AARO's Historical UAP Report - Volume 1

[NorCal Dave]

Can you tell me how experimental evidence is proof of a negative?

Again, it seems the only "experiment" was a bit of analysis on one of Art's Parts. While I agree the results should be published, it's largely irrelevant to the bigger question in the report. Is there a secret UFO retrieval and reverse engineering program with crashed UFOs and aliens? As claimed by Grusch.

Disproving that central claim, is I would argue, trying to prove a negative. No matter the lack of evidence for the claim, one can always argue "the evidence is still hidden". One can't prove that something hidden is not in fact there, it's hidden. What one can do is request that those making the claim provide evidence for the claim, something they seem unable to do.

what does any of that have to do with the fact that AARO telling us "the bismuth layer wasnt pure", should not be taken at face value without seeing the laboratory results for ourselves.?

Agreed. It should be published. But so what? It's a random piece of junk with no known origin that was part of a collection of bits of junk that included parts of a car radiator. It's a meaningless bit of junk that was part of a deliberate hoax or a delusional person's own reality. And I'll say again, it should have been ignored.

 

[deirdre]

But so what? It's a random piece of junk with no known origin that was part of a collection of bits of junk that included parts of a car radiator. It's a meaningless bit of junk that was part of a deliberate hoax or a delusional person's own reality. And I'll say again, it should have been ignored.

whatever, so far @Stryer hasnt brought any of that up.

at least the meta materials is an actual "claim of evidence" vs all these stories someone told someone who told me. they wasted our tax payer money investigating those too!!

 

[deirdre]

It's a random piece of junk with no known origin that was part of a collection of bits of junk that included parts of a car radiator.

and PS you got hte thumbs up for including the radiator reference

 

[krautbernd]

I'm not sure how to start explaining how wrong this is.

Can you tell me how experimental evidence is proof of a negative?

By asking for evidence that a sample could not possibly be of extraterrestial origin.

Any and every sample could be of extraterrestial origin and just be made to convicingly look like an ordinary material or just happen to have a known makeup. That's the underlaying flaw of invoking the supernatural that ufologists fall into - because they can not point to any actual qualities of whatever it is they want to believe in we can ascribe whatever we want to the "phenomenon".

The crux of this is also aptly demonstrated by how they have gone from wanting people to call it a "UFO" (Unidentified Flying Object) to UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomen) to UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon). We have gone from something vaguely concrete with actual qualities (it flies, it is an object) to something that might as well include ghosts or leprechauns.

This is one of the many reasons the equivalence you are implying here ("I am asking both sides") simply does not exist.

 

[Mendel]

Ann this is not how debunking works. When claims are made without evidence I am entitled to question where the evidence is.

But we know where the evidence is! We're just not cleared to see it.

I am calling out people here who are accepting this document without evidence.

I'm accepting what is in the document, and don't accept what is not.
I can accept that AARO made a new analysis that is different from a previous analysis; which of the two is better or more accurate, I couldn't say. And I don't really care much because these samples have no provenance.

 

[PublicStranger]

I didn't say they're lying. I asked where the evidence is. I also ask for Chuck Schumer's evidence to be released. Why is it wrong to ask for evidence?

When you see your doctor do you ask for evidence that he's a doctor? Or do you just trust his position of authority? Do you ask to see his license to practice certificate before you let him prescribe you medication? Asking for evidence for evidences sake is impractical. Sometimes we just make decisions based on position of trust.

Do you trust everything UFOlogists say without evidence? Most of the stuff they claim are not backed up with any.

 

[deirdre]

But we know where the evidence is! We're just not cleared to see it.

you are misinterpreting his sentence.

ex: would this conversation ever happen?

Mendel "Trump claims X. but where is the evidence?"
deirdre "the evidence is in his desk drawer"
Mendel "oh ok. cool. "

 

[deirdre]

Asking for evidence for evidences sake is impractical.

you do know you're on Metabunk, yes?

