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UFO-Forschung - Weiterer Background zu Pentagon-UFO-Story -Teil 1/3

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8.07.2019

Weitere Details sickern durch zu der künstlichen Werbekampagne für History-Channel. Es ist immer wieder erstaunlich zu sehen wie die Hardcore-Ufologie immer wieder hinter das Licht geführt wird und nichts daraus lernt. Zu groß ist die Angst nichts mehr in den Händen zu haben als "alte Erzählungen und Legenden" welche keine Beweise für "eine außerirdische Präsenz" liefern. Vielmehr bekommt man solche ungeprüften Fälle präsentiert welche schon beim ersten Blick, aber spätesten beim zweiten Blick einer Recherche nicht stand halten.

Einerseits sehen die UFO-Promoter eine "neue Sichtweise auf die UFO-Thematik von Seiten der US-Regierung" und deuten im Nachrichten-Nebel Alles zu ihren Gunsten und liefern gleichzeitig solch dürftige Fälle als Beweis und bringen sich selbst in die Lächerlichkeit, welche man so verzweifelt zu verhindern sucht.

CENAP-Michelstadt

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Sunday, July 7, 2019

"To The Stars" Closes its Series "Unidentified" Triumphantly Proclaiming Long-Debunked Italian Claims

 
The sixth and final episode of "Unidentified," produced by Tom DeLonge, started off with a bang. "Unidentified" airs on what used to be the History channel. (Now it's all aliens, all the time, practically.)

"Lou Elizondo discovered a different class of UFOs," we are boldly informed, although exactly what class of UFOs that might be, we are not told. Probably Tic Tacs or something. "But there's one thing his investigation has never found - until now!" Get ready for it -

"Is The Truth Here?"

Wow. And true to the teaser in last week's episode, we were shown the amazing story of a UFO in Sicily in 2006 that supposedly shot down a helicopter using an electromagnetic ray. The source of this amazing tale is Clarbruno Vedruccio, one of the Italian UFOlogists who met with TTSA's Tom DeLonge and Luis Elizondo on their recent visit to Rome. He also told about a series of "mysterious fires" occurring in the vicinity of Canneto di Caronia, in the province of Messina, which he attributed to electromagnetic beams coming out of the ocean. 
10-ph-d--clarbruno-vedruccio
Clarbruno Vedruccio, TTSA's Senior Italian Military Official Concerned about UFOs
This was not a new claim in UFOlogy. Paola Harris has been promoting it for some time, with the suggestion that it may involve an underwater UFO base nearby. Not everyone was convinced that aliens were to blame for the fires. Padre Gabriele Amorth, a Catholic priest from Rome, who was the honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists, had a ready explanation for the mysterious fires: it was the work of the devil. He explained that fires can happen “when the devil enters in the life of a person who allows him entrance.”

However, the demons and aliens were dealt a severe blow in March, 2015 when, after a lengthy investigation,  Italian police arrested one Giuseppe Pezzino, 26, for allegedly starting the "mysterious" fires occurring since 2004, with the help of his father. These incidents were investigated almost from the beginning by the Italian skeptics' group CICAP, which reported on them extensively.  Given that this case was closed four years ago, it is remarkable that Vedruccio did not seem to know about it. Or maybe he knew about the arrest of the arsonist, but chose to conceal it from his audience. In any case, it demonstrates that Vedruccio is not a reliable source of information, and that TTSA will believe practically any wild UFO-related story without actually checking it out.

At the beginning of the episode, the narrator proclaims, "They've been invited to a private meeting with senior Italian military officials concerned about UFO encounters." What that means, I'm sure, is that Vedruccio wanted to meet with them, and tell them his tall tales.

