The New Advisory Council on UFOs/UAPs Lacks Deep Scholars of Spooky Phenomena

 It has recently been announced that some US government authority asked Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb to form an advisory committee on UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and UAPs (defined either as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena). The committee is called the UAP Science Advisory Council. In a post, Loeb states this: "In support of President Trump’s directive on UAP transparency, I was tasked by the White House, the Pentagon’s All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI, and the Intelligence Community, to assemble a 'UAP Science Advisory Council'."  

I'm not sure why someone at the White House thought that Avi Loeb was a good choice for such a role. In recent years, Loeb's statements regarding anomalies and extraterrestrials has been a story of bungling error. 

Avi Loeb somehow got the idea that a  2014 meteor (the CNEOS 2014-01-08 meteor) may have been an interstellar spacecraft that blew up high in the sky. Loeb organized a costly oceanic expedition looking for what he hoped would be remnants of a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship.  He found no sign of anything looking like a spaceship or any of its parts. All that he recovered were some tiny metal specks. The metal specks he found were just like metal sea specks found all over the world.  But it seemed like Loeb tried to convince the press that he discovered smithereens of a starship.  The sad story of this bungling misadventure is told in my post here. 

As described in my post here, Loeb tried to persuade people that the probably-just-an-asteroid object ‘Oumuamua was an extraterrestrial spaceship. Loeb capitalized on this opportunity, writing a book trying to promote such a theory. He ignored facts defying his hypothesis. One was that ‘Oumuamua seemed to have a tumbling motion, one we would never expect an extraterrestrial spaceship to have. Another reason for rejecting the claim that ‘Oumuamua was some kind of extraterrestrial spacecraft is that the object showed no sign of moving towards our planet.  

As discussed in my post here, when the comet 3I/ATLAS recently passed through the solar system, Loeb repeatedly made statements trying to suggest that the object was an interstellar spaceship. Eventually photos showed that the object was just an ordinary comet. After repeatedly trying (in the autumn of 2025) to raise suspicions  that 3I/ATLAS is a spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin, Loeb confessed in December 2025 that "3I/ATLAS is most likely a comet of natural origin."

A well-selected committee to advise the government about the mystery of UFOs and UAPs would be one that had some deep scholars of spooky phenomena. There seem to be no such scholars on Loeb's new "Advisory Council." 

I looked at the list of about 14 people that Loeb selected for his council. I used Google Scholar to look at some of the papers the figures had written. It seems that nowhere on this council is there any deep and thorough scholar of paranormal phenomena.  None of the figures seems to have very deeply studied the topic of UFOs and UAPs.  A few of them are co-authors of papers discussing the technology of researching UFOs and UAPs, papers that do not show any deep scholarship of the phenomenology or history of UFOs and UAPs. Such papers typically have multiple authors, often many co-authors.

I see that two of the council members (Loeb and Carol Cleland) are co-authors of a long paper on the scientific investigation of UFOs and UAPs. But that paper has 39 authors, so we cannot count the paper as evidence of deep scholarship of UFOs or UAPs by either Loeb or Cleland.  These days a recently published paper reviewing the history of some topic is no convincing evidence of deep scholarship on the topic, because AI systems can do most of the work in gathering the history of something. 

The new Advisory Council includes Michael Shermer. I have read two of his books, which I discuss in my post "Paranormal Denialists Don't Do Their Homework," and my post "Some Errors in His Hardcore Skepticism."  My impression from reading these books of Shermer (and from reading some of his later writings) is that he is not any deep scholar of spooky phenomena, and is also someone who frequently states inaccuracies when writing about such phenomena.  In general self-described "skeptics" such as Shermer fail to be deep and thorough scholars of reports of the paranormal, and also tend to be extremely credulous in their gullible acceptance of dubious materialist dogmas (meaning that they are not really skeptics in the original meaning of that word). 

Photos and sightings of mysterious orbs are a phenomenon not at all limited to the sky.  Such sightings or photos abundantly occur in people's homes, and in indoor places such as Grand Central Terminal, as you can see in my long series of more than 1000 photos here.  The photography of mysterious orbs is deeply entangled with other types of extremely anomalous or paranormal phenomena, as documented in my long series of posts here. There are strong reasons for suspecting that UFOs or UAPs may be something other than spaceships from other planets, reasons I have discussed as early as 2014 (in my post here), and have continued to discuss in posts such as my 2021 post "Do UFOs Come From a Paraverse?" here. 