 

[Mendel]

So where now for disclosure, who will do the disclosing? Someone above said that the ball is now in the court of ET hypothesis supporters, what can they provide on their own if they were putting their hope in people who they are accusing of the cover up?
Is it a case that this is one long grift or they were hoping that the stories they heard would finally come to the surface?

There's a motif I've been seeing in UFO supporters, that has really been driven home by the bit in the report about AATIP/Elizondo studying Project Blue Book reports.

From the perspective of someone who believes that aliens have visited here, evidence of these visits must surely be among the the hundreds of reports in Project Blue Book's files. Therefore, if only someone really looked, sure this evidence must come to light. It's frustrating to them that AARO did not look.

The narrative here is, "it is ok to believe in UFOs even when we have no evidence, because the government has the evidence and is not sharing it". It sustains the belief system completely independent of any evidence, making it unfalsifiable: it is in fact confirmed every time no UFO evidence is found. The only way out is to start distrusting the people pushing this narrative—and when you do, you'll wonder how you ever believed it.

The civilized world has agreed that, for information to be reliable, it needs (at the very least!) to be supported by evidence. If you want to subvert a country, target the people who don't understand this when their favorite beliefs are concerned.

 

[PublicStranger]

you do know you're on Metabunk, yes?

I know but in context my point is clear. Evidence is great but it's also impractical to expect AARO to put out a potentially 1000 page academic paper on every single piece of evidence they gathered to arrive at their conclusion, especially considering the paper is aimed at the general public, most who would probably not understand it.

 

[deirdre]

I know but in context my point is clear. Evidence is great but it's also impractical to expect AARO to put out a potentially 1000 page academic paper on every single piece of evidence they gathered to arrive at their conclusion, especially considering the paper is aimed at the general public, most who would probably not understand it.

gottcha

i thought the guys decided a page and a half ago to just focus on the meta materials ask. In that context, I dont think asking to see the results of your lab tests is that far fetched myself.

 

[Mendel]

There are many broken links in the references cited; more than I have bothered to count. References #3, #4, and #6 were broken links. Reference #5 and #6 were combined as "56" instead of "5,6". References #8, #10, and #12 are broken links.

This is true. The formatting of the references is abysmal and some of the sources are a tad questionable. These are things one would hope would have gotten caught in the proof-reading stage and it makes AARO look unprofessional.

I think the reason is that the report was prepared on secure systems with no connection to the public Internet; that's how typos like "airandsapce" happen. The fact is that the resources being linked to do exist and are findable. I do not concur that they're questionable, but I'd be happy to look at examples.

Note also that better, classified references may have had to be removed from the report when it was declassified.

AARO states:"AARO's review of Project BLUE BOOK cases shows a spike in reported UAP sightings from 1952-1957 and another spike in 1960.

I actually misread that as "another spike in the 1960s", which your graph supports (spike towards 1967).

The report has errata; so do first printings of some textbooks. As long as they're minor, I can live with that, though it's obviously not ideal.

 

[PublicStranger]

gottcha

i thought the guys decided a page and a half ago to just focus on the meta materials ask. In that context, I dont think asking to see the results of your lab tests is that far fetched myself.

I mean the evidence would be a plus if we had it in full no doubt and it would be great to study for curiosity's sake. However I don't need the full lab results of that mineral to come to the conclusion that it didn't fall off the edges of a flying saucer. Just like I don't need to visit Beijing in person to know that China exists as a country.

 

[Mendel]

n

I mean the evidence would be a plus if we had it in full no doubt and it would be great to study for curiosity's sake.

It's frustrating that we can't look at the AARO case files that the report is referencing.
In a non-classified setting, material like that would often be released as appendices.

 

[NorCal Dave]

and PS you got hte thumbs up for including the radiator reference

As you reminded me! Though I think you said "vent" or something. The point is, the sampled piece is ONLY relevant if one can show it really came from a UFO. As it was included in Art's Parts and claimed to have been sent by the same person, though at a latter date, that sent part of car's radiator claiming it came from the same UFO, the claim is dubious at best. Latching onto the importance of the analysis is pointless, even if the results are shared. It's a random piece of junk.

