Saturday, February 08, 2025

Roswell, Sheridan Cavitt and Project Mogul

 

As I mentioned on Coast-to-Coast AM recently, I found another of those one-off UFO magazines that attempts to capitalize on the interest in alien visitation. I looked at the Roswell entry and noticed they mentioned the Project Mogul nonsense. I have covered this at length on this blog and in my recent books about the Roswell crash/retrieval. I’ll make one quick point here. Well, maybe two…

First, Flight No. 4, listed as the culprit here, that is, this flight was the one that allegedly scattered the debris for Mack Brazel to find was not launched. The documentation tells us that the flight was canceled. I do not understand how this documentation can be overlooked. If the flight didn’t fly, it did not scatter the debris.

There is a second point. According to what Charles Moore, one of the engineers who worked on the project back in 1947, told me, Flight No. 4, was configured just like Flight No. 5. While there is no schematic for Flight No. 4 (reinforcing the idea that it didn’t fly), we have the schematic for Flight No. 5, courtesy of the Air Force investigation of the Roswell case. There were no rawin radar targets on that flight, which raises the question, “Where did the rawin target photographed in General Ramey’s office originate?” It certainly didn’t come from Roswell.

Charles Moore reviewing winds aloft data at the school
library in Socorro. Photo by Kevin randle


Second, the testimony of Sheridan Cavitt, the CIC officer in Roswell at the time, carries great weight. However, what Cavitt told Don Schmitt and me when we met him, he wasn’t even in Roswell at the time. Later, he would tell Don and me, that he was too busy with security investigations to be chasing weather balloons.

I did ask him, given that the description of the officer who accompanied Jesse Marcel, Sr. out to the debris, meaning he was a West Texas boy who could ride horses, about his denial. He said that it sounded like him, but he insisted that he had not gone to the debris field.

Now, this could be boiled down to me spreading tales, but there is documentation about this. In the Air Force report, The Roswell Report: Fact vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, Cavitt’s interview conducted by Colonel Richard Weaver is published. Weaver asked about the incident that happened during the early part of July. Cavitt responded:

We went out to this site. There were no, as I understand, check points or anything like that (going through guards and that sort of garbage) we went out there and we found it. It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, well at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil… I do not remember if Marcel was there or not on the site. He could have been. We took it back to the intelligence room… in the CIC office.

RW: What did you think it was when you recovered it?

SC: I thought it was a weather balloon.

I always wonder why, if Cavitt had identified the material while still on the ranch, he hadn’t communicated this rather important piece of intelligence to Colonel Blanchard and saved him the embarrassment of telling the world they had recovered a flying saucer… but I digress.

I have a letter, written by Cavitt to Doyle Rees, one time officer in charge of the CIC office in Albuquerque, on December 6, 1989. He was answering a letter from Rees, which I think was generated by the original Unsolved Mysteries show on Roswell that had aired several weeks earlier. I think this because that show is mentioned in the letter.

In the letter, Cavitt wrote, “…Marcel was a smart man; a good friend, a Louisiana Cajun, who was prone to be excitable, and, in this case wrong in that Cavitt had been along on that caper.”

Sheridan Cavitt interview in Arizona with Kevin Randle and
Don Schmitt. Photo by Kevin Randle


I don’t know why Cavitt would lie to Rees, unless had not been the senior officer of the CIC in the area at the time, and therefore, hadn’t been read into the crash when he, Rees, arrived in Albuquerque. The point is that Cavitt told fellow CIC officer, Rees, he hadn’t been there, but then told Weaver that not only was he there, he recognized the debris as that from a weather balloon…

Of course, that still doesn’t explain the picture of the rawin target taken in Ramey’s office, that was published on July 9, 1947, for all the world to see. Where did that debris originate?

Roger Ramey and Thomas DuBose with the remains of a rawin target. Since there
were no rawin targets on the early flights of Mogul balloons, the question
 is where did the rawin originate?


But, of course, that’s fine because we all know that it was really part of Project Mogul…

(Blogger’s Note: For those interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Project Mogul explanation, I recommend Roswell in the 21st Century. This provides more evidence that Project Mogul was not a part of this story until injected into it in the late 1980s.)

