"It is just what we call a UFO. It couldn't identify it. It was flying. And it was an object. It's as simple as that." "You don't see birds at 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 feet. That's just not how birds operate." "You know, I've got top-secret clearance with a ton of special-project clearances. So, it's not like I wasn't cleared to know. But, as I'm sure you've found in your research [New York Magazine], to have clearance to know something you have to have both the clearance that it's elevated to and you have to have the 'need to know' it. And, clearly, whatever it was, if it was a government project, I did not need to know." "The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by 'erratic', is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I've ever encountered before flying against other air targets." "Because, aircraft, whether they're manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, a hundred feet in like seconds, which is not possible." "If it was obeying physics like a normal object that you would encounter in the sky -- an aircraft, or a cruise missile, or some sort of special project that the government didn't tell you about -- that would have made more sense to me. The part that drew our attention was how it wasn't behaving within the normal laws of physics." U.S.Navy pilot Chad Underwood
U.S.Navy Pilot Chad Underwood
"We've been waiting around as scholars and researchers on the subject for many decades and hoping to God that one day the government would come out and acknowledge what this is." Tom DeLonge, UFO researchers, The Stars Academy of Arts & Science
He was flying his F/A-18 Super Hornet over the Pacific fifteen years ago, when the radar pod on his plane captured a strange object flying in the near distance, and suddenly it was gone. Another, different pilot earlier that very day reported the very same image, about 40-feet long, in an oblong shape, white, hovering above the Pacific off the coast of Mexico. They called it "the Tic Tac". Pilot Underwood has had ample experience with flying objects, and he shudders at the prospect of himself being taken as a "little green men crazy".
He saw something on that day, something he has no explanation for. What he does know for certain is that whatever it was he saw failed to respect the law of physics. It flew from around 50,000 feet to descend to some hundred feet above sea level within the eye-blinking space of seconds and despite its speed, no sonic boom presented, there were no exhaust plumes reflective of some kind of propulsion.
And nor was it a top-secret test aircraft since someone like him with top clearance in the military would have been informed that to be the case. And then ... someone from NORAD contacted the USS Nimitz immediately following the report of the sighting for a narrative of what, exactly, was seen by this man. Serious enough that the military spent two weeks in an effort to understand what Pilot Underwood had seen and described. The radar system on his plane underwent recalibration to ensure it was working properly.
There was a credible report on objects observed by navy pilots in May, reported by The New York Times, including an incident where a Super Hornet came disastrously close to hitting ... 'something'. Another story from 2017, of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Thread Identification Program to analyze UFO sightings. This past September, a report on former Blink-182 frontman, Tom DeLonge, who left the band to occupy himself as a UFO researcher.
Whose prodding seemed to lead the U.S. military to acknowledge that several objects whose presence was caught on film, a presence that defies identification other than flying objects was in their possession and well known to them. The organization has fixed a firm focus on research in the 2004 Tic Tac video filmed by Chad Underwood, hoping to be able to understand or interpret the profound mystery behind these flying objects.
An image taken from a video released by
the Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
Program shows a 2004 encounter near San Diego between two Navy F/A-18F
fighter jets and an unknown object. U.S. Department of Defense
"It's been two weeks of insanity, pure insanity." "I've had no sleep. I have no voice. I would like to shake the hand of the young man who made this happen and created this monster, and also would really like to punch him as hard as I could." Connie West, proprietor, Rachel's UFO-themed hotel, Little A'Le'Inn
Joe Buglewicz / for NBC News
"Something is being covered up here." "If it was nothing they would just come out and tell you there was nothing." Phil Hartley, lecturer in electrical engineering, Bo'Ness, Scotland
"This is a very rough, tough desert [high mountains, baking heat, kilometres of jagged terrain]." "It's not a good place to get stranded or run out of gas." Roberta Park retired schoolteacher
"I cannot believe it's gotten this much attention. We deal with
this on a weekly basis but nothing to this scale."
"We could probably handle it,
[a possible influx of a thousand visitors] but it could definitely cause issues. Heaven forbid the number is 5,000
people where you almost double the size of the county."
"I
could see people with a lot of heat-related issues, and with our
limited resources up here it could definitely jeopardize their safety.
The number of people could overwhelm our EMS in a hurry." Lincoln County
Sheriff Kerry Lee
It was meant to be a bit of a lark. The person posting on Facebook declaring it was time to gather a crowd of curiosity-seekers and invade Nevada's Area 51, a military installation in the wilderness area of the state off limits, guarded by infrared cameras, buried motion sensors and private security guards, with its own airline -- the proving ground for generations of advanced U.S. aircraft, has always fascinated UFO hunters. The creator of the event urged people to sign up to attend the event. And he claims to have been surprised when 1.9 million signatures resulted.
He took it that the responses represented the same spirit of light-hearted fantasy-making as his own, in urging everyone to gather to view UFOs: to come along to "storm Area 51" and "see them aliens". It isn't really known what percentage of that close to two-million signers-on are serious about the imagined 'event', planning to arrive on September 21, the designated date for an unstoppable crowd to storm the area. If so, they would sardine-pack the tiny town of Rachel with its population of 54.
Rachel is considered to be the "back gate" to Groom Lake -- Area 51 -- accessible through the "Extraterrestrial Highway". On the highway is the Alien Research Center gift shop, and other related alien-themed pit stops. Groom Lake was chosen in 1955 by the Central Intelligence Agency as the test site for its U2 spy plane program. At the present time, that function on the site is merely one of many. The Nevada Test and Training Range is a military reservation of considerable size, a vast forbidden area wherein sit specialized areas from drone bases to botanical experimental stations.
Visitors
take pictures with a statue of an alien, known by locals as "Fred,"
outside the Alien Research Center in Crystal Springs, Nevada.Joe Buglewicz / for NBC News
Area 51 is not open to visitors , not even to Nevada Test and Training Range workers. A fleet of planes familiarly known as "Janets" ferry about a thousand workers daily to and from a private terminal at Las Vegas McCarran Airport, all employees of the facility. Up to the present the area has attracted a fairly steady stream of UFO devotees and the curious -- a boon to the shop people of the Extraterrestrial Highway to cater to.
A physicist by the name of Bob Lazar has claimed for decades that he worked on a crashed alien space craft near Groom Lake. He spoke on June 21 about the matter on a podcast with Joe Rogan, provoking the interest of student Matty Roberts, 20, who thought what fun could be had in suggesting an invasion of the area. "I think everything Bob Lazar says is true", a young sound engineer from Seattle averred, scouting the area to set up a music festival in September.
Should anyone in fact attempt to enter Area 51, they will face the reality of non-entry. The private guards are authorized in the use of deadly force should the occasion arise. And it did back in January when a man was killed as he attempted to cross the line near the town of Mercury at the opposite end of the NTTR from Groom Lake.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
