If the Jeopardy category is “Topics Seldom Covered At BattleSwarm,” “What are UFOs?” is a pretty good answer. While I’ve occasionally done a post, for the most part those waters are too polluted by cranks, grifters and true believers (to the extent those categories are distinguishable) to give much credence to the idea that alien spacecraft regularly visit earth.
But since Michael Shellenberger just dropped a piece on a whistleblower saying the federal government has a secret UFO program, and since Shellenberger did such important work on the Twitter files, I am reluctantly getting out my ten foot pole* and covering the piece.
But first some background.
Back in the 1970s, a whole lot of otherwise rational people believed not only in the existence of UFOs, but in alien abductions, ancient astronauts, and a whole host of crackpot pseudoscience beliefs. Belief in UFOs as extraterrestrials visiting earth probably peaked then, reflected in popular media from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Project Bluebook. There was also a steady stream of UFO true believers on TV, making fairly outrageous claims on actual news programs or “true story” TV shows, be it Barney Hill getting butt-probed in a saucer or Bob Lazar’s stories of alien technology at Area 51 and how Grays will use humans as “containers for souls.”
In terms of government UFO projects, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was a real (though unpublicized) Defense Department program that evidently ran from 2007 to 2012.
There is no evidence that any non-human or extra-terrestrial intelligence has visited Earth, according to a May 2024 report by the office the Pentagon created in 2022 to study unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), formerly called UFOs.
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) “assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part,” the report concluded, “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”
The former Director of AARO has since resigned his position and has repeatedly dismissed and ridiculed the topic, claiming that talk of the phenomenon is due mainly to a small group of individuals in the grip of a rumor-based religion.
But critics say that AARO’s 63-page history of the US government’s investigation into UAPs since the end of World War II was riddled with factual errors and poor referencing, including to Wikipedia. And the document was missing historical information that appeared in the 117-page “UAP Timeline” document created by a former or existing US government intelligence officer that Public published last year.
Christopher Mellon, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, wrote a lengthy rebuttal, concluding, “this is the most error-ridden and unsatisfactory government report I can recall reading during or after decades of government service.”
And major political figures, including Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, have vouched for the credibility of UAP witnesses and whistleblowers.
“I’ve interviewed solid people,” said former president Donald Trump in September, “great pilots for the US Air Force, et cetera, they’ve seen things that they cannot explain.”
Trump has said repeatedly that the government has information about UAPs that it has not released. In 2020, during a podcast with his son, Donald Trump, Jr., Trump said, “I won’t talk to you about what I know about it, but it’s very interesting.”
In June of this year, Trump said that the government has information about UAPs that it has not released. “I have access,” he said, “and I speak to people about it. I’ve had actually meetings on it. And they will tell you there’s something going on.”
In 2021, former CIA Director John Brennan said, “I think some of the phenomena we may be seeing continue to be unexplained and might be some type of phenomenon that results from something that we don’t yet understand and could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.”
The same year, the current Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said UAPs could constitute non-human intelligence (NHI).
In 2023, a high-ranking former intelligence officer named David Grusch testified to Congress that the US government had retrieved spacecraft of nonhuman origin and bodies, which US government insiders told Public was accurate.
In July 2022, the Intelligence Community Inspector General concluded that Grusch’s complaint that “elements” of the IC had withheld or hidden UAP-related information from Congress “to purposely and intentionally thwart legitimate Congressional oversight of the UAP Program” was both “credible” and “urgent.”
At the time, Charles McCullough III, the first Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, who the US Senate had confirmed for his job in 2011, represented Grusch.
That does not mean that extraterrestrial beings occupy or are operating the UAPs, nor that the US government and military contractors are hiding crashed alien spacecraft or bodies, as some former astronauts, former IC officers, and former military leaders claim.
There are other explanations for UAPs. Current dominant alternative theories, including those put forward by AARO, are that UAPs are some kind of natural phenomenon we don’t yet understand, like ball lighting or plasma. They could also be part of some new US or foreign government weapons program, such as drones, aircraft, balloons, CGI hoaxes, or birds.
Elon Musk thinks UFO sightings are probably experimental U.S. miltech. Let’s hope so.
