Sunday, December 31, 2017

Tom DeLonge, Disclosure and an Analytical History of UFOs

It would seem that Tom DeLonge’s program has had some success and I wonder if his status as a member of Blink 182 didn’t provide him with access to some high-level people that the rest of us might not have enjoyed. At any rate, just recently, those he had been working with, and who talked about a sighting along with gun camera film made by Navy fighter pilots, was confirmed by the Pentagon. In fact, we were all told that there had been a secret study made of UFOs for several years, though that study was concluded in 2012.

New reports and various commentators told us that the Air Force had begun investigating UFOs in 1947 under the name of Project Blue Book. So, bear with me as we look at a brief history of UFO sightings and investigations. They didn’t begin in 1947 as has been suggested and it didn’t begin with Project Blue Book as claimed. It began during the Second World War with aircrew reports of strange things in the skies around them that became known as the Foo Fighters.

The Foo Fighters were thought to be some sort of weapon or aircraft developed by the Axis that could counter the air superiority enjoyed by the Allies. There were discussions at the highest levels of intelligence and Allied command about them.
Alleged photograph of the Foo Fighters.
One of those involved was an American intelligence officer, Colonel Howard McCoy, who would pop up later. Scientists who made the analysis, which ended with the end of the war, made no identification of the Foo Fighters. The priority ended with the war and it was discovered that the Foo Fighters were not an Axis development. These became unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). All this was covered in The Government UFO Files that was published a couple of years ago.

But sightings didn’t end. In 1946, first in Finland, then Sweden, and finally all of Scandinavia and Europe, people were seeing what they called the Ghost Rockets. These were described more as rockets, some resembling the V-weapons developed by the Nazis, than they were as spaceships. Sightings continued into the late summer until various Scandinavian governments imposed a news blackout and without new stories about the Ghost Rockets published, the sightings seemed to end.

A streak of light that was thought to be one of the Ghost Rockets.
Today it is believed to be a meteor.
The sightings, however, did interest American intelligence. The thinking was that it might be some sort of Soviet development that demonstrated a new technology taken from Germany. Decades later it was learned that the Soviets had made no such development, but that didn’t mean that interest wasn’t high in 1946. An American intelligence officer, Colonel Howard McCoy, was one of those given the task of identifying the Ghost Rockets.

In late 1946, according to research done by Wendy Connors and Michael Hall, McCoy was given orders to establish an unofficial study of these UAPs. He set up an office at Wright Field with locked doors, very limited access and began gathering new reports. One of the best came from the Richmond (Virginia) Weather Station beginning on April 1, 1947. This was a series of sightings that included, according to the tales told, disk-like objects made by several different witnesses. It is important because it demonstrates an interest in these UAPs at the highest level of the military command structure that preceded the Kenneth Arnold sighting of late June 1947.

When the Arnold sighting was reported by the national press, the unofficial investigation became official. Investigations of sightings began by military officers, scientists and even FBI agents. In September, Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining, commanding officer of the Air Materiel Command, issued a letter that suggested the phenomena, that is the UAPs, were something real and not illusionary or fictitious. He ordered the creation of a project to investigate these flying saucers. Contrary to popular opinion, or rather what the news media is reporting today, that was not the beginning of Project Blue Book but of Project Sign. It began official operation in 1948. The officer who wrote the draft of the letter and the recommendations was Colonel Howard McCoy, the man who had been involved with them for years. This demonstrates a link from the Foo Fighters of the Second World War and this new project begun in 1947.

In the beginning, the project name, Sign, was classified with the public being told it was Project Saucer. That point will become important later. Many if not most of those involved in Sign believed that there was alien visitation and created an “Estimate of the Situation,” to prove it. Using the best evidence available they assembled the Top Secret document that was sent up the chain of command to General Vandenberg. Vandenberg  didn’t believe that the evidence proved the case for flying saucers. The Estimate was ordered declassified and then destroyed. While it might seem backwards, that is to declassify the report and then destroy it, by doing it that way, no record of it was created. In other words, destruction of Top Secret material required documentation to prove the document had been properly destroyed but by declassifying it first, no such documentation was required. This is just another indication that everything about UFOs was not above the board and that there was secrecy involved.

Those left at Sign, after a house cleaning that saw those who had written the report removed from the project, eventually issued a final report suggesting that there was nothing to the flying saucers that couldn’t be explained in the mundane. There was nothing more to be done and the impression left was that the Air Force had concluded its study which was something that was announced. In fact, the code name was changed to Project Grudge, and the investigations continued. Eventually, Grudge produced a long final report which again suggested that UFOs were explainable even though there was a large body of reported sightings that were not identified. The project was then nearly abandoned with little being done thought it still, technically, existed.

Grudge then evolved into Project Blue Book with renewed interest after a series of radar sightings. For about 18 months, through the summer of 1952, the effort was in gathering solid information and investigating the sightings in an unbiased manner. But old habits die hard and Blue Book became nothing more than a public relations project with the goal of explaining sightings. Air Force regulations, particularly AFR 80-17 provided for releasing UFO information if the sighting had a plausible explanation but requiring the information to be classified if no explanation had been found. Questions about these unexplained sightings were directed to a higher authority.