According to the 2018 book "Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence," UFO close encounters may often be more spiritual or psychic than typically  reported in the press. FREE is the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences. Early in the book we read this about a survey of people claiming such close encounters:

"FREE's research suggests that the physical aspects are but a small fraction of the attributes associated with these complex manifestations. Indeed, it is the persuasive non-physicality, the parapsychological and other paranormal aspects, that comprise the majority of survey respondents' experiences. We firmly believe that the field of parapsychology needs to take note and,  instead of remaining distant from the UAP phenomenon, the field needs to embrace it." 

Next in the book we read an interesting hypothesis. Using the term NIH for "non-human intelligence," the book states this:

"FREE hypothesizes that types of contact with NIH (contact via NDEs, OBEs, UAP Contact, Remote Viewing, Channeling, communication with ghosts/spirits, Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys, Telepathic Contact, sightings of Orbs, PSI, and other types of 'paranormal' Contact with NIH) might actually be one phenomenon that should not be studied separately. We call all of the ways that humans have pierced the veil and have had contact with NIH the 'Contact Modalities'...We firmly believe that cross comparative academic research on 'Experiencers' of the Contact Modalities may provide insight into the validity of various models of consciousness. Once the necessary cross comparative research has been undertaken among the various Contact Modalities, numerous commonalities will be derived that are shared by many of the experiencers of the Contact Modalities."

That's quite a mouthful, and to aid anyone confused by this "alphabet soup," let me explain some of the terms used:

• "NDE" means "near-death experiences," discussed in my long series of posts here.
• "OBE" means "out-of-body experience," a type of experience which most commonly occurs near death, but which can also occur in those not near death. Such experiences have 11 characteristics discussed in my long post here. 
• "UAP Contact" means contact (visual or otherwise) with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (another term for UFOs). 
• "Remote Viewing" is a reported ability to observe in a paranormal fashion distant locations.
• "Channeling" is when someone speaks (often in an unusual voice) in an anomalous way, and later claims that the words came not from his own mind but from some other person's mind (living or dead).  A very similar term is "voice mediumship." 
• "Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys" can occur after someone takes a drug or uses a natural substance (such as certain mushrooms), and may then report seeing otherworldly beings. 
• "Sightings of Orbs" sometimes occurs visually (as in the roughly 200 cases described here);  but the most common related experience is photography of hard-to-explain orbs (as shown here, here and here). 
• "Psi" is a general term for human "sixth sense" abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and mind-over-matter. 

 A deep scholar of UFOs (Jacques Valee) has produced works such as Passport to Magonia suggesting that UFO sightings are part of a wider human experience involving the paranormal, one that stretches back centuries in time.  Clearly the UFO/UAP phenomena is very entangled with types of anomalous or paranormal phenomena other than just seeing strange things in the sky. To properly advise the government on what is happening in regard to UFOs and UAPs, an "advisory council"  would need to include some deep thorough scholars of unexplained phenomena and the paranormal, people who have been very deeply studying such topics for quite a few years.  Regrettably the recently formed UAP Science Advisory Council seems to include no such scholars. 

The newly formed council would also benefit from having two types of people it lacks: (1) a professional photographer or photo analyst or video analyst; (2) someone with a police investigation background, having lots of experience in asking people tough questions and distinguishing between liars and truth tellers. 

Site: "Enigma Network Recorded Over 8,000 Orb Sightings"

 A web site called Enigma is tracking UFO sightings, largely by a smartphone app. At the page here, we read this:

"From December 2022 to June 2025, the Enigma network recorded over 8,000 orb sightings across the United States, including more than 500 that referenced metallic orbs. Of these, 422 were specifically described as 'metallic,' 'metal,' or 'silver.' Roughly 70% of all reports met our quality standards for publication. "

Silver is an orb color I never get. The colors I get most commonly are:

• Blue orbs (1500+ photos)
• Green orbs (275+ photos)
• Yellow orbs (190+ photos)
• Pink orbs (215 photos)
• Orange orbs (250+ photos)
• Purple orbs (487 photos)
• Red orbs (100+ photos)

US Congress Hearing Witness Tells of Being Spooked by an Orb

 In the video below we see part of testimony delivered this week at a hearing of the United States Congress. We hear some astonishing accounts told by Jeffrey Nuccetelli. He says five UFO/UAP events occurred at Vandenburg Air Force Base. He says that on October 14, 2003  Boeing contractors reported a massive red square hovering over two missile defense sites.  He then says a triangular craft larger than a football field hovered above some military installation for about 45 seconds. Around the 3:50 mark he says that in 2005 he saw a light in the sky which dropped in elevation, and which he and his friends then observed (200 feet over his house) as a 30-foot (about 10 meter) "sphere of light." He says the strange orb disappeared into the sky. 

