Article by Simon Green June 7, 2021 (dailystar.co.uk)
• In late December 1980, US Air Force Sergeant James Penniston was stationed at RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk, England when the infamous ‘Rendlesham Forest incident’ occurred. The incident involved a series of sightings of unexplained lights descending into the forest adjacent to the base. The British Ministry of Defence said whatever occurred posed no threat to national security and so it was never fully investigated. Skeptics have dismissed it as a series of nocturnal lights or even a fireball.
• Penniston appeared at the Citizen Hearing for UFO Disclosure in 2013 (pictured above) – a mock congressional hearing where 40 UFO witnesses testified to five Congressman and one Senator – to recount his experience. (see Citizen Hearing website here) He claimed that a UFO landed in the forest, and he walked up to it and touched it. “As I came around (the craft) I’ve seen there is an inscription on the front.” Penniston was able to draw the “inscription”, and showed it to the Congressmen. “That’s what I saw.” A copy of his drawing shows what appears to be five discernible objects that don’t bear any similarity to Earth’s languages.
• “It was smooth to touch,” Penniston continued. “I looked down and there was no wing but it was about two feet off the ground. I’m pushing the craft but it doesn’t move. It’s solid as can be. Unbeknownst to me, it was radioactive which is probably why it was warm. Then as I walked around it I realized it definitely wasn’t anything we had. And it sure as hell wasn’t anything the Russians had.” (see below the full 2013 Citizen Hearing on UFO Disclosure video pertaining to the Rendlesham Forest Incident.)
James Penniston
A retired United States Air Force (USAF) sergeant has claimed he touched a UFO and was
drawing of craft by Penniston
even able to draw the “inscription” it had on its side.
Sergeant James Penniston was stationed at RAF Woodbridge when the infamous Rendlesham Forest incident occurred in late December 1980.
Known as “Britain’s Roswell”, the incident involved a series of reported sightings of unexplained lights descending into Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk in late December 1980.
At the time, the Ministry of Defense said whatever occurred posed no threat to national security and it was never investigated
the five objects Penniston saw etched on the side of the UFO craft
fully.
And sceptics have often dismissed it as a series of nocturnal lights or even a fireball.
But, nevertheless, Sgt. Penniston’s account continues to amaze and baffle.
He appeared at Citizen Hearing – a mock congressional hearing where 40 UFO witnesses testified to five congressman and one senator – to recount his experience.
“I got up and composed myself just a little bit,” he said. “As I came around I’ve seen there is an inscription on the front.
“That’s what I saw.” A copy of his drawing shows what appears to be five discernible objects that don’t bear any similarity to Earth’s languages.
1:45:12 video of CHD testimony on the Rendlesham Forest incident (‘Citizen Hearing on UFO Disclosure’ YouTube)
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.
Article by Jane Clinton April 10, 2021 (inews.co.uk)
• Among the late Prince Philip’s varied interests, the Duke of Edinburgh (pictured above) was said to be fascinated with UFOs and amassed a sizeable library of books on the subject. It is believed his interest was sparked by his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who wrote an official report about an unidentified craft landing at his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire.
• Prince Philip spent the summer of 2019 reading The Halt Perspective which explores the Rendlesham Forest Incident. Dubbed “Britain’s Roswell”, US Air Force security personnel stationed at nearby RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk reported seeing strange lights on December 26th and 28th 1980 in the surrounding forest. US servicemen claim to have gotten within touching distance of a “craft of unknown origin”.
• The Halt Perspective was co-written by retired US Air Force Col Charles Halt, who was the base deputy commander at the time, along with retired West Midlands detective, John Hanson. In a letter to Mr. Hanson, Prince Philip’s private secretary Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell wrote: “I am certain it will be read with close interest over the summer.” Upon Prince Phillip receiving another book by Mr. Hanson, Haunted Skies: The Encyclopedia of British UFOs, Miller-Bakewell again replied: “His Royal Highness will add this copy to his collection.” It is believed the duke spent decades collecting such titles on extra-terrestrial activity.
• John Hanson’s ex-father-in-law Chief Petty Officer Edward West served in the Royal Navy with Lord Mountbatten on the HMS Kelly. West said that the Duke had twelve of Hanson’s UFO/extraterrestrial books on his shelf. “I’m quite proud of Prince Philip,” said Hanson. “[W]hy shouldn’t he have been interested in UFOs, because for goodness sake, that is something that we should treat seriously rather than flippantly. It is a phenomenon that has baffled mankind for millennia.” Hanson adds, “Even Prince Charles is interested in it and Prince William”
• Derek Dempster, a former RAF pilot who went on to become a reporter for the Daily Express and then founding editor of Flying Saucer Review, spoke of “allies” in the likes of “Sir Peter Horsley, who had been Station Commander at North Weald, and was then equerry to Prince Philip”. “We received collaboration from Henry Chinnery, who was Horsley’s successor,” said Dempster. “Both men had a keen interest in keeping the Palace posted on ‘flying saucers’ and we used to exchange files with them.”
