Article by Adam Barnhardt June 5, 2021 (comicbook.com)
• As Congress awaits a report about UFOs or ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ (UAP) from the American intelligence community, members of the press corps have been pressing Pentagon officials on what the report might contain.
• In one example, a reporter for Task & Purpose’s Jeff Schogol made note that he “was talking to a gentleman” that contended the Department of Defense had alien bodies and craft. Schogol then point-blank asked spokesperson John F. Kirby (pictured above) if the DoD did, in fact, have possession of these items and if so, the location they’re being held at. Kirby side-stepped the question saying, “I’m not going to get ahead of the report that the DNI will submit that we are helping, obviously, and providing input to and I’ll just leave it at that, Jeff.” (see 48 second video clip below)
• At the same time, the New York Times published an article suggesting its sources have been briefed on the UAP report, and it will reveal that intelligence officials have no evidence the UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin. The same exact article goes on to say that intelligence officials insist that these authenticated UAPs (UFOs) are not made by the United States of America, even at a covert level.
• Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is dubious that these highly advanced craft are neither extraterrestrial or American. “I can’t imagine that what has been described or shown in some of the videos is of, belongs to any government that I’m aware of,” said Heinrich. “I’m not really a betting man. But the way these things operate, you know they certainly, you wouldn’t want a human being or any living creature in something that moves that fast and changes direction that quickly. So like I said, I have no idea what it is, but I think we should figure it out.” “[I]f there is a foreign government that had these kinds of capabilities, I think we would see other indications of advanced technology.”
Jeff Schogol
The topics of UFOs and alien have been at the forefront of the news cycle as
Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
Congress awaits a report about UAP — the government’s term for unidentified aerial phenomena — from the American intelligence community. With many talking about it, members of the press corps stationed at the Pentagon have been pressing government officials on what the report might contain. In one example this week, a reporter for Task & Purpose pressed a spokesperson for the Pentagon on whether or not the United States Department of Defense was in possession of alien bodies and crafts.
“The UAP Task Force is really designed to take a look at these unexplained aerial phenomena and try to help us get a better understanding of them,” John F. Kirby, the DoD’s primary spokesperson said in a routine press conference this week. “Again, I’m not going to get ahead of the report that the DNI will submit that we are helping, obviously, and providing input to and I’ll just leave it at that, Jeff.”
Kirby’s response came after Task & Purpose’s Jeff Schogol made note that he “was talking to a gentleman” that contended the Department of Defense had alien bodies and craft. Schogol then point-blank asked Kirby if the DoD did, in fact, have possession of these items and if so, the location they’re being held at.
Around the same time Kirby brushed the question off, the New York Times published a piece suggesting its sources have been briefed on the report, and in it, intelligence officials will reveal they’ve obtained no evidence the UFOs are extraterrestrial in origin. That said, the same exact piece also explains intelligence officials are unaware of the true nature of some UAP sightings, other than the fact they’re not aircraft built by the United States of America, even at a covert level.
48 second excerpt of DoD Press Secretary John Kirby on alien bodies (‘Ryan Ha’ YouTube)
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• In April 2020, the US Department of Defense (DoD) ‘officially released’ three UFO videos captured by Navy aviators off of the US East and West Coasts, including the ‘Tic Tac’ UFO video from 2004, although they had been previously ‘unofficially’ released in December 2017. The DoD re-released 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.”
• More recently, filmmaker Jeremy Corbell published “leaked” images of bizarre UFOs swarming US Navy destroyers off of Southern California in 2019. The DoD quickly ‘authenticated’ those images recorded by Navy personnel. Reporter George Knapp also recently published photos depicting a separate set of alleged UAP/UFO events that took place in recent years off the East Coast.
• Dod spokesperson Susan Gough said that the Navy UFO photos and videos were “provided to some web news outlets without following the proper procedures for authorized release of information.” Gough declined to comment on which outlets were “provided” with the information. Also, according to Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Michael Gilday, the DoD has provided no details regarding the context of these confirmed UFO videos. The UFOs remain unidentified and the underlying facts surrounding these UAP/UFO incidents remain extremely limited. Gilday did note that “there have been other sightings by aviators in the air and by other ships not only of the United States, but other nations – and of course other elements within the U.S. joint force.”
• According to Gough, no formal investigation has been opened into the unauthorized release of the UFO photos and videos. The DoD has further declined to comment on the context of the videos, or the accuracy of media claims that these videos depict advanced craft.
• This repeated pattern of unaccountability has raised concerns that these airspace breaches arguably constitute a major intelligence failure. The confusing and often controversial nature of these UFO sightings may also contribute to a delayed or muted response by relevant governmental agencies.
• In an attempt to clear up some of this confusion, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence requested a public report on these strange UFO encounters, which is to be released in June. The committee’s request specifically acknowledged a lack of a “unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat.”
• On May 3, 2021, the apparent lack of seriousness surrounding this topic, as well as the lack of support in terms of Pentagon resources and expertise, prompted the DoD’s Inspector General to announce that it is opening an ‘evaluation’ into “the extent to which the DoD has taken actions regarding unidentified aerial phenomena”, i.e.: UFOs. The notice gives various organizations within the US military, including multiple entities in the US Intelligence Community, five days to designate a senior individual as a point of contact.
• The commands on the Inspector General’s list include the US Central Command, US Northern Command, and US Special Operations Command. However, the list does not include the US Indo-Pacific Command, which has seen unusual incidents involving unidentified aircraft in recent years.
• It is unclear whether the Department of Defense Inspector General’s evaluation will impact the timing of the release of the Senate Committee report. Hopefully, in the coming months the public will learn more facts about the UAP/UFO issue and the DoD’s response to it, or lack thereof. If new insights do not surface from the Senate report, they may well come from the DoD’s Inspector General’s report.
The Department of Defense Inspector General issued an announcement yesterday
Admiral Michael Gilday
that it is opening an evaluation into “the extent to which the DoD has taken actions regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).“ Importantly, the announcement specified an evaluation rather than an investigation, likely framing the inquiry in terms of policy instead of specific allegations of wrongdoing. The notice gave various organizations within the U.S. military, including multiple entities that are also members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, five days to designate a senior individual as a point of contact.
The distribution of the list notably includes the commanders of U.S. Central Command, U.S. Northern Command, and U.S. Special Operations Command. The list does not however include other combatant commands, such as U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which has seen unusual incidents involving unidentified aircraft in recent years. The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General could not be reached for comment on why only some commands were included.
sphere ‘transmedium’ UFOs off of the East Coast in 2019, released by George Knapp
The Inspector General’s announcement comes at a time when this issue is receiving
‘pyramid’ UFOs seen off of West Coast in 2019, released by Jeremy Corbell
high-profile media attention. The War Zone team has covered this topic for several years, including a recent story concerning a bizarre incident involving unidentified aircraft swarming U.S. Navy warships off the Southern California coast. Since our story, filmmaker Jeremy Corbell published leaked photos and videos apparently connected to the event. The photos and video were quickly authenticated by the Department of Defense as being recorded by Navy personnel, but no details regarding their context have been confirmed by the Pentagon. Reporter George Knapp also recently published photos depicting a separate set of alleged UAP events that took place in recent years off the East Coast.
George Knapp
Asked by The War Zone about the circumstances surrounding the apparent leak, Department of
Jeremy Corbell
Defense spokesperson Susan Gough told us that the photos and video were “provided to some web news outlets without following the proper procedures for authorized release of information.” She further stated that the Department of Defense concluded that confirming the cockpit photographs and night-vision video were taken by Navy personnel would “reduce public misperceptions regarding their authenticity.” Gough declined to comment on which outlets were “provided” with the information.
