US Department of War - UAP Files - Tranche 5
- Thread starter flarkey
- Start date
Report PR-125 appears to be the USS Omaha Transmedium sphere case....
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/uss-omaha-transmedium-sphere-descending-to-the-sea.11711/
https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/05/...R125-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Pacific-Ocean-2019
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/uss-omaha-transmedium-sphere-descending-to-the-sea.11711/
https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/05/...R125-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Pacific-Ocean-2019
JMartJr
Senior Member.
The ones with the least information are the most likely to remain unidentified, perhaps
Edited to add: the first thing I see when going to Flarkey's first link are a set of artistic and digital recreations. Does this suggest they're scraping the bottom of the barrel interms of imagery to release?
There are some videos there too which are also at the bottom of the barrel:
https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/05/?releaseDate=Release+05&release=05&type=.vid
The location of DOW-UAP-PR134 has been confirmed as Baghdad.
https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/05/...-PR134-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Middle-East-2025
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/geolocation-exercises.13384/post-374389
https://www.war.gov/UFO/release/05/...-PR134-Unresolved-UAP-Report-Middle-East-2025
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/geolocation-exercises.13384/post-374389
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RobertBillyBob
Senior Member.
DOW-UAP-PR117 to DOW-UAP-PR122 are the same event, the report give speed estimates :
(https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/r...R_Unresolved-UAP-Report-Gulf-of-Oman_2021.pdf)
Do we know how TACTOOL works and if it can be used to get reasonable speed estimates in this context?
(https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/r...R_Unresolved-UAP-Report-Gulf-of-Oman_2021.pdf)
Do we know how TACTOOL works and if it can be used to get reasonable speed estimates in this context?
I love the distribution list in the .pdf, just about everybody everywhere in government was on it.
Did any of them respond to this feed in any way? Would be interesting to know if the list was tailored for this instance, or more likely, it is a standard list of recipients that everything is sent too.
Having a large list of recipients makes identifying leakers difficult, and also maximizes the chance that it will be received by someone with time on their hands to look for interesting things to store and pass along.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
It seems like they really are doing a serious effort to redact every piece of information possible, in order to give us the most ambiguous shit ever.
owntheissue
Active Member
"ambiguous shit" is the defining, pre requisite characteristic for the video to be included in these releases.
From an intel analysis perspective - anything "identifiable" has intelligence value so if someone asks for your "unidentified" file - they will invariably end up with videos of balloons/birds and artifacts.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
Some of them have some screen data.
Some others have at least a full screen image with redacted spaces.
The ones appearing to move "erratically" are cropped to a level where you just see the "object" and whole pieces of background are blacked out.
Maybe the sea/sky is also classified.
Weird, I can look at it with my eyes most of the time IRL.
Those entries contain the disclaimer that they were digitally altered prior to their transfer to AARO, and that they were secondary captures from sensor displays. The cropping may have nothing to do with security considerations; it may simply reflect poor data collection at the point of capture, whether from in-camera effects or alterations made somewhere along the chain of custody. It speaks volumes that materials with these provenance problems are cited by the online UFO commentariat as prime examples of footage showing intentional behavior or so-called "physics-defying" capabilities.
In my view, this pattern of assigning outsized evidentiary weight to low-information media also supports the theory that UAP, as a category, consists primarily of incidents that observers judged unusual based on limited information rather than incidents that evince intrinsically mysterious phenomena.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
Those videos are "chopped up" to a level that does not justify a simple poor data collection in my view.
Sometimes you just have a small portion of the whole frame, it cannot be just a feature of a secondary capture (like a phone camera filming a screen).
You would still see the on screen data if that was the case, without someone choosing to black it all out.
I'm sure most of these erratic balls can be balloons, and that the apparent movement alone doesn't prove any abnormal flight capabilities.
In other words, since we also got videos with at least some info on them, I don't see a particular reason to redact every single piece of info that could make debunking even easier.
Debunking kills "mysteries", why wouldn't the pentagon also help a bit to kill these conspiracy theories about aliens providing at least some data?
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Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
Examples:
Second capture, huge added redactions.
Same as above.
Redaction on the left side, added to the second capture.
I suspect no incredibly sensitive info is being withheld.
Second capture, huge added redactions.
Same as above.
Redaction on the left side, added to the second capture.
I suspect no incredibly sensitive info is being withheld.
Ann K
Senior Member.
