Pentagon launches task force to investigate ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ The Pentagon has created a task force to investigate UFOs following several unexplained incidents that have been observed by the U.S. military. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force was launched earlier this month by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist, boosting an effort by the Office of Naval Intelligence, officials said. The Defense Department said Friday that it hopes to “improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs. The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.” “The safety of our personnel and the security of our operations are of paramount concern. The Department of Defense and the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report,” the department said. “This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as UAP when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.” The plans for the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days, were first reported by CNN on Thursday. The move marks an extension of previous efforts to look into UFOs — but stops well short of trying to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life. Since 2018, a Navy task force has been informally investigating such incidents and has coordinated information with U.S. intelligence agencies. In April, the Defense Department released and declassified three videos of Navy pilots encountering UFOs in 2004 and 2015. In 2017, The New York Times reported on the existence of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which had previously been disbanded, according to the Pentagon. While the new task force’s work will remain classified, that status could change if the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s proposal for an unclassified report on UFOs is adopted by the full Senate and House. Things that make ya go, “hmm…” 🙂
With Pentagon UFO unit in the spotlight, report mentions ‘off-world vehicles not made on this earth’ A long-hidden UFO investigative unit within the Pentagon will make some of its findings public, according to a New York Times report. The unit, which is now part of the Office of Naval Intelligence, has spent over a decade discussing mysterious events in classified briefings, according to the news outlet. A government contractor told the Times that he gave a classified briefing to the Department of Defense in March, describing retrievals from “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.” The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence was described in a Senate Intelligence Committee report last month. The unit standardizes “collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomenon, any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations,” the report said. “However, the Committee remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat,” it added. “The Committee understands that the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders.” In the report, the Senate Intelligence Committee directs the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, to submit a report to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on unidentified aerial phenomena (or “anomalous aerial vehicles”). The report must include “observed airborne objects that have not been identified.” The Committee says that the report should be submitted within 180 days of the enactment of the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2021. The bill was introduced on June 8, 2020. The New York Times reports that a small group of government officials and scientists believe that objects of “undetermined origin” have crashed to Earth and been retrieved, including former Sen. Harry Reid. While some have been found to be man-made materials, there are question marks over others. The publication cites Eric W. Davis, an astrophysicist who worked as a subcontractor and a consultant for the Pentagon UFO program. Davis, who now works for defense contractor Aerospace Corporation, said he also gave briefings on the recovery of unexplained objects to staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Oct. 21 and Oct. 23, 2019, respectively, the Times added. “As we have said previously, the Department of Defense and all of the military departments take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously, and examine each report,” a spokesperson for the Department of Defense said. “This includes examinations of incursions that are initially reported as ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAP) when the observer cannot immediately identify what he or she is observing.” The Department of Defense, she explained, does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into its training ranges or designated airspace, including incursions initially designated as UAP. “Regarding the task force mentioned in the article, I can say that the department is creating a task force to gain knowledge and insight into the nature and origins of UAPs, as well as their operations, capabilities, performance, and/or signatures,” she added. “The mission of the task force will be to detect, analyze, catalog, consolidate, and exploit non-traditional aerospace vehicles/UAPs posing an operational threat to U.S. national security and avoid strategic surprise.” Nick Pope, a former employee and UFO investigator for Britain’s Ministry of Defense, said he “fully supports” the creation of the task force, which he believes will address some of the concerns that the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have. “UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) was a term we popularized at the UK Ministry of Defence in the Nineties, as part of a ‘rebranding’ of the UFO phenomenon, attempting to ditch the