• Dempster, who died in 2012, went on: “There was also a shorthand writer for Lord Mountbatten, named Dan Lloyd, who was an ex-Royal Navy man. He was also very interested in ‘flying saucer’ matters and shared this interest and new research material with Mountbatten. It was said, at the time, that Mountbatten kept lever files of UFO photographs to show visitors on the bridge of the warships when he was at sea.”
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Among his vast and varied interests, the Duke of Edinburgh was said to have had an enduring fascination with UFOs and amassed a sizeable library of titles on the subject.
It is believed his interest was sparked by his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who wrote an official report about an unidentified craft landing at his Broadlands estate in Romsey, Hampshire.
Prince Philip reportedly spent the summer of 2019 reading The Halt Perspective which explores the Rendlesham Forest Incident which has been dubbed “Britain’s Roswell”.
United States Air Force (USAF) security personnel stationed at nearby RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, reported seeing strange lights on 26 and 28 December 1980 in the surrounding forest.
Lord Louis Mountbatten
Servicemen went to investigate with one even claiming they got to within touching distance of a “craft of unknown origin”.
Charles Halt with John Hanson
The Halt Perspective was co-written by retired US Air Force Col Charles Halt, who was the base deputy commander at the time, and retired West Midlands detective, John Hanson.
In a letter to Mr Hanson, Philip’s then private secretary Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell wrote: “I am certain it will be read with close interest over the summer.”
Then after receiving another book on the topic by Mr Hanson, Haunted Skies: The Encyclopedia of British UFOs Brigadier Miller-Bakewell again replied: “His Royal Highness will add this copy to his collection.”
Archie Miller-Bakewell Derek Dempster
John Hanson, whose ex-father-in-law, Chief Petty Officer Edward West, known as Ted, was on HMS Kelly with Lord Mountbatten, told i that the Duke had 12 of his books on the extraterrestrial.
Mr Hanson said: “I’ve got about 12 letters from the Duke’s private secretary that say the prince found the subject interesting.
“I’m quite proud of Prince Philip, why shouldn’t he have been interested in UFOs, because for goodness sake, that is something that we should treat seriously rather than flippantly. It is a phenomenon that has baffled mankind for millennia.”
He added: “Even Prince Charles is interested in it and Prince William”
It is believed the duke spent decades collecting such titles on extra-terrestrial activity.
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.
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.
John Burroughs and Jim Penniston
It was in the early hours of December 26, 1980, that three men from the US Air Force security police
Charles Halt
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.
sculpture of UFO craft
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.
Lord Hill-Norton
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.
Margaret Thatcher
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.
Georgina Bruni
“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”.
article’s writer, Nick Pope
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.
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.
Article Mike Williams November 9, 2020 (unilad.co.uk)
• In Robert Hasting’s 2016 documentary film, UFOs and Nukes: The Secret Link Revealed, Hastings cites key witnesses like Lt Colonel Charles Halt, where a UFO shaped like a basketball was recorded as having travelled 120mph in less than eight seconds during the Rendlesham Forest incident of 1980.
• The night of December 27, 1980, a team of security officers noted a bright beam coming from the depths of the Rendlesham Forest near to the base. Two days later, on the night of December 29, then Deputy Base Commander Halt, and colleagues, saw flashing lights darting across the forest, before the glowing object shot beams of light into the ground and disappeared.
• Lt Colonel Halt documented the entire incident in early 1981 for the UK’s Ministry of Defence. It stated how he and other witnesses saw a glowing object in the forest and a ‘red, sun-like’ pulsing light in the trees, and that a quick-moving, metallic-like triangular-shaped object was spotted acting erratically. Later, reports came in that the UFO had targeted the base’s storage facility of nukes – the largest in Europe at the time – and began pinging beams into the nuclear missile bunker. Hastings believes that the incident was a warning to humanity.
• Ike Barker and Jim Carey, who are featured in the documentary, were radar operators with the 2164th Communications Squadron at RAF Bentwaters in in Suffolk, England in the early 1980s. Barker and Carey say the object flew over the base during the incident. Several other eye-witnesses confirmed seeing the speeding ball during the series of unexplained encounters.
• Barker described it as ‘basketball-like object’, orange in color and “it popped into my mind that somebody was flying a basketball out here. There were lights around the center (of the orange sphere) but not like navigation lights. …[T]he lights were ‘more like portholes, as if you were seeing the lights from the inside coming out. It hovered momentarily, reversed its course and went back out a high rate of speed.” Prior to the object speeding off, it made an unnatural right angle shift. “It was just phenomenal to see it go that fast. I said that can’t be one of ours,” recalled Carey. “No jet can make an immediate right-hand turn.”