In October 1957, according to documentation found in the Blue Book files, another project was created known as Moon Dust. The mission of Moon Dust was to recover falling space debris of foreign manufacture or of unknown origin. Moon Dust did have a responsibility for investigating UFOs which fell under the unknown origin banner. We know this because of documents released under FOIA from the Department of State as well as information in the Blue Book files. I have found four cases from September 1960 in the Blue Book files marked Moon Dust. Granted, they are probably explainable by meteors or other natural phenomena, but they are found in the files of the Air Force UFO investigation and they are marked “Moon Dust.”

During the 1960s, it is clear from the documentation in the Blue Book administrative files, there was an effort to end the investigation, though it could be suggested it was an effort to end the public face of UFO investigation by the Air Force. The University of Colorado and Dr. Edward U. Condon, accepted a grant to investigate UFOs. While it was suggested that it was an unbiased investigation, documentation exists proving that it was anything but that. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler provided instructions to Condon that suggested that they find there was no threat to national security, there was nothing to the reports of scientific interest, and the Air Force had done a good job investigating sightings. Condon himself, at a speaking engagement in Corning, New York, told the audience that he was ready to find those things but he wasn’t supposed to do that for another 18 months. In December, 1969, Project Blue Book was closed and there were no UFO investigations sanctioned by the US government, at least according to public knowledge.

In the long report released at the time, Condon wrote, “We have no evidence of secrecy concerning UFO reports.” This is a strange statement given that one of the Committee’s scientists, who was investigating sightings at Maelstrom Air Force Base was told by the UFO officer there that he couldn’t discuss the sightings because of national security. There were other files, now declassified that were clearly marked as “Secret.”

But what about Moon Dust, you might ask? Did it end in 1969 when Blue Book was closed? The answer is, “No,” and the documentation found through FOIA proved that. Even though many documents about it were in the hands of UFO researchers, in 1985, the Air Force told US Senator Jeff Bingaman that such a project had never existed. Presented with documents from the Department of State, the Air Force amended their response, suggesting that the project had never been used. Based on other documentation, that proved to be untrue as well. It must be noted that the deployment of Moon Dust personnel in a number of cases did not seem to recover anything proving alien visitation but the real point is the project did exist, it did deploy and when asked, the Air Force denied these things.

In 1985, Robert Todd, a UFO skeptic, filed a FOIA request asking about the follow-on project to Moon Dust. He was told that the new code name was properly classified and could not be released. In other words, he wasn’t told no such project existed, only that it was classified under a new name.

I haven’t mentioned the Robertson Panel of January 1953, which was a CIA project that had its conclusions and probably the final report written before the panel sessions ended. Their recommendation was that there was nothing to the UFO reports and that a program of debunking should be started. For those who wish more detail, I have outlined all this in The Government UFO Files.

Tom DeLonge
What all this have to do with Tom DeLonge and the most recent revelation about a secret military study of UFOs you might ask? Well, it shows a long list of deceit at the hands of the military and other governmental agencies. It demonstrates some of the cracks in that secrecy that have long been ignored by the mainstream media because of their distaste for stories of alien visitation. It shows that the government has actually lied about the situation time and again and that while they might have claimed that there were no secret UFO studies or files (just look at what the Condon Committee had to say about that even when access to a specific UFO case was requested, they were told it was classified) that turned out not to be true.

What we have learned over the last several days is that much of the 22 million in funding for this new UFO project, landed with Las Vegas based businessman Robert Bigelow. He has been developing a space technology and it seems that he wanted the UFO reports as a way of deducing the propulsion systems being used by the UFOs. That much of the study focused on reports from the military, especially military pilots, indicates that they were looking for something more than just reports of lights in the night sky or strange blobs seen in the daylight. If something could be learned about the dynamics of UFO flight, then progress might be made in developing a system that would duplicate it. It is sort of a back-engineering task (and I use that term advisedly) because it would seem that if they learned something about the exhaust or the maneuvering of the UFO, they might also be able to learn something about the propulsion.

But none of that is as important as the implications of all this which is why I spent time explaining the history of UFO research as conducted by the US government and military for about three-quarters of a century. We have seen how the government kept the general public in the dark about those investigations, often saying one thing and doing another. They announced the close of the investigations on several occasions but kept right on working. They said there was nothing to the reports, yet kept gathering and classifying those that couldn’t be explained while announcing solutions to the others. The denied the classified studies and as we have seen, there were those studies made. And, they engaged in a program of ridiculing those who claimed to see UFOs, often suggesting they were uneducated people who might have had a drinking problem when the truth was that the higher the education, the less likely it was for the sighting to be a misidentification of a mundane object.

Now we learn, through Tom DeLonge’s organization and some of those supporting him who were, at one time, highly-placed individuals, that another, multi-million-dollar study was undertaken, the funding hidden in the black budget. But what seems to have been missed in all this was that if all the research conducted in the past proved there was no alien visitation, as we have been told, and if there was nothing hidden by various government agencies or in their files who had studied UFOs for decades, then why did we waste 22 million dollars on an investigation that was sure to fail? If the evidence was really as poor as we have been told, and if there was nothing to suggest otherwise, was this money a gift to Bigelow and his corporation and others who were involved? If there was nothing to find, then what was the real purpose of all this?