There are UFO believers in the pentagon, and UFO believers in Congress, and UFO believers among the general public.There's not a great push to kill the conspiracy theories, because they'd offend the people who believe in them ...and that would be seen as another conspiracy theory. It's a no-win situation.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
That's actually what is more worrying, especially when coupled with weird supposed UFO-hazing rituals in the DoD programs.
That hazing ritual I suspect was a carry-over from the Service Academies, where first-year cadets are assigned silly tasks to show their dedication to the system. Things like memorizing the serial number on the nose wheel of the aircraft on display at the Air Force Academy. All part of the system, very much like fraternity hazing rituals. "We had to go through this when we were new so you have to go through it when you are new."
Never saw anything like that on the civilian side of the classified world.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
UFOs are a national security matter, just because unidentified stuff in the sky has to be identified if possible or at least categorized as such and filed.
Thinking that people in the DoD are playing around that subject is pretty worrying IMHO.
Still the best defence department in the world, so far.
The Italian Aeronautica Militare still files and publishes the sightings they were not able to identify.
I haven't heard of any UFO buffs playing jokes in our military, which is still much less powerful than the American one.
I hope this frenzy will go away, maybe with a more serious administration?
Ann K
Senior Member.
UFOs in the "who's messing around in our air space?" sense are a serious matter. I think it safe to say that UFOs in the "space alien" sense are not, and are a fitting subject for juvenile jokes.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
These juvenile jokes seem pretty convincing for those who went to congress to talk about alien bodies.
Must be a hell of a hazing ritual.
Edit:
My claim is, all this PURSUE nonsense, and all the ambiguous shitty videos are fueling conspiracy theories.
The institutions are not managing this very well.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Find UFOs: conspiracy theories.
Don't find UFOs: conspiracy theories.
How do you suggest "the institutions" manage this kind of "heads, I win, tails, you lose" situation? There are always going to be people who are eager to take advantage of any situation, and there are always going to be people gullible enough to let them do so.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Although, wasting time and effort on the UFOs in a space alien context takes resources away from their actual role of protecting and defending against real threats. So is a matter of (weakening) national security.
Leekster
Senior Member
Agreed.
Been saying this for years.
You can't win.
If they say there are no aliens it's because they are hiding them with a cover up.
Some "whistleblower" with zero credibility says he spoke to a guy whose cousin works with aliens at Area 51 and then it's, "I KNEW IT WAS TRUE!"
No matter how many times the government holds a presser and says, "We have no evidence of aliens." They yell, "Cover up!!"
Every release of video that shows what is likey a bird or balloon. "See! They are prepping us for eminent disclosure!"
I wanna barf.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
Surely making government agents believe that some UFOs are potentially alien, when these could very well be the real UFOs even if prosaic (meaning a real security problem) won't have negative consequences at all (I'm being sarcastic).
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Aliens are not. Drones, and other things CAN be security matters, but I think, for the most part, they are dealt with accordingly. I find the hyped up concern over UAP/UFOs a bit of a strawman. It's mostly the UFO proponents, as in aliens, that push this narrative in an effort to make UFOs a more legitimate topic. As @Mendel has pointed out in several threads, bird strikes are a much more serious matter, but there isn't nearly the hype about it.
Check out our thread on AAWSAP (link below). People in the DoD, with congressional help, managed to commit $22M to investigating UFOs, remote viewing, the paranormal and werewolves, among other things, at Skinwalker Ranch.
The DoD, the Intell community and every other form of government is made up of citizens. In the US, it's US citizens, in Italy, it's Italian citizens. As such, it's a reflection of society at large, and at least some people are going to be into UFOs, just like some are into certain TV shows. Are there a few Carabinieri that believe in visions of Mary or dress up at a convention of some kind?
In the vast US bureaucracy, there are those that share what they believe to be UFOs with other enthusiasts on government servers for a varsity of reasons. Some just share, what they think, are weird videos to share. Some share with like minded UFO enthusiast and I'm sure some share to troll. Some of these shared, often out of context, videos eventually end up being reported to AARO.
When Congress wanted answers a few years ago, those in the DoD ended up bringing in Navel Intel officer Jay Stratton, to lead the UAP Task Force (UAPTF). Likely because he had been looking into UAP with the defunct AAWSAP program and then with his buddy Elizondo and their side hustle, AATIP. He's a Skinwalker Ranch alum, that according to the book about AAWSAP, believed that a contagion followed him home to Virginia from Utah and there were 7' werewolves in his suburban Virginia (just outside Washington DC) neighborhood.
