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Snowden Docs Reveal That Extraterrestrials Control the US Government

May 8, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Jose Hermosa April 22, 2021 (hebl.com)

• A January 2014 Forbes magazine article revealed secret files leaked by Edward Snowden (pictured above). Apparently, the files came from the Iranian Fars News Agency archive of nearly two million documents, guarded by the National Security Agency-Central Security Service under Iran’s department of defense.

• The secret files reveal that extraterrestrials “have been visiting our planet for thousands of years” and that several types of these aliens, including the “Tall Whites”, are working with the US Air Force in Nevada. Representatives of the Tall Whites met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 when the “secret regime” that currently governs the nation was established. However, as early as 1930, the Tall Whites were assisting the Germans, and then the Nazis, as evidenced by the fact that during the four years of World War II, Hitler built 1,163 technologically advanced modern submarines in German shipyards.

• The secret file contains a report by the Iranian secret services revealing the motives of the Tall Whites’ association with earth humans. It is nothing less than absolute domination over human beings, which would occur as part of a programmed “final phase.” To increase the chances of success, the Tall Whites would be helping to set up a global electronic surveillance network charged with concealing their dangerous existence.

• The secret file also points to Barack Obama as a representative of this shadowy “secret regime,” according to the website Whatdoesitmean.com, and to another faction of extraterrestrials about whom even less is known.

• Before the Democrats ostensibly took over the White House this year, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla) served as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Openly concerned about UFOs reportedly flying over US military bases with impunity, the committee included in a bill that President Trump signed into law a provision requiring military and intelligence officials to declassify and release information on UFOs by this summer.

• Not too long ago, the very existence of UFOs was completely denied by the government. Now, government officials are making UFOs public knowledge. Are we very far from coming right out and admitting that extraterrestrial beings exist and are already living here in our reality?

• [Editor’s Note] For more information on the Tall White extraterrestrials working with the deep state military industrial complex, see Dr. Michael Salla’s article “Interview with Charles Hall- Motivations of Tall White ETs & their Exopolitical Significance”.

After former President Donald Trump signed into law a bill on Dec. 27, forcing the Pentagon and

spy agencies to reveal the secrets of the UFO phenomenon within the next 6 months, the pressure to know the truth has been mounting.

The opening towards the subject of the visits of extraterrestrial intelligent beings is growing more and more, going from a time when their existence was completely denied to making their knowledge mandatory for the citizens, as it was published at the time by the British media The Sun.

Although the declassification of the documents is still two months away, information on this delicate subject has been accumulating for decades, and among the most surprising is the Iranian version, according to which an extraterrestrial leader would rule the United States.

Apparently, there is ‘”irrefutable evidence’ of an ‘alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda’ that directs U.S. domestic and international policy, and has been doing so since at least 1945″ cites Forbes in January 2014.

The source for Iran’s Fars News Agency would be an archive of nearly two million documents guarded by the National Security Agency-Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), run by the Department of Defense.

Likewise, the controversial computer specialist and former CIA agent, Edward

**Hitler surveying his Nazi U-Boat fleet**

Snowden, was the one who leaked the revealing secret files.

They claim that extraterrestrials “have been visiting our planet for thousands of years” and that several types of these aliens, including the “Tall Whites,” are working with the U.S. Air Force Nevada.

Members of this species met in 1954 with President Dwight D. Eisenhower when the “secret regime” that currently governs the nation was established.

However, as early as 1930, they were technically assisting the Germans, and especially the Nazis, as evidenced by the fact that from building only 57 submarines during the four years of World War II, they manufactured 1,163 technologically advanced modern submarines in their shipyards.

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The Navy Speaks Up About Its “UFO Patent” Experiments

February 20, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Brett TIngley February 1, 2021 (thedrive.com)

• After reporting on the bizarre saga of the US Navy’s “UFO” patents by Dr. Salvatore Pais for over a year and a half, The War Zone has finally gotten an on-the-record comment from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD). In a nutshell, NAWCAD concluded in September 2019 that the “Pais Effect” could not be proven. The Navy has washed its hands with Dr. Pais and his unproven patents, and all research on them has now been taken up by the US Air Force.

• The “Pais Effect” is a theoretical concept for generating high-intensity electromagnetic fields that could lead to breakthroughs in power generation and advanced propulsion, including a futuristic “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft” or ‘HAUC’ (which might have explained the ‘Tic Tac UFO’ that was in the news in 2018).

• The US Navy’s NAWCAD took Dr. Pais’ theories seriously enough to vouch for him to the US Patent Office and to assert that the Chinese had similar “operable” technology. The Navy invested $462,000 in researchers’ salaries plus $96,000 on “equipment, test preparation, testing and assessment” to test Dr. Pais’ patented ‘High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator’ (HEEMFG) theories between October 2016 and September 2019. While a group of Navy researchers obviously got richer, Timothy Boulay, Communications Director at NAWCAD, confirmed that the “Pais Effect” could not be proven and no further research is being conducted by the US Navy.

• So the US Navy knew in September 2019 that Dr. Pais’ theories were a scientific dead-end, but waited until now to say so publicly. Every single physicist that The Drive’s ‘The War Zone’ contacted over two years said that there was no scientific reality to the ‘pseudo-scientific jargon’ found in Dr. Pais’ patents. Still, in November 2019, Dr. Pais assured The War Zone that his work “shall be proven correct one fine day…”

• The bizarre secrecy surrounding this entire endeavor remains remarkably odd. Not until we actually got the images, data, and slides about the program of record that attempted to prove Pais’ theories did the Navy confirm its demise. We may never know why.

After reporting on the bizarre saga of the Navy’s “UFO” patents by Dr. Salvatore Pais for over a year and a half, The War Zone has finally

gotten an on-the-record comment from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, or NAWCAD, about the scientist’s seemingly out-of-this-world work and the service’s equally strange outright support of it.

As we reported in our last piece, the science and technology branches of the Naval Aviation Enterprise and NAWCAD took the theories of Dr. Pais seriously enough not just to vouch for them at the highest levels to patent examiners, asserting Chinese advances in similar areas of research and that they were ‘operable’ in nature, but to also subsequently invest a significant amount of money and time into researching the so-called “Pais Effect.” This is a theoretical concept for generating high-intensity electromagnetic fields that could supposedly lead to hypothetical breakthroughs in power generation and advanced propulsion. Specifically, the Navy has now responded to inquiries related to the new documentation we uncovered in our most recent report that shows hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on Pais’s High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator (HEEMFG) experiments, along with other details related to it.

Timothy Boulay, Communications Director at NAWCAD, confirmed several points to The War Zone by email:
– The High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator testing occurred from October 2016 through September 2019;
– The cost was $508,000 over the course of three years. Around ninety percent of the total – $462,000 – was for salaries, while the

rest was used for equipment, test preparation, testing and assessment.
– When NAWCAD concluded testing in September 2019, the “Pais Effect” could not be proven.
– No further research has been conducted, and the project has not transitioned to any other government or civilian organization.
While we greatly appreciate the response to our queries, it remains unclear why NAWCAD was unwilling to speak with us until now if they knew all along these experiments resulted in what appears to be a scientific dead-end that resulted in no verification of any of Pais’s theories.

In addition to the statements above, Boulay added the following about the inventor of the Navy’s “UFO patents”:
The latest on Dr. Pais: you might remember that he left NAWCAD in June 2019 and moved to the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs organization. I found that he transferred to the U.S. Air Force this month.

We are still working with NAWCAD to determine where Pais was transferred within the research organizations of the USAF. Pais’s first move from NAWCAD to Navy Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) office was somewhat interesting given that one of Pais’s most eyebrow-raising patents was for a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.” SSP oversees the development and sustainment of the Navy’s nuclear-armed submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

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New Discovery+ Series Unveils Unseen Project Blue Book UFO Files

January 19, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Patrick Cavanaugh January 11, 2021 (comicbook.com)

• Project Blue Book is one of the most well-known investigative efforts into UFOs and extraterrestrial life, conducted by the US Air Force in the ’50s and ’60s before shutting down in 1970. While some of the research conducted within Project Blue Book has been released, there is still valuable information that the general public has never seen. On January 14th, the online streaming service, discovery+, debuted the series UFO Witness to explore all manner of intergalactic phenomenon, from UFO sightings to possible contact with humans. Among the topics in the UFO Witness series is a fresh look at Project Blue Book.

• Jennie Zeidman was the last surviving member of the Project Blue Book investigative team. Before her death in April 2020, Zeidman spoke publicly for the first time about her decades of research for UFO Witness. She believed we’ve been visited by UFOs and that the Earth is under extraterrestrial surveillance. Zeidman gave discovery+ exclusive access to her Project Blue Book files, including the personal files of chief scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, to help continue Hynek’s investigations.

• In UFO Witness, former federal agent and paranormal investigator Ben Hansen reopens case files of some of the most astounding UFO encounters in history, which have been hidden from the public for decades. With unprecedented access to more than 10,000 of Dr. Hynek’s case files, Hansen believes the answers to UFOs in America are hidden in the cases of the past. Aiding Hansen on his quest is UFO investigator Mark O’Connell – Dr. Hynek biographer and member of J. Allen Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies. Together, Hansen and O’Connell will attempt uncover the secrets of the past to shed new light on today’s newest UFO encounters.