• While some have tried to debunk the strange sightings as military satellites, secret weaponry, a meteor, or the nearby shine from the Orfordness lighthouse, radar operator Barker is convinced in what he saw, saying, “It wasn’t like any radar target I’ve ever seen.” “It was traveling at an extremely high rate of speed,’ he recalled. ‘It passed over the control tower and then it stopped. I’ve never seen anything like the maneuverability that happened with this object.”
• Like many military personnel, Barker and Carey chose not to immediately come forward to their superiors with this information, for fear of a military discharge. Declassified documents from both the US and Russian governments have since emerged to reveal similar strange occurrences during the Cold War period. There are around 150 military witnesses to such unexplained phenomenon.
• [Editor’s Note] Unfortunately, this is the same Robert Hastings who is accused by the son of an Air Force officer, a witness to the incident, of fabricating the story that the inexplicable shutdown of ten nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana on March 16, 1967 was due to a UFO hovering directly over the base. (see previous ExoArticle here)
A documentary has attempted to shine new light on the infamous Rendlesham Forest incident from 1980, involving UFOs and nuclear weapons.
Robert Hastings
With UFOs and Nukes: The Secret Link Revealed, the latest feature to offer new and compelling details on the decades-old incident, the feature, produced by US researcher Robert Hastings, cites key witnesses like Lt Colonel Charles Halt, where a UFO shaped like a basketball was recorded as having travelled 120mph in less than eight seconds.
Ike Barker and Jim Carey, who were radar operators at the RAF Bentwaters, Suffolk, in the early 1980s, say the object flew over the base during the much debated incident in December of 1980.
The speeding ball happened during a series of unexplained encounters that amounted to several eye-witnesses saying they’d seen it. Filmmaker Hastings, who has investigated the event, believes it was a warning to humanity, as the UFO appeared to target the base’s nuclear arsenal.
Lt Colonel Charles Halt
On Boxing Day of 1980, a team of security officers noted a bright beam coming from the depths of the forest near to the base. Two days later, on the night of December 29, then Deputy Base Commander Halt, as well as other colleagues, saw flashing lights darting across the forest, before the glowing object shot beams of light into the ground and disappeared.
Reports later came in that the same UFO had targeted the base’s storage facility of nukes – which were the largest in Europe at the time – and began pinging beams into the bunker.
Jim Carey
Halt’s report, dubbed the ‘Halt memo’, documenting the entire thing written in early 1981, was sent to
Ike Barker
the UK’s Ministry of Defence. It stated how he and other witnesses saw a glowing object in the forest and a ‘red, sun-like’ pulsing light in the trees, and that a quick-moving, metallic-like triangular-shaped object was spotted acting erratically.
While some have tried to debunk the strange sightings as military satellites, secret weaponry, a meteor, or the nearby shine from the Orfordness lighthouse, those who were there say different.
Ike is convinced in what he saw, saying, ‘It wasn’t like any radar target I’ve ever seen.’
‘It was travelling at an extremely high rate of speed,’ he recalled. ‘It passed over the control tower and then it stopped. I’ve never seen anything like the manoeuvrability that happened with this object.’
Describing it as basketball-like object, he said it was ‘orange in colour and it popped into my mind that somebody was flying a basketball out here. There were lights around the centre but not like navigation lights.’
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.
• Michio Kaku, a well-known science writer and professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, spoke to the audience at the Ufology World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (September 6-9, 2019) about UFOs and the true extraterrestrial presence on Earth. Kaku exhorted the audience of 1,000 at the Hesperia Barcelona Tower hotel, that if they were ever taken aboard an extraterrestrial craft, “For God’s sake, steal something! … a pocketed alien paper clip, alien fork, even a bit of “alien dandruff” that would yield useful chemical and genetic information to scientists. Scientists such as Kaku at the conference called for the world to take the study of UFOs more seriously and respectable.
• The field of astrobiology – the study of life outside Earth – has been invigorated by some provocative findings released over the past 20 months. The US Navy video was released of UFOs behaving like no known aircraft. Kaku told the crowd, “We now know they fly between Mach 5 and Mach 20 — five to 20 times the speed of sound. We know they zigzag so fast that any pilot would be crushed by centrifugal force. That they have no exhaust that we can see.” “The explanations usually invoked for UFO sightings — meteors, weather balloons, even the planet Venus — can’t explain these live-action high-precision shots.” Then Kaku reached his conclusion: either they are of human origin, representing a technology so cutting-edge that even leading scientists are puzzled by it. Or, he said, “maybe they are evidence of an advanced outer space civilization.” After all, Kaku noted, the universe is 13.8 billion years old, while earthly science was born 300 years ago. On any of 4,000 recently discovered exoplanets, where life as we know it might be able to exist, alien civilizations may well have had much longer to advance their scientific and technological skills. In fact, Kaku surmised that pilots in alien spacecraft may be cybernetic or robotic.
