U.S. Congressman Tim Burchett's call for UFO transparency

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I missed this but U.S. Congressman Tim Burchette criticized a House subcommittee hearing on UFOs this past May.

In Newsweek:
Tim Burchett Calls UFO Hearing a 'Joke,' Claims Wreckage Has Been Recovered

By Robyn White On 5/18/22 at 5:21 AM EDT

Quote:"The UFO hearing this morning was a total joke," Burchett said after the meeting. "We should have heard from people who could talk about things they'd personally seen, but instead the witnesses were government officials with limited knowledge who couldn't give real answers to serious questions."

(...) Prior to the meeting, Burchett also claimed that wreckage from UFOs seen flying over the U.S. had been recovered. He told The Sun Online that "multiple sources" had informed him of the fact but did not elaborate further.

The congressman has previously called for more transparency from the government in their investigations of UFOs or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)—a term more commonly used by government officials.

While UFO sightings can easily be dismissed because of lack of evidence, the meeting on Monday was held after the topic has become one of national security.

This comes following a string of incidents where pilots have reported "near misses" with UAPs. In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said there had been 144 reports of UAPs. Earlier this week Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Scott Bray said that the number of UAPs incidents reported by pilots and service members has grown to about 400.
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(2022-08-15, 02:58 PM)Ninshub Wrote: I missed this but U.S. Congressman Tim Burchette criticized a House subcommittee hearing on UFOs this past May.

In Newsweek:
Tim Burchett Calls UFO Hearing a 'Joke,' Claims Wreckage Has Been Recovered

By Robyn White On 5/18/22 at 5:21 AM EDT

The biggest question on this to be answered at this moment is what percentage and which incidents of recent sightings and encounters with UAPs are, based on their characteristics, really sophisticated drones spying on our fleet exercises, actions by our adversaries especially China? And therefore of very certain and real national security threat concern, rather than the mere possibility that there might be a threat from true extraterrestrials/ultraterrestrials. 

This isn't to downgrade the concern about true apparently extraterrestrial or ultraterrestrial vehicle UAPs, but the drone problem greatly muddies the water.

And it's interesting about the fact that a number of these recent Fleet encounters have some of the characteristics of sophisticated drone swarms, that such drones are one of the latest manifestations of current miniaturized aviation and computer technology. 

This is somewhat reminiscent of the same sort of phenomenon that has occured several times in the long term history of UFOs, where the encounters appear to have been somehow linked to or been manifestations of the then current upcoming and new technologies not yet mainstream but very much in the public awareness. For instance, there were a number of sightings of and encounters with, apparent (high-tech at that time) powered dirigibles with occupants, in the late 19th century in the US. Just as that technology was being developed in Germany. And there were the "rocket-like" UFOs (admittedly a small minority) encountered during the UFO "flaps" of the late 1940s and early 1950s, just as rocket technology based on the Nazi V2 was beginning to be developed in an exciting and fearful time of perceived threat from the USSR.
(This post was last modified: 2022-08-15, 04:33 PM by nbtruthman. Edited 3 times in total.)
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For people like myself who largely reject the "nuts & bolts" theory I doubt we'd get much disclosure until governments felt they absolutely had to.

It's one thing to have visitors from afar, but if Vallee is right and the "neighbors" have always been here...

All that said, I agree these "UAP near misses" are likely to just be drones.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


(2022-08-15, 04:45 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: For people like myself who largely reject the "nuts & bolts" theory I doubt we'd get much disclosure until governments felt they absolutely had to.
Does that man you reject Bob Lazar's story, Sci? I have difficulty interpreting it as not "nuts and bolts".
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(2022-08-15, 05:04 PM)Ninshub Wrote: Does that man you reject Bob Lazar's story, Sci? I have difficulty interpreting it as not "nuts and bolts".

I mean it's possible there is advance craft, but Lazar in particular? I'm skeptical based on what I've looked at so far which admittedly isn't much.