pop culture baggage that attached to the term ‘UFO’ and reframe the debate as the defense and national security issue that those of us studying the phenomenon knew it to be,” Pope said. “Every government rightly wants to secure the territorial integrity of its airspace and ensure that all objects and phenomena in its airspace or in close proximity to its military assets are identified.” In speaking with the New York Times, Reid said he believes the government and the private sector may have retrieved materials from unidentified objects. “After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,” Reid said in the interview. Reid’s comments are the latest from the former lawmaker. In June 2019, he told Nevada’s KNPR that he wished lawmakers would hold public hearings into what the military knows. “They would be surprised how the American public would accept it,” Reid said during the wide-ranging interview. “People from their individual states would accept it.” The former Nevada senator has also tweeted multiple times about the topic, including in April, when he said he was happy the Pentagon released three videos of “unidentified aerial phenomena”, adding the “American people deserve to be informed.” Things that make ya go, “hmmmm.” For more, click on the text above. 🙂
U.S. Navy releases three ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ videos The Pentagon on Monday publicly released three mysterious videos of “unidentified aerial phenomena” captured by military personnel over the past 15 years and admitted that the objects seen in the clips still cannot be explained. Two of the videos were taken in January 2015 and another was taken in November 2004. All of the clips have been released and posted online by the Naval Air Systems Command. While the Pentagon has previously confirmed that the videos — which have been circulating on the internet for years — are real, Monday’s announcement marks a significant shift for the military. It’s the first time the Pentagon has shared the information with the public through official government channels. “The U.S. Navy previously acknowledged that these videos circulating in the public domain were indeed Navy videos,” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough said in a statement. “After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena. DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos. The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’” Monday’s release includes three pieces of raw video footage and a host of accompanying documents and other files, though much of the written information has been redacted. In one 34-second video clip, a small, bright object can be seen flying in front of the camera before disappearing. It then reappears, and the camera follows it for about 20 seconds before the clip ends You can watch the videos HERE. Go ahead and click on the text above, if you haven’t already…and you be the judge. 🙂
First Contact? Something in Space is Sending Earth Signals Like Clockwork, Scientists Don’t Know Why Astronomers from around the world have long been fascinated by the mysterious radio signals bombarding our planet from deep in outer space, with some onlookers linking them to a possible extraterrestrial intelligence. A new study by an international team of scientists led by astronomers at the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB) in British Columbia has discovered that a mystery radio source in a galaxy some 500 million lightyears from our solar system is sending out fast radio bursts like clockwork in 16.35 day cycles, including 1-2 bursts per hour over a four day period and then 12 days of silence before starting up again. The discovery is important, because out of the 150+ fast radio bursts recorded by Earth-based observatories over the last decade and a half, only ten of them have repeated, and none as steadily as the source discussed in the study. Furthermore, only a handful of them have been tracked back to the galaxy they came from. The mystery signal, known as FRB 180916.J0158+65 was first discovered in 2017, but has continued repeating steadily, albeit at a rate some 600 times fainter than the first bright flare. In their study, scientists analysed 28 bursts which took place between September 2018 and October 2019, confirming the pattern, and excitedly concluding “that this is the first detected periodicity of any kind in an FRB source.” The new FRB was tracked down to SDSS J015800.28+264253.0, a star-forming galaxy about 500 million light years from Earth. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object,” scientists suggested, providing several possible explanations for what may be causing the phenomenon. One possibility is that it is an object orbiting a sun which sends signals out only at a certain interval in its orbit. Alternatively, it could be a signal sent by a binary star system made up of a massive star and super-dense highly magnetized neutron star. Or it could be a stand-alone object caused by rotation or wobbling, such as a highly magnetic neutron star. And although the scientists don’t mention it, there’s no ruling out that this could be an alien life-form attempting to make contact with other lifeforms in the galaxy. Human scientists have been fascinated with the concept of using radio waves to try to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligence since the 1890s, and countries have built a number of radio telescopes over the past century to listen out for incoming extraterrestrial radio waves. The study’s authors now plan to continue watching out for the signal-emitting object, looking out for clues regarding its origins. Scans of SDSS J015800.28+264253.0 by X-ray and gamma-ray radiation telescopes may provide further clues as to its identity. Things that make ya go, “hmmmmm” 🙂
