Misinformation, Scepticism and how Anomalous Aerospace Vehicles are potentially unidentifiable
WORKING WITHIN THE arena of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) activism and social psychology, it is difficult to convey just how information becomes misconstrued when dealing with this sensitive issue. There is a pathological need for a certain mindset of people to associate the issue of UAP (UFOs) with something extraterrestrial and for others to label the phenomenon misidentified terrestrial objects. For such people the issue is simplistic, it’s either weather balloons or it’s aliens, it’s black or it’s white, it’s us or it’s not. In reality however, it’s more of a meshed, greyish colour that is infinitely complex in scope and practice. Genuine UAP objects that are anomalous and display ‘beyond next generation technology’, such as the ones that encountered the Black Aces squadron flying out of the U.S.S. Nimitz carrier strike group or the U.S.S. Roosevelt, aren’t misidentified planes, balloons, birds or stars. They are a genuine mystery that science hasn’t been able to appropriately explain. Unfortunately, due to the Department of Defense (DOD) classification which was placed upon certain dynamics of UAP cases, a problem arises. Issues stem from a matter of reduced transparency and has meant that videos and case reports can’t even be made public via FOIA. This creates an opportunity for misinformation.
From a psychologists perspective, when sensitive objective data is absent, it often becomes filled with the subjective needs and interpretations of the individual. It’s a flawed part of being human and clinically speaking, such tendencies aren’t rational and serve to develop the delicate ego which looks to protect itself at all costs. Facts and verifiable sources are pulled apart, analysed and projected for the conscious mind to carry forward into behaviours.
The individual has a narrative, with a certain reality they need to have subjectively upheld and who strive to ensure that only certain truths are objectified. This is no different for ‘believers’ or ‘sceptics’ who apply exactly the same tactics on either side of the spectrum.
WHAT ABOUT THE FACTS?
It’s a fact that these anomalous objects are being picked up on multiple sensors from the United States military and by the world’s most advanced defence technology. We can verify that through multiple Navy Pilots, Radar Operators, Intelligence Officers, Directors of various agencies and Senators who have been updated in classified briefings.
Take the recent UFO videos in the media, the DOD have determined them to be ‘Unidentified’ in classification. That means that after a thorough assessment by an official investigative body (for example, The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force - UAPTF), they have been unable to determine the nature and origin of such anomalous aerial vehicles (AAV). Arguably, the complexity of whatever this AAV/UAP technology might be, may extend far beyond the simplistic concept of extraterrestrials and into something else, something more alarming. Maybe it’s an effect of nuclear activity, maybe something truly unidentifiable, maybe something from the multiverse, or maybe it’s something that the animalistic human mind might not be able to conceive of in its original form. Then again, maybe it’s none of the above.
However, this is all hypothetical, and sadly we are stuck in neutral on this issue due to the binary thinking of society that unfortunately includes renowned scientists tasked with finding ‘alien’ life. Surely a genuine scientific approach says, ‘I don’t know what this phenomenon is, so let’s investigate.’
Instead of taking this issue on what is being reported, the debate becomes about trying to prove or disprove the stigmatised extraterrestrial concept rather than focus on a potential issue of national security or an issue of quantum physics or a possible issue of revolutionary technology. When a report on ‘UFOs’ makes the news cycle, more often than not, the well meaning journalist rings up the sole astrophysicist whose name has become attached to this issue for an uninformed quote.
Usually, the astrophysicist says it’s all misidentifications, nothing to see here, the ‘U’ in UFO means ‘Unidentified’, it’s all birds, balloons and planes whilst cherry picking data to create a narrative that we shouldn’t really bother with such things. What might the psychology tell us in such cases? Some say that when funding and reputation is put on the line, the mind will create a less hostile version of reality. Good for the status quo, but poor for unbiased scientific methodology and arguably a disaster for those seeking possible non-human intelligences.
A recent article broke into the Sunday Times last weekend with journalist Sarah Baxter making it to page 18 with details of the Pentagon UAP report. The article, fronted by an unfortunate picture of two people dressed as aliens, was well written and covered some of the current issues of UAP, quoting Harvard scientist Avi Loeb, who himself has attributed an interest to the extraterrestrial concept.
