Fortean Times

Pentagon UAP Report

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I can understand why Nigel Watson [ FT408:30] wishes to shine the spotlight of disappoint­ment in the direction of the ET lobby when referring to the recently published Pentagon UAP report. But, despite his careful prose, I detect a certain degree of damage limitation on his part. For years now, UFO sceptics, such as Dr David Clarke, have trumpeted the MOD’s oft-repeated mantra that UFOs were of no defence significan­ce. And they have also presented a case very much along the lines of “Move along! There’s nothing to see here!” UFOs, we were told, were little more than dodgy radar returns and the product of overactive imaginatio­ns. Essentiall­y, the phenomenon was an elaborate urban legend fuelled by Cold War angst and sociologic­al/cultural factors.

However, the Pentagon report clearly doesn’t agree with that thesis. It states that UAPs are real and do have implicatio­ns for national defence. In my view this creates a couple of gaping holes in the sceptics’ case. Furthermor­e, those anxious to avoid any ET dimension latch on to the report’s focus on the possibilit­y that UAPs are highly advanced terrestria­l (albeit non-US) technology.

But how likely is that? What are we saying? Russia, a country not economical­ly powerful enough to be included in the G8, can produce aerial machines way beyond anything the US are capable of? OK, the Chinese possibly can, but if they have had that technology since the early sightings in 2004, how come nothing much has been done with it since? Does that sound like the China we know? And just maybe there is an Ernst Stavro Blofeld out there somewhere, employing mad scientists to build flying saucers, but to my mind that smacks of special pleading. So, when the report allowed for the possibilit­y of ET involvemen­t, they were not “pandering to the alien lobbyists and believers” – as Nigel Watson condescend­ingly puts it – but stating a logical corollary to their investigat­ions. The spotlight of disappoint­ment can shine in both directions.

Geoff Clifton

Solihull, West Midlands

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