 

[deirdre]

Though I think you said "vent" or something.

i dont know...., for some bizarre reason since the finding i've found it pretty cool to know (and remember) they are "louvered fins". why i like, and remember, that phrase i cannot at all explain.

Latching onto the importance of the analysis is pointless,

maybe. i dont want to reread those really long threads again. But if the claim of "this cannot be manmade" refers to the "pure bismouth layer"...wouldnt a lab analysis showing the layer is not pure be a debunk of the claim that it "has to be extraterrestrial because there is no pure bismuth on earth?"

i dont really remember what the exact claims are (aside from "my grandpa told me all these parts and bits came off a ufo that crashed in the desert) regarding the analysis which allegedly proved its weird.

Anyway i still think it was the cheapest part of this silly report, so i dont really mind myself that they analyzed a slab o'slag.

 

[Eburacum]

So I used the numbers given in the report here (it is a UFO fact sheet, seemingly sent to the FBI by the USAF after the FBI made a request, now published on FBI's webpage) on p. 4 of the PDF and tried to make rough estimates of the numbers in Powell's diagram to compare them with this result:

This is all very interesting, and thanks for your efforts, but the whole premise is completely flawed.

Maybe 95% of all UFO reports can be explained using relatively mundane phenomena, such as Venus, Jupiter, Sirius, meteors, contrails, distant aircraft, birds, parhelia, balloons; the number of reports caused by OXCART and U2 (etcetera) might well have been half of the remainder during the 1950s and 1960s, but that would probably be about 2.5% or so, and is not really statistically significant.

 

[Duke]

You play to your audience, or more aptly here, your customer. Who is the customer? Congress.....who directed and funded the creation of AARO and this report. The majority of Congress members are not academics, scientists, engineers etc., peer-reviewed scientific journal level of detail would be lost on them. Most wouldn't know the difference between a test tube and a toaster.

Over my career I prepared and/or presented reports/briefings to four-star GOs, Congressional staffers, cabinet level officials, etc. The trick is to find a proper balance of enough v. too much information in the main brief/report. (This is often a fuction of how much time you actually have to make your case.) You also must have supporting data /background information in your hip pocket if the decision maker you're educating asks for additional details. I've given briefings where I had half again as many backup charts as I did primary briefing charts.

So did AARO find that proper balance considering who the report was prepared for? Yes, but I'd also expect, if tasked to do so, they are prepared to provide backup/support documentation to the required level of detail to footstomp anything they claim in the report. Their internal (murder) review boards conducted to clear this report for release would have seen to that. Those can be exhausting.

Even with great supporting data, there are always going to be hardcore types who will be quick to "yeah, but...." elements of your message. For example in this saga, the "Art's Parts" test reports wouldn't be releasable without the approval of TTSA/DeLongue. (I wouldn't count on it.) The identity of various individuals AARO interviewed will probably be redacted in any written records due to privacy requirements. Similarly, I'd expect a fair amount of redactions of information deemed classified.
.
It would be interesting to submit a FOIA request to AARO requesting supporting evidence on a point-by-point basis. I'd bet they are prepared to answer that request, but not to the satisfaction of many.

 

[deirdre]

It would be interesting to submit a FOIA request to AARO requesting supporting evidence on a point-by-point basis. I'd bet they are prepared to answer that request, but not to the satisfaction of many.

Black vault says alot of the documents he is getting back lately have "law enforcement" exemptions on them. so..somethings going on with that.

But the meta materials shouldnt fall under that as they were not leaked in anyway, they are just a civilian grandpa telling tall tales to his grandkids and [them believing him and] sending the evidence to a radio show. ie. no leaks.

 

[NorCal Dave]

"louvered fins"

That's it! Some of the "samples" that came with Mg/Bi sample were the aluminum louvered fins from inside a car radiator.

But if the claim of "this cannot be manmade" refers to the "pure bismouth layer"...wouldnt a lab analysis showing the layer is not pure be a debunk of the claim that it "has to be extraterrestrial because there is no pure bismuth on earth?"