Project Blue Book is one of the most well-known investigative efforts into UFOs and extraterrestrial life,

with the study being conducted by the United States Air Force in the ’50s and ’60s before shutting down in 1970. While some of the research conducted within Project Blue Book has been released, there is still valuable information that the general public has never seen, with the upcoming discovery+ series UFO Witness to debut all-new information about the phenomenon. The upcoming discovery+ series will explore all manner of intergalactic phenomenon, from UFO sightings to possible contact with humans. The first three episodes of UFO Witness debut on discovery+ on January 14th.

Per press release, “We are definitely not alone! For more than 70 years, the U.S. government has been documenting

sightings and cases of unidentified flying objects. In cooperation with former Project Blue Book investigator Jennie Zeidman, former federal agent and paranormal investigator Ben Hansen reopens case files of some of the most astounding UFO encounters in history, files that have been hidden from the public for decades. In the new series, UFO Witness, launching Thursday, January 14th exclusively on discovery+, these findings are finally seeing the light of day.

“Zeidman was the last surviving member of the Air Force’s top-secret UFO investigation called Project Blue Book, which

looked into sightings from 1952 through 1970. She has broken her silence, speaking publicly for the first time about her decades of research – motivated to share her expertise because she believes we’ve been visited by UFOs before – and fears Earth is under extraterrestrial surveillance. Sadly, Zeidman passed away in April 2020, but she has given discovery+ exclusive access to the files from the chief scientific consultant of Project Blue Book, Dr. Allen J. Hynek, to help continue his investigations.

“With unprecedented access to more than 10,000 of Dr. Hynek’s case files, Hansen believes the answers to UFOs in America are hidden in the cases of the past. Also aiding Hansen on his quest is Mark O’Connell – an accomplished UFO investigator, Dr. Hynek biographer and member of J. Allen Hynek’s Center for UFO Studies. Together, they will uncover the secrets of the past to shed new light on today’s freshest UFO encounters.”

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New Intelligence Community Member Space Force is Looking For a Clearer Picture

January 17, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Scott Maucione January 7, 2021 (federalnewsnetwork.com)

• The Space Force announced last month that it would become the 18th member of the US intelligence community. It still needs to submit its plans to Congress on how it will go about making the move. The Space Force’s two core space squadrons — space analysis and counter space analysis — are currently located at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at Wright-Patterson AFB (see previous ExoArticle here). During the next year, the Pentagon will set up a National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC) focused on space.

• But the Pentagon wants to maintain the information ‘synergy’ that comes with all of these squadrons being able to interact on a daily basis and talk to each other, says Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Force director of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance. So while NSIC will be separate from NASIC, their office will remain in the same building. Lauderback said the Air Force and Space Force are looking into the engineering and modeling to best maintain the two centers together.

• Space Force’s intelligence sector will be joining an already crowded community of 17 departments and agencies. Lauderback says that Space Force needs more sensors and presence in Earth’s orbit in order to characterize threats in space. “It’s just is so much more difficult in trying to characterize something that happens 12,000 miles away …that flies over the earth once every 90 minutes, all through technical means,” says Lauderback. “I just want to be able to make a more confident call and in a faster manner.” Another priority is bettering international agreements and education with Five Eye partners and other allies.

• Space Force has already received 2,400 recruits from the ranks of the Air Force. Space Force has just graduated its first seven enlisted trainees straight from basic training. Another 86 Air Force Academy cadets have been commissioned into Space Force, and there are 6,400 Air Force personnel who still plan to move over to the new military branch. “[N]ext year, we’ll have 98 cadets that will come over,” says Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond. “[W]e’re interviewing every single person that comes into the Space Force to be very, very selective.”

• Space Force is comprised of six career fields: Space operations, cyber operators, acquisition, engineering, cyber and intelligence. “[N]ow we have to develop those folks to fill those positions and do that organically,” says Gen. Raymond. “As new missions come about, we will add squadrons. [W]ith the units that were already in the Air Force, bringing them over, [we will] develop the manpower that fills those units today.”

New details are emerging on how the 18th member of the intelligence community will be set up as the Space Force continues to entrench itself as the newest service of the military.

Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, Air Force director of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, said within a year the military will set up a National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC).

The center will develop from the two core space squadrons — space analysis and counter space analysis — that are now at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC).

“Those squadrons will be the nucleus, they’d be the core of NSIC and then we will smatter a little bit of overhead on that to ensure that they’re getting what they need,” Lauderback said. “We absolutely want that to be co-located with NASIC. As a commander, there’s no way that we want to destroy the synergy that comes out of all of these squadrons being able to walk down the hallway and talk to each other.”

Lauderback said the Air Force and Space Force are looking into the engineering and modeling and other final assessments they need to station the two centers together.

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US Air Force Spacecraft Will Beam Solar Power to Earth

January 13, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Caroline Dlbert December 30, 2020 (popularmechanics.com)

• Cutting edge solar panels on Earth – prototypes developed by scientists for research, not the commercial ones you can readily buy – operate at around 30 to 40 percent efficiency. But if these solar panels operated above the clouds in space, the efficiency would be far greater. As CleanTechnica’s Tina Casey writes: “There are no clouds to block or even reduce solar panel efficacy. They can pivot, maybe even completely freely, to maximize exposure to more sun over a longer time each day. The sunlight is more potent outside of Earth’s atmosphere.”

• In December, the US Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled ‘Helios’ – a component part of the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) project – that will be launched into space on the Arachne spacecraft in 2024. The Helios component will gather power for other spacecraft as a fueling station in space.

• Arachne/Helios also serves a working model of an emerging technology that can convert solar energy to radio frequency (RF) power, transmitting that energy to the Earth, and converting it to usable power. “Solar is critical to our long-term spaceflight plans because of its plentiful and completely renewable nature,” says Casey. “We’ll likely learn a great deal from the use of solar power in space and then… extend to Earth.”

• The logistical challenge is to get the solar panels positioned into space. But the technology to “beam” power is pretty established at this point, relying on directed mirrors and receiver panels that focus energy into beams that act as wireless wires through the air. The right kind of solar panels paired with storage could periodically beam power to specific places without losing notable energy.

Beaming solar power from outer space sounds like a Marvel movie plot, but space could remove barriers to solar acceptance that dominate the Earthbound discourse.

Could the secret to our energy future be solar panels above the clouds, or even above the Karman line altogether?

Besides the logistical challenges of even getting solar panels up in space, the benefits are pretty airtight, as CleanTechnica’s Tina Casey writes. There are no clouds to block or even reduce solar panel efficacy. They can pivot, maybe even completely freely, to maximize exposure to more sun over a longer time each day. The sunlight is more potent outside of Earth’s atmosphere.

Right now, even the best solar panels are reaching something like 30 to 40 percent efficiency, and these are mostly cutting-edge prototypes developed by scientists for research—not the ones you can readily buy.

That means the huge advantage of higher-up sunlight would directly translate, perhaps even to the difference between

feasible solar and not. Again, though, this is without the logistics of putting panels into space.

And the technology to “beam” power is pretty established at this point, relying on directed mirrors and receiver panels that focus energy into beams that act, basically, like wireless wires through the air. The right kind of solar panels paired with storage could periodically beam power to specific places without losing notable energy.

Earlier this month, the Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled a component coyly named Helios (after the original Greek sun god) for its forthcoming Arachne spacecraft, the main part of the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) project. Arachne will launch in 2024.

Helios will gather power for other spacecraft, making it an essential research piece as well as proof of concept for some big ideas NASA has about traveling to the moon and subsequently to Mars.

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Lifting the Lid on Britain’s Most Famous Alien Encounter

January 7, 2021
ExoNews Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were walking into history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defence chiefs conspired to keep the incident secret.

But in 1983 the News of The World printed details.

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

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

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

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

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Building a 21st-Century Space Force

January 2, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by John W. Raymond December 20, 2020 (theatlantic.com)

• Just after World War II, the US military determined a need for a new independent Air Force military branch to compete with the Soviet Union in developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and reconnaissance satellites, and opening the door for space exploration. Employing a lean, focused team, the US Air Force’s unique culture, identity, and focus allowed its leadership to envision and develop crucial technologies, including stealth, smart weapons and precise global navigation.

• In the past five years, the number of active satellites in orbit has grown from 1,250 to 3,400. By 2023, there will be about 5,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth. The Satellite Industry Association estimated the 2019 global space economy at $366 billion, and Morgan Stanley projects that revenues could top $1 trillion by 2040.

• During this period of explosive growth, Russia and China have made obvious their intention to challenge American preeminence in commercial and military space, raising the prospect of war beginning in, or extending into, space. Early in 2020, Russia positioned one of its satellites dangerously close to an American satellite and then instructed it to execute a series of provocative and unsafe maneuvers. By the summer, that Russian satellite backed away, released a target, and then fired a projectile at that target as a raw display of space combat power. We are still dealing with the fallout from China’s own 2007 anti-satellite test, which left a cloud of space debris that still must be carefully tracked to avoid collision with a wide array of spacecraft, including the International Space Station.

