'Project Sphere Recommended Pilot-Awareness Training'

An ounce of prevention?

Huzzahs to New York magazine for this week’s attempt to play the UFO thing straight, plus Eric Benson’s followup interview with retired Sen. Harry Reid. Reid raised a number of familiar but worth-repeating issues, including the social stigma that keeps pilots from filing reports. And he added this well-deserved smackdown of the mainstream media: “Let me give you something that the press has totally failed and conjured. We have hundreds and hundreds of papers, pages of paper, that have been available since this was completed,” Reid said, ostensibly referring to the work produced by the Pentagon’s once-secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. “Most all of it, 80 percent at least, is public. You know something? The press has never even looked at it. Not once. That’s where we are. I wanted it public, it was made public, and you guys have not even looked at it.”

By Billy Cox De Void 3-22-18

De Void has yet to see that documentation posted anywhere, but never mind. Reid’s larger points are spot on, and the AATIP data is hardly the only material the MSM has ignored over the years. What comes first and foremost to De Void’s mind is a report titled Spherical UAP and Aviation Safety: A Critical Review. It has languished online since 2010, perhaps because its language is forbiddingly technical. Project Sphere, as it’s known, is the work of a now-dormant nonprofit called the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena. Among other things, NARCAP was able to bring good science to bear on strong cases because it promised anonymity to pilots fearing professional blowback. Its work is especially relevant now, given the jet fighter video released by erstwhile Defense Department official Chris Mellon via The Washington Post on 3/9/2018.

The whateveritwas that went zipping across the video viewfinder of the Navy F-18 looks like it could qualify, at least superficially, for inclusion into NARCAP’s Project Sphere. Relatively small, white or luminous, oval or ball-shaped unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) often displaying what looks like impossible aerodynamic characteristics, these elusive and transient spheres have been raising flight-safety concerns for decades.

As NARCAP executive director Ted Roe reported eight years ago, “The majority of spherical UAP reports involve initial detection by aircrews. It is uncommon for ATC (air traffic control) to detect spherical UAP and vector aircraft around them though, in some instances, spherical UAP are detected on radar after aircraft request confirmation.”

Among other things, Project Sphere recommended pilot-awareness training, as in-flight over-corrections when confronted with the abrupt and unexpected appearance of these UAP could end with catastrophic results. “If a jumbo jet should crash because of impact (or other negative interaction) with a UAP, the total financial burden will be enormous (along with the negative publicity and political fallout that will occur) and our present warnings (then as hindsight) suddenly will come clearly into focus,” the NARCAP summary stated. “The total financial burden of such a disaster is likely to be orders of magnitude greater than the cost of doing the research now.”

We got a glimpse of that potentiality two weeks ago. Tyler Rogoway, the War Zone reporter who, using recorded ATC chatter, reconstructed a November UFO/UAP event over California-Oregon that resulted in a jet-fighter scramble, came up with another gem that sounded like a case study ripped from Roe’s script.

Last month, a Learjet pilot flying over Arizona asked Albuquerque ATC if it was tracking a mystery without a transponder that had just flown overhead. ATC said there was nothing on the screen, but it alerted a nearby American Airlines Airbus to keep an eye open. Moments later, the Airbus pilot responded: “Yeah, something just passed over us, like a – I don’t know what it was, but it was at least two-three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over top of us.” Rogoway has posted the conversation online and it’s definitely worth a read.

Bottom line, Mellon’s cautionary remarks in his WaPo op-ed need serious scrutiny. By citing potential technological gaps between the U.S. and its adversaries, including a nod to Vladimir Putin’s “recent chest-thumping claims about propulsion breakthroughs,” Mellon makes his best and perhaps only realistic play for getting congressional attention. No doubt his proposal to apply focused analysis on “infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting” will make a lot of federal acronyms nervous. But what happens if and when a plane goes down in an accident that might’ve been prevented with a little pilot training? Especially given how well-reasoned advocacy for such situational awareness has been sitting in the public arena for years. Who wants to go for a swim in that hell-broth of litigation?

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See Also:

Two Pilots Report UFO in Arizona Skies | FAA Recording

OREGON UFO EVENT: Air Traffic Control Audio Tapes Released via FOIA Request

Secret Pentagon UFO Study – Interview with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon | VIDEO

The Military Keeps Encountering UFOs – Why Doesn’t the Pentagon Care? | VIDEO

What the Government Knows About UFOs | Interview with Harry Reid

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Aguadilla UFO Video Update: FOIA Request for Government Copy Answered

Rain, rain & more rain

By Billy Cox De Void 10-27-15

     Given the dramatic nature of the 2013 Aquadilla UFO footage, not to mention its subsequent forensic analysis by an independent team of researchers, De Void decided to informally query some flacks in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office about it. The 162-page report was released online on Aug. 11, and the feds at least deserve the opportunity to tell their side of it, right? After all, they’re the ones whose thermal camera recorded the small UFO as it hurtled above a coastal residential neighborhood in Puerto Rico before breaking the waves and – according to the ad hoc Scientific Coalition for UFOlogy (SCU) investigators – averaged more than 80 mph underwater before splitting into two separate flying objects.