Sadly, Baxter failed to mention some of the comments from Navy Pilots and Senators on the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence. My positive critique would be the framing of the issue, with the undertone hung up on the binary argument of extraterrestrials, rather than stepping back from such premature conclusions. But overall it was good, I was happy to see the coverage in a credible British media outlet and for a first time piece it was a promising start into this alternative world. But as Sarah will find out over the next two years, it won’t be the last.
Also, I should mention how the framing of Chinese technology would seem to be the next logical and rational explanation for anyone unfamiliar with what has happened over the past three years. The question is, how feasible are the claims that mundane misidentifications are what Navy Pilots are reporting, and also how accurate is it to consider that a foreign advanced technology is responsible for what we are witnessing? And could the Chinese really possess this technology as far back as 2004 without it being reported anywhere in next seventeen years?
I spoke with Graeme Randell, a British historian who has researched and authored articles for UAPMedia and The Debrief. Most recently his book on flight aviation within the old Soviet Union has got the attention of those working the UAP issue. He has wrote at length about the capabilities and tracking abilities of modern day fighter planes.
“Haven’t got actual figures, because they’ll be classified, but the PIRATE (Passive InfraRed Airborne Track Equipment) FLIR/IRST (InfraRed Search and Track) system developed by the EUROFirst consortium for Eurofighter Typhoon is supposed to be able to locate stealth aircraft such as the B-2 “at significant distances”. Flight testing started I think in 2000 or 2001 and the first Typhoon fitted with PIRATE flew in 2007.”
Important to keep in mind, we now live in a world in which multiple Navy Pilots have come forward with statements and videos, complete with various Radar Operator’s testimony on multiple sensory data from AN-SPY1 radar and collection data from satellites - so says the former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. We are talking sensory detection that is incredibly detailed and sophisticated. Since the 1969 closure of the United States Air Force UFO program, Project Blue Book, the technological ability of the military to identify objects in sensitive airspace has dramatically increased.
The U.S. military can now detect and track various airborne objects using a multitude of sensory information, particularly when engaging nuclear strike groups. It’s always amazed me that people think the three objects in those blurry UFO videos just somehow evaded the military with no tracking, as if they flew away without the military knowing what happened to them. It’s also amazing how many of those people are also unaware these objects were tracked over a period of days, rather than minutes.
“Public numerical figures on the SPY-1 detection range claim that it can detect a golf ball-sized target at ranges in excess of 165 km. When applied to a ballistic missile-sized target, the SPY-1 radar is estimated to have a range of 310 km.”
I’m told that military reconnaissance satellites, under the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are so incredibly sophisticated, they can apparently see five inches or larger on the ground from space. We are talking exceptionally incredible surveillance technology that is supported by hyper advanced radar systems that track each of the geographic spheres that are layered up towards space. And yet here we have three terribly fuzzy, black and white videos from the gun camera footage of Navy Pilots planes. That is what is in the public domain, but there are more, much more that are clear and close up. They are kept secret.
So when we talk about vehicles that wander into the most surveillanced airspace in the world and leave without any issue or interference, and then officially remain classified as ‘Unidentified’, we are not talking birds, balloons or the tail end of another plane. I spoke with researcher and civilian UAP journalist Danny Silva of SilvaRecord.com who suggested that Seth Shostak’s opinions aren’t correct.
“We have the testimony of Dave Fravor. Mr. Shostack brushing off Fravor’s expert testimony and comparing Navy Jets to Hondas is laughable. There is no compelling argument the Tic Tac is a conventional plane. Many top mainstream journalists agree the Tic Tac is either secret advanced technology, the likes of which the world has never seen, or something else. Moving forward the public will continue to be privy to more cases, like we have now seen with the USS Kidd. It will be exceedingly hard to continue to deny the reality of advanced technology, no matter where it comes from, in our skies and in bodies of water, among other places.”
And I would agree with Mr. Silva, if you want to apply subjective Occam’s Razor, arguably look to newly advanced Chinese technology, not planes which can be identified by DOD instantly. However, also keep in mind Occam’s Razor is highly dependent on the information available to you. Given the reports, we highly likely aren’t discussing the next advancement of the F-18, we are discussing a technology so radical it has mastered ‘trans-medium travel’, ‘anti-gravity’ and ‘hypersonic dead-stop propulsion’. Equally, look to the AATIP five observables for a true understanding of such technological capabilities.