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Jake Barber: UFO Retrieval Whistleblower

Last Saturday night, (January 18) NewsNation aired a segment that featured Jake Barber who claimed that he had seen a “nonhuman” egg-shaped aircraft and had been recruited for a top-secret government UFO crash/retrieval program. Unlike David Grusch who talked of hearing of such things from credible but unnamed sources, Barber said that he had participated in retrievals.

I probably should point out here that neither of these “whistleblowers” was the first to make claims of an involvement in some sort of government UFO crash retrieval program. Among the first was Clifford Stone, a mid-level Army NCO, who claimed to have been involved in several such operations and had even seen the “alien autopsy file,” not long after he had joined the Army. I mention this because Stones’ revelations were little more than invention that was not backed up by any sort of independent evidence.

The late Cliff Stone, who claimed to be on the inside
of a secret program involved with crash retrievals.


According to NewsNation, which had checked Barber’s records, he was a talented airplane mechanic who was deployed on several presidential support missions. He had been recruited into the Air Force’s Elite Combat Control unit suggesting he was a helicopter pilot (though it is unclear if he had been a military pilot), freefall parachutist, expert marksman and the recipient of a NATO top-secret security clearance, known as Cosmic Top Secret and service in Bosnia, for which he earned an unidentified valor award. They don’t reveal what award that might be. Stones’ records provided no corroboration for his tales.

To indicate the off-world nature of the retrievals, Barber said, “Just visually looking at the object on the ground, you could tell that it was extraordinary and anomalous. It was not human.” The craft was metallic, pearly white, and about the size of an SUV.

Normally, I am skeptical of these sorts of claims and I believe we all should be as well. However, my own experiences in both Air Force and Army intelligence suggests there might be some truth to it.

Because of my status in the military, that is as an intelligence officer, and because some knew of my interest in UFOs, I occasionally received nuggets of information about UFO cases that haven’t been reported or that have had little military interest. Bob Cornett and I might have been among the first to gain access to the Project Blue Book records while they were still housed as Maxwell Air Force Base and had not been redacted, taking out the names of the witnesses.

Bob Cornett reviewing UFO records while on assignment from
a magazine in the 1970s.


One of the first cases we wanted to see was from November 1953 that involved the disappearance of an Air Force fighter. The Blue Book file was just two pages and it was noted that it was an aircraft accident rather than a UFO report. According to an Air Force colonel who was stationed at Kinross Air Force Base said that in November 1953, a jet fighter was scrambled to intercept an unknown target, meaning a UFO, over the Soo Locks on Lake Superior. The intercept was watched on radar, the two blips, that is the UFO and the jet, merged but never separated. That single blip flew off the scope and disappeared in the distance. From the point of the merge, there had been no further communication with the fighter. The jet was never found. The colonel told me that there had been two schools of thought. One was that the UFO abducted the jet and the second was that it had crashed into the lake.

That is the sort of thing that I believe David Grusch heard when he talked about UFO crashes. People who were at the right place at the right time to know something more than the public provided that information. The colonel believed that the jet had been abducted, or in his words, the UFO took it. I wasn’t there, but the source had been. I knew him and he was credible but then where do you go with such a tale. If it is highly classified, how do I, as a civilian now, break through that barrier. Besides, attempts to learn more about it, other than the mundane and unclassified, have failed. I’m pointed back to the information and documentation that I already had.

In a somewhat similar vein, Don Schmitt and I interviewed a general at the Pentagon. Well, interviewed might be an over statement. He agreed to meet us in a snack bar on one of the lowest levels. The tables were about waist high or higher, so that people had a place to set a plate, but there were no stools. It was a get in, get your food, eat it and get out place.

We wanted to talk about the Roswell case. Don had apparently chatted with him at some point, explaining what we were after which is information about Roswell. By this time, we had talked to many witnesses to the crash and knew more about it. We had rejected the balloon answer and had even interviewed three of those who had been in General Ramey’s office on July 8, 1947.

