First off: A cursory examination revealed nothing in the information is positive proof of alien visitors from outer space or another planet, star, galaxy, reality, or dimension. The files, however, do record the US government’s effort to understand UAP; show a continued effort to defend the nation from an unknown technology or intelligence; and add to history solid information about a real phenomenon of unknown origin.

The reports include eyewitness reports of “The Impossible” from trustworthy and qualified observers, including military personnel, government employees and highly trained civilians who described observing unknown objects, apparently artificial in construction and under intelligent control. Today’s release also includes photographs and infrared images recorded above the United States and around the nations and oceans of the world.

Click here to visit the official Pentagon website: War.gov/UFO.

One truly remarkable event was detailed for the first time and highlighted among the files in today’s release. Listed on the War.gov/UFO site’s Page 16, the four files in the series are labeled “FBI SEPTEMBER 2023 SIGHTING.”

In the amazing report, several consultants, scientists and engineers were driving in a convoy of vehicles to work on a government LiDAR project in 2023. As they entered the test site in separate cars, a number individuals spotted a blindingly brilliant diamond-shaped light, stationary in the sky. Around the diamond was a faint ring.

The witnesses reported a 130-foot long shiny, copper, metallic-appearing object emerged from the brilliant light. For about 10 seconds, the thing hovered motionless adjacent to the light, emitted a light of its own, then instantly disappeared from view.

One of the witnesses reported on first seeing the object emotions of anger at someone flying a drone on a day when the area had been designated a no-fly zone. She told investigators that she was familiar with most of the drones in the US inventory and realized the object was not a drone.

The just-released official image (shown above) recreates the moment, fusing a photograph of the scene of the daytime sighting with a drawing of the object and phenomena by a talented FBI forensic artist.

The encounter’s location is an interesting for the phenomenon to present itself. LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a sophisticated remote sensing technology that uses pulsed laser light to measure distances precisely. Airborne platforms use LiDAR to create 3D models of the Earth’s surface. It also can be used to measure objects, areas and specific environments. This file is reminiscent of the reports from US Navy pilots who encountered UAP as they entered a restricted flight zone 300 miles offshore training areas, LiDAR has critically important military applications.

These significant new eyewitness accounts are recorded in the official FBI “302” files of witness reports and investigator observations. Politico reported in February 2025 that FBI agents assigned to the “UFO desk” worried the incoming administration would purge them and close their office.

Portions of these official documents remain redacted, including the identities of those involved. Readers can appreciate individual privacy and understand the hesitancy of people who recognize their reports in current coverage to go public.

That said, there’s a ton more solid, new and official information, as well as important historical records, such as the FBI files from the humanoids in Socorro in 1964 that would not hurt anyone to share with those interested in the history of the phenomenon. And the public was advised that additional tranches of UAP documents would be released in coming weeks. They show something “impossible” under our current understanding of matter, energy and information. The files also show that the US Government has made a sincere effort since its beginnings to chronicle, study and understand the phenomenon.

Usually, the Phenomenon appears as a relatively small object that stands out from the sky or clouds for some reason — as a bright shining light, or as a flash reflection, or from odd maneuvers as it travels across the sky. The experience typically lasts under 60 seconds — one minute.

Unless a camera is ready, even professional and dedicated amateur photographers usually won’t have sufficient time to get serious gear set up to photograph, film, tape or record digitally. The object also can appear so mesmerizing that it becomes difficult to take one’s eyes off it long enough to find a camera before the thing moves off. It is not impossible to get the image, however.

Images of Things Unknown

The Residium has detailed the historic images taken in 1950 by Paul and Evelyn Trent in McMinnville, Oregon; the amazing series by Almiro Baraúna, on assignment to the Navy of Brazil during the International Geophysical Year of 1958 off Trindade Island; and the remarkable Polaroid images created by Rex Heflin, a California government employee on official duty in 1965.

Their photographs are among the best images of UFOs in the public domain. The images have been judged by experts in photo analysis made in the manner the witnesses reported they took them. They show what the witnesses reported seeing. What’s more, although the subject of debunking by “experts” from the day each was published, the Trent, Baraúna and Heflin photographs have withstood the test of time — plus all attempts at duplication through trickery.

Be Prepared, Scout

If you are interested in the Phenomenon, be ready to use your camera. Most UAP sightings are of some thing that usually is far off, making for a picture of what appears as a teeny tiny dot set against the big sky.

Fortunately — photographically, if not socially — we today have the cell phone. While not on the same level optically or technically as pro gear, our smart phones are capable of recording and preserving something from the phenomenon experienced. And while it may not match exactly what was seen by eyewitnesses or recalled by human minds, the photo or file backs up a report with solid information.

Whether a cell phone or a professional Digital Single Lens Reflex, a photo can also provide data that human eyes may have missed — even in cases where the photo does not resemble what the witness remembered. And while a photographic image is not probative, it serves as evidence in support of eyewitnesses.

Think beforehand of what you need to do and practice, should the opportunity present itself to take a photo. Be familiar your camera and its operation, know how to adjust settings, such as a telephoto zoom function, and practice quickly getting your camera ready for the specific action. And stay calm, also easier said than done in such unusual circumstances.

Toward the goal of adding to what we know, I humbly submit a number of images I made of an odd thing I saw — and photographed — in 2023.

Weirdness Pictured

By way of background: The following occurred March 30, 2023 at about 6:21 p.m. EDST in suburban Detroit, Michigan. The camera used was a Canon 5DS with Canon EF 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 L II telephoto zoom lens set at 400mm, maximum magnification.

The large photograph shows the position of the waxing gibbous moon, estimated by eye about 40-degrees over the eastern horizon. The tiny object circled above is magnified to 100-percent (full pixel size on the full frame DSLR sensor) in the photo below.

I had been testing the lens’ autofocus system indoors and headed outside to test the lens on far-off subjects. I spotted a half-moon in a beautiful blue sky. As I looked through the viewfinder, I noticed a star-like object moving from the bottom of the frame toward the moon. It looked like one, sometimes two, tiny points of light, moving steadily up the frame, through the sky.

My first thought was, “Wow! An airplane is going to pass in front of the moon! What a shot!” Then, a second thought: “Wait a sec! That tiny thing must be the International Space Station! Holy cat, how lucky!”

Being near-sighted, I could not see the object with my naked eye. My camera has a built-in diopter that adjusts for my vision, enabling me to see sharply when viewing through the eyepiece. The same image that appears as a tiny point near the moon, and magnified full-size above, also appears in the sequence below: the second over in the first row.

A Stack of Balloons or Not a Stack of Balloons

As I watched and photographed the object, it reversed direction of travel and began to move “down frame,” away from the moon and toward the bottom of the frame. Oh, well, that ruled out the ISS and most air traffic.

Please note how the object seems to change from frame-to-frame, about second-to-second. In the third row, fifth image from the left, an object (unsure if it’s the same one) appears as a single “balloon” trailing a thin twin-tail. It appeared in only one frame, closer to the moon than images made immediately before or after.

Still, the thing “acted” weirdly, seeming to move smoothly for a moment, then quickly to another part of the sky. I tried to keep it in the viewfinder, but lost sight of it at least twice.

In my attempt to capture the image, I took many frames that did not show the object — only blue sky or sky with my neighbor’s home. I reacquired the object through the camera viewfinder and took the final images before again losing the object as it moved east, getting smaller. Eventually, I could not see it at all.

After getting indoors, I began to examine what I’d photographed using the camera’s 3.4-inch screen. At first, upon 100-percent magnifcation, I thought it was a cluster of balloons, similar to ones escaped from a birthday party I’d previously photographed passing by overhead (an example of which is seen at the top of this story).

Closer examination revealed the thing seemed to be a stack of spheres that could change shape, moving spheres and changing positions from image to image. Also, I thought the thing may be “jumping” from one part of the sky to another. In some images, the spheres seem to blur as they change position in the stack.

I still do not know what the object was. While I have photographed other odd objects in the skies, I had not seen anything like it before or since. I am familiar with hundreds of UFO photographs, and only remember one that captured something similar.

Dear Reader:

Please let me know your thoughts on this article, as well as the subject in general and the photos in particular. And please forward copies of images you have taken or that you would like to share. With your permission, of course, I would be honored to post them for discussion.

Thanks for reading. Take good care!

“My heart is breaking -- Nick (@nickpopemod) passed away this afternoon at our home,” she wrote. “The last few weeks of his life, even as he suffered, he managed to do a few interviews from home. I was so lucky to have met and to have married Nick. He was a wonderful husband. I loved him dearly.”

Mr. Pope had suffered from cancer of the esophagus. He was 60 years of age.

It is no exaggeration to write We the People of planet earth have lost one of the great minds investigating Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Mr. Pope was “expert” in the best sense of the word, providing factual information and honest analysis based on what he saw, learned and knew. His books include “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” “The Uninvited: An Expose on the Alien Abduction Phenomenon,” and “Encounter in Rendlesham Forest.”

In a career that began in service to the United Kingdom’s Department of Defense from 1985 to 2006, Mr. Pope investigated reports of UFO sightings to determine their nature and military significance. After leaving the “UFO desk,” he entered the field of ufology publicly.

Through his work, Mr. Pope helped elevate the subject of UFOs into a respectable field of study. He appeared on numerous “live” interviews on television and radio news, cable television, including the History Channel program, “Ancient Aliens,” on the innumerable and uncounted blogs of the Internet. Always, while keeping to the facts, Mr. Pope also kept the secrets entrusted to him by the DoD.

Through Hardship, to the Stars!

On February 12, 2026, Pope posted:

A Message From Nick Pope:

A while ago, following some digestive issues, I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Unfortunately, it's Stage 4 and has metastasized to my liver. While I know that it's kindness and hope that leads people to suggest healers and supposed miracle cures, and to say things like "fight it", and "you can beat it", I'm afraid my diagnosis and my situation leaves no doubt whatsoever: I can't beat it.

What an amazing adventure I've had! A 21-year career at the UK Ministry of Defence, where I got involved in subjects ranging from financial policy to counter-terrorism; from military policing to UAP. And I saved six cows; it's a long story! The things I've done; the places I've been; the people I've met; and the secrets I've been privy to. I wouldn't have swapped it for the world. And then a second career, where my previous government UAP role brought me to the attention of the world's media, leading me to become a regular commentator on TV news shows and documentaries, as well as consulting and acting as spokesperson on various UFO and alien-themed movies, TV series and video games. The media called me the real Fox Mulder!

The true highlight, of course, is life with my wonderful, beautiful and incredibly smart wife, Elizabeth. She's a real-life Agent Scully: a scientist, a skeptic and a redhead. We met randomly in the lobby bar of the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San José (she was an anthropology professor at San José State University) in October 2010 and got married 3 months later. We applied successfully for my Green Card and she had me shipped over and imported to the U.S., where a new adventure began, as Elizabeth and I enjoyed wildlife watching at our wonderful home in Tucson, desert hikes, film noir, true crime, country music, Sunday lunches with my in-laws, and much more besides. Recently, we had an amazing one-year adventure in New York City, living 5 minutes from Times Square, and having a wonderful view of the Empire State Building from our apartment window.

We proofread each other's books and articles (I love commas, hyphens and exclamation points way more than Elizabeth, and managed to win at least a few of those battles), and I'm supporting her in her ongoing fight for free speech, academic freedom, and keeping political correctness, superstition and identity politics out of science and academia. The White House Press Secretary Tweeted one of her recent newspaper articles, which shows the huge impact she's having.

I kept working for as long as I could (right up until last week), with my various film/TV interviews, conference appearances, and live events, including my position as moderator of Ancient Aliens Live - where I think I did 94 shows. Sadly, the time has come where I've had to step away from this work.

A lot of people have followed my work on UAP. I'm loath to use the word "fans", because I'm not a celebrity. But I am a public figure, and many people have followed me on my journey as I've sought to keep the UAP subject in the public eye, and to frame it as a defense, national security and safety of flight issue - as well as a fascinating science problem. Some of this work has been public knowledge, but some such work, of necessity, has been done behind the scenes. I hope I've helped move the needle forward. But most people, of course, know me through my media interviews and live events. To everyone who's followed me on my journey, thank you - and good luck with your own journeys. I wish you every success and happiness.

It's all been amazing, and I'm grateful for the things I've done, not mournful for the things that I won't now get to do.

Per Aspera Ad Astra!

Nick Pope, Tucson, Arizona, February 12, 2026 (Source)

Hey! What If?

In an article he wrote for BBC Sky at Night magazine, Mr. Pope asked “If we made contact with aliens, what would happen?”

“Contingency planners would probably regard finding alien life as a ‘low probability, high impact’ event, where even if the chances of it occurring are judged to be small, the consequences would be immense – and potentially catastrophic,” Mr. Pope wrote.

His are an excellent question and analysis, like all his public statements, based on what he knew, rather than what he was supposed to think. While we will never see another Nick Pope, we can do all we can to measure up to his example. Brought sadly to think of it, if anyone should know it was Nick Pope.

Dr. McCasland, 68, retired from the Air Force in 2013 after a distinguished 34-year career in which he led some of the most important scientific research and development facilities in the nation. He currently serves as technology director for Applied Technology Associates in Albuqueque.

Not So Routine Day

Susan McCaskill Wilkerson, Dr. McCasland’s spouse, also is a government physicist and a veteran USAF officer. Ms. Wilkerson saw her husband talking with a handyman who stopped by their home around 10:10 a.m. Mountain Savings Time. She then drove to a medical appointment . When she returned around noon, her husband was gone.

Susan Wilkerson called nearby friends and family to see if her husband had stopped in to visit with them. None had seen or heard from him. When Dr. McCasland had not returned by mid-afternoon, she reported him missing to police at 3:07 a.m.

Left behind were his prescription eyeglasses, cell phone and “wearable technology,” investigators reported. Missing from the home were his wallet and .38 caliber revolver with leather holster. The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office issued a “Silver Alert,” asking the public for support in locating a missing senior citizen.

Ms. Wilkerson told investigators that all seemed normal the morning of the disappearance. An avid outdoorsman, Dr. McCasland had no symptoms of illness or psychological distress, apart from reporting “brain fog” in recent days, police investigators reported Monday, March 17.

Dr. McCasland enjoys hiking, biking and exploring the wilderness near his home in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, an area with hundreds of miles of trails and challenging terrain and wildlife. Carrying a handgun for protection from dangerous wildlife and predators, particularly when hiking solo, can be a prudent thing to do. In normal circumstances, he wouldn’t leave his phone behind, needing it for communication and navigation.

After a week, searchers discovered a gray sweatshirt emblazoned with “Air Force” across the front and stylized wings on the back about 1-and-a-quarter miles east of the McCasland home. An investigator from the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office said the item did not appear familiar to Ms. Wilkerson or other family members, so it is not know what, if any, connection it has to Dr. McCasland’s disappearance.

A 1979 graduate of the Air Force Academy, Dr. McCasland earned his doctorate in astronautical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988. His dissertation, “Sensor and Actuator Selection for Fault-Tolerant Control of Flexible Structures,” examined the systems and practices for controlling satellites in orbit. Here’s how the Hertz Foundation, who helped support Maj. Gen. McCasland during his PhD research, describes him:

Retired Major General Neil McCasland is director of technology at Applied Technology Associates.

There, he is responsible for technology identification and development across the range of ATA competencies and applications, and sets the vision and strategy for technology development in participation with the directors of strategic development and business development.

Previously, Neil served for 35 years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, most recently as the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in the grade of Major General. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He was commissioned in 1979 after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a BS in astronautical engineering. Neil earned his PhD in astronautical engineering from the MIT, studying as a Hertz Fellow.