US Congress Hearing Video Shows Speeding Orb Hit by Missile

 In the video below we see part of testimony delivered yesterday at a hearing of the United States Congress. The video shows a speeding object that is described as an "orb." It looks like a blob of energy. We then see a Hellfire missile colliding with the mysterious orb. The mysterious orb seems to survive intact, continuing on its path. The video was taken in October, 2024. 

At the 1:30 mark of the video below, also from the US Congress hearing of September 9, 2025, we hear a US Navy officer report seeing this:

 "A self-luminous Tic-Tac shaped object emerged from the ocean, before linking up with three other similar objects. The four then disappeared simultaneously with a high-synchronized near instantaneous acceleration. I observed no sonic boom and no conventional propulsion signature, no exhaust plume...."

The video here gives us some of the hearing testimony before and after this evidence was introduced. 

UAP Buffs Are All Talking About That Wall Street Journal Article, But It Sounds Hard to Believe

 In my earlier post "Mystery Orbs Should Make Us More Humble," I discussed a very unsatisfactory article written by the former "UAP grand chief" Sean Kirkpatrick. The US Department of Defense had an office dedicated to investigating reports of UFOs (or UAP, variously defined as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). The office was officially called the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office or AARO. Sean Kirkpatrick led the office in 2022 and 2023, but resigned around the end of 2023. 

Kirkpatrick wrote an article that appeared in Scientific American, one entitled "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter." My post on the article noted that Kirkpatrick made some statements in that article that made him sound ill-suited for the role that he had, partially because of an attitude that you might call a "why-am-I-wasting-my-time-on-this-stuff?" attitude. 

Now we have a big new article involving Sean Kirkpatrick. But it is not one he has written himself. Sean has teamed up with a Wall Street Journal writer, who has written a UFO/UAP article in which Sean has a starring role. It is a very strange mishmash entitled "The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology."  I call it a mishmash because of a few little scraps here and there which do not amount to anything that sounds like any unified coherent plausible narrative. 

The first anecdote told by the story seems hard-to-believe and not very important even if it is true. We read about some colonel who supposedly gave a bar owner fake UFO photos, which the bar owner put on his walls. The bar was near Area 51. We are told that this was done so that people would think sightings of strange craft around that area were UFOs, rather than suspect the truth: the government was testing a new type of aircraft.  

The story sounds far-fetched. If you wanted to spread misinformation about what was seen around area 51, why do something so ineffective as making fake photos that would go up on the wall of a bar?

There follows in the article paragraph after paragraph not giving specific examples, but trying to create the idea that government officials may have done something to create false ideas about UFOs, maybe to confuse people so that they would not know about classified information.  

We have this far-fetched account, which includes no specific confessions by anyone involved:

"But Kirkpatrick soon discovered that some of the obsession with secrecy verged on the farcical. A former Air Force officer was visibly terrified when he told Kirkpatrick’s investigators that he had been briefed on a secret alien project decades earlier, and was warned that if he ever repeated the secret he could be jailed or executed. The claim would be repeated to investigators by other men who had never spoken of the matter, even with their spouses. 

It turned out the witnesses had been victims of a bizarre hazing ritual. 

For decades, certain new commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs, as part of their induction briefings, would be handed a piece of paper with a photo of what looked like a flying saucer. The craft was described as an antigravity maneuvering vehicle. 

The officers were told that the program they were joining, dubbed Yankee Blue, was part of an effort to reverse-engineer the technology on the craft. They were told never to mention it again. Many never learned it was fake. Kirkpatrick found the practice had begun decades before, and appeared to continue still. The defense secretary’s office sent a memo out across the service in the spring of 2023 ordering the practice to stop immediately, but the damage was done. 

Investigators are still trying to determine why officers had misled subordinates, whether as some type of loyalty test, a more deliberate attempt to deceive or something else."

The account sounds hard to believe. Why would someone mislead "commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs" into thinking that there was some captured UFO that was being reverse-engineered?  The explanation of a "hazing ritual" makes no sense at all. A "hazing ritual" is some trick or ordeal typically pulled on people at the bottom of some academic or military hierarchy, usually so that people higher up on such a hierarchy can remind the people at the bottom of their lower status.  It sounds  unbelievable that such a "hazing ritual" would be applied to  "commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs." 