• To deal with these challenges, the United States created a 21st-century military branch, the Space Force. Only by staying lean, agile, and tightly focused can Space Force succeed. Speed is a hallmark of our deliberately lean new service to rapidly design, test, and employ new technologies and innovations. Space Force headquarters at the Pentagon will have about 600 military and civilian members in a building that houses more than 20,000 Defense Department employees. We’ve removed several layers of command structure and bureaucracy, and moved leaders closer to the front lines to shorten communication pathways. This is especially important for a service so heavily reliant on technology.

• Space Force’s creation came one year after the Pentagon crafted a new National Defense Strategy designed to pivot toward ‘great-power competition’, and away from the counterterrorism focus of the past two decades. Space Force’s goal is to enhance American military power as space systems assume an ever-greater role in the missions of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard which depend on space for navigation and communication to strike targets with precision and lethality. By staying lean and focused, Space Force can address the challenges that lie ahead, out-competing adversaries, deterring conflict, and keeping Americans safe.

• The article’s writer, General John W. Raymond, is the first chief of space operations for the United States Space Force.

Early in 2020, Russia positioned one of its satellites dangerously close to an American satellite and then instructed it to execute a series of provocative and unsafe maneuvers. This summer, that satellite backed away, released a target, and then conducted a weapons test, firing a projectile at that target. This raw display of space combat power was carefully designed as an act of intimidation, right out of the 1950s Soviet playbook.

Over the past five years, space has become a contested commercial and military realm. During that time,

the number of active satellites in orbit has grown from 1,250 to 3,400. By 2023, there will be about 5,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth. The Satellite Industry Association estimated the 2019 global space economy at $366 billion, and Morgan Stanley projects that revenues could top $1 trillion by 2040. During this period of explosive growth, Russia and China have made obvious their intention to challenge American preeminence in commercial and military space and to prevent the U.S. from using its space capabilities in crisis and conflict, raising the prospect of war beginning in, or extending into, space. We are still dealing with the fallout from China’s 2007 anti-satellite test, which left a cloud of space debris that even today must be carefully tracked to avoid collision with a wide array of spacecraft, including the International Space Station. The consequences of a full-blown war in space would be far worse.

A year ago, to deal with these challenges, the United States created its first new independent military branch in more than half a century. The U.S. Space Force, which I am privileged to lead, is a new kind of service. The Space Force headquarters at the Pentagon will have about 600 military and civilian members in a building that houses more than 20,000 Defense Department employees. Only by staying lean, agile, and tightly focused on our mission can we succeed in protecting the United States.

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Air Force Ready to Begin Its ‘Internet of Military Things’

December 7, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Jared Serbu November 25, 2020 (federalnewsnetwork.com)

• Air Force acquisitions has confirmed that the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), also known as an “internet of military things”, is ready to move into a “steady-state demonstration-deployment phase” and start delivering real-world capabilities on existing military platforms as soon as next year.

• Will Roper, in the department of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, told reporters, “This will be something new (and) needs a new construct for how we manage and execute.” “[T]he reality of this business that we are handed a budget that we don’t make, and we have to do our best job executing it.”

• AMBS is the Air Force’s main contribution to the DoD’s broader vision of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) – born in 2008 – when the service decided not to build a replacement for the Joint Surveillance Target and Attack Radar System, an aging aircraft that tracks targets and sends that information to ground forces. Instead, the Air Force shifted to a plan to connect all of its systems through an “internet” of military platforms.

• The Air Force used the same architectural underpinnings as the AMBS system when it created new data links between F-35, F-22, AC-130 aircraft and commercial satellites last December. In September, the Air Force demonstrated new abilities to use AI and cloud technologies to track and destroy a simulated cruise missile.

• “Air Mobility Command, for example, is one of most forward-leaning commands we have…and they are ready to go put [ABMS capabilities] on mobility platforms so they can act as data relays,” said Roper. “We’ve got tankers that top you up with gas – [so] the vision of topping you up with data makes a lot of sense: You’re going to be there anyway to get fuel. And then that tanker standing off also can act as a battlefield relay and a network node. So they’ve got the right thinking.”

• “ABMS has been something we have put in front of…every program office and said, ‘you are part of this, you must figure out how to integrate with this, and we’ve made it personal for them. …[I]f someone ever walked into my office and said ABMS doesn’t have anything to do with me, that would be a long mentoring discussion that we would have.”

The Advanced Battle Management System, a future system-of-systems that the Air Force likes to think of as an “internet of military things” is likely to start delivering real-world capabilities on existing military platforms as soon as next year, the Air Force’s top acquisition official said Tuesday.

ABMS crossed a significant milestone this week when Will Roper, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, signed a memo saying the construct is ready to move into a “steady-state demonstration-deployment phase” and assigning a program executive office to manage future developments.

The Department of the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office, Roper said, will serve as an “integrating” PEO — a recognition that since every part of the Air Force and Space Force will have a hand in building ABMS, no single PEO can tackle the entire project.

“This will be something new, and something that’s new like ABMS probably needs a new construct for how we manage and execute,” he told reporters during a virtual roundtable Tuesday. “The RCO will gain the components that do not have a natural home within the Department of the Air Force, but they will also be responsible for providing the consolidated work breakdown structure, the consolidated baselines and most importantly, making funding trades when there’s not enough funding to do everything. That is something our program executive offices are accustomed to doing, and it’s the reality of this business that we are handed a budget that we don’t make, and we have to do our best job executing it.”

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Orbit Fab’s Plan is to Fill Them Up in Space

November 29, 2020
ExoNews Editor

November 16, 2020 (satnews.com)

• Orbit Fab is expected to launch the first operational fuel depot, or “gas station” in Earth’s orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 no earlier than in June 2021. ‘Tanker 001 Tenzing’ (pictured above) will store readily accessible fuel propellant to satellite servicing vehicles and other spacecraft the fast growing in-orbit servicing industry. (see 7:10 minute demonstration video below)

• The tanker is one of several payloads to launch on a Spaceflight Sherpa orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), which is capable of multiple deployments. Spaceflight’s first OTV, Sherpa-FX, is scheduled to debut in December 2020 on a SpaceX rideshare mission, and provides independent and detailed deployment telemetry and flexible interfaces, all at a low cost.

• Orbit Fab’s ‘Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface’ (RAFTI) provides reliable propellant transfer both on the ground and in orbit with a self-driving satellite kit for docking and attachment of two spacecraft without the need for complex robotic arms. The RAFTI interface has been adopted by multiple spacecraft manufacturers to extend the life of their satellites. RAFTI, which is also known as a “Satellite Gas Cap™,” was developed in cooperation with 30 companies and organizations and it is expected to become the industry’s common refueling interface.

• Orbit Fab successfully demonstrated its propellant storage and delivery systems in an unprecedented private transfer of water to the International Space Station. Earlier in 2020, Orbit Fab received a $3 million contract from the US Air Force to fully flight qualify the RAFTI service valve. Orbit Fab also received a National Science Foundation grant to test its docking system.

• RAFTI will support the rapidly proliferating in-orbit servicing industry which saw a five-fold increase since 2018. Gas stations in space are an essential resource to fuel this industry and support the infrastructure in space that enables projected commerce, exploration and national security.

• RAFTI will also support the Air Force and Space Force’s need for space combat logistics capabilities said Orbit Fab CDO, Jeremy Schiel. “Refueling is a requirement in the emerging Space Force architecture and for good reason. You don’t want to run out of fuel in the middle of a confrontation.”

Orbit Fab has signed an agreement with Spaceflight Inc. to launch the company’s first operational fuel depot to orbit. Tanker 001 Tenzing, which will provide fuel for the fast growing in-orbit servicing industry, is expected to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 no earlier than in June 2021.

Once launched, Tanker 001 Tenzing will store propellant in sun synchronous orbit, where it will be available to satellite servicing

vehicles or other spacecraft that need to replenish fuel supplies. The tanker is one of several payloads to launch on a Spaceflight Sherpa orbital transfer vehicle, which is capable of executing multiple deployments. Spaceflight’s first OTV, Sherpa-FX, is scheduled to debut no earlier than December 2020 on a SpaceX rideshare mission and provides independent and detailed deployment telemetry, and flexible interfaces, all at a low cost.

Orbit Fab’s fuel depots are designed to support more sustainable spacecraft through the use of the Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI), which has been adopted by multiple spacecraft manufacturers to extend the life of their satellites. RAFTI, which is also known as a “Satellite Gas Cap™,” was developed in cooperation with 30 companies and organizations and it is expected to become the industry’s common refueling interface.

In today’s contested space domain RAFTI provides reliable propellant transfer both on the ground and in orbit with a self-driving satellite kit for docking and attachment of two spacecraft without the need for complex robotic arms.

7:10 minute ‘Orb Fab Story’: gas stations in space (‘Altium Stories” YouTube)

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NASA Commander to be Sworn into US Space Force From the International Space Station

November 10, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Sandra Erwin October 28, 2020 (spacenews.com)

• NASA astronaut and US Air Force colonel Michael Hopkins is the commander of an upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Hopkins is also planning to transfer to the US Space Force.

