The UFO/UAP coverup continues

So, you simply sweep all of the evidence in the cases provided by nbtruthman off the table, refusing even to acknowledge let alone engage with it?

I engage with objective evidence, not with anecdotal evidence. A risk of relying on anecdotal evidence is that it can be used to spread misinformation and manipulate public opinion. Anecdotal evidence can be easily fabricated, exaggerated, or cherry-picked to support a certain agenda or narrative. Anecdotal evidence can also appeal to emotions, stereotypes, or prejudices that can sway people's judgments and decisions. Anecdotal evidence can also be used to discredit or undermine credible sources of evidence that contradict one's claims or interests.

I don’t doubt that there are people who think they have seen an UFO. But much more likely they have seen something mundane and interpreted what they saw according to their imagination. Without objective data how can others asses such accounts?

I mainly posted the quote by Denise for fun as she writes for the Discovery Institute who generally advocates for a viewpoint (ID) I know nbtruthman agrees with. Apparently UFOs aren’t on their agenda.

I engage with objective evidence, not with anecdotal evidence. A risk of relying on anecdotal evidence is that it can be used to spread misinformation and manipulate public opinion. Anecdotal evidence can be easily fabricated, exaggerated, or cherry-picked to support a certain agenda or narrative. Anecdotal evidence can also appeal to emotions, stereotypes, or prejudices that can sway people's judgments and decisions. Anecdotal evidence can also be used to discredit or undermine credible sources of evidence that contradict one's claims or interests.

I don’t doubt that there are people who think they have seen an UFO. But much more likely they have seen something mundane and interpreted what they saw according to their imagination. Without objective data how can others asses such accounts?

I mainly posted the quote by Denise for fun as she writes for the Discovery Institute who generally advocates for a viewpoint (ID) I know nbtruthman agrees with. Apparently UFOs aren’t on their agenda.

You complacently pronounce all the UFO cases I cited plus any and all others as mere "anecdotes" and consequently worthless, just imagination and misinterpretation of "mundane " events. This is laughable when actually considering the data in detail. It is ignoring so many corroborating factors - for instance what about the expertise of the observers who were sometimes pilots and police officers, multiple witness confirmations, and instrumental detection of accompanying electromagnetic phenomena?

I cite again the study report Fifty-Six Aircraft Pilot Sightings Involving E-M Effects – Haines (1992), at http://www.nicap.org/papers/92apsiee.htm . Explain that away.

The Abstract of that report:

Reports of anomalous aerial objects (AAO) appearing in the atmosphere continue to be made by pilots of almost every airline and air force of the world in addition to private and experimental test pilots. This paper presents a review of 56 reports of AAO in which electromagnetic effects (E-M) take place on-board the aircraft when the phenomenon is located nearby but not before it appeared or after it had departed. These effects are not related to the altitude or airspeed of the aircraft. The average duration of these sightings was 17.5 minutes in the 37 cases in which duration was noted. There were between one and 40 eye witnesses (average = 2.71) on the aircraft. Reported E-M effects included radio interference or total failure, radar contact with and without simultaneous visual contact, magnetic and/or gyro-compass deviations, automatic direction finder failure or interference, engine stopping or interruption, dimming cabin lights, transponder failure, and military aircraft weapon system failure. There appears to be a reduction of the E-M energy effect with the square of increasing distance to the AAO. These events and their relationships are discussed. This area of research should be concentrated on by other investigators because of the wealth of information it yields and the physical nature of AAO including wavelength/frequency and power density emissions.

Let's try an acid test. There is the old saying: "the Devil is in the details". How about producing a plausible detailed point-by-point explaining away of each of the following two classic cases from my files, rather than just a vague blanket closed-minded dismissal? We're waiting.

(1) -- The Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting

Location: Over Chesapeake Bay, VA
July 1952

The Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting was an unidentified flying object sighting that occurred on July 14, 1952, when 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.

A little more of the extensive detailed sighting by two expert observers, from https://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/sighting...nberry-ufo :

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”.

This 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”, despite all their efforts to explain it away as something conventional. 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.

(2) - - The RB-47 multiple air and ground electromagnetic signals interaction case.

This is 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 Condon Report UFO Project, called this explanation “literally ridiculous".

You complacently pronounce all the UFO cases I cited plus any and all others as mere "anecdotes" and consequently worthless, just imagination and misinterpretation of "mundane " events. This is laughable when actually considering the data in detail. It is ignoring so many corroborating factors - for instance what about the expertise of the observers who were sometimes pilots and police officers, multiple witness confirmations, and instrumental detection of accompanying electromagnetic phenomena?

I cite again the study report Fifty-Six Aircraft Pilot Sightings Involving E-M Effects – Haines (1992), at http://www.nicap.org/papers/92apsiee.htm . Explain that away.

The Abstract of that report:


Let's try an acid test. There is the old saying: "the Devil is in the details". How about producing a plausible detailed point-by-point explaining away of each of the following two classic cases from my files, rather than just a vague blanket closed-minded dismissal? We're waiting.