As the DoD's official head of the UAPTF, Stratton hired Dr. Travis Taylor as "Chief Scientist". Taylor was regular on the silly Ancient Aliens TV show, based on Eric Von Daniken's fraudulent books. He is still one of the main stars of Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, another silly cable TV show.
It's nothing new. The US Army and CIA ran project Stargate for decades spending all kinds of money on Psy research that never planned out. Stargate supervisor, General Stubblebine, believed he could (or should be able too) walk through walls and wanted all his soldiers to be able to bend spoons with their mind.
AAWSAP thread: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/the-origins-of-aawsap.12484/
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Nor are UFOs the only woo topic to get official attention, for example:
Source: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/ask-molly-did-cia-really-study-psychic-powers/External Quote:
!
I have read that the USSR was also into this stuff, but have never known how reliable that claim is... it is possible I guess that both sided were faking interest in order to lure the other side into squandering resources. Is it possible some of the modern UFO interest is similar misdirection? Heck if I know.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
There was certainly a FOMO that got the Army/CIA into Psy. And those early "experiments" involved Russel Targ and Hal Puthoff who went on to be an influential member of the Skinwalker Ranch crowd, part of AAWSAP, a designer of the failed KONA BLUE program, and was sent by Christopher Mellon to be a "whistle-blower" to AARO about alien crash retrieval programs. Project Stargate, Grill Flame* and those old Psy experiments are a part of the current file releases.
* Project Grill Flame has got to be one of the best names yet for a secret operation. Certainly top 10.
FOMO is a great motivator, and the more the other guys appear to be onto something the more some on your side will demand you mimic the other sides efforts.
I would be surprised if there was not similar misdirection going on now. With the internet the cost to tease, lure or bait an organization into wasting money is too small to pass up.
Definitely getting into "letters mailed in for public comment" territory, like half of the Kennedy assassination archive.
owntheissue
Active Member
Probably.
One claim stated because Soviet culture differs from the West - incorporation of esoteric science was more acceptable.
Another (more likely IMO) claim is that this was an extension of protecting sources and methods.
Russian intel had a few ways of saying "a little bird told me" and this was the old school way of not divulging you had bribed or obtained kompromat on someone to obtain your info.
Over time - as bribing and kompromat'ing folks became more popular (which Soviets viewed as proof of the degradation of western morality) - "a little bird told me" moved with the times and morphed into allegations of info that was allegedly derived from ESP or other such superpowers.
Interesting that the Stargate program was initiated by the CIA but was fairly quickly moved to the DIA - possibly once budget holders understood the real intelligence value?
Mendel
Senior Member.
The "going to Congress" bit is self-selection bias: those who are unconvinced by the hazing ritual never speak up. That's why it's generally our experience that when you find someone with a sighting or similar, it tends to turn out they've been into the subject before. You find what you are looking for, and you believe what you are ready to believe.
If you have a recipe for "managing" irrational beliefs, you ought to publish it, because not a lot of people know how to accomplish this.
It's the LIZ conundrum: everything that's identifiable gets identified (as "not aliens"), so we get left with the ambiguous because the data is too crappy to be identified.
With anything else (like undiscovered animal species), it might start out with rumors and unreliable witness reports (unicorns? sea monsters?), some of which get corroborated by those looking for evidence, adding increasingly better evidence to the record until the beast is discovered.
This is entirely unlike the progression on aliens evidence, because there is no such progression.
UAP videos are ipso facto ambiguous, because if they were identifiable, they'd already be identified. Because there is no alien tech zipping around in our air.
(I'd be very embarrassing if one of these unidentified objects were actually a foreign craft; because if that foreign power could ascertain that their craft remained unidentified, they'd know something valuable about how to avoid US intelligence. I think that's what the stringent redactions are trying to prevent.)
More about the LIZ:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ar...st-in-the-low-information-zone-the-liz.10921/
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ufo-acronyms-what-is-the-liz.11742/
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Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
UFOs are in the LIZ, this I understand.
But there is a difference between "Go fast" LIZ and the ones we're seeing now.
Yes, those first ones were leaks, so I get why there was at least some data on those videos.
Imagine this, some of these UFOs could be foreign craft (much more than aliens for sure), which means a security problem, and then you have hazing rituals about aliens.
Is it really better to have DoD officials convinced of aliens instead of possible foreign craft?