We were inside the Pentagon for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The general didn’t look nervous. He just told us that there was an area in the Pentagon to which he had no access. He said that our Roswell information was there. He didn’t elaborate. Just hinted that highly classified information about Roswell was in that area, and those entering had to have a specific request and their time in that area was limited. I would later talk to another man who had said he had seen the classified version Project Blue Book and described for me. He said he saw some of the pictures of crashed UFOs and the recovery operations that had been conducted. I don’t know if these classified Blue Book files were part of that section of the Pentagon to which the general had referred.

I have also talked with another general who said he knew the photographer who photographed Roswell bodies, but didn’t provide very much information about that. I need to point out that by the time the information got to me, it was third-hand. The general hadn’t seen the pictures, he had just talked to one of those men who took them.

I suppose I should mention the retired MSGT who said that he’d provided the rawin target for the Roswell explanation. What he had said to Cornett and me, was that he had taken a balloon into an area to show the witnesses what they had seen. This was before I had talked with Irving Newton, the weather officer who identified the wreckage in Fort Worth. He said they didn’t have rawin targets on the FWAAF, but did know where to get one if it was needed.

The MSGT was careful about what he told us, but the implication was that he had taken the balloon around the Roswell area. I have assumed that it was part it was part of the 1947 cover up, but when Bob and I talked to him, neither of us knew much about the Roswell case. I had read Frank Edward’s laughable description of the Roswell case in his Flying Saucers – Serious Business, but that didn’t contain much information other than it happened near Roswell and the Air Force had explained it, in Edward’s words, as a pie tin hooked to a kite.

All these are incidents, in which I was involved to some extent. Like those being talked about today, they suggest that these retrievals do happen. Sometimes the information is limited and we must deduce where it is going. Sometimes it is more explicit. What it does confirm is there was a cover up then and it remains in place now. 

Friday, January 17, 2025

The Zamora Symbol Controvery


Like David Rudiak, I really didn’t want to go down this particular rabbit hole because it was one of those no-win situations. More importantly, even if we could resolve the question of the “true symbol,” what did it gain us. And now there may be a third version to add to the mix.

I have advocated for years my belief that the “umbrella symbol” is the correct one. I based that on the documentation available in the Project Blue Book files and the testimony of some of the participants made at the time, that is in April 1964. I can see no reason that the officers involved in the investigation in the hours and days after Lonnie Zamora’s sighting would document that umbrella symbol as the true symbol if it was not. The every first is a scrap of paper on which Zamora said he scribbled that symbol as the craft was taking off. That seems to be very persuasive testimony.

On the other side of the argument are those who suggest the inverted “V” with three bars through it is the correct symbol. Ironically, it seems that Zamora is also the advocate of that symbol. It was released to some of the media, in those days meaning the press, within a day or two of the sighting.

J. Allen Hynek, in a letter dated September 7, 1964, produced a weird version of the inverted “V” symbol. It showed two parallel bars inside the “V” and a third bar over the top.

Rather than recap all this, the simplest solution for those who wish to read more about it, and to see the various pieces of evidence being discussed, is to follow this link:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-socorro-symbol-resolved.html

Now, in the last few hours, I have received additional information. As you’ll read, one of these correspondents is less than patient. I will note that I made no changes in his comment, other than to divide the paragraphs for greater clarity. He wrote:

Hi. This is Patrick Richard, former MUFON investigator, ufo artist, portrait artist, MUFON New Mexico member and a very close alliance of Lonnie Zamora up until his passing. I lived in San Antonito, 8 miles south of Socorro, from July 2004 until August 2011. Let me point out something about this blog's ruminations. There is controversy about the paper sack...whether it was a stray scrap of paper at the landing site in the arroyo, or that Lonnie had a paper sack in his cruiser that day...I never asked him. I don't know. But I do know what he divulged about the insignia when we were having coffee at the NWestern-most window table at the El Camino Restaurant in Socorro some 7 months before his well-attended funeral at the mission.


