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UFO-Forschung - The Pentagon’s UFO Report -Update-10

14.07.2021

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Digging into the government report on UFOs

In a Q&A, historian of science Kate Dorsch illuminates the history behind reporting and investigating UFO sightings and contextualizes the new government report on such phenomena.

Tucked in the $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief package that passed in December was a stipulation initially overlooked by many. As part of the Intelligence Authorization Act, the government was required to publicly release the findings of its investigations of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

Now that the report is out, folks are paying attention. With headlines like “The Pentagon won’t rule out aliens,” and “Are skies alive with UFOs?” the release has renewed interest in these unusual sightings. 

 

For Kate Dorsch, the report was eagerly awaited, if unsurprising in how little new information it revealed. Dorsch, a historian of science, completed her dissertation on UFO-sighting investigations carried out during the Cold War and sees in this latest report a continuation of themes that hearken back to an earlier era.

In a conversation with Penn Today, Dorsch explains the motivation behind the new assessment, how certain witnesses of unexplained phenomena are seen as more trustworthy than others, and why she’s neither a cynic nor a true believer in UFOs.

The report uses the term unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, rather than unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Why is there a distinction?

 

Much in the same way that we moved away from saying ‘flying saucers’ and started saying ‘UFOs,’ I think UAP acknowledges that not everything everyone sees is a material object. It could be a meteor or some newly discovered atmospheric phenomena. It’s a way of making room for non-technological or even nonmaterial explanations, and it’s a way of building credibility for those that are more scientifically inclined. It has the least amount of assumptions built into it.

 

Why did this report come out now, and what it was meant to accomplish? 

 

This report, this very brief, 9-page summary, is the result of an addendum to the COVID relief bill from last year. I’m sure all kinds of stuff like this got sneaked into that. But this report in and of itself is not particularly novel. Some reporting has painted this as some sort of watershed moment and the government being transparent about its UAP investigations, and I don’t think that’s accurate. 

The United States government—specifically various branches of the military—have put out similar reports to this. What’s striking to me is how little has changed from earlier in the 20th century to today. Historians tend to tell change-over-time stories, and it’s really turned into a not-change-over-time story, which is equally interesting.

This report basically says, We looked at all of these 144 reports of sightings that were made by military employees. There’s an intense focus on the reports of pilots. And they were able to identify only one case positively; it was a large, deflating balloon. The rest are unknown. And they say that the investigations are challenging because of the lack of good data and analysis resources and things like that. It’s very typical, essentially ‘we need more money and people.’ 

The first summary of this kind came out in 1948 and pointed to national security concerns and the safety and health of pilots. It’s all there in 1948, and it’s here in 2021. So again, what’s really striking to me is the consistency of this whole narrative.

 

What do you think is missing in this narrative and in the report itself? 

 

What we haven’t seen yet are the deep-dive stuff, the case analysis reports. We don’t know who is conducting the investigation, if it’s all internal staff or if they had outside contractors. Back in the day, it was really typical to have scientists from various universities subcontracted. Especially in the Cold War, having professional scientists in the military was common. 

I’m interested in that, and also where the sightings were happening, who was making them, and under what conditions. There are obviously confidentiality issues, and I don’t think we should read into these omissions as being particularly controversial.

As far as what’s missing in the narrative, I think that we’re not capitalizing on an opportunity to think about and talk about what national security looks like in the 21st century. To ask really interesting questions about our institutions and who we trust and why. And I think that’s especially important in the post-Trump era, to rebuild public trust in some of these institutions.

 

What are some of those issues around national security you think are most revealing? 

 

Back in the day, there were UFO sightings in Germany and Sweden, and everyone just assumed they were Russian or American aircraft, because the Russians and Americans had the most advanced technology. So when you see a technology you can’t explain, it was assumed to belong to a global superpower on the cutting edge of technoscience. So when these are seen in the U.S., and you’re considered the dominant terrestrial force, then clearly the only possible explanation is that these are extraterrestrial. 

But now, it doesn’t seem totally impossible that the Russians or the Chinese have matched us, but the idea that they have surpassed us in technology is scary. And so, I guess it’s a rhetorical question: What seems more believable, that the Chinese have surpassed us, the Russians have surpassed us, or that aliens are visiting us? There are interesting nationalistic and geopolitical forces at play there.