Edit:
What I mean is that it could be unwise to convince people of aliens instead of "possible foreign spy balloons" or anything like that.
And also I don't see the point.
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Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
Avoiding hazing rituals about aliens would be a start.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
I would imagine the vast majority of people in the DoD and Intel world tasked with identifying and keeping track of foreign technology do just that. Likely very competently. The suggestion made by many, I'm not including you, in the UFO world is that every unidentified blob in a blurry video MAY be an advanced foreign aircraft and therefore shouldn't be dismissed as something in the LIZ. As I said up thread, this is a Strawman.
IF these various blobs and orbs in the LIZ represent advanced foreign assets, then who's? There's really only 4 adversarial nations that one can even suggest might have advanced aircraft, and when looked at individually, the argument becomes even more tenuous.
- Russia: The Soviet's may have produced some advanced, for the time, aircraft in the '70s-'80s, but that was decades ago. The current Russian Aerospace Force has yet to establish air superiority over Ukraine in 4 years. Their most advanced aircraft, the Su-57 Felon, has seen sporadic use in Ukraine. The Russians have between 20-30 Su-57 while Algeria has 2. India dropped out of the Su-57 program due to problems with the plane. The Russian drones that swarm Ukraine are largely imported from Iran. The idea that the Russians have super advanced aircraft, but keep it hidden except for when they get caught on some US surveillance system makes no sense.
- Iran: The Iranian Air Force has a collection of surplus US aircraft from the '70s. They manage to keep a few of these old F4s and F14s in the air, but they're not developing some sort of groundbreaking super advanced aircraft. Their drones are simple and rely on numbers, not advanced designs and capabilities.
- North Korea: The North Koreans have a number of Soviet era aircraft, including ~35 of the more advanced Mig-29s. They concentrate more on ICBMs that allow them to project threats. It's highly doubtful they are creating and deploying super advanced aircraft.
- China: Maybe China can deploy an advanced aircraft. Maybe. At least of the 4 listed here, they have the capabilities to possibly develop something, but even then, it's still going to be within the understood limits of physics.
In addition, as current conflicts have shown, simple drones and anit-aircraft SAM systems are far more effective for the economic input.
All of that to say, the idea that some scrappy guys in Iran are developing and deploying some sort of advanced, possibly physics defining, super aircraft out in an old hanger full of scavenged F4s, is borderline ludicrous. It also suggests that those tasked with keeping up with this stuff, aren't or are incapable. Again, it's a giant Strawman argument put forth by UFO enthusiasts. They claim stuff in the LIZ could be foreign assets in an attempt to get it studied further, so that, when the blob is determined to not be Russian or Iranian, then it must be aliens.
I will grant you, there are always exceptions. In the case of the AAWSAP program, Jim Lacatski, a foreign rocket and missile analyst at the DIA, got caught up in the shenanigans at Skinwalker Ranch and authored AAWSAP to study UFOs and the paranormal. Did that influence his work as an analyst looking at foreign technology? Let's hope not, but either way, I think he's the exception.
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Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
I get your point, I agree with most of it.
I'm not saying "advanced physics defying aircraft" from foreign adversaries.
I just mean "unidentified stuff in the sky".
Even a Chinese balloon or drone can be a threat, they can spy on the US equipment, and in general is not something DoD would want to fly in their skies, whatever the nature of these "air things".
Excluding advanced saucer shaped anti gravity stuff that we have yet to know if they exist at all (and I suspect they don't, just because even defining gravity is difficult, let alone defying it), wouldn't it be wiser to not play around aliens just for kicks when your officials' job is to identify even banal stuff like potential foreign spy balloons? Especially when official reports (like AARO's) mention personnel using "alien stories" for hazing rituals. If officials are playing mind games or joking around with this topic, it undermines their core mission. It creates dangerous blind spots for national security.
Unless, since the US is still unparalleled regarding aircraft and air defense, then they can afford to waste time categorizing unidentified air clutter.
Why bother at all then?
Harabeck
Senior Member.
We should remember that the government is not actually a monolith. Someone making an informed policy decision probably would not encourage the hazing ritual. And I imagine such people had nothing to do with its creation. The hazing is probably best seen as a failure of discipline.
Fritzkquzerk
Senior Member
Let's just hope they're doing better controls to prevent this BS.
If other whistleholders come forward in the future, then the problem of credulity among officials is bigger than what we thought.
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