• “We’ve reached a turning point,” said Kaku. “It used to be that believers had to prove that these objects were from an intelligent race in outer space. Now the burden of proof is on the government to prove they’re not from intelligent beings in outer space.”
• In a throwback to the ’50s and ’60s, when sightings of flying saucers were front-page news, the media is now giving the topic more airtime and more ink. Congress is demanding more information. New TV shows and documentaries are popping up. There is a renewed interest in the 1947 Roswell incident, the Rendlesham Forest incident, and in Area 51. Rock star Tom DeLonge has created a research academy and History channel series that explores the Pentagon’s own UFO study program, which released several Navy cockpit videos of “unidentified aerial phenomenon’.
• The Pentagon study – the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ – also revealed hint that the Defense Department is studying far more than the existence of extraterrestrial UFOs in the skies, but also how they work. Titles of AATIP reports have surfaced that include “Traversable Wormholes,” “Invisibility Cloaks,” “Space Communication Implications of Quantum Entanglement” and “Warp Drive, Dark Energy and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions.” The head of that Pentagon program, Luis Elizondo, left the government in 2017 to join DeLonge’s UFO research academy. Billionaire Robert Bigelow and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence Christopher Mellon are also consultants with the academy.
• Formerly with the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense’s UFO program in the 1990’s, Nick Pope says, “We’re in game-changing, paradigm-busting territory.” Pope said UFOs are the topic that Brits most often ask their government about. Citing reports from European governments as well as the U.S. and accounts of sightings by “police officers, pilots and military personnel,” he hopes to “bring the subject out of the fringe and into the mainstream.” Pope believes that “more likely than not,” some UFOs may be of extraterrestrial origin.
• The conference’s three days of lectures and workshops explored the diversity of UFO craft (shaped like barbells, cigars, shiny orbs or even Tic Tacs), the numerous varieties of alien races (from the lizard-like Dracos and large-eyed, hairless Greys to the tall, human-like Nordics), and the phenomena of crop circles, lucid dreaming, and preparing the pineal gland for alien arrivals by learning “the language of light.”
• Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan spoke about the three-fingered mummies from Peru. Social scientists J.J. and Desiree Hurtak spoke about pyramids on Mars, UFOs spotted near the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant, footprints of giants in South Africa, and alien corpses that are under top-secret control. Spanish parapsychology investigator Sergio Ruiz said that he has been studying demonic possession, and the first thing that’s taught is that victims of possession may in fact have been overtaken by extraterrestrials.
• Jan Harzan, executive director for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), claims that “We are definitely not alone. It’s a fact!” Harzan said the majority of the 500 or more UFO reports his organization receives monthly are dismissed. But “about 5 percent appear to be legitimate.” That implies around 300 genuine sightings of alien craft per year. When asked why beings from outer space would have any interest in Earth, most speakers said they were coming in peace and to help humanity. Harzan, said that most extraterrestrial sources are concerned about saving the planet from destruction.
• But American “exopolitics lawyer”, Alfred Webre, said that extraterrestrials are coming to Earth to recruit human slave labor. Said Webre, “There are some estimates that 60 million humans are enslaved in industrial facilities in the solar systems, producing products used through the galaxy.” Even worse, the race known as Draco-Reptilians, believed to come from the Orion constellation, have a taste for human babies. Webre said that our world is actually being overseen by a regional galactic government of “seven or eight civilizations,” and humanity will be “rejoining the (peaceful) galactic community of nations.”
BARCELONA, Spain — For the often-ridiculed followers of ufology, the study of unidentified flying objects, there was a sense of validation when the celebrated physicist and author Michio Kaku took a break from his work on string field theory to address the Ufology World Congress here last weekend and offer some advice on how to behave aboard an alien spaceship.
Michio Kaku
“For God’s sake, steal something!” he exhorted the audience of 1,000 at the Hesperia Barcelona Tower hotel, famous for its spaceship bar perched off the 29th floor. Kaku said a pocketed alien paper clip, alien fork, even a bit of “alien dandruff” would yield useful chemical and genetic information to scientists.
It is, of course, a matter of speculation whether extraterrestrials have hair, let alone dandruff. Drawings based on the descriptions of people who claim to have seen them typically depict them as bald, although there is also believed to be a race of blond
J.J. and Desiree Hurtak
humanoid aliens known as “Nordics.”
Kaku, a well-known science writer, media personality and professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York Graduate Center, also spoke to Yahoo News about assorted planetary matters, including his concerns about a future traffic jam in orbits around the moon, in a separate interview.