Currently, we are red-taped, stuck in bureaucratic dogma that prevents progression. The very lack of detailed classification regarding these specific vehicles is problematic. UFO and UAP can mean anything from a balloon, drones, planes, missiles, birds, or anything that supposedly flies. There is nothing to distinguish objects seen in the GIMBAL video (Flying disc looking object), from the FLIR1 (Tic-Tac looking object). The lack of specification allows for misinformation to spread, thriving in the uncertainty and lack of transparency to force their own narrative. To ensure we sidestep unhelpful opinions from misinformed scientists and radicalised YouTube debunkers, we must ensure we don’t conclude without all the relevant data and equally we mustn’t label the phenomenon as one thing or another without a full bodied government investigation. I caught up with the former Director of the Pentagon program AATIP and asked about the failure in the scientific process when it comes to the issue of UAP technology.
“My great respect for the scientific community can not be overstated, and thus the reason we had some of the best in AATIP conducting the analysis, scientific modelling, and mathematical computations. What i find egregious is when some in the scientific community display unwarranted intellectual arrogance on a topic they have no idea about. Rather than allowing the scientific method to speak for itself, they muzzle her and speak for her. Amazing to me how in breath, someone claims to look for signs of alien life in our solar system, but is unwilling to look right under their own nose. Seems to me a bit hypocritical.”
The question is how to manage such misinformation? Going forward, the obvious answer is transparency of government data and ending the secrecy. Also, it has been suggested that the term ‘UAP’ or ‘UFO’ is replaced with something that represents the genuine anomalous nature of the phenomenon and the observed technology, and by that, I mean the genuinely unidentifiable quality that separates the misidentified from the identifiable.
When the intelligence agents provided information to The New York Times last summer (2020), they used the term Advanced Aerospace Vehicles (AAV), which was quickly squashed by Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough to Swedish researcher Roger Glassel, who stated that AAV was not an official Navy term. Possibly correct, possibly it was the contractor BAASS that complied the Nimitz report for AATIP?
Regardless, in doing so, she was ensuring the conversation of AAV and the concept of unidentifiable craft stopped in its tracks. The Pentagon was not wanting to allow that unidentifiable ideology to exist under their ruling. Some said this was a strategic move, given that the U.S.S. Nimitz report released in 2018 by reporter George Knapp used the term AAV - shut down AAV, shut down the Nimitz report.
Additionally, AAV was a term associated with the contractors of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program as reported by The New York Times in July 2020.
“We were provided a series of unclassified slides showing that the program took this seriously enough to include it in numerous briefings. One slide says one of the program’s tasks was to “arrange for access to Data/reports/ materials from crash retrievals of A.A.V.’s,” or advanced aerospace vehicles. Our sources told us that “A.A.V.” does not refer to vehicles made in any country — not Russian or Chinese — but is used to mean technology in the realm of the truly unexplained. They also assure us that their briefings are based on facts, not belief.””
Thanks to the recent comments of former DNI Ratcliffe, the mainstream media has been aware that UAP are being taken seriously by the DOD with a report due to the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence (SSCI) in summer 2021. We are told that higher ups in the DOD are not happy with the thought of a report on UFOs being released to the public. However, with public pressure and people now knowing the UAP technology reality, that might prove disastrous should they try to cover it up at this point.
Senators Rubio and Warner have gone on record to verify the pilots reports stating that they do not know what is buzzing around nuclear strike groups. A very serious issue to national security, so much so that the Pentagon established a inter-agency Task Force that was created to investigate UAP and compile the much anticipated report to congress. As reported from some anonymous intelligence sources, the UAPTF are taking into consideration all possibilities. Even those which are laden with psychological stigma and pushback.
But with everything happening right now, we still need to be cautious. Not everyone is on the same page and not everyone is willing to accept UAP, UFO or AAV as a reality they wish to live in. The only possible way forward is transparency of data which will reduce the wriggle room for intellectual dishonesty. It all starts with ending UAP secrecy within society and government.