We have a quote that may initially sound impressive, but which is actually unimpressive, because it does not come from a named witness, and does not speak precisely. The quote is this:

 "Ma’am, we know it went on for decades. We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of people. These men signed NDAs. They thought it was real.“

But what exactly is the "it" being referred to here from this anonymous source? We don't know. So the quote means little. 

The story ends with an account that does not sound right. We read about how a mysterious disabling of a nuclear launch system was associated with the sighting of one or more mysterious light anomalies some thought were UFOs.  The article attempts to persuade us that the explanation was some weird device the government was using to test the effect of electromagnetic pulse effects (EMP). But the article fails to link in any convincing way the construction and activation of such a device with the reported events of nuclear launch systems being mysteriously deactivated.  An article by Kevin Wright points out one reason the claim does not hold water:  any device testing EMP effects would probably not merely temporarily turn off a nuclear launch system, but also do permanent damage to such a system. It would be crazy for the government to be deliberately creating EMP effects near nuclear launch systems. 

We are left with a mishmash of bits and pieces that fails to add up to  some convincing narrative of the government systematically providing disinformation to mislead people about UFOs.  The story mostly sounds like a deal in which Sean Kirkpatrick is trying to further convince people that there's nothing to UFOs or UAPs, as he tried to do in his Scientific American article in 2024. The Wall Street Journal article's main photo is a giant photo of Sean. 

I do know this much: US government web sites continue to state enormously false claims about the nature of the human genome consisting of DNA and its genes. I documented this false information in my post "The US Government's False Claims About DNA." That post was written in 2022, and the very false claims I documented still exist on the US government web pages I cited. We have heard some claims that the new US administration is attempting to correct pages with false biology information, but no such correction has occurred in the pages I discuss in that post. 

I cannot think of any reason why anyone at the US government would have engaged in "hazing rituals" to deceive "new commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs," as the recent Wall Street Journal article claims. I do understand well a reason why biology authorities would be making false claims about the nature of DNA. That reason is explained in my widely-read post here. 

Analyzing the Account of the Latest "UFO Whistleblower"

Recently a video on the www.newsnationnow.com site has gained considerable attention, and is being talked about quite a bit on the UFO subreddit here.  A helicopter pilot named Jacob Barber is interviewed, and he makes claims of having seen something of non-human origin. The video starts out by asserting that Barber had involvement in intelligence activities, and had a high security clearance. We hear testimony from a few people saying Barber is trustworthy.

 Then Barber tells us of being involved in some attempt to retrieve by helicopter a weird egg-shaped object about 20 feet in size. At 9:36 Barber says he got within 150 feet of the object. At 10:48 Barber is very oddly asked a question about how he knew that the object was non-human in origin -- "alien tech."  That's a very odd question to be asking someone. At this point Barber fails to give a convincing answer. He says that looking at the object you could tell it was extraordinary and anomalous, and non-human. That is not a good answer. Seeing something strange looking does not entitle you to claim that is something artificial and of non-human origin. 

At 11:29 Barber says the object was a white egg-shaped object with no thermal signature and no sign of a propulsion system. He is asked again at the 12:13 mark how he knew that the object was of non-human origin. Again, he fails to give  a very convincing answer to that question. He describes the object as ridiculous-looking, but that does not justify a claim of non-human origin.  He says that later he heard from someone that what he recovered that night was "NHI," a term meaning nonhuman intelligence. Hearsay accounts like that are of much less value than first-hand testimony. 

Around the 13:25 mark the interviewer says that his organization has received footage of a helicopter retrieving an egg-shaped object in a sling. We see what looks an egg-shaped object being carried in a sling-like device. Around 15:13 Barber says there was another object involved, an acorn-shaped object. Around 15:54 Barber describes what he calls a profound-experience while retrieving one of the objects.  He refers at the 16:16 mark to feeling an "intense hybrid of sadness and happiness and beauty." The article gives us these quotes:

" 'I felt like something connected with me,' he said. 'I felt like something had tuned in to me and my soul and was providing me some sense of guidance on what to do and how profound what I was doing was. It was so overwhelming that I began to cry.'

Barber said he had never experienced a feeling like that before.