Other UAP skeptics say that some combination of government disinformation and social contagion, like the Satanic panic of the 1980s or the Salem witch trials, among UAP believers in the US military are driving the phenomenon.
Is it possible that the Pentagon and CIA are still playing disinformation games with the American people to cover up unacknowledged programs? Or that intelligence and security agencies, as well as politicians, are creating a UAP hoax to frighten the public? And is it possible that whistleblowers are fabricating parts or all of their testimony?
The US Air Force allegedly used disinformation against a UFO buff in the past to cover up a weapons program. Something similar could be happening today.
However, no available evidence supports that theory. And so, while this possibility should not be ignored, for it to be true, it would require a complicated conspiracy with unclear motivations.
As Senator Rubio noted last year, “Most of [the UAP whistleblowers] have held very high clearances and high positions within our government. So, you do ask yourself: What incentive would so many people with that kind of qualification – these are serious people – have to come forward and make something up?”
Rubio also said that individuals in “high clearances and high positions within our government” with “firsthand knowledge” of UAPs were “fearful of harm coming to them.”
Grusch and other UAP whistleblowers say the government retaliated against them and tried to stop them from going public.
Snip.
Existing and former US government officials have told members of Congress that AARO and the Pentagon have broken the law by not revealing a significant body of information about UAPs, including military intelligence databases that have evidence of their existence as physical craft.
One of these individuals is a current or former US government official acting as a UAP whistleblower. The person has written a report that says “the Executive Branch has been managing UAP/NHI issues without Congressional knowledge, oversight, or authorization for some time, quite possibly decades.”
Furthermore, these individuals have revealed the name of an active and highly secretive DOD “Unacknowledged Special Access Program,” or USAP. The source of the document told Public that the USAP is a “strategic intelligence program” that is part of the US military’s family of long-standing, highly-sensitive programs dealing with various aspects of the UAP ‘problem.’”
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)’
Supposedly the name of this secret UFO program is Immaculate Constellation.
All this adds up to something that congress should probably look into…but far short of actual proof that extraterrestrial vehicles are visiting earth. Just because a “whistleblower” says something doesn’t make it true.
Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence…
*Do I actually have a 10 foot pole? Actually I have a 16′ extending pole (similar to this one, though with a different brand name), which I’ve found useful for things like knocking dead branches out of a tree, or getting a Frisbee off a neighbor’s roof. Back when Dwight worked in an office, he used to borrow it to use as a Festavus pole…
Tags: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), Avril Haines, Christopher Mellon, David Grusch, Department of Defense, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Immaculate Constellation, Michael Shellenberger, Military, technology, UFO
The question I have always had about UFOs is this–the creatures bending the rules of space and time, moving across dimensions like I cross a street, come here to…probe our backsides? Really? Among us mere humans, colonoscopies may soon be a thing of the past as technology renders them unnecessary. But these super-advanced beings, as far ahead of us as we are above the bonobos, bridge the interstellar Gulf to look in our heinies?
My theory fwiw, is these lifeforms are not traveling billions of miles to get here. They’re either already here (maybe they always have been), or they have ways of traveling that don’t require moving from point A to point B in a way we understand.
The thing that strikes me about alien visitor true believers is their total lack of curiosity about how, exactly, they got here. There isn’t the slightest reason to believe that FTL travel is possible, even in principle. You just can’t go faster in this Universe. It’s not an engineering problem, it’s the way spacetime is. But those who don’t understand that will believe what they want to believe.
There are countless things we don’t understand about Nature, but instead of admitting that they don’t know, most people prefer to make up stories to fill the hole.
Some of the earliest UFOs – in the late 1940s and early 1950s – were actually sightings of Skyhook balloons,. These were high altitude balloons released in Western Europe to drift over the Soviet Union. They had cameras aboard to take pictures at fixed intervals. Intelligence gathering when you don’t have a better way. The cameras were supposed to be recovered by aircraft operating out of Japan or the Aleutians once they drifted over the Pacific. Then the balloons were supposed to self-destruct.
Some didn’t and drifted over the US – where they were seen as “saucer-shaped” silver disks. An ANG died chasing one of these flying saucers in a P-51. He didn’t have oxygen, climbed to 22,000ft, passed out, and crashed.
