in New Mexico.

Fast forward to today, UFOs — or UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomenon) as they are being rebranded — might be more popular than they have ever been. A growing number of pilots and military personnel have come forward with their own stories of strange encounters in the sky. These stories have appeared with increasing frequency in the national media over the last few years. On May 16, 60 Minutes broadcasted an interview with former Navy pilots Dave Fravor and Alex Dietrich that detailed their eyewitness account of a UAP off the coast of San Diego, which they described as a white "Tic Tac" shaped object about the size of a 737. The object moved erratically, had no visible propulsion and was lightning fast. But Fravor and Dietrich are far from the only ones. Other military personnel have come forward about similar sightings. Some of the objects, like the Tic Tac, have even been recorded by sophisticated tracking systems. The U.S. military has verified the authenticity of some of these recordings, although they can't say exactly what they are. At least that's the conclusion of a new report issued on June 25 by the Department of National Intelligence.

Last year, wheels were put in motion on the UFO front. The government's secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was relaunched under a new name, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. It's mission is "to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security," according to a Pentagon description. Also, as part of the federal government's $2.3 trillion spending package last year, lawmakers included an unusual provision. They wanted an unclassified report on what the government knows about UAPs from the Department of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense within 180 days.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report's findings were deemed "largely inconclusive." Definitively analyzing the reported incidents was a challenge for the department due to the technological limitations of military sensors and, admittedly, some of the stigma surrounding the topic within military and intelligence circles, the department says in its report.

The report analyzed 144 reports of these unidentified aerial phenomena between 2004 and 2021, but found that the limited data left most of them unexplained. Most reports detailed UAP near military activities or training areas (though that may be a collection bias, the report says). Only one of the reports was explained as a deflating balloon. However, 18 of the reported incidents appeared to show UAP demonstrating "advanced technology" in their movement or flight characteristics, the report says. It also says that UAP likely exist in one of five categories: "airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, [U.S. government] or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall 'other' bin." The report did not mention anything extraterrestrial.

Ultimately, the report laid the groundwork for future analysis of UAP with a long-term goal of increasing its data set through more reporting and collaboration with other agencies and eventually applying machine-learning algorithms to help determine their nature.

But for some in the UFOlogy community, much of the new report isn't really news. UFOlogist Peter Davenport, who is based in Eastern Washington, has already been collecting data on UFO/UAP incidents all over the world, and he's got a head start on the report by a few decades.

Young Kwak photo

Based in Eastern Washington, Peter Davenport has been running the National UFO Research Center website and hotline for 27 years.

 

COUNTING THE ENCOUNTERS

 

Davenport's first brush with UFOs was at an outdoor cinema near the St. Louis Lambert International Airport back in the 1950s, he says. Just a child at the time, Davenport recalls there being a sudden disturbance in the cinema. People were getting out of their cars, slamming their doors, and pointing to the sky.

 

"I looked out the right side of our '53 Studebaker ... and there was an incredibly bright object, red, about the shape of a British rugby ball. ... It was illuminating the entire St. Louis airport like it was daylight," he recalls.

Out of nowhere, it rose up and went behind the screen of the theater within a couple of seconds and then disappeared. The incident, still vivid in his mind's eye more than 60 years later, is likely what led him to a career in UFOlogy, he says.

Davenport is a believer through and through. A devout Christian, trained scientist and businessman, the 76-year-old says there is little doubt what these unidentified flying objects are: Sophisticated, technological craft piloted by alien creatures.

"I think we're dealing with intelligent, highly developed, sentient creatures who, from time to time, come to this planet and visit us," he says from his home in the tiny town of Harrington, Washington, about an hour west of Spokane. "I'm fairly confident that we're being visited on a routine, consistent basis that's been going on for at least 100 years. I suspect these creatures have been aware of our presence for a long time."

Davenport has been running the National UFO Research Center website, nuforc.org, and hotline for 27 years. He has been an expert source for the L.A. Times, the New York Timesand, obviously, the Inlander, and has been a regular guest on paranormal talk shows like Coast to Coast AM.