“Top Secret” Doesn’t Begin to Cover It Covertly

As an officer in the US armed forces, Maj. Gen. McCasland directed classified defense and space programs. In his career, he helped oversee and manage the U.S. Government’s most sensitive military and defense information. Dr. McCasland served as director of research at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Wright-Patterson AFB has played a central and recurring role in the official and public study of Unidentified Flying Objects, home to Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. And since 1947, Wright-Patterson, proponents of UFO lore and eyewitness testimony, the Air Force may have housed wreckage from a crashed flying saucer recovered from Roswell, New Mexico, about 200 miles to the southeast from the McCasland home in Albuquerque.

While her husband had consulted with civilian UFO researchers, Ms. Wilkerson said she believes there is no reason to connect her husband’s disappearance with UFOs or UAP. However, the knowledge Dr. McCasland possesses would be of interest to most any government on earth. Specializing in astronautical engineering and advanced weaponry and defensive technologies, his knowledge as an astronautical and defense engineer would be of interest to most any intelligence agency off earth, as well.

An Air Force Scientist Vanished in 2025

Such a person is rare and remarkable. However, Dr. McCasland is not the first of the nation’s important space scientists to mysteriously disappear.

On June 22, 2025, Monica Jacinto Reza, 60, an aerospace engineer specializing in materials for rocket engines, disappeared while hiking with a friend in the Los Angeles National Forest. Ms. Reza had worked on a project directed by Dr. McCasland at Los Angeles Air Force Base.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported Ms. Reza was last seen “hiking near the Mount Waterman area” with a friend on the morning of June 22, in the San Bernardino Mountains in the Angeles National Forest.

Her hiking partner told investigators that all seemed well. They were hiking on the trail and he was about 30 feet ahead of Ms. Reza. She had smiled at him when he turned around. When he next turned around to check on her progress a short time later, she was gone. His immediate search and searches organized subsequently found no trace of her.

Daniella Segura of The Sacramento Bee reported the story in June 2025: 60-year-old vanishes on mountain hike in forest, CA cops say. Now a frantic search.

Authorities investigating the two cases, as yet, have made no mention of a connection between the two cases. Journalists at News Nation, however, reported the possible link between Dr. McCasland and Ms. Reza early this week.

One More Point

In Ian Fleming’s novel, Goldfinger, the title character observed that the best leaders are always on guard for what may seem at first sight accidental: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Please know people like Dr. McCasland and Ms. Reza are most rare. “Rocket Scientist” does not do justice to their knowledge, experience and judgment. Extraordinary people like them, and ordinary people of any age, are not supposed to just vanish.

While there is no known connection between the disappearances, speculation runs from unknown health issues and a desire to go underground to bad actors and our nation’s adversaries to the mysterious and unknown intelligences behind UAP.

If Dr. McCasland and Ms. Reza have been taken by an intelligent person or agency, from this world or any another universe or realm, it is my hope they read the following words:

You have in your custody two truly remarkable people. Please treat them — and any others you may have — as the special and missed individuals they are and release them to safety. They are the kind people who work to change the world for the better.

Dr. Kitei’s photographs recorded what she sighted, as would additional photos and videotape made during UAP sightings two years later. She and her husband, also a physician, witnessed and chronicled a V-formation of lights over Phoenix on January 23, 1997 and then the spectacular statewide sightings of March 13, 1997.

Seven years later, she went public with her interests in the phenomenon. Her work helped preserve the testimony of hundreds of people who witnessed the phenomenon as it appeared over their city.

Here’s the story in the good doctor’s own words, from a 2017 interview with Mirelle Inglefield in Phoenix Magazine:

Both my husband (who is also a physician for over 40 years) and I are healthy skeptics. But we were also witnesses to extraordinary and advanced technology. Not only did I capture 35mm photos of oval orbs in a pyramid array just yards from our home in 1995, I also filmed a mile-wide formation of equidistant lights head-on [which then turned] into a V -shape in January 1997 – two months before the March 13 mass UFO events.

(This sighting was also witnessed by a group of air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor. As they described, “six points of equidistant lights appeared at 1,000 feet over Class B restricted airspace, turned as a unit against the wind, elevated in synchrony and then moved slowly behind South Mountain.” The same massive “object” was again reported in the same restricted airspace during the March 13 events.)

Even though I witnessed and photographed the anomalies up close and personal, I knew nothing about the topic and actually shied away from it. But when thousands of other Arizonans saw what I had been documenting and then I discovered that these phenomena have been gracing our skies globally since human records began, I needed to educate myself to what was going on. After seven years of compiling the most credible reports and data, I ended up with a 750-page journal that confirmed that we have been and are being visited by something not of our world.

It wasn’t an easy task to keep silent with all the credible info I was finding, but at the time the topic was too controversial and those who did come forward were ostracized and discredited. Ultimately, after much soul searching, I knew I couldn’t stick what I had compiled in a drawer. The data is just too important not to share. And since there is so much misinformation surrounding our extra-ordinary 1997 anomalous events, not only was it vital for me to set the record straight, but as a physician, I wanted to let others know that they are not crazy or alone.

“Pa, What Are Those Lights?“

Thousands in Arizona and Nevada reported sighting a massive, silent V-shaped object (or boomerang-shaped or triangle-shaped) pass slowly and silently overhead on Thursday, March 13, 1997. Later the same evening, witnesses reported a formation of stationary, orange-red lights over the mountains to the southwest of Phoenix metropolitan area.

As accident investigators and ufologists know, witness descriptions of the same event may vary. Perhaps the capabilities of the phenomenon include the ability to hide or disguise its true nature. Most people are well-intentioned, however, and describe what they experienced as they best remember.

Many eyewitnesses reported the lights were part of one large object, a solid V-shaped craft that “blocked out the stars” as it passed slowly over head. A number reported the object was more-shaped like an enormous carpenter’s square. Some also reported they were certain that the lights they saw were separate objects, or served as “thrusters” or rockets that propelled the enormous object or objects.

Many if not most witnesses estimated the lights or object that passed over Phoenix at more than one hundred yards across. Other witnesses estimated the object they saw was more than a mile across. Some estimated its size as more than three miles across, based on the distance between familiar points on the terrain underneath.

Private pilot and action film star Kurt Russell witnessed the lights as he approached Phoenix International Airport with his son. They reported what they saw on landing to the tower and FAA. IndieWire writer Michael Nordine asks: “Is there anything Kurt Russell can’t do?” in his excellent report.

A True Renaissance Woman

An accomplished physician with a booming practice in family medicine, a pioneering clinician specializing in medical education at the Arizona Heart Institute, and a former Hollywood and stage actor, Dr. Kitei is the very model of a modern woman of the Renaissance.

Based on reports to the US Air Force, Arizona police agencies, the UFO Reporting Network (UFORN), and the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), Dr. Kitei estimated about 20,000 people witnessed the phenomenon March 13, 1997.

Dr. Kitei’s own documentation includes 35-millimeter photographs and video footage of the phenomena she captured over three separate events. To her images, she has collected the photographs and videotapes taken from across the Phoenix metropolitan region, along with thousands of eyewitness reports from March 13, 1997.

To preserve the stories of witnesses, Dr. Kitei established the Phoenix Lights Network (PLN). Its website serves as a place to report and document individual eyewitness accounts, including those from pilots, police officers, and other witnesses. The PLN has chronicled more than 700 individual reports.

Dr. Kitei also continues the great American tradition of the Citizen-Scientist. Like Benjamin Franklin, who really did fly a kite during a thunderstorm to study electricity, Dr. Kitei bravely went against the taboo regarding interest in UFOs to learn and share what she found about the Phoenix Lights. She has written The Phoenix Lights: A Skeptic’s Discovery That We Are Not Alone and produced a film documentary, The Phoenix Lights.

As a medical doctor, practicing her art in modern Arizona, Kr. Kitei has seen and treated most all manner of illness and injury. She knows what she knows and she can tell when she sees something she doesn’t know. Over the coming years and decades, she thoroughly investigated what she and her family witnessed, analyzed eyewitness reports, and collected news articles and photographs chronicling the Phoenix Lights. Her conclusion: “We are not alone.”

However, at the time of the Phoenix Lights of 1997, Dr. Kitei had to keep her interest in the subject of UFOs and the Phoenix Lights to herself. The reason: the longstanding federal campaign — stretching from Roswell through Project Sign to Project Grudge to Project Blue Book to whatever name it goes by in the present day — to publicly ridicule those who discussed “flying saucers.”

Officially Droll

To help hammer disinformation home to the citizenry of what was not yet officially termed “The Homeland,” Arizona’s then-Governor Fife Symington called a press conference in 1997 to “defuse the situation” and prevent public panic over unidentified objects flying over his state’s capital city.

As they were about to discuss the Phoenix Lights and answer reporters’ questions, a figure costumed as a bug-eyed alien in a silvery space suit crashed the press conference, accompanied by a brace of Arizona state troopers. Gov. Symington unmasked the visitor, revealing his human chief of staff.

Governor Symington, who also served as an officer in the US Air Force Reserves, would corroborate the Phoenix Lights, stating publicly a decade later that he himself had witnessed the unidentified object pass overhead.

In an interview with journalist and author Leslie Kean , Gov. Symington stated his sighting March 13, 1997 was of something “otherworldly” that “defied logic.”

“It was absolutely breathtaking,” Gov. Symington told Ms. Kean. “I mean when I saw it, I said this is definitely a UFO. It was a geometric form with extremely bright lights on the leading edge. I have never seen anything like this in my life.”

“I’m a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies. It was bigger than anything that I’ve ever seen. It remains a great mystery... In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly.”

Today retired as a full colonel and an expert in advanced weaponry, Mr. Isbell kept the experience to himself for 45 years. Here’s the story in his own words, related to interviewers of UAP Files, minimally edited for clarity by The Residium:

“I had a red Corvette that I purchased after I got to England through the Army PX, the Air Force post exchange service, and I had it shipped over. And so, I’m driving my red Corvette home from the base to just south of the town of Bicester in a little area called Chesterton.

“…RAF Upper Heyford is about 12 miles north of Oxford, England. It’s in Oxfordshire, nestled in the Cotswolds – countryside with a lot of rolling hills. Beautiful place, beautiful. So, I’m headed home to my assigned base housing, which they had a small subdivision that was constructed for people who were assigned to the base to have a place to live.

“…On the way home, I was passing a golf course that I was familiar with, where I played on before, called the Bicester Golf Course. And it was a very small two-lane road and woodsy. And as I’m driving down that road, I noticed something in my rearview mirror. And it was all these changing colors of light and it was moving very rapidly toward my direction.

“But I could tell that it wasn’t down on the road. It was up above the trees. And like most golf courses, this one had some guard trees that were out along, you know, the edges. So that if somebody hit a stray ball, hopefully the trees would keep the ball in that park.

“So of course there were trees on the course but I was familiar with the place where when it zipped by me and it was going very, very fast. It just instantaneously stopped – doop! – when it went from fast zipping along to just stopped. And it’s completely stationary.

“That caught my attention, because there was no sound. It had these lights that were constantly changing around the bottom. It wasn’t like light bulbs that were blinking. The lights were blending into these various colors. So, in my mind, as as an engineer kind of guy, it reminded me of sort of an a plasma kind of effect along the bottom of the craft.

“The craft was triangular, but not pointed on the front. It was a little bit rounded on the front end; more pointed on the back ends. I only saw the side and bottom of the craft. (Col. Isbell estimated the object was about 40- to 50-feet in length).

“I guess it was up around 50 to 60-feet above the ground when I when it stopped there. So, I couldn’t see the front or the top of the craft. And it was a very dark night. But it caught my attention to the point that I stopped.

“Of course now I’m in an American vehicle. So, I’m driving on the left hand side of the vehicle. And and I’m driving in the left lane. There was no traffic. There were no other cars on the road. So, I pulled across the oncoming lane and pulled off the road on the side there next to the golf course.

“And I got out of my Corvette and I’m just standing there, staring at it. And you know, as part of our NATO training, we were required to memorize and instantly recognize all the types of threat aircraft from the Soviet Union that we might encounter — jets, helicopters — and to identify them as friend or foe. We had to know and identify all the NATO aircraft. We were regularly tested on that.

“And I’m just in shock because this is certainly not an aircraft. It has no wings. It had no visible means of propulsion. It had no helicopter blades. It was making no noise whatsoever. And of course, our jet fighters don’t stop instantly like that, because of the momentum and the inertia.

“So, I’m just puzzling (about its construction) as an engineer. I’m an aerospace engineer. How is it staying there stationary in the sky like that? And, of course, it was a bit of an ontological shock in the moment I realized, ‘No, this is not a craft of anything I’m familiar with.’ There was no real prosaic explanation for what it was.

“So, I was so curious. I walked around the back of my car and across the grass toward the tree line. And as I’m walking toward the craft, it reacted to me and it began to lower itself down toward the golf course. And at that point, suddenly, I’m back in reality.

“I’m probably 150-feet from it at that point. And, you know, the fighter pilot in me just wants to see if they’d let me hop in and take it for a spin. But the realistic fighter pilot in me said, ‘If anybody finds out that you’ve had a UFO sighting, if you tell a soul, your career is over before it’s, you know, just when it’s at the very, very beginning.’

“So, I quickly decided this is not a good idea to get closer to this craft. Plus, the plasma under it, I didn’t know what the effects would be if you got too close to that.

“As I say, that’s the only way I could define these rapidly changing colors underneath the craft. As they were kind of blending up on the sides a little bit, around from the bottom. So, anyway, I quickly said to myself, ‘Okay, nobody has seen you out here. Beat feet back to your car, get in, start it, and head to the house and don’t tell a soul.’

“And so I didn’t. For 45 years, I didn’t tell anybody.”

Col. Isbell is an extraordinary pilot with a 30-year career in the US Air Force, where he had flown in combat and then piloted almost every type of fighter, bomber, spy plane, along with most everything else in the U.S. inventory. He also served on active duty as a military test pilot and later as a test pilot instructor.

The encounter in the U.K. countryside was the first of a series of close encounters Col. Isbell would experience over his 26-year career. He first publicly shared his experiences involving the phenomenon in late 2025.

After hearing him tell this story, George Knapp, extraordinary journalist and ufologist, remarked to Col. Isbell: “They’re tracking you,” in regards to the encounter in the UK and several additional encounters over the course of his career.

“That spooked me out,” Col. Isbell said. “Who’s tracking me? What’s tracking me?”

Here’s the interview from the investigators at UAP Files.

When one of his recent interviewers asked why he didn’t report his encounter at the time it happened, Col. Isbell replied: “Pilots who reported UFOs would see their careers end. I decided to keep quiet about what I saw.”

Col. Isbell’s close encounter occurred on Friday, December 26, 1980, the first night of the series of close encounters that occurred at Rendlesham Forest, experiences chronicled by active duty US Air Force personnel, including Col. Charles I. Halt.

Fortunate for We the People of the United States that Col. Halt has stood by his report for more than four decades when denigrated by closed-minded skeptics. As a senior career officer of impeccable character and sterling service to his country, his word is as good as it gets. He stands behind his memo and memories to the present writing. As free citizens of the United States, we are fortunate Col. Halt remained in service to the nation as a member of the U.S. Air Force.

We the People also are fortunate that Col. Isbell remained in the military service. The fully-rated combat fighter pilot later became a leading experimental aircraft test pilot and then a test pilot instructor, a test pilot’s test pilot. After retirement from the flight line, he served as an aerospace engineer leading the development of new technology for the military — providing knowledge of how aircraft and technology behave at the cutting edge of science and performance for our side. Had he reported his UFO encounter, he likely would have had a very different career path.

Centered around neighboring Joint RAF-USAF Air Bases, RAF Bentwaters and two miles to the south, RAF Woodbridge, the broad spectrum of experiences and phenomena are collectively known today as the Rendlesham Forest Incident. The phenomenon left physical traces, was confirmed by radar, and exhibited a broad spectrum of phenomenological and psychic events.

Labeled “The Roswell of Britain,” the appellation is not fair to Rendlesham Forest or the people who lived these experiences. Active-duty military personnel reported numerous and varied unidentified flying objects and nocturnal lights, silent UFOs hovering over and scanning a top secret weapon storage area, and reports of a number of landings and close encounters.