It is interesting to note that the Pentagon used very similar language to Gough’s statemen when it officially released three controversial UAP videos, seen below, including one with the filename “FLIR” that shows an object that is now commonly referred to as the “Tic Tac,” in April 2020. “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,” a statement at the time read.
According to Gough, no formal investigation has been opened into the unauthorized release of the photos and videos. She further declined to comment on any questions regarding the context of the video, or the accuracy of media claims that these videos depict advanced craft.
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Article by Henry Holloway April 22, 2021 (thesun.co.uk)
• On April 25, 2013 at around 9:20 pm, pilots of a DHC-8 Turboprop flying near the Rafael Hernandez Airport in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico spotted a red light over the ocean. They contacted the control tower who could not identify the object. The object’s light went out as it approached the shore. The US Customs and Border Protection aircraft engaged its thermal imaging camera and went on to the follow the UFO. It captured video of an object about five feet in length moving at speeds of up to 120mph close the ground over the airport. (see 3:54 minute video below)
• The infrared camera footage was leaked to the Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (SCU), a ‘think tank’ dedicated to exploring UFOs and other phenomena, by an anonymous source. Jonathan Lace, spokesman for the SCU explained how the organization believes the 2013 Aguadilla UAP footage to be a “most compelling” footage of a UFO. In a 50-page report the coalition compiled on the incident (see here) SCU investigators who spent 1000 hours researching the UFO resolved that the object appears to be of “unknown origin”.
• “No bird, no balloon, no aircraft and no known drones have that capability,” the SCU report notes. When the object moves over the water again, it splits in two and plunges into the ocean. However, the mysterious UFO appears not to disturb the water when plunging beneath and then re-emerging from the surface – a phenomena known as “trans-medium” travel. “This video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have ever seen,” the report concludes.
• The SCU released a letter that it sent to Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, ranking members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, urging them to release more information on UAPs. Some 55 members of the SCU signed off on the document as they offered their services in the investigation of these strange phenomena. They urge the two Republican Senators to get behind efforts to release more footage of the infamous 2004 “Tic Tac” UFO video from the USS Nimitz, and the “Go Fast” and “Gimbal” UFO videos filmed by the pilots from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2014.
• This report comes as the UFO debate reopened after the release of scraps of footage showing mysterious ‘pyramid’ objects from 2019, which the Pentagon confirmed as authentic. The videos were leaked from briefings by the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force. The world is awaiting an unclassified report on UFOs by the Director of the National Intelligence and the Department for Defense which is due for release in June.
• In a statement, the SCU said: “The SCU believes that all government data regarding unidentified aerospace objects should be made available to the public to be openly investigated by the broader scientific community, provided that such data does not compromise sources or methods of data collection. A full scientific investigation of such data would be able to uncover valuable information relating to both national security and advancement of our understanding of physics, aerospace engineering, and our world.”
• Competing theories on the strange videos continue to rage. Some claim that the pyramid UFOs are never-before-seen military aircraft or drones, or even hypersonic drones from China or Russia. Others claim it shows otherworldly craft possibly piloted by extraterrestrial beings. Diehard skeptics suggest that the bizarre videos are just camera tricks, natural phenomena or outright hoaxes.
Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
The Scientific Coalition for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (SCU) told The US Sun
Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
they are encouraging the disclosure of more information so scientists can help to investigate these unexplained occurrences.
Jonathan Lace, spokesman for SCU, explained the organization believes “most compelling” footage of the anomalous activity was taken by a Homeland Security aircraft over Puerto Rico on April 25, 2013.
The eerie footage shows an object believed to be up to five feet in length moving at speeds of up to 120mph close the ground before seemingly plunging into the ocean and splitting into two.
‘Tic Tac’ UFO off San Diego 2004
“No bird, no balloon, no aircraft and no known drones have that capability,” the SCU noted in a 50-page report the team compiled on the incident.
SCU investigators said the object appears to be of “unknown origin” after spending 1000 hours researching the UAP.
Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio
Mr Lace told The US Sun: “The SCU finds the 2013 Aguadilla UAP footage to offer the most compelling evidence of unusual UAP flight characteristics.”
‘pyramid’ UFO off LA 2019
He noted the group has “no official” position on a leading theory for UAP as questions mount over the strange encounters which are being investigated by the Pentagon.
The US Sun contacted SCU – a think tank dedicated to exploring UAPs and other phenomena – as they released a letter set to Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio urging for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) to release more information on UAPs.
Some 55 members of SCU signed off on the document as they offered their services in the investigation of these strange phenomena – but their names have been withheld due to privacy concerns.
3:54 minute 2013 Aguadilla UAP footage in Puerto Rico (‘Paris Match’ YouTube)
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Article by Jazz Shaw December 31, 2020 (hotair.com)
• Back in June, some big UFO news focused around a provision that was inserted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence into the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) that directed the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force to produce an unclassified report on what they know about UFOs. It directed that this report be released to the Senate committee within 180 days of the enactment of the IAA. Well, the IAA was included in the $1.4 trillion government funding package that was passed on December 27th along with a $900 billion COVID-relief fund. So the 180 day clock is ticking. So what can we expect to see when that clock runs out?
• Christopher Mellon is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former staff Director of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee. Mellon played an integral role in the development of the committee’s UFO legislation. He points out that the UFO phenomenon enjoys the support of both parties in both Houses of Congress, and therefore it is more likely that some sort of report will be released. Any expectations of revelations of UFO incidents or discoveries under current investigation, however, are more unlikely.
• First of all, the Pentagon can respond by saying that they’ve not being given enough time and will need to postpone it – for a very long time. Second, this report specifically pertains to unclassified material. All of the juicy stuff will no doubt be deemed ‘classified’. Thirdly, back in September, after the Pentagon’s verification of the existence of the UAP Task Force, numerous reporters were contacting the Pentagon’s one and only spokesperson to handle UAP questions, Susan Gough. Gough began issuing a boilerplate refusal to any and all questions regarding details of UAP incidents under investigation. To wit: “To maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.” You can rest assured they have zero intention of starting to discuss it publicly now. Short of the President ordering specific documents from the UAP Task Force declassified (document that they somehow already know about), it seems obvious that the Pentagon intends to keep a lid on all of this.
• The military and the intelligence community routinely overclassify information, covering virtually every area of interest, not just UFOs. And once they lock something down it requires a herculean effort to bring it back to light. I can’t see those channels in our government sweeping away more than 70-years of obfuscation and deception with one sweep of a new broom. While cautiously hopeful about the pending release of this report, I’m definitely not getting my hopes up.
A lot of news came out of that massive COVID relief bill with bazillions of dollars in other spending wrapped up in it. One item that didn’t draw nearly as much attention was the fact that the annual Intelligence Authorization Act was rolled in as part of that mess. The IAA is obviously a necessary bit of housekeeping that Congress has to take care of on a regular basis, but this year’s version was of particular interest to people in the ufology community. I wrote about this when the measure was drafted back in June, specifically focusing on the provisions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that made it so interesting to the saucerheads. It dealt with internal communications challenges for the UAP Task Force (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) and directed the UAPTF to produce an unclassified report on their progress within 180 days of when the measure was enacted. Well, now it’s enacted. And as The Debrief pointed out this week, that means that the clock is ticking. But what should we really expect to receive when that clock strikes midnight?