The correct insignia is, as he stated to the dispatcher, "un 'v' invertido con tres lineas debajo". Debajo is slightly different but noteworthy. He didn't say 'abajo' (below and not necessarily related to a reference point in Spanish). He meant that the horizontal lines were not apart from the inverted V, per this nuance of Spanish grammar --- according to my wife who is latin american Spanish. Lonnie's use of 'debajo' is like saying 'is attached to the subject in the bottom area' --- otherwise he would have used 'abajo'. Spanish, like German, is very fussy about exactness in location. Regressando a la vaca fria...let's get back to the cold cow : the El Camino restaurant in Socorro (which is still open). I asked if he 'd have coffee with me because I wanted to ask him in person to come to my little house in San Antonito to finish an oil portrait I was painting for the purpose of donating it to the Socorro Historical Museum. Lonnie agreed to both, to my surprise. To the El Camino I brought the Albuquerque Journal's 25 year anniversay edition of the experience. Lonnie said he never saw this. So he leafed through it while I was doodling the variations of the red insignia. I had intended to bring it up, but I was sensitive to his needs for privacy, still, after 45 years. He looked at the black & white pages of the Journal as we began talking about it. I mused which insignia it was -- not asking him directly as he looked at the Journal's photo of the paper sack or "scrap"...Then, he pointed to my doodles and said "That one." The inverted V with three horizontal lines at the bottom, running through the bottom of the inverted V.

His two sons, or his daughter, may kniw something different, HOWEVER, Lonnie was truly and irreversibly dedicated to the safety of his family until the end of his life. To me, that is in itself, the smoking gun of his reality in the arroyo.

And that is persuasive argument and I would counter with the comments I made before. There is no motivation for the officers who provided written reports for Project Blue Book to have concealed the real nature of the insignia given the circumstances. While they might not have wanted it out in the general public arena as a way of eliminating follow on hoaxes, in their internal communications, that purpose is moot.

An hour after this first comment (made about seven hours ago) he furnished the following:

I would never argue in support of just a theory. As ufoguy remarked: get away from the computer and go outside to interview. That's solid.

An hour after that, he wrote:

Not the umbrella. Lonnie and I talked briefly about the ongoing fear for his family. The AF really did a stereotypical intimidation on him and did it well...and then crystalized the veiled threat with a sickly idea of patriotism thrown at a latino man who loves family and country, in that order. "Un 'v' invertido con tres lineas debajo" means the inverted v with 3 horizontal lines at the bottom of that v in a slightly cramed cluster. He told me.

And finally, he provided the following an hour later, “Where is my comment?”

The answer was simple. I hadn’t looked at the blog. I no longer allow unapproved comments to be posted directly. I was getting too many comments like, “Loved your post Good story. See http;//blab, blab, blab.com which was just an ad for a product that had nothing to do with UFOs.

But I digress.

I had also received another comment from TheUFOGuy, who posted his comment before those of Patrick Richard. He wrote:

Once again. I have a first hand witness who discussed this with Lonnie at the local coffee shop. Here is the conversation: At El Camino, while Lonnie was talking softly about the Albuquerque Journal edition, i was sketching (doodling) a couple of versions of the red insignia.

He looked from the newspaper and pointed to "that one" . I didn't expect him to answer my rhetorical question ( more to myself than to him) "well which one was it?"

The one in the upperleft of the photo I just sent.

He pointed to the drawing of the inverted V with 3 lines, but this site will not let me paste that drawing. I could send it to you, but your mind seems to be made up. Your also forgetting that Lonnie described the inverted V with 3 lines in spanish when he called the dispatch from the site. So, I have the drawing from the first hand witness with Lonnie, but I guess you will not post it?

Once again, I’m not sure why the snarky comment. Why wouldn’t I post it? It is relevant to our discussion. But there was no attachment and I looked at my email but didn’t see anything from him… until I realized who he was: Here is the drawing he sent.

 


If you look at the following post, you can read some additional information about this controversy. David Rudiak makes a few very interesting comments about this issue. Like him, as I say, I didn’t want to get dragged down this rabbit hole, and since the information that set it all off has been discredited (that presentation about Tesla), we really didn’t need to do this. The source for the original story is from a not so credible source and I knew that if I posted that information, we’d quickly learn more about it. That turned out to be true, and that part of this episode should be reduced to a footnote.