Though of course it's entirely possible there's something going on that is partly "nuts & bolts", and partly something stranger. The world is a strange place.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


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(2022-08-15, 05:28 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: I mean it's possible there is advance craft, but Lazar in particular? I'm skeptical based on what I've looked at so far which admittedly isn't much.
Do yourself a favour and watch the documentary "Bob Lazar and the Flying Saucers". If you're interested of course!
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(2022-08-15, 04:45 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: For people like myself who largely reject the "nuts & bolts" theory I doubt we'd get much disclosure until governments felt they absolutely had to.

It's one thing to have visitors from afar, but if Vallee is right and the "neighbors" have always been here...

I don't know how Vallee handles the many very persuasive apparent physical vehicle sightings that accumulated during the heyday of UFO "flaps", where numerous expert witnesses (like trained military pilots, and police officers trained in accurate observation), observed and even interacted with what very much seemed to be physical extraterrestrial vehicles, "somebody else's hardware". Maybe Vallee considered these cases to be deliberate deception by ultraterrestrials of some sort. If so, an elaborate hypothesis much more complicated that the common sense physical interpretation of these events.

As far as I am concerned, real data, evidence, always trumps theory. These following cases and many others of the same sort were real events in the world, in space-time, occurring to real people that presented as described. Their testimony and other evidence can’t reasonably be dismissed just because they appear fantastic or theoretically preposterous. Especially with good observers like pilots and police officers (sometimes multiple) whose testimony would otherwise be accepted in a court of law. The burden is on the skeptic to credibly demonstrate how these cases are actually misperceptions, hallucinations, errors, hoaxes, useless anecdotes, etc. And on the skeptic of the ETH to come up with a more credible general explanation for the many cases of physical interaction with physical apparent vehicles.

Just a sampling of some of the better older data:

– The 1947 Kenneth Arnold sighting
Except for the WWII “foo fighters”, this begins the modern era of UFOs. A good analysis is at http://www.martinshough.com/aerialphenom...lysis2.pdf . There do not seem to be any valid optical, geometric, geographical, psychological or other reasons to doubt the major features of Arnold’s sighting as reported and they are internally consistent. The analysis results in a range of 16-20 miles, a minimum length of 70-90 feet, and a speed of 890 to 1200 mph. Arnold described the objects as trimmed-off in the rear thin shiny “saucer-like” discoids reflecting sunlight blindingly like metal at certain angles.
– The Chiles-Whitted Case – Montgomery, Alabama, United States – July 24, 1948
– The Nash-Fortenberry Sighting (aircraft encounter with formation of UFOs) – Virginia, United States – July 14, 1952
– The RB-47 UFO Encounter – Gulf Coast Area, United States – July 17, 1957
-  The Levelland, Texas case - November 2-3, 1957
– Socorro / Zamora UFO Incident – Socorro, New Mexico, United States – April 24, 1964
– Coyne Helicopter Incident – Mansfield, Ohio, United States – October 18, 1973
– “Dogfight over Tehran”, the 1976 Iranian Air Force Incident, a multiple pilot/ground/radar/visual/EMI signal case. Details at http://www.nicap.org/760919tehran_dir.htm .
– The Cash-Landrum Case – Huffman, Texas, United States – December 29, 1980
– Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 Over Alaska – Alaska, United States – November 17, 1986
– Belgium Triangle UFO Sightings – Belgium – October, 1989
– Illinois Triangle UFO Sighting (by multiple police officers) – Illinois, United States – January 5, 2000

The ultraterrestial deception theory (or human mass hallucination engendered by ultraterrestrials theory) unfortunately ignores a host of the classic UFO cases where what clearly appeared to be large vehicles were seen and sometimes interacted with the witnesses. These cases and many others also don’t fit the space creature idea very well at all.

The following is just some of this evidence in a little detail. As a nuts and bolts UFO skeptic, please plausibly explain these cases:

An example is the well-known Chiles-Whitted encounter in 1948, early in the twentieth and twenty-first century history of the phenomenon. From Wiki:

“In the early morning hours of July 24, 1948, Clarence Chiles, chief pilot, and John Whitted, co-pilot, were flying an Eastern Air Lines Douglas DC-3 passenger plane near Montgomery, Alabama, at about 5,000 feet altitude. The night sky was clear with “the Moon, four days past full, shining through scattered clouds.”

