Blink-182's Tom DeLonge's "To The Stars" UFO Disclosure Enterprise

[Willie Kay]

It would also be a good idea for the military to try to identify UFOs in case they are significant, and to help understand why pilots (and their equipment) sometimes make mistakes.

Pilots can misidentify objects just like anyone else, however, I would like to hope that they were slightly (I stress slightly) better prepared to identify other airborne objects than your average individual in the street.

 

[Mick West]

Pilots can misidentify objects just like anyone else, however, I would like to hope that they were slightly (I stress slightly) better prepared to identify other airborne objects than your average individual in the street.

They certainly are - both from experience and training. Fighter pilots especially. But unfortunately that higher capability means that when they DO make mistakes, however rarely, they (and others) are more prone to misinterpret them as genuine observations.

 

[John85]

There's no problem. We do it all the time here, in fact there's a dedicated sub-forum for it:
https://www.metabunk.org/forums/Skydentify/

It would also be a good idea for the military to try to identify UFOs in case they are significant, and to help understand why pilots (and their equipment) sometimes make mistakes.

Yes, crowdsourcing is a great way to do it too, which makes their data collection app an encouraging idea.

 

[deirdre]

Yes, crowdsourcing is a great way to do it too, which makes their data collection app an encouraging idea.

isn't that what Project Bluebook did? and what MUFOn (and probably other countries) around the world has done already? Still not sure how reports of weird things people don't understand in the sky, will lead to building a Tardis type space ship.

 

[Mick West]

They certainly are - both from experience and training. Fighter pilots especially. But unfortunately that higher capability means that when they DO make mistakes, however rarely, they (and others) are more prone to misinterpret them as genuine observations.

A classic example is US General and decorated fighter pilot Thomas McInerney who (in 2010) was convinced that an airplane leaving a contrail was a missile being launched off the coast of Los Angeles. Experience and expertise does not immunise anyone to mistakes in novel situations. Listen to the General here. Listen to his experience, his rank, his certainty, the deference given him him, and his total wrongness.
It was just a distant plane for Hawaii leaving a contrail, at an unusual perspective.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI_0hh26n6Q

 

[John85]

isn't that what Project Bluebook did? and what MUFOn (and probably other countries) around the world has done already? Still not sure how reports of weird things people don't understand in the sky, will lead to building a Tardis type space ship.

Depends what the weird things are, doesn't it. If they're chinese lanterns, nothing will come of it. If they're 40ft tic tacs which descend from 80,000 ft to sea level, and zoom away at a rate that amazes Navy pilots, well...

The involvement of ex-DIA, CIA and Pentagon staff in this private/public benefit venture suggests there is something of value to be gained from the endeavor.

 

[Mick West]

The involvement of ex-DIA, CIA and Pentagon staff in this private/public benefit venture suggests there is something of value to be gained from the endeavor.

That's not what the military thought:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111

The former staffer said that eventually, however, even Reid agreed it was not worth continuing.

“After a while the consensus was we really couldn’t find anything of substance,” he recalled. “They produced reams of paperwork. After all of that there was really nothing there that we could find. It all pretty much dissolved from that reason alone—and the interest level was losing steam. We only did it a couple years.”

“There was really nothing there that we could justify using taxpayer money,” he added. “We let it die a slow death. It was well-spent money in the beginning.”

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It's just frustrated UFO enthusiasts wanting to keep looking

 

[deirdre]

The involvement of ex-DIA, CIA and Pentagon staff in this private/public benefit venture suggests there is something of value to be gained from the endeavor.

don't get me wrong, I don't care if people want to spend their money searching for UFOs. If I ever make it to Loch Ness I am definitely wasting my money on a Nessie tour (even though it's biologically impossible for her to exist).

But no, all it suggests is a bunch of 'space boys' are still hoping we are important enough to be visited by ETs.

My point is, how can you say "of value" when decades and decades of the whole world searching has produced nada? and.. how does a crowd sourcing app help you build a Tardis?

 

[John85]

That's not what the military thought:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111

The former staffer said that eventually, however, even Reid agreed it was not worth continuing.

“After a while the consensus was we really couldn’t find anything of substance,” he recalled. “They produced reams of paperwork. After all of that there was really nothing there that we could find. It all pretty much dissolved from that reason alone—and the interest level was losing steam. We only did it a couple years.”

“There was really nothing there that we could justify using taxpayer money,” he added. “We let it die a slow death. It was well-spent money in the beginning.”