“Now, with the recent passing of the Omnibus, the clock has officially started ticking, and The Pentagon’s
Christopher Mellon
UAP Task Force has 180 days to provide the Senate Intelligence Committee with their unclassified report detailing The Pentagon’s current investigations into UFOs.”
“The newly enacted Intelligence Authorization Act incorporates the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report language calling for an unclassified, all-source report on the UAP phenomenon. This was accomplished in the Joint Explanatory Statement accompanying the bill,” says Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former staff Director of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee, who played an integral role in the development of the legislation.”
“Consequently, it’s now fair to say that the request for an unclassified report on the UAP phenomenon enjoys the support of both parties in both Houses of Congress,” Mellon told The Debrief in an email.”
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Article by Tim McMillan December 2, 2020 (thedebrief.org)
• US military and intelligence officials have offered a glimpse into what is currently going on with the Pentagon’s “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force,” in an exclusive for The Debrief.org website. For the last two years, the DoD has been busy briefing lawmakers, intelligence community members, and the highest levels of the US military on encounters with UAP/UFOs that defy conventional explanations. In addition, two classified intelligence reports on UFOs have been widely distributed to the US Intelligence Community, including clear photographic evidence. The reports also explicitly state that these UFOs could be operated by “intelligences of unknown origin”.
• In June, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence offered its support for the “efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence” and requested an unclassified report detailing the analysis of ‘Anomalous Aerial Vehicles’. In mid-August, the Pentagon formally acknowledged they had established a UAP Task Force “to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.”
• The Debrief learned that on October 21, 2019, a UFO briefing was conducted at the Pentagon for several Senate Armed Services Committee staffers. Attendees said they were provided information on two Pentagon UFO research programs that preceded the UAP Task Force. Two days later on October 23rd, staffers with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee were provided the same information. Dr. Hal Puthoff, who claims to be one of a handful of persons who conducted the October UFO briefings, said that he had been invited to brief congressional staffers on more than one occasion. He said that staffers were “engaged”, and provided “positive responses, [with] more details always being requested.”
• An email obtained by The Debrief shows an October 16, 2019 exchange between then Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert Burke, and current Vice Chief of Staff for the Air Force General Stephen “Steve” Wilson, in which Adm. Burke tells Gen. Wilson, “Recommend you take the brief I just received from our Director of Naval Intelligence VADM Matt Kohler, on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).” Adm. Burke concludes the email, “SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] will get the same brief tomorrow at 1000.”
• Pentagon Spokesperson Susan Gough did not confirm or deny the existence of the UAP intelligence reports, and declined to make any comment on their contents. It seems the Pentagon is not interested in sharing any more information on the UAP topic.
• However, several current and former officials with the DoD and individuals working for multiple US intelligence agencies told The Debrief that there was much more going on behind closed doors. Details on the two classified intelligence position reports, which the UAP Task Force provided to the US Intelligence Community, suggest both a greater degree of Pentagon involvement and an indication that the hunt for UFOs isn’t confined to aerial phenomena.
• A 2018 intelligence report provided a general overview of the UAP/UFO topic, including details of previous military encounters. According to sources who had read the classified reports, the report also contained an unreleased photograph of a silver “cube-shaped” flying object captured from the cockpit of an F/A-18 fighter jet with a pilot’s personal cell phone. The object was “hovering” completely motionless when Navy pilots encountered it. Based on the photo, the object was at an altitude of 30,000 to 35,000 feet, and approximately 1,000 feet from the fighter jet.
• Defense and intelligence officials expressed shock that the classified UAP Task Force report had been so widely distributed amongst the Intelligence community. “In decades with the [Intelligence Community] I’ve never seen anything like this,” said one intelligence official. The report’s most disconcerting aspect was a “list” of possible explanations for these mysterious encounters, and that the potential for UAP/UFO to be “alien” or “non-human” technology was of legitimate consideration.
• A second classified UAP Task Force report was issued in the summer of 2020. Like the first report, this report was also widely distributed amongst the Intelligence Community. “It went viral,” said one intelligence official who had read the report. The most striking feature of the second report was the inclusion of new and “extremely clear” photograph of an unidentifiable triangular aircraft also taken from inside the cockpit of a fighter jet off the East Coast of the United States. The UFO in the photograph is described as a large equilateral triangle with rounded or “blunted” edges and large, perfectly spherical white “lights” in each corner. Two DoD officials said the photo was taken after the triangular craft emerged from the ocean and began to ascend straight upwards at a 90-degree angle.
• The second report primarily focused on “Unidentified Submersible Phenomena”, or “transmedium” vehicles capable of operating both under water and in the air, and apparently originating from within the world’s oceans. The idea of unidentified submersible objects, or “USOs”, is not something new. MUFON astronomer Marc D’Antonio has shared an experience involving the detection of an underwater “Fast Mover,” which occurred while he was sailing as a civilian aboard one of the US Navy’s prized attack submarines. Defense journalist Tyler Rogoway spoke with several veteran submariners to get their take on D’Antonio’s account. The Navy vets interviewed by Rogoway almost unanimously acknowledged that unexplained, very high-speed sonar targets are indeed recorded by some of the most sophisticated listening equipment on the planet.
• A senior member of the Intelligence Community, whose responsibilities for decades involved underwater surveillance and reconnaissance programs, told The Debrief there was validity to claims of extremely fast-moving underwater objects being detected by US military systems. “On occasion, there are detections made of non-cavitational, extremely fast-moving objects within the ocean.” The intelligence official cited the high-levels of security classification associated with underwater reconnaissance. One active defense official said the UAP Task Force has a wealth of photographic evidence collected from military pilots’ personal devices as well as sophisticated DoD surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. There are many accounts – some going back centuries – in which people have observed unidentifiable craft operating in and out of the water.
• In 2017, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Dana White confirmed to Politico that the DoD had studied UFOs under the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP) run by Luis Elizondo. Then in December 2019, the Pentagon issued a statement saying AATIP was not UAP related, and that Elizondo had “no responsibilities” in the program. When The Debrief pointed out that its investigation had confirmed that AATIP did, in fact, involve UFOs and that Luis Elizondo was, in fact, the custodian of the AATIP portfolio, Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough replied, “Please keep in mind (Elizondo) left DoD over three years ago, and there are personnel and privacy matters involved.”
• From closed-door meetings, to senior military leadership and the issuance of classified intelligence reports, all indications suggest the DoD is indeed taking the UAP/UFO issue seriously. But when it comes to underwater systems, the extremity of official secrecy falls into a class by itself. For instance, retired Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman acknowledged that he served as director for the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) decades ago. Yet to date, the government denies that the NURO even exists.
• Even if the Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s request for an unclassified UAP report ends up being enacted in the FY2021 Intelligence Act, the UAP report provision is not binding law. There’s no guarantee the public will be provided any comprehensive information on UAP/UFOs. And while Congress is required to have access to classified information, only the Executive Branch has the authority to declassify national security information to make it public.
• Should the DoD become more willing to discuss UAPs publicly, there are plenty of indications that it might be a disappointment compared to many of the popular myths and narratives intertwined with the UFO subject over the last 70 years. Every source familiar with the activities of the UAP Task Force said that no concise estimate of the situation for UAP has been achieved, and the US government presently lacks any definite explanation for UAP-related events.
• US Air Force Brigadier General Bruce McClintock, who served as Special Assistant to the Commander of Air Force Space Command until his retirement in 2017, and presently heads up the RAND corporation’s space-related research, told The Debrief that he is dismissive of the idea that US military encounters with UAP/UFO could be related to any form of classified aerospace testing by either the US or a foreign adversary. “It is unlikely that the US government would intentionally conduct tests against its own unwitting military assets. To do so would require a very high level of coordination and approval for the potential safety and operational security risks.”