At some of the events, witnesses reported missing time, conflicting memories of what was seen or present, and psychic or telepathic communication with possibly nonhuman entities — as well as between human witnesses themselves. Two airmen, independent of each other, reported they witnessed the apparent teleportation of a third enlisted man who had approached and touched a landed object.

“IT WAS NOT A CRASH. IT LANDED”

On the evening of Friday, December 26, 1980, two USAF airmen on guard patrol were ordered to investigate a light spotted over the woods neighboring RAF-USAF Joint Air Base Bentwaters. Thinking they were investigating a possible airplane crash, Staff Sergeant James Penniston and Airman First Class John Burroughs opened an auxiliary gate and drove into the forest to investigate. When they briefly climbed out of their vehicle, the atmosphere, they felt, was filled with “static electricity.”

What they felt and saw made the two airmen turn around and return to base to report. Calling from the first telephone they found, the two airmen informed their commander to report something unusual in the forest.

“We thought we were looking at a crashed aircraft, burning in the woods,” AFC Burroughs later reported. “It wasn’t a crash. It landed.”

SSgt. Penniston and AFC Burroughs, now joined by Airman Ed Cabansag, were sent back to Rendlesham Forest to investigate. Driving as far as the road allowed, they walked on foot into the woods and walked through a farm field toward an area illuminated by an object with multicolored lights. As they walked closer, they reported the object began to course toward them, suddenly vanished, and then a moment later silently reappeared behind them before again disappearing.

They airmen continued forward into the woods. Climbing over a small mound, they were surprised by a blast of light. When they could see, they faced some kind of light-emitting object, triangular in shape, about 10-feet long at the base and about 10-feet tall. One airman said he saw a metallic, triangular shaped craft. Another said the object looked like a disc hovering over the clearing. Whatever was floating or resting on three legs, it left impressions in the ground.

SSgt. Penniston and AFC Burroughs took notes and made drawings in their air police notebooks. SSgt. Penniston and Airman Cabansag reportedly took photographs on film cameras. SSgt. Penniston approached and touched the object.

“It was solid, as if built of metal,” Airman First Class John Burroughs said in one interview years later. “But it felt warm and smooth to the touch, like black glass. The ‘hieroglyphs,’ though, felt rough, like sand paper.”

Burroughs had touched what seemed like a number of symbols along one edge of the object. As he touched them, alight atop the craft suddenly became “sun-like” in brightness and made the surrounding wooded clearing as “bright as day.”

And then things got really weird. After which, the men returned to RAF Bentwaters and reported what they experienced.

Seeing What Is Not Supposed to Exist

The following evening, Col. Charles I. Halt, USAF (Ret.) heard the “UFOs had returned.” Then serving as deputy base commander of Joint RAF/USAF Base Bentwaters, Col. Halt personally led a team of Air Force personnel into the forest to investigate.

Here’s part of his official report, a memorandum composed about a week after the events (please click on the image to enlarge for readability), released about two years after the incident via FOIA request by ufologists:

A Surreal Experience

The Air Force team found indentations in the ground where the team the previous evening reported seeing the object touched down in a small clearing in the public forest. They measured significantly higher radiation on the ground and on the trees facing the landing spot. While there, they sighted a mysterious light, about the size and orange color of a basketball.

To help document the investigation, Col. Halt carried a micro-cassette tape recorder to capture much of what was said and seen during his foray the second evening. Excerpts in Col. Halt’s voice:

“It’s coming this way. It is definitely coming this way...Pieces of it are shooting off...There is no doubt about it. This is weird!

“OK, we’re looking at the thing. We’re probably about two to three hundred yards away. It looks like an eye winking at you. Still moving from side to side. And when you put the Starscope on it, it sort of has a hollow center. It’s... Yeah, like an eye.

“We see strange strobe-like flashes to the...rather sporadic, but there’s definitely something there. Some kind of phenomenon...”

NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, made the tape recording in a digital format here via Wikipedia. NICAP also made a transcript of the tape, available here.

One more important quote from Col. Halt to consider, made at 4 a.m.:

“One object still hovering over Woodbridge base at about five to ten degrees off the horizon, still moving erratic and similar lights and beaming down as earlier…This is unreal.”

A security forces airman at Joint Base Woodbridge would later report observing a “black triangle” while on guard duty at the sensitive Weapons Storage Area. As he watched, another object that appeared as a round or elliptical light passed over the area, scanning the weapons below with a beam of light similar to a laser, swinging the beam from side to side, as if conducting a search.

Ufologist Linda Moulton Howe later interviewed an anonymous airman, “Smith Jones,” stationed on guard duty at Joint Base Heywood — about 100 miles to the west — who on the same evening sighted a similar object searching the top secret weapons area. Around that time and place, Col. Dan “Tanna” Isbell was experiencing a close encounter with UAP, an event he would not share until 2025.

Ms. Howe also has conducted important interviews with many of the principals of Rendlesham, including Col. Halt, who in a press release dated June 25, 2009, wrote:

“I wish to make it perfectly clear that the UFOs that I saw were structured machines moving under intelligent control and operating beyond the realm of anything I have ever seen before or since. I believe the objects that I saw at close quarter were extraterrestrial in origin and that the security services of both the United States and England were and have been complicit in trying to subvert the significance of what occurred at Rendlesham by use of well-practiced methods of disinformation.”

As with much of ufology, much of this story seems absurd. What’s more, much if not most of the data, does not make sense with what we know about science and the universe. However, the character of witnesses to these events is impeccable in terms of professional qualifications and personal integrity. The extensive documentation they created describes a variety of unknown and unexplained phenomena.

The Rendlesham Forest Incident stands as one of the most important cases on record. Also important to note is the bravery of the witnesses who have spoken publicly as citizens in a democracy by reporting what they saw during their official duties.

“The Witnesses of Rendlesham Forest” and documentary filmmaker Richard Thomsen have created an excellent online record with the eyewitnesses reporting their experiences in their own words:

Mr. Thomsen provided an index of speakers:

00:00 Intro
02:35 Night one
02:42 John Burroughs
08:14 Jim Penniston
12:43 Richard Bertolino
17:20 Lindy Vaughn (Night one)
21:09 Night two
21:18 Lori Bouen
23:50 Lindy Vaughn (Night two)
26:14 RAF Upper Heyford
26:30 Smith Jones (*pseudonym)
29:08 Night three
29:26 Greg Battram
31:18 Monroe Nevels
33:54 Charles Halt
36:20 Michael Stacy Smith
38:00 Rick Bobo
41:18 Jim Carey
42:00 Ike Barker
43:24 Larry Warren
48:34 Adrian Bustinza
53:36 End

Background and Resources

What the witnesses of Rendlesham Forest experienced holds national security implications involving UFOs over the airspace of several NATO bases during the height of the Cold War — and the closing days of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The fact photographs, videotapes and other material records witnesses said they made have not been released via FOIA or leak is a public sign of its importance.

For those new to the Rendlesham Forest Incident, CUFOS, the Center for UFO Studies founded by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, provides a good overview and background in its resource: Classic UFO Cases. UFO Weekly also provides an excellent overview: “Unraveling the Rendlesham Forest UFO Incident.” BBC News provides additional context in its report: “Rendlesham Forest: Are we any closer to the truth 40 years on?”

UK ufologist Gary Heseltine, a veteran law enforcement officer and a veteran of the RAF, personally investigated the extraordinary case in detail, interviewing witnesses, visiting locations, and examining records at his own expense. Mr. Heseltine kindly shares the results of his four-year investigation in “Non-Human: The Rendlesham Forest UFO Incidents: 42 Years of Denial.”

Dr. Roberto Pinotti, PhD, is an accredited sociologist, a former officer in the Italian Air Force, and one of the world’s great UFO investigators. In his address to the Sol Foundation Symposium in October, Dr. Pinotti shared one of the most astonishing stories in UAP history. And it took place not too far from where we were gathered.

Dr. Pinotti related how on the morning of Tuesday, June 13, 1933, a metallic flying machine, about 30 feet across and ten feet tall, shaped something like a damaged bell, of unknown origin and unfamiliar design, coursed over the mountains and foothills of the Alps and crashed in a field near Magenta, a historic city about 15 miles west of Milan in northern Italy.

By 7:30 a.m., local time, the object and its wreckage were discovered, reported to local authorities, and soon became the subject of concern at the highest level of Italian government. The crash scene was secured and cordoned off by the local police and Carabinieri. The authorities issued a cover story to mollify, if not satisfy, some, if not most, of the curious, the same day.

Gabinetti RS/33

To oversee the investigation and security of the recovered object of unknown origin, il Duce Benito Mussolini created a body consisting of the brightest scientific minds and closest military officials. Termed “Gabinetti RS/33,” for Gabinetti di Ricerca Speciale 33, or Special Research Cabinet 33, the panel is reported to have included Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Prize winning scientist and inventor of the radio.

Initially, the investigators thought the object was an aircraft of German origin, about 30-feet in diameter and about 10-feet in height. German authorities are reported to have examined the wreckage and immediately determined it was neither their design or property. There was no immediate word about occupants, crew or survivors.

Dr. Pinotti reported the disk-shaped object was heavy and required specialized equipment for recovery and heavy trucks for transportation. The crashed object was eventually was lifted from the field in Magenta and crated off to a secure location, reportedly a secluded hangar on a remote military base under the auspices of the Italian Air Force and control of RS/33.

Today, some allege the senior Marconi, a devout Roman Catholic, also played an instrumental role prior to his death in 1937 of officially notifying the Holy See regarding the discovery and recovery of an object of apparent extraterrestrial origin. This unpublicized contact also helped prepare a path for securing the object with non-fascist hands before the approaching Second World War.

Italy maintained possession of the Magenta object through much of World War 2, reportedly inspiring aeronautical engineers in Italy and the other Axis powers, Dr. Pinotti reported. Sometime near the war’s end, Italy physically transferred the object itself to a secure location within the Holy See.

Thus, Pope Pius XI and his government in the Vatican prevented the object’s capture by Nazi Germany and post-war, the Soviet Union. Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton, then affiliated with the Office of Strategic Services, a US wartime intelligence agency and forerunner of the CIA, are reported to have played key roles in the Magenta object’s transfer to the contiguous United States in 1945. The object has rested in a cocoon of secrecy, under the auspices of unknown powers and agencies, ever since.

It bears mentioning for democracy that Mr. Dulles and Mr. Angleton also played important roles in recruiting and securing 1,600 Nazi scientists, including Hermann Oberth and Werner von Braun, and an unknown number of Nazi officers and spies, including Rheinhard Gehlen and Klaus Barbie, in the effort to contain the Soviet Union after the war. Of course, these Project PAPERCLIP “assets” were also put to use, many for better and too many for worse, later in the Cold War in the race to the moon and the socio-political-economic dominion of the planet Earth.

Important Documents from an Anonymous Sender

Backing up the story of the Magenta crash are three sets of documents sent anonymously in 1996 by mail to Dr. Pinotti, the editors of a popular newspaper, and to an independent journalist. The documents included a telegram from Mussolini and directed no mention of the crashed object in Magenta was to be repeated officially. Two other telegrams in the document batch mentioned the matter of a crashed object of unknown origin was being been taken most seriously at the highest levels of the Italian government. In addition, the documents included reports and drawings of other UFO encounters from pre-war Italy.

Dr. Pinotti submitted the documents for forensic analysis and received confirmation supporting the validity of the paperwork. Handwriting analysis was consistent with principals of the time, and analysis of the ink and paper were consistent with those from the 1930s and 1940s. For the record, in more recent years Guglielmo Marconi’s grandson confirmed the inventor of radio accepted the idea of extraterrestrial life as fact.

To see the documents, read their translation and learn more from Dr. Pinotti, I recommend a visit to the work archived by the team at The Black Vault: The UFO Files of Mussolini.

And there things stood. Dr. Roberto Pinotti shared a good story about a crashed flying saucer from the days before the term was generally known — in 1933 Fascist Italy, of all places.

For his trouble confirming the authenticity of the documents and affirming their contents, as best as possible, through the word of surviving relatives of the original principals, Dr. Pinotti attracted the attention of professional debunkers and their paid shills. As if singing from the same hymnal and page, a cry arose from journalists, historians, scientists and even a number of fellow ufologists to impugn his word, investigative and analytic abilities, but worst of all, good intentions.

The Reality

After years of rumors with no confirmation that this story was even true, two prominent figures involved in official UAP research on behalf of the US Government testified to the US Congress in support of Dr. Pinotti’s story of the Magenta UAP crash.

Mr. David Grusch is a physicist formerly employed by the US Air Force and, more recently, other unnamed government agencies as part of official task forces formed to investigate UAP. Mr. Grusch testified in 2023 to the Congress that he learned public United States agencies and private organizations and enterprises were in possession of several UFOs: crashed objects and landed vehicles of unknown manufacture and design. These include, Grusch testified, the object recovered in 1933 Magenta, Italy.

Read about Mr. Grusch and his testimony to Congress in PDF format: “We are not alone: The UFO whistleblower speaks.”

Separately, Dr. Harald Malmgren in an interview conducted with investigator Jesse Michel literally days before his death, confirmed the Magenta UFO crash story. Dr. Malmgren, a distinguished government economist and counsel, served in the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford.

UFO researcher Richard Dolan, historian and author of “UFOs and the National Security State” and other important works on the topic, provides an excellent overview of Dr. Malmgren’s career, work in UFOs and interview in a recent podcast:

Readers can hear Dr. Malmgren’s complete interview with researcher Jesse Michel in the following video:

The Big Picture

The discussion involves more than the story of a crashed saucer in pre-World War 2 Italy. The issue concerns money and power and new knowledge gained through the study of the UFO phenomenon. Much of this information has been sequestered by anonymous agents of the world’s superpowers, principally, it seems, those of the United States of America.

However, if ever there was a question for all humanity to consider and weigh in on, it is UAP — UFOs, flying saucers, little green men, unknown things falling from the sky — or whatever name people care to call a phenomenon that can apparently manipulate matter, energy, space and time in ways that we do not yet understand.

In addition to its potential new breakthroughs in science and engineering, the UAP issue is a question for all humanity and for democracy. Who controls what is learned should not be the exclusive purview of a secret agency or a cabal operating in the dark without oversight and outside the channels of legal responsibility. Crashed flying saucers and all they represent are the business of We the People.

• Discover the latest in UAP news and analysis,

• Encourage the public study of UAP as an emerging and important field of scientific study,

• Meet like-minded people to share what we know and wonder about UAP.

So, when Dr. Garry Nolan, PhD, a Stanford Medical School professor, genetic researcher and innovator, and Executive Director of the Board of Directors of the Sol Foundation, discussed the UAP experiences and associated data gathered by Jake Barber and his colleagues at Skywatcher Technologies, I knew this was the kind of presentation worth traveling 4,500 miles to hear.

Going from what I heard and the crowd’s reactions in the room and outside after, we weren’t disappointed. However, I, for one sure was surprised at what I learned.

It seemed too good to be true: Intentionally calling UAP to appear and summoning their presence into our reality. Yet, going by eyewitness reports, photographs and data compiled on sensors that include radar, it is true.

Skywatcher Calling

A 30-year a veteran of the US Air Force and other US Government agencies and offices, Mr. Barber described his service as a helicopter pilot and after active-duty, his work in the US intelligence community. Without violating any secrecy oaths, he told us his work included retrieving crashed vehicles and technology — foreign (“red bucket”), domestic (“blue bucket”), and other (“just plain other”).

About three years ago, Mr. Barber and Mr. James Fowler co-founded Skywatcher Technologies, a UAP investigation program. Dr. Nolan also is a member of the Skywatcher team.

In their conversation, Mr. Barber and Dr. Nolan said the Skywatcher team has developed proprietary methods to attract, record and interact with the UAP phenomenon, including the intelligence or intelligences — possibly alien and likely nonhuman — behind UAP.