As for the helicopter that was allegedly zapped by a UFO, the photo promoting that claim comes from a local resident named Antonino Spinnato. He took a photograph that shows a helicopter, and some other object - very likely a bug. This video from the Discovery Channel UK explains his claim. Later on in the video, we see Spinnato chasing more UFOs. He claims to have seen quite a large number of UFOs down there in Sicily. A "repeater," you could definitely call him.
helicopterufo2
Antonino Spinnato's photo, showing the helicopter and the supposed UFO - probably a bug (from the video)
What happened was that in March of 2006 a MBB BK.117 helicopter of the Civil Protection Police had to make an emergency landing after "something solid" damaged three of its four main rotor blades. In the episode, Vedruccio claims that a craft appeared a few hundred meters behind a military helicopter, followed it, and shot a ray that destroyed the helicopter "wings." No evidence was shown to support this assertion, but somehow DeLonge and Elizondo found it to be very convincing! In this Italian-language interview by the team "Mystery Hunters" of local resident Nino Pezzino concerning the "mysterious fires"  he talks about the helicopter incident, saying that the pilot and the Captain felt a vibration, but they did not say anything about it to avoid creating panic. (Could this Pezzino be the father and enabler of the accused arsonist?)

This tells us a great deal about DeLonge, Elizondo, and the other supposed "experts" of TTSA. Far from being "experts," they are Babes in the Woods concerning UFOs. Keeping to themselves and other like-minded persons, never venturing outside their little bubble of group-think, they seem completely unaware of the long history of error, self-delusion, and hoaxing that constitutes the sordid spectacle of UFOlogy. They make statements and gaffes that betray complete ignorance of what has occurred before them in UFOlogy, yet they bluff their way to convincing gullible reporters for major news organizations to take what they say very seriously. (Speaking of reporters, TTSA's pet reporter, Bryan Bender of Politico, once again appeared several times, explaining how significant and wonderful everything is that TTSA is doing.)

So ends Season 1 of "Unidentified". Will there be a Season 2? If so, TTSA will have to find some more blurry UFO videos to play over and over and over again, while giving us no credible reasons to take seriously what they say. But a lot of awful shows have been given new seasons lately, and I'm sure that, if given the chance, TTSA can produce a second season just as ludicrous as this one.
Quelle: Bad UFOs Reflections on UFOs, skepticism, and practically anything else by Robert Sheaffer
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AATIP, Tic-Tacs and more - A reality check

July 07, 2019

It's been a while since my last post on these topics, that is, the so called "Pentagon UFO Program", and the few UFO cases that have been associated with it. There are two primary reasons for that. Firstly, I have been too busy with other things. Secondly, what should I write about? What has really changed?

This post is a review and update of the primary events and my thoughts so far. It's really about the history (and History) repeating itself, with the help of people who can't handle the truth, or worse, couldn't care less about it.

Whatchamacallit

As you can see from the title, I'm having some diNculty inventing a common name for the set of events I'm covering here. I think the fundamental issue is that, in reality, those events have little in common. But the media, and one entertainment company in particular, are eager to present them as if they have. And so, similarly to some other UFO waves, we even have a new term, tic-tac, in use to describe all sorts of events that have little resemblance to the one that originated the term.

I think this "wave" is best described as the UFO publicity wave of 2017-2019. Especially when we compare the amount of visibility UFOs have received in the media with the amount of actual new UFO cases of any signiScance or quality.

The Nimitz encounter, which is by far the most interesting part of the story, happened way back in November 2004. The associated video and navy event log were leaked at ATS back in February 2007. Paco Chierici published his version of the story in March 2015, which was based on personal conversations with Dave Fravor and what is now commonly known as the "Executive report" or "unoNcial oNcial report" of the events. It also mentioned Fravor and (Douglas) Kurth by name. So pretty much all of it was already out there, but it was just another UFO story that few knew or cared about. It was the (mainstream) media that changed it all.

And for the reasons detailed below, I don't think this wave will _y much further than the

 

And for the reasons detailed below, I don't think this wave will _y much further than the present year, at least as far as rational discussion is concerned.

TTSA - a "new" entertainment company is born

As a sort of prelused to the NYT "bombshell" story, TTSA held its announcement event on October 11, 2017. It was mostly covered in entertainment/music media, due to being headed by Tom DeLonge, and of course on UFO sites.