Once it became clear CBP wasn’t going to bite, De Void filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a government copy of that video. It was apparently leaked to researchers by Customs insiders and had been lighting up the Internet a year or so before the SCU issued its report. “It’s not like they can deny it,” says SCU co-author Robert Powell. “We’ve got radar records showing their plane in the air at that time.” Still, it seemed important to officially verify the provenance of the controversial clip. The ensuing brushoff a couple of weeks ago, slugged “Final Disposition” and tersely worded as a “full denial based on exemptions,” came as no surprise. But its crimes against coherence were abominable.

“CBP has determined,” stated the online rejection notice, “that the responsive records are partially releasable, pursuant to Title 5 U.S.C 552 and have applied the appropriate exemptions.” De Void followed that link to a list of nine itemized potential “Exemptions,” accompanied by three other separate speedbumps beneath a category called “Exclusions.” The range was eclectic; it covered everything from protecting “trade secrets” to “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Unfortunately, the verdict failed to specify exactly which “Exemption” or “Exclusion” the CBP employed to justify its rejection of De Void’s FOIA. Furthermore, whatever the censors deemed “partially releasable” is nowhere in sight.

CBP evidently located what it called a “responsive record” to De Void’s query because it admitted there was “one item found.” Beneath that little glimmer of hope were links to “Export options” via CSV/Excel formats. De Void clicked on both of those separately and in both instances got a “Stripes validation error report” header with this alleged explanation, verbatim, in toto:

Here’s how it is. Someone (quite possibly the Stripes Dispatcher) needed to get the source page resolution. But no source page was supplied in the request, and unless you override ActionBeanContext.getSourcePageResolution() you’re going to need that value. When you use a tag a hidden field called ‘_ sourcePage’ is included. If you write your own forms or links that could generate validation errors, you must include a value for this parameter. This can be done by calling request.getServletPath().

Who writes this crap? Superman rival Mr. Mxyzptlk? Pretending to be helpful, this “Final Disposition” included yet another link, to a Department of Homeland Security “FOIA Contact Information” page, with a listing for a Customs & Border Protection FOIA Officer. De Void dialed the number and listened to the recorded message urging me to pursue more online options, but if I needed to talk to a human being I should press 1. When De Void pressed 1, it disconnected the call. De Void called back twice more and got the same results – two more disconnects.

Hang on a minute – I think I feel a sneeze coming on.

Of course, this isn’t about De Void or Aguadilla. During Sunshine Week last March, the Associated Press released a study detailing the disgraceful state of America’s FOIA laws. Despite President Obama’s inauguration-day executive orders calling for more federal transparency, bureaucracies under his administration have actually set a record for censorship, with a backlog of more than 200,000 FOIA unanswered requests in 2014, up by 55 percent over 2013. In its assessment of 100 federal agencies, the AP discovered a 4 percent drop in processing public inquiries from 2013. Maybe that’s because, in 2014, government agencies received a record 714,231 FOIA requests; maybe it’s because – as the logjam kept piling higher – those same agencies pink-slipped 375 employees charged with processing FOIAs full time, or 9 percent of the workforce.

Either way, the forecast for accountability and transparency looks like rain. Which – bottom line – means De Void is thankful for receiving abstruse gibberish instead of being ignored altogether.

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See Also:

Aguadilla UFO Video: "... We’ve Got Infrared ... We’ve Got Radar ..."

Controversial 'Aguadilla UFO' Filmed Years Earlier at Area 51? | VIDEO

Scientific Coalition for Ufology and The Analysis of FLIR UFO Video

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Experts Chime in on Puerto Rico UFO Video

By Alejandro Rojas openminds.tv 9-4-15

     Since the release of a report analyzing a UFO video allegedly captured by a Customs and Board Patrol (CBP) aircraft using a thermal imaging camera, online UFO researchers have shared a lot of opinions. Several have come up with alternate theories. However, the few experts that have shared an opinion support the findings in the report.

The report was authored by a group of UFO researchers with backgrounds in science and technology who have posted their findings on a website called the Scientific Coalition for Ufology (SCU). You can read more about their findings in a previous story on OpenMinds.tv and in the video below.

Robert Powell, one of the authors of the report, who is also the Director of Research for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), says the have heard from a French organization called The Aeronautical and Astronautical Association of France (3AF). They are an important mainstream organization in Europe, similar to the United State’s American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Powel says they have been impressed with the SCU’s findings, and have agreed with their conclusions.

Another expert who has offered an opinion on the report is Dr. Richard Haines, a former research scientist for NASA. He told Billy Cox of the Sarasota Herald Tribune, “For a number of reasons, I don’t believe it is a hoax. It does deserve a lot more serious study for what it may tell us about small volume, generally globular (i.e., contained), dynamic, heat-emitting resources.” [...]

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“…Investigation Of Arguably The Most Significant UFO Footage…”

Aguadilla UFO Video: "... We’ve Got Infrared ... We’ve Got Radar ..."