Jaime Maussan
Even without extraterrestrial dandruff to analyze, the field of astrobiology, the study of life outside Earth, has been invigorated recently by some provocative findings released over the past 20 months. Researchers have been poring over recently declassified videos shot by U.S. Navy pilots over the East Coast in 2015, showing mysterious flying objects that behave like no known aircraft. Thanks to newly updated radar systems in Navy jets, the videos have aided scientists by providing “testability” and previously unknown metrics about UFOs. “We now know they fly between Mach 5 and Mach 20 — five to 20 times the speed of sound,” Kaku said. “We know they zigzag so fast that any pilot would be crushed by centrifugal force. That they have no exhaust that we can see.” The explanations usually invoked for UFO sightings — meteors, weather balloons, even the planet Venus — can’t explain these live-action high-precision shots, said Kaku, leading to either of two possible conclusions: They are of human origin, representing a technology so cutting-edge that even leading scientists are puzzled by it. Or, he said, “maybe they are evidence of an advanced outer space civilization.”
Nick Pope
Could they be Russian, not Martian? Perhaps, Kaku allowed, given that last year Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that “Russia had built a hypersonic flying vehicle that can zigzag.” The U.S. and China are also working on hypersonic drones. On the other hand, Kaku emphasized, “maybe they are extraterrestrial.” After all, he noted, the universe is 13.8 billion years old, while earthly science was born merely 300 years ago; on any of 4,000 recently discovered exoplanets, where life as we know it might be able to exist, alien civilizations may well have had much longer to advance their scientific and technological skills.
Alfred Webre
Even if not smoking-gun proof, the declassified videos — bolstered by confirmation of multiple sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles during 2014 and 2015, including at least one near-collision — are giving ufology new weight. “We’ve reached a turning point,” Kaku said. “It used to be that believers had to prove that these objects were from an intelligent race in outer space. Now the burden of proof is on the government to prove they’re not from intelligent beings in outer space.”
The possibility that they are vehicles from other planetary civilizations, Kaku told Yahoo, “now has to be put on the table.”
Still, in the absence of even a molecule of aliens’ DNA, if they have DNA — Kaku cautioned that pilots in alien spacecraft may be cybernetic or robotic — astrobiology remains largely a discipline without a material subject matter. Which is why Kaku wants something scientists can touch and examine in the lab, predicting that “it will end the debate right then and there.”
Whatever the state of provability, ETs and spinning discs are again the rage, as evidenced in more than just ticket prices for the three-day Ufology World Congress, which ranged up to $1,600 for premium seating and a “meet-and-greet” with Kaku.
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.
Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) have been recorded since ancient times. But it was Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of flying saucers near Mount Rainier in 1947 that launched the modern era of UFO sightings. The U.S. military immediately moved to discredit Arnold’s claims, along with any other claim of the existence of an extraterrestrial UFO. “The (Arnold) report cannot bear even superficial examination, therefore, must be disregarded,” the Air Force Materiel Command wrote. With Project Blue Book, the Air Force went on to discredit every single UFO sighting until the project’s end in 1969.
However, the civilian scientist who helped to run Project Blue Book, Allen Hynek, claimed that the Air Force had underplayed the credibility of UFOs. He went on to devise a classification system for grading UFO sightings – ‘close encounters of the third kind’, etc.
Taking its cue from Hynek, Newsweek magazine created its own rating system for UFO sightings on a point-based system. They points are awarded, or subtracted, based on factors such as witness credibility, photographic/video evidence, flight attributes, proximity, physical effect, and discredit by the government/military. The writer also used input from the Scientific Coalition for UFOlogy (SCU) composed of 45 UFO ‘experts’.
SCU board member Robert Powell says that some 6,000 UFO encounters are reported every year. “Ninety-eight percent or more of sightings are basically misidentifications of airplanes or Chinese lanterns, or a variety of different things,” Powell told Newsweek. Chiming in, Seth Shostak, the Senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, told Newsweek, “Could the rest be alien craft? Maybe, but that’s like saying that the 40 percent of homicides committed in New York City that are unsolved could be due to alien murderers. Possible, but not likely.”