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It's just frustrated UFO enthusiasts wanting to keep looking

Is it possible that Reid was not being fully honest? Reid was a defense contractor, and defense contractors are not habitually forthcoming.

In England, the Ministry of Defence has maintained that 'UFO' sightings are 'of no defence significance' in its correspondence with members of the public and in media statements. An example is this response to a letter requesting information on the MOD's official stance regarding alien abduction:

The MOD examines any reports of 'UFO' sightings it receives solely to establish whether what was seen might have some defence significance; namely is there any evidence that the UK Air Defence Region might have been compromised by a foreign hostile military aircraft? The reports are examined with the assistance of the Departments [sic] air defence experts as required. Unless there is evidence of a potential military threat, and to date no 'UFO' sighting has revealed such evidence, we do not attempt to identify the precise nature of each sighting reported to us. We believe that down-to-earth explanations are available for most of these reported sightings, such as aircraft seen from unusual angles or natural phenomena.

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Nick Pope, well known for being the civil servant in charge of a public, government UFO helpdesk in the 1990s, differs in his assessment of UFOs:

I was initially sceptical about abductions. Even when it seemed to me that my official research at the Ministry pointed more and more to an extraterrestrial explanation for some UFOs, I remained distinctly uneasy about the concept of alien abduction. Like many researchers before me I felt that while the idea of alien craft visiting the Earth was acceptable, abductions were somehow beyond the pale. ... Slowly, my views on the phenomenon began to change. The sheer volume of reports, the commonality in independent accounts coupled with the physical and emotional effects on abductees convinced me that we were dealing with more than just hoaxes or psychological delusions. While such prosaic explanations undoubtedly accounted for some abductions, they could not account for them all.

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The Uninvited: an Expose of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon

Two very different views - one official, the other not - but both connected to the defense world. They can't both be right.

 

[John85]

don't get me wrong, I don't care if people want to spend their money searching for UFOs. If I ever make it to Loch Ness I am definitely wasting my money on a Nessie tour (even though it's biologically impossible for her to exist).

But no, all it suggests is a bunch of 'space boys' are still hoping we are important enough to be visited by ETs.

My point is, how can you say "of value" when decades and decades of the whole world searching has produced nada? and.. how does a crowd sourcing app help you build a Tardis?

Because decades of searching (and poor bystanders not going looking) have turned up results beyond the scope of this thread. A crowdsourcing app is important for gathering data. For instance, what is the size, shape, appearance, luminosity, sound, movement, behavior of the unidentified phenomenon? If you find multiple consistent data points across regions, you have something to study. That will begin to influence the questions you can ask: how does it fly? Is it under intelligent control? Is it air-breathing? Does it emit radiation? How dense is it? What kind of acceleration can it withstand?

 

[deirdre]

Is it possible that Reid was not being fully honest?

was it possible he was not being honest about the need for the program in the first place? You can't really paint someone as dishonest and then pick and choose the bits that fit your narrative to believe.

Nick Pope, well known for being the civil servant in charge of a public, government UFO helpdesk in the 1990s, differs in his assessment of UFOs:

I'm not sure holding an "abduction" believer up as evidence, is the way you want to go if you are trying to convince people about the legitimacy of TTS.

Because decades of searching (and poor bystanders not going looking) have turned up results beyond the scope of this thread

the scope of this thread is TTS.. so feel free to provide an example of these relevant results.

If you find multiple consistent data points across regions, you have something to study.

I would have thought Elizondo took a glance or two through the project bluebook cases. If you can build a spaceship from laymen descriptions, they should be able to do that with all the data already available, no?

If you find multiple consistent data points across regions, you have something to study. That will begin to influence the questions you can ask: how does it fly? Is it under intelligent control? Is it air-breathing? Does it emit radiation? How dense is it? What kind of acceleration can it withstand?

sounds like this is going to be a very very very long project.

 

[John85]

was it possible he was not being honest about the need for the program in the first place? You can't really paint someone as dishonest and then pick and choose the bits that fit your narrative to believe.

I'm not sure holding an "abduction" believer up as evidence, is the way you want to go if you are trying to convince people about the legitimacy of TTS.

The contrasting views were both from the defense world - one being the official position of the UK government, the other from an individual who had a responsible position within the Ministry of Defence. They disagree. The MOD says there is nothing of any defence significance to UFOs. By extreme contrast, Nick Pope wrote that prosaic explanations could not account for all alien abduction cases. In all likelihood, one of the two views is not fully honest. That was enough to substantiate my point that people from the defense world are not habitually forthcoming on their subject areas. So when I said:

The involvement of ex-DIA, CIA and Pentagon staff in this private/public benefit venture suggests there is something of value to be gained from the endeavor

It is not sufficient to use what a staffer said Reid believed to claim:

That's not what the military thought

The military are not forthcoming. They are also not homogeneous, and there will be differences of opinion within and between institutions, teams and levels in the hierarchies. A totalizing view of 'the military' or 'the government' is more often a flaw in conspiracy theory thinking.