Many of those outlets described it as DeLonge's effort to crowdsource a spaceship. This is how DeLonge himself described it in a Facebook message on that day:

Hello, my name is Tom DeLonge from the Blink-182. I have brought together an elite team from CIA, DOD and the FMR Director of Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s SkunkWorks. We are aiming to build this ElectroMagnetic Vehicle to Travel instantaneously through Space, Air and Water by engineering the fabric of Space-Time. Our company is called To The Stars... and you can INVEST in our plan to revolutionize the world with technology that can change life as we know it. We Launch Today Www.ToTheStarsAcademy.com


Hello, my name is Tom DeLonge from the Blink-182. I have brought together an elite team from CIA, DOD and the FMR Director of Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s SkunkWorks. We are aiming to build this ElectroMagnetic Vehicle to Travel instantaneously through Space, Air and Water by engineering the fabric of Space-Time. Our company is called To The Stars... and you can INVEST in our plan to revolutionize the world with technology that can change life as we know it. We Launch Today Www.ToTheStarsAcademy.com

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I'm guessing the important bit was capitalized. In the meanwhile, oNcial SEC Slings described it in more realistic terms as an entertainment company, largely based on DeLonge's earlier entertainment businesses and funded by loans from a hot dog stand/management company, or something, with guaranteed minimum royalty payments to DeLonge, and so on.

They ended up netting a little over the million dollar offering minimum (maximum being 50 millions), with impressive costs:

The Company raised approximately $1,370,000 under this Offering, which ended September 28, 2018, receiving proceeds net of offering costs of approximately $1,172,000 during the 2018 year. Offering costs incurred by the Company were approximately $199,000 and $244,000 during the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively.

So at least someone made good money from all of that. Since their Offering Circular made it quite clear that their valuation was insane and the so called "investors" have little more than snowball's chance in hell of seeing their money again, and that they won't be able to actually build any spaceships with that level of investment, it probably wasn't a scam, at least in legal sense. Although their investment counter, which I tracked here at the time, certainly seemed to have misled their "investors". It showed more than an extra million related to what they eventually gained, much of which appeared during the Joe Rogan podcast, where DeLonge proved to be extremely gullible when it comes to UFO stories and clueless when it comes to science. Rogan himself described him a bit less politely

The Company raised approximately $1,370,000 under this Offering, which ended September 28, 2018, receiving proceeds net of offering costs of approximately $1,172,000 during the 2018 year. Offering costs incurred by the Company were approximately $199,000 and $244,000 during the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, respectively.

 

It seems they are now preparing another "investment" round with a maximum target of

30 million. Even that wouldn't cover their stock-based compensations for themselves:

As a result of the foregoing factors, the company’s net loss from operations was $10,660,495 in 2018 compared to a net loss of $30,665,436 for the 2017 year. These amounts include non-cash stock-based compensation expense recorded by the company during 2018 and 2017. Excluding the impact of non-cash stock-based compensation expense, the company’s net loss from operations was $1,495,078 in 2018 compared to $1,129,637 for the 2017 year.


As a result of the foregoing factors, the company’s net loss from operations was $10,660,495 in 2018 compared to a net loss of $30,665,436 for the 2017 year. These amounts include non-cash stock-based compensation expense recorded by the company during 2018 and 2017. Excluding the impact of non-cash stock-based compensation expense, the company’s net loss from operations was $1,495,078 in 2018 compared to $1,129,637 for the 2017 year.

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That TTSA announcement event featured a number of grand statements by former government/military/intelligence types, the kind who have tended to be featured as conspirators in UFO lore, but suddenly became more like targets of worship. The part that had some practical signiScance was Chris Mellon telling a badly distorted version of the Nimitz incident, while emphasizing that:

This story may sound like a sci [ movie but it is a true story and far from being the only one of its kind. I’ve met with one of the pilots and con[rmed the account as have other members of the To the Stars Academy team. But

the real beauty of this story is that you don’t have to take my word for it or even that of the Navy ocer who described these events in an article you can [nd on the web by searching on Nimitz UFOs 2004 there I was. Better yet the US government itself can verify the events involving the USS Nimitz on November 14th 2004. So the key to revealing whether or not there are advanced vehicles with capabilities far beyond anything made in America is now in the hands of the press and the public.

There is nothing to prove here. These are just facts that need to be properly evaluated. Without the facts, neither Congress nor our democracy can function effectively.