Scientific Coalition for Ufology and The Analysis of FLIR UFO Video

UFO Video Captured by Homeland Security Analyzed | VIDEO

UFO Captured On FLIR Video by Homeland Security Helicopter? | VIDEO – Puerto Rico

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

“…Investigation Of Arguably The Most Significant UFO Footage…”

Boeing schmoeing, gimme Aguadilla

By Billy Cox De Void 9-1-15

     Three weeks gone now since the release of a detailed investigation of arguably the most significant UFO footage of the modern era. Yet, not a peep about it in the mainstream press. Can you believe that? Could this be part of a pattern? Hmm.

OK, let’s just dispense with the obvious (again): When it comes to The Great Taboo, The New York Times, The Washington Post and pretty much every corporate watchdog in the Fourth Estate are reliable no-shows unless being spoonfed press release-sized pre-chewed culturally acceptable talking points. But maybe it’s unfair to single out the institutions; no mortal is immune to the evolutionary shift that is reprogramming -- right now, even as you read -- the universal attention span for minimal capacity. Who among you can hang, seriously, be honest, with a technical, 162-page multi-disciplinary analysis of a high-strangeness event– even if it was captured by an airborne government surveillance camera? But of course you'd watch the video (see below), who wouldn't? That's why one would think somebody, somewhere, might’ve broken from the mainstream flock and at least posted the footage, just for the easy bounce in traffic. It’s not every day we get a chance to see a taxpayer-financed video of a UFO outperforming our coolest toys.

On Aug. 19, a week or so after the Aguadilla news broke, Forbes magazine announced how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had approved back in April Boeing’s design of a “transformer-like process for converting the drone into a small submersible vehicle when it hits the water.” Superficially, it sounds a lot like what happened over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, on the evening of 4/25/13. That’s when a Customs and Border Protection plane tracked the night-flying UFO with thermal imaging and recorded about two minutes' worth of action. Hurtling erratically along at anywhere from 40 to 120 mph, no transponder, and apparently forcing the 16-minute delay of a FedEx flight due to its proximity to a local airport, the gizmo went for a shallow dip in the Caribbean -- and averaged 82.8 mph. Underwater. Nearly twice the speed of most submarines and torpedoes.

Boeing’s designs on developing a “rapid deployment air and water vehicle” for the U.S. Navy include wings, stabilizers and propellers while aloft, and detachable components in its submersible configuration. But those sleek schematics on paper don't much resemble the vaguely spheroid, boxy-looking amorphous thingamajig that buzzed commercial/residential landscapes in Puerto Rico. And, unfortunately for Boeing, the plans it submitted to the USPTO don’t call for its Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) to split apart as it emerges from the water to become two separate flying vehicles. Looks like whoever invented the Aguadilla UFO beat Boeing to that nifty trick at least two years ago. That’s got to be a bummer, because the team that studied the Customs and Border Protection video -- they call themselves the Scientific Coalition for Ufology -- could detect no means whatsoever of propulsion for the UUV.

So guess what? If I’m the Navy brass, I’m saying Look, guys, China's working on supercavitation technology that can propel a sub at the speed of sound, so screw the Boeing specs, give me one of those Aguadilla UUVs so I can double my coverage and beat the snot out of anything that tries to chase me in the water. Fortunately for all parties, the media is keeping its distance from this one, so nobody has to get embarrassed or agitated in a public manner.

In the meantime, with or without the press, with or without institutional science, research on this curiosity continues. Here’s a radar rehash of that event, conceived and posted by UK researcher Rob Jeffs. Because no radar pingbacks registered on the UFO – too small? below the coverage? stealth? – its precise location during the sequence is inferred by the CBP plane's flight pattern. Jeffs' narration is self-explanatory, and it’s worth a look:

“It’s intriguing because the video appears to show some interaction with the water, which would place the object at ground level – at least at the end of the sequence,” adds Jeffs in an email. “But it’s also frustrating because while the video provides information that a UFO case wouldn’t usually include, it also raises additional questions, for instance, how the infrared camera operates.”

Bingo. If only. SCU team member Larry Cates is a mathematician with a background in systems analysis and hardware development. He got hooked on the UFO mystery after studying MUFON's radar post-mortem on the 2008 Stephenville incident. Among other things, Cates fired off FOIA radar requests for SCU, shortly after the footage was leaked, apparently by a federal employee, in 2013.

“There’s still more analysis to be done. For instance, most of us were pretty naïve about infrared when we started this project two years ago, trying to figure out what’s normal in an infrared video." That path ended at the gates of the technology that acquired the UFO footage -- Wescam MX-15D's thermal optics. “We went through a learning curve and then we bumped up against trade secrets and need-to-know issues.”

So imagine if NASA or NOAA or any government agency other than DoD brought transparently funded curiosity to bear on Aguadilla. Imagine if they issued press releases to The Times or The Post or NPR or Amy Goodman or Dr. Sanjay Gupta or Jimmy Fallon or take your pick, and gave them all permission to cover the story.

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See Also:

Aguadilla UFO Video: "... We’ve Got Infrared ... We’ve Got Radar ..."

Scientific Coalition for Ufology and The Analysis of FLIR UFO Video

UFO Video Captured by Homeland Security Analyzed | VIDEO

UFO Captured On FLIR Video by Homeland Security Helicopter? | VIDEO – Puerto Rico

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

Aguadilla UFO Video: "... We’ve Got Infrared ... We’ve Got Radar ..."