The claim was that it was from the hull of the crashed UFO at Roswell. Linda Multon Howe than asked around to places like Dow and other chemical companies and claimed nobody could make it, or at least nobody did make anything like it. So, its composition was anomalous, and Travis Taylor suggested it might levitate if enough current were run through it, though all he did was manage to make it vibrate a bit like most metals will when a sufficient current is passed through.

I think the purity claim, another standard UFO meta-material trope, was pushed more by DeLong after he got ahold of Art's Parts and then sold them to his own TTSA. It appears TTSA provided at least the Mg/Bi sample to AARO.

Almost everyone seems to know that the rest of Art's Parts are just plain aluminum including things like the louvered fins from a radiator and aren't from a crashed UFO. Despite the Mg/Bi sample coming from the same anonymous person with the same whacky story, UFOlogist continue to be fascinated by it.

One of the theories is that magnesium used to be layered onto molten lead to draw the bismuth out and purify the lead. This process would be repeated possibly creating the layered sample. If so, samples like this would be very rare as they would only occur in the smelting of lead ore and after the process is completed, the magnesium-bismuth slag is treated to recover the bismuth so it can be sold off and the magnesium reused.

 

[deirdre]

Almost everyone seems to know that the rest of Art's Parts are just plain aluminum including things like the louvered fins from a radiator and aren't from a crashed UFO. Despite the Mg/Bi sample coming from the same anonymous person with the same whacky story, UFOlogist continue to be fascinated by it.

Really? i just assumed everyone didnt know the connection. I understand your attitude a bit now then!

 

[Stryer]

Would seeing the results of the analysis of Art's Parts confirming, more or less, what everybody already knows make that big of a difference in the scope of things? It seems that analysis is the sole "experiment" AARO carried out. I wouldn't really call it an "experiment", just an analysis of a piece of junk that UFOlogist claim can do all kinds of things. Though they've never managed to actually demonstrate those claims.

I think it shows the catch-22 congress creates with things like this. As in the case of the Condon committee by testing a bit of Mg purportedly from a crashed UFO in Ubatuba, even after finding nothing remarkable, the fact that they tested it gives credence to the otherwise unsubstantiated claim it was from a UFO.

The same thing happened with the '90s Roswell report, when it was suggested the testing of anthropomorphic dummies in the '50s might have been confabulated into "recovered aliens" years later. While logical, it just reenforced the notion that the claims of "recovered alien bodies" was legit, while in fact there was not a single source for alien bodies at Roswell prior to the sensationalized and hyped book, The Roswell Incident written 30 years after the fact by Charels Berlitz. He also wrote "factual" books on The Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, the Philidelphia experiment and Noha's Ark.

If the analysis of Art's Part is released, I would expect the UFOlogist to say if AARO did not "hit it with a terahertz and make it float" they didn't really study it and it's part of the cover up. Like the supposed alien bodies at Roswell, the pieces from Ubatuba and Art's Parts should have been ignored until the parties making the wild claims about them can in fact produce some evidence for said claims.

Yes in the antivaxx work

When you see your doctor do you ask for evidence that he's a doctor? Or do you just trust his position of authority? Do you ask to see his license to practice certificate before you let him prescribe you medication? Asking for evidence for evidences sake is impractical. Sometimes we just make decisions based on position of trust.

Do you trust everything UFOlogists say without evidence? Most of the stuff they claim are not backed up with any.

You mean do I accept arguments of authority?

 

[John J.]

I dont think asking to see the results of your lab tests is that far fetched myself.

Maybe, but do you think printed test results would convince the committed UFO enthusiasts?
The ones who chose to believe, with no real evidence at all, that a scrap of metal had anti-gravity properties?

To draw a parallel with another investigation into a (largely) metallic sample supposedly dropped from a UFO:

If you read the (I think problematic) paper "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics", by Gary P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang and Larry G. Lemke, 2022, you find the authors- the first two are heroes of Ufology- find that their mystery material from Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1977 has isotope ratios indicating Earth origin.
The material was described by contemporary analysts as possibly industrial slag (which it certainly resembles) or possibly a poorly-mixed collection of fine scrap melted with thermite.
Nolan, Vallee et al. confirm that the material is poorly mixed- it isn't an alloy, just a mixed clump of commonly-found metals and silicon. Their analysis is also consistent with industrial slag, perhaps molten and spilt from rail transport (thank you @Z.W. Wolf for that hypothesis) or an improvised thermite ignited on sandy ground. No unusual properties are found.

