US v UK: TWO COUNTRIES SEPARATED BY UAP POLICY
WHEN IT COMES to Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), there are major differences in information, official statements and policy on either sides of the North Atlantic. We can’t even use that old adage “two countries separated by a common language” when it comes to describing the enormous gulf between official American and British attitudes towards UAP. Britain appears to have no policy on the subject other than a flat denial that it actually exists in the first place.
Initiatives such as The Big Phone Home in America have been a great way of encouraging grass roots support for openness, transparency and extra information on the UAP subject. Contacting your local representatives with concerns regarding flight safety issues, incursions into military exercise areas and strange aerial platforms seen in the vicinity of sensitive civilian nuclear facilities does not mean you are suddenly wearing a tin-foil helmet. No-one has mentioned the word “aliens”. You don’t need to. Any politician worth his or her salt should take the above three items very seriously. One can bet that most, if not all of the civilian and military intelligence agencies will be. However, to someone living on the other side of the pond, the degree to which several prominent American politicians have put their views about UAP on the record is nothing short of astounding. Love him or loathe him because of the side of the political divide he sits on, Marco Rubio transcended partisan boundaries with a series of statements on the issue prior to the submission of the UAP Task Force’s Preliminary Assessment back in June 2021. Other colleagues in the American political establishment have expressed their concerns strongly and publicly. As more information regarding UAP is amassed, this can only continue. Things are looking up for those of us interested in finding out more about the phenomenon and the possibility of Disclosure within our lifetimes. Of course, like a lot of things, it depends on where you live.
The Gulf Between Us
Living in Britain, it has been simply jaw-dropping to watch events unfold in the UAP issue across in America since the release of the three now-infamous FLIR videos in December 2017, which rekindled people’s interest in the phenomenon around the world. Since that time, there appears to have been a steady stream of information, videos and commentary emanating from across the Atlantic, which reached its crescendo by the time the Preliminary Assessment appeared. One would love to look to our own government, our own elected politicians and the press for similar developments, plus more engagement with the British public on the UAP issue. After all, it appears to be something that is seen worldwide. However, given the House of Lords’ debate on UAP at the end of June 2021, the flat denial that any issue exists – at least within UK airspace – is troubling:
“The MoD has no plans to conduct its own report into UAP because, in over 50 years, no such reporting indicated the existence of any military threat
to the UK.”
Since very little comes out of the MOD regarding contemporary UAP sightings, especially those that may be encountered by our military personnel, it is either the case that a) nothing is actually occurring within UK airspace, b) the MOD have investigated the issue and found nothing of significance as they claim, or c) there is an ongoing issue, with policy being to conceal such details from the public. Let’s examine these options more closely.
Nothing To See Here, Move On
USS Nimitz (2004), USS Theodore D. Roosevelt (2015), USS Omaha (2019) – three major cases where UAP were sighted in close proximity to US Navy combat vessels, battle groups or embarked aircraft. Given the number of cases cited in the Preliminary Assessment, these three appear to only be the tip of the iceberg – at least as far as America is concerned. Of course, we do not know whether the UAP Task Force’s report covered incidents that involved naval vessels on deployment around the world, including inside British territorial waters, but it is probably safe to say that they are or will be included in future reporting.
I could simply leave a blank page here to demonstrate Britain’s contribution over the last twenty years. As far as the MOD are concerned, and therefore Her Majesty’s Government, there is no issue worth discussing. There have apparently been no incursions that constitute what the MOD call “matters of defence significance”, at least not prior to 30th June 2021. No cases have been announced, at least with any level of official confirmation, and no former military personnel have broke cover to confirm that cases have indeed taken place since the beginning of the new Millenium.
The Americans analyse and discuss FLIR videos, together with testimony from former aircrew such as Commander David Fravor, Lieutenant-Commander Alex Dietrich and Lieutenant-Commander Chad Underwood. They have witnesses statements from personnel manning radar systems and bridge watches, including Chief Petty Officer Kevin Day and Chief Master-at-Arms Sean Cahill. All of these people are credible individuals who saw something that defied attempts to explain it away in rational terms. Back in Britain, we have no FLIR videos that have been released, no David Fravors, no Sean Cahills and no Kevin Days.
Marco Rubio, Andre Carson, Tim Burchett – all of these people are current American politicians who have lifted their heads above the parapet to talk about UAP and how the issue should be investigated, if only to find out if there is a potential foreign adversary at work here. You can add former Deputy Secretaries for Defense such as David Norquist, who was responsible for establishing the UAP Task Force in December 2020, or former Directors of National Intelligence such as John Ratcliffe, both of whom have gone on the record. Even former President Barack Obama was recently quizzed on the UAP issue, and at one stage during his replies ditched the jokey responses, suggesting that his seriousness implied that there was more to it than his usual glib comebacks signified.