 

This report covers sightings by Navy pilots, who would seem to have some credibility over other reports made by civilians. How does the status of witnesses influence how UFO sightings are perceived?

 

This is interesting because we’re supposed to support our service people and military, but then we’re inclined to think, ‘Oh, they’re all lying about these sightings.’ That’s an interesting dissonance that I think deserves more attention.

But as far as the United States military is concerned, their main focus has always been on what their pilots and other personnel—sailors, radar technicians, or the people on their bases—have been seeing. Again, this points to this national security piece.

But at the start of the Cold War, for example, there was also a desire to have the American public be aware of threats. And there were civil defense programs in the Air Force, educational program that were teaching people about reporting unusual sightings. 

But over time, by the 1950s, this taboo develops around reporting UFOs, and pilots and others actually stopped making those reports. And that’s a problem, because the pilots may have seen something. There’s that stigma that they’re fighting against. And I think that is still the case today.

 

Do you perceive some of these sightings as more trustworthy than others?

 

I’m not a debunker, but I’m also not a true believer. I try to be as objective as I can be, but I do believe that some people have seen things. I believe there’s a difference between a bartender at a dive bar seeing something one night out with his buddies, and a pilot in flight, and I think it is reasonable to suggest, for the sake of the pilot, that we put some resources into investigating that pilot’s sighting.

 

Do you think the post-9-11 ‘see something, say something’ mantra has diminished the stigma around reporting unusual phenomena? 

 

Right, like how you’ll get on a train and those signs are everywhere. Actually ‘see something, say something’ isn’t really a post-9-11 thing. It’s the same philosophy that was built into the civil defense programs of the 1940s. With those programs, the U.S. Air Force taught people about the science of optics and night sky observing training, telling them about human perception and how our ability to judge speed, distance, color, all this stuff, diminishes after a startlingly short distance in space. The Air Force was setting out to educate people, to make them better observers, so they wouldn’t report everything they saw and could judge for themselves when something is of serious concern. 

But by the late ’50s, early ’60s, there were thousands and thousands of these reports a year; I think in one big year there were 10,000 reports. And these were cataloged and investigated, yet most of them were coming from private citizens and may have actually been a sighting of, like, Jupiter. What a tremendous waste of resources.

It’s hard to know whether reporting has increased more recently because there is not a central repository for these reports and the military isn’t encouraging people to make these reports anymore. 

 

What’s next for your own studies of UFOs?

 

One fun side project involves the correspondence from public citizens, writing to the Air Force or to scientists who are involved in UFO investigations. I’ve got boxes of this stuff—people are sending in bags of soil to be analyzed. They’re sending in the aluminum foil they’re claiming is the detritus of the alien ship. 

But one of the things that caught my eye is that all of these letters are at once balancing these two really interesting things: One is an intense focus on science, physics astrophysics, cosmology, mathematics, and engineering. On the other hand there’s an intense mysticism, and sort of a religious fanaticism about what the mission of the aliens is. I’ve got in one case a 50-page manifesto about some new way of understanding the universe that both tracks with atomic physics, but also says there’s a god energy at the center of the universe and we’re all transcendent beings that are telepathically connected with these aliens. So I’ve got all this stuff in the archive, and I’m particularly interested in the 1960s. People espousing a UFO religion in the 1960s seem to be trying to find god in the machine. 

 

On a personal level, you’ve been interviewed a lot about UFOs lately. What is it like having your expertise be tapped in the mainstream media?

 

I love it, and not in a self-aggrandizing sense but because I’m obsessed with this stuff. It’s fun to help people think about these basic questions like, Why don’t you trust the Air Force? They help keep us safe, and we trust them to do 17,000 other things, but when it comes to UFO sightings, this is the one space they’re not credible? Or questions like, Why do you think that what you saw wasn’t an airplane? I don’t necessarily care what you actually saw, but I’m interested in the why.

People are often like, Oh those UFO people, they’re so crazy, but they’re not crazy. They’re actually really interesting and an incredible community of people who take themselves very seriously but are also very generous in sharing these cool experiences they’ve had.

 

Kate Dorsch is a science, technology, and society postdoctoral lecturer in the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences’ Department of History and Sociology of Science.

Quelle: Penn Today, University of Pennsylvania

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UAPs and the limits of our technology

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Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) have long existed in the popular imagination, and they have been a hot topic for many conspiracists. Now, the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has published an official report concerning UAP, though it does little to debunk many of the conspiracies about these otherworldly phenomena.