As he said, the beauty is that we don't have to take his words for it, and clearly shouldn't, as his words do not accurately re_ect the way the pilots themselves and other sources have have described it. For example, in his version, the object was heading directly towards the battlegroup, the pilots who had the visual encounter took gun camera footage of it, and more F-18s were dispatched with similar results. Such claims, which have been rejected by Fravor who actually saw it, may have contributed to similar claims made by others since then.

And bear in mind, one of those TTSA members Mellon was referring to supposedly included the leader of the "Pentagon UFO program", so he should have known better.

All in all, it was pretty clear from day one that the TTSA wasn't really interested about facts or serious research. It was mostly about entertainment, some of which turned out 

 

to be non-intentional, such as the image of party balloon Mellon used as illustration of his Nimitz story. Or their, let's be honest here again, delusional plans of building spaceships based on the ideas of a fringe physicist.

As a sidenote, at one point, Mellon's website also leaked the personal details of all those pilots. Should we expect something more from a supposed national security expert, and from a company that presumably expects other possible witnesses and "investors" to trust them?

2017-12-16 -The NYT story

While the earlier events gained relatively little interest, all of that changed when the story hit the New York Times, and other outlets soon after. The story behind that began from Leslie Kean, who Joe Nickell described as a credulous _ying-saucer promoter. She originally wrote about the launch of TTSA and "sensitive aerospace threat identiScation program" in HuNngton Post, but it gained little attention before she pitched that story to her longtime friend and NYT contributor Ralph Blumenthal, which led to the original NYT story, and several follow-ups. Several other outlets published similar stories, but as I noted before, the tone of NYT articles was markedly different, and read more like

adverts for TTSA, and lately for another rehash of what little material they have in the form of a History Channel UFO entertainment series. That's not surprising given the apparent close relations between Kean and the TTSA members, especially Chris Mellon, as both are board members of the UFODATA project.

Such connections between a few key people have clearly made all the difference, at least as far as publicity goes. Another key player on the media front has been George Knapp, who has also published articles linking UFOs to various pseudo-scientiSc and nonsensical topics, such as remote viewing, psychics and Skinwalker ranch. I covered here earlier how TTSA member and pseudoscientist Hal Puthoff also brought such topics together in one pseudoscientiSc conference. If you are worried about the ridicule UFOs have been dealt with before, just think how ridiculous it would look like if they would turn out to be planes, birds and balloons, after they had already been linked to everything from demons to psychic powers. And that's basically what's already happening, but we'll get back to that soon.

The UFO (or not) program (or not) that Elizondo led (or didn't)

Regardless of the grand claims by the TTSA, a few low quality video clips haven't really brought us any closer of having an answer to the hugely signiScant question of whether we are alone or not. Since there has been little progress or new data in that front, much

 

of the discussion has concentrated on attempts to Sgure out what the so called

of the discussion has concentrated on attempts to Sgure out what the so called

 

Pentagon UFO program/AAWSAP/AATIP really was.

There are still a lot of open questions about it, but it clearly wasn't another Project Blue Book, not in scale, not in signiScance. It also seems evident that its origins, and especially the politics and Snancial side, were questionable, to say the least. The picture that has emerged is far from an oNcial serious scientiSc study, but rather of a network of UFO/paranormal enthusiasts and friends helping friends and arranging Snancing for their interests. Now that the Pentagon has repeatedly denied Elizondo ever led the program, if there even was a program at that stage, and we know he became associated with it only after the primary funding had been cut, it also seems clear he was nowhere as important player as he and the TTSA have led us to believe.

The man at the very center and origins of it, James T. Lacatski, appears to be impossible to reach, and according to Elizondo, his "predecessor's career was ruined" because "UAP has even been associated with demons", and their research was seen as a threat to religious beliefs. My understanding is that Lacatski played a signiScant role in such associations by originally making connections to the Skinwalker ranch. So sounds like some demons of his own making came back to haunt him.

In any case, if that was THE government UFO program, they apparently don't know much, or know how to properly analyze the little they had. Furthermore, according to Chris Mellon, who supposedly had "deep and wide-ranging access to compartmented programs", it's unlikely any government agency is concealing UFO information and he "never detected the faintest hint of government interest or involvement in UFOs" during the time he had such access. That's pretty bad news for those who have put their hopes in seeing some world-shattering disclosure, if there's little to disclose.