There really isn’t way to resolve this dilemma. I have posted illustrations made by Lonnie Zamora within hours of the sighting, signed by him, as the real symbol. Ray Stanford, who was in New Mexico within a couple days, and within two weeks, wrote to Dick Hall that the inverted “V” was not the real symbol. The real symbol is the “umbrella symbol.”

When the mayor of Socorro asked that Lonnie Zamora provide an illustration, Rick Baca was the one who drew it. A version of that drawing was published in the newspaper without any symbol on it but under Zamora’s guidance, the “umbrella symbol” was added later. This information is in the following post’s comments.

And there are the comments by Harden, who lives in Socorro and I’m sure both Richard and TheUFOGuy have spoken with him. He provided some interesting commentary, found in the following post about the “true” symbol.

TheUFOGuy (sorry, I didn’t realize who you were until later in the conversation) and now Patrick Richard, provide some compelling testimony. He provided a copy of the material that Richard provided that, as noted, came about with his discussions with Zamora and approved by Zamora.

A solid case can be made for either symbol (or the new third one that developed on that illustration above). I believe, based on the interviews I conducted and the documentation from the Blue Book files, that the “umbrella symbol” is the correct one.

However, the other side makes a compelling case for the inverted “V,” so you look at the evidence and decide which you think is the right one. I’m just not certain that it makes any difference in the world today. And remember, at the chief of Project Blue Book said at the time. He was going to make the UFO people happy because he, Hector Quintanilla labeled the case as “Unidentified.”

Monday, January 06, 2025

A Good Match for the Zamora Symbol has been Found

Almost from the moment that strange craft was reported by Police Officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964, Air Force officers, UFO researchers, journalists and those with an interest in UFOs have been searching for an Earth based symbol to match that which Zamora saw. The search was complicated by military a military officer and an FBI agent who interviewed Zamora within a couple of hours. They suggested that he keep the symbol to himself, not to hide the evidence, but to have something to use if others reported the craft and symbol. That was further complicated when they, or someone at Project Blue Book, invented a symbol to satisfy the news media.

For those interested in reviewing this aspect of the case, you can find my postings about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/11/socorro-symbol-redux.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

Over the years, there have been suggestions about that symbol, but they weren’t very close matches. Now, however, there is one that is frightening close to what Zamora reported. It is upside down. It is attached to a document dated 1928 which is part of a larger document. You can find that document here:

https://www.hal5.org/PDF/HAL5-Dec2018-Talk-AntiGravity.pdf

If the link doesn’t work, and I’ve had trouble with this sort of thing in the past, this is a look at several patents held by Nikola Tesla. The relevant one is Patent No. 1655144. Use that number in your search engine. This is a pdf. You need to scroll down to the patents from 1928 and you’ll see it in the upper left corner of the illustration.

While it is not an exact match, but, as I say, it is frightening close to the symbol that Zamora drew. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, why not just show it. The links above show the symbols released in 1964 and provide the documentation for it. I believe these provide a good history of that symbol.

That doesn’t answer the question however. Just in case links are broken or the patent number doesn’t work, here is that symbol:




Is the symbol here, the inspiration for the Zamora/Socorro symbol?

I should point out that Charles Blithfield discovered this and passed it along to me. Credit for the discovery goes to him.

And no, I don’t know if this taints the Zamora case, though it seems to be an incredible coincidence if an alien spacecraft held a symbol that is so close to the one Telsa used. Over the years, there has been quite a bit of controversy about this. I have to wonder, if the object Zamora reported was some sort of experimental craft, if there is any link to the various machines flying around White Sands had any link to Tesla.

Anyway, Blithfield has certainly complicated the case. I am reminded that Hector Quintanilla, the chief of Blue Book in 1964 had labeled the Zamora case as “unidentified,” he thought that the solution was somewhere in Zamora’s mind. He thought there might have been something that Zamora saw but hadn’t quite figured out what it was. Maybe this is the hint that Zamora needed for access that memory.

