The Pentagon and UAPs: A small but welcome paradigm shift.

Ok. It's been more than five years since I wrote my last post on this blog! Not sure where the time went but I did start a new permanent Government job back in 2017, so was very occupied with applications prior to that. This means I had to pretty much abandon this blog whilst my time turned to much more mundane public sector matters for a while. I'm now considering (almost permanent) retirement in the next year - so maybe I'll have more time to write about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Who knows?

I felt compelled to write now because of the unfolding events concerning the soon to be released report into 'UAPs' (Scientific American article) and the revelations around encounters in restricted US airspace by highly-trained US navy pilots, supported by video, radar and Forward-looking Infrared (FLIR) data

I'm sure those of you with a keen interest in this will have greedily digested what information you could online about this subject which I won't repeat here (I know I have!) - but I've included a couple of useful links below.

As we get closer to the formal report's publication, I've noticed that in the last couple of weeks or so there appears to be a bit of a backlash from those who maintain that the exposure about the released videos from the US navy and the soon to be published report are part of some larger 'Psy-ops' on the part of the US military or intelligence agencies, or at the very least, some attempt by certain agencies to secure greater defence and military funding.

Whilst this can't entirely be ruled out, such counter-arguments seem weak. If there is a concerted effort to deceive the public through some 'false-flag' operation, one has to ask simply "Why?" to get as many speculative explanations in response as there are for what's behind Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. And regarding the argument for securing additional funding, there is a long, published history of the military industrial complex spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on secret or 'black' projects without apparent authorisation from any US Administration or Congress. Why should that change now?

From my perspective the buzz surrounding the report will sort of reset the clock back about 70 years - but hopefully in a good way - before the debunking exercises that were Project Blue Book and the Condon Committee Report successfully made the subject taboo and something to be ridiculed. Many commentators have already said that this new report could allow the subject of UAP to become more mainstream and be considered more seriously. 

If so at least it would be a small - but very welcome in my view - paradigm shift. We'll have to see how this pans out...

Recommended links (for those who've been living under a saucer/triangle-shaped rock the last few months):-

The Guardian

The Phenomenon (trailer)

Sixty Minutes

Why "UAP" not "UFO"?

The term "UFO" was first coined in 1952 by a Captain. Edward J. Ruppelt, who led Project Blue Book, - the only official and public investigation into the UFO phenomenon by the United States Air Force (USAF). Ruppelt's term was quickly adopted by the USAF, which initially defined UFOs as 'those objects that remain unidentified after scrutiny by expert investigators'.

The term UFO is often used for any unexplained sighting irrespective of whether it has been investigated. Because of its immediate association for the general public with aliens or extraterrestrials and the media ridicule often connected with the subject, an increasing number of investigators now prefer to use other terms such as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (or UAP). 

My own personal view is that it is unfortunate that the term UFO has now become so commonly associated with supposed flying craft containing 'little green men' (or 'space aliens' as my wife jokingly prefers to call them), especially when balloons, Chinese lanterns, lenticular clouds, meteorites, satellites, sun dogs - and many other earthly but ultimately explicable phenomena - could just as easily fall into the category of being 'UFOs' prior to being identified. So 'UFO' was quite useful as a scientific term until it (rather too quickly) fell into general misuse.

Consequently, those who generally say they 'believe in UFOs' are really saying they believe in the existence of craft of extraterrestrial or extra dimensional origin, which is far more dramatic than saying they believe in any flying object that has yet to be identified but which could be amongst the shortlist of explicable phenomena above.

To help sky watchers in identifying some of the less-obvious phenomena I've listed above I will include brief explanations of these (and others) in another post with corresponding images.