It's worth restating who the military/intelligence figures are that are involved in TTS, aside from Elizondo:

Jim Semivan

Mr. Semivan retired from the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations after 25 years as an operations officer, both overseas and domestically

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Steve Justice

Stephen is the recently retired Program Director for Advanced Systems from Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs

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Chris Mellon

He served 20 years in the federal government, including as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and Bush Administrations. In addition, he’s worked many years on Capitol Hill including as the Minority Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. As an aide to Senator William S. Cohen, he drafted the legislation that established the US Special Operations Command.

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Dr Norm Kahn

Dr. Kahn had over a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency, culminating in his development and direction of the Intelligence Community's Counter-Biological Weapons Program. Dr. Kahn is the recipient of the Agency's Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and the Director of National Intelligence's National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal

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https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com/

They believe it is not a waste of their time to launch a private/public benefit venture for the scientific investigation of UFOs. The most rational response to that should be curiosity. Why are the investing in this? Why are they making bold claims about seeking to develop technological applications? Why are they suggesting a link with consciousness? Why do they say there has been excessive secrecy over UFOs within the military? It's particularly important to note that several of these people would have been in a position to access relevant information, to know about the potential significance of observations, or to have seen advanced technologies already developed within industry. Are these people merely chasing lens flares and Chinese lanterns?

I would have thought Elizondo took a glance or two through the project bluebook cases. If you can build a spaceship from laymen descriptions, they should be able to do that with all the data already available, no?

Perhaps the spaceships are ours. You're suggesting there isn't much value in collecting more data? The more data, the better, considering that conclusions are not settled, and the subject is so controversial. What other response is possible? The answer to the question "More science?" is always "Yes please".

 

[Mick West]

By extreme contrast, Nick Pope wrote that prosaic explanations could not account for all alien abduction cases. In all likelihood, one of the two views is not fully honest.

Why is that the most likely explanation? It seems far more likely that one of them (Pope) is simply incorrect.

Alien abductions is a step above unusual fly craft in terms of implausibility of it happening without significant evidence. Also getting a bit off topic here.

They believe it is not a waste of their time to launch a private/public benefit venture for the scientific investigation of UFOs. The most rational response to that should be curiosity. Why are the investing in this? Why are they making bold claims about seeking to develop technological applications? Why are they suggesting a link with consciousness? Why do they say there has been excessive secrecy over UFOs within the military?

Perhaps because they are big UFO/Sci-Fi fans whose wishful thinking outweighs their rationality. Perhaps they simply WANT to believe.

 

[John85]

Perhaps because they are big UFO/Sci-Fi fans whose wishful thinking outweighs their rationality. Perhaps they simply WANT to believe.

In other words, we can dismiss what they're saying and the implications of their project because these senior defense and intelligence officials and trusted advisors are probably fantasists.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Right. That puts it pretty well.

 

[John85]

Right. That puts it pretty well.

Why are they probably fantasists?

 

[Mick West]

Why are they probably fantasists?

Some people are. Why is that implausible?

 

[John85]

Some people are. Why is that implausible?

Some people are, yes. Why should we suppose that these senior defense and intelligence officials are?

 

[Mick West]

Some people are, yes. Why should we suppose that these senior defense and intelligence officials are?

Who exactly are you talking about? DeLonge is clearly a fantasist. But it's probably not a useful term for everyone. People make mistakes. People indulge in motivated reasoning. Even highly trained experts. These things are known. So they are possible explanations for a variety of observations.

 

[John85]

Who exactly are you talking about? DeLonge is clearly a fantasist. But it's probably not a useful term for everyone. People make mistakes. People indulge in motivated reasoning. Even highly trained experts. These things are known. So they are possible explanations for a variety of observations.

That's all generally true. Why should we regard the senior ex-DIA, ex-CIA and ex-Pentagon officials in particular as fantasists? These are Jim Semivan, Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and Dr Norm Kahn.

 

[Mick West]

That's all generally true. Why should we regard the senior ex-DIA, ex-CIA and ex-Pentagon officials in particular as fantasists? These are Jim Semivan, Steve Justice, Chris Mellon, and Dr Norm Kahn.