I do want to note that I don’t believe Zamora made up the sighting and I believe he was truly confused by it. He saw something he couldn’t identify and reported what he had seen.

As I say, thanks to Charles Blithfield for the information. 

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Drones: The Guesses Just Keep on Coming

I had hoped, with Congress in recess and we’re in the middle of the holidays, that I would be free from more drone discussion. However, there was one interesting item I caught over the weekend. Representative Nancy Mace, who is the Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation, said that she had been in a classified briefing on the drones.

Like President-elect Trump, she was careful about what she said. She indicated that the government did know more about these drone incursions that the claimed and said that she was interested in the fact that there were two distinct shapes involved in some of those sightings. She then said she didn’t want to get into the classified information she had received. If we follow the two-source rule used by journalists, we have two sources, that have been identified and who, given who their inside status, are in a position to know something more about the drones than we civilians.

In the last few days, there has been more analysis, some of it by other officials and some of it by various pundits, that suggests the government, or elements of the government, know what is going on. And there are those who are saying, with some justification, that this latest interest is the result of hysteria. Too many people outside looking for drones and spotting them. Or, in other words, not all the sightings are of these unidentified drones.

I also need point out that there are very few of us who believe that the drones are of off-world manufacture. This whole thing is Earth based.

Finally, there is no evidence, at the moment, that has been given to us by the government or that we have learned ourselves, that there is a threat here. I suppose we could say, and some have said, the drones could be a threat to aerial navigation, and one airport was shut down by a close encounter with a drone, but the truth is, this is one of those reflective phenomena. That means, simply, that the more attention we pay to it, the more our interest increases.

Anyway, the holidays have gotten in the way of drone reporting. We still see interesting video, and some of the news media continues to pursue the story, but the rest of us are no longer that interested in it.

Now, for those interested in such things, I’m doing Night Dreams Radio. For those interested, you can watch and listen here:

https://youtube.com/@nightdreamstalkradio?si=3dTWZX-SpgO0_zT4

And going completely off script, my wishes that everyone has a better new year than the last. 

Monday, December 16, 2024

Drones, Donald Trump and the CIA

 

So, I’m driving my car, pushing the buttons to find something interesting on the radio and I blunder into President-elect Trump’s press conference. I’m about to hit the button but I caught the question being asked. “Can you comment on the drones…”

Trump seems to hesitate and then said, “The Government knows what is happening… Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. For some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is. Our military knows and our President knows and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense. I can’t imagine it is the enemy because if it was the enemy they’d blast it out. Even it was late they’d blast it. Something strange is going on. For some reason they don’t want to tell the people and they should because the people… I mean they happen to be over Bedminster. I don’t think I’ll spend the weekend in Bedminster. I have decided to cancel my trip.”

The President-elect, as if I had to mention that.


He’s interrupted by additional questions and makes a very telling comment. A reporter asked, “Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?”

He says, “I don’t want to comment on that.”

They then descent into questions about vaccines, which is not relevant to our discussion.

I did see, or hear, that an ex-member of the CIA was suggesting that the drones were some sort of classified exercise. The CIA has spent decades taking credit for all sorts of UFO sightings, suggesting during the 1950s and 60s that high flying spy planes were the UFOs. Now the CIA, or rather someone who was a member of the CIA, is making the same claim about the drones.

And the CEO of a company that makes drones suggested that they are “sniffing” for gas leaks or areas of radiation. That is why they’re flying at night, which implies that these searches are classified. But I wonder if that was true, then why are they all lit up. If it’s a secret search, turn off the damn lights. And that really doesn’t explain the daylight sightings.

I’m inclined to believe what Trump said during the press conference. He said the military knows, which explains why none have been shot down. He then didn’t answer the question about having been briefed, which is, of course, a type of answer. Given what he has done since the election during this transition period, it is very likely that he has been briefed. That briefing suggested there is nothing dangerous involved.

I also wonder if some of the drone sightings haven’t been inspired by the hysteria that is being exhibited. During a wave of UFO sightings in the 1973, there were several cases in which witnesses were making up their encounters, increasing the hysteria. There was a case where three men, dressed in aluminum foil and standing near a road were waving at the cars. They were eventually arrested.

