What is a UFO/UAP? An unidentified flying object (UFO) is also called a flying saucer. It is also known as Unidentified Flying Object. Learn the history behind this enigmatic phenomenon.
Today is also labeled UAP or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or anomalous aerial vehicles (AAV). It can be any aerial object or optical phenomenon not readily identifiable to the observer. UFOs became a significant subject of interest following the evolution of rocketry after World War Two.
They were thought by some researchers to be intelligent extraterrestrial life visiting Earth.
What is the history of UFOs?
It all started in 1947 when a search-and-rescue pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported nine “saucer-like things…
The picture below shows pilots E.J. Smith, Kenneth Arnold, and Ralph E. Stevens looking at a photo of an unidentified flying object they sighted while en route to Seattle, Washington, in 1947. Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images.
Project Blue Book and “Flying Saucers”
The first historical UFO sighting happened in 1947 when businessman and private pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed to see nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier in Washington while flying his small plane, a CallAir A-2.
Arnold calculated the crescent-shaped objects’ speed as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like saucers skipping on water.”
The newspaper report that followed mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, consequently the term “flying saucer.“
Locations of Kenneth Arnold’s plane and the sighted UFOs
On June 24, 1947, the fascination with UFOs began when a private pilot from Idaho, Kenneth Arnold, described seeing nine objects “flying like a saucer would” along the crest of the Cascades.
The UFOs arrived from the direction of Mount Baker. They then passed in front of Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in the space of 1 min. 42 s.
The 47 mi or 76 km distance. And if measured peak to peak, suggests a speed of 1,650 mph or 2,660 km/h, similar to Kenneth Arnold’s estimate of 1,700 mph or 2,700 km/h.
This far exceeds that of the record-holding P-80 jets of the time.
Sightings of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) increased, and in 1948 the US Air Force launched an investigation of these UFO reports called Project Sign.
The involved with initial project opinion was that the UFOs or UAPs were most likely advanced Soviet aircraft. Some researchers proposed that they might be alien spacecraft from other worlds, the so-called ETH or (extraterrestrial hypothesis).
But within a year, Project Sign succeeded by another project, namely Project Grudge, which in 1952 was replaced by the longest-lived official examinations into UFOs, Project Blue Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
It ran from 1952 to 1969. Project Blue Book collected UFO reports of more than 12,000 sightings or events. Each of which was ultimately classified as:
- Identified – with a known astronomical, atmospheric, or artificial (human-caused) phenomenon
- Unidentified
The latter category, approximately six percent of the total, involved cases for which there was insufficient data to identify a known phenomenon.
The Robertson Panel and the Condon Report
An American fascination with the UFO phenomenon was underway. In the warm summer of 1952, an alluring series of radar and visual sightings happened near National Airport in Washington, DC.
However, those events were attributed to temperature inversions in the city’s air. But not everyone was satisfied with this explanation.
While the number of UFO reports had risen to a record high, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prompted the US government to establish a scientists’ expert panel to investigate the phenomena. H.P. Robertson headed the committee.
He was a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and included other physicists, a rocket engineer, and an astronomer.
The Robertson Panel gathered for three days in 1953 and questioned military officers and the head of Project Blue Book. They further reviewed films and photographs of UFOs. Their conclusions were that:
Ninety percent of the sightings could be attributed to astronomical and meteorologic phenomena (e.g., bright planets, stars, balloons, meteors, auroras, ion clouds) or such earthly objects as aircraft, birds, and searchlights.
- There was no apparent security threat.
- There was no evidence to back the Extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH).
Portions of the panel’s report were kept classified until 1979, and this long period of secrecy boosted fuel suspicions of a government cover-up.
Another committee was set up in 1966 at the Air Force’s request to examine the most interesting material collected by Project Blue Book.
And two years later, this committee, which conducted a detailed study of 59 UFO sightings, published its results as the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, known as the Condon Report, named after Edward U. Condon, the physicist who supervised the investigation.
The Condon Report was reviewed by a select committee of the National Academy of Sciences.
A total of 37 scientists composed chapters or parts of chapters for the report, which covered investigations of the 59 UFO sightings in great detail.