Yet the authors consider whether the material could have been used as a liquid metal in a (wholly theoretical) type of nuclear reactor on a flying vehicle. To support this conjecture they cite a paper in which they claim

...liquid metal designs have been proposed for... superconducting airborne platforms

The cited paper, System considerations for airborne, high-power superconducting generators, Southall, H.L., Oberly, C.E., 1979, doesn't have any mention of liquid metal or nuclear power, and does not support Nolan, Vallee et al.s' claim in any way whatsoever.

The authors have information about the possible design of theoretical liquid metal reactors from a J. Roser, who is otherwise unidentified and uncited. Roser states what the waste products might be, but they don't coincide with Nolan, Vallee et al.s' findings. And Vallee had included Roser's comments in an earlier (1998) paper- so the authors knew that their material wasn't from some hypothetical reactor from the outset. So why include the conjecture linking their sample to this (unproven, and probably impractical) technology?

The authors don't conclude, as most others would, that "they've been had", and have been investigating a scrap of metal waste. Instead, they write

Should the Council Bluffs material be determined to be engineered for a function we don't currently understand, it remains that our physics are as yet insufficient to explain the purpose of such a material.

...instead of considering that if the material had a purpose, it might have been to fool "UFO investigators".

Conclusion: Even when UFO enthusiasts do the analysis themselves, and have the appropriate skills and equipment to do it, they fail to reach- or publish- the most likely conclusions that are indicated by their own findings.
"We've got to keep the dream alive."

Discussion of the Nolan, Vallee et al. 2022 paper on this thread on this thread (link),
for those interested I've attached their paper as published, below; also the Southall and Oberly 1979 paper.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Yes in the antivaxx work

I may be a bit dense, but I fail to see how "antivaxx work" is related to Art's Parts?

 

[Duke]

Black vault says alot of the documents he is getting back lately have "law enforcement" exemptions on them. so..somethings going on with that.

Never heard that, bit of a head scratcher. Have a reference were I can read up on it?

But the meta materials shouldnt fall under that as they were not leaked in anyway, they are just a civilian grandpa telling tall tales to his grandkids and [them believing him and] sending the evidence to a radio show. ie. no leaks.

The test reports/data on Art's Parts would not be releasable because they were provided as TTSA property under the CRADA between TTSA and the designated US Army organization. Releasing that data without TTSA concurrence would likely open that Army organization to both criminal and civil action.

 

[Skalman]

This is all very interesting, and thanks for your efforts, but the whole premise is completely flawed.

Maybe 95% of all UFO reports can be explained using relatively mundane phenomena, such as Venus, Jupiter, Sirius, meteors, contrails, distant aircraft, birds, parhelia, balloons; the number of reports caused by OXCART and U2 (etcetera) might well have been half of the remainder during the 1950s and 1960s, but that would probably be about 2.5% or so, and is not really statistically significant.

I am not sure what you think the premise is supposed to be? The report said there were two spikes at 1952-1957 and 1960 according to the data from blue book, Powell said that wasn't true according to his data and I checked both and came to the conclusion that neither was exactly true in my opinion. I am not making a judgement as to what caused the fluctuations in UFO reports during that time period (as you say, most have obviously mundane explanations) but as to how the data fluctuations are described in the report and by Powell. What's behind the data is irrelevant for this argument, but because they used different sources I thought a direct comparison between them was warranted to show that the description of the distribution given by AARO was incorrect in both datasets (and incidentally, that Powell's description wasn't completely correct either).