The Skywatcher system includes what Mr. Barber called a “dog whistle,” implied more than described as a specially amplified electronic signal of unique frequency and power, and “neuro-meditators,” a human team of “psionic” specialists who use their conscious and unconscious minds to telepathically or through a state of meditation to “call and attract” UAP.

Whatever Skywatcher is doing, it’s working. Their interactions with UAP have yielded enough photographs to build a classification system based on appearance, movements and behavior. Some of the various types of object also create or leave particularly positive (benevolent) or negative (malevolent) impressions on the neuro-meditators, which is concerning considering history of the UAP field.

The image directly above shows a helicopter flown by members of the Skywatcher team and an unidentified object photographed by other members of Skywatcher from the ground. Mr. Barber shared that the crew on the chopper was unable to see or image the object from the air, even though they were directed within what appeared to be very close proximity by members of the ground team.

The inability to photograph UAP from the air has extended to all Skywatcher airborne UAP interceptions, Mr. Barber said. In addition, the UAP apparently interfered with the helicopter’s avionics, freezing the display of important information as noted in the image of the aircraft control panel above, at right.

For All Mankind

The success of the Skywatcher system has led to its planned expansion to promising locations across the United States. The information they gather, Barber and Nolan said, would be shared openly in order to advance understanding of UAP with the goal of improving the quality of life of all humanity on planet earth. The project is funded by an unspecified ratio of government contracts and private investment.

People who weren’t at the Sol Symposium can be forgiven for not knowing this important information about what is happening in our planet’s skies, on its lands and under its waters. For some reason, UAP news is not deemed worthy of consideration by many governments, newsrooms and the adults in leadership positions who should know about it (or them). Little of the UAP story — what amounts to world altering news — has made the national front pages or leading newscasts of US news media.

From A Secret Location in the Western USA to Somewhere Over Detroit

The image directly above left is an enlargement of the photo taken by Skywatcher team from the ground. Shared by Mr. Barber is his presentation, it was taken at a secret location in the Western United States, sometime over the past few years.

The image above on the right was taken January 12, 2024 in the sky somewhere over Detroit, Michigan. Its similarity to the Skywatcher may be noteworthy. Therefore, in the spirit of the Sol Foundation, I include it in this report.

The object from Detroit appeared as a tiny sparkle of light in the viewfinder, first noted while taking a photograph of the moon in a daytime sky. The image above shows the object as it appeared relative to the full image. The series of images from Detroit will be detailed in a future report for The Residium.

The Bottom Line

No sense in waiting for Uncle Sam, Agent Nick NATO, the US Air Force, Big Business, the International Court of Justice at The Hague, or global academia to ride in for our UAP investigative rescue. They are each busy doing their own thing when it comes to UAPs. Very low, if actually on their list of priorities, is informing the public about anything ground-breaking, let alone earth-shattering, they have found, discovered or learned.

We — the people at Skywatcher, the members of the Sol Foundation, and all others who are willing to stand up and face the phenomenon and its ramifications in public — are the ones who have to do the gritty detective work and all its associated heavy lifting when it comes to gathering reports, information, facts and data about UAP, UFO, USO, Flying Saucers and the phenomenon behind them.

We also must do our own investigation, analysis and discussion. Unless we do the work ourselves, UAP investigators will hear, in one form or another, the voice of David Byrne of Talking Heads singing Once in a Lifetime. “The same as it ever was. The same as it ever was.”

Byrne’s message would resonate as investigators and those interested in UAP seemingly continue to go over the same ground and argue the same facts, time and again, since the first modern UFO wave in 1947. The loop will not change until the free, open-minded, and willing people of planet earth get up and do something about it themselves and learn about UAP on our own.

Judging by what he shared with the audience at the recent Sol Foundation Symposium in Italy, Dr. Svozil’s pioneering approach and groundbreaking ideas just may get him to the stars. If we are fortunate, he will take us along on the adventure.

“Here we are in Italy, where the Enlightenment was born,” Dr. Svozil said in an address to the Sol Foundation. “Humans as a species have to know. We want to know. And we must know. So, command your eyes to look into the subject.”

Much of physics, especially theoretical quantum mechanics, takes place in the imagination. This includes finding ways of going to the stars, Dr. Svozil said. “I visualized breakfast here in Italy, lunch somewhere near the star Vega, and coming home for dinner with the family,” he said. Impossible to do now, but not necessarily so on another day.

Dr. Svozil is an honored professor emeritus of the Institute for Particle Physics at the Technical University of Vienna. He credited part of his investigative approach to Heinrich Hertz, the German physicist who proved the existence of electromagnetic radiation first proposed by English physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Hertz indicated in the preface to his classic work, “Principles of Mechanics,” the important role played by “pictures,” the mental and metaphorical constructs scientists develop when considering physical objects and theoretical concepts.

What Hertz mean by a “picture” is a scientific model that serves as a metaphorical picture of reality. The model-picture represents a theory’s hidden quantities and causal relationships through a system of symbolic representations. Hertz’s pictures are not a literal visual image but a mental and mathematical construct that scientists can use to better understand and predict natural phenomena, similar to how an artist creates a picture to represent an idea or object.

Typically, the pictures we see and can understand are just one step beyond what is currently understood, Dr. Svozil said. Yet, even if only one person understands a new picture, that understanding of the new concept can serve as a bridge to greater understanding. Shared by one and understood by a few at first, eventually all working in the field may come to accept the new picture as reflecting reality.

While he himself has never seen UAP or been contacted by a nonhuman intelligence, he added that he very much appreciates the reports of seemingly impossible actions often associated with the phenomena. Dr. Svozil said those who report UFOs and their actions may be providing “one picture beyond” the current state of scientific understanding.

Dr. Svozil said that he had tried, and failed, in certain areas. However, he is ready to try new avenues of research and promised to continue his theoretical work and intellectual pursuits, some of which have been inspired by the UFO phenomenon. He also refuses to limit his own quest for understanding by what others may think of his interests: “Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who was instrumental in the development of radar for air defense during the Battle of Britain, wrote: ‘If the scientists say it’s not possible, get me another set of scientists.’” Dr. Svozil said scientists today may need to take a similar approach in order to advance theoretical and experimental physics in order to understand what we today consider, “impossible.”

Dr. Svozil described how in quantum mechanics, the physics that describes the basic building blocks of matter and energy, there are equivalences that must be maintained. However, new ways of understanding and changing what today seem incontrovertible physical properties may be found tomorrow, including the elusive unification of Einstein’s General Relativity with Quantum Physics.

The doctor specifically mentioned the Higgs Boson, discovered at the nearby CERN Large Hadron Collider, which gives mass to the various subatomic particles that interact with its field. Some of Dr. Svozil’s own experiments have shown that there are ways to change a particle’s mass that may hold promise for one day creating an “inertia-less” state of matter, which might then yield new ways for traveling at light speed, or changing directions, accelerations that would seem to an observer instantaneous and today are considered impossible.

I wondered if Dr. Svozil had read the science fiction of E.E. “Doc” Smith, an American dentist with a remarkable talent for describing the amazing worlds in his imagination. His “Lensman” series of novels, derided or lauded (take your pick) as “space opera” when published in the late 1930s, included the idea of “inertialessness,” where the mass of spacecraft was reduced to zero. The Higgs Boson was not yet discovered and laser beams had yet to be invented, but Doc Smith put the ideas together to send his heroes on adventures across the galaxy.

Today, new avenues of speculation and novel approaches at experimentation may yet yield artificial ways of creating and utilizing wormholes, tunnels between black holes and white holes theorized to warp space and wrinkle time, that may allow a vehicle to “pop” into and out of our universe as the vehicle “skips” across various wormholes as it pops in and out traveling from one end of the cosmos to the other.

Please forgive any imperfections in the quotes and content above – I am going from written notes scratched down while trying to listen to one of the most fascinating lectures I have ever heard.

In addition to his scientific work, Dr. Svozil has written extensively on UAP and the possible physics that may be behind them. One important example is his 2023 work, “UFO: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Observations, Speculations, Explanations.” The inspiring work combines UFO history, quantum mechanics, and solid analysis.

So, while we await a transcript or videotape from the Sol Foundation of his talk Saturday, October 25, here are some of his ideas on UAP from 2023. At the time, the US Congress was convening public hearings on the topic featuring eyewitness testimony of US Navy pilots. The following quotes are in his own words, as shared in a pair of 2023 interviews by the German weekly news magazine, FOCUS:

What were your thoughts as a physicist when reading the descriptions of the witnesses Grusch, Graves, and Fravor?

During the hearing, the pilots mentioned several objects or phenomena they had observed themselves or that had been reported by many of their comrades: After being guided by radar to the point where his aircraft and the object had essentially “merged on the screen” and were no longer distinguishable, Commander Fravor saw “whitewater” (foaming water) beneath his aircraft in an otherwise calm ocean and under near-perfect weather conditions. This led him to suspect that a larger object was located just below the surface of the sea, and that the resulting shallow area was causing the water to foam at that point. He and others who were also present could not determine exactly what it was.

Immediately afterward, he saw a white, oval object darting around, which he likened to an enlarged Tic Tac candy from the Italian company Ferrero. Fravor described its movement as the twitching of a ping-pong ball, flying back and forth and seemingly changing direction without inertia. As he steered toward it, the object appeared to react to his maneuver, aligning its longitudinal axis with his aircraft, suddenly shooting toward him at tremendous speed, and then disappearing from his view, only to reappear a minute later at the secret rendezvous point about 100 km away. The foaming water had also vanished; the sea surface appeared undisturbed.

Another US Navy pilot, Ryan Graves, reported sightings of flying dark gray or black cubes inside transparent spheres, with the cube’s vertices or points touching the inside of the sphere. These objects remained motionless for extended periods (even in Category 4 hurricanes with winds exceeding 200 km/h), only to then zip away erratically and rapidly at supersonic speed.

My first reaction upon hearing these descriptions was: That’s impossible! Over time, the physicist in me raised his inner voice and whispered: “And what if we could change the inertia of objects or even reduce it completely to zero?” Inertia and mass go hand in hand. And according to our current understanding, the mass of, for example, atoms or airplanes consists primarily of the energy contained in the gluonic fields within the atomic nuclei; and to a lesser extent, in electromagnetic fields, and the mass that arises from spontaneous symmetry breaking by the so-called Higgs boson.

I proved very early on that if you “sandwich” an electron between circuit boards, for example, you reduce its electromagnetic radiation field and it becomes lighter. ( Source ) This effect is so small, however, that it is negligible, but still: the mass of a particle, and thus its inertia—its “resistance” to changes in motion—is reduced. Perhaps one could significantly reduce inertia by altering the mass-giving mechanisms, or even the vacuum itself? But these are, of course, just wild speculations.

Can we rule out terrestrial drones as a UAP explanation for the Tic Tac video?

Yes. What was seen had an excessively long flight time, no discernible propulsion or locomotion technology, sudden changes of direction, and was much too fast... and that was years ago, when there were hardly any drones!

What would Einstein have said if he had been able to follow the UAP hearing on July 26th?

Einstein was asked about the Washington Flyovers in 1952 and wrote: “These people saw something. What it is, I don’t know, and I’m not curious to know.” In that vein, I’d like to encourage you to research Einstein’s assistant, Shirley Wright. Very interesting stories.

Source: Top physicist assesses Grusch’s holography speculation on UAP maneuvers

About the expert

Karl Svozil is a theoretical physicist at TU Wien (Vienna) and a retired professor. His research interests lie in the fields of quantum mechanics and quantum logic, though he also enjoys exploring beyond the boundaries of these disciplines. He is particularly fascinated by the construction of spatial and temporal scales, as well as potential and speculative “breakaway technologies” that could overcome our conventional limitations. This curiosity has also led him to investigate UFOs and related phenomena.

More from Dr. Svozil in FOCUS:

How can the phenomenon of instantaneous acceleration without apparent inertia, as described in the draft legislation, be reconciled with our current physical models?

Our current understanding of inertia and mass does not allow for instantaneous changes in speed or direction. But we should be open to technologies that make this possible, even if we don’t yet understand how and why. The short history of physics teaches us that we constantly encounter new phenomena that challenge and expand our existing models.

How can UAPs, as described in the draft legislation, generate positive lift that contradicts known aerodynamic principles?

This could be explained by a phenomenon that might be called “antigravity,” although it does not exist within the framework of our current theory of gravity—Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This would be yet another example of a phenomenon that challenges our current understanding of physics.

Given the characteristics of UAPs described in the US bill, what do you think the underlying technology or physics of these phenomena might be?

Based on the current, established state of physics, we cannot know that. Depending on the expert, you will receive different answers; each will likely tell you what they are currently researching. I must warn against such quick explanations! We should first study these objects and patterns of movement with an open mind.

What could be demanded to get to the bottom of this phenomenon?

To better understand this phenomenon, we would need access to military signals such as radar data. Unfortunately, most “anomalous” radar signatures are simply filtered out and presumably forgotten. For such studies, one wouldn’t even need the presumably sensitive raw data, but could make do with “degraded” data, as was the case with GPS in the past. The military possesses potentially vast amounts of valuable signal data, which is inaccessible to civilians.

Source: Antigravity and transmedial transitions still defy our understanding of physics

Closing Thoughts from the Editor

Without the Sol Foundation Symposium, I might never have heard of Dr. Svozil and his important work. For some reason, his ideas and interest in UAP have largely been absent from American news media and its coverage of UAP and the UFO phenomenon. Thanks to the Sol Foundation, I now share with you, Dear Reader.

Here’s a link to “Top Gun vs. UFO,” in which The Residium discusses Commander David Fraver and his colleagues’ encounter with the phenomenon while on active duty as US Navy fighter pilots. Readers also may enjoy “The Real Impact of Surrealism,” which looks at the effect of the unbelievable on memory.

Based in San Francisco, California, the Sol Foundation’s third symposium attracted some of the world’s leading lights in ufology, as well as a good number of physicists, psychologists, social scientists, engineers, architects, investors and journalists who wanted to learn what’s what and who’s who. By my count, 23 UAP investigators shared their work in a series of presentations and discussions.

Speakers included astrophysicist Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, PhD., who discussed “The Hunt for Nonhuman Artifacts Near Earth” and her work on Transient Stellar Like Objects. Many of these transient events correlate with the rotation of earth, implying that they are objects positioned in earth orbit when they blink out as they enter the earth’s shadow. Stars don’t disappear like that. Satellites do. What’s remarkable is that the images were made by the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey five years before Sputnik. The transients also correlate with the 1952 flap over Washington, D.C. when UFOs appeared on the radar and over the nation’s Capitol.

Col. Karl Nell, (US Army, retired), contrasted the works of the “Five Good Roman Dictators” with the modern bureaucracies of the Western democracies in order to highlight the disappointing recent efforts to garner support in the US Congress for UAP Disclosure – the public revelation of top secret investigations by the CIA and US Air Force that stretch back at least 75 years. Col. Nell also discussed the importance of public awareness for getting movement by our elected representatives on an issue that impacts the lives of every human being on the planet.

Theoretical physicist Dr. Karl Svozil, professor emeritus of Technical University of Vienna, shared insight on “Stagnation in Physics, Inspiration from the Skies: Rethinking Science in the Age of UAP.” While he described uthe century long impasse between Einstein’s Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, he explained that we are beginning to see a new picture developing — one based on the scientific method and stirred by the apparent actions and possible technologies — associated with UAP.

This was just part of Saturday, the first full day of the symposium. That afternoon heard Dr. Jacques Vallée discuss his peer-reviewed scientific paper on an apparent UFO that irradiated a stand of trees in northern Louisiana, “Estimates of radiative energy values in ground-level observations of an unidentified aerial phenomenon: New physical data,” in 1966. The work was co-authored by Luc Dini, who also presented at the Sol Foundation Symposium, and Geoffrey Mestchersky. Click here for an article preview.