NUFORC was established in 1974 and has served as a repository of thousands of eyewitness accounts of UFO incidents dating back several decades from all over the world, detailing strange encounters with pretty much anything that could be described as extraterrestrial. Floating lights. Massive, silent pyramid structures. Long-limbed humanoids. Flying saucers. Before the internet, these reports had to be taken over a telephone hotline or submitted via mail to NUFORC, sometimes along with an illustration.

 

Davenport's path to NUFORC has been a winding one. He served in the Army as a Russian translator before studying biology at Stanford in the 1970s. Grad school took him to the University of Washington, where he continued a career in science and later founded the biotech company BioSyn in Seattle. He met NUFORC founder Bob Gribble in 1991 at a monthly UFO meeting hosted by the Washington chapter of the Mutual UFO Network. Gribble, who had been running the hotline for 20 years, was about to call it quits at the time though. Not wanting to see Gribble's hard work go to waste, Davenport took the reins in 1994.

By his own admission, the work is exhausting, and Davenport now finds himself in the same position as Gribble, looking for another impassioned investigator to take over. The job has not been easy, he says. The onslaught of reports keeps him busy all day long, and the frequent prank phone calls from "young people" has grown tiresome. But he's also become a prominent figure within the UFOlogy community.

In between questions, he cites examples of what he describes as credibly sourced eyewitness reports. There are reports from airline pilots, seminarians and law enforcement officers. Then there's the story of Travis Walton, an Arizona man who claimed to have been abducted by aliens in the 1970s in front of several witnesses.

Walton's book was later adapted into the 1993 sci-fi film Fire in the Sky. Davenport, who knows Walton on a personal basis, says that if his story is true, "then it is perhaps one of the leading candidates for being one of the most traumatic incidents I can think of."

On their way back from work in a pickup truck, Walton and his co-workers allegedly spotted a UFO off the side of the road. Walton got out of the truck to investigate and claimed that he was shot by a beam of light and brought into the craft. Walton was missing for more than five days after the alleged abduction and claims to have conscious memory of some of the events.

After so many years of cataloging these stories, Davenport has become good at deciphering between the sincere and the insincere. Walton's story is one of the former, he says.

"I freely admit, I don't like the thought of being anywhere near a UFO," Davenport says. "People argue that I'm dealing with the devil. Other people claim I'm dealing with angels. I take the assertion that we're dealing with both."

Despite his firm belief in extraterrestrials, Davenport, like many in the UFOlogy community, is skeptical of some of these cases.

"You develop a sixth sense. If a person doesn't want to give his name, or is glib and jolly about his UFO sighting, these are signs it's not a sincere report," he says. "People will say things they aren't willing to write down. It's a warning sign [that] it's not conclusive."

Davenport is also suspicious of the U.S. government, he says, which is why he's not particularly thrilled by the Department of National Intelligence's UAP report.

"I'd like to think we're going to get the truth, but I'm skeptical," Davenport said in the weeks leading up to the report's release. "If the government officials who control this information were forthright with us, they could have done it long ago."

There have been other instances of government disclosure on what people have described as UFOs, particularly in Roswell, but also during the "Phoenix Lights" incident in 1997. But in those cases, the answers weren't satisfying, at least not for the UFO community.

Public opinion has changed somewhat since then. People are more willing to believe today than ever before. About one-third of Americans believe that UFOs spotted are alien spacecraft, according to a Gallup poll from 2019. About half of all Americans believe there are species similar to humans in the universe, the same poll says.

Even if alien spacecraft or species similar to humans don't exist, the reports from military officers and other seemingly credible sources are hard to dismiss entirely. Even former President Barack Obama said in a recent interview that "there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are."

"The American people are more willing to address the topic, particularly members of academia and people who have a lot to lose by being labeled a kook," Davenport says. "Airline pilots for a long time wouldn't talk about what they see in the cockpit. I've now taken seven reports from airline pilots from the cockpit since November."

The government report did not disclose the existence of extraterrestrials, but it did open up a starting point for people to have a serious conversation about the topic.

Kind of.

"I'd like to think we're going to get the truth, but I'm skeptical. If the government officials who control this information were forthright with us, they could have done it long ago."

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GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT

 

In the age of information, it's getting harder to distinguish the truth from lies. If we've learned anything about the internet over the last several years, it's that we're all highly susceptible to misinformation. We believe what we want to. Politics. News. Entertainment. Whatever. People will believe just about anything if it confirms their biggest hopes or their worst fears, and the potential existence of extraterrestrial intelligence can be both of those things.