My somewhat convoluted point was that these kind of errors and mistakes will be picked apart by critics, and by making AARO look unprofessional, their own conduct and claims by comparison seems more trustworthy and reliable. Apart from convincing the politicians that there truly is nothing going on, it is also meant for public consumption, and it's not the "true believers" on reddit (who are convinced that the fact that AARO didn't use the term "NHI" is a smoking gun on UAPs being interdimensional and that AARO consistency in using the term "extraterrestrial" in the report is a legal loophole to get away with it on a technicality) that are supposed to see it and feel reassured in the government not hiding UFOs from them, but the doubters and fence-sitters, the people in the "probably/maybe/probably-not" camp. And making these kind of mistakes and not proof-reading is just serving up people like Powell and even the Skinwalker ranch guys with easy opportunities to dunk on AARO's sloppy work.

The report was going to piss off the ufologists anyhow, giving them ammunition in the form of easily refuted claims and amateurish mistakes in the layout, no matter why those mistakes were made, will benefit the true believers (and the grifters) and hurt the public perception of AARO. Because taken at face value, to people who fall into the middle ground camp it looks like the government agency was caught lying, obfuscating or just being bad at its job by those guys who claim there is a conspiracy at foot. It makes you more susceptible to the rest of their arguments:

"If they get simple things like dates wrong, how can we trust them on more complicated stuff?"

"They didn't even mention all these other important cases!"

"They are cherry-picking the evidence that supports their preferred solution!"

"So, they are hiding something! It's a cover-up!"

By being meticulous in your work you don't give them that initial lever to work with. It's much harder to convince people of a conspiracy when you have to go directly to the "They must be lying! It's a cover-up!" part of your argument.

 

[Eburacum]

What's behind the data is irrelevant for this argument, but because they used different sources I thought a direct comparison between them was warranted to show that the description of the distribution given by AARO was incorrect in both datasets (and incidentally, that Powell's description wasn't completely correct either).

That is correct, and I am disappointed that the AARO report perpetuates this myth. There may have been a slight uptick in reports caused by experimental aircraft (and presumably also by rocket launches) but those reports would be almost completely subsumed by much more mundane phenomena.

Rather than looking for experimental aircraft, they should be searching for pyscho-social explanations for fluctuations in the data.

 

[Ben Harris]

I'm glad to hear it, but what I'm pointing out is that even knowing the methodology and results for a particular sample, there's a chain-of-custody question big enough to drive a truck through. And if the past is any example, there absolutely would be nay-sayers pouncing on that, people for whom no answer except "Yes, ET has landed" is acceptable. I certainly hope you're not one of them.

It's axiomatic that we can't prove a negative, but all it would take is one good example of a positive extraterrestrial presence. "Where's the beef?"

 

[Ben Harris]

That's it! Some of the "samples" that came with Mg/Bi sample were the aluminum louvered fins from inside a car radiator.



The claim was that it was from the hull of the crashed UFO at Roswell. Linda Multon Howe than asked around to places like Dow and other chemical companies and claimed nobody could make it, or at least nobody did make anything like it. So, its composition was anomalous, and Travis Taylor suggested it might levitate if enough current were run through it, though all he did was manage to make it vibrate a bit like most metals will when a sufficient current is passed through.

I think the purity claim, another standard UFO meta-material trope, was pushed more by DeLong after he got ahold of Art's Parts and then sold them to his own TTSA. It appears TTSA provided at least the Mg/Bi sample to AARO.

Almost everyone seems to know that the rest of Art's Parts are just plain aluminum including things like the louvered fins from a radiator and aren't from a crashed UFO. Despite the Mg/Bi sample coming from the same anonymous person with the same whacky story, UFOlogist continue to be fascinated by it.

One of the theories is that magnesium used to be layered onto molten lead to draw the bismuth out and purify the lead. This process would be repeated possibly creating the layered sample. If so, samples like this would be very rare as they would only occur in the smelting of lead ore and after the process is completed, the magnesium-bismuth slag is treated to recover the bismuth so it can be sold off and the magnesium reused.

Roswell? What hull?

 

[Ann K]

the number of reports caused by OXCART and U2 (etcetera) might well have been half of the remainder during the 1950s and 1960s, but that would probably be about 2.5% or so, and is not really statistically significant.