Dr. Vallee’s paper, here in PDF format, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Strategy for Research,” submitted to the French Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), and their UFO study group, GEIPAN, could have been the blueprint for what I saw unfold in Baveno.

In his seminal 1979 work, “Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults,” Dr. Vallée asked: “Where are the UFO detectives?” Had I the chance, I would have let him know: “Well, doctor, look around you — the UFO detectives are here. And all of them in attendance are here in large part due to your pioneering work, Herculean drive, and saintly patience as the scientific world caught up to that you and your colleagues like Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Dr. James E. McDonald saw decades ago.”

The Residium posted a profile on Dr. Vallée and his work earlier this year, “Jacques Vallee: Information Scientist.”

My Aim and Warning

Over the coming weeks, I hope to detail as many of their presentations as possible, as well as the contributions made by other participants at this extraordinary conference. Of course, I will also freely provide my own 2-cents of personal observations and analysis, openly and clearly so-marked, based on more than 60 years following the subject of flying saucers, UFO and now UAP.

First, though, I must warn readers of The Residium and participants in the Sol Symposium alike – especially those who may feel they are being drawn quickly, as if irresistibly – into the “UFO Community.” Please remember and be aware that some, if not many, of the actors are not who or what they say they are. By that I mean that some are agents representing government, corporate, and private interests who do not necessarily share a commitment to democracy, open discussion of cutting edge ideas, or the well-being of participants in the study of UAP in their individual agendas.

The field is full of truly remarkable people and amazing information, as well as frightening facts and implications, and a big number of disinformation professionals. So, keep your cards close to your vest, be mindful with whom you share, and at all times remember that your critical faculties — your conscious and unconscious mind, your memories and feelings, and your reasoning and intellectual talents and abilities — are what matter most in all of this study.

One who has fallen afoul of insidious players was featured in the closing discussion of the conference: Mr. Jeffrey Nuccetelli. A retired US Air Force military police officer, Mr. Nuccetelli broke the official silence as a “whistleblower” in order to brief the US Congress on five UAP encounters with which he was involved officially at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Please click here to read Mr. Nuccetelli’s testimony to Congress in PDF format.

Mr. Nuccetelli and several of his colleagues who have gone public with their experiences have been targeted for silencing, often bullied through physical intimidation and threats to themselves and their families, been fired from their civilian jobs and otherwise ostracized simply for telling the truth to Congress about what they experienced while on duty — UAP near some of the most sensitive military installations and hardware in the US inventory.

An Addendum

Located in Southern California, Vandenberg AFB, where Jeffrey Nuccetelli was stationed during a series of encounters with UAP, is the site of many historic and interesting UFO encounters.

New readers may enjoy The Residium’s “The Vandenberg UFO Incident,” featuring the extraordinary experience of US Air Force officers, 1st Lt. Robert Jacobs and Maj. Florence J. Mansmann, Jr., who saw what looked like a flying saucer toppled an Atlas ICBM in flight in 1964.

In the lead was one crescent-shaped and apparently metallic object. It was followed by a string of eight shiny objects that seemed to be shaped somewhat like the heel of man’s shoe as seen from above, but thin and resembling a disc when viewed in profile.

The objects seemed to move through the sky “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water,” Mr. Arnold was quoted as saying. He also said the objects seemed to move in a coordinated matter, perhaps linked by radio control, as he watched them bob and swing together “like the tail of a kite.”

The date was June 24, 1947. While he never mentioned the phrase, “flying saucer,” in his initial interview, reporters and editors around planet earth did. Russell Lee of the The National Air and Space Museum detailed the episode: Newspapermen took the words of Kenneth Arnold and a historic phrase was born.

The phrase “Flying Saucer” also created a sensation and helped popularize the idea that is was possible for beings from other worlds to visit the earth. In fact, the summer of 1947 was a time when many people across the United States sighted what seemed like remarkable and unknown objects flying through the skies. Their number includes several who reported UAP before Mr. Arnold.

The Original

Kenneth Arnold’s report, however, is not the first time the term “saucer” had been used in newsprint to describe a mysterious traveler crossing the sky overhead. That distinction goes to the writers and editors of the The Dennison Daily News of Dennison, Texas, who published what farmer John Martin reported seeing cross over his head near his farm, about 80 miles north of Dallas, near the border with Oklahoma on January 22, 1878.

The sighting was reported under the headline, “A Strange Phenomena” in the Denison Daily News of January 25, 1878. Ufologist B. J. Booth of the UFO Casebook provides an excellent transcription of the article and important analysis of the episode. (The Residium broke up the article, reproduced below, into paragraphs for improved readability.)

From Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this city, we learn the following strange story:

Tuesday morning while out hunting, his attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky.

The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eyes to discover its character.

When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size.

After gazing at it for some time Mr. Martin became blind from long looking, and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes.

On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed.

When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height.

Mr. Martin thought it resembled, as well as he could judge at such a distance, a balloon, which seemed to him to be the most reasonable solution of the strange phenomena, though he is of the opinion that it was possibly some of the heavenly bodies.

It went as rapidly as it had come, and was soon lost to sight in the southern sky.

Mr. Martin is a gentleman of undoubted veracity, and this strange occurrence, if it was not a balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists. — Dallas Herald

Above from The UFO Casebook.

The 1878 Denison Daily News headline also marks the first time a flying saucer was classified as a “phenomenon,” albeit a “strange” one, pre-dating the introduction of the term to describe UAP — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena— by about 145 years.

Please know, Dear Reader, the editor of The Residium only knows about this report due to the work of author John Spencer, of BUFORA, the British UFO Research Association, who described the report in his “UFO Encyclopedia” published in 1993.

Notes that Last

After decades of public fame and its associated notoriety, along with abuse from the more uninformed members of the public, Mr. Arnold said: “If I ever saw a ten story building flying through the air, I would never say a word about it.”

Going from how the public often treats those who tell the truth, I don’t blame him for feeling that way. And while I still don’t know what UFOs are, or what Mr. Arnold saw flying over the Cascade Range of Washington that day, I am most grateful he decided to share what he saw. Like a good public education, learning from other people saves one a truly great amount of time.

My appreciation also goes to the hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of witnesses who have braved to step forward and report what they experienced in just the 73 years since Kenneth Arnold. Led by farmer John Martin 147 years ago, they have opened a new universe for us to explore.

From the infrared camera footage, the missile did not explode when it struck the UAP, bouncing off the target and continuing on an altered course. The UAP appeared to flutter and change course on impact. The object continued on its course, accompanied by three pieces evidently knocked from it and able to continue following the larger object by means unknown.

The missile/UAP encounter was the visual highlight from a Congressional hearing on UAP transparency and protecting whistleblowers. From the House of Representatives:

The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held a hearing today titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection.” During the hearing, members heard from witnesses on continued concerns regarding disclosure of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) and information held by federal agencies. Members examined transparency issues within the federal government’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and the intelligence community. Members also analyzed ways Congress can better protect whistleblowers who come forward with information on UAPs. Source w/links and details.

Here’s the video, courtesy Space.com:

Personally, I don’t believe firing an armed warhead at unknown aerial phenomena is a smart thing to do. Two individuals whose expertise I respect provide their perspectives and analyses.

Astrophysicist Avi Loeb, director of the Galileo Project, says the UAP itself may be military drone, possibly controlled by Houthi rebels in Yemen. The video may have recorded the collision and fins from the missile may have continued in flight, drawn along by the damaged drone. Click here for a complete analysis from Dr. Loeb, who readers will note looks first for a most-likely, terrestrial explanation.

Writer and ufologist Marik von Rennenkampff says the tape evidently records the moment a UFO took a direct hit from a missile in flight — and kept on moving through the atmosphere by unknown means, followed by three apparently similar pieces. While a more exotic interpretation, the objects did behave in extraordinary ways following impact. The following offers a detailed explanation from Mr. von Rennenkampff and the SOL Foundation.

Here’s a blow-up on the objects from a screen grab.

The various shades from white to black represent different temperature levels as recorded by infrared camera. To my eye, the three trailing objects are from the original UAP. In Mr. von Rennenkampf’s detailed analysis, the objects have even more unusual properties.

Democracy Depends on Truth

It seems an excellent idea to let the American public in on what Uncle Sam knows about UFOs, perhaps excepting under Congressional review that which impacts national security. Unless it was a threat, firing a warhead at a UFO traveling through a war zone does not seem like a good thing to do.

One thing I know is a good idea: the Congressional hearing featuring the UAP Hellfire recording is important. It marks the continuation of efforts by Congress and ufologists to shed light on federal departments, agencies and the archives for public study of the phenomenon. That is real progress for those of use who have followed the phenomenon for decades.

Thanks to brave members of Congress and a number of patriotic whistleblowers, today We the People know a bit more. Who knows? With luck, we may actually see sound, scientific and public awareness applied to study a mysterious phenomenon that impacts humanity in innumerable and important ways.

The teams had started the second half when the referee whistled play to a halt at about 20 past 2 to assess a penalty against a Fiorentina player. The jeering and cheering in the stadium quickly quieted into an eerie silence as players, coaches, medical staff and the other good people at the game looked up with astonishment.

In the sky above, something unusual appeared and put on a show. Some witnesses reported seeing one egg-shaped object moving slowly across the sky. Others reported several similar objects hovering and darting about. Others reported several objects of many types, some shaped like “Cuban cigars” and others resembling spheres or eggs, frolicking in the sky above the stadium.

News reports indicated the referee stopped play for 15 minutes. Then, the objects departed as mysteriously as they had arrived. After the aerial show was gone, many in the stadium reported a fall of “angel hair” — described by one there as a silvery, fibrous substance, like “wet string,” that fell from the sky.

The local and national papers ran two photographs of the phenomenon taken that day from the stadium. Ufologists report that, apart from the versions published in the newspapers, the original photos are no longer available for study.

Here’s more on the story from a feature article in the BBC News Magazine:

Excerpt…

One of the footballers on the pitch was Ardico Magnini - he was something of a legend at the club and had played for Italy at the 1954 World Cup.

“I remember everything from A to Z,” he says. “It was something that looked like an egg that was moving slowly, slowly, slowly. Everyone was looking up and also there was some glitter coming down from the sky, silver glitter.

“We were astonished we had never seen anything like it before. We were absolutely shocked.”

Play was suspended because spectators saw something in the sky, according to the referee’s match report.

Among the crowd was Gigi Boni, a lifelong Fiorentina fan. “I remember clearly seeing this incredible sight,” he says. His description of multiple objects differs slightly from Magnini’s.

“They were moving very fast and then they just stopped. It all lasted a couple of minutes. I would like to describe them as being like Cuban cigars. They just reminded me of Cuban cigars, in the way they looked.”

Boni has spent many years reliving that day in his mind. “I think they were extra-terrestrial. That's what I believe, and there's no other explanation I can give myself.”

Another of the players, Romolo Tuci, still sprightly in his 70s, agrees. “In those years everybody was talking about aliens, everybody was talking UFOs and we had the experience, we saw them, we saw them directly, for real.”

The incident at the stadium cannot simply be interpreted as mass hysteria — there were numerous UFO sightings in many towns across Tuscany that day and over the days that followed. According to some eyewitness accounts a ray of white light was seen in the sky coming from Prato, north of Florence.

Another man who relishes the chance to speak about that day is Roberto Pinotti, the president of Italy’s National UFO Centre, external. He has written many books about UFOs and his home in the centre of Florence is stuffed full of alien memorabilia, posters of old Italian B-movies, framed newspaper articles and black-and-white photographs of blurry flying saucers.

“The players and the public were stunned seeing these objects above the stadium,” Pinotti says.

“At the time the newspapers spoke of aliens from Mars. Of course now we know that is not so — but we may conclude that it was an intelligent phenomenon, a technological phenomenon and a phenomenon that cannot be linked with anything we know on Earth.”

He’s also intrigued by the material that fell from the sky — what Magnini describes as silver glitter.

“It is a fact that at the same time the UFOs were seen over Florence there was a strange, sticky substance falling from above. In English we call this ‘angel hair’,” says Pinotti.

“The only problem is after a short period of time it disintegrates.” As a 10-year-old-boy he witnessed this phenomenon himself. “I remember, in broad daylight, seeing the roofs of the houses in Florence covered in this white substance for one hour and, like snow, it just evaporated.

“No-one knows what this strange substance has to do with UFOs.”

Variously described by witnesses as similar to cotton wool or cobwebs, the substance was hard to collect because it disintegrated on contact - but some people were determined to find out what it was.

One of them was a journalist at the Florentine newspaper La Nazione, the late Giorgio Batini. In 2003 he told an Italian television programme, Voyager, how on that day he received hundreds of phone calls about the sightings. From the offices of La Nazione in the centre of town his own view of the sky was blocked by the Cathedral, so he went up to the top of the newspaper's building to see what everyone was talking about. The 81-year-old recalled seeing “shiny balls” moving fast towards the dome of the Cathedral.

Batini ventured out to investigate. He came across a wood outside the city that was covered in the white fluff. He gathered several samples by rolling them up on a matchstick, and took them to the Institute of Chemical Analysis at the University of Florence. When he got there he found that others had done the same.

The lab, led by respected scientist Prof Giovanni Canneri, subjected the material to spectrographic analysis and concluded that it contained the elements boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium, and that it was not radioactive. Unfortunately this did not provide any conclusive answers — and the material was destroyed in the process.

Continues...

Click here for the complete story from BBC News Magazine.

Internet historian “Trattoriazaza” wrote:

It was not easy to collect samples (a journalist, at the stadium, put it in a box of Turmak cigarettes), which were sent to the laboratory and analyzed. It emerged that the substance was composed of boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium. It was Professor Giovanni Casseri of the Institute of Analytical Chemistry who announced this discovery.

“It looked like wet string,” one eyewitness reported. Chemical analysis showed it was anything but.

Brian Boldman of NICAP, who investigated a number of “UFO Angel Hair” cases, including Florence, reported:

“Engineering student Alfredo Jacopozzi collected samples in a jar and took it to Professor Cozzi at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Florence for analysis . . . the substance contained such known elements as boron, silicon, magnesium and calcium…

“While it is true that correlation does not prove causation, the evidence seems overwhelming that angel-hair cases are indeed related to genuine UFOs, and provides more evidence of their reality. Both UFOs and angel hair deserve the serious attention of the scientific community. ”

Source: https://www.nicap.org/articles/IURV26No3.htm

UFO Flap of 1953-54: France and Northern Italy

The UAP witnessed by 10,000 people in broad daylight may be the largest multiple witness sighting of UAP. The event happened during the height of a great wave of sightings occurring across Eastern France and Northern Italy in 1953-1954.

Perhaps due to the colloquial nature of the US press, but this historic sighting is unknown to almost all Americans. It should be big news and now, almost 71 years later, important history.

Something else those interested in space, science, technology, math, history, truth, exploration, adventure and soccer may want to remember or learn:

Florence, Italy — where the Renaissance, where classical ideals in the arts and sciences were rekindled, where genius was celebrated, where the modern world sprang — would almost five centuries later be visited by something strange from the unknown. While who they are or what they want is still unknown, they left a most unusual calling card.

At the time, the event was called the most photographed and videotaped celestial happening in human history. It also represented one of the most thoroughly recorded UFO events of all time. At least 17 independent videographers and photographers filmed an unidentified object (or very similar objects) from 17 locations throughout the federal district and neighboring states.

Videos taken by observers from locations as far as 80 miles apart on the ground during the eclipse seem to show a solid metallic object with a dark base hovering in the sky, just under the cloud layer. One extraordinary video seems to show the teleportation of the object from one point in space to another — visible as a streak (including sun reflection off of what seems like a metallic surface) quickly moving from one point to another across the screen (sensor).