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Indifference or dereliction?

By Billy Cox De Void 8-19-15

     What if – just for the sheer counterintuitive hell of it – “the government” isn’t even interested in UFOs? Or at least, not lately?

Last week, a group of researchers calling themselves the Scientific Coalition of Ufology released its potentially game-changing, 162-page analysis of a 2013 UFO event over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. What set this incident apart from so much common dreck was the apparent source of the videotape – U.S. Customs and Border Protection, under the Department of Homeland Security. This is an impressive pedigree, maybe even a gold standard. And flightstats.com independently confirmed an insider’s contention that a Fed Ex flight was, indeed, delayed for departure by 16 minutes as the UFO, sans transponder, buzzed nearby Rafael Hernandez Airport.

That last detail put the hook in Dr. Richard Haines, former research scientist with NASA-Ames and founder of the non-profit National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena. Since 1999, Haines and NARCAP have assessed and published trends on the potentially catastrophic impact of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) on air traffic safety, at home and abroad. Given the extraordinary clarity of the Aguadilla video, coupled with the fact that the name-protected whistleblower who leaked the footage appears to be a federal employee, Haines took an arm’s-length approach when he was contacted about the images in 2013.

“Given sufficient motivation, manpower and money, one could create a very realistic hoax here,” Haines conceded in an email to De Void. “However, for a number of reasons, I don’t believe it is a hoax. It does deserve a lot more serious study for what it may tell us about small volume, generally globular (i.e., contained), dynamic, heat-emitting resources.”

Still, Haines’ main reservations weren’t over authenticity. His foremost concern was whether or not the footage involved classified material. After all, if this is what it appears to be – i.e., a single flying object, averaging 80 mph after plowing into the ocean, then splitting into two separate flying objects as it emerged from the water – it seems pretty obvious that a federal agency has documented evidence of some extraordinary technology. If it’s one of ours, is this how Uncle Sam would want to put the word out there? Via UFO researchers? Really? And if it’s stealthy hardware from, say China, would we want them to know we know?

“[Restricted access] has still not been determined by anyone as far as I know,” states Haines, “and that is one of the reasons we (NARCAP) did not proceed with any more than a cursory examination of the video long ago when we first learned of it. We wanted to (and still want to) play by the rules, so to speak, in this regard considering that it might have been classified information.”

But if Morgan Beall’s confidential source is correct, the bureaucrats just don't give a spit.

“According to our witness,” says Beall, the Florida State MUFON director who coordinated the investigation, “Air Force intelligence kicked it back down, said ‘We don’t know what it is,’ and said to call the 800 number of a civilian research organization. Actually there are two to three witnesses, and when there didn’t appear to be any interest from the upper echelon, their attitude was, well, does that mean we’re free to talk about it? And that’s when the leaks started.

“We’ve all heard stories about eyewitnesses being threatened and told to keep quiet or else. But those are largely historical cases, and from the ‘90s onward we’re not hearing that from anybody at all. And I think that’s probably a smarter way to handle it, just deny you’re interested.”

SCU team investigator Richard Hoffman suspects the Aguadilla video trickled into the public domain as “more of a mess-up than anything else.” An IT engineer contracting with U.S. Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., Hoffman blames the leak on a “lack of clear guidance” on what to do with UFO reports that might emanate from government agencies. Unlike a number of South American and European nations, the U.S. has had no official institutional system for processing UFO data since 1970. “Whether it was passed up the chain of command or if it just stayed with Customs, I don’t know,” he says. “My concern is that someone with DHS is going to spank someone from Customs for letting it get out there.”

A student of the phenomena since he was a teenager growing up in Ohio, Hoffman says he’s been waiting a lifetime for evidence of this caliber to emerge. He once interviewed an Air Force pilot who told him he shot gun-camera footage in pursuit of a UFO, only to have it confiscated and vanish down a black hole. Now, it’s as if Customs and Border Protection just delivered the goods on a silver platter.

“I’m almost doing pole vaults, I’m so excited about it,” says Hoffman. “There’s never been a single case that's been so thoroughly studied. In two and a half minutes, we have an object that breaks two laws of physics. And we’ve got infrared video, we’ve got radar, we’ve got the kind of technology and built-in metrics you just can’t get from eyewitnesses alone. We've done the science, we've done the math. We've posted it, and we want more input."

So did Customs screw up? Or DHS? Or could it be that administrators at either agency really don’t care that on the evening of April 25, 2013, a state-of-the-art airborne camera did its job and gathered evidence of a flying machine demonstrating unprecedented performance capabilities?

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

Scientific Coalition for Ufology and The Analysis of FLIR UFO Video

UFO Video Captured by Homeland Security Analyzed | VIDEO

UFO Captured On FLIR Video by Homeland Security Helicopter? | VIDEO – Puerto Rico

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

'...NARCAP From Its Inception Ditched The UFO Acronym...'

Broccoli or smores? Hmm ...