Steve Bassett
I had one other thought that probably thrills Steve Bassett and the Disclosure crowd, which I don’t think that anyone has mentioned. This is actually the first time that the government admitted there was something to this idea of alien visitation and had spent so much money so quickly on an attempt to learn more. It was the first time that they actually, almost, endorsed a sighting report of an attempted intercept by American military aircraft without providing some ridiculous explanation such as those offered for a variety of credible reports. It might suggest the first cracks in the stone wall of denial that we have been subjected to since many of us became interested in UFOs.

What this latest revelation suggests is a subtle change in attitude. There was no denial by the military or the government and the main stream media seemed to take the announcement as somewhat important. Rather than treat the news with the disdain they normally show for UFO related stories, they seemed to be interested in it. That they don’t know much about the whole of UFOs, and can’t seemed to be bothered to even look it up at Wikipedia, they did treat it seriously.

So, does this indicate a relaxation of the curtain of ridicule? Does it suggest that more information about UFOs might be coming? Are we being told that something of a scientific value might be learned by studying UFO reports, even if that doesn’t lead us to alien visitation? Those are the questions that need to be answered.


There is one other thing that I should note here. Those at the highest levels were looking at this as a way of learning something about the propulsion used by the UFOs. That indicates that they know more about it than they are letting on because if that wasn’t the case, then it was nearly a crime to spend 22 million dollars on a study they had to know what fail. The only way this makes any sense is if they believed that such a study would produce results and the only way they could believe that was if they suspected that some UFO sightings might be of advanced technical craft. The only way any of this makes sense is if they know something about UFOs that they haven’t told us. And that is the real revelation.

35 comments:

Zak MacKracken said...

Best article I have read on this matter!

Paul Young said...

Thanks Kevin. That's an excellent overview of what this latest information can mean to the subject. There certainly seems to be a sea change in main stream reporting (at least on this side of the pond) these last few days.
We're actually getting news segments without the usual X-File style music.

Now I shall sit back and await with bated breath for an amusing Orfordness-esque explanation for what Cmdr David Fravor and Lt Cmdr Jim Slaight came across...Lancelot???

Paul Young said...

..and Happy New Year chaps.

(This could be an interesting one.)

andycher said...

Thank you for this. I don't know how many times these various cover-ups need to be exposed before people who talk about UFO secrecy are no longer dismissed as 'conspiracy theorists.' While we don't know what information is hidden from us, logic can still be applied to the situation. If 'they' are convinced that there are objects flying around that they can't identify, then that would explain an interest in discovering the origin of these UFOs and in the technology behind them. If the origin and/or the technology are known, but classified, then all we can do, until some Snowden comes along, is speculate. There are those who claim that 'there is no there there' and at best UFOs are a counter-intelligence ploy, but even that raises questions about who is being misled and why.

A

Tom Livesey said...

There is also the curious matter of the recovered material that is now the subject of an FOIA request. How nuts and bolts is the material? Is it sludge? Well, there are so many questions.

Article from the Daily Express UK: https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/897900/UFO-Pentagon-metal-aliens-make-public

Bob Koford said...

Good Afternoon, Kevin and blog-readers.

There is even more evidence of the actual importance applied to this subject in the so-called Blue Book documents, as well as in documents available for reading at the Central Intelligence Agency's on-line library. Yes, you will have to read several documents, and conduct some searches, but it is all there.

First-of-all, as early as 1952 the UFO office declared (it is in the documentation) that it desired to close the public portion of the program as soon as “technology” could make that possible -not because there was nothing to it. They didn’t want an Intelligence Program to be subject to public scrutiny, among other reasons.

One other important piece of information can be found by using the term, "Unconventional Aircraft" in your PBB archive search. In 1948 the Air Force sent a directive to the CIA for them to assist in the UFO program, by sending all available information on Unconventional Aircraft sightings, by deemed competent observers, to Wright Field. Yes, today the term Unconventional Aircraft can be used to indicate such things as balloons, drones, parachutes, and other non-usual air devices, but we also know, from the Army letter created by Colonel Riley Ennis (USA/GS/ID), on 25 March 1948, that Unconventional Aircraft was to include "Flying Discs."

I feel it is also important to see, in the files, the fact that the Intelligence Community's "Watch Committee", called the National Indications Committee, had an important Air Force connection. From its inception, in 1954, the National Indications Center (NIC) and its Watch Committee, would have assigned to it an Air Force General to the position of Assistant Director.

In the Blue Book material, in the late nine-teen sixties (see for instance the briefing of 09 June 1966), then Aerial Phenomena Office's Director, Major Hector Quintanilla, Jr., gave special briefings to the Assistant for the National Indications Committee (AFNIN) and the Deputy Director/Research and Engineering (DD/RE). In the 1966 briefing, for instance, the DD of the NIC was one General Thomas. (see, for instance, from the Project Bluebook Archive: NARA-PBB86-1125: " b. The briefing yesterday at 1400 for AFNIN, General Thomas, seemed to be successful...General Thomas made the remark that if Major Quintanilla came across something interesting not to forget AFNIN. Major Quintanilla said that he would not forget them. ")

If there was nothing to these Aerial Phenomena, groups such as AFNIN and the NIC would not care about the TDEW's Office of Aerial Phenomena, at all. Why would they need to be briefed? One would think that it would be the other way around, and the NIC briefing the Aerial Phenomenon Group.

