A Friday at Midnight Ramble on Today’s UFO Report

For those who don’t follow the topic, today AARO released its long-awaited first volume report on UFOs. AARO stands for All-domain Anomalous Resolution Office, which was set up by the Pentagon to study UFOs/UAP, the latest in a long list of secret and not-secret offices throughout the last seventy years or so. Like the previous reports, this one “found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity.”

So, case closed?

Well… the problem with the report, like all previous reports, is that it was written by the same people charged with protecting UFO secrecy, if such a thing exists, which the people who would be charged with protecting UFO secrecy say, in today’s report, does not.

The other problem is that many witnesses have incurred professional risk reporting their encounters to AARO, only to have those reports written off. It’s certainly correct and true, as the report says, that a majority of the sightings were “almost certainly the result of misidentification and a direct consequence of the lack of domain awareness…” Even so, the report acknowledges that “many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified,” saying that lack of data prevents final resolution. We’re left with, what, a handful of cases that are well-documented and inexplicable? Or are we left with no cases that are both well-documented and inexplicable? The report does not say.

The UFO community, of course, is in an uproar. “A whitewash,” is the typical review. “Quivering and fuming with anger,” says UFO experiencer and spoon-bender Uri Geller.” “A grotesque display of stenography,” said @tinyklaus, a UFO dude I follow, in describing the mainstream press’s coverage of the report.

Personally, I don’t know what to think of the AARO report. I don’t know the motivations of its top personnel, nor their bosses. I don’t know if it’s entirely on the up-and-up or whether the office is a front to launder the Pentagon’s dirtiest laundry. The entire topic is so suffused with fog that’s it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.

What I do know is that something unexplained is in the seas, skies, and space of and above our planet. They’ve been here a long time, they come in many shapes and sizes, and they behave in ways we can neither replicate nor explain for a purpose or purposes we do not understand. That’s not conjecture on my part – those are the facts. The evidence is international and voluminous. These things exist. Their existence is no longer controvertible. Even the AARO report begrudgingly acknowledges that fact.

The very first question that necessarily follows is also the question we cannot answer: what are they? We don’t know. Even former head of AARO Sean Kirkpatrick admitted to the existence of “metallic orbs” in various sizes, “capable of very interesting apparent maneuvers.” He has no idea what they are but he knows they are not extraterrestrial. How does he know?

He doesn’t say.

I will be the first to admit that it’s possible Sean Kirkpatrick is correct. It is certainly possible that every single one of these UFOs can be explained away through prosaic means. But if that’s true, then something is amiss with everything else because too many of these objects display flight characteristics and propulsion systems that do not seem possible with our conventional technology. So, either our soldier, sailors, airmen, marines, pilots, submariners, astronauts (not to mention everyday citizens) are too badly trained to properly identify prosaic craft, air clutter, and meteorological phenomena AND their equipment is equally faulty OR there’s something out there we don’t understand.

None of the more everyday hypotheses are very good. Maybe it’s foreign tech that kicks our tech in every way? Maybe it’s domestic tech that, if ours, obviates the need for much of our current energy infrastructure, in which case why don’t we have the good stuff? Maybe it’s a combination of balloons and birds and glitches on cameras? If that’s the case, the best minds at the Pentagon are apparently fooled by balloons and birds and glitches on cameras.

Moreover, UFOs are only a small, but integral part of the larger puzzle which makes up “the phenomenon,” the umbrella term used to slot all manner of anomalous activities: from UFOs to psychic activity to near death experiences to bigfoot to alien abductees. But if you squint your eyes a little bit, you can also squeeze in miracles, divine communication, saintly appearances, and all manner of accepted religious dogma. In other words, this mysterious part of the human experience is common and difficult to explain away, Pentagon report or no.

I don’t know why our government can’t cop to their existence. I suspect they have their reasons, and some of them may even be good reasons. As for why other governments don’t release what they know? Some have, a bit. The French concluded the things are real. The Mexicans have basically done the same. The Soviets studied them. The Chinese opened an official UAP office just the other week. Nobody’s come forward with a craft. Nobody’s come forward with a credible body. Maybe it’s a whole lot of hooey. But I don’t think so and most of you don’t, either.

Will the issue now fade away? It’s possible. We’ve been here before. But it’s also possible that the cat is now too far out of the bag. As, Lue Elizondo, former head of AATIP, an AARO predecessor, wrote today:

Today the Pentagon and its current UAP investigative program, AARO, released a report that is intentionally dishonest, inaccurate, and dangerously misleading. I hold the Pentagon leadership and former AARO leadership accountable for this obvious attempt to diminish and embarrass whistleblowers, to undermine the truth, and ignore the evidence.. Myself and others who are awre of the truth are going to keep working to help Congress in their efforts to achieve disclosure.

Personally, while the AARO report is as disappointing as it is surprising, I don’t mind. The most compelling part of this mystery has always been its mystery. Let the mystery continue.