Here are 25 UFO sightings and their ‘credibility rating’ according to this Newsweek writer:
Roswell Incident – Roswell, New Mexico July 1947: Hundreds of witnesses claim an alien craft crash landed near a ranch with one or more dead extraterrestrial beings inside. In 1997, the Air Force released a report denying everything, and declaring “case closed”. Credibility Rating: -2
Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting – Mount Rainier, Washington June 1947: Pilot Kenneth Arnold witnessed nine “circular-type” objects flying in formation at twice the speed of sound. It was dismissed out of hand by an Air Force investigation. Arnold maintained his account until his death in 1984. Credibility Rating: 0
Levelland UFO Case – Levelland, Texas November 1957: Multiple witnesses reported seeing an egg-shaped object or a large flash of light moving across the sky in the small Texas town. The sighting was later discredited by the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, claiming the phenomenon had been caused by severe electrical storms and ball lightning. Credibility Rating: 0
Stephenville, Texas Sighting – Stephenville, Texas January 2008: Multiple witnesses reported seeing inexplicable objects moving through the sky or bright lights. Naval Air Station Fort Worth at first said that no planes had been active from that base that night. Then they retracted and claimed that those were their planes after all. Credibility Rating: 0
NASA Curiosity Rover Photograph – Mars March 2019: Ufologist Scott C. Waring claims to have spotted a UFO on Mars in images beamed back from NASA’s Curiosity Rover. Credibility Rating: 1
The Washington, D.C. Flap – Washington, D.C. July 1952: On two separate occasions Air Force F-94s were scrambled over Washington after UFOs were sighted on radar at Andrews and Bolling Air Force bases. The bogeys cruised at between 100 to 130 mph before zooming off at incredible speed, outrunning the military jets. Credibility Rating: 3
Valensole UFO Sighting – Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France
July 1965: Maurice Masse claimed he saw two humanoid aliens land a spherical UFO in a field and exit the craft. The French farmer said he was left paralyzed when one of the beings pointed a cylindrical instrument at him. The pair then flew away after briefly inspecting the surroundings. Credibility Rating: 3
Delphos Ring Incident – Delphos, Kansas November 1971: Sixteen-year-old Ronald Johnson claimed to have seen a glowing object hovering over a specific area close to his family farm in the early evening. When he went to fetch other witnesses the object had vanished. However, an eerie glowing ring was found where the UFO had been. Another witness corroborated to police the sighting of the strange flying object. Credibility Rating: 3
Loring Air Force Base Sighting – Loring Air Force Base, Maine October 1975: On two successive nights service members reported seeing a cigar-shaped UFO hovering over Loring Air Force Base, which was also seen on radar. The government attributed it to “unidentified helicopter(s) flying out of Canada.” Credibility Rating: 3
Val Johnson Incident – Marshall County, Minnesota August 1979: On the morning on September 11, 1979, Marshall County sheriff’s deputy Val Johnson encountered what he described as a white ball of light hovering a few feet above the ground while driving on a rural section of a State Highway. “[S]uddenly it was in the car with me”. Johnson woke up in a ditch half an hour later. His patrol car had suffered superficial damage and he had burns around his eyes. Credibility Rating: 3
Cash-Landrum Sighting – Dayton, Texas December 1980: Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Colby Landrum claim they were followed by hovering disc with a single fiery thruster as they drove home in eastern Texas. When the trio abandoned their car they felt intense heat generated by the UFO. All three claimed to suffer health problems in the aftermath of the encounter. Credibility Rating: 3
Trans-en-Provence Case – Trans-en-Provence,Var, France January 1981: Renato Nicolaï, a 55-year-old farmer, observed a saucer-shaped UFO land on his property at a distance of about 50 yards. The lead-colored vessel then lifted off from the ground and flew towards a nearby tree line. The case is considered remarkable because of scorch marks left by the machine, documented and extensively analysed by French authorities. Credibility Rating: 3
Belgian UFO Wave – Belgium March 1990: Over a number of days, scores of individuals reported seeing strange lights in the sky over Belgium. Belgian Air Force F-16s claimed to have seen nothing. But the European media exploded when an image of one of the triangular UFOs emerged, which was then revealed to be a fake. Credibility Rating: 3
Phoenix Lights Phenomenon – Phoenix, Arizona March 1997: Hundreds of witnesses saw “otherworldly” lights move across the night sky over Arizona, Nevada and northern Mexico. The sighting consisted of a giant V-shaped craft with lights and a series of stationary orange and red lights hanging in the sky. Arizona’s governor at the time, Fife Symington, said. “It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery.” Credibility Rating: 3
McMinnville UFO Photographs – McMinnville, Oregon May 1950: Paul Trent captured images of a UFO on camera after his wife spotted a slow-moving metal disk near their farm. The images were printed in Life magazine. The pair maintained their account until their deaths. Credibility Rating: 4
Shag Harbour Sighting – Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada October 1967: Multiple witnesses, including pilots, reported to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that they had witnessed a UFO with many flashing lights flying over the shoreline. A dozen or so witnesses said they saw a glowing orange sphere crash into the water and then slip beneath the surface. No wreckage was ever found. Credibility Rating: 4
The 1976 Tehran Incident – Tehran, Iran September 1976: Two Iranian F-4 interceptor aircraft reported their equipment jammed as they approached a star-shaped UFO over the Iranian capital. Ground control equipment at Mehrabad International Airport was also affected by the strange craft. The pilot Parviz Jafari said he attempted to fire on the UFO but was unable to cause any damage. “My weapons jammed and my radio communications garbled.” Credibility Rating: 4