This is my interpretation, admittedly --but to me it adds to the mystery of why the Pentagon would seem to be more open about this subject, so publicly, of late. What has changed?

Best to All,
Bob

Brian B said...

When this story broke I suggested Kevin comment on it. He may have already been aware of it, but even so more information has come out about it since the story first broke. I’m glad he has addressed it.

We’ve heard interviews from two congressmen who support it and one USN pilot who was a witness to it, along with the former program’s director who resigned.

First, is it not possible that hidden behind this story is something much deeper, that being yet another case of bureaucratic corruption in secretly directing $22 Million to one man’s aviation company?

Second, it’s hard to dismiss the witness testimony but as we have seen before is it not possible the disinformation campaigns we have seen before include having former military men falsely comment on the program as means to coverup Pentagon mishandling of tax payer funds, current black budget process and technology, or government corruption?

Thirdly, we’ve seen officials both ridicule witnesses and oddly, at times, also hint, promote or suggest that some sightings may even be extraterrestrial as a way of simply confusing or hiding the real truth from the public?

Fourth, all of those interviewed thus far, while witnesses or program supporters, are most certainly not briefed on each and every compartmentalized black project which is known to exist. Is it not possible then that while they may be telling the truth as they see it, that the real truth has never been revealed to them and that some agent of our current military is just fine with the idea that other servicemen might conclude their top secret project is really ET because it just buries the secrecy of their project even further?

Fifth, I’ve seen video analysis of this film and at least one pro-ET group has concluded the object seen in the released film is actually a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II in a continuous slow roll and the image has been blurred or obscured to make it seem anomalous.

I for one can say the object seen does not look like a “tic-tac” as described. Isn’t it possible then that this film is not the actual film captured and just a purposely released misdirect for the media and general public?

I have a hard time seeing Tom DeLong gaining access to top level military secrets (over other researchers) and persons in the know simply because he once played in a band. Isn’t it possibly he’s simply being “played” by the powers that be?

If not, then you have to seriously reconsider Jackie Gleason having actually seen alien bodies with President Nixon as having some merit of truth.

Personally I think the Pentagon was happy to entertain an elected official’s offer of black budget funding to explore a question that a few senior ranking officers wanted more information on because in truth they have never been read into the classified projects being hidden from them.

We’ll need more information before anything is certain but I do agree with Kevin that our military is hiding something and that it frequently misleads people in the name of national security.

cda said...

I wonder if you are reading too much into all this.

Remember there has been an active SETI program (active off and on) since Frank Drake began Project Ozma in 1960. SETI has been described as a silly waste of time & money by such learned ufologists as Stan Friedman, in the same way most of the scientific community would describe UFO research (including this latest Project).

Yes there was, is, and will continue to be, occasional sums of money devoted to UFO research, either at an official level or at a lower, privately funded level. These sums may or may not be large, depending on viewpoint. Similar sums have in the past (and maybe even now) been spent on other borderline science matters by interested parties.

Why not just accept it as a fact, instead of all this speculation as to whether the US authorities, or any other country's authorities, have some ulterior motive such as a cover-up of something vital?

I cannot see Mr Trump spending any money on UFOs, but if perchance he did it would merely be further evidence to his opponents that he was 'off his rocker'.

I do not feel ufology has been advanced one iota by these NYT revelations. If you disagree, wait and see.

couldbebetter said...

This recent "disclosure" event is meaningless. I am certain agencies such as the NRO
can track objects even if they go into outer space or into the oceans. I am certain they can lock
onto and then track such objects to find out where they have gone to. If they are beings
from another world they already know this. Of course "Alien" craft have shown interest in
our nuclear capabilities and have fried weapons. Of course all of this officially is highly classsified and will not be officially released. The Tom DeLonge stuff is there to distract
us by letting the media claim there is something out there but we cannot figure out what it is. This is BS. The NRO, CIA, and NSA all know what it is. They release videos that the public will look at and read whatever they want into them...be it the Fundamentalist Christians who say it is Satan or demons, or the skeptic who says it is plazma. Sadly, UFOlogy is being mislead again and the powers that be get to ignore the serious researchers
such as Robert Hastings. One clue on this is that the government will never address the
issue of UFO's and Nukes. They cannot risk scaring the public with that! DeLonge's group
have current or old security clearances and will not disclose classified info, hence, the
group is a scam if anyone believes they are truely looking for answers. They are not. They are just a distraction to keep us from the serious issues and questions that should be asked about Alien involvement with Earth and its inhabitants.

William Strathmann said...

Curious about Twinning and the "Estimate". I'd thought that Vandenberg was the actual disappointed customer that disagreed with "interplanetary" and ordered the document's destruction. Was there more to that story?