At about 2:45 AM, Chiles “saw a dull red glow above and ahead of the aircraft.” He told Whitted, “Look, here comes a new Army jet job.” The object closed on their DC-3 in a matter of seconds, and both men later said they saw the object fly past the right side of their plane at high speed before it pulled “up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds.” They observed the object for a total of ten to fifteen seconds. Chiles and Whitted stated that the object “looked like a wingless aircraft…it seemed to have two rows of windows through which glowed a very bright light, as brilliant as a magnesium flare.”Both pilots claimed the object was 100 feet long and 25-30 feet in diameter, torpedo- or cigar-shaped, “similar to a B-29 fuselage”, with flames coming out of its tail. Only one of the plane’s passengers, C.L. McKelvie, saw anything unusual. He reported seeing a “bright streak of light” that flashed by his window.”

UFO skeptics later claimed it was a large meteor, but this explanation is untenable due to the obvious characteristics of an actual vehicle. The witnesses (trained pilots and good observers) would have to have been on drugs to so misinterpret what they saw and experienced.
..........................
The Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting, located over Chesapeake Bay, VA in July 1952:

Two experienced commercial pilots (William B. Nash and William H. Fortenberry) saw eight UFOs flying in a tight echelon formation over Chesapeake Bay in the state of Virginia. Though the encounter lasted only twelve to fifteen seconds, Nash and Fortenberry were able to offer a detailed moment-by-moment chronology of events, and a relatively accurate measurement of the objects’ motion and size when compared to well-known attractions. Both pilots were World War II U.S. Navy veterans, and had been trained in identification of enemy aircraft — Nash was a Naval Air Transport veteran who specialized in anti-submarine patrols, while Fortenberry worked with the Navy’s air experimental wing.

Nash stated that the sighting consisted of “six bright objects streaking towards us at tremendous speed…They had the fiery aspect of hot coals, but of a much greater glow…Their shape was clearly outlined and evidently circular!” He would go on to state that this color was the same on each craft, which themselves glowed around “twenty times” brighter than the city lights below them.

The closer the objects got to the airliner the clearer the two men could see they were in a purposeful “narrow echelon formation”. The leader, according to Nash, was the “lowest” in the formation, with “each following craft slightly higher”. Then, the leader appeared to attempt to slow suddenly. Nash would continue:

“We received this impression because the second and third wavered slightly and seemed almost to overrun the leader, so that for a brief moment during the remainder of their approach the positions of these three varied. It looked very much as if an element of “human” or “intelligence” error had been introduced in so far as the following two did not react soon enough when the leader began to slow down and so almost overran him!”

As the two men continued to observe the row of glowing circular objects, they suddenly and with lightning speed changed their direction. They would “flip” on their edges with the glowing surface facing the pilots’ right. As they did so, the bottoms of the craft were “not clearly visible”.

This would lead the pilots to believe that the bottoms of the craft were, in fact, unlighted. The same appeared true for the edge of the objects. Nash would describe their overall appearance as being “much like coins”.

The encounter was corroborated by several groups of independent ground witnesses. The case has been recorded in the United States Air Force Blue book project as “unknown”. Major Dewey Fournet, who was involved with the Project Blue Book project years later, indicated that the incident was “one of the most detailed and reliable cases” of the times.
...........................
Then there’s the RB-47 multiple air and ground electromagnetic signals interaction case, summarized at https://science.howstuffworks.com/space/...47-ufo.htm. This has been considered one of the best UFO vehicle cases ever. A better and more detailed account is at http://www.noufors.com/the_RB-47_ufo_encounter.html .

“Possessing the most sophisticated electronic intelligence (ELINT) gear available to the U.S. Air Force, the RB-47 could handle anything.

Unfortunately, in the morning hours of July 17, 1957, over the southern United States, an RB-47 came across something it was unprepared for.

