UFOs on Navy Radar and More
I started this blog nearly two years ago. In addition to chronicling the local UFO story for Minnesota and Western Wisconsin, I wanted to keep an eye on recent developments in the national UFO story. By summer of 2019, a year and a half had already elapsed since the watershed publication of the Kean and Blumenthal New York Times story. The ball was already rolling. Congressional briefings were taking place. It was pretty obvious that the national UFO story, which had languished on the paranormal conspiracy fringes since the 1970s, was about to go mainstream again. That’s why I adopted the tagline, “It’s Happening.”
But it wasn’t happening very fast. Weeks and months went by during which not much happened at all, and I spent a lot of time searching Google, looking for legitimate UFO news in the media and wishing for new content to feed the blog. That’s no longer the case. Frankly, I can’t keep pace with the stream of news coverage devoted to the topic, much less find the time to write my own analysis. A few weeks ago, media coverage began a rapid escalation that culminated in the dam-burst 60 Minutes report. Since then, I have despaired of being able to keep up with the flood of new stories appearing daily in the media.
It’s not that there’s been an increase in UFO activity, just an increase in national conversation as more and more government and military officials go on the record admitting that the phenomena is real, unidentified, and possibly non-human in origin. I call this process the Piecemeal Disclosure. When the truth finally does come out, I don’t expect to discover any vast conspiracy or government coverup. I expect we will discover a vast government incompetence created by an atmosphere of belligerent denial.
Last week, we took several steps closer to that Disclosure, whatever it may be. Here’s a rundown on some of the top stories from the last week in May, 2021.
Director of Intelligence UFO Report
Behind closed doors, officials in the Pentagon are surely scrambling to figure out what they know and what they want to admit they know about UFOs. There’s speculation that the director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Defense are going to ask for an extension on the deadline for their report to Senate Intelligence Committee (and the American Public) on UFOs, perhaps submitting the request for extension this Tuesday, June 1. The report from the Director of National Intelligence is supposed to be compiled from military and intelligence files from across several departments, and its supposed to provide some analysis. In anticipation of the report, the media is experiencing a full-on old-fashioned flap of UFO journalism.
Politico published an in-depth feature recap titled “How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer From Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream.” This looks like another good catch-you up on the story type of piece. CBS did an interview with Bryan Bender, the author of the article.
Lu Elizondo and Christopher Mellon had interviews and appearances on a wide variety of media outlets while the New York Times published a short piece from former senator Harry Reid about his involvement in the formation of the AATIP (Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program) operation. Here’s Elizondo on CNN discussing the anticipated national security report. At the same time, the Pentagon continues its campaign to discredit the UFO whistleblower. The Pentagon would prefer to deny that Elizondo ever worked for DOD, and it has gone so far as to allegedly delete all his email records from his time as the head of AATIP.
Radar Data from USS Omaha
Filmmaker Jeremy Corbell has released more video leaked from recent congressional briefings regarding the military encounters with UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon). The new piece of evidence features footage of radar scopes filmed in the control room of the USS Omaha during the ship’s 2019 encounter with the so-called drone swarms. The radar footage apparently corresponds to the same incident that involved the infrared footage of one of the drones mysteriously disappearing into the water. The video contains cuts of a radar scope in the control room of the Omaha as the crew deals with multiple encounters (as many as 14 UFOs) over a two-hour period.
The Pentagon quickly verified the authenticity of the footage. Take a look at the story on George Knapp’s Mystery Wire:
FOX News was just one of several news outlets to quickly recycle the story. In this video, Fox assembled a panel of silly talking heads to discuss the new video and speculate about the contents of the upcoming report. Its fun to watch the opinion-makers and pundits stumble around while inadvertently making it clear that they have not looked at the data whatsoever.
Pyramid Video Explained
UFO and conspiracy theory debunker Mick West has looked at the data, and he offers an explanation for the flashing triangle video Corbell leaked last month. That cellphone video, also confirmed by the Pentagon as authentic and part of the UAP investigation, was shot through a night vision lens by a Navy sailor on the deck of the USS Russel in the summer of 2019, allegedly during a UFO/drone incident. The video seems to depict triangular craft maneuvering overhead, but West convincingly explains the flashing triangles as lens bokeh, a lens artifact created by a triangular aperture in the night vision lens. The fact that the government UAP analysis failed to make that realization does not inspire confidence in their investigation. Same goes for the photo of an unknown object encountered by Navy jets that appears to be a batman balloon. West also offers his own analysis of the FLIR/GIMBAL/GOFAST videos.
Biden Administration and the UAP/UFO Investigation
In last week’s White House press conference, Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that President Biden supports the current investigation into what our defense and intelligence agencies know about UFOs. Psaki said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was actively working on the forthcoming report. An article in The Debrief titled “White House says president Biden supports the Pentagon’s UAP Investigations” covers the details. This comes a week after Obama’s own admission on the subject on the CBS Late Night Show with James Corden:
“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are, we can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is. But I have nothing to report to you today.”
Barak Obama
The Extra-terrestrial Hypothesis
Ever since the current revival of government interest in UFOs began, it’s been predicated on the possibility that foreign governments like China or Russia might be intruding on restricted and sovereign airspace with drones or other advanced craft. For the sake of holding on to some threads of mainstream credibility, government officials lead their comments with that suggestion, but almost all of them also admit that it seems more likely that the UFOs encountered by our military are something for which we have no prosaic explanation. For example, former congressman Newt Gingrich says “I would not rule out the possibility that these are visitors from another planet.”
The two most likely explanations are either that the Chinese or the Russians have developed a technology that is generations ahead of us. I don’t think it’s very likely, and certainly some of the things that these unidentified flying objects are doing are so extraordinary that it’s kind of hard to believe they’d have that kind of technology without us knowing. I would not rule out the possibility that these are visitors from another planet.
Newt Gingrich
An important opinion piece in The Hill by former DOD and State Department security analyst Mark von Rennenkampff points out just how unlikely the foreign government explanation is. In the article titled “Extraordinary explanations for UFOs look increasingly plausible.” Rennenkampff argues that comments from the vast array of high-ranking officials from intelligence, DOD, and congress, including former President Obama, indicate that the data and the government analysis already points toward non-conventional interpretations. In contrast to the flood of ill-informed and Johnny-come-lately opinion pieces lodged over the last few weeks, Rennenkampff’s single article assembles the recent admissions, the leaks, and the comments from officials into a clear picture depicting something much more exotic than the latest greatest Chinese drone.
Drones or UFOs
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the UAP phenomenon continues to do what it does without regard to the national discussion. The War Zone delivers another story about a mysterious drone encounter. The War Zone writers favor the theory that the unidentified craft invading our airspace, harassing our aircraft, and buzzing our military installations are advanced drones from foreign powers. I’ve been arguing that those encounters are more consistent with reports of similar UFO encounters going back to 1947, long before drones were crowding our skies. The latest story is no exception to the rule.
On February 9, 2021, a helicopter operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection was buzzed by a “high powered” drone that followed it up to a high altitude in the skies over Tucson, Arizona. The so-called drone executed “erratic maneuvers” at high speeds and high altitudes in a cat-and-mouse chase with the helicopter. It seems significant that the incident in Tucson is only the latest in a string of events in the region in which UAP/drones have eluded law enforcement including encounters with commercial aircraft in Arizona and New Mexico, the swarming of Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear power plant, and the still-unsolved 20219-2020 Colorado-Nebraska drone swarm mystery.
Is there a connection between these mysterious drone encounters and the current anxiety coming out of Washington, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the DOD? I sure hope so. Because whether our government is paying attention or not, it’s happening.
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