Looking at the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s utterances on UAP – well, there are none in the last year, certainly not in respect of the Task Force’s Preliminary Report. It is doubtful that he is even aware of it. You have to go back to the last Parliamentary election campaign in December 2019 to find any public UFO-related statements made by Johnson, and even that was a dismissive gesture:
“There are also photographs that purport to prove that there are UFOs.”
Look to the House of Commons for statements on the UAP issue and you will find none, at least not in the last twenty or thirty years. Such discussions are usually the stuff of late-night debates across in the “other place”, the House of Lords, where non-elected peers very occasionally ask questions about these matters, only to be fobbed off by the usual MOD line, as per the debate at the end of June 2021. A few Conservative and Labour peers did ask pertinent questions – Lord Sarfraz, Lord Coaker and Baroness Wilcox of Newport, for three, but they received nothing more than the standard boilerplate replies from the Minister of State, who seemed content in downplaying the issue to the point where it was completely meaningless. It is unlikely that anyone with interests beyond politics or UAP would have heard of the three non-elected members of the Lords who questioned the Minister.
Private Investigations: Dire Straits For UK Truth-Seekers
When the MOD trot out their usual “nothing within 50 years” mantra, they calmly forget two things. The first is that they did in fact investigate one particular case just over 31 years ago. Notwithstanding some of the weirdness surrounding the August 1990 Calvine case in terms of the witnesses, the manner in which the Daily Record declined to publish a story about the incident and passed the photographs taken of the object to the MOD without so much as a raised eyebrow, the powers-that-be did seriously look into the nature of whatever was spotted above a remote Highland glen one summer evening. It is known from archived UFO correspondence files released some years ago that requests were made to No.4 Squadron, RAF, to determine whether their Harriers were the aircraft captured in the same images as the unidentified object over Scotland. Dr. David Clarke has recently revealed that not only were the RAF questioned, but so were the Americans, with feelers being put out to see whether it “was one of theirs”.
That the case effectively ran into a brick wall many years ago in terms of information in the released files may indeed suggest that the MOD rapidly came to the conclusion, or were somehow informed through back-channels, that the Calvine object was indeed some sort of secret aerial platform being tested by the Americans. It would make a lot of sense. There are still elements of nagging doubt that linger about Calvine, given just how odd the whole affair with the Daily Record seems, but a known quantity in the form of a US “black project”, even if the MOD weren’t privy to all the details, would explain a lot. Whilst there might have been a bit of tension at high levels of the US-UK military interface due to the Americans thinking they could test something top secret over the wilds of Scotland without telling the Brits, it would have eventually been smoothed over. It would also have led those in the MOD who don’t believe in UAP or simply want the issue to go away, to think that solving this mystery on the quiet meant that UFOs/UAP didn’t really exist after all.
The second is the little-known Project Condign, commissioned in 1996. The MOD clearly sanctioned its creation, as the blurb they issue when anyone asks about it reads:
“During a policy review in 1996 into the handling of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sighting reports received by the Ministry of Defence, a study was undertaken to determine the potential value, if any, of such reports to Defence Intelligence. Consistent with Ministry of Defence policy, the available data was studied principally to ascertain whether there is any evidence of a threat to the UK, and secondly, should the opportunity arise, to identify any potential military technologies of interest.”
MOD FOIA website statement, May 2006, via The National Archives
And here lies another gulf between what happens in America and across here in Britain. Where are our equivalents of Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, or Luis Elizondo, former Director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Intelligence Program (AATIP)? Where are the people who had some – if not all – of the details regarding the scale of the issue regarding how it affects the UK? Who is working behind the scenes here to get a FLIR video taken from a Tornado or a Typhoon jet released into the public domain? Go on, stick your hand up, don’t be shy… The silence is deafening. Undoubtedly our military and intelligence personnel see, hear and read about things, but either they can’t or won’t talk about them, even long after they have left the service. The Official Secrets Act 1989 must cast a long shadow.
Clearly, neither the Calvine sighting nor Condign’s conclusions made anyone at Whitehall or the MOD question the decision to shut the “UFO Desk” down in 2009. It was the right call. Or was it?
We’re Still Good At Hiding Things
The fact that US Navy aircrew have continued to report encounters with UAP since November 2004 off both the East and West Coasts of America suggests that there is something of an ongoing problem, not just in terms of the phenomenon but also of Military Intelligence’s failure to understand just what is going on. Given the hints of similar incursions into sensitive areas and other sightings around the world, events which do not show any sign of reducing in number, then the UAP issue appears to have become a global problem – something that those studying this subject have known for many years. With reports coming in from around the globe, both by civilian and military witnesses, surely it cannot be that Britain has some sort of exemption when it comes to UAP? We may have cut some of our ties with Europe recently but have our political and military officials declared the country to be a UAP-Free Zone, and can actually enforce this?