Same as the Robertson Panel, this committee concluded that there was no evidence of anything other than common phenomena in the reports and that UFOs, or UAPs, did not warrant further investigation.
This, together with a drop in sighting activity, led to the end of Project Blue Book in 1969.
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Other investigations of UFOs/UAPs
Despite the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) failure to make headway with the expert committees, a few engineers and scientists, most notably Professor J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, had been involved with projects Grudge, Sign, and Project Blue Book.
He concluded that a small fraction of the most reliable UFO reports gave definite indications for the presence of extraterrestrial visitors.
Allen Hynek founded CUFOS, or the Center for UFO Studies, which continues to investigate the UAP phenomenon.
Another significant US study of UFO/UAP sightings was the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP). It was a secret project that ran from 2007 to 2012.
Luis Elizondo was the AATIP program director. When the existence of the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was made public on December 16, 2017, the most newsworthy aspect of this project was a report that the US government held materials, alloys, and compounds purportedly attained from UAPs/UFOs that were unidentifiable.
Still, today many scientists remained skeptical about this astonishing claim.
Aside from the American works, the only other official and relatively complete records of UFO/UAP sightings were kept in Canada, where they transferred those in 1968 from the Canadian Department of National Defense to the Canadian National Research Council.
The Canadian records contained approximately 750 sightings. Less-complete records have been maintained in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Greece, and Australia.
In the United States, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) in Bellvue, Colorado, continue to log UAP sightings reported by the public.
In the Soviet Union, sightings of UFOs and UAPs were often prompted by tests of secret military rockets. In order to obscure the true nature of the tests, the government sometimes encouraged the public’s belief that these rockets might be extraterrestrial craft but eventually decided that the descriptions themselves might give away too much information.
UFO sightings in China have been similarly provoked by military activity that is unknown to the public.
Probable explanations for UFO sightings and alien abductions
UFO/UAP reports have varied widely in reliability, as judged by the number of witnesses, whether the observers were independent of each other, the observing conditions (e.g., fog, haze type of illumination) the direction of the sighting.
Typically, witnesses who take the trouble to report a UFO sighting consider the object to be of ET (extraterrestrial) origin or maybe a military craft but unquestionably under intelligent control.
This judgment is usually based on what is perceived as formation flying by sets of objects, unnatural—often sudden motions, the lack of any sound, brightness or color changes, and exotic shapes.
That the unaided eye plays tricks sometimes is well known. For example, a bright light, such as the planet Venus, frequently appears to move.
Astronomical objects can also be problematic to drivers, as they seem to “follow” the car. Visible impressions of UFOs’ distance and speed are also highly unreliable because they are based on an assumed size and are frequently made against a blank sky with no background object (clouds, mountains, etc.) to set a maximum distance.
Reflections from eyeglasses and windows can similarly produce superimposed views. Moreover, complex optical systems, such as camera lenses, can turn point sources of light into seemingly saucer-shaped phenomena.
Such optical illusions and the psychological wish to interpret images are known to account for many observed UFO/UAP reports, and at least some UFO sightings are known to be hoaxes.
Radar sightings, while in some respects more reliable, fail to discriminate between artificial objects and meteor trails, rain, ionized gas, or thermal discontinuities in the atmosphere.
“Contact events,” such as abductions, are quite often associated with flying saucers or UFOs.
Because they are ascribed to extraterrestrial visitors, most psychologists who have investigated this phenomenon disputed the credibility of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) as an explanation for abductions.
They suggest that a common experience known as “sleep paralysis” may be the culprit, as this causes sleepers to experience temporary immobility and a belief that they are being watched.
How UAPs are potentially “unidentifiable.”
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) activism and social psychology are difficult to convey just how information becomes misconstrued dealing with this delicate subject.
There is an unhealthy need for a certain mindset of people to associate UAP/UFO with something extraterrestrial and for other people to label the phenomenon as earthly objects.
For such people, the issue is simplistic. It’s white, or it’s black. It’s either weather balloons or aliens.
It’s us, or it’s not. In reality, though, it’s more of a meshed, greyish color that is infinitely complex in scope and practice.
Real UFO/UAP objects that are anomalous and display ‘beyond next-generation technology, such as those that encountered the Black Aces squadron, flew out of the USS. Nimitz carrier strike group or the USS. Roosevelt, aren’t misidentified planes, birds, balloons, or stars.