 

Before anyone can jump to conclusions about extraterrestrial beings visiting Earth, let’s first understand what UAP are, how the military has handled their existence and what our current understanding of these phenomena are.

 

First, unidentified aerial phenomenathe preferential title, according to the ODNI report, as opposed to unidentified flying objects (UFOs)are exactly that: unidentified. They are ill-understood, and, while unknown circumstances make for great inspiration in art, reality is far more mundane than many might expect.

 

The report published by ODNI offers no conclusive evidence that incidents involving UAP are or are not extraterrestrial. Had it done so, these incidents would no longer be considered “unidentified.” A total of 143 reports remain unexplained, with at least 18 incidents exhibiting technological capabilities beyond the intelligence of the United States. 

 

The report explains that UAP most likely lack a single explanation, and can be sorted into five categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, classified U.S. developmental or industrial programs, foreign adversary systems or the miscellaneous “other.”

 

Airborne clutterwhich includes objects such as birds, balloons, plastic bags and other debrisis a frequent contender for many UAP explanations. Considering the amount of debris we’ve accumulated in space and in our oceans, it’s not difficult to imagine aerial debris as a potential explanation for assumed evidence of extraterrestrial life. 

 

As stated in ODNI’s report, natural atmospheric phenomena can include ice crystals, moisture and thermal fluctuations that may register on standard infrared and radar systems.

 

Perhaps more elusive than the “other” category itself, ODNI reports that some UAP observations may be the result of classified programs developed by U.S. entities. Of course, it can not be entirely confirmed if that is the case, and little is known about what this category implies. 

 

Technologies developed by foreign entities, or perhaps by no nation-state at all, are also not ruled out in the categories for potential explanations, although the report states that there is little evidence to suggest that foreign technologies are currently capable of registering as UAP. This subject has, however, been of particular interest to the U.S. Intelligence Community because of fears about national security threats. 

 

Finally, everything that remains scientifically inexplicable is placed in the “other” category, but this is likely due to a lack of data and limited analytical capabilities rather than extraterrestrial technology.

 

What makes the phenomena unidentifiable or unexplainable has to do with current limitations of maneuverability. Three declassified videos show an object moving upwind at abnormally high speeds without observable propulsion. Currently, the fastest aircraft in the world is the SR-71 Blackbird, which relies on jet propulsion and an extremely particular design. 

 

It is unknown how the Blackbird’s maneuverability and speed compares to the UAP in the declassified reports. In fact, no official numbers were found in the report detailing exactly how fast the UAP were traveling. Instead, the report simply states that the objects were “unusually fast.”

 

The propulsion of all jets, rockets and planes are explained by the same principle: Newton’s third law of motion. The law states that all forces exist in pairs, and aircraft exploit that law to forcefully eject large amounts of matter from a system, producing an equal and opposite reaction that pushes the object forward.

 

Several key UAP have yet to be explained because they seemingly defy the very foundational laws of physics. 

 

The observations in the report are perhaps not impossible to reproduce, but, if the objects are confirmed to be aircraft, this could fundamentally change the way we think about our current laws of physics. The same reasoning is also why UAP are unlikely to be the result of foreign technology, since the laws of physics apply throughout the world, not just in the U.S. 

 

There is still plenty about the universe that we do not understand, which is the reason why science and technology research exists in the first place. ODNI’s report does nothing to enhance our understanding; it only reiterates that it too has yet to fully identify everything on our planet. Whether UAP are the result of E.T. “phoning home” is doubtfulhowever disappointing that may be.

Quelle: Portland State's student-run newspaper

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Update: 15.07.2021

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Why the military should work with scientists to study the UFO phenomenon

UFOs have been in the news a lot lately. I am a research astronomer who has written and edited books and created a free online course about the search for life in the universe. While I think we are making progress on detecting life beyond Earth, I view UFOs from a skeptical standpoint, since the evidence that they represent aliens visiting the Earth is unconvincing.

Last month, a report from the Office of the Director on National Intelligence dropped on Congress. It described 144 sightings by military personnel over a 17-year period, preferring to use the term UAP, for unidentified aerial phenomenon, in part to avoid the stigma attached to UFOs.

