Margaret Thatcher

Lifting the Lid on Britain’s Most Famous Alien Encounter

January 7, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Nick Pope December 25, 2020 (thescottishsun.co.uk)

• Forty years ago, in the early hours of December 26, 1980, that three men from the US Air Force security police based at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, England saw the strange flashing lights deep in the adjacent Rendlesham Forest. They figured that an aircraft might have crashed, so they drove out to investigate and help. As the track of road narrowed, they were forced to continue on foot. Two of the men, John Burroughs and Jim Penniston, advanced into a small clearing, brightly lit by the strange lights. As they got closer, they realized it was not a crashed aircraft but a landed UFO.

• The object was triangular, ten feet wide at the base, resting on three legs. It looked like a cross between a small stealth fighter and a lunar landing module. And the only way into the clearing was from above. Penniston was trained in aircraft recognition and this was like nothing he had ever seen. Symbols on the side looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs. The photos that Penniston took “did not come out”. But his drawings of the craft and his accompanying notes have survived (see below). The craft took off vertically and he noted: “Speed — impossible.”

• Two nights later on December 28, 1980, the UFO returned. The witnesses on this night included the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt who led a team into the forest to investigate. Halt recorded his observations on a cassette tape. On tape, Halt is heard remarking about the UFO ahead: “It’s definitely coming this way . . . pieces of it are shooting off . . . this is weird.” The UFO appeared overhead and fired a thin beam of light in front of them. Halt later asked himself: “Was this a weapon, was this a warning, was this communication?” Burroughs and Penniston later reported health issues, which they attributed to the UFO sighting.

• Later it was claimed that the UFO was seen firing light beams into a storage area where nuclear weapons were kept. In 2015, Colonel Halt acquired statements from two military radar operators, Ike Barker and Jim Carey. They confirmed that the UFO was tracked on radar, traveling at thousands of miles an hour then stopping over the base. “It wasn’t like any radar target I have seen,” Barker said. (see previous ExoArticle on the radar operator’s story) Radioactivity at the site was also said to be “significantly higher than the average background”. Halt concluded that the craft was clearly under intelligent control.

• British and American defense chiefs conspired to keep the incident secret. But in 1983, Lord Hill-Norton, formerly Britain’s most senior military officer, asked a series of questions about the Rendlesham Forest incident in Parliament. Hill-Norton stated that either the deputy commander of an operational, nuclear-armed NATO base was hallucinating – or there had been an actual UFO landing.

• In 1997, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was at a charity function with the socialite Georgina Bruni. When Bruni asked Thatcher about UFOs and the Rendlesham Forest incident, Thatcher replied: “You must have the facts, (but) you can’t tell the people.” Bruni believed that Thatcher had been spooked by secret intelligence regarding UFOs.

• In 2006, the MoD declassified a top-secret assessment of the overall UFO phenomenon, code-named ‘Project Condign’. In the final report, it stated that “several observers were probably exposed to UAP radiation for longer than normal UAP-sighting periods”. This information was passed along to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, and a confidential claim settlement was reached with at least one of the US Air Force personnel at Rendlesham.

It was in the early hours of December 26, 1980, that three men from the US Air Force security police

based at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, saw the strange flashing lights.

Coming from beyond the perimeter fence, in Rendlesham Forest, they figured an aircraft might have crashed. They drove out to investigate and help.
As the track narrowed, they continued on foot.

They were walking into history.

John Burroughs and Jim Penniston advanced into a small clearing, brightly lit by the strange lights. As they got closer, they realised it was not a crashed aircraft — it was a landed UFO.

The object was triangular, ten feet wide at the base, looked like a cross between a small stealth fighter and a lunar landing module, and was resting on three legs.

The only way into the clearing for a vehicle was from above.

Penniston was trained in aircraft recognition and this was like nothing he had ever seen. Symbols on the side looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs.

**Jim Penniston’s drawing of the craft**

He took photos but was later told they did not come out. But he sketched the craft too, and his drawing has survived. He also took notes. The craft took off vertically and he wrote: “Speed — impossible.”

Two nights later the UFO returned and the witnesses then included the deputy base commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt. A sceptic, he led a team into the forest when he was told the UFO had come back.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

He recorded his observations on a cassette. It makes eerie listening as Halt catches sight of the UFO and says: “It’s definitely coming this way . . . pieces of it are shooting off . . . this is weird.”

Then the UFO appeared overhead and fired a thin beam of light in front of them.

Shocked Halt later asked himself: “Was this a weapon, was this a warning, was this communication?”

Later the UFO was seen firing light beams into a storage area, where many claim — though this was never confirmed — that nuclear weapons were kept.

In 2015, Colonel Halt, who has pursued the case, acquired statements from two military radar operators, Ike Barker and Jim Carey.

They confirmed the UFO was tracked, travelling at thousands of miles an hour then stopping over the base.

“It wasn’t like any radar target I have seen,” Barker said.

Halt concluded that the craft, “was clearly under intelligent control”.

Radioactivity at the site was said to be, “significantly higher than the average background”.