They are a true mystery that science hasn’t been able to explain appropriately. Sadly, due to the Department of Defense (DOD) classification, which is placed upon UFO/UAP cases’ specific dynamics, a problem arises.
Issues stem from reduced transparency and have meant that videos and case reports can’t even be made public via FOIA. This creates an opportunity for misinformation.
And from a psychologist’s perspective, when sensitive objective data is absent, it often becomes filled with personal needs and interpretations.
It’s a flawed part of being a human being and clinically talking. Such tendencies aren’t rational and help develop the delicate ego, which looks to protect itself at all costs.
Facts and verifiable sources are pulled apart, analyzed, and projected for the conscious mind to carry forward into behaviors.
The individual has a narrative with an inevitable reality they need to have subjectively upheld and ensure that only certain truths are objectified.
This is no different for ‘believers’ or ‘skeptics’ who apply the same tactics on either side of the spectrum.
What about the UFO facts?
It’s a fact that these strange UFOs are being picked up on many sensors from the United States military and also by the world’s most advanced defense technology.
We can verify that through several Navy Pilots, Intelligence Officers, Radar Operators, Directors of various agencies, and senators updated in classified briefings.
Take the recent UFO/UAP videos in the media. The DoD has determined them to be “Unidentified” in classification.
This means that after a careful assessment by an official investigative body, for example, The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force or UAPTF, they have been unable to determine the nature and origin of such anomalous aerial vehicles (AAV).
Arguably, the complexity of whatever this AAV/UFO/UAP technology might be may reach far beyond the oversimplified concept of extraterrestrials and into something else, something more alarming.
Maybe it’s an effect of nuclear activity, perhaps something genuinely unidentifiable. Maybe something from the multiverse, or perhaps it’s something that the animalistic human mind might not imagine in its original form.
Then again, perhaps it’s none of the above.
However, this is all hypothetical. We are stuck in neutral on this UFO topic due to society’s twofold thinking that unfortunately includes renowned scientists tasked with finding “alien” life.
Indeed a genuinely scientific approach says, “I don’t know what this UFO phenomenon is, so let’s investigate.”
Instead of taking this topic on what is being reported, the discussion becomes about trying to prove or disprove the stigmatized (ET) extraterrestrial concept rather than focusing on likely national security or quantum physics problem, a possible problem of revolutionary technology.
The Pentagon’s UAP
Franc Milburn of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies published this exceptionally insightful assessment of the USG’s new UAP investigation. It’s called “The Pentagon’s UAP Task Force.” And he’s done a meticulous job reviewing the open-source literature and is asking the right questions.
UFO reports in the media
When a report on “UFOs” makes the news cycle, more often than not, the well-meaning journalist calls up the sole astrophysicist whose name has become attached to this issue for an uninformed quote.
Regularly, the astrophysicist says it’s all misidentifications, nothing to see here.
The “U” in UFO means “Unidentified,” it’s all balloons, birds, and planes while cherry-picking data to create a narrative that we shouldn’t bother with such things.
What might psychology tell us in such cases? Some say that when funding and reputation are put on the line, the mind will create a less hostile version of reality.
It is suitable for the status quo but poor for unbiased scientific methodology and arguably a disaster for those seeking possible non-human intelligence.
A new article broke into the Sunday Times with journalist Sarah Baxter making it to page 18 with details of the Pentagon UAP/UFO report.
This article, faced with a bleak picture of two people dressed as aliens, was well written and included some of the current issues of UFO/UAP, quoting Harvard scientist Avi Loeb.
He has attributed an interest to the (ET) extraterrestrial concept.
But, Baxter failed to mention some of the comments from Navy Pilots and Senators on the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence.
My positive critique would be framing the issue with the undertone hung up on the twofold argument of ETs, rather than stepping back from such premature conclusions.
Overall, it was quite good. I was pleased to see the coverage in a credible British media outlet, and for the first time, it was a promising start in this alternative UFO world.
But as Sarah will soon find out over the next two years, it won’t be the last.
Are UFOs/UAPs from China?
Also, I should mention how Chinese technology’s framing would seem to be the following rational and logical explanation for anyone unfamiliar with what has happened over the past three years.