Re: the recent news
One hopes, at the very least, that the publicity may give military pilots some encouragement not to bury their anomalous experiences for fear of a career stall. Maybe.

Happy New Year!

Zak MacKracken said...


"Sadly, UFOlogy is being mislead again and the powers that be get to ignore the serious researchers
such as Robert Hastings. One clue on this is that the government will never address the issue of UFO's and Nukes"

It seems that Hastings excellent work has been confirmed by this group :

"Mr Elizondo told the newspaper there were geographical “hot spots” – sometimes around nuclear facilities and power plants – which emerged during AATIP’s investigations, as well as common factors between UFO sightings. "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ufo-pentagon-beyond-reasonable-doubt-video-us-navy-tracking-pilots-footage-unidentified-flying-a8127881.html

KRandle said...

Tom -

I'm not sure that this FOIA for the metal is going to work. The evidence for its existence is shaky, it is held privately which means FOIA doesn't work... or, it comes under National Security which negates FOIA. While it is something that should be done, I fear the results will be the same as they have been for years. Little or nothing of importance.

CDA -

My point is that this investigation was approved and funded which suggests some knowledge beyond that of the general public. While Bigelow clearly believes that there has been alien visitation and that something cold be learned by studying UFO reports, the narrative had always been that UFOs had no national security implication and nothing of scientific value could be learned by studying those reports. Somehow, someone convinced those with the purse strings that this narrative was inaccurate and something of scientific value could be learned. It implies there is more information available at some level of government.

William -

Of course it was Vandenberg... I had Twining on the brain because he had appeared in an earlier paragraph. Thanks for the correction and I have updated the blog to reflect the accurate information.

Larry said...

As for the F-18 FLIR imagery being a misidentified F-35: The encounter took place in 2004. The first flight of an F-35 took place in late 2005.

Robert Hastings said...

Kevin writes, “In December, 1969, Project Blue Book was closed and there were no UFO investigations sanctioned by the US government, at least according to public knowledge.”

“Public knowledge” being the operative phrase. However, another document secured by researcher Robert Todd via the FOIA, in 1980, reveals the actual, unpublicized Air Force approach to UFOs, post-Blue Book: The memorandum, dated October 20, 1969, and signed by Air Force General C.H. Bolender, the Air Force’s Deputy Director of Development, was directed to all Air Force commands. While the memo did indeed suggest that Project Blue Book should be terminated, it then stated, “...reports of UFOs which could affect national security should continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedure designed for this purpose.”

General Bolender emphasized this point, adding, “Reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book system.” As researcher Barry Greenwood has noted, sixteen attachments which once accompanied the Bolender memorandum are no longer in Air Force files, at least according to the FOIA managers who responded to various requests for their release.

Regardless, the Bolender memo confirms that the most important UFO cases—those potentially affecting national security—were never routinely funneled to Project Blue Book in the first place, but were sent to other, less-publicized groups within the Air Force, which were *still* tasked with collecting and evaluating such reports after Blue Book’s official and highly-touted closure.

Indeed, most of the USAF veterans I have interviewed regarding their involvement in UFO incidents at nuclear weapons sites say that they were debriefed by an OSI (Office of Special Investigations) agent. Those debriefings occurred in the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and beyond. Consequently, OSI should have lots of files relating to these cases. Nevertheless, when I’ve attempted to access some of those, relating to one incident or another, OSI has repeatedly told me that they had no—zero—UFO-related documents in their files.

Re the recent admission by Luis Elizondo that some of the UFO incidents investigated by the newly-exposed Pentagon UFO study involved UFO activity at nuclear sites, I offer this: In 2008, physicist Hal Puthoff asked me to overnight-ship four copies of my book UFOs and Nukes to him so that he could distribute them to some “movers and shakers in Washington” at a meeting the following morning. He would not identify those persons but, last week, Hal admitted to me that one of them was Elizondo. (Puthoff still declines to identify the other three but told me that I could now publicize his 2008 request.)

albert said...

$22 million seems like a lot of money to (most of) us, but it's only 0.003% of the Pentagon's annual budget. They probably spend more on latrines.

. .. . .. --- ....

Brian B said...

@Larry who wrote:

“As for the F-18 FLIR imagery being a misidentified F-35: The encounter took place in 2004. The first flight of an F-35 took place in late 2005.”

Yes true, but to clarify the suggestion (by others) was that the video was not actually from the incident being described but rather something just “put out there” as a supposed UFO when in fact it’s really not. Meaning it could be film from 2005 or more recent and not really of the object they claim they saw.

As I mentioned this object doesn’t resemble a “tic-tac” pill shape (to me). Also the pilots describe a fleet of these things and yet no film of a fleet has been provided. Where are the other pilot’s testimony? We only have one and what he described is different than what is seen in the film.

In any case you can watch one pro-ET group’s analysis here and he debunks it as fake:

https://youtu.be/f97GzE_aA0U

Brian B said...

John Lear’s commentary -

I’m not a fan of John Lear’s take on most things, but here is his analysis of the video and I have to agree some of what he says makes sense. His theory is the New York Times chose to help DeLonge and produced a fake video to match the story from the Pentagon, and that behind this all was former senator Harry Reid’s desire to be the “man of disclosure” and the Pentagon went along for the money and to use the effort to continue a cover-up of whatever it is they want to hide.