'It was a very feminine energy. I’ll tell you that it felt like the spirit of God, but not in any masculine sense. And it wasn’t like a soul; it was like a frequency that I was connected with. And whatever that force was since that night, it has stayed with me. And as crazy as this sounds, it’s what’s guiding me now, and it’s what’s providing protection for me.' "

At the 19:03 mark he says there is a psychic component to the UAP research. 

It is true that reports of UFO encounters and so-called "alien abduction" experiences often seem to have a strong psychic and spiritual component. I discuss that in my post below:

Quite a Few So-Called "Alien Abductions" May Be Spiritual Experiences

Around the 19:31 mark we hear that Barber says he was convinced that he had connected telepathically to a non-human intelligence. We then hear (around the 19:50 mark) Barber speculate that that the appearance of the egg-shaped object was not accidental, that the object was "summoned" by something called the Psyonix Team (or the Psionics Team). Around the 20:13 mark Barber is asked what is a psionic. He answers that a psionic is someone with "astral, temporal" abilities. In the next minute he claims that there was an attempt to use psychics to summon a UFO or UAP to land. At 21:39 someone else (Don Paul Bales) says something that sounds rather supportive of some of Barber's claims.

Around the 25:00 mark Barber says that he and his team got ill, possibly because of the retrieval mission. He describes symptoms such as hair loss that are similar to those of radiation poisoning. Later in the video we have a hard-to-follow account in which Barber describes some involvement in retrieving sensitive hard-drives pertaining to UFOs or UAPs. There is some kind of complicated story in which it is insinuated that someone's life may have been in danger. 

The physical part of the account is not all-that impressive, in the sense that a 20-foot white oval object is not very impressive evidence of some nonhuman power.  Any number of human powers might be able to manufacture such an object.  The most interesting parts of the account are the claim that some team is attempting to summon mysterious visitors using telepathy, and Barber's claim that he had some kind of mystical telepathic encounter while retrieving this object (or a related object) in a helicopter he piloted. 

The evidence for telepathy is very good, and the evidence for psi abilities such as ESP and clairvoyance goes back nearly 200 years, consisting of both an abundance of experience accounts and a great abundance of convincing experiments. You can read about some of this evidence in my long series of 68 posts you can read here, by continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. We should not throw away Barber's account just because of its telepathic element.  Despite some cases of drawing big conclusions about non-human origins based on insufficient evidence,  Barber mostly appears rather credible and persuasive as a witness, so his account cannot be summarily dismissed. Instead his account should be noted and preserved, and scholars of UFOs should look for further evidence that might support his claim of people trying to summon UFOs telepathically (particularly people funded by a government), or claims of people having telepathic experiences after encounters with UFOs. The general rule to follow about any report of the paranormal that is even halfway credible is: don't discard, but put it in your records, and keep an eye out for other accounts of the same type.  

UFO studies have been dominated by materialists advancing a "nuts and bolts" explanation that UFOs are spaceships from another planet. We can expect that the typical UFO buff may be hostile to Barber's claims. But the kneejerk hostility of materialists to telepathy claims (a topic materialists fail to decently study) means very little. 

She Said, "We See These Glowing Orbs of Light Every Night"

 In the HBO Max TV series "UFO Witness,"  Episode 2 of Season 2 has a theme of orb sightings. We hear near the beginning, "Sightings of glowing orb-shaped craft are on the rise," followed by the question "What do these aliens want?"  The narrator seems to be jumping to conclusions here, assuming that any orb seen in the sky is some craft from another planet.  We don't know what causes naked eye sightings of orbs. 

"There's definitely light orbs in the sky," says one of the hosts, while in Auburn, Massachusetts (USA). Another host says, "Specifically there's been many sightings of a UFO that looks like a glowing orb."  A narration then says (at the 1:43 mark) this: "In 2021 alone 48 glowing orb-shaped UFO's were spotted from New York to Maine."  We hear an eyewitness account by a woman named Samantha Dick who in 2021 around 4 AM  saw a bright color-changing orange orb "like a blob of lava" floating about, one she captured in a video that seems to show something very bright hanging in the air. 

Around the 28:15 mark someone says, "You have a lot of these people that have these interactions with these orbs, and are experiencing missing time."  I myself have never experienced such a thing. In a UFO encounter, a person will sometimes claim "missing time" involving a few hours that he can't account for. 

In Episode 4 of Season 2, a woman says at about the 30:00 mark, "On my reservation we see these glowing orbs of light every night." 