How likely are the claims that ordinary misidentifications are what Navy Pilots are reporting? How accurate is it to think that a foreign advanced technology is responsible for what we are witnessing?
And could the Chinese possess this technology as far back as 2004 without being reported anywhere in the next seventeen years?
A British historian who has investigated and authored articles for The Debrief and UAPMedia.
His book on flight aviation within the former Soviet Union has recently got the attention of those working on the UFO/UAP issue.
He has written at length about the capabilities and tracking abilities of modern-day fighter planes.
He states that he hasn’t got the actual figures because they’ll be classified. He continues that the FLIR/IRST (InfraRed Search and Track) system and the PIRATE (Passive InfraRed Airborne Track Equipment) produced by the EUROFirst consortium for Eurofighter Typhoon are thought to be able to find stealth aircraft such as the famous B-2 at significant distances.
Those flight testing started in 2000 or 2001, and the first Typhoon fitted with PIRATE flew in 2007.
It is essential to keep this in mind. We now live in a world where many Navy Pilots have come forward with statements and videos, complete with various Radar Operators’ testimony on multiple sensory data from AN-SPY1 radar and collect data from satellites.
All this is according to the former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe.
US military can now “detect” UAPs.
We are talking about sensory detection that is amazingly detailed and sophisticated. And since the 1969 closure of the United States Air Force UFO program, Project Blue Book, the military’s technological capacity to identify objects in sensitive airspace has dramatically increased.
The US military can now detect and track various airborne objects using different sensory information, especially when engaging in nuclear strike groups.
It’s always astonishing that people think the three things in those blurry UFO/UAP/AAV videos just somehow eluded the military with no tracking, as if they flew away without the military knowing what happened to them.
It’s unbelievable how many of those people are also unaware those objects were tracked over days rather than minutes.
New advanced radar systems can now detect UFOs.
Available numerical figures on the SPY-1 detection range claim that it can distinguish a golf ball-sized target at ranges above 165 km.
When applied to a ballistic missile-sized target, the SPY-1 radar is supposed to have a range of 310 km. All this information, according to the “Missile Defence Advocacy Agency.”
The military reconnaissance satellites under the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are incredibly sophisticated.
They can see five inches or more prominent on the ground from space. We are talking about particularly incredible surveillance technology backed by hyper-advanced radar systems that trace each of the geographic spheres that are layered up towards space.
Still, here we have three fuzzy, black and white videos from the gun camera footage of the US Navy Pilots’ planes. But that is what’s in the public domain.
However, there might be more that is clear and close-up. Yet, they are kept in a secret vault somewhere.
UAP/UFO journalist Danny Silva
So when we talk about UFOs that wander into the most surveillance airspace in the world and later leave without any issue or interference and then officially remain classified as “Unidentified,” we are not talking swamp gas, birds, balloons, or the tail end of another plane.
The researcher and civilian UAP/UFO journalist Danny Silva implied that Seth Shostak’s opinions aren’t correct.
The Testimony of Dave Fravor on UFOs
We have the famous testimony of Commander Dave Fravor. Mr. Shostack brushing off Commander Fravor’s expert testimony and comparing Navy Jets to Hondas is ludicrous. There is no compelling argument the Tic-Tac UFO is a conventional plane.
Many top mainstream journalists agree the Tic-Tac is either secret black projects, advanced technology, secret programs, the likes of which the world has never seen, or something else.
So, moving forward, the public will remain privy to more UAP cases, as we have now seen with the USS. Kidd. It will be tough to continue to deny the reality of advanced technology, no matter where it comes from, in our skies and bodies of water, among other places.
And I would agree, if you want to apply subjective Occam’s Razor, arguably look to newly advanced Chinese technology, not planes that DOD can identify instantly.
Nevertheless, keep in mind Occam’s Razor is highly dependent on the information available to you. Given the reports, we highly likely aren’t talking about the next advancement of the F-18.
We are discussing technology so radical it has mastered trans-medium travel, anti-gravity, and hypersonic dead-stop propulsion.
Look to the AATIP five observables for a proper understanding of such UFO technological capabilities.