Lear says: First thing I noticed right off was the ambient noise, supposed to be sounding like wind rushing against the aircraft. Like someone who didn't know anything about ambient noise in a fighter jet was trying to make wind noise. There is no wind noise in a jet because the microphone is inside he oxygen mask which seals around your face and does not let any ambient noise in. When a pilot is talking there should be a very faint sound of him breathing. In this case there was not even the slightest breathing sound. It sounded like the pilots where reading from a script into a recorder on a kitchen table and they were using a home-type vacuum cleaner to simulate wind rushing outside the fighter. There were several interruptions in the pilot conversation which, if it was being recorded from the aircrafts audio system, there couldn't be.

Then the pilots conversation using 'dude' and 'bro' is not Navy jargon. Fighter pilots talk in short, clipped sentences. No extraneous comments. Then the one pilot says something like “The wind is out of 120 degrees at 20 knots” or something like that. Why would he bother to tell the other pilot that information? The other pilot has that information on his HUD (Heads Up Display) Maybe because the other pilot can't read? Not. Thats a stupid remark to put in the script.

Then the attitude reference, presented to the pilot by the HUD (Heads Up Display) which allows the pilot to see attitude, altitude, airspeed and other vital information while simultaneously looking directly outside and showing him a point of reference to aim at. There are 2 little vertical lines that tell the pilot exactly where he is aiming. Down to the left on this HUD is the airspeed, in this case 238 knots. So if he is going 238 knots how come the UFO isn't getting any closer? The attitude reference (on the HUD) shows he is in a 20 degree left bank. So if he is turning how can the alleged UFO stay in the exact center of the HUD? The UFO would have to to be matching the jets exact rate of turn to stay in the center of the HUD. That means whoever drew the UFO or penciled it in somehow didn't know how the HUD or the aircraft point of reference worked. That UFO should have been making changes left and right, up and down as the pilot attempted to keep it in the center but the alleged UFO didn't move like that.

Then the clouds were simulated. They were of a stratocumulus type and their shape was uniform throughout the turn. Unless there is a storm in progress (which there isn't) clouds, if there are clouds, should have been of the stratus type simply because the underlying sea does not have varying degrees of temperature to make a stratocumulus as shown in the video. The clouds over the Pacific could not have been the stratocumulous type as shown in the video. The uniformity of the clouds throughout the turn indicates to me that this video may have been filmed in a flight simulator which does have that uniformity simply because it would be unnecessary added expense to the background presentation. I have thousands of hours in all types of simulators and I know how they work and how they are built.

Pat said...

Having spent time after my active duty as a contractor at crane Indiana naval weapons station, I have seen examples of night vision devices that combine image intensifiers with flir and even color scale that make our current night vision look archaic. Vehicle mounted systems that use drones to give Doppler radar coverage for 40 plus miles of ground , detecting personnel, vehicles, structures etc. I have no doubt that we have a generation of air craft unknown outside of DARPA. And still we know there is something out there that we don't control..get ready for col. Alexander to tell us there are no secrets,he knows all

Anonymous said...
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couldbebetter said...

Here is my problem with the 22 million spent on finding UFO's. Of course unidentified objects
are tracked and identified. That is what various agencies and military units are supposed
to do. Theses units may track submarines, ships, aircraft, baloons, etc. There are systems
in place to deal with unknowns...for example classified aircraft...which may be spotted to
insure these are not attacked as opposed to a real threat aircraft. My point is that at some level certain types of reports are classified and that informatin will not be made public.
Unknown craft around nuclear weapons storage areas, any evidence recorded on those goes up
through certain channels and wherever they go those groups know what they are. Mr. Hastings
reports that the AF OSI debriefs AF members who have had encounters with UFO's. Those reports
are not made public and whoever is acting on those reports will not share what they know with
people like ret. Col Alexander. (Who then proclaims there are no UFO secrets.) And yet, people are impressed he is part of DeLonge's group? ( if anything it is more proof he is a disinformation agent.) The bottom line is that at some level some group knows that some outside "power" is monitoring the world's military/technical capabilities. Whoever they are or what they want is being closely guarded by those who are involved. People like DeLonge and company are either useful idiots or disinformtion agents. UFOlogy gets fooled
again.

Robert Sheaffer said...

"The only way any of this makes sense is if they know something about UFOs that they haven’t told us. And that is the real revelation."

No, the only way any of this makes sense is if Bigelow, a wealthy campaign contributor to Harry Reid and a lifelong True Believer in UFOs, convinced his favorite Senator to funnel cash his way, because Bigelow was certain that with the extra money he could discover the Secret of the Saucers.

Mr. Sweepy said...

There is a word missing in your overview. That is "coincident". Why? All three of the main players in this story, Senator Harry Reid, DeLonge and the billionaire Bigelow, all come from Las Vegas. I just don't think this an accident. This saga started while Reid was still in office and the Senate Majority Leader. He had access to some information but the extent of his total knowledge is unknown. LeLonge, is the entertainer first that is seeking a new line of business. The billionaire, seeking new technology that may well exist but the mother load is in getting the patients from new entry sources and technology. In short, all three have motivations. Do I think Senator Reid plan and orchestrated the creation of this Pentagon office? Yes, that is how and why this is even in the press.

