After US Congress held its first ever hearing on unidentified flying objects, we explore the allegations that are simply out of this world
Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were once the preserve of conspiracy theorists: tinfoil hat-wearers who have, in recent decades, found their natural home in the dark corners of the internet. Despite our natural curiosity, scepticism has been our default response on this issue.
The doubts have persisted despite such esteemed figures as Lord Hill-Norton, once a Chief of the General Staff, and Vice-Admiral Roscoe H Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, supporting theories of their existence.
All the more remarkable, then, were Wednesday’s events in the US Capitol as Congress held its first ever hearing on UFOs. Three retired US military officers told the security sub-committee of the House of Representatives’ main investigative body, the House Oversight Committee, that they had witnessed “unexplained anomalous phenomena” (UAPs).
It marked the culmination of a growing bipartisan obsession with UAPs that has seen Democrats and Republicans unite in demanding greater transparency about what has been witnessed, detected and found over the years. Tim Burchett, the committee’s joint leader, describes it discreetly as the “biggest cover-up in history”.
Two years ago, a Pentagon report revealed 144 official sightings of UAPs had been reported between 2004 and 2021 – 80 of which were also picked up by monitoring equipment – but provided no details of these encounters.
When retired intelligence official David Grusch alleged last month that information about UAPs was being withheld from Congress, it sparked the extraordinary congressional hearing featuring allegations of varying credibility were made. Here are the most intriguing:
The white ‘Tic Tac’
Commander David Fravor, an ex-US Navy fighter pilot, told the hearing that in November 2004 he witnessed from his cockpit a cylindrical, wingless white object “moving very abruptly over the white water, like a ping-pong ball” above the Pacific Ocean. When approached, this “Tic Tac” accelerated and was detected 60 miles away less than a minute later. Footage filmed by Cdr Fravor was leaked in 2017 and confirmed as genuine three years later.
“I think what we experienced was, like I said, well beyond the material science and the capabilities that we had at the time, that we have currently or that we’re going to have in the next 10 to 20 years,” he told the hearing.
Hurricane-defying objects
Lieutenant Ryan Graves, another retired navy fighter pilot, testified that he and fellow airmen had observed a UAP remain still in hurricane-strength winds before accelerating at supersonic speeds, defying the limits of technology.
“These objects were staying completely stationary in category-four hurricane winds,” he said. “The same objects would then accelerate to supersonic speeds – 1.1, 1.2 mach – and do so in very erratic and quick behaviours that we don’t have an explanation for.”
Dark cubes sighted worldwide
Lt Graves also claimed UAPs have been detected by navy servicemen stationed across the world and that most sightings are of “dark grey or black cubes inside a clear sphere” where “the apex or tips of the cube were touching the inside of the sphere”.
He claimed that he himself observed such an object over the Atlantic during a posting at Virginia Beach in 2018, and that there was “no official acknowledgement of the incident” despite his squadron reporting it.
‘Alien remains found’
Major Grusch, formerly of the US Air Force’s UAP intelligence task force, made the most startling claim of the hearing. He said the US government has found “non-human biologics” at crash sites, though he has not witnessed any himself and gave no further details.
Major Grusch also did not repeat previous claims that the US had recovered the bodies of alien pilots; a Pentagon spokesperson has denied his claim.
‘Scientific secrets harvested at crash sites for decades’
Major Grusch alleged that a secret official programme has been retrieving UAPs from crash sites for decades to harvest their technological secrets.
“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.
But again he declined to give any further details, just as he declined to repeat under oath previous claims about a football-field-sized spacecraft and allegations of murders committed to cover up UAP crashes. A Pentagon spokesperson also denied this claim.
@Raphael
Interesting that you see Hunter’s laptop as diversion du jour.
I see the UFOs as “diversion du jour” from Hunter’s, his father’s and the whole ruling class misdeeds.
How sad, how tragic, that so many nations in Africa and Asia have chosen, the stupidest and cruelest of all religions, Islam, as their religion.
And now it is almost impossible to change it.
One fellow tried to reform Islam and created Bahá?í Faith.
But he god only some 8 million people in 150 years of its existence.
Like all faith, Bahaism is also stupid. But much less so than Islam from which it originated.
@Vivarto
I read your comment and gave it a thumbs down as you reqeusted.
So really what his article is saying that many people, saw something up in the sky.
And that something appeared to move.
They assumed that whatever they saw was a physical object.
(Rather than for example a hallucination in their brain, or an atmospheric phenomenon, or some other natural phenomenon).
Assuming that it was a physical object, it’s movement was of such nature that could not be explained with our current knowledge of physical objects.
Further assuming that this object was a technological creation, they concluded that the technology used to create it was more advanced than anything we know about here on Earth.
Based on the above assumptions many people consider it a possibility that this object was created by some intelligent beings from a different part of the universe.
Now if we remove all the assumptions we can correctly state that Unidentified Objects were observed by many people, and that these objects appeared to fly.
Therefore some people may choose to call them UFO for short.
===================================================
This reminds me of Mr. God.
People observe the miracle of life, including their own existence.
They cannot explain it. They are aware that they’ll never be able to understand it.
Therefore they assume that a being infinitely more intelligent and powerful then them has created the Universe including themselves.
They call that assumed being “God”, ascribe to it male gender, so it becomes Mr. God. And then they start worshipping it, fearing it, loving it, submitting to it.
As time goes they create more and more stories about their Mr. God:
And they call their stories “religions”.
According to one of human groups “religion” Mr. God has great need for the foreskins of 8 year old baby boys. So now this particular group mutilates their baby boys to please their particular Mr. God.
Moreover they are so certain that what they are doing is “good” and deeply spiritual, that they would be very offended if they read what I am writing here.
I hope than none of them reads it, because I don’t want to offend anyone.
The sad part for me is that the intelligent people facing the mystery of unexplainable existence, turn to Mr. God, and start following absurd rules like the above described mutilation.
I have a request, if you have read what I wrote here, kindly give me a thumbs down. Don’t worry, do that even if you happened to agree with what I said.
My ego will not be offended. I just want to know if ANYONE bothered to read it.
Well, to me, this is embarrassingly stupid.
UFO == Unidentified Flying Object.
So people see something that they cannot identify. So what?
And then they identify it as UFO
Too silly.
@Adam, et al. I trust that the many, many pilots and other highly qualified people who have seen UFOs (UAPs now?), can tell when they have seen something that has been engineered. There cannot possibly have been that many mistaken meteorites, or weather balloons for that matter. The evidence is compelling that they are seeing something real that is not naturally occurring. What they are, or where they come from, is another question. Maybe somebody knows, but if so, they aren’t telling us. That’s probably a good thing. I don’t think that people, as a whole, could handle that kind of information. Maybe someday that knowledge will be forced upon us. Until that day, Hunter’s laptop is the diversion du jour.
All of these strange phenomena are typical of meteorites entering the earths atmosphere. They appear to move “in formation,” disappear suddenly, sometimes appear to explode (and actually do), seem to move away at high speed, may light up the sky, etc. The military has a long history of attributing tests of experimental aircraft, and claiming shriveled up or mutilated corpses of of US airmen who volunteered for suicide missions flying these craft (the infamous Roscoe incident). I also suspect that the present Democratic Party administration has a hidden agenda for agreeing to a Congressional investigation of these reports, That is, to distract Congress from more substantive investigations, like those into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s taking bribes from foreign governments such as China and Ukraine.