• “If all goes well, we’re looking to swear him into the Space Force from the International Space Station,” said Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations of the US Space Force. Raymond is working with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the details of a planned transfer ceremony as a way to highlight the decades-long partnership between DoD and NASA.

• NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission is scheduled to launch on November 14th from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The crew of four includes Hopkins, NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency mission specialist Soichi Noguchi (all 4 pictured above).

• For more than 60 years, men and women from the five military branches have helped fill the ranks of the NASA astronaut corps. Hopkins was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in 2009. Like hundreds of other Air Force airmen, Hopkins is voluntarily transferring to Space Force. He will be the first member of the Space Force to serve in NASA’s astronaut corps.

WASHINGTON — NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, a U.S. Air Force colonel and the commander of the upcoming SpaceX Crew Dragon mission, is transferring to the U.S. Space Force and is expected to be commissioned aboard the International Space Station.

“If all goes well, we’re looking to swear him into the Space Force from the International Space Station,” said Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force.

Col. Michael “Hopper” Hopkins is the commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission scheduled to launch Nov. 14 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The crew of four includes Hopkins, NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency mission specialist Soichi Noguchi.

Col. Catie Hague, a spokesperson for the chief of space operations, told SpaceNews that the service is working with NASA to schedule a transfer ceremony once Hopkins is on board the International Space Station.

Hopkins, like hundreds of other airmen who are now in the Space Force, is transferring voluntarily. He was selected by NASA to be an astronaut in 2009.

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Space Force Built for War?

October 30, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Ryan Faith October 16, 2020 (realcleardefense.com)

• Space Force keeps a tight lid on its military intentions. Therefore, Russian or Chinese space warfare theorists might assume that a ‘kinetic’ (ie: shooting) war could be in the works. As in the US Air Force, the purveyors of kinetic mayhem tend to be culturally dominant. And Space Force has been no exception. These kinetic mayhem purveyors present a louder, more muscular, aggressive face of the Space Force. The non-kinetic approaches to space dominance get little discussion. The overall message suggests a Space Force with a strong bias towards kinetic warfare.

• At the same time, the US Space Force does not discuss the activities of its potential foes, and publicly there’s little to suggest that US opponents are hostile and aggressive. This makes the cultural bias in Space Force towards kinetic action appear to be an itchy trigger finger, not a response to real-life aggression.

• Kinetic action in space comes with an immense risk associated with orbital debris. In 2007, China demonstrated an anti-satellite weapon, and created more than 3,000 bits of space shrapnel in space. At immense orbital speeds, an impact by even a small bit of debris can have a devastating effect. This in turn creates more orbital debris in a sort of feedback effect called the Kessler Syndrome. This in itself creates some talk of strategic deterrent to an orbital debris chain-reaction that results in unintentional mutually assured response and destruction.

• The US Space Force would probably benefit by clarifying that a kinetic response must be in response to a legitimate threat or attack. Secondly, the US has a variety of tools at its disposal to manage the escalation of a space conflict without blowing a space asset to smithereens.

• But these suggestions are just a small part of the extensive political-social-media context of space operations as the backdrop to combat operations for the foreseeable future. The reality of a space conflict today may be a matter of winning the security battle versus losing the messaging war tomorrow.

If I were a Russian or Chinese space warfare theorist, thinking about a future war with the United States, it might be reasonable to bet that the newly-minted U.S. Space Force was planning for a kinetic space conflict, starting on Day 1.

Understandably, the Space Force keeps a tight lid on broader discussions of its capabilities. There isn’t a lot of direct information one way or another. Without a clear understanding of what the U.S. can do, an analyst might start trying to figure out U.S. intentions.

The culture of the Space Force might still be unformed and changing; it does bear at least a family resemblance to its sister services in at least one significant respect. In the services, the purveyors of kinetic mayhem — the shooters and the killers — tend to be culturally dominant within their respective services. The Space Force has been no exception to this.

Whether or not the Space Force shooters want to or not, they present a louder, more muscular, aggressive face of the Space Force. Conversely, non-kinetic approaches to space dominance get little discussion indeed.

Between the relative boldness of the kinetic space warfare community and the comparative silence of the non-kinetic warfare practitioners, the overall message suggests a Space Force with a strong bias towards kinetic warfare.

Compounding this problem, the USSF does not speak a lot about the activities of its potential foes. In public discussion, there’s little to suggest that U.S. opponents are hostile and aggressive and that need a muscular response. Keeping malicious actions secret makes the cultural bias towards kinetic action appear spontaneous — that it is not a response to unfortunate real-life conditions, but more of an itchy trigger finger.

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Space Force Developing Offensive Capabilities in Space

October 30, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Frank Wolfe October 19, 2020 (satellitetoday.com)

• In 1958, the United States was the first nation to test an ‘Anti-Satellite’ (ASAT) weapon, launched from a bomber. Since then, Russia, China, and India have demonstrated their abilities to destroy orbiting satellites as well. US Air Force and Space Force officials have largely promoted the resilience and redundancy of US space assets and protecting them from enemy attacks. At last year’s Space Symposium, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein stated, “If …your country is interested in participating in manned spaceflight, then you should not be …creating (a) risk to manned spaceflight. So demonstrating any capability that would create more (dangerous space) debris, in my mind, is a step in the wrong direction.”

• That type of thinking may have changed in 2007 when the Chinese demonstrated their anti-satellite weaponry on one of their own satellites, creating a swarm of space debris. “That was a clarifying event,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations. “I can almost chart from there the establishment of the Space Force, because suddenly space was contested.” “[T]hat kinetic attack on a satellite really shook the foundations that this is no longer a benign environment, and we started asking the questions about are we properly structured and organized and doing the right kinds of things to be able to maintain our advantage.”

• “[T]o some degree, the aggressive behavior of our competitors has clarified what we need to do as a nation and in the Department of Defense,” Saltzman continued. “They awoke the great giant that is the United States. [W]e are now moving rapidly toward developing capability to ensure that we maintain that strategic advantage…for a long time.” “I think the best defense sometimes is a good offense.”

• In April, after Russia tested a direct-ascent ASAT, John “Jay” Raymond, the Space Force’s chief of space operations, called it “further proof of Russia’s hypocritical advocacy of outer space arms control proposals designed to restrict the capabilities of the United States, while clearly having no intention of halting their counter-space weapons programs.”

• A recent ‘Roadmap for Assessing Space Weapons’ report from Aerospace Corporation‘s Center for Space Policy and Strategy said that the U.S. should not rush headlong into the development of new space weapons. “To avoid Russia and China imposing unnecessary costs on the United States, US decisions on space weapons should not be made simply in reaction to China and Russia’s space weaponization. US decisions on space weapons require an exhaustive comparative analysis of the value to US national security to develop, build, and deploy any type of space weapon, and the downsides to such a decision. Is the United States better off with or without space weapons of any type? …The analysis might lead to a conclusion that certain types of weapons or certain functions of such weapons are advantageous while others are not.”

**Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein**

The U.S was the first nation to test Anti-Satellite (ASAT) weapons in 1958 with bomber-launched ASATs, and three other nations have demonstrated the ability to destroy orbiting satellites — Russia, China, and, most recently, India, with a test in March last year. Officials from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Space Force have largely confined themselves to talking about building the resilience and redundancy of U.S. space assets and protecting them from enemy attacks, such as ASATs.

At last year’s Space Symposium, Air Force leaders discussed space deterrence through a lens of rapid response to adversary actions, and then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told Via Satellite sister publication Defense Daily that an ASAT test “absolutely isn’t the way” to demonstrate a space deterrent capability.

**Air Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman**

“If you take the long view and your country is interested in participating in manned spaceflight, then you should not be contributing in any way, shape or form to creating risk to manned spaceflight,” he said. “So demonstrating any capability that would create more debris, in my mind, is a step in the wrong direction.”

That thinking may be changing.

“I was on the ops floor in 2007 when the Chinese shot their own satellite down,” Air Force Lt. Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber, and nuclear, said during an Oct. 16 Aerospace Nation forum sponsored by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “That was a clarifying event, and I can almost chart from there the establishment of the Space Force because suddenly space was contested.”

“We knew there was other kinds of [space] contesting going on, but that kinetic attack on a satellite really shook the foundations that this is no longer a benign environment, and we started asking the questions about are we properly structured and organized and doing the right kinds of things to be able to maintain our advantage,” Saltzman said.

“And so, to some degree, the aggressive behavior of our competitors has clarified what we need to do as a nation and in the Department of Defense,” he said. “They awoke the great giant that is the United States, and we are now moving rapidly toward developing capability to ensure that we maintain that strategic advantage. We’re going to be able to compete in that area for a long time.”

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Top Secret Photos of Calvine UFO Sighting Left Me “Shell-Shocked”

October 25, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Nick Pope October 10, 2020 (thescottishsun.co.uk)

• The top secret color photographs of the so-called ‘Calvine Incident’, when a flying saucer was clearly seen in the skies above the Scottish Highlands in August 1990 were set to be released in 2021. But now the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) has postponed the photographs’ release for another fifty years. Nick Pope worked for the Ministry of Defence for 21 years, from 1991 to 1994, and ran its UFO office. Pope (pictured above) tells the inside story.