Coyne, Mansfield Helicopter Incident – Mansfield, Ohio October 1973: Four crew members of an Army Reserve helicopter recorded a near collision with a UFO near Charles Mill Lake. The incident was corroborated by witnesses in Richland and Ashland counties who described an object or a ball of light moving in a manner inconsistent with human flight. The crew on the helicopter, piloted by Lawrence Coyne, reported seeing a 60-foot-long, cigar-shaped object with a bright green light. Credibility Rating: 4
Nancy France Sighting – Nancy, Grand Est, France October 1982: A biologist, M. Henri, and his wife observed a UFO that hovered for 20 minutes over their garden. The egg-shaped vessel had a shiny metallic appearance. Henri attempted to photograph the craft but found his camera had jammed. After the UFO regained altitude it moved at a speed and trajectory impossible for man-made aircraft. Credibility Rating: 4
Japan Airlines Flight 1628 Incident – Alaska November 1986: The pilot, Kenji Terauchi, and crew of a Japan Airlines cargo flight from Paris to Tokyo reported seeing strange flashing colorful lights that followed their aircraft over Alaska while the plane cruised at 35,000 feet. Credibility Rating: 4
Chicago O’Hare Airport Sighting – Chicago, Illinois November 2006: On an overcast day, United Airlines staff and pilots at Chicago O’Hare Airport reported seeing a flying saucer hovering over the airport terminal. The vessel then shot up into the air so quickly that it punched a hole in the clouds. The FAA called it a “weather phenomenon” and did not further investigate the incident. Credibility Rating: 4
Rendlesham Forest Incident – Suffolk, England December 1980: Between December 26-28, 1980, U.S. Air Force personnel stationed at RAF Bentwaters reported seeing strange lights near Rendlesham forest. The incident was never investigated. However, radar operators at the base recounted how they had observed a UFO moving too quickly for normal human flight. Credibility Rating: 5
Aguadilla Airport Incident – Aguadilla, Puerto Rico April 2013: A UFO was seen flying at low altitude across the Rafael Hernandez Airport runway in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection aircraft captured infrared video of the episode that was given to the Scientific Coalition for UFOology (SCU). The video shows the vessel travelling without lights below tree-top altitude, at speeds close to 100 mph. Credibility Rating: 6
USS Nimitz Tic-Tac UFO Incident – California Coast November 2004: U.S. Navy pilot Cmdr. David Fravor recalled seeing “something not from this earth” – a tic-tac shaped vessel moving at great speed – while commanding a U.S. Navy strike fighter squadron during exercises some 60 to 100 miles off the coast of Baja California. He recounted observing. A separate Navy jet crew tracked the object and filmed it for more than a minute. The footage was publicized by the New York Times following following the Pentagon’s acknowledgement of its Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, a recent study of UFO sightings. Credibility Rating: 6
F/A-18 Super Hornet GO FASTER Video – East Coast 2015: The third video recently released by the Pentagon shows the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet off over the Atlantic off of Virginia.
[Editor’s Note] All of these UFO incidents, with the exception of Scott Waring’s UFO on Mars, are credible and true, and are excellent accounts to look into. This arbitrary rating system, however, is simply the mainstream media’s way of assuring the public that they are on top of the UFO phenomenon, and, as usual, there is nothing here to be concerned about. But should anything new happen that might change this perspective, the mainstream media will be there to tell the people what to believe.
The modern era of UFO sightings began in 1947 when Kenneth Arnold, a businessman and pilot from Idaho, spotted what he believed was a formation of flying saucers near Mount Rainier in Washington. Encounters with unidentified flying objects have been recorded since ancient times, but Arnold’s sighting hooked the American public. It was the encounter that launched a thousand theories.
The U.S. military attempted to discredit Arnold’s claims. “The report cannot bear even superficial examination, therefore, must be disregarded,” the Air Force Materiel Command wrote in a now-declassified document.
As reported sightings increased and UFO obsession spread like wildfire, its flames fanned by the notorious Roswell incident, the military attempted to douse the issue. A series of UFO studies commissioned by the U.S. Air Force culminated in Project Blue Book, which wrapped up in 1969 and found no evidence of the presence of extraterrestrial vehicles on Earth or in the skies above.
The Air Force clearly hoped to put an end to the UFO craze—but the studies had the opposite effect. Josef Allen Hynek, who had overseen the Air Force efforts, broke with the military, claiming the importance of UFOs had been underplayed. His scientific analysis forms much of the basis of modern UFOlogy and his close encounters classification system is the benchmark in grading the credibility of UFO sightings.
In devising our own credibility rating system for UFO sightings, Newsweek built upon Hynek’s foundations. The astronomer and preeminent UFOlogist valued sightings that involved multiple or highly credible witnesses. We have also incorporated advances in technology into our scale. The advent of cameras and infrared devices on aircraft have presented new kinds of evidence for sightings.
The credibility scale works on a point-based system. One point is given for sightings with multiple witnesses, another for an expert witness (a pilot, air traffic controller, military or government official). One point is awarded for picture evidence and an additional point for film of a moving UFO. Unidentified flying objects can often be explained away as foreign aircraft, so an additional point is given for UFOs seen to be flying in a manner inconsistent with flight as humans know it.