• The Debrief has been unable to find anyone willing to speculate as to the source of UFO encounters reported by military aviators, whether they may be a US black budget program or the ‘testing’ of US air defense by foreign governments. A transition team spokesperson for Biden said that his administration would “[i]mmediately return to daily press briefings at the White House, US Department of State, and US Department of Defense. Our foreign policy relies on the informed consent of the American people. That is not possible when our government refuses to communicate with the public.”
‘equilateral triangle’ ufo
In an exclusive feature for The Debrief, U.S. military and intelligence officials, as well as Pentagon emails,
Air Force General Steve Wilson
offer an unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes of what’s currently going on with The Pentagon’s investigation into UFOs, or as they term them, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” (UAP).
For the last two years, the Department of Defense’s newly revamped “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force” (or UAPTF) has been busy briefing lawmakers, Intelligence Community stakeholders, and the highest levels of the U.S. military on encounters with what they say are mysterious airborne objects that defy conventional explanations.
Along with classified briefings, multiple senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter say two classified intelligence reports on UAP have been widely distributed to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Numerous sources from various government agencies told The Debrief that these reports include clear photographic evidence of UAP. The reports also explicitly state that the Task Force is considering the possibility that these unidentified objects could, as stated by one source from the U.S. Intelligence Community said, be operated by “intelligences of unknown origin.”
Admiral Robert Burke
Significantly, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and head of RAND corporation’s Space Enterprise Initiative has—for the first time—gone on record to discuss some of the most likely explanations for UAP. His responses were surprising.
BRIEFINGS AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS
In June, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s FY2021 Intelligence Authorization Act contained an
Naval Intelligence VADM Matt Kohler
intriguing section titled report on “Advanced Aerial Threats.” In the inclusion, the committee gave an eye-opening official hint (in recent history) the government takes UFOs seriously by offering its support for the “efforts of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force at the Office of Naval Intelligence.” The Intelligence Committee additionally requested an unclassified report detailing the analysis of “UAP” or “Anomalous Aerial Vehicles.”
Though already acknowledged by the Intelligence Committee, in mid-August, the Pentagon formally acknowledged they had established a task force looking into UAP. In a press announcement, the Secretary of Defense’s Office stated, “the UAPTF’s mission will be to detect, analyze and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.” According to the release, authority for the Task Force was approved by the DoD’s chief operating officer, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist.
The summer news of the establishment of the UAPTF seemingly suggests—for the first time since the shuttering of Project Blue Book (the Air Force’s official investigations into UFOs) in 1969—that the Pentagon is now taking the subject of UFOs seriously.
However, an internal email obtained by The Debrief shows that almost one year before the DoD’s announcement, the highest levels of the U.S. military were already being briefed on UAP.
David L. Norquist
The email, obtained via Freedom of Information Act request, shows an October 16th, 2019 exchange between
Bruce McClintock
then Vice Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert Burke, and current Vice Chief of Staff for the Air Force General Stephen “Steve” Wilson.
In the email, Adm. Burke tells Gen. Wilson, “Recommend you take the brief I just received from our Director of Naval Intelligence VADM Matt Kohler, on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).” Adm. Burke concludes the email, “SECNAV [Secretary of the Navy] will get the same brief tomorrow at 1000.”
The “SECNAV” referenced in Adm. Burke’s email was then-Secretary of the Navy, Richard V. Spencer. A little over a month after this UAP briefing, Spencer was fired by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper over public disagreements stemming from a series of controversies involving the court-martial of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher.
Speaking on background, one U.S. Defense official lamented that a lack of continuity with DoD leadership might have hindered some of the UAPTF’s work. Within the past 24 months, there have been four different Secretaries of the Navy and five additional Secretaries of Defense. Vice Admiral Matt Kohler, noted for having provided the briefings, retired after 36 years with the Navy in June of this year.
Marc D’Antonio
Reaching out to several active government officials and individuals who retain their government-issued security
Dr. Hal Puthoff
clearances, The Debrief learned that last fall was a busy time for the UAPTF. On October 21st, 2019, a briefing on UAP was conducted at the Pentagon for several Senate Armed Services Committee staffers.
Attendees at the meeting told The Debrief that they were provided information on two previous DoD-backed UFO programs: The Advanced Aerial Weapons Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) and the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). They were also briefed on “highly sensitive categories of UFO investigations.” Only two days later on October 23rd, staffers with the Senate Select Intelligence Committee were provided the same information in a meeting on Capitol Hill.
A former private contractor for AAWSAP and AATIP, Dr. Hal Puthoff, confirmed for The Debrief he was one of a handful of persons who conducted the October briefings. “I have been invited to brief congressional staffers on the Senate Armed Services Committee on UAP matters in the last couple of years,” Puthoff said in an email, “and have done so on more than one occasion.” Dr. Puthoff described the staffers during these meetings as being “engaged,” and provided “positive responses, [and] more details always being requested.”
Luis Elizondo
The Debrief reached out to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Office and DoD Executive Services
Bobby Ray Inman
Office and formally requested an interview with someone authorized to speak on the UAP briefings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In an email, Senior Strategist and Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough responded, “To maintain operations security, which includes not disseminating information publicly that may be useful to our adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examination of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP – and that includes not discussing the UAPTF publicly, also.”
Official public affairs channels indicate the Pentagon is not interested in sharing any more information on the UAP topic. However, several current and former officials with the DoD and individuals working for multiple U.S. intelligence agencies told The Debrief that there was much more going on behind closed doors.
UAP INTELLIGENCE POSITION REPORTS
Multiple sources confirmed for The Debrief that the UAPTF had issued two classified intelligence position reports, which one individual described as “shocking.” Details provided on these reports suggest both a greater degree of Pentagon involvement, and that the UAPTF’s hunt for unidentified objects isn’t confined only to aerial phenomena.
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Article by Andrew Daniels November 23, 2020 (popularmechanics.com)
• Noting its concern “that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the federal government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on [UAP], despite the potential threat,” in June, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) authorized appropriations for fiscal year 2021 under the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) which included the Pentagon’s ‘UAP Task Force’ to provide a report on UFO links to “adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to US military assets and installations” within 180 days. House bill H.R. 6395 is set to pass this bill into law.
• Now, President Trump is threatening to veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which includes the UAP Task Force directive in the IAA, if lawmakers don’t remove a bipartisan amendment to rename military bases named after Civil War Confederate leaders. The NDAA must be passed and signed before Congress adjourns on January 3rd.
• If Trump vetoes and the NDAA doesn’t pass before the deadline, the public will have to wait longer still for the much-anticipated disclosure of UAP/UFO secrets.
• The build-up to this point of having a publicly released report on UFOs stems from the US Navy’s confirmation in 2019 that the three Navy jet videos of separate UFO encounters that was released in 2017 were authentic, but never should have been released. In April 2020, The New York Times reported that the military has created a new UAP Task Force to continue the work of previous Pentagon programs that secretly studied UFOs.
• Then in a July New York Times article, the former US Senator from Nevada, Harry Reid, said he believes “crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied … actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession.” That same Times article quoted the astrophysicist Eric Davis, who consulted with the Pentagon’s original UFO program and now works for a defense contractor, who had come to the conclusion that “we couldn’t make [certain alien materials] ourselves.” Davis had briefed a DoD agency as recently as March 2020 about retrieving materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.”