• Two men had been out hiking near Calvine in Scotland. Suddenly, they saw a massive UFO hanging in the sky, silent and motionless above their heads. Awestruck, they shot six photographs before the object accelerated away, vertically, at immense speed. The hikers sent the photos to a Scottish newspaper. A journalist contacted the MoD press office looking for a comment. The MoD managed to extract all the photos and the negatives from the newspaper, who never got them back.

• The photos had been taken in broad daylight and showed a large, crystal clear, diamond-shaped craft. At the government intelligence photo lab, the images were enlarged and analyzed. The analysis revealed that the photos had not been faked. They showed a structured craft of unknown origin, unlike any conventional aircraft. There was no fuselage, no wings, no tail, no engines and no markings of any sort. The size of the craft was estimated to be 100 feet in diameter. An enlargement of the photos revealed two military jets in the background. It wasn’t clear if they were escorting the UFO, trying to intercept it, or whether their presence was coincidental and the pilots had been too far away to see it. Pope’s predecessor at the MoD-UFO office had been prevented from tracing the military jets in the photos. This suggested that someone inside the MoD had sabotaged the investigation and blocked the UFO project from getting to the truth. Dark forces were at work.

• The MoD’s standard line on UFOs was that the phenomenon was of ‘no defense significance’ – a meaningless Whitehall soundbite that meant whatever we wanted it to mean. At best it was misleading, and at worst it was a downright lie. Pope says that the MoD consistently played down the true level of its interest in UFOs, telling Parliament, the media and the public that the subject was of little interest, “while all the time, behind closed doors, we struggled to make sense of cases like the Calvine incident”.

• MoD officials never found a definitive explanation for what was seen at Calvine. Of the several hundred UFO sighting reports received each year, most turned out to be misidentifications of satellites, meteors, Chinese lanterns and other ordinary objects and phenomena. But around five percent of the cases remained unexplained. “We didn’t assume these unexplained cases were extraterrestrial,” says Pope, “but neither did we rule out the possibility.”

• In the mid-nineties, a ‘believer faction’ had emerged at the MoD. This led to some extraordinary scenes. One time Pope and his boss walked over to Defence Intelligence Staff headquarters building in Whitehall. These were the ‘spooks’ who provided scientific and technical advice. A military intelligence briefer pulled out a copy of one of the Calvine photos from a folder. The intelligence officer ran through the possibilities. The object in the photograph wasn’t Russian. And it wasn’t American. That only left one other possibility. The briefer pointed straight up. Nothing further was said, and Pope and his boss walked back to their office in silence.

• A bitter struggle between UFO skeptics and UFO believers had erupted within the MoD. In relation to the Calvine photos, the only possible skeptical theory was that the object was a secret prototype aircraft or drone. Could it be American? The U.S. authorities were asked if they’d been testing a secret ‘Aurora’-type aircraft over the UK, but the U.S. denied any such prototype craft over Scotland. Since this was the skeptics’ only possibility, they persistently asked again. The Secretary of the US Air Force, Donald Rice, was ‘incensed’ by the questioning and the implication that he’d lied to the US Congress when Rice told them Aurora didn’t exist.

• Until now, a clear color photo of the Calvine UFO adorned the office wall at the UFO division of the MoD. But due to the diplomatic dust-up between Britain’s RAF and the US Air Force caused by the photos, the head of the division took it off of the wall. This division head still believed that it had to be a secret American craft. It couldn’t have been an extraterrestrial UFO, because they don’t exist. So he locked the photo in a safe, and it’s rumored that he later put it through the shredder.

• Plenty of other copies of the Calvine UFO survived, however. Pope came out of retirement in 2008 to help publicize the declassification and release of the MoD’s UFO files. But when the relevant files were released, the Calvine photos were missing. All that remained were some poor-quality black and white photocopies of a line drawing of one photo. It was as if the MoD wanted to ridicule the subject. A few years ago, Pope teamed up with a graphic artist in Los Angeles. They reconstructed the photo for a TV show, using the line drawing and memory as a guide. The result was spot-on, but it’s still not the real thing.

The top secret colour photographs, said to show a flying saucer above the Scottish Highlands in August 1990 – the so-called Calvine Incident – were set to be released in the New Year.

However, they have now been blocked for a further 50 years.

Here, former MoD official Nick Pope, who previously ran its UFO project, tells The Sun the inside story…

In the cult sci-fi series The X-Files, Fox Mulder has a poster of a UFO on the wall of his basement office. Underneath are the words “I want to believe”.

In the Ministry of Defence office, which served as the nerve centre of the UK’s UFO project, we had something very similar. But our picture was real.

Most UFO photos are either obvious fakes, or blurry and indistinct – a vague light in the night sky, or a fuzzy dot in the distance.

Not this one. It was up-close-and-personal, had been taken in broad daylight, and showed a large diamond-shaped craft.

I soon got the story out of my predecessor and read the file myself. It was an extraordinary tale: two men had been out hiking near Calvine in Scotland.

Suddenly, they’d seen a massive UFO hanging in the sky above their heads, silent, motionless and menacing. Awestruck, they shot off six photographs before the object accelerated away at immense speed – vertically!

The shell-shocked witnesses sent the photos to a Scottish newspaper and a journalist contacted the MoD press office, looking for a comment.

Somehow – perhaps using a D-Notice or perhaps using some real-life Men-in-Black trickery – someone at the MoD managed to extract all the photos and the negatives from the newspaper, who never got them back.

The MoD’s technical wizards leapt into action. The images were enlarged and analyzed, using the full resources and capabilities of intelligence community specialists.

Even now, years after these events, I can’t discuss the details of this process, as so much of the information is top secret.

The analysis was nothing short of sensational. The photos hadn’t been faked.

They showed a structured craft of unknown origin, unlike any conventional aircraft. There was no fuselage, no wings, no tail, no engines and no markings of any sort.

8:44 minute Nick Pope lecture on the Calvine UFO incident from Nov 3, 2015 (‘The Vortex’ YouTube)

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Space Force Doesn’t Want to Send a Human to Do a Robot’s Job

October 11, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Nathan Strout September 29, 2020 (c4isrnet.com)

• While Space Force officials have tried to keep the focus on what their personnel will do on the ground to support the nation’s space assets, this hasn’t dampened public speculation as to when Space Force will they send humans into orbit. A recent recruiting ad seemingly implied its members would literally be going to space.

• But for anyone joining the Space Force to be an astronaut, Maj. Gen. John Shaw has some bad news. “I think it will happen,” Shaw said on September 29th, “But I think it’s a long way off.” Shaw serves as both commander of Space Force’s Space Operations Command and for the U.S. Space Command’s Combined Force Space Component Command. Shaw sees two big reasons why it’s not likely to happen soon: “First, space isn’t really all that habitable for humans.” “And the second is, we’re getting darned good at this robotics thing in space.”

• “You know, the best robots that humans have ever created are probably satellites — either ones that explore other planets or operated within our own Earth/moon system,” said Shaw. “GPS satellites might be among those …and we’re only getting better with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’re going to have an awful lot of automated and autonomous systems operating in Earth and lunar orbit and solar orbit in the days and years to come doing national security space activity.”

• The Space Force and the US Air Force are investing in robotic capabilities that preclude the need for humans in space. Most notable is the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Spacecraft (RSGS) program being run by DARPA (illustrated above). With RSGS, DARPA wants to develop a robotic arm that can be placed on a free flying spacecraft which can navigate up to satellites to conduct repairs, orbital adjustments, or even install new payloads. DARPA hopes to launch a robotically enhanced vehicle into orbit in late 2022, where SpaceLogistics will provide the spacecraft and DARPA will provide the robotic arm.

• The Air Force Research Laboratory is building ROBOpilot, a robot that can fly planes, completely replacing the need for human pilots. It can press pedals to activate brakes, pull on the yoke to steer, adjust the throttle, and even read the dashboard instruments to see where it is and where it’s going.

• The secretive X-37b space plane is an unmanned vehicle is currently able to take off, carry host experiments into orbit, deploy satellites, and return to earth without humans on board.

• But Shaw believes that it’s inevitable. “At some point, yes, we will be putting humans into space,” said Shaw. “They may be operating command centers somewhere in the lunar environment or someplace else that are continuing to operate an architecture that is largely perhaps autonomous.”

• In July, the Sierra Nevada Corporation announced it had received a study contract for such autonomous orbital outposts in low Earth orbit. Missions will include hosting payloads, supporting space assembly and manufacturing, microgravity experimentation, logistics, training, testing and evaluations. SpaceNews confirmed that two other companies – Nanoracks and Arkisys – have also received study contracts.

• While these orbital outposts will be unmanned for now, a Defense Innovation Unit spokesperson said that it would be interested in securing a “human rating” for future outposts. So even if humans on orbit are not part of the military’s immediate plans, it remains a tantalizing possibility. “At some point that will happen. I just don’t know when,” said Shaw. “And it’s anybody’s guess to pick the year when that happens.”

Since it was established in Dec. 2019 — and probably even before that — one question has plagued the U.S. Space Force: when will they send humans into orbit?