Hynek also prized close encounters. Close encounters of the first kind—sightings of an object less than 500 feet away—are given one point. Close encounters of the second kind, a UFO event where a physical effect is felt (a car light breaks, extreme heat is felt, scorch marks on the ground), are given two points. Finally, close encounters of the third kind, instances where an animated pilot is seen, earn three points.
A system for removing points has also been incorporated to account for cases where military or government bodies have discredited the sightings. Three points are removed in these cases, as the baseline for credibility in the scale begins at three.
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.
• New information has surfaced regarding the ‘Rendlesham Forest incident’, where in December 1980, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt Jim Penniston and Airman John Burroughs witnessed a small triangular craft that landed in Rendlesham Forest near the twin NATO airbases of RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk, England. Sgt Penniston got close enough to touch the craft, describing it as “smooth to the touch” and covered with strange symbols similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, before it took off.
• It was known that Penniston and Burroughs were out of radio communication with the base’s Central Security Control for several hours.
• In 2010, now retired British police detective Gary Heseltine and his wife walked through the forest with the deputy commander of the base at the time, retired U.S. Air Force colonel Charles Halt, in an effort to retrace Halt’s steps during the third night of UFO activity there for a documentary that was never made.
• While a film crew shot the 2010 interview, Heseltine’s wife made a private video as well. At one point, she video recorded Heseltine walking with Halt in the forest during a break in filming. Heseltine says that he recently watched the private video again, and picked up on an interesting comment made by Halt. In the video, Halt says: “He [Burroughs] may have been abducted. Who knows? You know there is lost time, we know that. They were not on the radio … You’ve got men out in the forest …. unaccounted for hours..”
• “I did some research and realized that this admission [by Halt] had never been made public,” said Heseltine. “It’s one thing to see a UFO… but it’s quite another to suggest one of your men might have been abducted by aliens.”
• Heseltine also says that Halt told him the Suffolk airbase had the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in Europe at the time.
A retired U.S. Air Force colonel has claimed that two airmen involved in Britain’s most infamous UFO case may have been abducted by aliens in secret video footage.
Staff Sgt Jim Penniston and Airman John Burroughs witnessed a small triangular craft which landed in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk – in what has been dubbed the UK’s Roswell.
Sgt Penniston got so close, he even managed to touch the craft, describing it as “smooth to the touch” and covered with strange symbols similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs – before it took off.
Now in secret video footage obtained exclusively by Sun Online, the deputy commander of the base at the time, Charles Halt, can be heard stating that Burroughs “may have been abducted” and that the men were “unaccounted for” for hours.
It is believed it is the first time Halt has ever made the bombshell claims – and they did not appear on his official memo of the incident which was sent to the Ministry of Defence.
The mysterious Rendlesham incident took place in December 1980 – at the height of the Cold War – in woods just outside the twin NATO airbases of RAF Woodbridge and RAF Bentwaters.
Penniston and Burroughs headed into the woods to investigate some strange flashing lights, which is where they saw the UFO.
Two nights later, the UFO returned, and Halt led a team of military experts into the woods in a bid to “debunk” the claims.
However, the military team were shocked when a beam of light from the UFO hit the ground just a few feet away.
Charles Halt and Gary Heseltine in 2010
Halt, who made an 18-minute audio recording of the incident, went on to write a memo detailing what happened which he sent to the MoD but defence chiefs said the incident was of “no defence significance.”
For years it has been rumoured Penniston and Burroughs, who were security policemen, may have been snatched by the UFO as they were out of radio communication with their Central Security Control (CSC) for several hours – but no one officially involved in the incident has ever publicly stated it.
Now former British police detective Gary Heseltine has released a video clip from 2010 – when he toured the forest with Halt for a documentary that was never made.
The video clip was recorded by Heseltine’s wife during a break in filming and shows Heseltine walking with Halt in the forest in an effort to retrace his steps during the third night of UFO activity during the 1980 incident.
In the video, Halt says: “He [Burroughs] may have been abducted who knows… You know there is LOST TIME, we know that? They were not on the radio … You’ve got men out in the forest that you can’t …. unnaccounted for hours..”
Heseltine, 57, of Scholes, West Yorkshire, told Sun Online: “My wife Lynn took quite a few video clips as we walking around the forest.
“It was only recently while watching them again that I picked up on the admission by Halt that Penniston and Burroughs had been missing off air ‘for several hours’.
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.
And sceptics have often dismissed it as a series of nocturnal lights or even a fireball.
enduring fascination with UFOs and amassed a sizeable library of titles on the subject.
A documentary has attempted to shine new light on the infamous Rendlesham Forest incident from 1980, involving UFOs and nuclear weapons.