• This prompted SSCI chair Senator Marco Rubio to ask who’s responsible for UAP/UFO spotted over American military bases, and whether it could be the Chinese or Russians having made some sort of technological leap. Or if UFOs originate from off-planet. The Senate’s SSCI appropriations bill added the IAA provision with the UAP/UFO public report language.
• In August, the DoD officially approved the UAP Task Force, which the Times had reported in April, to “improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs,” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough told Popular Mechanics at the time. “The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.”
• A Trump veto of the NDAA may stall the momentum of a UFO movement that has rapidly captured mainstream attention over the last two years.
President Donald Trump says he’ll veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual bill that sets the budget and policies for the U.S. military, if lawmakers don’t remove a bipartisan amendment to rename military bases named after Confederate leaders, according to an NBC News report.
The NDAA, which must be passed and signed before Congress adjourns on January 3, covers troop pay raises and funding for new equipment, among other items. But it also includes language that could ultimately change what the American public knows about UFOs in a significant way. A Trump veto of the NDAA may stall the momentum of a movement that has rapidly captured mainstream attention over the last two years.
In August, the Department of Defense (DoD) officially approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force (UAPTF). The task force will investigate the sightings of UAPs, also known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs.
Senator Marco Rubio
The task force is the first official government program affiliated with UFO research since a 2000s-era unit that analyzed
Harry Reid
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other UAPs lost its funding in 2012, even though multiple sources confirmed with Popular Mechanics that the unit remained active in secrecy after its shuttering.
The DoD formed the UAPTF to “improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs,” Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough told Popular Mechanics at the time. “The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security.”
In June’s Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA), the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) authorized appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for the UAPTF and supported its efforts to reveal any links that UAP “have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to U.S. military assets and installations.”
Eric Davis
In the IAA, the Select Committee on Intelligence said it “remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the federal government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on [UAP], despite the potential threat,” and so it directed the task force to report its findings on UAP, “including observed airborne objects that have not been identified,” within 180 days.
The Senate passed the NDAA, which included the IAA containing the language about the task force, in July. Though the House’s version of the NDAA, which also passed in July, did not include the IAA, the Senate re-passed a version of the NDAA just last week under the House bill number (H.R. 6395) that does include the IAA and its attendant instructions for the UAP task force.
So if Trump indeed vetoes the NDAA and the House and Senate can’t produce a new version before the deadline, it’s back to square one—and the public will have to wait even longer for the much-anticipated disclosure of UAP secrets.
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Article by Alejandro Rojas July 20, 2020 (openminds.tv)
• The United States Air Force claims that it stopped investigating UFOs in 1969 with the closing of the UFO research program, Project Blue Book. This is the official position in the “USAF UFO Fact Sheet”. But it is a lie. The US Air Force was gaslighting the public to believe that they have no real interest in UFOs. But, as often demonstrated, the government has been taking UFOs seriously for a very long time. And it continues to this day.
• In a memo dated October 20, 1969, Brigadier General Carroll H. Bolender noted that “reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book system.” The memo noted that the most critical cases did not go to Project Blue Book at all. First of all, why have an official UFO research program like Project Blue Book that excludes “the most critical cases”? Secondly, why aren’t UFOs that ‘could affect national security’ investigated?
• In 1993, the military modified its ‘no such thing as a UFO threat’ position when the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “OPREP–3 reports containing information relating to unknown objects near US military installations are considered extremely sensitive, and thus not releasable.” So the US military says that it is not interested in investigating UFOs, while at the same time expressing concern about UFOs flying over military bases, including nuclear weapons installations.
• It seems the US and the UK had a similar UFO public relations strategy. In the 1990s, Nick Pope ran Britain’s Ministry of Defense’s “UFO desk.” Pope told the Huffington Post, “We were telling the public we’re not interested, this is all nonsense, but in reality, we were desperately chasing our tails and following this up in great detail.” “To really achieve our policy of downplaying the UFO phenomenon, we would use a combination of ‘spin and dirty tricks,’” said Pope. “We used terms like UFO buffs and UFO spotters — terms that mean these people are nut jobs. In other words, we were implying that this is just a very somewhat quaint hobby that people have as opposed to a serious research interest.” Whenever someone went to the aviation authorities or the police, as soon as they mentioned ‘UFO’ the authorities would immediately lose interest and refer them to civilian UFO groups, regardless of the perceived threat.
• Senator Marco Rubio is the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). In the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act for 2021, the SSCI asked that the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with the Secretary of Defense put together a report on “unidentified aerial phenomenon [UAP].” The report is to include information from the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force’. Rubio recently told CBS Miami that he was concerned about “things flying over your military bases… [that] exhibit, potentially, technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal.” “[T]o me,” said Rubio, this “is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into.”
• Why would Senator Rubio assume that the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force’ would have this sort of information? Luis Elizondo is a former intelligence officer who headed up a previous Pentagon UFO research project called the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, or AATIP. While the DoD claimed that the program ended (in 2012), Elizondo claimed that the program continued even after he had left. Eventually, the DoD admitted that the program existed and still exists. This is the Task Force.
• On July 21st, Elizondo told investigative journalist George Knapp on Coast to Coast AM that he was recently at a meeting having a classified discussion when one of the men present told him he had done Elizondo’s job in the 1980s. “[I]t was very clear to me that AATIP was not the first of its kind,” said Elizondo. “There was an organized effort back in the ’80s to do exactly this as well.”
• Chris Mellon is a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and a former Staff Director of the SSCI. He and Elizondo are currently featured on the History Channel’s UFO investigation series “Unidentified”. Such efforts to reveal the government’s knowledge of UFOs have resulted in the Navy admitting they took UAPs seriously, investigated UAP incidents, and have begun reporting them to Washington DC lawmakers.
• Mellon says they have several never before seen military cases featured in the HISTORY show’s new season. For example, Mellon relates the story of a NORAD officer who was tracking a UFO on radar. The military was “scrambling every jet they could get in the air.” But when researcher John Greenewald filed a Freedom of Information Act request on this incident, NORAD responded that it had “found no records.”
• Hopefully, mainstream science, media, and academia are beginning to realize that the government has been lying to us about what it knows about UFOs. So how will the government and the military respond to investigative agencies such as Rubio’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence? Will they gaslight the SSCI, like they have done with the public at large since (at least) 1969?
Senator Marco Rubio
The United States Air Force claims it stopped investigating UFOs in 1969. It is a point they love to repeat when inquiries have been made for the last few decades, even when researchers present government documents to demonstrate otherwise. Often in the past couple of decades, instead of answering my inquiries about UFO documents, I am sent the USAF UFO Fact sheet. However, given recent revelations, the USAF fact sheet was wrong, and, as many have demonstrated, the government has been taking UFOs seriously for a very long time.
Nick Pope
According to the USAF UFO Fact Sheet, the USAF program to investigate UFOs, Project Blue Book, was closed because “No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security.”
In a memo dated October 20, 1969, by Brigadier General Carroll H. Bolender, the reasons for closing Project Blue Book were outlined. In the memo, Bolender noted that “reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book system.”
Christopher Mellon
His note indicates that the most critical cases were not going to Project Blue Book, which begs the question, “what good is it to investigate UFOs without the best cases?” It also implies there were cases, “which could affect national security.”
“Unidentified flying objects” were one of the items listed as something to report.
Eventually, the military replaced CIRVIS with Operational Reporting (OPREP). A document distributed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993 says, “OPREP–3 reports containing information relating to unknown objects near U.S. military installations are considered extremely sensitive, and thus not releasable.”