Harvard prof doesn’t back down from claims that alien spacecraft may be zipping past Jupiter orbit A distinguished Harvard University professor is not backing down from his claims that a piece of extraterrestrial spacecraft technology may be flying past the orbit of Jupiter at this moment. Avi Loeb, one of the top astronomy professors in the world, boasting of decades of Ivy League professorships and hundreds of publicized works in respected astronomy publications, is remaining defiant that the space object – dubbed as “Oumuamua” – first noticed by Hawaiian astronomers in 2017 could be from another civilization. “Considering an artificial origin, one possibility is that ‘Oumuamua is a lightsail, floating in interstellar space as a debris from an advanced technological equipment,” Loeb and his colleague Shmuel Bialy wrote in Astrophysical Journal Letters in November, according to the Washington Post. Since making the shock claim last year, many scientists have criticized Loeb for offering, in their view, the most sensationalist theory of what the object is. “Oumuamua is not an alien spaceship, and the authors of the paper insult honest scientific inquiry to even suggest it,” Ohio State University astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter wrote in a tweet. Other scientists are more diplomatic and haven’t publicly countered Loeb’s claims, only saying that the object is likely just some sort of rock, whether it’s a piece of an asteroid or a comet. But Loeb remains stubborn on this theory, and dismisses the claims that it’s a rock, noting that it’s moving too fast for an inert rock. He told the Post that the object is long yet no more than one millimeter thick, and that it’s so light that sunlight is moving the object out of the solar system. “Many people expected once there would be this publicity, I would back down,” Loeb says. “If someone shows me evidence to the contrary, I will immediately back down.” “It changes your perception on reality, just knowing that we’re not alone,” he continued. Things that make you go, “hmmmm” For more, click on the text above. 🙂
‘Supersonic Tic Tac’ UFO stalked US aircraft carrier for days, Pentagon report reveals A supersonic UFO shaped like a Tic Tac stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier for days before vanishing into thin air, according to a bombshell Pentagon report. The object, which could reportedly hover in midair and make itself invisible, bamboozled U.S. Navy fighter pilots during a training exercise in the Pacific Ocean. The leaked report, obtained by Las Vegas’ KLAS tv station, tells how the USS Princeton, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, had multiple radar contacts with what it dubbed a Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV). In November 2004, the ship’s ultra-advanced AN/SPY-1 multifunctional phased-array radar caught the object hovering at 60,000 feet before nosediving to the ocean surface in a matter of seconds. It then sped off so rapidly that crew members thought it was a ballistic missile. It appeared again two days later, and a pair of high-tech F-18 jets were scrambled to intercept it, but pilots reported that the object had turned itself invisible. It could still be detected as it was triggering a a circular disturbance in the water “about 50 to 100 meters in diameter.” The craft was described as “solid white, smooth, with no edges… uniformly colored with no nacelles, pylons or wings”, and looked like “an elongated egg or Tic Tac,” according to one of the pilots. Days later, a second jet spotted the same disturbance — and this time saw the UFO hovering above it “like a Harrier [jump jet]”. When the two pilots returned to the ship, crewmates put on tin-foil hats to greet them and asked eager questions about their “UFO flight.” The report adds that the USS Louisville nuclear attack submarine was operating in the area but reported no disturbance. An E-2C Hawkeye surveillance plane managed to detect the object, but was unable to lock on, suggesting that it was able to dodge radar. It adds that the craft matches “no known aircraft or air vehicle currently in the inventory of the United States or any foreign nation.” To see the video of this thing, click on the text above…and you be the judge. 🙂
New report reveals even more freaky details about the UFO that shocked the US Navy UFO sightings are a dime a dozen these days, and they have been for a while, but back in December the New York Times released the results of an investigation into the US military’s monitoring of UFO claims and came up with something totally wild. It was a video released by the Pentagon that shows US Navy pilots tracking the movements of a totally unexplainable aircraft. Now, a local news team from Las Vegas has obtained a military report that offers even more details on the sighting, and the story is somehow becoming even more bizarre than it already was. The report (PDF here) explains in great details how a US Navy aircraft carrier played a strange game of hide and seek with multiple Anomalous Aerial Vehicles (AAVs) that demonstrated flight characteristics that should be downright impossible to pull off. The sightings began on November 10, 2004, and lasted for several days. The objects would appear on the carrier’s radar systems for short periods, seeming to hover still, and then fly off at high speeds. Confused by exactly what was going on, the crew decided to investigate. When the object appeared again a few days later a pair of F/A-18Fs was directed to check out the strange signals. The result is the now famous video showing the “Tic-Tac” shaped UFO cruising along at incredibly high speeds and making rapid changes in altitude. In the new report, the object is described as “solid white, smooth, with no edges,” and