By Billy Cox De Void 5-15-15

      OK, let’s face it, nothing competes with dead space aliens when it comes to creating orgasmic worldwide hype. And when the pyrite that tried to pass for bullion dissolved into snake oil during last week’s “Roswell Slides” calamity in Mexico City, there were plenty of critics quick to point to the hogslop as the industry standard for evidence attending The Great Taboo. So now might be a good time to step back and revisit the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena website, which would probably do somersaults if it could get even a fraction of the attention provoked by the clumsy mummy farce.

On April 10, without any fanfare (no dead aliens/visuals = no buzz), NARCAP executive director Ted Roe issued a status report on the non-profit’s ongoing research, at home and abroad, since 1999. And just for reference, stunts like the "Roswell Slides" have so poisoned the well for inquisitive fence-sitters, NARCAP from its inception ditched the UFO acronym altogether for the more neutral unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP. Either way, institutional American attitudes continue to stagnate despite NARCAP's attempt to frame the mystery as a potential flight safety issue.

“Data regarding aviation related UAP observations and incidents flows away from the aviation system and is not examined for safety factors by US aviation authorities, the NTSB, etc.,” writes Roe. “In fact, the FAA refers pilots and air traffic controllers that want to make a UAP or ‘UFO’ report to contact civilian UFO research groups and private businesses. These organizations have not published a single study nor demonstrated the slightest concern for the matter of UAP and aviation safety.”

Led by retired NASA scientist Richard Haines, NARCAP’s multi-disciplinary, multi-national contributors labor thanklessly to educate (mostly) pilots on the potential hazards of close encounters, which have never gone away despite nearly a half century of wishful thinking from the University of Colorado and the U.S. Air Force. As technical work, this is forbidding stuff, dense with physics and geometry, largely inaccessible to general audiences and most assuredly not for the sound bites that pass for journalism these days.

Take a single report from 2010, Project Sphere, which attempted to get a better grip on those elusive white blips and metallic-looking orbs that have, for decades, been photographed and detected on radar. Fifteen contributors weighed in -- from Spain, Canada, France, the U.K., Brazil and Japan, joining American scientists like NASA engineer Lawrence Lemke (his chapter: “Aerodynamics of Spheres”) and Richard Spalding from Sandia National Laboratories (“An Atmospheric Electrical Hypothesis for Spherical Luminosities Occurring at Aircraft Altitudes”).

Properly circumspect, NARCAP declined to hang a label on this puzzle, but felt secure enough in its data to make seven recommendations, including the integration of UAP characteristics into flight-simulator training, alongside more conventional variables like wind shear and bird collisions. If knowledge alone wasn’t a sufficient motivator, perhaps the threat of liability could make the case.

“If UAP are judged to be naturally occurring so-called acts of God ...” wrote Haines in the report’s conclusion, “then airlines have less to fear in terms of litigation. If, on the other hand, UAP are discovered to be intelligently controlled or otherwise artificial, then a quite different legal judgement could be made, one whose outcome could only be guessed at. It makes good sense, then, that we should try to discover the core nature of UAP sooner than later if, for no other reason, (than) to obviate some of these problems that are associated with aviation accident litigation.”

Not even a shrug, of course, from U.S. authorities. But in his blogpost, Roe reminds us of how the rest of the world has made adjustments to The Great Taboo since Uncle Sam bailed in 1969, e.g., the rise of government studies sweeping South America, the expansion of NARCAP’s links into Chile, Germany and Mexico, even a concession from the British Ministry of Defence — which proclaims itself officially disinterested in these matters — “that UAP exist is indisputable… and they (UAP) are probably a threat to safe aviation.”

NARCAP’s work should be news. If only it could find some dead alien mummy pix. . . .

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

"... NARCAP, Which Refers to UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Does Real Science Without Resorting to Hype or Speculation ..."

‘…We Need an International [UFO] Data Clearinghouse…’ says Retired NASA Scientist

PILOTS: What Not to Do if you Have a Near Encounter with an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (NARCAP)

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

“More Than A Few Pilots Have Shared Their UFO Stories With Me…”

One more small thing

By Billy Cox De Void 4-17-15

     Hate to be a pedantic nag, especially because the detailed first-person piece written by airline captain Andrew Danziger for the New York Daily News last week was pleasantly surprising in its fearlessness. Getting a commercial pilot to go on record with a job-related UFO encounter in this country is like finding someone to admit they take baseball bats to baby harp seals in order to make underwear.

As we know, plenty of other countries, from France to Uruguay, encourage aviators to openly log UFO incidents because, well, it only makes sense, given the potential risk to flight safety. But here in the U.S., we have this thing called exceptionalism. That means a former NASA scientist like Dr. Richard Haines has to acquire that sort of data by extending the sanctuary of anonymity — i.e., the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena — to pilots afraid of losing their jobs for telling the truth. What is it with this country, anyway? We label our money “In God We Trust,” which sounds sardonic, if not outright blasphemous. But God doesn’t even leave radar tracks behind for us to verify.

Anyhow, last week, Danziger bucked the trend in a big way and went public with his extended in-flight encounter with an apparent shape-shifting bogey outside Kansas City. Granted, the incident occurred in 1989 — “early in my career,” wrote Danziger, who appears to be nearing retirement — and his confession couldn’t possibly put his then-employer in a jam at this point because Air Midwest folded in 2008. What added a little more heft to Danziger’s testimony was the fact that he was deemed competent enough to ferry candidate Barack Obama during his first presidential campaign.