For those like me waiting for definitive statements, the report was a big disappointment. It declined to draw any conclusions, saying the available data is “largely inconclusive” and noting it is limited and inconsistently reported. The report worried about increased air “clutter,” and left open the possibility that some UAP sightings represent advanced technologies of foreign adversaries, with significant national security implications.

As for UFOs as alien spacecraft, the report was agnostic. It scrupulously avoided using the words alien or extraterrestrial. That will do little to discourage “true believers.” Nearly half of all Americans think aliens are visiting the Earth, and the UFO phenomenon has become enmeshed in a web of conspiracy theories that include accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. These conspiracy theories have undoubtedly been fueled in part by the fact that the military has been secretly investigating UFOs for decades. Any rational debate over UFOs must contend with the fact that they have taken deep root in the public consciousness.

Will the report, and increased transparency by the military, change anything? Will it help draw scientists like me into a serious study of the phenomenon?

Scientists will have to get over their reticence to engage with the sightings. We are in an awkward position. Rapid progress in finding planets orbiting other stars has led to a projection of 300 million habitable planetsin our galaxy. There has been plenty of time for life on some of those planets to evolve intelligence and technology. We don’t deny the possibility of aliens traveling from their star system to ours. We are just unconvinced by the data presented so far. Most sightings can be attributed to weather balloons or astronomical phenomena such as meteors, fireballs, and Venus. There are many resources giving mundane explanations for UFO sightings.

There have been academic studies of UFOs before. In 1968, the Condon Report said that that no scientific knowledge had been gained from two decades of study of the phenomenon. But 20 years later, a review led by Stanford professor Peter Sturrock concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that warrants investigation. It is telling that after decades of studies and hundreds of thousands of sightings, UFOs have not reached the gold standard in science for confirming any hypothesis: reproducible evidence.

For their part, the military and intelligence communities will have to more actively engage with scientists, and ask for their help and expertise in understanding the sightings in the report, and many others that have not been made public. There are signs that this might happen. Under Avril Haynes, the Office of the DNI has been drawing on its expert group of 500 scientists who consult with the intelligence agencies on scientific problems. A model for this type of collaboration is the two panels of scientists and medical experts that were recently set up to understand the “Havana syndrome” that has afflicted American diplomats since 2016. 

What would a collaboration with scientists look like, and what kind of data would it take to “move the needle” on understanding the UAP phenomenon?

The recent report shows how difficult it is to interpret the sightings, even with expert observers and data from multiple sensors. In all but one of 144 cases, there was too little information to even broadly characterize the event. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks acknowledged this deficiency when she called for more timely and consistent data collection on UAPs. The Defense Department has just over two months to develop a new strategy and report back to Congress.

Sensors malfunction and even expert observers can be fooled when seeing something outside their realm of experience. With optical and infrared imaging, it is extremely difficult to gauge the distance, size, and speed of an object. For example, the three Navy videos that have been in heavy circulation on the Internet seem impressive and inexplicable, but they could easily be artifacts of camera optics and tracking systems.

The military should invite a select group of experts to examine all the evidence (with suitable clearance given when the sensor technology involved is classified). It should be an interdisciplinary team, comprised to address all the observational characteristics of the phenomena. Ideally, data should be shared among our allies, since UAP appear globally. Scientists can bring their assets to bear on the problem as well. For example, civilian satellites are being used to detect and monitor UAPs and machine learning can be used to sift the data for anomalous events.

Scientists are curious and they love a challenging problem. I would lend my hand to the effort if asked. Let’s hope the government will harness scientific expertise to shine light on this decades-long mystery.

Quelle: Military Times

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Update: 17.07.2021

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Classified ‘brief’: Secret UFO report only 17 pages long

The real truth on UFOs is out there — and it’s only 17 pages long.

The nine-page preliminary US government report released last month did little to satisfy those seeking answers on whether alien life exists — and the classified version isn’t likely to provide much more depth with just eight additional pages, according to a report by The Black Vault, a website operated by author and podcaster John Greenewald.

Days after the June 25 report was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, US officials declined to comment on the length of the classified version, but told Greenewald it was “substantively consistent” and had the same conclusions as the public document.

Greenewald tweeted Thursday that he had confirmed the length of the classified report, which led to much speculation online, with estimates ranging anywhere from 70 to 400 additional pages.

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An email from ODNI confirms the full US government report on UFOs is “17 pages in length.”
John Greenewald / The Black Vault

“The classified version of the report is 17 pages in length,” Sally Nicholson, from ODNI’s office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests, wrote to Greenewald in an email Thursday.