While Space Force officials have tried to keep the focus on what their personnel will do on the ground to support the nation’s space assets, they’ve done little to dampen speculation. The Space Force probably didn’t help itself when it released a recruiting ad earlier this year that seemingly implied its members would literally be going to space.

But for anyone joining the Space Force to be an astronaut, Maj. Gen. John Shaw has some potentially bad news.

“I think it will happen,” said Shaw during the AFWERX Engage Space event Sept. 29. “But I think it’s a long way off.”

Shaw would know. He’s been a key member of the lean staff standing up both the Space Force and U.S. Space Command, serving simultaneously as commander of the former’s Space Operations Command and the latter’s Combined Force Space Component Command. While Shaw sees humans in orbit as part of the military’s plans somewhere down the line, there are two big reasons why it’s not likely to happen soon:
“First, space isn’t really all that habitable for humans. We’ve learned that since our early space days,” he explained. “And the second is, we’re getting darned good at this robotics thing in space.”

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China Quietly Launches ‘Reusable Experimental Spacecraft’

September 17, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Eric Mack September 4, 2020 (cnet.com)

• On September 4th, with little fanfare China’s state-run Xinhua media outlet announced the launch of a “reusable experimental spacecraft” from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Space industry watchers believe it to be some sort of unmanned space plane similar to the X-37B operated by the US Air Force and Space Force, that the Chinese have been developing since 2017.

• The statement reads: “After a period of in-orbit operation, the spacecraft will return to the scheduled landing site in China. It will test reusable technologies during its flight, providing technological support for the peaceful use of space.”

• The mission was conducted under a veil of secrecy with no official launch photos, and not even the time of launch made public. Jonathan McDowell with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics speculated that China’s secrecy “leads one to think this is not only a space plane, it’s a military space plane”.

• [Editor’s Note] While the Chinese test flight lasted two days, the Americans have kept its umnanned X-37B aloft in space for more than two years. (see previous ExoArticle on the X-37B craft)

To be fair, the Air Force is just as secretive about its X-37B craft. But the unmanned Chinese craft, called ‘Chongfu Shiyong Shiyan Hangtian Qi’ (translation: ‘Repeat Use Test Space Craft’) returned safely two days after the September 4th launch. Interestingly, it appears that the Chinese craft released an object into space before returning back to the Earth. (see follow-up article “China’s reusable experimental spacecraft returns to Earth after two-day mystery mission”)

China says it has successfully launched a “reusable experimental spacecraft” under increased levels of secrecy. Space industry watchers believe it to be some sort of unmanned space plane similar to the X-37B operated by the US Air Force and Space Force in recent years.

A short statement from China’s state-run Xinhua media outlet announced the launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Friday.

“After a period of in-orbit operation, the spacecraft will return to the scheduled landing site in China. It will test reusable technologies during its flight, providing technological support for the peaceful use of space,” the statement reads.

The mission was conducted under a veil of extra secrecy, with no official launch photos or even the time of launch made public.

“That leads one to think this is not only a space plane, it’s a military space plane,” said Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Jonathan McDowell on a European Space Agency sponsored Zoom conference Friday.

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Space Coast Air Force Members Transfer to Space Force

September 15, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Emre Kelly September 4, 2020 (floridatoday.com)

• On September 2nd, more than two dozen Air Force service members stationed on the Space Coast of Florida transferred to the Space Force. They are a small part of the 2,410 active-duty airmen that will transfer to the military’s newest branch before the end of the year.

• 26 airmen – 19 officers and seven enlisted – transferred during ceremonies at Patrick Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. All are assigned to either the space operations or space systems operations career fields.

• To transfer, airmen have to officially separate from the Air Force and re-commit to the Space Force under the same rank. Both officers and enlisted personnel must agreed to a two-year minimum active-duty commitment.

• “This is a momentous occasion for the Space Force and for each of these space professionals,” said Space Force leader Gen. John “Jay” Raymond said. “We intend to give our newest Space Force members and their families the special recognition they deserve.”

• What still remains to be seen are the planned name changes of the Space Coast’s two Air Force bases to Patrick Space Force Base and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. A ceremony was planned earlier this year, but the coronavirus pandemic put those plans on hold. A wing spokesperson confirmed the name changes will still happen, but the timeline is under review.

More than two dozen Air Force service members stationed on the Space Coast officially transferred to the Space Force on Wednesday, marking a small part of the overall effort to move thousands to the military’s newest branch before the end of the year.

The 45th Space Wing confirmed that 26 airmen – 19 officers and seven enlisted – transferred during small ceremonies led by their squadron commanders at Patrick Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. All are assigned to either the space operations or space systems operations career fields.

The local moves are part of a branch-wide effort that started Tuesday to transfer 2,410 active-duty airmen in those two roles to the Space Force over the coming months. The first batch includes airmen who volunteered for the transition in May.

To transfer, airmen have to officially separate from the Air Force during the ceremony and re-commit to the new service under the same rank. Both officers and enlisted personnel agreed to a two-year minimum active-duty commitment to the Space Force.

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Outdated Treaties and the Rush to Control Resources in Space

September 10, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Malcolm Davis August 31, 2020 (aspistrategist.org.au)

• The US Air Force Academy’s Institute for Applied Space Policy and Strategy has a ‘military on the moon’ research team set up ‘to evaluate the possibility and necessity of a sustained US presence on the lunar surface’. The focus of its report (see here) seems to be on the establishment a US lunar military base.

• The notion of a military base on the Moon has the space law community seeing red. Such a base would directly conflict with both the spirit and letter of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (see here), which provides that: “The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapon and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.” A military base on the Moon would also violate the 1979 Moon Treaty (see here), which no major space power has yet ratified. According to these treaties, no Earthly nation may establish a lunar military base, so long as that nation remains a signatory.

• Space law was developed for a different, more benign era and doesn’t adequately address the emerging dynamics of modern space activities. The framework of the treaties contain gaps that that an adversary could exploit in coming decades. For example, ‘commercial’ space operations can provide a convenient cover for states that wish to sidestep established law.

• The 1967 Treaty allows military personnel to be on the Moon for scientific ‘or any other peaceful purposes’, and states that ‘the use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the Moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited’. This leaves a lunar facility’s role open to interpretation. Is it a commercial base or an undeclared military facility?

• Article IV of the 1967 Treaty extends to both military and private commercial activities in space. “States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by government agencies or by non-governmental entities.”

• The 1967 Treaty states that space is “not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.’ However, the 2015 US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (see here) sets a precedent for legitimate activity by permitting a commercial company to secure, own and profit from a space resource. This creates a grey area between lawful commercial activities and illegal claims of sovereignty. Safeguarding access to a resource, and preventing a competitor from intruding, implies the necessity of security that the 1967 Treaty wasn’t designed to manage.

• In April 2020, President Trump signed an executive order ‘encouraging support for the recovery and use of space resources’… consistent with applicable law’. The Trump administration then released the Artemis Accords (see here) designed to establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space. In the accords, ‘all activities [on the Moon] will be conducted for peaceful purposes, per the tenets of the (1967) Outer Space Treaty’. The Artemis Accords require the US and its partners to share information on the location and general nature of operations so that ‘safety zones’ can be created to ‘prevent harmful interference’. This implies the delineation of territory or a zone of control around a facility.

• While lunar military bases may be prohibited, competition for resource wealth in space will test the premise of the 1967 Treaty. States and non-state actors will inevitably compete for access to and control over resources in space, and for a permanent and exclusive presence where those resources are located.

The 2019 movie Ad Astra had a US military base on the moon and a memorable battle scene involving a moon rover, implying that by late this century the moon will be heavily militarised. A question now being discussed in space policy circles is whether fact will follow science fiction, as the US Space Force considers exactly what its role will be. It has some pretty ambitious ideas, and a recent report indicates that its thinking will be shaped by a deep astrostrategic perspective.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise when news emerged that a group of US Air Force Academy cadets are researching the idea of military bases on the lunar surface. The academy’s Institute for Applied Space Policy and Strategy has a ‘military on the moon’ research team that was set up ‘to evaluate the possibility and necessity of a sustained United States presence on the lunar surface’. The focus seems to be on a military base, though there’s little information on exactly what they’re planning.

But the very notion of a military base on the moon has the space law community understandably seeing red.

Such a base would directly conflict with both the spirit and letter of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which provides the foundation for space law.

Article IV of the treaty states that: The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapon and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.

A military base on the moon would also violate the 1979 Moon Treaty, which Australia supports, though no major space power has ratified it. So that means no overt or declared lunar military bases, at least as long as all powers remain signatories to the OST.
The academy cadets would no doubt be aware of this. Why even consider such a move, then?

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UFOs Deserve Scientific Investigation

August 8, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Ravi Kopparapu and Jacob Haqq-Misra July 27, 2020 (scientificamerican.com)

• UFOs have been back in the news because of “unidentified aerial phenomena” videos officially released by the Pentagon. But the UFO phenomenon is a worldwide occurrence. Scientists in several other countries have studied them. Shouldn’t American scientists choose to investigate and curb the speculation around them? An interdisciplinary scientific investigation is needed, while discarding the taboo surrounding this phenomenon.

