The recent long-awaited release ( Jan. 16th) of the 2022 “Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)” by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has disappointed both skeptics and supporters alike.
Skeptics would prefer to see almost all UAP dismissed as misidentified conventional objects such as drones and balloons and, indeed, nearly one-half of the 366 newly reported UAP fell into that category. But, remarkably, the other half did not and some were even said to demonstrate “unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, [that] require further analysis.”
Yet this important admission hardly satisfies UAP/UFO supporters who wonder why that analysis has not already been accomplished. After all, the UFO phenomenon itself is hardly new; unusual flight and performance characteristics have been reported since at least 1947 and it is totally naïve to believe that the military/intelligence community has not already commissioned some fairly sophisticated analysis of a number of UAP/UFOs that could pose a national security threat. In that regard, this latest unclassified report (is there a classified version?) is unhelpful and simply continues an official obscurantism with respect to important aspects of this mystery.
Some UFO supporters have asserted for decades that the government has been hiding evidence that some UFOs/UAPs are extra-terrestrial. Perhaps, but no smoking gun has ever surfaced. On the other hand, skeptics have also asserted that some UFOs are a convenient “cover” for the government’s own clandestine flight/technology programs, designed to keep deep secrets and mislead potential enemies. Perhaps some are, but this theory–currently popular with the smart chattering classes–has its own set of problems.
First, solid military reports of UFOs that hover, perform extraordinary turns and accelerate without noise (exotic UFOs) have been accumulating since at least the 1940s. Are we to believe that the U.S. has had this particular advanced technology for the last 7 decades but that none of it has yet to openly surface in our own security regime? Hard to believe.
Second, there are dozens of military reports of (very) close encounters of U.S. jets in pursuit of UFOs. There are solid non-classified reports of on-board jamming (EM) of radar and electronics. Very dangerous stuff. Again, it is difficult to believe that a cover for some clandestine program could ever justify repeated risky UFO pursuits and/or possible mid-air collisions with military jets or commercial planes and their passengers. But not difficult to believe if the actual purpose of such close inspections was to discover more details about the technology of exotic UFOs.
Third, UFOs that have exhibited “unusual…performance capabilities” have been observed all over the world, recorded on radar all over the world and chased by military aircraft all over the world…for decades. Almost every country in Europe and Latin America has a vast data resource on the phenomenon that contains reports that are identical to those in all previous U.S. collection programs. The point is that it is almost impossible to believe that any U.S. covert program would ever risk an accident or crash of its own decades-ahead exotic technology (with possible debris recovery by a foreign power) over Ukraine or Mexico City or Madrid or, frankly, even over the outskirts of Detroit. Does not pass the smell test.
So what are exotic UFOs? What is “under the covers” so to speak? Certainly, the recent congressional concern that we get to the bottom of this mystery is hopeful, although there are many decades of official disappointments on this matter. Perhaps the next intelligence report will have some real answers. This one does not.
The post UFOs and National Security appeared first on LewRockwell.