Sure enough, UFO researchers have found several of these documents. They typically address UFOs incursions over weapons storage areas, including those that house nuclear weapons.
Despite having receipts, UFO researchers are often grouped in with the tin-foil hat crowd. Nick Pope ran the Ministry of Defense (MoD) “UFO desk.” He dealt with these issues from the government side. Pope told the Huffington Post, “We were telling the public we’re not interested, this is all nonsense, but in reality, we were desperately chasing our tails and following this up in great detail.”
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Article by Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean July 23, 2020 (nytimes.com)
• The ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ is a program that appears in an unclassified US Senate budget report. Its function, however, which is to research sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles (i.e.: UFOs), is classified. Operating under the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Task Force is the latest incarnation of a previous covert Defense Intelligence Agency UFO research program said to have been ‘disbanded’ in 2012. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has taken notice of this covert program and is requiring the Navy to reveal at least ‘some’ findings to the public as part of the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act.
• Florida Senator Marco Rubio is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rubio told CBS Miami that he wanted to get to the bottom of these Navy UFO videos because there are reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases and we need to know if China or Russia has made “some technological leap”. (see first of three short videos below)
• The former head of the previous DIA UFO research program, known as the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, Luis Elizondo is among a small group of former government officials and scientists with security clearances who say they are convinced that objects of undetermined origin have crashed on Earth and that extraterrestrial material have been retrieved for study. According to participants and unclassified briefing documents, this military UFO program has been briefing congressional committees, aerospace company executives and other government officials.
• Former Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada pushed to fund the previous Pentagon UFO program in 2007. After reviewing reports from that program, Reid came to the conclusion that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred, and “there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession” that should be studied. As yet, no crash artifacts have been publicly verified as being extraterrestrial in origin.
• Eric W. Davis is an astrophysicist who has worked with these government UFO programs since 2007. Although he could not offer any hard evidence of classified alien artifacts, Davis said that he had provided classified briefings to the DoD as recently as last March about retrievals of “off-world vehicles not made on this Earth.” Davis also gave classified briefings on retrievals of ‘unexplained objects’ to Senate Armed Services Committee staff and to Senate Intelligence Committee staff in October 2019.
• In a June interview, President Trump told his son Donald Jr. that he knew “very interesting” things about Roswell but demurred when asked if he would declassify any information on Roswell. “I’ll have to think about that one,” he said, coyly.
• [Editor’s Note] Check out the three videos below. The first is a report on acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, talking about the ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force’ from ‘Rising with Krystal and Saagar’. The two and a half minute clip features footage of the three famous Navy UFO videos. The second video is a five minute clip from Fox News of Tucker Carlson talking to Leslie Kean, the NY Times article’s co-writer, on how the government is inexplicably indifferent to legitimate UFO sightings. (Can you say “cover-up”?) The third is a five minute video of Dr Michael Salla’s take on the article and Carlson’s interview with Kean. Dr Salla stresses a point made in the article that the US military and private aerospace defense contractors have been successfully reverse-engineering extraterrestrial craft for decades. This is particularly true with the US Air Force’s sizable secret space program.
Dr Salla wonders how the so-called experts in academia, media, government and the military, who have parroted the deep state’s false position that extraterrestrial UFOs simply don’t exist, are feeling now as they are confronted with the reality that they have been kept from knowing the truth all of these years, while they smugly spread their “tin foil hat” disinformation. To quote Dr Salla, “This is very important breakthrough. Millions of people are now waking up to a different reality. This has been a seismic shift.”
Senator Marco Rubio
Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway —
Eric W. Davis
renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles.
Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public within 180 days after passage of the intelligence authorization act.
Fmr Senator Harry Reid
While retired officials involved with the effort — including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader — hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States.
Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Luis Elizondo
Intelligence, told a CBS affiliate in Miami this month that he was primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases — and that it was in the government’s interest to find out who was responsible.
He expressed concerns that China or Russia or some other adversary had made “some technological leap” that “allows them to conduct this sort of activity.”
Mr. Rubio said some of the unidentified aerial vehicles over U.S. bases possibly exhibited technologies not in the American arsenal. But he also noted: “Maybe there is a completely, sort of, boring explanation for it. But we need to find out.”
In 2017, The New York Times disclosed the existence of a predecessor unit, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Defense Department officials said at the time that the unit and its $22 million in funding had lapsed after 2012.
People working with the program, however, said it was still in operation in 2017 and beyond, statements later confirmed by the Defense Department.
The program was begun in 2007 under the Defense Intelligence Agency and was then placed within the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which remains responsible for its oversight. But its coordination with the intelligence community will be carried out by the Office of Naval Intelligence, as described in the Senate budget bill. The program never lapsed in those years, but little was disclosed about the post-2017 operations.
2:31 minute clip from ‘Krystal and Saagar’ on Marco Rubio and Navy UFOs (‘The Hill’ YouTube)
5:04 minute video of Tucker Carlson and Leslie Kean on legit UFOs (‘Wise Wanderer’ YouTube)
5:14 minute video of Dr Michael Salla’s take on the NYT article (‘Michael Salla’ YouTube)
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• Last month, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence offered a bill that, if passed, would direct the Pentagon to issue a public report on what the government knows about UFOs. Florida Senator Marco Rubio (pictured above) is the acting head of that committee. When interviewed by Jim DeFade for CBS Miami on July 16th, DeFade asked Rubio if he thought there were non-human aliens in our galaxy visiting the Earth. Rubio first answered the question seriously in terms of national defense.
• But then Rubio said “Look, (here’s) the interesting thing for me about all this and the reason why I think it’s an important topic, OK? We have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is, and it isn’t ours. So, that’s a legitimate question to ask.”
• “I would say that, frankly, if it’s something outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity,” said Rubio. “But the bottom line is: If there are things flying over your military bases and you don’t know what they are because they’re not yours, and they exhibit, potentially, technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal, that to me is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into.”
• Interestingly, Rubio did not even consider the possibility that the high tech UFOs we’ve seen may have been developed within America’s own black budget Special Access Programs that he might not know about it.
• Then DeFade hit him with a broad question: “What’s your gut? Are we alone in the universe, or is there something else out there?” Rubio sidestepped the question, simply calling it a ‘phenomenon’. “It’s unexplained,” said Rubio. I just want to know what it is, and if we can’t determine what it is, then that’s a fact point that we need to take into account. I wouldn’t venture to speculate beyond that.”
• The argument against wanting it to be aliens is that means that we are sharing our space with beings that are vastly technologically superior to us. These things have been with us at least since the Nimitz encounters of 2004, but probably much longer. During the Vietnam War, American fighter pilots reported seeing identical things in their airspace. (see video below) If the aliens were going to attack us, they could have done it long ago, with impunity.
• But if these things represent the type of technology possessed by the Russians or the Chinese, then that’s not an ideal situation either. If the Russians indeed had this sort of technology, wouldn’t they have used it to end the Cold War conclusively in their favor? And if it’s our own gear, why haven’t we broken it out yet and dominated our adversaries? Also, if we have anti-gravity technology, why are we still burning fossil fuels to get around?