Clearly, NARCAP’s Haines hopes Danziger’s testimony could be a momentum-builder. “His account, if it is accurate, should help keep the flame under this pot of coffee at least warm, which is important,” states Haines in an email. After all, NARCAP studies of pilot encounters with what he calls unidentified aerial phenomena suggest a catastrophe is just one abrupt over-correction away. “We should not allow the pot to grow cold,” Haines continues, “or else new pilots coming on the scene may think there is absolutely nothing to worry about or at least to be prepared for. I see a lot of normalcy bias here....”

So good on Captain Danziger for whatever mitigation his story may have on the UFO stigma. And it’d be great to thank the Daily News for playing it straight. If only.

Here’s how Danziger concluded his piece: “More than a few pilots have shared their UFO stories with me, too. I’m not going too far out on a ledge to say that virtually all pilots believe in UFOs. Little green men, ‘close encounters,’ alien kidnappings, not so much, but with billions of stars and trillions of planets out there, ‘ya gotta believe,’ and almost all of us do.”

Unfortunately, the editors couldn’t leave well enough alone. They inserted a little green man illustration into Danziger’s story with this simple cutline: “Many pilots believe in little green men, Captain Andy said.” Well, no, that’s not what he said. Try to imagine President Obama writing in an op-ed, “We are not going to bomb Iran,” and the editors decide to run an illustration of Tehran in flames above the cutline: “We are going to bomb Iran, President Obama said.” At a minimum, the dingbat who made that call would’ve gotten his/her eardrums scalded and blistered for that little stunt, and there would’ve been a correction.

It's a small thing. But this issue has been trampled beneath the weight of countless small things. Proving, once again, that when the subject is UFOs, as the corporate media proved once more in January with its epic fail on the digitization of the ancient Project Blue Book files, you can get it wrong forever and there will never be consequences.

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

Do Pilots Believe in UFOs?

"Corporate Media’s Latest Orgy of Ineptitude Over UFOs — AGAIN"

"... NARCAP, Which Refers to UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Does Real Science Without Resorting to Hype or Speculation ..."

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

‘…We Need an International [UFO] Data Clearinghouse…’ says Retired NASA Scientist

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Where is the USA?

By Billy Cox De Void 3-19-15

     In July 2014, some four months before France and Chile held their historic meeting to collaborate on UFO research, the founder of the non-profit National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena made a compelling case in Paris for standardizing procedures. Last month, NARCAP’s website posted this video (see below) of Dr. Richard Haines’ 25-minute pitch, and it’s definitely worth a look. “The emphasis on methodology is essential,” the retired NASA scientist told his audience, “and we should’ve been doing this 20 years ago.”

Better late than never. NARCAP is an online sanctuary where pilots — usually American, but not always — can report in-flight encounters with what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), openly and anonymously, without fear of professional repercussions. Over the past 16 years, NARCAP, which networks with researchers in more than a dozen countries, has compiled a database with sobering implications for air traffic safety. Haines stressed the importance of getting the witnesses to re-enact those events as authentically as possible, all the way down to putting those participants back in the cockpit or, failing that, into simulators. Protocols involve producing sketches of UAP flight patterns in relation to windows and instrumentation panels, backed up with whatever radar data may exist, for plotting triangulation. The system calls for separate interviews with pilot, co-pilot, air traffic control when available, and then reuniting the witnesses for a collective near real-time walk-through. This is the “validation phase,” where discrepancies in memory, data, and perception can surface.

Among the most riveting “black swan” events in Haines’ presentation (“black swan” because they’re so rare and unforgettable) was the 1996 flight of a DC-10 outside LAX around 2 a.m. This one involved a barbell-shaped configuration of lights that initially appeared on a collision course with the cargo plane. “He could not believe his eyes,” said Haines, describing how the pilot repositioned and braced for impact. “He thought it was the oncoming landing lights of another jet plane, and he had about three seconds to live, that’s how frightening it was.”

The UAP accelerated horizontally and didn’t even leave radar tracks, which raises yet another obstacle. “I’m not convinced radar is going to solve our problem because of stealth and other concerns,” Haines said. Consequently, analytical tools should include not merely onboard radar and ground-sensing stations, but readily available resources such as satellite technology and real-time environmental/meteorological data, some as infinitely detailed as ultraviolet ray indexes and magnetic field distribution. “This level of information is unprecedented, we’ve never had this before,” Haines said. “It’s extremely valuable in reconstructing near-earth events.”

“I’m suggesting,” he went on, “that methodology from a conceptual point of view should be like a fisherman’s net. And that should be a very large net to catch lots of fish, if you will, but the weave of the net should be very small ... It must be creatively planned. It must include both psychological and physiological and sociological data as well as physical hard-science data — don’t leave that out, it’s extremely important.”