 

For most people, it's hard to say whether or not aliens exist. But no one can prove that they don't exist; therefore, perhaps they do. This "burden of proof" logical fallacy, as it is called, is used frequently by conspiracy theorists to put the onus on their skeptics. Straight-up liars like professional lunatic Alex Jones, host and creator of InfoWars, love to use this fallacy because it asks critics to prove a negative.

You can't prove that Dr. Anthony Fauci didn't help orchestrate the COVID-19 pandemic, so maybe he did. You can't prove that the corporate news media isn't covering up the truth of the virus to hide the globalist agenda, so maybe it is. You can't prove that the world leaders don't want to enslave the human population through vaccinations and implants, so maybe they do.

This kind of thinking runs rampant in the UFO community as well, says James Clarkson, a UFOlogist based out of Port Townsend, Washington. Clarkson, a self-described member of the "old guard," has watched the internet wreak havoc on the UFO community in recent years. The community has become increasingly intertwined with other, more fringe conspiracy communities like QAnon, he says.

It's the human version of "garbage in, garbage out," Clarkson says, referring to an old computer science concept. Essentially, bad data produces bad output.

"I think it's an extreme problem, not just for UFOlogy, but for politics and the country and the world. We have to get some ethically based search for the truth," he says. "It's not that we have too little information. It's that in some ways we have too much."

The days leading up to the government's UAP report created a "stampede of speculation" when, at the time, we didn't know anything, he says. Clarkson didn't find the report especially interesting. After all, it was unclassified information.

Clarkson is the former director for Washington state's chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, and has been investigating UFOs for three decades. As a science fiction fan, he loves to speculate "what the alien agenda might be." But Clarkson, who spent his professional career as an officer with the Aberdeen Police Department and as an investigator of child abuse and fraud, is very careful to note when he's wearing his UFO researcher's hat and when he's wearing the tin foil hat.

He has learned to approach UFOlogy like a criminal investigation.

"While you are going through an investigation, you are continually asking yourself the same question, 'What would a reasonable man conclude if he was confronted with the evidence in front of me right now?' You want to keep it reasonable, you want to keep it sensible," he says. "That's the problem I see in UFOlogy and the internet in general right now."

For every 10 UFO sightings you get, about six will have commonplace explanations, he says. Only one or two are what they call "true FOs," or truly unidentified flying objects, he says.

"Those are cases where you have highly credible witnesses, you have some kind of corroborating evidence and, hopefully, some facts that you can find," Clarkson says. "Witnesses who know everything worry me. I expect a witness to only know their part of it. A witness who can look me in the eye and say, 'I don't know, I didn't see that,' that impresses me."

Sometimes that means providing boring, "unpopular" answers that don't necessarily fit a media-driven entertainment narrative, he says.

DEBUNKING WITH CARE

 

This might also include UFO skeptics like Mick West, a Sacramento-based professional debunker who runs the website metabunk.org and who authored the book Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect. His website covers pretty much everything from COVID to chemtrails to that monstrous photo of a gigantic Joe and Jill Biden alongside a miniature Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. But mostly, metabunk.org covers UFOs.

 

For almost all of the high-profile sightings featured in the May 60 Minutes broadcast, West has a perfectly reasonable explanation. Using the mathematical and problem-solving skills he developed as a video game programmer, West often re-creates certain photographic effects that mimic what some UFO witnesses report having seen in the sky.

The first thing West looks for when debunking a sighting is the origin of the report: who took it, when it was taken, and where it was taken. From there, he tries to geolocate the sighting on a map to check off any environmental explanations. He also uses a handful of flight trackers that follow the signals of aircraft along their flight paths, which is a pretty common explanation for UFO sightings, he says.

Trying to convince the most ardent believers that these "sightings" might have simple explanations is not an easy task though. Talking with conspiracists requires a degree of patience and respect that can require swallowing a bit of pride, West says.

"It's really kind of the same way you deal with people who are in cults. Essentially, you've got people whose minds have been kind of brainwashed in a way, and they're starting to believe these various things that are very divergent from reality, and the way to help them

UFO-Forschung - The Pentagon’s UFO Report -Update-8

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