Take Justice. You think his plan is anything other than fantasy?

 

[deirdre]

You're suggesting there isn't much value in collecting more data?

No. I'm suggesting that they know 'more data' isn't going to help them build a spaceship. So they are fleecing a lot of people under false pretenses in my opinion. If they want to tell people.. "hey donate money so we can run this collection app and make movies about UFOs", that is fine.

But why all the gobley gook about building space ships? we already know these alleged spaceships can hover, stop on a dime, switch into warp speed etc etc. And apparently that isn't helping them build a space ship now. How can more visual data add to that. That's all I'm saying.

 

[John85]

Take Justice. You think his plan is anything other than fantasy?

We should take then seriously and be curious if they are well-placed, senior, authoritative officials (or ex-officials). We should dismiss them if they are fantasists. What evidence is there that they are fantasists? It is circular to say they're fantasists because they want to study UFOs, and we should ignore their project on UFOs because they're fantasists.

 

[deirdre]

It is circular to say they're fantasists because they want to study UFOs

I think it's more that they make extraordinary claims with no evidence. Saying there is strong evidence for UFOs is an extraordinary claim.. we've never seen any such evidence.

Saying they can build a spaceship based on youtube videos is beyond an extraordinary claim.

 

[Mick West]

We should take then seriously and be curious if they are well-placed, senior, authoritative officials (or ex-officials). We should dismiss them if they are fantasists. What evidence is there that they are fantasists? It is circular to say they're fantasists because they want to study UFOs, and we should ignore their project on UFOs because they're fantasists.

I listened to what Justice had to say. It sounded like complete nonsense. I'm saying he's a fantasist because his plan for building a spaceship is utter nonsense. It's basically like "scientists will look at UFO videos, figure out how they work, and we'll have anti-gravity space warp drive in five years"

 

[LucM]

a circular thought could also be "we have to study ufo because we find nothing, we find nothing then we must study ufo". If you study dragons you will not find them, does it mean we must found more dragons research?

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Robert Sheaffer's blog - Dec 18

http://badufos.blogspot.com

Bigelow received his initial federal UFO funds in late 2008, and the one obvious (in hindsight) use of them was (ironically) the contract he signed with MUFON in February, 2009 to fund their "STAR Team Rapid Response UFO Investigation Unit."

The STAR Team Impact Project (SIP) was a MUFON program funded in part by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) where MUFON was subcontracted to provide information from the CMS data base (website) and witness reports related to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) directly to BAASS.

MUFON had a contract with BAASS (per the terms of the contract agreement) MUFON provided data from sighting reports that were submitted to MUFON CMS website in exchange for BAASS paying funds directly to MUFON each month. This Contract was sometimes referred to as a Purchase Agreement (purchase of information) and the project was referred to as the SIP Project (STAR Team Impact Project).

Part of this money was used to directly fund the STAR TEAM, which consisted of paid investigators who would be deployed to investigate the most compelling cases and a dispatch operation that would work continuous shifts to monitor the activity of the cases coming into the CMS website.

Unfortunately, Bigelow's deal with MUFON quickly turned sour. According to Richard Lang, who was the manager of the STAR Team, the deal soon got tangled up in financial controversy and audits, and was terminated in January, 2010. He says that MUFON only received about $324,000 total from Bigelow, a small fraction of the money Bigelow received from the federal government.

So far as I am aware (and I talk to a lot of MUFON people), none of them were aware that Bigelow was in essence passing federal funding onto them. In fact, I am sure that some of them will be upset that Bigelow was, in essence, making them unknowingly participate in a federally-funded investigation.

Data on the Federal Elections Committee website shows that Bigelow was a campaign contributor to Harry Reid.


That "Searchlight Leadership Fund" is also tied to Harry Reid, and there have been accusations of corrupt practises concerning it. In fact, accusations of corruption have long dogged Reid, who was the leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate. In 2016 Reid made the "surprise announcement" he was retiring from the Senate, in the wake of a 2015 Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s report, which found that Reid pressured a compliant DHS official to override normal departmental procedures and rush through 230 EB-5 foreign visa applications, thereby freeing up $115 million the applicants invested in the SLS Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The report did not, however, reveal the now confirmed fact that the owner of that casino project had hired Reid’s son, Rory Reid, to provide legal representation for the project.

It seems very implausible that it would be possible for Bigelow to spend over $21 million in analyzing two (or maybe three) videos of purported UFOs. How was this money spent?