The story seems to be similar with the navy, who apparently didn't even try to keep a major UFO incident secret. The higher ups just weren't that interested. Since the evidence from that incident is lacking, it can be hard to accept that's all there is.

Predictably, we have already seen various stories featuring more secret programs, and better and longer footage, and additional UFOs and intercepts during the Nimitz encounter, and so on. That's the way these stories tend to develop. When the best is not enough, invent something better.

Three of the most unusual usual videos

Now we get to the stuff that actually matters, evidence of UFOs. When it comes to

 

tangible evidence connected to AATIP and TTSA, we are left with what the Washington

tangible evidence connected to AATIP and TTSA, we are left with what the Washington

 

Post called "three of the most unusual videos" that Elizondo arranged to be released. Problem is, the one that's connected to the most signiScant event is just a small boring blob without audio, so it's not too surprising media mixed those up and tended to show the Gimbal clip while talking about the Nimitz incident.

Each of those clips were supposed to show some features that would defy conventional explanations, but none of them have survived closer scrutiny. And that's the important part that applies to them all. None of them contain the supposed extreme features they were supposed to have. It doesn't really make a difference whether we can positively identify whether they are birds, balloons, bugs or planes, or what kind or species speciScally. The world is full of blurry videos that are unidentiSed in that sense. The only reason those were supposed to be evidence of something extraordinary is because they weren't supposed to be just unidentiSed, but unexplainable, and that's not what they are. The mystery and need for extraordinary explanations is gone, and hence they can't really function as evidence of anything like that.

Another highly signiScant aspect is to consider who they managed to fool. We have heard how these videos were supposedly taken with the best equipment by highly

trained observers and so on. Similarly we have been led to believe they have been analyzed by competent people at the Pentagon and elsewhere. At the same time, some of those same observers and experts have belittled the so called "Internet experts", who have come to different conclusions. Luckily, in most cases we don't need to settle for one word against the other, as simple math and the data itself proves quite conclusively who has been fooled and who's not. We'll start with the clip that fell apart conclusively and literally on the same day it was published, by several independent "Internet experts".

Go "Fast"

The "Go Fast" footage shows a tiny blob _ying more or less in straight line, and that's basically it. So why is that a UFO video in the Srst place? According to the TTSA, it shows:

"The high-speed _ight of an unidentiSed aircraft at low altitude"
"The unidentiSed vehicle appears as a white oval shape moving at high speed from top right to lower left of the screen _ying very low over the water."
"There are no obvious wings or tails on the object. Even IR imagery of a cruise missile, would have visible wings at this range"
"There is no exhaust plume from the object. An exhaust plume is clearly visible on conventional aircraft in the mid-wave infrared frequency used by the ATFLIR."

 

Then they go on to compare that tiny blob to a large IR image that shows an aircraft in

 

detail, as if that makes sense. If that would be scaled down to similarly tiny blob, the

 

detail, as if that makes sense. If that would be scaled down to similarly tiny blob, the supposed exhaust plume would become invisible, like other small features, especially against a moving background and added compression artifacts etc. They did similar claims about the Nimitz clip, as if something like exhaust plumes would be possible to see from that tiny very low quality blob. But in this case that doesn't really matter, since there's little reason to suspect that target had an engine.

Parallax

With that part out of the equation, the only supposed "extraordinary features" are it _ying fast and low. Neither claim is true, but even if they were, is that really all it takes for something to be considered among the best evidence of aliens or such? Seriously, if that video is among the most unusual, the rest sound like pretty usual.

Even if you are stationary, and seeing something with your own eyes, velocities and sizes are diNcult to estimate, especially as the distance increases. It becomes a whole lot more diNcult when you are moving too, and so is the background, as the apparent movement of the target is some combination of your own movement and that of the target.

Depending on the background, available reference points, familiarity of the target, and so on, it can be very diNcult to estimate size, velocity and distance at the same time. And when you misestimate one, there's a mathematical relationship that makes it likely you will similarly misestimate the rest as well. A small target at a close distance and slow speed can look very much the same as one that has double the size, distance and speed. If something is seen visually, in 3D, you may be able to tell the difference in some cases by changing your viewpoint by moving yourself or your head. But if all you have is a video, where the scene has been _attened to two dimensions, even that option is gone.