being “uniformly colored with no nacelles, pylons, or wings.” The report says the object was estimated to be about 46 feet long. By comparison, the F/A-18 fighters that were trailing it measure around 56 feet in length, meaning that whatever it was that the Navy spotted could feasibly hold one or more human-sized individuals. The pilot said they never felt as though the object was a threat, but the report notes that the AAV seemed to react to the presence of the jets, “demonstrating an advanced acceleration, aerodynamic, and propulsion capability.” Throughout the several days of seeing the object come and go, the Navy says it may have demonstrated the ability to “cloak” and disappear to the human eye. Its rapid descent from 60,000 feet to just 50 feet before disappearing also made officials consider the possibility that it was capable of operating underwater, effortlessly moving from the air to the sea at will. It’s all pretty freaky. Agreed..
UFO mysteries unraveled: How the ‘real-life X-Files’ emerged from a top secret UK project A former official at the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence has shed new light on the circumstances surrounding a secret government UFO study that was conducted during the 1990s. In 1996, the MoD commissioned a defense contractor to produce a comprehensive report on U.K. UFO sightings. The report was compiled at a time of huge public interest in UFOs fueled by the wildly popular “X-Files” TV series and 1997’s 50th anniversary of the purported UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico. Careful to avoid using the term UFO, the report described sightings as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Code-named Project Condign, the report analyzed a database of sightings between 1987 and 1997 and was delivered to officials in 2000. The study, entitled ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region,’ found that that sightings could be explained by a variety of known phenomena, both man-made and natural. The incidence of relatively rare natural phenomena was also noted. “No evidence exists to associate the phenomena with any particular nation,” it said. Project Condign has been compared to Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force effort to investigate UFOs that closed in 1969. Nick Pope, a former MoD UFO investigator who is now an author and journalist, told Fox News that he was involved in setting up the study with his counterpart in the Ministry’s Defence Intelligence Staff. “The reason for the study was that while we’d been investigating UFO sightings on a case-by-case basis for decades, we’d done very little trend analysis,” he explained, via an emailed statement. “Project Condign was supposed to rectify this and be a proper intelligence assessment that would look for patterns in data we already had.” “We were trying to draw everything together and say in relation to UFOs: ‘OK, what’s our best assessment of what we’re dealing with, what are the threats, and what are the opportunities?’,” he added. Initial discussions about the study started in 1993, according to Pope, who was no longer involved in the Ministry’s UFO investigations by the time work on the report itself started. Pope, who left the MoD in 2006, has been quoted extensively in the media as a result of his links to what remains a highly controversial topic. His involvement in MoD UFO investigations lasted from 1991 to 1994, according to his website. “The study was highly classified and extremely sensitive, not least because the MoD consistently told parliament, the media and the public that UFOs were of limited interest and ‘no defense significance’,” Pope said. “Our concern was that if the existence of the study became known, it would have exposed an internal position on the phenomenon that was different from our public position.” The report only entered the public domain in 2006 following a Freedom of Information request from academic Dr. David Clarke. The identity of the report’s author has not been revealed. A new set of previously-unseen documents recently obtained by Clarke, a principal research fellow at the U.K’s Sheffield Hallam University, have thrust Project Condign into the spotlight once again. The records show how over-worked MoD officials were keen to reduce their commitment to investigating reports of UFO sightings. With its findings, Project Condign duly laid the foundations for the MoD to start scaling back its UFO-related operations. The Ministry’s DI55 department, which had secretly collected data on potential UFO sightings since 1967, closed at the end of 2000. The MoD’s UFO Desk closed in 2009. Pope found the final Project Condign report disappointing. “In places it looked like a conclusion-led study where data had been used to support a personal opinion,” he said, but acknowledged the challenges involved in compiling such a confidential report. “The problem with an intelligence study like Project Condign is that it’s so secret and sensitive that those involved don’t reach out to subject matter experts outside the intelligence community,” he explained, adding that consultation with the U.K.’s Met Office weather service, other scientists and academics would have been helpful. The report also suggested that atmospheric plasma may account for some UFO sightings, which Pope sees as confusing. “In speculating about exotic atmospheric plasma phenomena the report’s author had made the classic mistake of trying to explain one mystery in terms of another,” he said. The former MoD employee was also surprised by the discussion of “novel military applications” that could be supported by greater understanding of the UFO phenomenon. “This was essentially a reference to weaponization, including the construction of a directed energy weapon,” he said.