Finally, when it comes to government transparency on UAP records, Haines lauded France’s “more open posture than we have ... in America, and we’re still fighting that uphill battle.” In fact, speaking of America, just this week an Associated Press analysis of federal compliance with sunshine laws indicated record rates for denying or censoring FOIA requests over the past year. Which means that any insights into The Great Taboo will likely be forged without Uncle Sam.

Still, Haines was optimistic. “We need an international data clearinghouse where we can truly share data across cultural bounds, across national boundaries,” he added in a nod to the half a dozen or so South American governments now openly building UAP files. “Of course, military classification issues become a problem there, we understand that. But there’s a great deal of open data — open, free, scientific data — that we can have access to.”

Well, at least for now.

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“UAP [UFOs] Maneuverability Makes … Drones Look Archaic”

The new scapegoats?

By Billy Cox De Void 1-27-15

     The quadcopter drone that crashed into the White House lawn on Monday may have been innocuous, but at some point there’s going to be a disaster — and everybody sees it coming. The global skies are getting more cluttered by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) morphing into increasingly bizarre and complex designs, and regulators can’t scramble fast enough to keep up with the galloping technologies, many of which now employ stealth configurations.

In November, The Washington Post reviewed FAA records and discovered pilots had reported “a surge” of near-miss incidents since June 1, where drones came within a few feet or seconds of colliding with conventional aircraft. In an environment where the odds of potentially catastrophic encounters are accelerating, could an unintended consequence be getting more critical eyes on UFOs?

Credit: dronesurvivalguide.org

Since 1999, the nonprofit National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena has been studying The Great Taboo — preferring the less loaded acronym UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) — from flight-safety perspectives. NARCAP’s concerns aren’t so much over mid-air collisions — UAP apparently don’t obey the laws of traditional aerodynamics and are agile enough to turn on a dime — as they are about pilot reaction. NARCAP researchers scoured FAA cases dating back to the 1950s and discovered the biggest danger was a tendency by pilots to overcorrect when confronted by the often abrupt approach of UAP. No fatalities on file, yet, but a few injuries here and there, and certainly a potential for disaster anytime a pilot attempts a sudden evasive maneuver.

Inject drones into that lengthy FAA track record and things get dicey real quick. In a 2013 report titled “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Can We Tell Them Apart?,” NARCAP’s Richard Haines and Wayne Reed drew distinctions between UAP and UAV. To mention a few, drones can be pretty noisy; UAP are largely mute. Unlike UAV, most drones have range, altitude and speed limitations. UAP maneuverability makes even the most sophisticated drones look archaic. “Unless something basic has been overlooked in this overview,” states the report, “it seems reasonable to assert that none of the UAV that are reviewed here are able to disappear suddenly from sight, execute instantaneous ninety degree (or other angles) turns, accelerate at extremely high speeds, hover in complete silence or perform small, constant radius somersaults or corkscrew flight around a single point, suddenly change shape or size (without changing their orientation or distance from the viewer) — all of which UAP have been reported to be able to do.”

NARCAP published yet another example just this month, from Australian researchers Keith Basterfield and Paul Dean. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), described it as “a near collision with an unknown object involving a De Havilland DHC-8, VH-XFX near Perth Airport, Western Australia on 19 March 2014,” and filed it under the “serious incident” category. The charter turboprop had 53 passengers aboard that clear morning when it was confronted by an “unknown object” that, according to the crew, was coming head-on and sported “a bright strobe light” up front that “appeared to track” toward the DHC-8. The pilot had to bank the avoid the collision with the bogey, which passed within 65 feet horizontally and 100 feet vertically.

A strobing light amid clean skies was weird enough, but the ATSB report, which also said the object left no radar tracks, logged it as “cylindrical in shape and grey in colour.” But get this: The DHC-8 was traveling at 3,700 feet; at the moment of the encounter, according to the ATSB, the area below 3,500 feet was restricted military airspace. Upon being interviewed by Paul Dean, the chief pilot said the object was shaped like a cigarette, only “it was green, military green, in colour.”

The pilot informed Dean nobody told him to shut up about what he saw. But after that interview, which was conducted through the airline, Dean’s access to the pilot, and to the safety officer he hoped to question, went dark. “No more emails, no more return calls,” Dean writes. “It was like they'd either had enough of the case, or, were told not to keep discussing it.

“I wonder of course, if it was a missile or rocket, where the body of it is,” he continues. “If it was a UAV then we have to wonder what type?! I looked and looked and no UAVs are pencil-like, all green-grey, or have a strobe at the front. It's weird. Whatever it was it nearly took that plane out.”

Just one more thing we'll likely never figure out. But what if drone technology -- military or otherwise -- begins to seriously imperil our skyways? Might authorities start chatting up UFOs as a cover for their mistakes?

Continue Reading . . .

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Do We Need a [UFO] Threat?

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By Billy Cox De Void 8-26-14

     Would official science be more inclined to study UFOs if there were compelling evidence the phenomena impacted air-traffic safety? That issue was implicitly raised recently in Leslie Kean’s update on the Chilean government’s latest pronouncement on UFOs. Last month, CEFAA, Chile’s impressive multi-disciplinary panel of military and civilian analysts studying what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), weighed in on the evidence for danger to its air space. Perhaps Navy Capt. Roberto Bore summed it up best: “Aside from any natural distractions to the flight crews, the risks so far have been null. We cannot call UAP a risk to our operations, not even a low risk. An interaction, either good or bad, between a human being and UAP so far is nonexistent in our skies, as far as I know.”