(1) -- The Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting

Location: Over Chesapeake Bay, VA
July 1952

The Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting was an unidentified flying object sighting that occurred on July 14, 1952, when 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.

A little more of the extensive detailed sighting by two expert observers, from https://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/sighting...nberry-ufo :

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”.

This 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”, despite all their efforts to explain it away as something conventional. 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.

(2) - - The RB-47 multiple air and ground electromagnetic signals interaction case.

This is 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 Condon Report UFO Project, called this explanation “literally ridiculous".

These are likely but not certainly all true accounts of having seen something.  What, we cannot say.  When you are flying above the clouds, who knows what kind of things you might see.  In the blandness of the open sky, I wouldn't mind betting it is possible to hallucinate because of the Ganzfeld effect.  Possible environmental phenomena.  Who knows what else?

These are likely but not certainly all true accounts of having seen something.  What, we cannot say.  When you are flying above the clouds, who knows what kind of things you might see.  In the blandness of the open sky, I wouldn't mind betting it is possible to hallucinate because of the Ganzfeld effect.  Possible environmental phenomena.  Who knows what else?

A vague closed-minded fishing expedition for any imaginable extremely remotely possible alternate explanation, that fails because of the large amount of data recorded in the case.

From the http://www.noufors.com/the_RB-47_ufo_encounter.html link I just included, here's a very detailed account of the later, second phase of the RB-47 encounter. This involves coordinated and corresponding aircraft and ground electronic intelligence equipment detections of EM emissions from the object, with multiple witnesses. Note the bolded passages. Do you still hold that this could be hallucinations or somehow, "environmental phenomena"?

The Unknown Companion

By this time, they had reached the Duncanville, Texas area. At 4:39, Chase spotted a huge light to the right front of the RB-47 at about 5,000 feet below the aircraft's 34,500 feet altitude. The weather was perfectly clear. At 4:40, McClure reported two signals, at 40° and 70°. Chase and McCoid reported seeing red lights at those locations. Chase contacted radar Station Utah at Duncanville, Texas and requested permission to abandon his flight plan and pursue the lights, which he received. At 4:48 AM, radar station Utah requested the position of the signals that McClure was receiving, and they immediately confirmed that their radar had detected the objects at the same location. As the RB-47 attempted to pursue, the object appeared to stop suddenly. Chase could see that they were gaining on it, and they over shot it.

At 4:52, it blinked out, and simultaneously vanished from McClure's scope and the ground radar! Chase put the aircraft into a port turn, and the object suddenly blinked on again, simultaneously reappearing on McClure's scope and the ground radar at 4:52! They began to close to within 5 miles of the object, when it suddenly dropped to 15,000 feet and then blinked out again, once again vanishing from the scopes and ground radar. At 4:55, Chase radioed Utah radar station that they had to break of pursuit and continue with their scheduled flight plan due to low fuel. At 4:57, McClure picked up the signal again, and at 4:58, Chase made visual contact again. As they headed into Oklahoma, McClure continued to receive a signal, now from the rear of the aircraft, until it finally faded as they neared Oklahoma City. The Director of Intelligence, 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, stated in his report that he had: "...no doubt the electronic D/F's coincided exactly with visual observations by aircraft cmdr numerous times, thus indicating positively the object being the signal source."

What can be detected on ECM direction finding devices, can be seen visually, and can be detected on ordinary ground-based radar all at the same time? What can be detected by all the sensors and can also fly rings around a jet travelling at 500 mph?

Project Bluebook said that the sightings in Dallas-Fort Worth area were an ordinary jet airliner. They couldn't explain the abrupt, simultaneous disappearance and reappearance of the object from radar screens, ECM scopes, and visual detection. They also couldn't explain the events that occurred over Mississippi and Louisiana. It's odd that the Utah radar station couldn't tell an airliner from an unknown.

The U. of Colorado Condon Committee toyed with several explanations, but found none to be satisfactory, finally classifying this case as unknown.

A little historical review is warranted in order to clear the obfuscations and misstatements in the recent complete put-down by the Pentagon and AARO organization of the reality of UAPs/UFOs as alien vehicles, and reveal something of the weight of the extensive evidence that accumulated over many years and was later suppressed, from mainly Air Force and other military cases. 

An excellent new opinion piece in The Hill covers this and brings back a couple of convincing and evidential early Air Force cases from the 1950s and how an initial assessment of ETI was changed by arbitrary decision on high to debunk at all costs. It looks like the old adage is still true, "Those who forget the past (either accidentally or deliberately) are doomed to repeat it". 

The article: "The Pentagon’s new historical review of UFOs picks and chooses its history", by Marik von Rennenkampff, Opinion contributor, at https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4...s-history/ .

The official Department of Defense AARO report released March 8 demonstrates that a seven decade-long trend of official obfuscation and deflection on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) continues unabated. A little examination of the history of all this is needed for historical perspective. The new The Hill opinion piece brings some of that long-forgotten history to the fore.