‘I saw a UFO’ Buzz Aldrin PASSES lie detector test revealing truth about aliens Moon walker Buzz Aldrin and three other astronauts have passed lie detector tests over claims they experienced alien encounters. The space travellers’ accounts of strange space sightings were examined under laboratory conditions. All four astronauts taking part passed the test, carried out using the latest technology. Experts say the results prove they were “completely convinced” signs of alien life they claimed to have witnessed during historic missions were genuine. Aldrin, Al Worden, Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper all took part in the study. The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology in Albany, Ohio, carried out complex computer analyses of the astronauts’ voice patterns as they told of their close encounters. Although the technology is still top-secret, these studies are claimed to be more reliable than current lie detector tests and could soon replace those used by the FBI and police. One of the first tested was Apollo 11 pilot Buzz Aldrin, now 88 – the second human to set foot on the lunar surface in 1969. Aldrin has always maintained he spotted a UFO on the way to the moon, saying: “There was something out there that was close enough to be observed, sort of L-shaped.” BioAcoustic’s Sharry Edwards said tests reveal Aldrin is sure he saw the UFO even though his logical mind “cannot explain it”. Apollo 15 pilot Al Worden, 86, stunned Good Morning Britain viewers when he claimed to have seen extra-terrestrials. He believes we are all descended from ancient aliens. Voice recordings of fellow NASA pioneers Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper, both now dead, were also analysed. Apollo 14’s Mitchell claimed to have seen several UFOs, while Cooper actually described trying to chase a cluster of objects. The tests revealed both men believed they were telling the whole truth. Things that make ya go, “hmmm” 🙂
Two pilots report seeing UFO in southern Arizona skies Pilots flying on two separate aircraft reported seeing an unidentified flying object over Arizona last month. The incident took place over southern Arizona around 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 24 between the New Mexico border and the Sonoran Desert National Monument, which is about 40 miles from Phoenix. The Drive reported that one witness, a commercial pilot flying a jet for American Airlines, said the object was above 40,000 feet and had a big reflection. “I don’t know what it was,” the pilot told Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center. “It wasn’t an airplane but it was … the path was going in the opposite direction.” Air traffic control told an aircraft on a similar flight path to let him know if anything passes over him in the next few miles. A few minutes later, the pilot confirmed that something passed over his aircraft. “Don’t know what it was, but it was at least two, three thousand feet above us,” he said. “It passed right over the top of us.” “Can you tell if it was in motion or just hovering?” traffic control asked. “Negative, I don’t know if it was a weather balloon or what not,” the pilot said. “It had a big reflection, several thousand feet above us going the opposite direction.” After questions about whether it was a Google balloon, another voice responded and said it was a UFO. Arizona had more than 4,500 reported UFO sightings from 2001 to 2015. It was also home to one of the most infamous UFO cases of all time, the Phoenix Lights. Things that make ya go, “hmmmm.” 🙂
The Daily Buzz 