• Such unexplained UFO cases drew interest by scientists during the 1960s. As a result, the US Air Force funded a scientific group at the University of Colorado, headed by physicist Edward Condon, to review UFO cases from 1966 to 1968. The resulting ‘Condon Report’ concluded that further study of UFOs was unlikely to be scientifically interesting. Concerns over the inadequacy of the methods used by the Condon Report culminated with a debate sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1969, with participation by scholars such as Carl Sagan, J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald, Robert Hall and Robert Baker.

• Regarding the 1969 scientific debate, Sagan wrote of the “strong opposition” by scientists who feared that AAAS sponsorship of the debate would lend credence to ‘unscientific’ ideas. While Sagan himself dismissed the extraterrestrial hypothesis, he still claimed that the UFO subject was worthy of scientific inquiry.

• We, as scientists, should be cautious of outright dismissal of the UFO phenomenon by assuming that every instance has a “scientific” explanation. We must let scientific curiosity be the spearhead of understanding such phenomena. But these recent Navy pilots’ accounts of UFO sightings have failed to generate similar interest among the scientific community.

• Why should astronomers, meteorologists, and planetary scientists care about these UFO events? Because we are scientists. Curiosity is the reason we became scientists. UFOs represent observations that are waiting to be explained, just like any other science discovery. A systematic investigation is essential in order to bring the phenomena into mainstream science. Collection of hard data is paramount to establishing any credibility to the explanation of the phenomena. A rigorous scientific analysis is sorely needed, by multiple independent study groups.

• The transient nature of UFOs, and the unpredictability of when and where the next event will happen, is one of the main reasons why UFOs have not been taken seriously in science circles. But how can one identify a pattern without systematically collecting the data in the first place? In astronomy, the location and timing of gamma-ray bursts, supernovae and gravitational waves are similarly unpredictable. By meticulously collecting data from each occurrence and systematically observing them, we now recognize these as natural phenomena arising from stellar evolution. Similarly, gathering UFO data with tools such as radar, thermal, and visual observations would be immensely helpful. Not every case is a classified military aircraft or strange weather formation.

• As Sagan concluded at the 1969 debate, “scientists are particularly bound to have open minds; this is the lifeblood of science.” We do not know what UFOs are. This is precisely the reason that we as scientists should study them.

• [Editor’s Note] Back in the 1960s, the Condon Report didn’t stand a chance of seeing the light of ‘scientific curiosity and impartiality’. The deep state jackels had just gotten away with assassinating a sitting US President, and they felt invincible. The 1969 Condon Report was a set up, just like the Warren Commission. Even Carl Sagen, who played the role of the open-minded advocate of scientific curiosity, was later revealed to be an actual member of the top-secret Majestic 12 deep state UFO government debunking committee.

The question is, has the deep state lost its absolute control over the modern scientific community to a point where there are, in fact, some independent scientists who would make an impartial inquiry into the UFO phenomenon and reveal their objective findings to the public? Or will these scientists continue to bow to the deep state governmental authorities and private foundations that provide the funding for their work, and thus their livelihood?

UFOs have been back in the news because of videos initially leaked, and later confirmed, by the U.S. Navy and officially released by Pentagon that purportedly show “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP) in our skies. Speculations about their nature have run the gamut from mundane objects like birds or balloons to visitors from outer space.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to say what these actually are, however, without context. What happened before and after these video snippets? Were there any simultaneous observations from other instruments, or sightings by pilots?

Judging the nature of these objects (and these seem to be “objects,” as confirmed by the Navy) needs a coherent explanation that should accommodate and connect all the facts of the events. And this is where interdisciplinary scientific investigation is needed.

The proposal to scientifically study UAP phenomena is not new. The problem of understanding such unexplained UAP cases drew interest by scientists during the 1960s, which resulted in the U.S. Air Force funding a group at the University of Colorado, headed by physicist Edward Condon, to study UAP from 1966 to 1968. The resulting Condon Report concluded that further study of UAP was unlikely to be scientifically interesting—a conclusion that drew mixed reactions from scientists and the public.

Concerns over the inadequacy of the methods used by the Condon Report culminated with a congressional hearing in 1968 as well as a debate sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1969 with participation by scholars such as Carl Sagan, J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald, Robert Hall and Robert Baker. Hynek was an astronomy professor at the Ohio State University and led the Project Blue Book investigation, while McDonald, who was a well-known meteorologist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and AAAS, performed a thorough investigation of UAP phenomena. Sagan, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, was one of the organizers of the AAAS debate. He dismissed the extraterrestrial hypothesis as unlikely but still considered the UAP subject worthy of scientific inquiry.

Recent UAP sightings, however, have so far failed to generate similar interest among the scientific community. Part of the reason could be the apparent taboo around UAP phenomena, connecting it to the paranormal or pseudoscience, while ignoring the history behind it. Sagan even wrote in the afterword of the 1969 debate proceedings about the “strong opposition” by other scientists who were “convinced that AAAS sponsorship would somehow lend credence to ‘unscientific’ ideas.” As scientists we must simply let scientific curiosity be the spearhead of understanding such phenomena. We should be cautious of outright dismissal by assuming that every UAP phenomena must be explainable.

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Decades of Government UFO Gaslighting

August 2, 2020
ExoNews Editor

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?

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.

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.”

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.”

JANAP 146 detailed “Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings [aka CIRVIS].”

“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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What Happened at Roswell, the Birthplace of the Flying Saucer Legend?

July 10, 2020
ExoNews Editor

July 2, 2020 (timesnownews.com)

• On July 7, 1947, when ranch worker William Brazel, discovered unusual debris 75 miles north of the town of Roswell, New Mexico, he wouldn’t have believed that this would be the first incident in a long sequence of events, spanning over seven decades, to form a rich and mysterious conspiracy theory that continues to fascinate and bewilder UFO theorists today. The ‘Roswell Incident,’ as it has now come to be called, provided to many the proof of extraterrestrial visitation and spawned a cultural movement.

• In 1947, stories of ‘flying discs’ or ‘flying saucers’ had already been circulating in the national press. So when Brazel discovered the debris, did the previous news of flying saucers lead him to believe that this may have been of an extraterrestrial origin? Brazel informed Roswell’s sheriff, who, in turn contacted Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field. The following day saw the RAAF issue a shocking press release confirming that a “flying disk” had, indeed, crashed at a ranch near the town of Roswell.

• As scientists arrived to the area, a press conference was hastily put together to explain that debris tinfoil, sticks and rubber strips was no more than that from a fallen weather balloon. The Roswell Daily Record newspaper which initially claimed that the debris came from a UFO, corrected their story to fit the RAAF’s weather balloon narrative.

• The incident faded from the news until 1980 when authors Charles Berlitz and William Moore published a book called The Roswell Incident. This book alleged that the weather balloon story was nothing more than a cover-up. Then in 1994, the US Air Force released a report claiming that the debris actually came from a spy device designed to fly at high-altitudes over the former USSR to detect sound waves, called Project Mogul, with the purpose of monitoring the Soviet Union’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

• But the USAF report did not address the eyewitness accounts of bodies seen at the crash site. So a follow up report was drawn up in 1997 to debunk the theory that alien corpses were discovered and transported by the US government to a top secret facility, saying that the figures were merely parachute test-dummies.

• To many, the reaction of the US government remains suspicious. Some have contended that, in attempting to originally claim one version of events, and then immediately backtrack on it, the government’s response had the unintended effect of attracting even greater attention to, not just the incident, but the covert operation as well.

• Roswell has since become the unofficial UFO capital of the world, and houses the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Since 1996, Roswell has also been the home of an annual UFO festival that sees thousands of tourists congregate at the little town to conduct scientific experiments, workshops and seminars, perform plays, experience its planetarium and even dissect fake alien corpses as part of the spectacle.

The little town of Roswell, New Mexico has been made famous for an incident that took place in 1947 that several conspiracy theorists maintain was

**Major Jesse A. Marcel with tinfoil, sticks and rubber strip “debris”**

proof of extraterrestrial visitation.

When ranch worker William Brazel, discovered what he thought to be unusual debris 75 miles north of the little town of Roswell, New Mexico, on that fateful day of July 7, 1947, he wouldn’t have, in his wildest dreams, believed that his was to be the first incident, in a long sequence of events, spanning over seven decades, forming a rich and mysterious conspiracy theory that continues to fascinate and bewilder UFO theorists even today. The ‘Roswell Incident,’ as it has now come to be called, has spawned a cultural movement, that has defied both, reason and time.

A whole host of conspiracy theories have made their way into the mainstream over the last few decades, and, it appears that we may never actually learn the full truth, amid all the cacophony. Nevertheless, some facts of the tale remain undisputed beginning with Brazel’s discovery.

Stories of ‘flying discs’ or ‘flying saucers’ had already been circulating in the national press that year, and, perhaps, these may have been what led Brazel to believe that the tinfoil, sticks and rubber strips he uncovered, may have had extraterrestrial origins. He soon informed Roswell’s sheriff of his discovery, who, in turn, contacted Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).