So the next questions is, what happens now? I don't know. What I would be watching out for is what if anything happens on the political front first. I believe that the military would prefer that this whole story just go away. The politicians? If they can gain campaign donations or TV interview time then something might happen.

So if we hear nothing in the 2018, then the dust fall again on the boxes of UFO files. Otherwise, it could be a very interesting year for the UFO community.

CommanderCronus said...

Referring to the videos by their names makes things a bit easier. There are two UFO videos available on the To The Stars Academy(TTSA) website. The first video, named FLIR1, is simply an infrared image of a fuzzy white dot between two parallel lines. This video does not have any audible voices in the soundtrack. Toward the end of the short video, the fuzzy white dot shoots to the left and off the screen. TTSA states FLIR1 is the only officially released video of the object associated with the 2004 Nimitz incident.

https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/2004-nimitz-flir1-video/

The second video is named GIMBAL, and it’s the one with the blurry black object flying over the clouds. It also includes the audio conversation between two unnamed individuals, the first of which can be heard saying “it is a [expletive] drone, bro. TTSA claims this video was taken aboard an F-18 fighter jet, but it also states the dates and location of the circumstance has not been released to the public. It may, or may not, be related to the 2004 Nimitz incident.

https://coi.tothestarsacademy.com/gimbal/

Various news media has been showing both the FLIR1 and GIMBAL videos on the screen whenever they interview the F-18 pilots involved in the Nimitz tic-tac encounter, despite uncertain relevance of the GIMBAL footage to the Nimitz case. I suspect the news channels are doing this because it adds a sensational video element to the interviews, and I also suspect the pilots are unaware of which videos are being shown to the viewers during the interview.

TTSA claims both videos have been released by the government according to their declassification process and comes with “chain-of-custody documentation” to validate it’s origin, but they haven’t made any such documentation public.

As far as I can tell, the videos do not appear on any US government websites and the US government has not made any statements of validation, so at this time I consider their provenance open to speculation.

Anthony Mugan said...

I seem to be having some trouble posting comments...this might be a very short form of previous comments...

The crux of this case seems to me to be the sharp acceleration at the end of FLIR1. If there is a comventional explanation for that much of the rest of it is at least open to debate. I am currently puzzled by that movement of the heat source so it looks like a probable unknown to me at the moment, st least for that specific element of the case.

Any theories?

Lance said...

@ Anthony Mugan:

Yes, while UFO nuts make fools of themselves, adults take a look at the actual evidence. Here is Mick West's excellent destruction of the supposed "acceleration".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIl4peYb59E

The "scientist" mentioned by Mick who made the idiotic acceleration claim, is a well known biased (serially incorrect) old time UFO barnacle.

UFO believers get EXACTLY what they deserve for their tawdry religion.

Lance

Larry said...

Anthony:

I saw an analysis that showed that that "acceleration" was actually an artifact due to the magnification suddenly switching from 1X to 2X on the FLIR sensor. When the change in magnification was taken into account, the apparent velocity of the object remained basically constant, throughout.

Not sure which of the two videos that was, but just a word of caution.

Mr. Sweepy said...

Kevin, your last paragraph stood out with me. Basically you wrote about additional information about UFO's. While we are focused now on the one gun camera footage, it would be hard even for Senator Reid to justify spending the $22 million just on this one event. So, were they looking at all of the military files since the end of Project Blue Book?

My thought is since the US Air Force has been the largest in the World there had to be dozens of gun camera footage films over the 48 or 49 years since Blue Book ended. Then, how many wars did we have planes in air? 3 with air battles and others with duel use fighter bombers on missions. The point here is there were hundred of thousands of flight hours and likely in the millions.

This is were Tom the Entertainer comes in. What to make any bets he has other gun camera footage? Las Vegas baby! I wouldn't take that bet.

Brian B said...

@ Robert Sheaffer:

Your comment is on point. Recall Bigelow’s 60 Minutes television interview last year where he said “I’ve spent millions of dollars” to find ET and that he believes he has. Those “millions” are the funds Reid channeled to him via the Pentagon, not his own money.

Anonymous said...

Here is a link to. Ted Talk that references Bigelow, and his team.... https://youtu.be/urKhVssiygA

Anthony Mugan said...

Thanks Lance and Larry
Unfortunately it looks like we need more data, in particular the distance to the heat source, to assess this movement more fully. We could also do with a lot more detail on other parts of the car such as radar data etc. One I’ll be keeping an eye on but at the moment I accept there probably isn’t enough there to be certain. That move does look odd though, beginning fractionally before the change in magnification.

KRandle said...

Robert -

If you are correct, and it seems that the major players here are all important Nevada people, then we do have a whole other issue. However, it does seem that there is something else at play here... sort of like the hunt for the ninth planet that turned up Pluto, which, of course, no longer applies.

I do remember the old Watergate saying, "Follow the money..."