Early in the first episode of Season 1 of another TV series "Aliens in Alaska" we have an account by a couple who saw a big orange orb in the sky, describing it as extremely bright. We see some video footage showing such an orb in the sky. At the 17:20 mark of the second episode of Season 1a witness tells of seeing an orange sky orb going back and forth, and then suddenly disappearing. We have a similar report around the 39:00 mark and the 40:00 mark. At the 12:48 mark in Episode 4, Colei Stockton recalls seeing a bright orange ball of light in the night sky, one that soon disappeared.  She says it was followed by a sighting of a huge ship in the sky. Around the 22:04 mark a witness says he saw two orange orbs in the sky. 

Mystery Orbs Should Make Us More Humble

 The US Department of Defense now has an office dedicated to investigating reports of UFOs (or UAP, variously defined as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). The office is officially called the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office or AARO. Sean Kirkpatrick led the office in 2022 and 2023, but resigned around the end of 2023. Sean has written an article that recently appeared in Scientific American, one entitled "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter."  PC users will find the article blocked by some annoying popup that demands your email address. I read the article on my I-Pad without having to give my email address, and I will summarize the contents. 

I can start by noting the egotistical-sounding article title.  Sean was the leader of an office with quite a few people, but he has described himself as "the" US government's UFO hunter, as if it was a one-man show. Sean then denounces "today's world of misinformation, conspiracy driven decision-making and sensationalist-dominated governance," and claims that "evidence-based critical thinking is eroding." He claims to "have experienced this erosion up close and personal," and that this was "one factor in my decision to step down from my position." Wow, that sounds quite "holier than thou." But it doesn't really make sense. If there are some people around you not thinking very clearly, why not help things out by staying around and standing up for clear, rational thinking? 

Sean then states, "AARO discovered a few things, and none were about aliens." No, actually, AARO encountered quite a few reports of mysterious anomalies, and we do not understand the cause of such anomalies.  Visiting extraterrestrials is one of the main theories to explain such anomalies. Such a theory has not been ruled out by anything AARO has done. 

Next, Sean makes a strange reference to the AATIP program (an acronym which stands for Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), a program that is also called the  Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP).  Sean seemingly tries to make the program sound like something that was about "paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah." He says "taxpayer money was inappropriately spent on paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah." The truth is that the AATIP program seems to have had no more than a slight involvement in Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. The AATIP program mainly produced reports on a wide variety of futuristic topics. You can see a list of the reports it produced at the "Black Vault" link here. Here are the reports it produced

1.  Metallic Glasses – Status and Prospects for Aerospace Applications [30 Pages, 1.74MB]
2.  Aerospace Applications of Programmable Matter [20 Pages, 1.34MB]
3.  Pulsed High-Power Microwave Source Technology [37 Pages, 2.55MB]
4.  Biomaterials [32 Pages, 1.75MB]
5.  Materials for Advanced Aerospace Platforms [27 Pages, 1.96MB]
6.  Space Access – Where We’ve Been and Where We Could Go [57 Pages, 3.27MB]
7.  Invisibility Cloaking – Theory and Experiments [29 Pages, 1.62MB]
8.  Positron Aerospace Propulsion [35 Pages, 1.89MB]
9.  Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion [72 Pages, 4.35MB]
10.  Metallic Spintronics [27 Pages, 1.77MB]
11.  Advanced Nuclear Propulsion For Manned Deep Space Missions [37 Pages, 2.12MB]
12.  Technological Approaches to Controlling External Devices [36 Pages, 2.5MB]
13.  Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions [33 Pages, 2.13MB]
14.  The Role of Superconductors in Gravity Research [16 Pages, 1.33MB]
15.  Advanced Space Propulsion Based on Vacuum (Spacetime Metric) Engineer [17 Pages, 1.2MB]
16.  The Space Communication Implications of Quantum Entanglement and Nonlocality [32 Pages, 2.03MB]
17.  Maverick Inventor Versus Corporate Inventor – Where Will the Next Major Innovations Arise? [19 Pages, 1.37MB]
18.  Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy [42 Pages, 2.66MB]
19.  Antigravity for Aerospace Applications [44 Pages, 2.78MB]
20.  Biosensors and BioMEMS – A Survey of the Present Field [45 Pages, 2.84MB]
21.  High-Frequency Gravitational Wave Communications [57 Pages, 4.38MB]
22.  Metamaterials for Aerospace Applications [27 Pages, 1.74MB]
23.  State of the Art and Evolution of High-Energy Laser Weapons [31 Pages, 1.77MB]
24.  Concepts for Extracting Energy From the Quantum Vacuum [57 Pages, 3.61MB]
25.  An Introduction to the Statistical Drake Equation [55 Pages, 2.83MB]
26.  Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Biological Tissues [38 Pages, 2.17MB]
27.  Laser Lightcraft Nanosatellites [77 Pages, 3.8MB]
28.  Cockpits in the Era of Breakthrough Flight [57 Pages, 3.26MB]
29.  Negative Mass Propulsion [43 Pages, 3.26MB]
30.  Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion [49 Pages, 2.35MB]
31.  Detection and High Resolution Tracking of Vehicles at Hypersonic Velocities [46 Pages, 2.19MB]
32.  Ultracapacitors as Energy and Power Storage Devices [34 Pages, 2.02MB]
33.  MHD Air Breathing Propulsion and Power for Aerospace Applications [32 Pages, 2.14MB]
34.  Cognitive Limits on Simultaneous Control of Multiple Unmanned Spacecraft [30 Pages, 1.92MB]
35.  Quantum Computing and Utilizing Organic Molecules in Automation Technology [54 Pages, 3.12MB]
36.  Quantum Tomography of Negative Energy States in the Vacuum [51 Pages, 2.12MB]
37.  Aneutronic Fusion Propulsion II [36 Pages, 1.88MB]