See for yourself in the following compilation of various images and tapes, including interviews, news and archival footage from numerous and sundry sources, compiled and shared by “Eyes On Cinema”:

Journalist and ufologist Jaime Maussan helped bring the event to the attention of the people of Mexico via the national television program, “60 Minutos.” While the case gained much notice around the world, the story did not garner the attention it merited in the United States among ufologists.

In the decades since, Mr. Maussan has continued to follow the UFO phenomenon. He has gained notoriety among some journalists and many skeptics for, way back in the 1970s proposing the photographs and encounters reported by Swiss contactee Billy Meier could be legitimate; and in 2023 proposing to the Mexican government that odd mummified remains from Peru could be extraterrestrial in origin. Going from what has happened to many prominent investigators and proponents of UAP in the USA, let alone the absurd nature of the phenomena itself, a talented investigator may have hoodwinked by professional-quality disinformation.

It is my hope that more people will discover and share this report about the UFOs over Mexico City during the total solar eclipse of 1991. Despite its near-total absence from memory in the United States, the tapes and photographs captured that amazing day contain mountains of data.

The image above and at the top of the page show the solar prominences revealed during totality and the “diamond ring effect” near the end of totality during the total solar eclipse of 2017. Taken by the author and members of his family from a mountainside in the western USA, the image captured some of the first rays of sunlight as they shot through the valleys and lowlands along the lunar rim.

The encounters with UAP over the Saturday-Sunday nights of July 19-20 and July 26-27 also created a firestorm in the nation’s news media. A large part of the public feared of alien invasion or accidental interplanetary war. Perhaps an equally large part thought the nation was in the grips of mass psychosis. And an unknown number of Americans then believed the Soviet Union might be operating a new secret weapon over the Capitol of the United States of America.

Here’s what happened the second weekend, via Mr. Francis Ridge of NICAP:

At 9:08 PM on the 26th of July, the UFOs once-again descended on the Nation’s Capitol. It was a repeat performance. The same controllers tracked them, Andrews Field & Washington National confirmed the maneuvers, pinpointing them simultaneously at places where lighted objects were reported by airline pilots. And again, the jet interceptors were delayed in getting to the scene. But this time when the fighters arrived some UFOs were still in sight. Lt. William Patterson tried to chase one of them at 600 mph, but it quickly left him behind.

This time, Washington National's radar room had some extra visitors. The Pentagon’s ACE UFO investigator, Major Dewey Fournet, was there; along with Albert M. Chop (Air Force Press Desk) and a Lieutenant Holcomb (radar specialist). Reporters and photographers were asked to leave the radar room on the pretext that classified radio frequencies and procedures were being used in vectoring the interceptors. ([Edward J.] Ruppelt, himself, said that the reason the press was cleared out, was that not a few people in the radar room were positive that this night might be the big night in UFO history - the night when a pilot would close in on and get a better look at a UFO - and they didn’t want the press to be in on it). Nowhere have I found any mention of Air Force, radar or tower personnel, or civilian press, taking pictures of the UFOs. All civilian traffic was cleared out of the area and the jets moved in.

By 12:30 AM, 4-5 of the targets were continually being tracked at all times, so once again a call went out for jet interceptors from Newcastle County AFB. By midnight two F-94’s were airborne and headed south. But just as the jets arrived, the targets disappeared! The jets returned to base.

A few minutes later, the UFOs were back on the scopes in that same area. At one point, a few minutes after the objects left the radarscopes in Washington people in the area around Langley AFB near Newport News, Virginia, began to call Langley Tower to report weird lights that were “rotating and giving off alternating colors”. The tower also saw the lights and called for an interceptor. The jet was in the area for several minutes and got some visual and radar lock-ons, but had them broken within a few seconds. A few minutes after the F-94 over Newport News had the last lock-on broken, the targets came back on the scopes at Washington National!!! The controllers called the Air Defense Command again and two F-94’s roared south toward Washington. This time the targets stayed on the scopes when the jets arrived.

In later years Chop was asked how everyone in the scope room felt when one of the pursuing pilots (Red Dog One) was surrounded by UFOs visually and on radar. Was there a sense of helplessness or disbelief? Chop: “Disbelief…No! Helplessness…Yes!” he insisted. “As we looked up at each other while watching that intercept attempt, you could imagine each of us trying to think of something that would be helpful. I might also add there were no disbelievers around that scope. We all knew these objects represented something with which we could not cope.”

After about a half an hour the jets were running low on fuel and had to return to base. Right after that the sky began to get light and the objects and the targets were gone.

Each time, the radar sets were checked for malfunctions. There were none. Three ground stations were picking up the UNKNOWNS, plus airborne radars. At the time of the trackings, controllers noted both anomalous propagation and the objects. The UNKNOWNS were NOT weather targets. The objects were not aircraft. They would loaf along at 130 mph, then put on a burst of tremendous speed, flight reversals, etc. No jet was ever able to get close. At one time there were 18 unidentifiable objects on the scopes!!!

Francis Ridge
NICAP Site Coordinator

Source: Edited version of Donald Keyhoe’s, “Flying Saucers From Outer Space”, page 68. Report cleared by the Air Force, item 23.

Here are the outstanding NICAP reports on the UFO events of July 19-20, 1952 and July 26-27, 1952.

The Washington National Sightings

The UFOs Return To Washington

The UFO Database also provides excellent resources and context: “The Washington Merry-Go-Round.”

Flying Saucers and Public Policy

The 1952 encounters over Washington, D.C., would bring great changes to how the U.S. government handled the “UFO problem.” Following the recommendations of “The Robertson Panel (PDF Report),” the government would consider UFOs a matter of national security, including psychological warfare. Second, in order to prevent critical air defense infrastructure from being overrun by UFO reports, the government would continue its official policy to downplay the reality of UFOs, in particular the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

The Kinross Incident

November the following year of 1953 would show the world why there was real reason to worry about the UFO phenomenon when a fighter jet scrambled to intercept a UFO disappeared as it approached the unknown object over Lake Superior.

Known as the “Kinross Incident,” USAF radar operators watched their screens as First Lt. Felix Moncla and Second Lt. Robert Wilson and their F-89C Scorpion approached an unknown target. As the two blips merged on the scope, they both suddenly disappeared. No sign of the crew or fighter plane were recovered. For details, please see “Fatal Encounters with UFOs” in The Residium.

The Galileo Project applies leading technologies in observation, detection, imaging and analysis to scan the sky for anomalous objects that make up the UFO phenomenon. Funded by donations and pledges from individuals and foundations, the project has established a network of observatories to scan the sky with advanced sensors and to analyze data with machine learning and human wisdom.

The project emphasizes a transparent approach to ufology, making all data publicly available. Rather than concentrating efforts on radio and electromagnetic signals that emanate from sources in deep space, the Galileo Project searches the sky for physical objects that can be sensed and recorded — important evidence of extraterrestrial technology observed in the earth’s atmosphere, nearby space and earth orbit.

Dr. Loeb made headlines and angered colleagues when he proposed that Oumuamua, believed to be the first interstellar object to be tracked as it passed through the solar system in 2017, may have been an artificial object built by an alien intelligence. In part, Dr. Loeb based his hypothesis on the fact Oumuamua, after its closest approach to the sun, accelerated on its way (or did it make its way?) out of the solar system.

And now 3I/ATLAS, another object believed to be of interstellar origin, is racing through the solar system. Based in part on its rapid speed and seemingly targeted angle of approach, relative to the earth’s orbit around the sun, Dr. Loeb and his team estimate the object is scientifically interesting, a possible arrival of an object seemingly from another star system or, even, extraterrestrial civilization.

For the record, Dr. Loeb and his team have ever claimed to know what 3I/ATLAS is, but they want to use science and technology to study what may be another artificial object. That’s about as good a use of science and technology I can think of.

From a CBS News-Boston interview with Dr. Loeb:

“I think that when we have a blind date from a visitor from another star, all bets are off,” said Loeb. “We shouldn’t assume anything, and we should assess the risk given the data that we have.”

Dr. Loeb said the risk should be assessed using something like the Richter scale for earthquakes.

“Zero would be a natural object like a comet,” Loeb said. “Ten would be an object that maneuvers as if it has an engine that is definitely technological, and then there should be some policymakers deciding how to respond to that.”

Professor Loeb says 3I/ATLAS will pass closest to the sun on October 29 of this year.

“We see a lot of houses on the cosmic street that look just like ours, analogs of the Earth’s sun system,” Loeb said. “And I think it’s very arrogant of us to assume that they don't have residents.”

For his public interest in the UFO phenomenon, Dr. Loeb has received “the Treatment,” from professional colleagues and the general press. Not coincidentally, the smears and threats are exactly of the same kind as his predecessor at Harvard University, the late Dr. John E. Mack, MD, experienced.

Dr. Mack researched the UFO phenomenon, especially the abduction experience reported to him by hundreds of patients. Despite mounting criticism from colleagues, Dr. Mack treated people who suffered real psychic trauma, apparently caused through interaction with an unknown, possibly alien, intelligence. Click here to learn more about Dr. Mack in “Two Superlative Schools of UFO Thought: Westall ‘66, Ariel ‘94” on The Residium.

Both Dr. Loeb and Dr. Mack put truth before their own self-interests. And both prevailed, overturning colleagues’ attempts at censure or worse, merely for their academic and intellectual interests touching on the untouchable topic of the UFO phenomenon.

That is most gratifying to this Editor, one who has followed and studied flying saucers, or UFOs and nowadays UAP, for nearly 60 years. It is reassuring to know at Harvard University, an institution founded almost 140 years before the formation of the United States of America, two intellectual giants were free to follow, study and share their work on the UFO phenomenon.

What’s more, unlike their vocal and now-frustrated critics who worked to shout them into silence, Dr. Loeb and Dr. Mack share a characteristic engraved in a one-word motto on their school’s seal. No matter where it has taken them in their lives as individuals and careers as intellectuals in a field — literally at the edge of reality — at all times and in all ways in their approach to the UFO phenomenon, Dr. Loeb works and Dr. Mack worked to pursue Veritas.

The following report is from the log of the USS Supply, Lt. Frank H. Schofield, USN, commanding. The date was Feb. 28, 1904; the location, the Pacific Ocean about 300 miles southwest of San Francisco, California. The lieutenant, who would in a gallant and storied career rise to Admiral Schofield, USN, Commander-in-Chief of the US Navy, attested to what the Officer of the Deck (on that morning watch, the ship’s assistant boatswain) and two other seamen on watch witnessed at 6:10 a.m., local time:

“0400 - 0800 Cloudy to fair; light breeze from WSW; at 0600 wind shifted to SW; steaming on course NE(1/4)E; executed morning orders; steam 125 lbs., revolutions 64.6. At 0610 three large bodies appeared in the sky traveling from NW(1/2)W. The largest one egg or pear shaped, with sharp point and ragged edge to full body aft. In size it appeared to be six times the size of the sun. The next one was round and about twice the size of the sun. The third one was round and about twice the size of the sun. They were in echeleon (sic) when first seen and were below the clouds and traveling fast and rising to directly overhead. They were dull red in color and were in sight about three minutes. The largest body would cover all of them. When first seen were like an airship.”

A fascinating account from the days before flying saucers, UFOs or UAP were part of the vernacular. Emphasis and the correction of minor typos in this report is by The Residium editor.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 November 1930 — Associated Press Photo. NEW NAVY BATTLE PLANE — Greeted at Long Beach, Cal., by Admiral Frank Schofield (center), and Vice-Admiral Richard H. Leigh (right), David S. Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, was high in his praise for his Curtis hell-diver two-seater fighting plane. Mr. Ingalls asserted the plane will outperform and out-maneuver any plane in existence and predicted the two-seater will be the ultimate development in fighting plane design.

An Eye on the Skies

Lt. Schofield was in command of USS Supply, in relief of Lt. Cmdr. William E. Sewell who had fallen ill while serving in the US Territory of Guam. The vessel had been ordered to transport Lt. Cmdr. Sewell to medical facilities in the United States. Unfortunately, this was in the days before penicillin and anti-biotics, and Lt. Cmdr. Sewell died shortly after arriving in San Francisco.

Not on deck when the UFO sighting occurred, Lt. Schofield trusted and valued the word of those under his command. The final entry in the Supply’s log indicated the witnesses stated the objects appeared as an airship. Judging by his amazing insights into the changing nature of warfare over the coming decades, it is possible his experience at sea in 1904 served to illuminate the value of naval air power for him.

Remember the times: The Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk only 73 days earlier, December 17, 1903. Less than two decades later, the Navy collier USS Jupiter was converted into the world’s first operational aircraft carrier, the USS Langley, commissioned on March 20, 1922.

During the interregnum, Lt. Schofield would rise through the ranks, commanding ships, various commands and eventually the entire fleet. In the process of becoming Admiral Schofield, he became a strong proponent for the power represented by naval aviation.

In the “Grand Joint Exercise Four” war games of early 1932, Admiral Schofield led the attacking force. Approaching Hawaii from the north, he ordered 150 aircraft from the USS Saratoga and USS Lexington carriers to attack defending Navy and Army forces on Oahu.

Referees ruled the engagement a victory for the attacking forces. Denoted in part by sacks of flour dropped from the attacking aircraft onto ships at anchor and airfield runways on land, the Navy planes destroyed the island’s Army Air Force bases and sank all the battleships at anchor in Pearl Harbor.

Admiral Schofield’s force then escaped northward unscathed, journalists and biographers report. The admiral retired a few months afterward. Many of his colleagues considered the success of the attack a “fluke” and did not appreciate the potential of naval air power, preferring battleships on the surface, and when necessary, submarines underwater. However, the concept of surprise attack by naval aviation demonstrated in war games became reality in battle nine years later — “a day of infamy” — December 7, 1941.

Similar in shape to the forward- and back-slash on a computer keyboard (“/” and “\”), an echelon formation is a military tactic applicable to forces on land, sea and air. Echelon formations help units secure their flank and engage threats from multiple directions. Moving forward at an angle provides each member in the echelon with excellent vision, improved maneuverability, and space needed to engage, flank and envelop enemy forces as conditions warrant.

To hear three unidentified objects were seen to employ the tactic in 1904 and in many UAP reports since is a possible observation of intelligent and coordinated military behavior. I believe Lt. Schofield remembered that aspect of the episode at sea, as well.

Readers of The Residium can learn about this important historic record today thanks in large part to work by NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon) and its leadership, including the late Richard Hall, the late Maj. Donald Keyhoe, USMC (ret.), and membership of civilian researchers to preserve the report. While the original organization is no longer active, NICAP still fields a dedicated corps of ufologists who maintain a database with a body of significant case files and information in a rechartered body.

One brilliant NICAP member, Dr. Bruce S. Maccabee, Ph.D, an optical physicist in the employ of the United States Navy, brought it up for detailed study. Going directly to the original eyewitness statements, and applying his own critical faculties and technical expertise, Dr. Maccabee’s study and report (archived at Netowne.com) stand as a “Master Class” in historic UFO analysis.

