...The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.
Most of the incidents investigated in Britain have been easily explained as misidentifications of stars and planets, aircraft lights, satellites and meteors, but some cases have raised national security or air safety issues.
On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a clear security breach.
On March 30 and 31, 1993, there was a wave of U.F.O. sightings over Britain. One witness described a triangular-shaped craft that flew slowly over an air force base before accelerating away to the horizon in an instant, many times faster than a jet. The British military reported, “There would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating over the U.K.”
On April 23, 2007, a commercial airline pilot and some of his passengers reported a huge cigar-shaped U.F.O. — the pilot estimated it to be a mile wide — near the Channel Islands. At the time, air traffic controllers reported to the pilot that radar picked up something, but that it was “unknown traffic.”
In addition, there have been several incidents of near misses between U.F.O.s and known aircraft — enough to prompt the Ministry of Defense and the British Civil Aviation Authority to advise pilots, if they encounter anything, “not to maneuver, other than to place the object astern, if possible.”
The United States is no less vulnerable than Britain and France to threats to security and air safety. The United States Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should reopen investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s out there.
Well, maybe not, but isn't this an interesting time to talk about it on one of the primest Op-Ed pieces of journalistic unreal estate in Known Space?
And while we're recounting stories of Alien Terra here, why not mention a few words about the Battle of Los Angeles at the beginning of World War II?
Because some files are just a little too sensitive, perhaps?
There is an interesting pattern developing. The Vatican says aliens could exist, and might even be good guys? If it were John Paul saying this, I'd smile, and say the good only see the good, but Pope Ratzo the Nazi?
Then there's the ex-astronaut, a moonwalker, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, a doctorate of MIT, saying the truth really is way out there, but has been visiting regularly?
And if they hadn't been nice guys, they would have wiped us out?
Not that I'm prone to argue, but I can think of a lot of reasons they wouldn't want to wipe us out, no matter how obnoxious we might be. For one thing, where else could you possibly find such a world of complacent rubes too full of alternately happy talk or dire foreboding to actually accomplish anything meaningful in the multiverse?
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