I'm not a UFO expert, and I don't play one on TV either. But for some reason, UFOs are in the news again, and this time it's not just the usual suspects – you know, the stereotypical tinfoil-hat wackos who claim to have been abducted and subjected to bizarre surgical procedures, etc. – but, arguably, establishment types like the U.S. military, which has quit referring personnel who claim to have seen a UFO to the post psychiatrist but is now, apparently, taking these things seriously. Of course there's a long and colorful history of the whole UFO matter which, among other things, has inspired great numbers of sci-fi movies and TV shows – and the military, especially the Air Force, has always been depicted as the “bad guy” – skeptical, dogmatic, conservative, secretive, and so on. And the popular culture – not limited to sci-fi fans – has generally assumed that whenever the Air Force denies that something exists, that automatically means it does exist, and that the military is “hiding something” – advanced weapon systems or actual aliens, or both – from the American public and from our enemies.
One overarching theme over the years (decades) has been that UFOs, in some mysterious way, were part of the Cold War. This notion was supported by the fact that most even semi-credible sightings were in the vicinity of military installations, test sites, military aircraft, or warships. So the idea was that UFOs were, indeed, either data-gathering instruments or advanced weapon systems – but whose? If ours, the military wanted to disguise the fact, understandably. If someone else's, the military wanted to keep whoever it was from realizing that we had detected their advanced systems... or, the government wanted to keep the public from being upset by the thought that the Russkies might have weaponry far superior to ours. So in that sense, the “little green men” thing may have been no more than a red herring (so to speak) – a harmless diversion that was allowed to run its course, and an excuse to shut down all inquiry and speculation (because “only a nut would believe...” etc.). (Now why the specter of being invaded by Martians is less scary to the public than the notion of the USSR having weapon systems far superior to our own is another matter. But that depends to some extent on one's view of what aliens from another planet represent.) (See my post, “Jonesin' for Aliens”, July 25, 2015.)
But then the Cold War ended – or so it was assumed – back when the Soviet Union broke up. But did UFOs disappear? Apparently not. They keep coming back, like those cohorts of locusts – they're in the news, then they aren't. They generate societies, meetings, publications, then the whole thing fades away. Pop culture gives us “The X-Files”, then ratings fall off and the show closes. And then the whole thing starts over again. And so on. So yes, the UFO thing comes and goes, and the military can never seem to make up its mind as to whether they're real or just a symptom of Air Force pilots suffering from oxygen deprivation leading to hallucinations. So years go by when they don't talk about it, and then you get the kind of revival of interest we're seeing now.
But then we run into another interesting angle – one that has been part of the story since the first “flying saucers” were sighted soon after World War II. And that is what I'll call the quality of evidence. Now, it was easy enough to understand, in the early days, how photos or films of alleged UFOs were always grainy and blurred (not unlike photos of the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot) – whoever was taking the pictures (and they were nearly always photos, not radar captures) was probably using a Kodak Brownie or 8mm home movie camera, and was trembling with excitement (or fear) (or dreams of collecting big bucks from the National Enquirer for exclusive rights to the footage).
But that was then. Nowadays, the military has optics so advanced that they can read someone's poker hand from 50,000 feet (or so I'm told). Add high-speed cameras, digitization which yields extremely fine-grained images, and other improvements – and yet the imagery we see in the news is still as grainy and blurred as anything that came out of the 1950s. There's obviously something wrong here. And this is just traditional optics – hasn't radar made just a few advances during that time as well? And then you have infrared optics. And so on. And yet, the level of ambiguity of UFO images (whether moving or still) doesn't seem to have advanced much beyond, once again, the Loch Ness or Bigfoot stage. Are you really going to declare a national emergency based on images resembling first-generation arcade games? Hopefully not.
Then we have the “noise” factor when it comes to electronic systems. Yes, they are sensitive – almost too sensitive at times. They pick up everything, the way microphones used to do in movies before voice-over and Foley artists took over. Now, you might say, isn't static just the same as white noise – i.e., chaotic and incapable of generating anything resembling an actual image? Not necessarily. (I commented to someone recently that I can see stuff resembling UFO footage when I drive with a dirty windshield (especially at night).)
And what if... just what if somebody or something is “trolling” us and generating signals made to look like supersonic, ultra-agile UFOs when in reality it's coming out of some guy's garage in Lubbock, Texas? I mean, there are plenty of geeks out there with time on their hands – what could be more fun than coming up with something that will freak out the military? Not actual physical objects, but signals aimed at the electronics of military aircraft (or ships, in some cases)? Or -- any chance that the Russkies are back to their old tricks and just want to distract us from focusing on whatever they're up to in their own weapon development programs? Make us distrust our lyin' eyes and radar, in other words? And as far as our “system security” goes, well... if you can hack into a system in order to steal information, you can hack into the same system in order to generate fake information.
And now Congress, waking from its usual slumber, is demanding – OK, asking – OK, politely requesting – the intel community to tell them all it knows about UFOs. Riiiight. When's the last time the intel people told anyone in Congress all that it knows about anything? I mean, would you? Might as well relate your history of STDs to the town gossip. The intel people have been down this road before – they'll blow smoke up the appropriate butts, toss out a few bones, and we'll wind up with a bigger nothingburger than the Durham Report. And so it goes. “Nothing to see here, dumb asses – go back to your silly power games.” And the amazing thing is, everyone in the establishment will be satisfied. Another round in the endless game, now let's head for the nearest watering hole.
There are so many possibilities here, but the main point is that if the military, or anyone else, wants to convince anyone in the public, or in Congress, on this point they'd better come up with something better than a handful of glowing green Fritos floating around against a noisy black and green background – or a black jellybean dropping into the ocean. But this isn't going to happen, because – for whatever reason – those in charge prefer to keep things ambiguous and mysterious – interesting, a bit scary perhaps, but not enough to cause mass hysteria like Orson Welles' “War of the Worlds”. In this sense, it's like everything else in government – if you're being paid to solve a problem, the very last thing you want to do is actually solve it.
There are political games – and mind games as well – being played around this issue, but there's nothing really new about it and we don't seem to know any more than we did 70-plus years ago. Or if we do, no one can be bothered to tell us.