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Air Force Reports on Aircrew Encounters with Unidentified Flying Craft

July 4, 2020
ExoNews Editor

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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Officials Hail Rome NY Lab’s Foray Into Quantum Technology

June 29, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Dave Gymburch June 17, 2020 (romesentinel.com)

• On June 15-16th , the Air Force Research Laboratory headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio sponsored a 2-day event in Rome, New York wherein small tech businesses could make a 20-minute pitch to senior Air Force officials as to novel approaches to advance quantum-enabling technology and applications. The program ultimately awarded 36 contracts to 23 companies from nine states, amounting to $5.4 million to small businesses.

• Rome Lab, the Air Force’s ‘super laboratory’ for science and technology, was praised by a Pentagon official for its key role in quantum technology research. Assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, Will Roper, said during a keynote session that Quantum technology is “one of those potential game-changers.” “What we hope to do… with Rome Lab leading the way, (is to) get that quantum technology over the goal line and into the warfighter’s hands,” said Roper.

• Roper praised New York Congressman Anthony Brindisi for the work being done at Rome Lab, formally known as the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate, and spoke about the importance of research for quantum development and the funding to support it.

• Quantum technology is considered an emerging field of physics and engineering, which relies on principles of quantum physics. Among potential impacts of quantum technology include GPS-like precision in locations where there is no GPS signal or it is severely degraded; ultra-secure global communication networks; high-precision sensors linked together with a quantum network; new computing paradigms for optimization of asset and resource allocations, discovery of new materials, and novel applications of artificial intelligence.

• Congressman Brindisi expressed the importance to bring together small business, industry, and academia with Department of Defense labs for “faster and more efficient development of quantum technology.”

• Rome Lab Director Colonel Timothy Lawrence said the event will hopefully be a “step in the right direction” for giving the Air Force, Space Force and the nation what is needed regarding quantum development.

Rome Lab’s key role in quantum technology research was praised by a Pentagon official during a two-day event aimed at enhancing small businesses’ involvement in the initiative.

Quantum technology is “one of those potential game-changers,” said Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, during a keynote session Monday for the virtual quantum collider pitch event.

“What we hope to do…the Air Force and the Space Force, with Rome Lab leading the way, is put year-after-year routine demand, routine challenges…routine funding to

bring Q-Day, the day we get that quantum technology over the goal line and into the warfighter’s hands…where we bring that early,” said Roper.

Earlier in the session after Congressman Anthony Brindisi spoke about the importance of research for quantum development and the funding to support it, Roper said “I applaud you for thinking ahead and making sure that all quantum roads lead to Rome…and really appreciate all the work the lab is doing in your district.” Rome Lab, based at Griffiss Park, is formally known as the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate.

Roper was among several speakers at the event, which included small businesses in private 20-minute pitch sessions with senior officials for novel approaches to advance quantum-enabling technology and/or applications. The AFRL program called for awarding up to 36 contracts and up to $5.4 million to small businesses in this phase of the initiative.

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US Planned to Blow Up Moon, What Happened?

June 28, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Bhaswati Guha Majumder June 21, 2020 (ibtimes.sg)

• At the dawn of the space race in the 1960s, a secret mission code-named ‘Project A119’ was devised by the US Air Force out of Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico to demonstrate to the Soviets and to the entire world that the U.S. could dominate space by exploding a bomb on Moon’s “terminator” – the area between the part of the surface that is illuminated by the Sun and the part that is dark. The military planned to add sodium to the bomb to make it glow and be highly visible to the naked eye from Earth. The plan was never carried out to avoid an “unparalleled scientific disaster.”

• This revelation is exposed in the unclassified Air Force document from 1959 entitled: ‘A Study of Lunar research Flights’, and in a new book by John Greenewald Jr. entitled: Secrets From the Black Vault: The Army’s Plan for a Military Base on the Moon and Other Declassified Documents that Rewrote History. Greenewald, who runs ‘The Black Vault’ website containing the largest civilian archive of declassified government documents, said, “A nuclear bomb on the surface of the Moon was definitely one of the stupider things the government could do.”

• Greenewald’s book also discloses the US military’s “Project Horizon”, in which the US Army planned to establish a permanent colony of 10 to 20 people on a Moon base by 1966. The plan was promoted in 1959 by the Chief of Research and Development for the U.S. Army, Lt General Arthur G. Trudeau, who claimed that if the U.S. could beat the Soviets to the Moon, “the prestige and psychological advantage to the nation will be invaluable.” They went so far as to design suits for the landing party and bulldozers for the construction. But the cost of the endeavor was estimated at over $6 billion annually (or $53 billion per year in today’s dollars), and was therefore shelved. Greenewald told the NY Post, “You look at these documents and wonder if this is what they’re telling us. Imagine what they’re not.”

• Today, NASA’s Exploration Technology Development Program is working on a plan to establish a permanent Moon base for scientists and astronauts. Also, Lewis Dartnell, a professor at the University of Westminster, has proposed a “Moontopia” city to be built inside massive hollow tubes formed by lunar volcanic eruptions.

• [Editor’s Note] It appears that while the Army’s plan to establish a Moon base was publicly terminated, the military industrial complex revised their plan by creating a NASA space program to occupy the public’s imagination by hiring ex-Nazis to put Americans on the Moon using rocket technology, while secretly pursuing a ‘secret space program’ to explore and colonize space using advanced anti-gravity and electromagnetic/warp drive technology throughout the ensuing decades.

And according to SSP whistle-blowers, the Nazis did in fact build a lunar base within hollow volcanic tubes on the Moon in the early 1940s, which the American military industrial complex improved upon and expanded during the 1950s and 60s through a subsequent collaboration with the post-WWII Nazi remnant headquartered in Antarctic, along with their reptilian allies.

Blowing up the moon — this idea may look like a sci-fi movie plot, but it is a fact that the U.S. government made plans to explode a bomb on moon’s “terminator” — the area between the part of the surface that is illuminated by the sun and the part that is dark.

It was a secret mission code-named “Project A119.” The project was conceived at the dawn of the space race in the

1960s and designed to be monitored by a U.S. Air Force division located at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. All the details of this secret mission came to light in a recent report titled, A Study of Lunar Research Flights.

The Explosion of Moon

It is quite obvious that the plan did not work out. But if the U.S. had done, the explosion would have been visible from earth with naked eyes as the military had planned to add sodium to the bomb, which would make it glow and make it visible during the explosion.

John Greenewald Jr., author of the new book “Secrets From the Black Vault: The Army’s Plan for a Military Base on the Moon and Other Declassified Documents that Rewrote History” said, “A nuclear bomb on the surface of the moon was definitely one of the stupider things the government could do.”

The author also runs a website called The Black Vault, which is the largest civilian archive of declassified government documents including around 2.1 million pages. This webpage includes classified documents on assassinations and other phenomena legally obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Greenewald wrote in his book that the U.S. Air Force devised the moon plot as they wanted to show the Soviets and the entire world that they can dominate space as well. Based on one such declassified document, he said that the plan was never carried out, most possibly due to the its potential to trigger an “unparalleled scientific disaster.”

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Raytheon Intelligence & Space to Participate in Development of the Advanced Battle Management System

June 22, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article from PR Newswire June 15, 2020 (yahoo.com)

• Raytheon Intelligence and Space has been awarded an IDIQ contract of $950 million over the next five years to participate in the Air Force’s development and support of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). The ABMS is a future command and control network that will connect military platforms across the globe.

• “ABMS will transform the future battlespace for the U.S. Air Force by delivering the right data at the right time to the right people so they can make the right decisions fast,” said Barbara Borgonovi, vice president of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems, at Raytheon I&S. “This is the first step to delivering the Air Force’s vision… (to) link capabilities across all domains – air, land, sea, cyber and space.”

• To support this effort, Raytheon I&S will contribute open systems design, modern software and algorithm development for the future system. Under the terms of the multiple award contract, the Air Force will run competitions under each category that will be issued as task and delivery orders.

• A developer of advanced sensors, training, and cyber and software solutions, Raytheon Intelligence & Space delivers the ‘disruptive technologies’ that give our customers a military and commercial advantage. It has 39,000 employees in 40 countries.

• Raytheon I&S is one of four businesses that form Raytheon Technologies Corporation, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Raytheon Technologies Corp is an aerospace and defense company which comprises four industry-leading businesses – Collins Aerospace Systems, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Raytheon Missiles & Defense – operating at the edge of known science, and pushing the boundaries in quantum physics, electric propulsion, directed energy, hypersonics, avionics and cybersecurity.

ARLINGTON, Va., June 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Raytheon Intelligence and Space, a Raytheon Technologies business (NYSE: RTX), was awarded a

multiple award IDIQ to participate in the Air Force’s development of the Advanced Battle Management System, a future command and control network that will connect military platforms across the globe, giving military commanders the ability to make decisions faster.

Under a multiple award, IDIQ contract valued up to $950 million over the next five years with options beyond, RI&S will participate in the support of the maturation, demonstration and proliferation of capability across platforms and domains to enable Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

“ABMS will transform the future battlespace for the U.S. Air Force by delivering the right data at the right time to the right people so they can make the right decisions fast,” said Barbara Borgonovi, vice president of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems, at Raytheon Intelligence & Space. “This is the first step to delivering the Air Force’s vision of JADC2, which will link capabilities across all domains – air, land, sea, cyber and space.”

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Tag: US Air Force