There's nothing in this list about Skinwalker Ranch. So why has Sean attempted to belittle this program by claiming that "taxpayer money was inappropriately spent on paranormal research at Skinwalker Ranch in Utah"? And why would money be inappropriately spent if someone was researching the paranormal at such a location, reputed to be a hotspot for UFO sightings? For the former head of a US UFO office to be thinking that it is inappropriate to investigate the paranormal sounds very strange indeed. Diligent scholars of UFO reports are well aware than such reports have long been entangled with various types of paranormal phenomena such as ESP.  And dramatic UFO reports are typically themselves reports of the paranormal. 

Most of the topics mentioned above are no more outrageous or fringe than many types of research that receive abundant government funding, such as research on the never-observed hypothetical realities called dark energy and dark matter.  Trying to belittle some claim he doesn't believe, Sean strangely tells us "the key purveyors of this narrative have known one another for decades," as if such a claim was important. Sean then tries to create bad impressions about the AATIP program by saying that it worked on "fringe studies."  The word "fringe" is a long-used term of disparagement that no director of a UFO office has any business using. The topics in the list above (and also the topic of UFOs) are no more "fringe" than many research topics the US government lavishly funds, such as the search for dark matter, dark energy, and primordial cosmic inflation.  

Later, Sean makes this statement: "Simply put, 'unidentified' is unacceptable." To the contrary, man's knowledge of nature is fragmentary, and many types of unidentified phenomena have always been an important part of human experience. Any idea that "unidentified" is unacceptable would seem to involve vast overconfidence about the state of human understanding. Later, Sean strangely claims that UFO research is "data poor." To the contrary, organizations such as MUFON have tons of data about UFO sightings.   

For example, one of the documents above (" Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Biological Tissues") has the following interesting data-rich table in an appendix, listing effects reported in UFO encounters:

Sean's article is centered around his grievances against some people he seems very annoyed by, and he seems more interested in talking about his grievances against such people than shedding light on the topic of unidentified aerial phenomena. Sean's article has a  "UFO researchers should not taint themselves" ring to it, with the idea perhaps being that there must be no mingling with things that NASA materialists might disapprove of.  That does not make sense, because UFO reports are thoroughly entangled with psychic phenomena,  as I discuss in my posts here and here. A good attitude for the leader of some government office having the task of investigating UFO reports would be: fearlessly collect and analyze observations, and make whatever conclusions are justified by them, no matter how much that may offend the easily-offended ears of today's experts. 

Here are quotes that Sean made in a public hearing:

"Sean Kirkpatrick: "The vast majority of what has been reported and what we have data on, a little less than half now, are orbs, round spheres."

"Sean Kirkpatrick:  "This is a spherical orb metallic in the Middle East 2022 by an MQ-9. I will come back to the sensor question that David raised here in a moment. This is a typical example of the thing that we see most of. We see these all over the world and we see these in making very interesting apparent maneuvers."

Such puzzling anomalies should teach us great humility, but I think Sean failed to learn the lesson. "Unidentified is unacceptable" is not something suggesting humility before the countless mysteries of reality. 