Defence chiefs conspired to keep the incident secret.

But in 1983 the News of The World printed details.

Then Lord Hill-Norton, formerly Britain’s most senior military officer, asked a series of questions about the incident in Parliament.

He stated that either the deputy commander of an operational, nuclear-armed Nato base was hallucinating — or there had been a UFO landing.

The second establishment figure to break ranks was former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was at a charity function in 1997 with the socialite Georgina Bruni, who had a long-standing interest in UFOs.

Bruni asked Baroness Thatcher about UFOs and Rendlesham and she replied: “You must have the facts and you can’t tell the people.” Bruni believed Thatcher had been spooked by a secret about UFOs.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.

Do We Want a Piece-Meal Space Force?

April 17, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Henry F. Cooper April 10, 2020 (newsmax.com)

• In the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan’s era of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), America’s defense against the enemy’s use of ballistic missiles was to create a space-based ballistic missile defense. The “Brilliant Pebbles” space-based interceptor system could shoot down Soviet missiles in their “boost phase,” while their rockets still burned and before they could release its warheads. Brilliant Pebbles was considered our most cost-effective SDI system.

• In 1972, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed wherein the U.S. would lead the way in reducing offensive nuclear weapons by agreeing to end the deployment of our Minuteman ICBMs. But it was dubious whether Russia also ended the production and use of its ICBMs. So Reagan turned to the space-based SDI program. At the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to negotiate the restriction of such space-based systems in principle, but Reagan refused to concede to this. Political observers say that this SDI system gave Reagan the leverage to negotiate a true bi-lateral reduction in nuclear weapon development and a ban on all Russian Mirved ICBMs. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated: “SDI ended the Cold War without firing a shot.”

• In 1993, Clinton Administration Defense Secretary Les Aspin returned to a defense strategy based on “mutual assured destruction” by strengthening the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, and abandoning the SDI program. Then in 2002, the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the ABM Treaty altogether, without reviving the SDI program. This is where things stand today.

• Now, the Department of Defense is concerned about Russia’s hypersonic missiles able to evade our ballistic missile defenses. A ‘boost-phase’ SDI system would have been able to defeat these hypersonic missile systems. The development of the ‘Brilliant Pebbles’ system might have discouraged the Russians from developing such a next-generation ballistic missile system to deliver nuclear weapons in the first place.

• Now America’s strategy seems to be a new hypersonic nuclear weapon arms race with Russia, even though the U.S. ended its development of hypersonic weapons decades ago. We seem to have abandoned any interest in space-based missile defenses to defeat these new hypersonic weapons.

• Current plans for the new US Space Force reveal an inability to defend against the growing offensive intercontinental ballistic missile threat, particularly those with hypersonic capabilities. The Trump administration’s apparent strategy is to play “catch-up” with Russian and Chinese hypersonic missile capabilities, and to rely on the Cold War scenario of mutual assured destruction as a defense strategy.

• This article’s writer, Henry Cooper, served as Reagan’s chief Defense and Space Talks negotiator with the Soviet Union, and later he served as SDI Director in the George H.W. Bush administration. Cooper advocates a return to a Reagan-era SDI program by deploying 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles for $20 billion, to be operational within 5 years.

• [Editor’s Note] Perhaps this article’s writer, Henry Cooper, and others are missing a big piece of the puzzle. What if our global “space race” went far beyond the hypersonic ballistic missiles that the public is aware of? What if there were numerous secret space programs having technology far beyond ICBM or SDI technology? And what if we already had orbital platforms in space that could shoot energy beams and kinetic energy weapons at any target or missile on Earth? Such a reality would render ballistic nuclear missile treaties and Reagan-era space-based missile defense systems moot.

Current plans for the new U.S. Space Force and its implied underpinning strategy reveal a key deficiency — an ability to defend against the growing offensive intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat, particularly those that employ hypersonic capabilities.

In effect, the Trump administration’s funding priorities display an apparent strategy to play “catch-up” with the growing Russian and Chinese hypersonic threat capabilities — and to rely totally on the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy of the Cold War.

Do we really want a new Cold War, now involving a multilateral offensive nuclear arms race?

Ronald Reagan had a very different idea based on a vital role for truly effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems that could defeat such threatening ballistic missiles.

In President Reagan’s administration, that idea led to his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that emphasized space-based defenses. I was privileged to serve as his chief Defense and Space Talks negotiator defending his perspective with the Soviet Union — and later to serve as SDI Director during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Space-based defenses always had a central role during the SDI era — 1983 until early 1993 when Defense Secretary Les Aspin “took the stars out of Star Wars,” ending Ronald Reagan’s vision and heralding a return to the MAD doctrine of strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty “as the cornerstone of strategic stability,” as became the oft-stated claim of the Clinton administration.

And even though the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002, nothing was done to revive the central role of the most cost-effective product of the SDI era — the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor system.

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

Tag: Margaret Thatcher

Lifting the Lid on Britain’s Most Famous Alien Encounter

Do We Want a Piece-Meal Space Force?