An analysis of the locations from which the reports come might clarify this (and may already have been done). If there's a significant uptick in sightings that come from locations near which new technology was developed, that might provide a better estimate of the statistical significance.

 

[Ann K]

You mean do I accept arguments of authority?

You've told us you have the technical expertise. You've told us you know how to write and footnote a technical report. In other words ...you're asking us to accept your argument of authority.

 

[deirdre]

Maybe, but do you think printed test results would convince the committed UFO enthusiasts?
The ones who chose to believe, with no real evidence at all, that a scrap of metal had anti-gravity properties?

i have to convince every single believer?

if presenting evidence doesnt matter because every believer isnt going to change their minds...then what is the point of Metabunk?

 

[deirdre]

Never heard that, bit of a head scratcher. Have a reference were I can read up on it?

the exemptions are shown in the elgin report. eglin. ? thread.


Source: https://twitter.com/blackvaultcom/status/1766284993981260046

 

[Ann K]

A comment was made here earlier that this report hasn't met with much publicity. I just browsed Yahoo News and came upon this local-interest puff-piece tidbit, which appears to refer to the (unnamed) "usual suspects" at Skinwalker Ranch, but does nevertheless link to info about the AARO report.

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — A document recently published by the Department of Defense All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office took a look into unidentified anomalous phenomena — and included a section on Utah.

The nearly 70-page report said there was an investigation into an alleged hotspot of UAP and paranormal activity at a property in Utah, which at the time was owned by the head of a private sector organization.

According to the report, investigators examined reports of "shadowy figures" and "creatures," and explored "remote viewing" and "human consciousness anomalies."

Additionally, the report states investigators planned to hire psychics to study "inter-dimensional phenomena" believed to appear at that location frequently.

The report did state that "all investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification."

However, the report states, many of the cases remain unresolved.

"The lack of actionable, researchable data — specifically the lack of speed, altitude, and size of reported UAP — combined with resource constraints, high volumes of cases, and perceived differing levels of support from USG officials were factors in all investigative efforts," the report states. "Even with the significant advancements in ground- and air-based sensors, the apparent inability to collect sufficient and high-quality data for scientific analysis continues to plague investigations."

The investigations were reportedly managed and implemented by a range of experts, scientists, academics, military, and intelligence officials under differing leaders — "all of whom held their own perspectives that led them to particular conclusions on the origins of UAP," the report states. The investigators reportedly all had in common the belief that UAP represented an unknown and, therefore, theoretically posed a "potential threat of an indeterminate nature."

https://news.yahoo.com/investigation-paranormal-activity-utah-confirmed-040624739.html

 

[JMartJr]

"They didn't even mention all these other important cases!"

Given the number of cases that believers could claim to be important, I see no way of avoiding this one. Particularly if one had limited time and resources.

 

[John J.]

i have to convince every single believer?

I was trying to find a pastime for you, the cryptids want to raise their Nesslets and Littlefeet in peace this spring.

if presenting evidence doesnt matter because every believer isnt going to change their minds...then what is the point of Metabunk?

Fair point.
But the AARO report isn't a nuts'n'bolts, case-by-case refutation of UFO claims (even if people of diverse viewpoints might have wanted it to be), it's more a summary of AARO's understanding of USG/ contractor holdings of physical evidence for alien visitation (i.e. none), and an overview as to why some individuals believe otherwise.

I'm more frustrated by the lack of interviewee names, and the names of others who ARRO contacted, than the lack of spectroscopy results for the miracle scrap. Only to be expected, I guess.

AARO hasn't made any extraordinary claims, though as has been pointed out, there may be some minor errors, which is unfortunate. Generally though, they are saying something like
"We consider these claims are largely debunked", rather than
"This is why you should believe us when we say these claims are largely debunked". -Which might have been more interesting!

Nevertheless, it's an important report for those of us interested in UFOs /UAP, and ARRO's identification of a group of people who have kept pushing the "UAP are ETI, and we have some" narrative might help save a few US tax dollars, and the time of a couple of politicians, in future. (See quote from @NorCal Dave below).