Anyway, I think there is something else at play here, other than cronyism. It really doesn't make much sense without something other than money and power involved.

Lance said...

Anthony,

You should watch the entire video. There are multiple instances of the camera losing full lock and drifting off. Needless to say, a camera moving off target provides the illusion of movement.

This was something that the scientifical UFO believers in Robert Powell's faux-scientific group, the SCU, could not seemingly understand with the Aquadilla video.

Additionally, the zoom factor readout lags behind 1-4 frames the actual change in zoom.

Is there anything in this video that even slightly interesting, knowing the above?

Apparently the UFO religion and its central doctrine, the Argument from Ignorance, allows that anything that the UFO believer can't understand is DEFINITELY a flying saucer and, even when decisely debunked, at least needs further study.

This kind of thinking, leads us into the world we have now where is the truth is much less valued that the low-rent fanfiction world of the UFO believer.




Daniel Transit said...

Lance said...

'This kind of thinking, leads us into the world we have now where is the truth is much less valued that the low-rent fanfiction world of the UFO believer.'

I think 'low-rent' is an American expression (?). Oxford Dictionary says: having little prestige; inferior or shoddy.

Larry said...

Kevin,

You wrote:
"Anyway, I think there is something else at play here, other than cronyism. It really doesn't make much sense without something other than money and power involved."

I think you are right.

About 7 years ago I was approached at a professional conference by an individual I will not name and informally told about the existence of a government program whose purpose was to reduce the classification level of some UFO information so that a larger section of the technical community could be involved in researching it. I was told that most information was at the codeword (SAP) level. At the time I was a NASA employee with a TS clearance. I was led to believe that if the program was successful, individuals such as myself would be candidates to work on the data. Naturally, I told them to count me in.

I was not told the name of the program nor was I told exactly where it was located in the government. I was never given any classified information about it. I was led to believe that in order for the program to be successful, they would need 1) to get all the keepers of the individual compartments to agree simultaneously to reduce the classification level and 2) secure an ongoing flow of government funding (to hire contractors, such as myself).

When the story came out a few weeks ago, I put two and two together and realized that the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program that is the subject of the news story must have been what I was told about.

Before the news story, I did not know that the DIA was the organization in charge and I did not know that Bigelow was involved in the private sector.

Regardless of the truth or falsity of any behind-the-scenes information, there are two apparent differences between the government's treatment of the subject now, as compared to, let's say, the Blue Book days.

First, in the good old days there was clearly a top-down, centrally controlled treatment of the subject where the Generals told the Colonels what to say, the Colonels told the Majors, etc. and someone finally told the public. In other words, presenting a unified story about what the public was supposed to believe about the subject was clearly an important policy objective in its own right. In these recent press releases it looks to me like different offices in the DOD were making their own decisions about what to tell the public, seemingly without a policy directive from somewhere higher.

Second, in the good old days what they wanted to public to believe was that there was nothing to the subject. The policy was clearly to explain away sightings. In the recent releases, some parties at least, seem to be willing to accept some sightings as Unconventional Flying Objects (i.e., advanced technological devices not produced by any known terrestrial source) that need to be explained instead of explained away.

atennisfan said...

Kevin, I just recently discovered your interesting blog. While you have received your share of flak for tackling certain well-worn mysteries I appreciate that sanity and reason prevails. And most of the time you know how to handle good old Occam's Razor adequately. Debunking no matter what is actually not what Occam's Razor is all about.
But the Foo Fighters - or rather the "F...cking Foo Fighters" as they were labeled originally before the sanitized version was coined - drew me to this particular post. Do you have any personal opinion about this truly mystifying phenomenon? I tried to read everything I could lay my hands on, and I'm absolutely baffled. I can't think of a rational explanation. And yet, this aereal phenomenon has been seen and described by hundreds of pilots. It simply cannot be dismissed as a misinterpreted St.Elm's light or - another often trotted out explanation - a missidentified planet. At the time the Foo Fighters were openly adressed by the media, and the military experts were truly concerned. It wasn't unreasonable to assume that it might be a secret weapon like the illusive Nazi Bell. But when the war ended it became clear that this wasn't the correct explanation since "the other side" had been equally bamboozled by these strange lights. Also, the foo fighters didn't do any real damage. They certainly didn't seem to be a weapon, although they could've been an experimental version or a spy device.
The Foo Fighters sparked my interest in the UFO phenomenon. I used to be a strict non-believer. While I think that extraterrestrial intelligence is most certainly possible I couldn't get over the apparent impossibility of intergalactical journeys. I'm not so sure anymore. As Arthur C. Clarke has said (I'm paraphrasing): all seriously advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic by those who don't understand the technology. I'm writing this with that magical little device of the 21. century - my tablet ;) At the time of WWII this might well have been classified as possibly alien technology.
So, again, what is your personal take on those "F..cking Foo Fighters"? Alien or secret terrestrial technology, natural light phenomenon - or mass delusion of stressed out fighter pilots?
Addendum: as a psychologist I'm weary of the label mass delusion. IMO it's just lazy and is often used by ardent debunkers when no other rationally acceptable explanation can be found.