As we discussed last month, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has released a bill which, if passed, would direct the Pentagon to get their act together on the UFOs our military has been chasing around in our airspace and issue a report on what’s going on and make it available to the public. The acting head of that committee is Florida Senator Marco Rubio, so he’s been receiving a lot of predictable media attention on this subject. From everything I’ve seen, Rubio has been taking the question in an admirably serious fashion and not ducking away from opportunities to comment. One of those cropped up this week, when he was interviewed by investigative journalist Jim DeFade for CBS Miami.
a UFO image captured by a US Navy jet
DeFade didn’t pull any punches, directly asking the Senator of he thought there were actually aliens in our galaxy and if we might not be alone. Rubio keeps a serious tone, discussing the possibility of a threat to national security as represented by these strange craft. But he then goes on to offer a rather startling opinion as to their origin. While not directly invoking the word “aliens,” he says that if it’s “something outside this planet,” that might be better than finding out that the Chinese or the Russians have gotten a huge leap on us in the technology race.
“Look, here’s the interesting thing for me about all this and the reason why I think it’s an important topic, OK? We have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises, and we don’t know what it is, and it isn’t ours. So, that’s a legitimate question to ask,” Rubio said in a Thursday interview with Jim DeFede of CBS4 News in Miami. “I would say that, frankly, that if it’s something outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity.”
Rubio added: “But the bottom line is: If there are things flying over your military bases and you don’t know what they are because they’re not yours, and they exhibit, potentially, technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal, that to me is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into.”
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Article by Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway June 26, 2020 (thedrive.com)
• In 2019, reports emerged from US Navy pilots of UFO encounters off the East Coast and in the Middle East. (see previous ExoArticles here and here) Since then The War Zone website has collected Navy and Air Force incident reports through Freedom of Information Act requests. In this article, The War Zone has compiled 25 reports obtained through FOIA from the Air Force Safety Center.
• The UFO issue, especially involving US military aircraft, was thrust back into the public spotlight in June when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence demanded a full accounting of matters pertaining to UFOs from the Pentagon and the US Intelligence Community. (see previous ExoArticle here) The incident reports listed below may be among the information provided to the Senate Committee.
• Only the November 1, 2017 report involves a combat jet and only the April 21, 2015 report involves ‘tactical aircraft’, which The War Zone considers “extremely odd”. Fighter jets and tactical aircraft have the most capable radars and other sensors to spot and track small, unidentified objects. Additional reports may be getting passed through separate or even classified systems, outside the normal reporting channels for military aviation safety incidents. The Black Vault received a number of internal Air Force Emails via FOIA related to this topic, including one that said, “Currently the Air Force is not working any specific guidelines for reporting UAPs.”
• The 25 reports show the steady rise of lower-end drone activity – an increasing issue for commercial air operations. Regulators around the world, including the Federal Aviation Administration, have struggled to develop rules and guidelines that are practical and enforceable. This underscores the fact that small drones present real safety concerns to U.S. military activities at home, as well as abroad. The proliferation of cheap but capable drone technology enables non-state actors, in addition to the military forces of nation-states, to increasingly employ unmanned aircraft for surveillance and actual kinetic attacks on and off the battlefield. This is a threat that the DoD was astonishingly too incurious to recognize.
• #1 June 17, 2014: 27th Special Operations Wing – The 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico reported an unidentified fixed-wing aircraft flying under Visual Flight Rules intruding into the nearby R5104 range area between 11:04 and 11:22am. Communications could not be established with the aircraft.
• #2 July 2, 2014: 58th Special Operations Wing – An “unidentified helicopter” flew under the two aircraft at a distance of between 100 and 300 feet near Sorocco, New Mexico. The HC-130P’s crew first spotted a bright light near the aircraft. An accompanying HH-60G crew also saw it. The light grew brighter, blinding the pilots using night-vision goggles. No communication was established with the unidentified helicopter.
• #3 July 24, 2014: 317th Airlift Group – A C-130J Hercules airlift had a near-collision with an unidentified light fixed-wing aircraft approximately eight miles to the south of Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, during a training mission.
• #4 November 21, 2014: 121st Aerial Refueling Wing – A KC-135R tanker was given notice of a potential hazard from its Traffic Collision Avoidance System while climbing away from Wilmington Airpark near Wilmington, Ohio.
• #5 February 7, 2015: 45th Space Wing – An HC-130 Combat King combat search and rescue and tanker aircraft had an encounter with what was described as “a possible remote control aircraft” with a “flashing red light”. Personnel at Patrick Air Force Base tower spotted the remote control aircraft and contacted the Brevard Country Sheriff’s Office to investigate along with the Air Force Security Forces Squadron at Patrick. They found no further evidence of the object, which had been flying an estimated 900 to 1,000 feet in the air.
• #6 April 21, 2015: 379th Air Expeditionary Wing – A KC-135R tanker at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar visually saw an “unidentified aircraft” while conducting an aerial refueling mission over Afghanistan near Kandahar, but the object did not appear on radar with the tanker plane or air traffic control.
• #7 May 15, 2015: 100th Aerial Refueling Wing – A KC-135R Stratotanker had several near collisions with an unidentified aircraft while on approach to its home base of RAF Mildenhall, UK. When the tanker descended to 2,600 feet as part of their approach, air traffic controllers warned them about another aircraft directly below them. The crew climbed to 3,600 feet to avoid the craft. The crew never visually saw the other aircraft or received any radio calls from another plane warning of a potential collision.
• #8 May 21, 2015: 452nd Air Mobility Wing – A C-17A Globemaster III airlifter had a near-collision with an “unidentified remotely piloted aircraft” while on approach to March Air Reserve Base in California. The pilot said that the flying object came within 15 feet of the aircraft, passing it above and to the left.
• #9 July 25, 2015: 129th Rescue Wing – An MC-130P Combat Shadow search and rescue tanker aircraft had to take evasive action to avoid hitting an unidentified object during a nighttime training mission near Niagara Falls International Airport in New York State. While on approach to the airport, the pilot saw through their night-vision goggles an “object [that] appeared to be illuminated by a single external light” and that looked to “be accelerating from left to right” in front of them. The pilot took evasive action and passed directly over the object.
• #10 August 13, 2015: 452nd Air Mobility Wing – A KC-135R tanker suffered a near collision with what the crew described as a “quad-copter-type drone” 100 feet below the craft while flying a pattern around March Air Reserve Base in California. It continued on in the opposite direction from the KC-135R and “disappeared from sight.”
• #11 January 15, 2016: 45th Space Wing Wing – An American detachment at RAF Ascension Island, a territory of the United Kingdom in the South Atlantic Ocean, reported seeing an “unauthorized personal drone” at two separate locations. The RAF pilots did not see the drone nor did it interfere with their landing, but the 45th Space Wing described the incident as having a “high accident potential.”
• #12 April 21, 2016: 193rd Special Operations Wing – An EC-130J(SJ) aircraft had a near collision with a small drone flying at around 4,000 feet while in contact with aircraft controllers at Philadelphia International Airport. The crew initially thought they saw a bird, until they saw a flashing red light pass 3 feet above the left wing.
• #13 January 25, 2017: 27th Special Operations Wing – An unidentified private fixed-wing aircraft flying at around 10,000 feet intruded into restricted airspace near Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico at 4:10pm. Cannon’s Radar Approach Control lost the signal from the aircraft’s transponder by 4:37.
• #14 June 9, 2017: 12th Flying Training Wing – A T-6A Texan II trainer had a near collision with a “red unmanned aerial system” while flying south of the Mobile Bay Bridge in Alabama. “The UAS was spotted approximately one half to one wingtip away from the EA [Event Aircraft] and was co-altitude.”
• #15 November 1, 2017: 48th Fighter Wing – An F-15E Strike performed evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with an “unidentified flying object” while flying near its home base at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom. “The object passed over the right side of the aircraft with an estimated minimal separation of 100 feet.”