Strangely, the link that previously took you to NASA's report on UFOs (a low-effort affair, as I discuss here) is now a dead link. 

Today's NASA UAP/UFO Report Reads Like Very Lazy Work

In a post on one of my two other blog sites (sites you can read here and here), I complained about the scrambled reasoning and lazy-sounding efforts that astronomers produce when they write about UFOs.  I wrote this:

"It seems that when mainstream scientists other than parapsychologists write about the paranormal, they usually give us their laziest efforts, failing to be diligent in either scholarship or logic. It's as if their rule was: when writing about the paranormal, just 'phone it in.' "

Today NASA released a long-awaited report on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, which is a new name for phenomena such as UFOs.  Written by a panel that included five astronomers and someone called a "telescope scientist," we have a report that reads like a very lazy effort, a "phone it in" job.  It's the kind of report we might expect from a panel dominated by astronomers, who tend to give us their laziest efforts when dealing with UFOs and anomalous mysterious phenomena. 

The report makes no attempt to classify sightings of UFOs or UAPs. It tells us nothing about the speed or altitude or colors or shape of UFO/UAP sightings in general. The only UFO sighting the report attempts to analyze in detail is the "Go-Fast" UFO. The report attempts to use trigonometry and speculative assumptions to persuade us that the "Go-Fast" UFO was not moving very fast.  

No other UFO or UAP sightings are discussed in detail. Other than just mentioning one mysterious orb photographed, the report makes no mention of any of the mysterious orbs that were mentioned in the August hearing before the US Congress, dramatic and hard-to-explain references I summarize in my post here. The authors write as if they had no interest in analyzing UFO/UAP characteristics and patterns.  The authors fill up their report with lots of "we could do this and that in the future" talk. 

This is the kind of "give us no insight" effort we might expect from some panel that included no scholars of the paranormal.  Reading like a mere "going through the motions" affair, the report reads just exactly like what we might expect if the authors had no interest in the topic of unidentified sky phenomena, and felt like they couldn't be bothered to study it in a serious and thorough manner.  

Postscript: A Daily Mail story says "The climate scientist who helped supply the DailyMail.com with the ERA5 wind data described NASA's explanation of the GOFAST video as 'low-effort' and 'not rigorous.' "

From the Front Page of the New US Government UFO Web Site

 Below is what we see on the front page of the new web site of the  US government's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). I have circled two parts.  UAP stands for "Unidentified Anomalous  Phenomena." 

Wow, it looks they are getting lots of orb reports, many of them reports of translucent orbs.  I wonder: do many such orbs look something like the 500+ translucent orbs I have photographed/? You can see them all here by scrolling down and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. 

When astronomers talk about UFOs they tend to give us their laziest efforts. One I know keeps repeating the claim that UFOs are pretty much only seen in the US, a kind of "those Americans are so silly" narrative. The UFO hotspot map above shows us such an idea is not true. 

Cubes in UFO Orbs, Seen for Eight Years?

People are talking about today's US Congress hearing on UFOs and UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).   At the 1:09:45 mark of the video embedded in the news report here,  pilot Ryan Graves is asked about common characteristics of strange things seen in the sky. Graves says, "We were primarily seeing dark gray or black cubes inside of a clear sphere...and that was primarily what was being reported...That occurred over almost eight years, and as far as I know it still occurred.." Referring to objects traveling at twice the speed of sound (Mach One), later Graves says. "The objects that we were seeing, they were spherical, and they were observed up to Mach Two, which is a very...non-aerodynamic shape."

At the link here you can read a transcript of the entire testimony. 

Military Eyes Spot Big Orange Orb Over Aircraft Carrier

 Here are statements from a recent news story:

"ANOTHER US Navy sailor has come forward to speak out after he witnessed a 40 ft ball of light UFO hovering over deck of the USS Ronald Reagan. Dozens - or even hundreds - of crewmen are reported to have witnessed the object hovering over the flight deck of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the strange episode from 2004....Derek witnessed it alongside another sailor, who also confirmed she saw the object in an interview with Mr Beaty. She described the object as an 'orange globe floating over the flight deck' that was keeping pace with the ship - which is believed to have been moving around 22 knots."

A mysterious orange orb? That sounds familiar. You can see hundreds of my photos of mysterious orange orbs by using the link here, and continuing to press the Older Posts link at the bottom right. 

Below is another news story about the event.