"Recently the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s (AARO) report, a congressionally mandated historical review of U.S. government involvement with UAP, found "no evidence of extraterrestrial technology.” While that may be technically accurate, the Pentagon’s lengthy report deliberately obscures a critical fact: Official records and public reporting going back many years to the early 1950s are littered with evidence of unknown craft exhibiting what appears to be extraordinary technology."

"Citing Capt. Edward Ruppelt's various flimsy carrying-out-official-policy case debunkings long ago in his work as the first director of the Air Force’s decades-long UAP analysis (and, later, debunking) effort known as Project Blue Book, AARO’s new report ignores the countless cases, including many involving simultaneous radar and visual observations, that actually left Ruppelt and the Air Force thoroughly baffled.  After retirement, Ruppelt came clean and detailed in a book about his experiences what really happened.

For instance, from Ruppelt's account in his book, in July 1952 there was a very evidential incident where a ground radar installation scrambled an F-94 interceptor to engage with a UFO. There followed an engagement where the F-94 "played tag" with the UFO, which could be seen as a large, yellow-orange light. There was extensive radar tracking of the UFO during this action.

Another July 1952 case:

As Ruppelt describes it, a ground radar station tracked a UFO “coming straight south across Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron at 625 miles an hour.”

The pilot and radar operator aboard an F-94 fighter jet directed to intercept the object “saw that they were turning toward a large bluish-white light, ‘many times larger than a star.’” Like the UAP in the preceding incident, the object soon “took on a reddish tinge.”

Once again, “the radar operator in the back seat [of the fighter jet] got a good radar lock-on,” stating, “It was just as solid a lock-on as you get from a B-36 [bomber].”
For 10 minutes, the jet pursued the UAP. “At times,” Ruppelt recounts, “the unidentified target would slow down and the F-94 would start to close the gap.”
“Just as the ground controller was telling the pilot that he was closing in,” Ruppelt continues, “the light became brighter and the object pulled away.” According to Ruppelt, “the target would put on a sudden burst of speed and pull away from the pursuing jet” at speeds up to “1,400 miles an hour.”
It did not take long for the fighter to run low on fuel. As soon as it turned around to return to base, “the target slowed down to 200 to 300 miles an hour.”

The initial investigations conducted by the Air Force concluded that the UFO phenomenon was probably extraterrestrial visitations, despite the obvious "goggle threshold" being greatly exceeded. But in the early 1950s there was an abrupt change to a debunking policy re. UFOs after Air Force chief of staff Hoyt Vandenberg made the arbitrary decision to reject the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs:

As Ruppelt puts it, analysts subsequently “tried a new hypothesis: UFO’s don’t exist. In no time they found that this hypothesis was easier to prove (by simple assertion of some very implausible conventional cause) and,” critically, “it got recognition.”

Ruppelt continued, “Before, if an especially interesting UFO report came in and the Pentagon wanted an answer, all they’d get was an ‘It could be real but we can’t prove it.’ Now such a request got a quick, snappy ‘It was a balloon,’ and feathers were stuck in caps from [Air Force intelligence] up to the Pentagon.”

In other words, Ruppelt revealed that top Pentagon officials — not “unbiased evaluation” — were driving analytic conclusions about UAP.

Comment: shades of our current AARO UFO ETI debunkings! Yes, in the recent 2024 official 100% debunking attempt by AARO, history truly is repeating itself.

Skeptics are invited to try to plausibly explain away the two obscure 1950s cases detailed above. These two resurrected incidents from the early 1950s bring back memories of other closely related "classic" cases, in particular the later famous 1957 RB-47 ELINT and radar detection and multiple military ground witness incident over the southern United States, which produced very extensive data but was never plausibly explained, despite extensive investigation by both Blue Book and the U. of Colorado Condon Report study.

Skeptics are invited to try to plausibly explain away the two obscure 1950s cases detailed above. These two resurrected incidents from the early 1950s bring back memories of other closely related "classic" cases, in particular the later famous 1957 RB-47 ELINT and radar detection and multiple military ground witness incident over the southern United States, which produced very extensive data but was never plausibly explained, despite extensive investigation by both Blue Book and the U. of Colorado Condon Report study.

I've not looked into these cases deeply but I do think *something* beyond the mundane is going on here.

On the other hand I would say we need to separate the anomalous aerial phenomena from the claims of recovered vehicles/corpses.

Even the "Deep Weird" encounters with bizarre entities doesn't really paint a picture of aliens having technology that can be reversed engineered...some of these beings don't even seem to exist within the boundaries of expected physics...

[Laird]

The new The Hill opinion piece brings some of that long-forgotten history to the fore, and deserves extensive quoting.

@nbtruthman, this is a great piece, and worth quoting from, but the extensiveness of the quoting breaches our Guidelines for reproducing external content. Could you please edit your post to suit?

@nbtruthman, this is a great piece, and worth quoting from, but the extensiveness of the quoting breaches our Guidelines for reproducing external content. Could you please edit your post to suit?

Done, I hope to your satisfaction.