The USS Supply Sighting of 1904

by Bruce Maccabee
via NICAP

In his premier issue of the “UFO Historical Review,” author Barry Greenwood has presented what would seem to be a reasonable explanation for a sighting of three glowing bodies passing through the atmosphere by several members of the crew of the USS Supply, a Naval ship, on February 28, 1904. Greenwood has made the not-surprising suggestion that these were meteors. The main factors that seem inconsistent with the meteor hypothesis are the claims that (a) the meteors “did come below the clouds” estimated at about 1 mile (1.6 km) high, (b) they did “soar instead of continuing their southeasterly course” which would have taken them over the ship and (c) they were seen for “over two minutes.” The quotes are from the report written by Lt. Frank H. Schofield as published in the Monthly Weather Review, March, 1904 and reproduced below. (Note: Schofield eventually became the Chief of Naval Operations.) The meaning of “soar” as used here is that the glowing objects appeared to travel roughly horizontally (constant altitude) below the clouds as they approached the ship, and then they appeared to climb through the cloud altitude and move directly away from the ship, to “soar” into the heavens, at a constant angular elevation of about 75 degrees (but not radially away from the center of the earth; the angular elevation would have to be 90 degrees for a radial departure). Schofield’s report, entitled “Remarkable Meteors,” begins as the objects were first sighted by the Officer of the Deck and then by two other people on deck. The objects “appeared near the horizon and below the clouds, traveling in a group from northwest by north (true) directly toward the ship. At first their angular motion was rapid and color a rather bright red. As they approached the ship they appeared to soar, passing above the clouds at an elevation of about 45 deg. After rising above the clouds their angular motion became less and less until it ceased, when they appeared to be moving directly away from the earth at an elevation of about 75 deg. and in direction west-northwest (true). It was noted that the color became less pronounced as the meteors gained in angular elevation. When sighted the largest meteor was in the lead, followed by the second in size at a distance of less than twice the diameter of the larger and then by the third in size at a similar distance from the second in size. They appeared to be traveling in echelon and so continued as long as in sight. The largest meteor had an apparent area of about six suns. It was egg shaped, the sharper end forward. This end was jagged in outline. The after end was regular and full in outline. The second and third meteors were round and showed no imperfections in shape. The second meteor was estimated to be twice the size of the sun in appearance and the third meteor about the size of the sun. When the meteors rose there was no change in relative position; nor was there at any time any evidence of rotation or tumbling of the larger meteor. I estimated the clouds to be not over 1 mile high. The near approach of these meteors to the surface and the subsequent flight away from the surface appear to be most remarkable, especially so as their actual size could not have been great. That they did come below the clouds and soar instead of continuing their southeasterly course is also equally certain, as the angular motion ceased and the color faded as they rose. The clouds, in passing between the meteors and the shop completely obscured the former. Blue sky could be seen in the intervals between the clouds. The meteors were in sight for over two minutes and were carefully observed by three people, whose accounts agree as to details. (the Officer on Deck) sent a messenger to me who brought an untelligible message. When I arrived on the bridge the meteors had been obscured for about one-half minute.”

Click here to read the official History of USS Supply.

Lt. Schofield carefully interviewed the witnesses shortly after the sighting and then compiled this report which would have us believe that “meteors” traveled “in echelon” (a flying formation) underneath the 1 mile high cloud layer and then rose upward, passing above the cloud layer and apparently moving directly away from the ship. As Greenwood pointed out in his article, the statement that they were traveling for a period of time below the clouds is sufficient to reject the meteor hypothesis. The report of traveling “in echelon” and then rising upward above the clouds further contradicts the meteor explanation. Nevertheless, Greenwood argues that these were meteors for the following reasons:

1). although the witnesses claimed that the objects were below the clouds, this was an “optical illusion” because they were initially at a very great distance near the horizon; they only appeared to the “below the clouds”; they were only seen through “intervals” in the cloud cover; hence they could have been far above the clouds.

2). the initial great distance made them look red (atmospheric reddening, as with sunlight on the horizon) and as they traveled along they got closer to the ship so the distance light had to travel through the atmosphere continually decreased and the red color diminished.

3). the existence of three objects can be explained as a result of a single large meteor breaking into three parts.

4). there were no trails reported, but meteors don't always have trails.

5). the two minute duration is not inconsistent with known durations of meteors (Greenwood cites a 100 sec meteor observation in 1972).

These reasons seem “reasonable.” And yet, Schofield seemed “awfully certain” that these objects were below the clouds. As Greenwood stated in his article, “...if the objects were below a cloud cover...it is unlikely that they were meteors without their having impacted nearby. It also strains logic to think that large meteors would take an upward turn that close to the surface and disappear from view.”

More than 20 years ago, when I became interested in this sighting report (published in NICAP's UFO Evidence) I decided to do something no one else had ever done (and Greenwood did not do). I decided to check the original record to see if there was anything left out of Schofield's report. There was.

The log of the U. S. Naval Ship Supply is at the National Archives. For the date and time in question we read: "0400 - 0800 Cloudy to fair; light breeze from WSW; at 0600 wind shifted to SW; steaming on course NE(1/4)E; executed morning orders; steam 125 lbs., revolutions 64.6. At 0610 three large bodies appeared in the sky traveling from NW(1/2)W. The largest one egg or pear shaped, with sharp point and ragged edge to full body aft. In size it appeared to be six times the size of the sun. The next one was round and about twice the size of the sun. The third one was round and about twice the size of the sun. They were in echeleon (sic) when first seen and were below the clouds and traveling fast and rising to directly overhead. They were dull red in color and were in sight about three minutes. The largest body would cover all of them. When first seen were like an airship.”

Supplemental information registered in the log at 0600 hours includes: "wind 9.8 knots, SE, force 2, barometer 30.38, air temperature 62, water temperature 58" and the all-important information on clouds that is only hinted at by Schofield: "stratus, moving from north, coverage 9." Stratus are horizontally layered cloud caused by atmospheric cooling over large horizontal areas. They are not very thick vertically and can exist from the surface (where they are essentially fog) up to a mile or more. "Coverage 9" indicates that the sky was about 90% covered by the cloud layer which was moving southward (coming from the north).

Mr. Greenwood's hypothesis is that the supposed meteor (which subsequently broke up) entered the atmosphere hundreds of miles from the ship in the direction of the initial view (NW by 1/2 W or about 292 degrees azimuth). Its track took it directly toward the ship as it curved around the surface of the earth. Subsequently it began to glow and then split into three parts. Eventually it became visible to the Supply officers on deck while at a distance of perhaps 800 km or about 500 miles. For Greenwood's hypothesis to work it would be necessary that there be NO cloud cover in the direction of the meteors when they were first seen and, furthermore, that there was no cloud cover in the direction of the meteors until the they got much closer to the ship at an angular elevation of about 45 degrees when they reportedly rose through the cloud layer. It would be at this time that clouds started to block the direct view. This means that there had to be a "slot" or opening in the 90% cloud cover from the horizon up to an angular elevation of at least 45 degrees, with the axis of this slot aligned with the azimuth of the “meteors.” This is, of course, possible, but highly unlikely considering the layered nature of stratus clouds.

Mr. Greenwood's hypothesis as described and illustrated by his drawings can be illustrated by imagining a straight line path of a meteor above the curved surface of the earth. Assume this meteor started to glow at an altitude of about 100 km (60 miles), then penetrated the atmosphere to a depth of about 50 km (30 miles) and then continued along a substantially straight path that took it away from the earth, probably becoming invisible as it reached once again about 100 km altitude. It would have reached 100 km just before it was over the ship so that its highest observed angular elevation would have been about 75 degrees. (Note: the actual track of a meteor this close to the earth is a slight curve with radius much greater than the radius of the earth, 6328 km or about 4,000 miles. However, use of a curved-path in this illustration would seriously complicate the analysis and provide little further information. Of course, the “ultimate” curved path for a non-crashing object is parallel to the surface of the earth, i.e., an orbit with radius of curvature (6328 + H), where H is the minimum height of the object. No grazing meteor track would have a radius this small.) Further, his hypothesis would require that the first view of this meteor (or group) was at the time that it was about at its lowest altitude. Assume, then, that it was 50 km high when first seen. By geometry one can show that if it was first seen at 50 km altitude while traveling along a straight path that would pass through 100 km altitude over the ship, then its distance would have been about 800 km or 500 miles away and it would have been right on the horizon. Initially the angular elevation would have increased slowly, but then the rate of increase of elevation would itself increase, being the most rapid as the meteors disappeared nearly over the ship (with looking almost straight up as the meteors traveled nearly a horizontal path over the ship), in contradiction to Mr. Greenwood's suggestion that the rate of increase of angular elevation would decrease as the meteors moved away from the earth.

If the meteors were climbing out of the atmosphere, and hence cooling and hence glowing less as they approached the ship, they might fade to invisibility before passing over the ship but at no time would the angular elevation seem to stop increasing as long as the meteors were visible. In other words, there is no way that glowing meteors could appear to stop their approach to overhead, i.e., to stop the increase in angular elevation, and then fade out as if moving directly away from the ship at an elevation of 75 degrees. The observation that the angular elevation ceased to increase once it reached about 75 degrees seems to be completely incompatible with the meteor hypothesis.

Mr. Greenwood has suggested that a sighting duration of “over two minutes” is unusual, but not an impossible meteor duration. Of course, we see now that the actual observer who wrote the entry into the ship’s log placed the duration at about 3 minutes, so Schofield was being conservative. A good question to ask at this point would be, what is the longest duration that one might expect to see a meteor? I answered this question some 20 years ago at a time when the Coyne-helicopter case was being debated. Since Greenwood referred to the 1972 fireball meteor, let’s use it as an example. It became visible when it was about 90 km high and at its lowest it was about 60 km high. This was a “skipping meteor” which passed through the upper atmosphere of the earth, glowed, and then “bounced off” the atmosphere and continued its travels through the void of space (having suffered a severe deviation from its initial track). Now imagine as before a straight line cutting through a circle, where the circle represents that atmosphere at 90 km altitude (above the circular earth) and the straight line is a good approximation to the path of a meteor. The closest distance of the straight line to the surface is 60 km. One can show using geometry that the **straight line path** from 90 km above the surface down to 60 km and back up to 90 km (5 degrees elevation) is a distance of about 1250 km. The 1972 fireball traveled at roughly 14.5 km/sec on average. If we use this as an estimated speed for the Supply “fireballs” than, if someone had watched it from the beginning to the end of its glow, he would have seen it for about 1250/14.5 = 86 seconds (an observer exactly under the center of the glowing path would see this traveling from horizon to horizon in 86 seconds). (Note: the 1972 meteor approached the earth from behind at about 10 km/sec, but then accelerated as it got closer and was traveling at about 14.5 km/sec relative to the surface of the earth at its closest approach.) Of course, the meteor did not travel in a straight line, but rather curved over the earth and hence traveled a slightly longer path in the atmosphere than calculated here. A space satellite that observed the meteor in infra-red light estimated the glow path was about 1500 km and the duration of visibility to the satellite was a bit over 100 seconds. (This satellite was able to detect the infra-red glow before the meteor made the atmosphere hot enough to be visible to the eye, and then the satellite was able to “see” the meteor longer then the naked eye.) This is the value quoted by Greenwood as if a ground observer could have seen it for that duration, but, of course, no ground observer could see it that long. Actually the ground observed durations ranged up to 1 minute with most of the observations being 40 seconds or less. The famous film of this fireball lasts “only” 26 seconds.

One concludes from this analysis that it is virtually impossible to see a meteor **from horizon to horizon** that lasts as long as 100 seconds. The USS Supply officers sighted the meteors, not from horizon to horizon, but at most about halfway, from the horizon to overhead. This would take half as long, say 50 seconds or less. Hence the claimed duration of “over 2 minutes” and perhaps as much as 3 minutes lies far outside the normal meteor duration of visibility. These were truly remarkable, i.e., remarkably slow, meteors. (Note that **orbiting** bodies in low earth orbit could have observation durations this long, but they would not escape the orbit, so they would not appear to soar. Furthermore, to maintain a glow, such an orbiting body would have to travel at a high altitude, far above the clouds to avoid frictional energy loss that would slow it further and cool it below glowing speed.)

The “bottom line” on the meteor hypothesis is that it is strained, at the very least, by the observation that they appeared to travel beneath the clouds (considering the 90% cloud cover), strained even further by the observation that the angular motion ceased and they appeared to travel directly away from the ship, and finally it is rejected by the reported duration of over 2 minutes.

A brilliant physicist and a dedicated public servant, Dr. Bruce S. Maccabee used his scientific training to advance our understanding of UFO phenomenon. He is shown in the photo above holding the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the International UFO Congress.

Dr. Maccabee worked at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory / Naval Surface Warfare Center from 1972 to 2008 in Silver Spring, Maryland. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute of Worcester, Massachusetts, and his Master’s and Ph.D from American University in Washington, DC. Dr. Maccabee passed away in 2024. He was 82 years of age.

Ufologist Elizabeth Moulton Howe published a remembrance on her outstanding website, Earth Files:

Dr. Maccabee joined the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in the late 1960s. Later in 1975 Dr. Maccabee also became a member of the Mutual UFO Network and then became Maryland’s MUFON State Director. Among his many UFO investigations was his re-analysis of the statistics and results of the famed Battelle Memorial Institute Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, that was a very large analysis of 3,200 U. S. Air Force cases from the 1940s to 1950s.

One More Word

Barry Greenwood is an important figure and leader in the field of ufology, as well. With Lawrence Fawcett, he co-wrote “Clear Intent: The Government Cover-Up of the UFO Experience.” A pioneering exploration of UFOs and democracy, the work shares what was known at the time about the phenomenon in context with its impact on our national security — in balance with our Constitutional rights as citizens of the United States of America. Here’s a brief biography posted by the Center for UFO Studies.

Click here for the study.

The photograph above was taken by Hannah McRoberts during a visit to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada in 1981. The photographer wanted to image “an unusual cloud,” only later discovering the UFO at top right after the film and photographs returned from the processing lab. A close-up of the image is below:

The thing looks like a flying saucer. Of course, there may be another explanation.

A report from journalist Bryce Hoyce of the CBC follows directly below, along with links to the complete report and one-page brief on the rationale for scientific approach to the UFO phenomenon.

Canada needs agency to manage public UFO sightings, says new federal report

Federal mechanisms for UFO reporting 'fragmented,' says report commissioned by office of chief science adviser

by Bryce Hoyce
CBC News, July 17, 2025

Canada needs a transparent, public-facing agency in charge of managing reports of mystifying things seen darting, blinking or hovering through our skies, according to a new report commissioned by Canada's top scientist.

The Sky Canada Project report published this week calls for a federal framework for managing UFO sightings by the public and pilots as a replacement for the current patchwork of protocols across departments that "hinder[s] scientific investigation."

"There is some evidence that there's something really unusual going on in the skies.… We just don't have enough information," said Winnipeg-based science writer Chris Rutkowski, director of the long-running Canadian UFO Survey, who was consulted for the report.

Snip...

The report also identifies the need to increase transparency and build public trust through proactive disclosure of UAP case details in an effort to combat misinformation and disinformation, and "pre-bunk" conspiracy theories before they spread.

Click here for complete CBC article.

The Residium editor agrees with the approach of the Canadian Science Advisor:

How the Scientific Method Might Apply to UAPs

The scientific method is a systematic and iterative process used to investigate the universe around us, acquire new knowledge and refine or correct existing understandings of the world. Applying it to UAPs could involve several key steps, including:

Observation: Gather reports and data on UAP sightings, including, but not limited to, eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos, radar data and physical evidence, ensuring that the information collected is objective and unbiased. This may include developing new instruments specifically designed to enhance the accuracy and reliability of the data.

Hypothesis: For each case under investigation, explore possible explanations for the sighting. This could range from natural phenomena to advanced human-made technology and may include fraud and instrument malfunction.

Experimentation: Test the hypothesis. While traditional experiments might be challenging due to the elusive nature of UAPs (the sighting cannot be repeated like an experiment in controlled laboratory conditions), researchers may conduct simulations, analyze existing or past data, or use observational tools (like radar or satellites) to gather additional information.

Analysis: Review and analyze the data to look for patterns, anomalies or correlations. This might include comparing UAP reports with known atmospheric phenomena or the behaviour and flight path of aircraft.

Conclusion: Draw conclusions based on the analysis. This could involve categorizing a given UAP into known phenomena, unexplained sightings due to lack of data, or areas needing further investigation.

Communication: Share findings with the scientific community, government agencies and the public, through research papers, or reports and through a publicly accessible online portal.

Applying the scientific method to UAPs makes it possible to ensure a rigorous and objective approach to understanding these phenomena while promoting critical thinking and advancing scientific knowledge.

Click here for the complete study.

The following is a report from Chris Rutkowski, the Canadian ufologist instrumental in gathering more than 24,000 reports from across Canada over the past 30 years-plus through the annual Canadian UFO Survey.