• #16 January 20, 2018: 47th Flying Training Wing – A T-1 Jayhawk training jet reported a near-collision with an “unidentifiable unmanned drone” while on approach to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona, 4.2 miles from the airport’s runway. The aircraft was flying at 1,300 feet and flew right under the drone. Both pilots identified it as a UAV due to the fact it was hovering, and they saw a small white steady light emanating as they passed underneath it.
• #17 February 7, 2018: 71st Flying Training Wing – A T-38C Talon jet trainer had a near collision with a drone while on approach to Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma, coming within 300 feet of the jet trainer.
• #18 February 5, 2018: 325th Fighter Wing – The pilot of a transient US Navy T-6A Texan II aircraft was on approach to Tyndall Air Force Base at 1000 feet when they spotted an unmanned aircraft 1,200 feet off his left wing. The pilot “noticed sun glint off of metal, this is when he realized the black object was not a bird and that it was moving to the southeast.”
• #19 March 26, 2018: 45th Space Wing – The pilot of a civilian helicopter flying near Patrick Air Force Base in Florida “had a model airplane come within about 100 feet.” All the other major details about this incident are redacted, but it appears to have led to the issuance of a formal Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) regarding the potentially hazardous situation.
• #20 September 10, 2018: 86th Airlift Wing – A C-130Js had a near collision with an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle while flying near Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The report describes the drone as “spherical with an approximated 6 feet diameter top mounted rotor.”
• #21 March 6, 2019: 12th Flying Training Wing – A T-1 Jayhawk training jet reported seeing “a quad copter or non-traditional aircraft” that was “silver in color” while flying in Mississippi on a low-level training flight. “The UAS was stationary or near stationary” and was seen within one nautical mile of the T-1 hovering at around 1,500 feet.
• #22 March 13, 2019: 445th Airlift Wing – A C-17A Globemaster III airlifter had to take evasive action to avoid a small drone during a training sortie on March 13, 2019. The aircraft was flying at approximately 3,500 feet over Ohio. “The pilot flying (PF) observed a white sUAS [small unmanned aerial system] with either brown or black accents or propellers just below the [Aircraft]…. within 50 feet.”
• #23 March 21, 2019: 552nd Air Control Wing – An E-3B Sentry flying at 3,000 feet reported that a “DJI style quad-copter/unmanned aerial system” passed by the aircraft approximately 20 feet below its number four engine. The crew also told air traffic controllers at Oklahoma City Approach that “they came close to one.”
• #24 July 25, 2019: 445th Airlift Wing – A C-17A Globemaster III airlifter, when departing RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, “visually acquired an orange colored small unmanned aerial system as it passed approximately 50′ below the left wing” after climbing out to an altitude of 7,500 feet. “
• #25 September 9, 2019: 109th Airlift Wing – An LC-130H Hercules airlifter reported a near-miss with a quad-copter-type drone while conducting a proficiency flight around Albany International Airport. During a climb out at 1,100 feet, the crew spotted the drone, yellow in color, approximately 300 feet away laterally and between 100 and 200 feet below.
Last year, reports emerged about Navy fighter pilots having numerous encounters with unidentified flying objects while flying in restricted airspace off the East Coast of the United States. Details remain limited, though The War Zone has been steadily collecting more and more information that could help explain many of those incidents. At the same time, curiously, there haven’t been virtually any revelations about similar encounters with other U.S. military services’ flying branches, especially the Air Force, which is the entity primarily responsible for safeguarding America’s airspace.
In May, The War Zone was first to publish details from a number of hazard reports from the Naval Safety Center, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). regarding interactions between that service’s aircraft and unknown aerial craft that offered an additional look into what might be happening, why, and how these encounters were or weren’t getting reported. We can now share information from 25 similar reports obtained through the FOIA from the Air Force Safety Center.
This whole issue, especially regarding U.S. military aircraft encountering unidentified objects when flying over or near the United States proper, was thrust back into the public consciousness just this week. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said that it was looking to get a full accounting of the issue from the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Pentagon. As part of a report accompanying the latest draft of the Senate version Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, the Committee members included language asking for a detailed review of exactly what information about these kinds of incidents exists now, how new data is getting collected, how this is all shared within the federal government, and what threats these aerial objects might pose, including whether they might reflect technological breakthroughs by potential adversaries. These Air Force reports, as well as the previously disclosed ones that the Navy has on file, could easily be among the information that the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense might end up compiling for Senators to review.
The 25 reports that The War Zone obtained, which cover various types of incidents around the world and come from the Air Force Safety Automated System (AFSAS) database, came in response to a request that asked for copies of “any flight incident, hazard, or similar reports that the Air Force Safety Center received during the calendar years 2013 to 2019 that deal with encounters that any Air Force aircraft had anywhere in the world with any unidentified aerial objects.”
This date range was meant to capture a snapshot of similar experiences that the Air Force might have been having around when Navy pilots said they saw a spike in the number of encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, more commonly known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, off the East Coast of the United States through the end of the most recent complete calendar year.
Personal identifying information is redacted throughout the Air Force reports. “Safety investigation boards’ Findings, Evaluations, Analyses, Conclusions, and Recommendations are exempt from disclosure,” the Air Force Safety Center also said in a letter accompanying the release, citing various Air Force and Department of Defense regulations, as well as relevant FOIA case law, which you can read in full, with certain personal information redacted by us, here.
“All other privileged portions of the report have been withheld according to established laws,” the letter added. “Unfortunately, some pages are virtually illegible due to the quality of the microfilm record and our capability to reproduce it.”
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The Department of Defense Inspector General issued an announcement yesterday
“No bird, no balloon, no aircraft and no known drones have that capability,” the SCU noted in a 50-page report the team compiled on the incident.
A lot of news came out of that massive COVID relief bill with bazillions of dollars in other spending 
wrapped up in it. One item that didn’t draw nearly as much attention was the fact that the annual Intelligence Authorization Act was rolled in as part of that mess. The IAA is obviously a necessary bit of housekeeping that Congress has to take care of on a regular basis, but this year’s version was of particular interest to people in the ufology community. I wrote about this when the measure was drafted back in June, specifically focusing on the provisions from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that made it so interesting to the saucerheads. It dealt with internal communications challenges for the UAP Task Force (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) and directed the UAPTF to produce an unclassified report on their progress within 180 days of when the measure was enacted. Well, now it’s enacted. And as The Debrief pointed out this week, that means that the clock is ticking. But what should we really expect to receive when that clock strikes midnight?
“Now, with the recent passing of the Omnibus, the clock has officially started ticking, and The Pentagon’s
The summer news of the establishment of the UAPTF seemingly suggests—for the first time since the shuttering of Project Blue Book (the Air Force’s official investigations into UFOs) in 1969—that the Pentagon is now taking the subject of UFOs seriously.
President Donald Trump says he’ll veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual bill that sets the budget and policies for the U.S. military, if lawmakers don’t remove a bipartisan amendment to rename military bases named after Confederate leaders, according to an NBC News report.
raises and funding for new equipment, among other items. But it also includes language that could ultimately change what the American public knows about UFOs in a significant way. A Trump veto of the NDAA may stall the momentum of a movement that has rapidly captured mainstream attention over the last two years.
Last year, reports emerged about Navy fighter pilots having numerous encounters with unidentified flying objects while flying in restricted airspace off the East Coast of the United States. Details remain limited, though The War Zone has been steadily collecting more and more information that could help explain many of those incidents. At the same time, curiously, there haven’t been virtually any revelations about similar encounters with other U.S. military services’ flying branches, especially the Air Force, which is the entity primarily responsible for safeguarding America’s airspace.