Greenewald, who specializes in obtaining declassified documents through FOIA requests, bills his site as the largest private online collection of declassified government reports.

Greenewald’s inquiry into the classified report, filed the morning after ODNI delivered it to Congress, initiated a “mandatory declassification review (MDR),” according to The Black Vault.

That’s a process in which an individual or entity can request any federal agency to review classified information for declassification, regardless of age or origin, with “certain limitations,” according to the Information Security Oversight Office.

The Black Vault also requested attachments to the classified report, “wherein members of Congress received additional videos or photographs outside of the seventeen pages and whether those are confirmed to exist,” Greenewald wrote.

“It must be stated that this answer may only come after the case is processed, closed, and a final determination is issued, since the current state of the report and/or attachments should they exist, are classified,” the report continued.

Greenewald said many MDR cases are ultimately denied, but have led to the unearthing of a CIA document that “supposedly justified the Iraq invasion” and a National Security Agency record revealing the list of classified documents aboard the USS Pueblo before its capture by North Korea in 1968.

Luis “Lue” Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, told The Post last month that the ODNI report was merely the “first” of many to come.ufo-003

UFO investigator John Greenewald has filed numerous FOIA requests in his pursuit for classified documents on UFO sightings.

Elizondo, who claims the Department of Defense has tried to discredit him, told The Post on Friday that the classified report — funded as part of a $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and spending package enacted by President Donald Trump in December — is considerably longer.

“Understandably, there is some confusion, but rest assured the complete report, including end notes, is over 70 pages,” Elizondo said in a statement to The Post. “I do not care to speculate about why there is confusion, nor involve myself in the debate, but the fact remains that the full and complete report is significantly longer than what is currently being stated for the record.”

Elizondo did not clarify how he knew the length of the classified report. He said last month’s public release — which didn’t find “firm conclusions” on the 144 UFO sightings reported by government sources since 2004 — left more questions than answers. Just one reported UFO was identified as a large, deflating balloon.

“This conversation is only beginning,” Elizondo told The Post late last month.

Quelle: New York Post

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Update: 19.08.2021

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Emerging Tech Key to Unraveling UFO/UAP Mysteries, Officials Say

Further use of emerging technologies marks the path forward for the intelligence community to uncover more compelling evidence of unidentified flying objects (UFO), and to learn more about their meaning and intent, former Federal government officials said at NextGov’s technology summit on August 17.

Lue Elizondo, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (ATTIP) at the Department of Defense (DoD), explained that gathering hard data from a variety of sensors has provided a crucial bridge in the government’s approach to studying UFOs – also referred to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

In addition to eyewitness UFO/UAP testimony, Elizondo said, Federal government personnel can utilize ground-based sensors, sea-based sensors, airborne sensors, and now space-based sensors to provide compelling reports to Congress on the issue.

“On top of eyewitness testimonies from trained observers, we have data from sensors as another layer of information that is all corroborating the same information at the same time and place under the same circumstances. That is very compelling,” said Elizondo.

A recent preliminary assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena reported that 80 out of 144 sight reports involved observation with multiple sensors that captured enough real data to allow initial assessments.

While Federal agencies have compiled enough data to present compelling evidence of UAPs, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said at the August 17 event that the government must continue working on the most important questions – what are UAPs, and what do they represent.

According to Reid, it would be negligent – and even become legislative malpractice – if the Federal government does not go further to find out more about UAPs.  That’s mainly because UAPs are a matter of national security concern.

“We have evidence of these multiple sightings. But I think it’s essential that we continue trying to find out what these things are,” said Reid.

For a subject once relegated mainly to the province of science fiction, the Federal government has come a long way in recent months in acknowledging the validity of UAP sighting data. And a June 2020 vote by the Senate Intelligence Committee requires U.S. intelligence agencies and the DoD to compile an unclassified report covering all data collected on UAPS.

Elizondo explained that transparency on the issue by the Federal government – not just within the classified space but also with the public – is vital because democracy cannot work for the interests of the American people if the government is not truthful, especially with national security concerns.

“There’s someone, somewhere with some technology that can come in unimpeded any time they want to at will and undetected over our sensitive facilities,” Elizondo said of UAPs. “That’s a problem.”

Quelle: MeriTalk

 
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