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Science Forum Index » Astronomy Forum » Unidentified Flying Threats...
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| chatnoir... |
 Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 4:53 pm |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/opinion/29pope.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Unidentified Flying Threats
By NICK POPE
Published: July 29, 2008
London
ON the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at
O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object
hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was
tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not
investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft.
Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar
systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of
aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations
of several witnesses?
A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads
people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But
in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar
data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a
weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to
engage in espionage against the United States.
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.
Nick Pope, the author of “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” was in charge of
U.F.O. investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to
1994. |
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