Viewed as an exercise in debunking, the ARRO report is not strong. But viewed as a statement of ARRO's confidence in the extraordinary claims of others, it is clear.

While we may never get the actual names of the interviewees, the report does provide us with some idea who's making these claims:

AARO researched and interviewed numerous people, programs, and leads. It has determined that modern allegations that the USG is hiding off-world technology and beings largely originate from the same group of individuals who have ties to the cancelled AAWSAP/AATIP program and a private sector organization's paranormal research efforts.

These individuals have worked with each other consistently in various UAP-related efforts.

• Persons 1-5 and Interviewees 1, 3, 9, 12, 13, and 14 have repeatedly voiced these claims in various public and private venues, and they have petitioned Congress in various capacities on UAP issues. They have not provided any empirical evidence of their claims to AARO.120

• Persons 1 and 3 and Interviewees 1, 3, and 12 were involved with the paranormal research conducted under AAWSAP/AATIP.121

• Person 5 and Interviewees 3, 9 and 14 were involved with the alleged crashed UAP materials that were provided to the U.S. Army and subsequently to AARO forexamination.122

• Persons 4, 7, and 8 and Interviewees 1, 3, and 13 investigated UAP on their own and were responsible for successfully expanding the remit of an existing IC program to include UAP exploitation language.123

• AARO notes that Persons 1 and 4 never formally sat down with AARO to provide official, signed statements; these individuals have been mentioned by other interviewees frequently as sources of their claims. Person 8 held an informal interview and Interviewee 14 sat for an official interview but has not signed the memo for the record documenting this interview.

Content from External Source pg. 36

We can go through these and get a pretty good idea who is making the claims.

I think we could have a bit of fun some productive time spent matching names to numbers- maybe in an offshoot thread.
The "Persons" listing above reminds me of those old brainteasers, like "Suzy and Raj are taller than John. Qian is shorter than Suzy but taller than..." etc. etc.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Roswell? What hull?

Your right, my bad. It was from the "shell-like shielding of the disk". I will endure to be more accurate with my terminology concerning exotic meta-materials from crashed UFOs in the future.

Art's Parts were sent to Art by a guy calling himself "A Friend". After "A Friends" first batch of samples supposedly from the crashed UFO at Roswell turned out to be normal aluminum according to Art's own somewhat credulous researchers, "A Friend" somewhat shifted gears and said that's what 'ol granddad's team thought as well. Then he stepped up his game and sent in the magnesium-bismuth layered sample, claiming it came from the "shell-like shielding of the disk":

I noted that the Researcher discussing the testing of the samples noted that basically, it is merely Aluminum.

Slight variations on the testing, but indistinguishable from "normal" Aluminum.

Actually, this is precisely the same initial findings of Grandad's Team. However, I neglected to include metallic samples of the exterior of the crashed Roswell disc.

I now include the enclosed, and can only say that these scrapings came from the exterior underside of the Disc itself. It literally was a "shell-like" sheilding of the Disc. Brittle and layered, almost with a prefabricated design and placing.

I included the complete text of "A Friend's" letters to Art Bell that accompanied the bits and bobs he sent to the radio host as well as letters to Linda Moulton Howe in the OP of the linked thread below. If anyone is interested in a compilation of '90s era SciFy alien tropes and Roswell storytelling, the letters are...enlightening. And somewhat entertaining in a whacky sorta way. The text of the letters also show why AARO should have ignored these sample as meaningless.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/meta-materials-from-ufos.12995/

 

[deirdre]

the cryptids want to raise their Nesslets and Littlefeet in peace this spring.

you can't make them even CUTER and expect me to stay away!

 

[deirdre]

Nevertheless, it's an important report for those of us interested in UFOs /UAP, and ARRO's identification of a group of people who have kept pushing the "UAP are ETI, and we have some" narrative might help save a few US tax dollars, and the time of a couple of politicians, in future. (See quote from @NorCal Dave below).

i agree.

 

[deirdre]

The text of the letters also show why AARO should have ignored these sample as meaningless.

i dont think AARO had much choice in what they needed to investigate.