UFO-ology Gains Traction with New U.S. Report

“It’s a bird? It’s a plane? No, it’s, we don’t know.” That’s the sum extent of what we can derive from a U.S. intelligence report on unexplained aerial phenomena witnessed by many commercial and military pilots, as well as by people on the ground going back decades.

In the modern era, UFOs have been with us since 1947. The first report came from an amateur pilot flying over Washington state who described witnessing a number of objects, flying in formation at high speed with flashing lights and maneuvering unlike any known airplane of the time. He called the objects “unidentified” and soon the moniker was extended including the words “flying objects” coined by a reporter. Hence UFOs were born. UFOs soon morphed into “flying saucers” again based on the editorial enthusiasm of the media taking the descriptions given by the pilot of the way the objects flew like a saucer thrown across a water surface, skipping up and down. If he had said like skipping stones, would the press have described UFOs as “flying stones?”

In 1947 alone, there were 853 sightings after the initial story broke. The U.S. Air Force opened an investigation which became Project Blue Book. Blue Book may have been inspired by the report of a “flying saucer” crashing in New Mexico, near the town of Roswell. Blue Book finally ended in 1969 after a University of Colorado study reinforced these conclusions:

1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.
2. There has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge.
3. There has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” are extraterrestrial vehicles.

And yet regardless of the U.S. Air Force discounting thousands of sightings flying saucers became part of popular culture and extraterrestrial invasions of our planet were glorified in film and books. Probably the most riveting effort, Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” left this writer looking up at the night sky after leaving the theatre.

The origins of UFO-ology are well described in a piece written by Megan Garber, appearing in The Atlantic back in 2014. It’s a great read. But it’s not the origin story that made headlines in the last couple of weeks. Instead, it is a report from The New York Times of an upcoming presentation to the U.S. Congress followed by a government document release on June 25, 2021, that has the media in a new tizzy. A recent segment on “60 Minutes” featured interviews with U.S. Navy pilots describing unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs, the new term being entered into UFO-ology, describing these objects as real and inexplicable.

So what does the report that will be released on June 25th contain? An examination of 120 incidents spanning over two decades describes a number of objects exhibiting hypersonic capabilities. That is, the UAPs fly at speeds no current known aircraft can achieve. Nor do these objects maneuver in a manner similar to any existing aircraft. And finally, many of the reports suggest there are no visible means of propulsion powering them. In one observed report aired on “60 Minutes,” two Navy pilots in 2019 described witnessing their own close encounter with a spherical object hovering over the ocean in midair, moving back and forth like a game of Pong, and then diving into the water, all of it captured on video.

As one Pentagon investigator of UAPs described the phenomena: what U.S. military personnel were witnessing was technology capable of withstanding up to 700 G-forces (astronauts experience 3 to 4 Gs during ascent and re-entry), speeds of more than 21,000 kilometres (13,000 miles) per hour (the fastest aircraft today is the Lockheed SR-71 which clocks at 3,500 kilometres (2,100 miles) per hour), with the ability to hover, change direction instantaneously horizontally or vertically, evade radar, and fly in the air, water, and probably space, and do all of this with no visible engine, no wings, and no avionic controls.

When the U.S. Senate convenes on June 25th to hear the report they supposedly will get the whole picture. What gets released to the public will be redacted (lots of black ink hiding whole sections).

I cannot even speculate on what UFOs or UAPs are. Could they be experimental technology from some military skunkworks either domestic or foreign? Could they be natural phenomena? Could our planet harbour a species we have never met that has advanced technology and is generally shy? The June 25th reveal has science-fiction aficionados salivating.