So, out of the three videos, how many of them had a target that was seen visually as well? None. How many had some background with proper reference points that would have helped estimation? None. In fact, they were all Slmed above the ocean, and even the visual encounter of the Nimitz incident, which happened hours before the FLIR footage was taken, and probably wasn't the same target at all, happened over a calm sea with little to no reference points.

Estimation errors of the above kind, the so called parallax effect, are very common in supposed UFO cases, and they seem to have contributed to all three cases discussed here as well. It should be among the Srst things to consider on all UFO cases. The diNculty is of course proving that such errors happened, as that's the whole point of the

 

effect, things look the same visually. For the same reason, it doesn't really matter how the TTSA is trying to highlight the observational skills of the pilots:

The pilots aboard the Super Hornet are not only highly capable [ghter pilots, but they are trained observers skilled at scrutinizing their observations and targets in order to ascertain “friend or foe.” They are speci[cally trained to look for discreet changes in shape, size position, aight attitude (angles), and speed in order to determine the nature of the threat. They are able to discern nuanced details that few people would normally recognize.

 

Especially when there's research indicating both commercial and military pilots make relatively poor witnesses. And when it comes to these three videos, what we see there is more or less all that the pilots saw too. Sure, their image quality was likely somewhat higher, but still limited to the 640x480 VGA resolution of the ATFLIR pod, and they were making their initial estimates, whose effects we can hear in the audio, in real-time, while _ying.

Math doesn't lie

While a blurry video is just that, even if taken with multi-million dollar equipment, the real

beneSt of such equipment are the presumably pretty accurate measurements given on the display. Thanks to them, we actually know how far the target was, and can calculate other relevant and dependent information based on that and the rest of the data on the display.

When it comes to the Go Fast footage, it's really, really easy to calculate the target didn't _y low over the water, as TTSA has claimed, and that changes everything, as after that there's every reason to suspect it wasn't as fast either, and more involved calculationsshow it was slow enough to be a bird (my Srst choice) or a balloon, hence no engines or exhaust plumes needed.

The display actually makes it so easy to see it wasn't _ying low that it hardly needs calculation at all. You only need to look at the display explainer on the TTSA Go Fast page, and take the range Snder, altitude and vertical angle values from any point of the actual video during the time they were displayed (don't take instrument values from the explainer, as TTSA faked them too). For example, close to the start, the plane was _ying at 25,000 feet, and the rangeSnder showed the distance to the target was 4.4 nautical miles, and the vertical angle to the target was 26 degrees. 4.4 nautical miles is around 26700 feet, so close to the same as the altitude. If you are at 25,000 feet, and looking downward in a 26 degree angle, a viewing distance of 26,700 obviously takes you nowhere close to the water.

Claiming it does is basically the same as saying that if you are standing at a height of 2.5 feet, and you have a 2.7 feet stick, you can hit the ground while holding the stick at a shallow angle of 26 degrees. It so obviously doesn't work. Here's my earlier illustrationof how that target, which was most likely a bird or alternatively a balloon, was actually _ying high at an altitude of more than 13000 feet:

pentagon-video-r

But here's the real issue: If that is so obvious and easy to prove, and all that data is available right there and explained by TTSA themselves, how is it possible that the pilots, and AATIP and Elizondo, and the entire TTSA team, and whoever experts they have supposedly contacted, didn't notice that? Oh, and you can apparently also add that

have supposedly contacted, didn't notice that? Oh, and you can apparently also add that

 

new History Channel show and their experts to that list as well, as it's now repeating the same false claims. And so far there's no indication they would do anything to admit or correct that. It seems none of them actually analyzed the footage to any extent. And since this video is one of only three, it certainly doesn't seem like they had too much data for not being able to spend a couple of hours on it before this all.

 

But such a blunder is of course more understandable, at least as far as the AATIP is concerned, if the AATIP hardly existed at that point. And that seems more or less consistent with the statements Pentagon spokespersons and others have given about it. It seems likely it was little more than an informal network of UFO enthusiasts, who got overly excited about any material they could get hold of.

Fortsetzung...

Quelle: Parabunk

 

 
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