The red-taped, bureaucratic UFO dogma
Currently, we are red-taped, lost in bureaucratic dogma that stops progression. The lack of detailed classification regarding these specific UAP vehicles is problematic.
UFO/UAP can mean anything from a drone, balloon, plane, birds, missiles, or anything that seemingly flies.
There is nothing to distinguish objects seen in the famous GIMBAL video from the FLIR1. The absence of specification allows for misinformation to spread, thriving in the uncertainty and lack of transparency to force their narrative.
To guarantee we sidestep unhelpful opinions from misinformed scientists and radicalized YouTube debunkers, we must ensure we don’t conclude without all the relevant data. Equivalently, we mustn’t name the phenomenon as one thing or another without a full government investigation.
Luis Elizondo former director of AATIP
The former Director of the Pentagon program (AATIP), Luis Elizondo, was asked about the breakdown in the scientific process regarding UFO/AAV/UAP technology.
His great respect for the scientific community could not be overstated. Thus, he continues, AATIP had some of the best in conducting analysis, scientific modeling, and mathematical computations.
He finds it egregious when some well-known scientific community scientists display unwarranted intellectual arrogance on a topic they have no idea about.
He also said, rather than allowing the scientific method to speak for itself, they muzzle her and talk for her.
So it amazes Luis how in breath, someone claims to look for signs of ET life in the solar system but is unwilling to look right under their noses.
He states that it seems to him to be a bit hypocritical.
The term “Advanced Aerospace Vehicles” (AAV)
The question is now how to manage such misinformation. And from now on, the obvious answer is the transparency of government data and ending the secrecy.
Moreover, it has been suggested that the term UAP or UFO is replaced with something that represents the genuinely bizarre nature of the phenomenon and the observed technology and the genuinely unidentifiable quality that separates the misidentified UAPs from the identifiable.
Furthermore, when the intelligence agents provided information to The New York Times last summer (2020), they used the term Advanced Aerospace Vehicles (AAV).
Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough quickly squashed Swedish researcher Roger Glassel, who said that AAV was not an official Navy term. It was possibly the contractor BAASS that complied with the Nimitz Incident report for AATIP.
She was assuring the discussion of AAV, and the concept of unidentifiable craft stopped in its tracks.
The Pentagon did not want to allow that unidentifiable ideology to exist under their rule. Some will claim this was a strategic move, given that the USS. Nimitz Incident report released in 2018 by reporter George Knapp used the term AAV – shut down AAV and shut down the Nimitz Incident report.
Moreover, AAV was a term associated with the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) contractors, as it was reported by The New York Times in July 2020.
Provided the New York Times with a series of unclassified slides revealing that the secret program took this seriously to include it in numerous briefings.
One slide states one of the program’s tasks was to “arrange for access to Data/reports/ materials from crash retrievals of AAVs,” or advanced aerospace vehicles.
New York Times sources told them that “AAV” does not refer to vehicles made in any country.
Not Russian or Chinese, but it is used to mean technology in the truly unexplained realm. They also assure that their briefings are based on facts, not belief.
The mainstream media has been aware oF UFO/UAP.
With the recent comments of John Lee Ratcliffe, an American politician and attorney who worked as the Director of National Intelligence from 2020 to 2021, the mainstream media have been aware that UFO/UAP is being taken seriously by the DOD with a report due to the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence (SSCI) in summer 2021.
And with public pressure and people now knowing the UFO/UAP technology reality, that might prove disastrous should DoD try to cover it up at this point.
Senators on the records and their conclusion
Senators Marco Rubio and Warner have gone on record to verify the Navy pilot’s reports stating that they do not know what is flying around nuclear strike groups.
A severe issue to national security was that the Pentagon established an inter-agency Task Force (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force) that was created to investigate UAP/UFOs and compile the much-anticipated report to congress.
The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force is taking into consideration all possibilities. Even those who are burdened with psychological stigma and pushback.
But with everything happening right now, we need to be cautious. Because not everyone is willing to accept UAP, UFO, or AAV as a reality, the only possible way forward is data transparency, reducing the wriggle room for intellectual dishonesty.
It all starts with ending UFO/UAP secrecy within society and government.
Are you interested in more UFO topics? Then head over to my new article named: Can New Electronic Warfare Explain UFO Sightings?