In the first hint of what was to come, one of the three officers who operate the electronic countermeasures (ECM) equipment detected an odd signal. Moving up the radar screen, the blip passed some distance in front of the RB-47, then over Mississippi. Though puzzled, he sai­d nothing. However, a few minutes later, at 4:10 A.M., the sudden appearance of an intense blue light bearing down on the aircraft shook the pilot and copilot. Even more unnerving, the object changed course in the blink of an eye and disappeared at the two o’clock position. The aircraft radar picked up a strong signal in the same spot. The UFO maintained this position even as the RB-47 continued toward east Texas.

The pilot then observed a “huge” light, attached, he suspected, to an even bigger something that the darkness obscured. When the electronics gear noted the presence of another UFO in the same general location as the first, the pilot turned the plane and accelerated toward it. The UFO shot away. By now the crew had alerted the Duncanville, Texas, Air Force ground radar station, and it was soon tracking the one UFO that remained (the second had disappeared after a brief time). At 4:50 radar showed the UFO abruptly stopping as the RB-47 passed under it. Barely seconds later it was gone.

This incredible case — considered one of the most significant UFO reports ever — remained classified for years. When it became known years later, the Air Force declared that the RB-47 crew had tracked an airliner. Physicist Gordon David Thayer, who investigated the incident for the University of Colorado UFO Project, called this explanation “literally ridiculous.””
(This post was last modified: 2022-08-15, 11:19 PM by nbtruthman. Edited 4 times in total.)
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Great list, nb. I completely agree with you here and yeah this one area where I have to go with a non-idealist physical view. (Of course brahman can still underpin it all! Wink).
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(2022-08-15, 05:47 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: Just a sampling of some of the better older data:

– The 1947 Kenneth Arnold sighting
Except for the WWII “foo fighters”, this begins the modern era of UFOs. A good analysis is at http://www.martinshough.com/aerialphenom...lysis2.pdf . There do not seem to be any valid optical, geometric, geographical, psychological or other reasons to doubt the major features of Arnold’s sighting as reported and they are internally consistent. The analysis results in a range of 16-20 miles, a minimum length of 70-90 feet, and a speed of 890 to 1200 mph. Arnold described the objects as trimmed-off in the rear thin shiny “saucer-like” discoids reflecting sunlight blindingly like metal at certain angles.
– The Chiles-Whitted Case – Montgomery, Alabama, United States – July 24, 1948
– The Nash-Fortenberry Sighting (aircraft encounter with formation of UFOs) – Virginia, United States – July 14, 1952
– The RB-47 UFO Encounter – Gulf Coast Area, United States – July 17, 1957
– Socorro / Zamora UFO Incident – Socorro, New Mexico, United States – April 24, 1964
– Coyne Helicopter Incident – Mansfield, Ohio, United States – October 18, 1973
– “Dogfight over Tehran”, the 1976 Iranian Air Force Incident, a multiple pilot/ground/radar/visual/EMI signal case. Details at http://www.nicap.org/760919tehran_dir.htm .
– The Cash-Landrum Case – Huffman, Texas, United States – December 29, 1980
– Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 Over Alaska – Alaska, United States – November 17, 1986
– Belgium Triangle UFO Sightings – Belgium – October, 1989
– Illinois Triangle UFO Sighting (by multiple police officers) – Illinois, United States – January 5, 2000

Would you include also the Levelland, Texas case of November 2-3, 1957. I detailed that one a bit in my review of Richard Hall's NICAP The UFO Evidence report (1964) back on Skeptiko. Reading that book was really eye-opening for me.

Related are two other books I reviewed in that same thread, Keith Chester's Strange Company, about the WWII foo fighters, and Frank Feschino's Shoot Them Down! The Flying Saucer Air Wars of 1952.
(2022-08-15, 05:38 PM)Ninshub Wrote: Do yourself a favour and watch the documentary "Bob Lazar and the Flying Saucers". If you're interested of course!

Definitely will watch, as I don't have any strong antipathy to Lazar just a feeling I've gotten through minimal skimming.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


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