The Federal government did not want to admit it was violating Soviet airspace by flying balloons over it, so they let everyone assume the pilot had been “shot down” by a flying saucer.
My position for a long time, essentially since I was a teenager, is that, if it is ever demonstrably proven that UFOs are alien spacecraft, I will simply interpret it as proof that we are all living in a gigantic computer simulation where the code can be changed by whoever (God, even) is running it.
It’s the same with Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, photos of so called sightings are no better today then in the 1960 even though everyone has a damn 4k camera in their pocket.
It is no surprise the govt has secret programs to study UFOs. The govt funds studies on the most inane topics imaginable.
[…] YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT UFOS (BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK THE INTERNET): Getting Out The Ten Foot Pole To Talk About UFOs. “All this adds up to something that congress should probably look into…but far short of […]
I’ve always felt that the whole UFO phenomenon tells us rather more about ourselves than it does anything about extraterrestrial intelligences.
The phenomenon goes back a hell of a lot further than many assume. There were multiple reports of people having “aeronauts” drop out of the sky and walk up to the campfire in old Western newspapers. Back then, it was interpreted as “Easterners and Europeans with balloons”, even though no such balloons actually existed, nor were any Easterners or Europeans exploring the Western US at the time with them.
Go back a little further, and you start running into all sorts of weirdnesses being reported all throughout history. Hell, it’s in the Bible, even…
The UFO thing is basically modern folklore. Maybe there’s something to it, but like with the old stories about changelings actually representing what we now call autistic children…? I think the odds are that the whole thing has been radically misinterpreted.
I’d also put it down to the essentially kludged-together reality that is human consciousness and cognition: There are so many things going on that barely work, and which are highly error-prone that it’s a wonder we manage to even think clearly at all, let alone interpret each and every little anomaly properly. The entire phenomenon may just be down to a collective blindspot in human cognition that keeps getting reinterpreted differently with every historical era… It’s akin to the way schizophrenics in the West seem to have a much different set of “voices” talking to them than the ones in the East, who instead of reporting the voices telling them to do bad things, mostly seem to be getting better advice and actual comfort from said voices.
I rather doubt that anyone is gonna fly themselves millions of light years to some out-of-the-way back-asswards planet and do anal probes for the fun of it, while hiding from everyone.
Of course, on the other hand, maybe it’s time-travelers come back to sample our digestive tract biomes, seeking diversity for their health. I mean, if the theories about the effect that such organisms have on us are true, perhaps they’re down to one or two cell lines, and need more active biota…? I mean, it’d explain a lot about the whole “I got probed up my anus…” stories. And, it’s a lot more palatable than thinking that people are just that obsessed with their bungholes.
Go read the book “Imminent” by Lue Elizondo. It’s available on Amazon. Elizondo is the former head of the Pentagon program responsible for the investigation of UFOs. It may change your opinions about UAPs (UFOs) and all the rest.
I recall seeing a UFO “Strange creatures” or similar show do a bit about a mass sighting near Phoenix. People describing the lights, the odd movement some short videos of the lights moving, but not clear, and many got a good close views, so they had artist and witness drawings of the UFO in question. Mid to late 80’s iirc. I saw it a time or two on reruns.
Then the gov’t showed the B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber. Looked just like that old UFO, dontcha know?
@Hairless Joe
“There isn’t the slightest reason to believe that FTL travel is possible, even in principle. ”
That’s just not true. There’s lots of ways it is mathematically and theoretically possible. The Alcubierre warp drive being the most recent and best explored method – yes, it sounds a lot like Star Trek, but the math works, it only has the slight technical problems of needing several times the mass-energy of Jupiter to get going and when the trip ends you hose down your arrival area with concentrated gamma rays, killing everything. Extremely massive objects rotating very quickly also allow for closed loops around them that result in arriving before you began, which in turn allows for both time travel and FTL – Larry Niven wrote at least one short story about this. Wormholes are completely possible within our current understanding of physics. Quantum effects necessarily produce (experimentally verified!) effects disconnected from any cause, and effects at arbitrary distances without requiring intervening information transfer at or below lightspeed. Et cetera et cetera et cetera. It’s not as if our current understanding of physics is complete, either.