Of course not. Unless UK research and development has suddenly developed some method of denying our airspace to UAP, then our military are likely as powerless as the US Navy in denying entry to the strange objects transiting their sensitive airspace at will. This, of course, presents the MOD with the same exact problem that the Department of Defense is currently facing. In the US, the Office of the Department of Naval Intelligence (ODNI) is actively working to pull together different agencies and military forces in search of what is behind UAP. The relevant portions of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 and H.R.4350 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 make interesting reading in terms of what the Americans are proposing.
Given the worldwide scale of the issue, Britain’s alignment with America on many issues, including defence, and the obvious desire to make sure both China and Russia do not have some kind of decisive technological leap over NATO in terms of reconnaissance and surveillance platforms, one would think that the MOD would be falling over themselves to come up with a similar research programme. It would dovetail nicely with American efforts and any other NATO nation that may have a similar desire to know just what is happening in their skies. It’s not as if we haven’t shared intelligence before. We did it all the time during the Cold War, and even before that, in the dark days of World War Two.
Publicly, at least, there is a deathly silence on the matter. The question was asked in the House of Lords debate as to whether the MOD had assessed the contents of the ODNI’s Preliminary Assessment into UAP:
“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, published on 25 June; and what data they hold on unidentified flying object sightings in the United Kingdom.” - Question from Lord Sarfraz, House of Lords debate, 30th June 2021
“My Lords, the Ministry of Defence notes the contents of the report. The department holds no reports on unidentified aerial phenomena but constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity and is confident in the existing measures in place to protect it.” - Answer from Baroness Goldie, Minister of State, MOD, House of Lords debate, 30th June 2021
“Noting the contents of the report” could mean many things, from a detailed line-by-line assessment and independent analysis of the ODNI’s report, down to a junior staff member being given it to file away somewhere – or anywhere in between. Usually, however, it is government-speak for “we know about it but we’re not going to take heed of it”. So have the MOD carried out any kind of analysis or assessment of UK UAP reports since Condign was published in 1996? That is a question those of us who study the phenomenon in the UK would love to have answered, at least in a manner beyond the old “50 years and nothing to see here” trope. Nick Pope’s old “UFO Desk” may be in an internal MOD museum somewhere, but it is likely that when RAF and Fleet Air Arm pilots report seeing strange items in UK airspace or over naval exercise areas in territorial waters, the information is sent somewhere. DI55 presumably still receives the juicy bits, as they’ve done for years – we all know that Nick Pope didn’t pull a Fox Mulder and go out into the field with an MOD badge to investigate UFOs. If it was done at all, someone else did – and most likely from DI55.
Remember, Britain practically invented the secret services. Queen Elizabeth had a huge nationwide spying network back in the 1580s, and the Secret Service Bureau was founded in 1909. If anyone knows how to effectively squirrel away something they don’t want anyone else to know about, it’s us.
We’re Not Playing Your Little Game
It’s clear that the Americans aren’t going to go it alone in terms of trying to get to the bottom of what is behind UAP. They have allies and friendly nations around the world who will fall over themselves in trying to earn Brownie points in helping the US work out what is going on. You’d think that would include their long-standing allies. And yet the UK has appeared hell-bent on actively rubbishing or even stymying past attempts relating to international co-operation on UFO matters and seems intent on doing the same today. There are rumours that the UK are trying to stop other countries from talking about the issue even now.
Just to add insult to injury, the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), HR 4350, which was already approved by the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, contained a 571-word section listing new obligations that the Department of Defense should adhere to in respect of UAP. Although HR 4350 had been approved by the House Armed Services Committee on 2nd September 2021, and by an almost unanimous vote, the bill’s text has only recently been released. The committee's requirements are not necessarily the same as those contained in the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act (S. 2610), approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence back in July. The two bills see slightly different approaches to the UAP issue: the wording of the House submission sees more detailed substantive requirements on a few points, but there is far less reporting back to Congress. It is even possible that the two bills will be merged somehow to create a single framework of requirements for data collection and analysis. Also, by the end of December 2022, HR.4360 stipulates that the Secretary of Defense has to submit an annual UAP report to no less than six congressional committees.
The Americans are clearly pushing ahead with plans to collect and analyse UAP data. Our military and intelligence services here in the UK still maintain there is nothing to see, let alone investigate. One might be forgiven for thinking that those of us living here in the UK have a mountain to climb when it comes to elected officials discussing UAP without dragging the patently ridiculous “50 year” mantra into the conversation.
The divide between us seems to be widening by the day.
At UAP Media UK, we would welcome the chance to hear from military personnel who have experienced UAPs in the UK, contact from politicians who are sympathetic to the issue without resorting to the current MOD line, and even former service or intelligence personnel who have stories to tell. Such people are out there, it’s just a question of them wishing to speak about UAP and finding us.
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