The point is, that it is now difficult to separate the real sightings from the faked sightings or the incidents in which some drone owners are taking advantage of the public concern. There is a solid body of evidence that drones are flying into areas that are restricted, violating FAA regulations, and adding to the hysteria that has gripped the nation.

To this point, and I stress that, to this point, there has been no incident in which one of these drones caused an accident. That isn’t to say that might never happen, only, to this point, it is the hysteria and the fear of the unknown that is driving these events.

If the Government has the answer, and it doesn’t involve our adversaries as we have been told repeatedly, and it’s not the Martians, or aliens from another solar system, then there is no real reason for the secrecy. If they can end the hysteria now, then it is time to do so.

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Drones: My Estimate of the Situation

For the last several days we have been talking about drones. At this point, it seems that we are relying more on rumor, speculation and misinformation. There have been several people interviewed and official spokespeople have been saying, things, sometime in direct contradiction of each other.

For some perspective on this, I will note that dozens, if not hundreds of drones have been seen over New Jersey and now those sightings have slipped into Pennsylvania and New York. There are several military installations in that general area. There are many videos of the drones seen in both daylight and at night. There are descriptions of drones that are relatively small, there are some described as six feet in diameter and then those are said to be the size of SUVs.

The Predator Drone. The size of an SUV? Suggestive of what some
are seeing over New Jersey and Pennsylvania?


You might say this began with the incursions around Langley Air Force Base recently and now migrated into other areas of the United States. And the Pentagon just reported that the drones, whatever they are, do not come from any of our adversaries in today’s world and they are not part of the US military.

After the incursions around Langley in December 2023, Christopher Mellon wrote an article wondering who was operating those mysterious drones that have been seen over Navy military exercises, around nuclear plants, and other critical operations. He mentioned that these intrusions by drones got so bad around Langley AFB that in response to the drones, aircraft at the base were moved to other, more secure locations.

Mellon wrote “Our government has had no success in determining where they are coming from or who is operating them. It is also surprising that not a single one has malfunctioned and been recovered despite extensive operations by large numbers of them over extended periods of time.”

Christopher Mellon


Air Force General Mark Kelly told reporters for the Wall Street Journal that one drone, was “roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.”

Adding to this, U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot told The War Zone that the Langley AFB incursions were just some of the more than 600 incursions reported over military installations in 2022.

He also said two other interesting things. One was that the he didn’t know if the drones had been had been tracked back to their recovery point or whether they could have been launched by a vessel off the coast. And two, he saw that NORAD’s responsibility for countering UAS was very limited to something that would be an attack of national consequence. He added that NORTHCOM had no responsibility or authority to take action, meaning they wouldn’t be intercepting them or trying to down one. He was saying that it was somebody else’s responsibility.

Surprisingly, he told The War Zone that all this activity led to the creation of a counter-drone experiment this week called Falcon Peak 2025, in which several companies will offer their solutions to counter these incursions.

Which I found interesting because, according to Mellon, these incursions had something of a history beginning in late February to early March, 2019. He mentioned, specifically, drones, displaying bright spotlights were seen repeatedly over Anderson Air Force Base on Guam. It seemed these drones were interested in a newly installed anti-ballistic missile system.

There is some indication that the Chinese might have been interested in learning about this system but there is no direct evidence of them deploying drones. The real problem with that is that none of the drones were brought down by American defensive systems. In other words, they operated with impunity.

There is, of course, proof of Chinese interest in what it happening in Canada and the United States. In February 2023, there was the great balloon flight that crossed parts of Alaska, Canada and the US. It was finally intercepted over the Atlantic Ocean and brought down. I often wondered why it wasn’t intercepted over some of the wide-open spaces in Canada or in the western and central parts of the US. It was apparently allowed to complete its mission, whatever that mission was, before it was destroyed.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, these drone incursions have been going on since, at least, 2019 and now, they have come up with a program that, apparently, will begin in 2025. Nothing like jumping on the problem and solving it in a timely manner.