Why We Should Take UFOs Seriously

Whether you call them UFOs, UAPs or flying saucers, Canada should treat the objects that fly in our skies as scientific phenomena, not pop-cultural quackery

by Chris Rutkowski
MacLean’s, October 20, 2023

Excerpt…

Canada should establish a central repository where new UFO reports can be collected and analyzed. Every year, that office should produce a public report, much in the same way the Supreme Court of Canada releases its annual year in review. This summary should include sightings from civilians—farmers, birdwatchers, even accountants who happen to glance upward during their daily commute. Science has always been advanced by the observations of regular people.

The broader scientific community will also need to participate in UFO studies to provide Canadians with proper data. There’s already good news on this front. This past September, NASA released a 33-page report that called for better UFO data gathering, possibly aided by AI technology and open-source smartphone apps. Also earlier this year, news broke that Canada’s Office of the Chief Science Advisor had launched the Sky Canada Project, the Canadian government’s first known UFO research effort in three decades. The goal is to examine how UFOs are tracked in Canada. (The results are expected in 2024.) These developments open the door for the use of scientific tools, like video surveillance, remote-sensing technology and telescopes. They can help us identify what we see, and also answer questions like how long it was there and how it moved. Scientists like tangible, replicable data, not anecdotes. These tools could provide it.

I’d like to see Canadian post-secondary institutions include more UFO-focused coursework in their disciplines—and not just in astronomy. Engineers, for example, could speculate on the technical details of how interstellar travel might work. There’s been some UFO research at Canadian universities, like the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies. But for the most part, ufology—the study of UFOs—has remained within the “invisible college,” among scientists who’ve conducted research for interest’s sake, without institutional support.

There’s also the issue of misinformation: when scientists dismiss the validity of studying UFOs, Canadians don’t become less fascinated by them. We’re just forced to settle for less-reputable, fringe sources of information. (One Sky Canada document, for example, lists “preventing conspiracy theories” as a priority.) We get caught up in the wild speculation on Reddit or X, or watch Encounters, Netflix’s new and popular (but incomplete) UFO docuseries. Pop-cultural touchstones, like Star Trek and Unsolved Mysteries, feed our fundamental desire to know whether or not we’re alone in the universe. But the civic duty of scientists is to give us the facts.

Continues… Click here for complete article.

It is most heartening to know that our family, friends and allies in Canada are interested in studying the UFO phenomena scientifically and democratically. Here’s to seeing the day when We the People of the United States do so, as well. — The Residium

Two flyers were in each aircraft. In the lead were Commander David Fravor and the weapons systems officer in the back seat. Pilot Lt. Alex Dietrich and her WSO flew as the flight’s wingman. Over their radio came new orders from their command ship, the USS Princeton: the training exercise was changed to combat mission status. The Navy jets were redirected to intercept an unidentified target picked up by radars on ships and aircraft.

Commander Fravor Observed:

“As all 4 looked down we saw a small white Tic Tac shaped object with the longitudinal axis pointing N/S and moving very abruptly over the white water. There were no Rotors, No Rotor wash, or any visible flight control surfaces like wings. As we started a clockwise turn to observe the object, My WSO and I decided to go down to get closer and the other Aircraft stayed in High cover to observe both us and the Tic Tac. We proceeded around the circle about 90 degrees from the start of our descent and the object suddenly shifted it longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft and began to climb in a clockwise climbing turn. We continued down for another 270 degrees when we made a nose low move to head to where the Tic Tac would be when we pulled nose onto the object. Our altitude at this point was approximately 15,000ft with the Tic Tac at about 12,000ft. As we pulled nose onto the object at approximately ½ of a mile with the object just left of our nose, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft. Our wingman, roughly 8,000ft above us, also lost visual. We immediately turned to investigate the white water only to find that it was also gone. As we turned back towards our CAP point, roughly 60 miles east, the air controller let us know that the object had reappeared on the Princeton’s Aegis SPY 1 radar at our CAP point. This Tic Tac Object had just traveled 60 miles in a very short period of time (less than a minute), was far superior in performance to my brand-new F/A-18F and did not operate with any of the known aerodynamic principles that we expect for objects that fly in our atmosphere.” — Commander David Fravor, USN (ret.)

Commander Fravor’s complete statement follows the following “Editorial Opinion.”

Attention, Citizens!

The account above is taken from Commander Fravor’s testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023. It was a most historic moment. One of the most credible of all observers — a commanding officer of the United States Navy — shared his remarkable interaction with the UFO phenomena with the Congress of the United States, the American people and the planet.

The Tic Tac story also represents a treasure trove of information for those interested in the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena and those relatively new to the UFO story. In addition to expert eyewitness reports, the 2004 encounter yielded radar data from the USS Princeton, USS Nimitz and from the two F/A-18s. Data from visual and infrared cameras and sensors also was taken from the aircraft, a small portion of which has been released by the Navy. Less reported are the unknown target’s apparent ability to interfere with military radar and other electronic sensors.

What’s more, public acceptance and open discussion have evidently led other F/A-18 pilots and aircrew to report their encounters with unknown objects and phenomena. TWZ (The War Zone), a website specializing in military affairs and technology, reports Multiple F/A-18 Pilots Disclose Recent UFOs Encounters, New Radar Tech Key In Detection.

A Flying Saucer in the Breath Mints Section

While we still don’t know what UFOs are, the Navy Tic Tac report is historically important as it acknowledges the US Government officially recognizes the reality of the UFO phenomenon. Understandably and thankfully, one understands and appreciates why the Defense Department takes the subject most seriously.

It is my hope that every citizen, politician, journalist and historian also recognizes the credibility and integrity of the four who saw the Tic Tac UFO with their own eyes. Their bravery as public servants reflects their character as citizens of the United States, proud to tell and share the truth.

That, evidently, presents a problem for some in the spooky world of disinformation. There spies, clinicians and academics collaborate to evaluate intelligence and protect sources, methods and secrets — data, facts and truth. And for some unknown reason having to do with UFOs, there’s a lid on what the US Government knows and/or has.

Recently, Ross Coulthard, journalist and UFO investigator, reported the Tic Tac UFOs seen by Commander Fravor and his fellow Navy air crew “resulted from Lockheed Martin technology.” Mr. Coulthard added he felt his information was ironclad, received from people he long-knew and trusted.

Also supporting the “Lockheed Martin behind the Tic Tac” story were UFO investigative journalist George Knapp and his colleague, ufologist Jeremy Corbell. The two reported a CIA officer had stated the same to Commander Fravor about his 2004 encounter, who refuted the explanation.

In addition , while much of the resulting coverage over the past week has taken the angle that the Tic Tac UFO itself represented technology created by Lockheed Martin Corporation. I say, “Beware! Watch both facts and semantics,” for there is much disinformation getting spread about in recent months concerning prominent people who report UFOs.

The smear campaign efforts, in particular, have targeted a group referred to monolithically as the “Pentagon UFO Whistleblowers.” The group of former officials includes Luis Elizondo, Ryan Graves, David Grusch, and Jake Barber, who allege the government is covering-up its involvement with the UFO phenomenon, and the intelligences and technology behind it.

This debunking campaign attempted to discredit USAF Capt. Robert Salas and the reports he and his colleagues made regarding UFO incursions at Air Force ICBM installations in 1975. Recently invented allegations included a quasi-official “hazing” campaign meant to gauge the response of young officers exposed to the concept of crashed saucers and reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology.

Another “new story” comes from a concerted effort by “the Pentagon” of an active-duty officer who would plant rumors of UFO activity to mislead the public about experimental aircraft. Of course, certain creations of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works have been misidentified as UFOs.

Now the efforts to discredit the UFO phenomenon have expanded to include USN Commander Fravor and his colleagues and their fellow Navy personnel who reported . That is un-American behavior and certainly a civil offense. No matter, the facts they reported are to be remembered and shared.

Even facts or the wording itself about the facts, can serve as disinformation. For instance, one can claim that an image of the Tic Tac UFO captured on an F/A-18 monitor built by subcontractors affiliated with Lockheed Martin, can literally result in a Tic Tac UFO. Likewise, when switching from infrared to visual imaging can make an object appear different to an observer.

Finally, we must not forget that a great deal of new technology can “result” from Lockheed Martin, including data recorded from phased-array, multi-channel radar and all-manner of electromagnetic sensors — a leading array of sensing technology that we learned thanks to the United States Navy resulted in imaging something unknown and still unidentified.

The screen grab above shows the unknown object was shaped like a Tic Tac breath mint. It was estimated to be 40-feet in length, about the size of an F/A-18 Super Hornet. The unidentified object zoomed back-and-forth, low over ocean’s calm surface, creating a white foamy area that attracted the attention of the aircrews. The object then proceeded to climb, accelerate and maneuver in seemingly controlled, but un-aerodynamic ways.

US Navy officer makes historic UFO report to Congress

David Fravor Statement for the House Oversight Committee:

“I first want to thank you for the invitation to speak to this committee on the UAP topic that has been in the news for the past 6 years and seems to be continuing to gain momentum.

“My name is David Fravor and I am a retired Commander in the U.S Navy. In Nov 2004, I was the Commanding Officer of Strike Fighter Squadron Forty-One, the World Famous Black Aces! We were attached to Carrier Airwing Eleven and stationed onboard the USS Nimitz (CVN-68). We were at the beginning of our workup cycle that would prepare us for a combat deployment to the Persian Gulf for operations supporting the ground forces in Iraq. The at-sea period was scheduled to go from Early November to Late December. During this period, we train with the other units in the Battle Group while integrating and honing our skills that we will rely on during our deployment.

“We had been at sea for roughly 2 weeks, and I was scheduled to lead a 2 V 2 Air to Air training exercise. My flight of 2 F/A-18Fs was the Blue Air, the good guys, and we were being controlled by the USS Princeton, CG-59. Keep in mind the F/A-18F’s are 2 seat aircraft with the pilot in the front and the WSO (Weapons System Officer) in the back seat. The Red Air was being flown by our Marine F/A-18 squadron VMFA-232.

“As we launched off the USS Nimitz, we checked in with the air controller on the USS Princeton, we were told that training was going to be suspended for real world tasking. My wingman joined up and we proceeded towards a contact to the west of our CAP (Combat Air Patrol) point. The CAP point is where we would hold prior to commencing our training runs, roughly 40 miles South of the ship.

“As we proceeded to the west and as the air controller counted down the range, we had nothing on our radars and were unaware of what we were going to see when we arrived. The air controller on the ship also had no idea but had been observing these objects on their Aegis combat system for the previous 2 weeks. They had been descending from above 80,000ft and coming rapidly down to 20,000ft would stay for hours and then go straight back up.

“When we arrived at the location at 20,000 ft, the controller called Merge Plot, which means that our radar blip was now in the same radar resolution cell as the contact. As we looked around, we noticed some white water off our right side. The weather on the day of the incident was as close to a perfect day as you could ask, clear skies, light winds, calm seas (no whitecaps from the waves) so the white water stood out in the large blue ocean. As all 4 looked down we saw a small white Tic Tac shaped object with the longitudinal axis pointing N/S and moving very abruptly over the white water. There were no Rotors, No Rotor wash, or any visible flight control surfaces like wings. As we started a clockwise turn to observe the object, My WSO and I decided to go down to get closer and the other Aircraft stayed in High cover to observe both us and the Tic Tac. We proceeded around the circle about 90 degrees from the start of our descent and the object suddenly shifted it longitudinal axis, aligned it with my aircraft and began to climb in a clockwise climbing turn. We continued down for another 270 degrees when we made a nose low move to head to where the Tic Tac would be when we pulled nose onto the object. Our altitude at this point was approximately 15,000ft with the Tic Tac at about 12,000ft. As we pulled nose onto the object at approximately ½ of a mile with the object just left of our nose, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft. Our wingman, roughly 8,000ft above us, also lost visual. We immediately turned to investigate the white water only to find that it was also gone. As we turned back towards our CAP point, roughly 60 miles east, the air controller let us know that the object had reappeared on the Princeton’s Aegis SPY 1 radar at our CAP point. This Tic Tac Object had just traveled 60 miles in a very short period of time (less than a minute), was far superior in performance to my brandnew F/A-18F and did not operate with any of the known aerodynamic principles that we expect for objects that fly in our atmosphere.

“We returned to Nimitz and mentioned what we had witnessed to one of my crews who were getting ready to launch. It was that crew that took the now famous approximately 90 second video that was released by the USG in 2017. What is not seen is the Radar tape that showed the jamming of the APG-73 radar in the aircraft, but we do see on the targeting pod video that the object does not emit any IR (infrared) plume from a normal propulsion system that we would expect.

“What is shocking is that the incident was never investigated, none of my crew were ever questioned, tapes were never taken, and after a couple of days, it turned into a great story to tell friends. Not until 2009 did Jay Stratton contact me to investigate what we observed. Unbeknownst to all of us, Jay was part of the ATIP (Anomalous Threat Identification Program) program led by Lue Elizondo out of the DOD. I refer to the report as the Unofficial Official Report which is now available on the internet!

“Years later I was contacted by Alex Dietrich, the other pilot in my flight asking if I had ever been contacted about the incident after 2009. I had since retired and my answer was no, but I told her if folks wanted to talk, I was happy to meet with them. Alex stated that she had been invited to the Pentagon multiple times to discuss the event and view other videos of UAPs. I was contacted by Mr Elizondo shortly after talking with Alex in 2016. We briefly chatted and I was told that he would be in contact.

“In the weeks that passed I was made aware that Lue had left the pentagon in protest and joined forces with Tom Delonge, Chris Mellon, Steve Justice and others to form To The Stars Academy. It was this organization that pressed the issue with leading Industry experts and USG officials, worked with Leslie Keane, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper to publish the articles in the NYT in Dec 2017 admitting the USG was looking at UAPs and removed the Stigma of the UFO topic which led to us being here today.

“Those articles opened a door for the Government and the public that cannot be closed. It has led to an Interest from our elected officials who are not focused on ‘Little Green men’ but on figuring out what these craft are, where are they from, the technology they possess, and how do they operate. It has also led to the Whistleblower protection act in the recent NDAA which brings us too today.

“There are multiple witnesses coming forward that say that they have first-hand knowledge, that I’m sure Mr Grusch will or already has discussed. What concerns me is that there is no “Oversight” from our elected officials on anything associated with our government possessing or working on craft that we believe are not from this world. This issue is not about full public disclosure that could undermine national security, but it is about ensuring that our system of checks and balances works across all work done in our government using taxpayer funds. Relative to government Programs, even Unacknowledged Waived programs have some level of oversight by the appropriate committee members in the House and Senate and this work that is said to be occurring from Whistleblower testimonies should not be exempt.

“In closing, I would like to say that the Tic Tac Object that we engaged in Nov 2004 was far superior to anything that we had at the time, have today, or are looking to develop in the next 10+ years. If we in fact have programs that possess this technology, it needs to have oversight from those people that the citizens of this great country elected to office to represent what is best for the United States and in the best interest of its citizens.

“I thank you for this time to speak with you today and God Bless America!”

— David Fravor, Commander, USN (ret.)

The following recording was made at the McMinnville UFO Festival in 2020, where Commander Fravor related the story publicly — “for the first and only time.”

The Residium detailed the Trent Photographs, celebrated at the McMinnville UFO festival. Taken in 1950 near their farm outside McMinnville, Oregon by Mr. and Mrs. Paul and Evelyn Trent, they remain among the best evidence supporting the reality of the UFO phenomenon.

The reports from Commander Fravor and his colleagues, and the data obtained from their aircraft and from the USS Nimitz and USS Princeton in 2004, as well as the object’s apparent ability to interfere with radar and radio, likewise provide evidence in support of the technical capabilities behind the UFO phenomenon. For some reason, the search for truth about the UFO phenomenon bothers a number of people.