In the States, that sort of rendering — you know, lack of existential drama, playing to an institutional mindset indicted for “a failure of imagination” following the 9/11 debacle — might scuttle all hopes of establishing a formal study. But for Chile, as well as nearly half a dozen of its South American neighbors, research is apparently just beginning. Consider this statement from Gen. Rolando Mercado, who heads the Chilean equivalent of our own FAA:

“If, as many witnesses have declared, the UAP demonstrates ‘intelligent behavior,’ and if we admit this fact, then we must look for the ‘intention behind’ that intelligence, whatever it may be — a form of energy, perhaps — it doesn’t matter. Intelligence is what matters. If this is so, we must ask: has it shown hostility or carried out openly threatening maneuvers? Has it actually attacked our aircraft? To date, this doesn’t seem to be the case. We cannot possibly call something a threat to something or someone if they have not shown any open intention to do harm. And even less, we do not even know their exact nature!”

Curiosity for its own sake — there’s a novel idea. But the founder of CEFAA’s small private American partner, the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, sees no contradiction between Chile’s announcement and NARCAP’s own studies, which began addressing UAP/air traffic safety as early as 2000.

“It is significant,” writes Dr. Richard Haines in an email to De Void, “that these government officials met openly to consider various aspects of UAP and seemed to accept their reality. This meeting showed exceptional foresight, planning, and courage by all parties.

“Secondly, at least one of these officials alluded to intelligent control of the phenomenon, which in my opinion is perhaps the most important question we can ask about them. Even to raise the possibility of intelligence is a brave and intellectually honest thing to do at such a meeting.

“Thirdly,” continues NASA-Ames' erstwhile Chief of the Space Human Factors Office, “the criterion that was used by the group in Chile in order to state that there is no need for the flying public to fear UAP was reasonable as far as it went. Indeed, NARCAP has few documented instances of this kind. Nevertheless, as our website has made clear from the beginning, we employ three different criteria for causes for potential concern: electromagnetic effects on avionic systems, cockpit coordination and communication disruption, and/or sudden flight path deviation to avoid a perceived collision with nearby UAP. I discovered more than one hundred such incidents just for the USA for the years 1950 - 2000 and published them on NARCAP's website as Technical Report 1 (2000).

“NARCAP does not want to alarm the flying public; it does want to serve as a scientifically based, theory-neutral, confidential collection point for all pilots and air traffic controllers who encounter UAP while carrying out their duties so that, one day, we will understand the core identity of these poorly understood atmospheric phenomena.”

Imagine the windfall of public interest if even a modestly financed and transparent American project, based on the Chilean model, collaborated with international perspectives on this tenacious mystery. Of course, for domestic consumption, the trick would be how to turn it into a reality show ...

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Aviation Safety and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

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By www.avweb.com
7-2-14

     The National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena or NARCAP.org was founded in 2000 to address a perceived need to document and analyze incidents involving unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and aviation safety. The literature addressing pilot reports of observations and incidents involving UAP contains many examples of aviation safety factors like loss of separation, near mid-air collisions, crew factors, equipment failures and other problems. NARCAP case files contain over 3400 examples of aviation related observations and incidents involving UAP.

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UAP are not simply something that a pilot could not identify. It means that AFTER examination by those qualified to make a determination and in the presence of enough data to make a determination, it remains unidentified.

The definition of UAP:

"An unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) is the visual stimulus that provokes a sighting report of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance and/or flight dynamics of which do not suggest a logical, conventional flying object and which remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making both a full technical identification as well as a common-sense identification, if one is possible. " (Haines, Pp. 13-22, 1980)

The term "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" or UAP is an attempt to address the fact that not all UAP are described as unidentified flying objects or UFO. Many are simply described as unusual lights. NARCAP feels the term "UAP" more accurately reflects the broad scope of descriptions in aviation reports as well as the possibility that these phenomena may arise from several different sources.

The answers to the questions regarding the existence, source and nature of the subcategory of UAP referred to as UFO will be found in the data. Given that pilots do report aerial phenomena that they describe as structured objects, NARCAP feels it is appropriate to give attention to the witness' description of what was seen or detected and engage it objectively.

NARCAP.org was founded specifically to collect and document these incidents and offer its findings in a public and transparent manner. NARCAP.org is staffed by current and former aviation professionals, pilots, aviation and aeronautical experts, aviation human factors experts, perceptual psychologists and others who bring a wide variety of skills and abilities to our investigative programs.

NARCAP.org invites any pilot or aviation professional that has experienced an incident or observations involving an unidentified aerial phenomena, unidentified traffic, etc., to contact NARCAP investigators and share their experiences.

Confidentiality: Unless directly instructed otherwise, all cases and investigations are de-identified prior to the final report and no witness will be publicly associated with any case or report by NARCAP.org.

Please contact NARCAP.org via its website or contact Ted Roe admin@narcap.org

Continue Reading . . .

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