But Guam and Anderson AFB were not the only target in 2019. In September, swarms of these drones were around the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The drones had flashing red and white lights. Again, these drones flew without hindrance or restriction and no identification was made. Robert Hastings, in his book UFOs and Nukes, made a study of these sorts of incursions in which security forces were unable to identify or down the objects flying over both military bases where atomic weapons were stored and the power plants that used atomic power.

In the latest go-around, we learned there is a report of a large drone, flying above 8000 feet, in violation of FAA rules and regulations. Drones have also been reported at altitudes between 24,000 - 28,000 feet. An orb was chased by an F-16 over a sensitive military base in New Jersey. That object vanished at an estimated Mach 3 and I will note that it was an estimate of its speed. These reports certainly are a threat to aerial navigation, and to national security but all we are hearing is talk about what they can do.

In fact, there seem to be laws or regulations that prevent any attempt to bring one down unless there is a threat. I’m not sure why there is talk of that. I would think that the drones operating above 400 feet would be a fair target since it is in violation of FAA regulations and is, therefore a threat to aerial navigation.

I’ll note here that the US military has drones that can operate at tens of thousands of feet above the ground. The Predator drone can hover high over the battlefield for hours and is virtually invisible from the ground. It is large enough to carry Hellfire Missiles and can be controlled from bases inside the United States while flying over targets on other continents. It is so quiet that it can’t be heard on the ground. In other words, we have the technology to do some of the things that the drones over New Jersey are reported to have done.

Given the growing concern over the drone flights that are now reported in New York as well as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, members of Congress were given a classified briefing on the ongoing problem with UAP, once known widely as UFOs. These drones are classified as UAP. Following that meeting, Congresswoman Nancy Mace said:

"We talked about several different UAPs that have been in the press or leaked. Most of those have been explained but there are ones that we discussed that are unexplained and they have a plan, they say, to disclose and declassify how they came to that conclusion and why they're still objects that are unanswered. There are certain shapes that are unexplained, that are in the air. I'm in a classified setting. I don't wanna cross over and disclose classified information but there are certain shapes consistently that are unexplained. Which is fascinating.”

The Pentagon was pushing back on the idea that some of the reports relate to off-world technology. Sabrina Singh, the DoD Deputy Press Secretary said, “To date the department has discovered no verifiable evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activities or technology.”

This is, of course, the same song and dance that we have heard since 1947 when flying saucers entered the public consciousness. There were classified investigations and a near constant claim about the lack of crash recovered debris, which would answer some of the questions.

In contrast to that bleak statement, AARO’s director, Dr. Jon Kosloski has said, “There are interesting cases that I, with my physics and engineering background and time in the intelligence community, do not understand and I don’t know anybody else who understands.”

There have been more statements by officials that tell us nothing, other than to suggest that there is no reason for concern. One Pentagon spokesman said that many of the drone sightings were actually commercial and private aircraft that have been misidentified as drones. Of course, there are videos and photographs that prove that many the reports of drones are actually drones and many are flying in violation of the FAA regulations about drones. And we have the report of 600 sightings made over several months.

We now learn that California and Oregon have had there own troubles with these incursions. You can listen to one pilot’s report of seeing something strange here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UppitJ6E9tM&t=21s

I could go on, but I think the point is made. These sorts of activities have been going on for years with no real governmental or official response. There has been little in the way of investigation or interception of them. I’m not sure why the Pentagon has been unable to bring down some samples of these drones. All they do is tell us that these flights are not controlled by our adversaries in the world, they have suggested that they can’t jam the radio frequencies being used by the drones, and they seem to be able to evade our attempts to get our hands on one. This strikes me as another indication of our inability to properly respond to what is an obvious threat to our national security. We talk, we worry, but we do nothing other than provide weak statements suggesting there is nothing to worry about.

Given the response of the government, it is possible to believe that they do know what is going on. They tell us that it of no importance to national security, which makes no sense, unless they understand what is happening and actually do know the source of the drones. Their response screams that they do have the answers. It’s just they can’t do anything about it of maybe that they don’t want to. Getting a drone would generate more questions and it is clear to me, they simply don’t want to answer any of them.