It is specifically true that, under the current model, accelerating a given mass to lightspeed requires an infinite amount of energy and therefore cannot be done. In that sense and in that sense alone, reaching or surpassing lightspeed is not possible. But there’s lots of ways around that.
I believe that the correct phrase is “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot crocodile”. 😁
Having been in “Commercial Aviation” as a Jet/Turbine Helicopter Mechanic, and know the Craft at the level of Particle Physics (Air is Particles) All of the “UFO’s” I have seen (and sometimes Worked on or Around) were Experimental Aircraft, Military and/or Commercial. The numbers of Isolated- by-Secrecy Experimental/Special Mission Aircraft and Programs, plus what the Manufacturers did is probably Unaccountable/Uncountable even for someone in the DOD who has the “Flying Saucer Clearance”
As to the existence of Intelligent Folks on other Planets, well, if you have Half an Understanding of just how Big, only this Galaxy is, you cannot reasonably believe that “We” are the only Life-Forms using Tools out there. That said, it still is Debatable whether Interstellar Travel is Possible/Practical at all. Even people saying “Faster-than-Light Travel is Impossible” may well be (likely are, IMO) Wrong.
So, people who INSIST that there have been/are “Alien Spacecraft” visiting the Earth, have a Very Steep Hill to Climb if they want to show “Proof” of them actually doing that. Even the most ‘recent’ Photographs of purported “UFO’s” are still the same grainy, unfocused, wash-out-color crap like going back to the 1950’s. This, with Millions of Hi-Resolution Digital Cameras just about Everywhere….
p.s. forgot to mention, that’s 45 Years in the Work, early on being Educated by Masters of Jets like Scott Crossfield and Kelly Johnson, and Rocketmen like Stanley Janeidas.
Several points: 1) The bad guys are humans, using reverse-engineered technology for evil purposes. 2) The true ETs are highly evolved and benign. They use consciousness-based technologies to accomplish interstellar and intergalactic travel, not warp drives and the like. 3) There is plenty of evidence, terabytes in fact with over 700 whistleblowers, including highly-placed project managers who are sick of the secrecy and sick of depriving humanity of advanced technologies like free energy, the true solution to poverty and climate change. See https://pzj8dnjab.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001K7ZK7wp9N-a0RYpOLlkpN3f63kkd5JWBURW8YCF2xuXYaE_ZX1wT7twYaw-HcrctTIR6-GXHF-2oKdFPhT851cyv3PJz21HcNOQq_zgwTGntDxGp5KFsBg5hXlsypY8-mG42IIecE4Rj4xnHAkIasg==&c=2LP7b0D4jTWxpFEbTxIMH09f-Mj_Z2XDHJg8AJlA8I5xB62mFWXoXQ==&ch=EEIxqlwxUONNl0lGaPeC9IRxMRxeCVdFl_K2LoMPnu0Smcm2AqsZtQ==
There are 2 ways to look at unexplained aerial phenomenon being caused by sapient aliens: if they are here, they either want us to know they are here, or they don’t. If they don’t, we simply would not; consider how difficult to detect we could make something, with our technology, to anyone in 1924. On the other hand, if they wanted us to know they were here, there would be no doubt.
I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot Pole or a twelve foot Armenian…
I think any attempt at trying to determine the veracity of any of these UFO sightings is always going to be a difficult task because of the history of false information and conflicting data that is often supplied and then subsequently, perhaps unknowingly, distributed by some of the major figures within the UFO community itself. Luiz Elizondo, for example, the outspoken defender of recent UFO disclosures, often presents himself as a dissident whistleblower with insider knowledge gained from his tenure as the head of the Pentagon’s UFO program. But the real nature of his involvement is beginning to be increasingly questioned, with government officials publicly doubting some of his statements, statements and claims whose reliability is difficult to determine due to his inability to provide any reliable documentary proof, or any other kind of supporting material. Also, I can’t mention Elizondo without thinking of the infamous deception by Air Force intelligence officer Richard Doty, and the trove of bogus information that he gave to UFO researchers throughout the 1980s, especially Paul Bennewitz, helping to undermine the whole discourse about UFOs for decades. Doty’s involvement shows just how effective government disinformation can be in misdirecting UFO researchers while at the same time sowing disunity within the same community.