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[Z.W. Wolf]

Harry Reid has a long history of corruption:

https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/03/corruption-scandals-led-to-harry-reids-abrupt-retirement/

You’d never know it from the mainstream media puff pieces of Harry Reid’s sudden retirement, but it was a long string of corruption scandals—including a recent one involving his attorney son—that drove the veteran Nevada senator to abruptly leave public office.

For nearly a decade Judicial Watch has investigated and exposed Reid’s involvement in a multitude of transgressions and JW even warned the Senate Ethics Committee, but not surprisingly, no action was ever taken. On multiple occasions the Senate minority leader appeared on JW’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list for his role in a number of political scandals that got more serious as his seniority and clout in Congress increased

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Judicial Watch might be dismissed as having a far right bias, so I also went to the left leaning Los Angeles Times:http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/23/nation/na-sons23

"The Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002." In a welter of technical jargon, it dealt with boundary shifts, land trades and other arcane matters -- all in Nevada.

As he introduced it, Nevada's senior U.S. senator, Democrat Harry Reid, assured colleagues that his bill was a bipartisan measure to protect the environment and help the economy in America's fastest-growing state.

What Reid did not explain was that the bill promised a cavalcade of benefits to real estate developers, corporations and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons' and son-in-law's firms, federal lobbyist reports show.

Other provisions were intended to benefit a real estate development headed by a senior partner in the Nevada law firm that employs all four of Reid's sons -- by moving the right-of-way for a federal power-transmission line off his property and onto what had been protected federal wilderness.

The governments of three of Nevada's biggest cities -- Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson -- also gained from the legislation, which freed up tens of thousands of acres of federal land for development and annexation. All three were represented by Reid's family members who contacted his staff on their clients' behalf.

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Did he really give Robert Bigelow 22 million taxpayer dollars because he (Reid) is fascinated with UFO's? And where did this money really go? So far we know some of it went to MUFON, and some of it went to build a warehouse, or modify an existing building (reports differ), to store metal that was allegedly part of a flying saucer.


I live in Nevada, btw, and have long been aware of Reid.

 

[John85]

The involvement of ex-DIA, CIA and Pentagon staff in this private/public benefit venture suggests there is something of value to be gained from the endeavor.

My point is, how can you say "of value" when decades and decades of the whole world searching has produced nada? and.. how does a crowd sourcing app help you build a Tardis?

Because decades of searching (and poor bystanders not going looking) have turned up results beyond the scope of this thread.

the scope of this thread is TTS.. so feel free to provide an example of these relevant results.

There are many results I could talk about, but for MB they have to be a) mainstream, and b) internet-based.

The UK government conducted a 3-year study of UAP sightings occurring between 1987 and 1997, releasing the report in 2006. The report concludes that a new, poorly understood, natural phenomenon accounts for the unexplained sightings. They describe the characteristics of this phenomenon, its physical, radiological and psychological effects, as well as its potential military applications, stating that the MOD had been informed of relevant results. They even appear to attribute the Belgian triangles to this phenomenon, whose appearance as we all know caused the Belgian Air Force to scramble F-16s. Nonetheless, the report concludes that the unexplained UAP do not pose a threat to the UK, and do not represent any foreign aircraft. It is the incompatibility of the findings with the conclusion that suggests there is fertile ground for major discoveries in the study of UFOs, and not merely meterological discoveries. Simply put, there is a phenomenon with great operational potential, but it is not understood, and the best explanation offered is novel, hypothetical, and untested. As the best explanation is only hypothetical, it is both impossible to be confident that this new phenomenon will turn out to be merely an extension of the familiar, and difficult to believe the MOD would presume it to be so, in advance of actually determining what it is.

The report says:

That UAP exist is indisputable. Credited with the ability to hover, land, take-off, accelerate to exceptional velocities and vanish, they can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile - either manned or unmanned.

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As to what these UAP might be, it says:

Aerial phenomena of the type consistent with those reported as UAP, and with exceptional characteristics exist - but the available evidence suggests that apart from those which can be more easily and satisfactorily explained, they are comprised of several types of rarely encountered natural events within the atmosphere and ionosphere. Some of these are still barely understood

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Specifically,

the events are almost certainly attributable to physical, electrical and magnetic phenomena in the atmosphere, mesosphere and ionosphere. ... [A]t least some of the events may be triggered by meteor re-entry, the meteors neither burning up completely nor impacting as meteorites, but forming buoyant plasmas. The conditions and method of formation of the electrically-charged plasmas and the scientific rationale for sustaining them for significant periods of time is incomplete or not fully understood.

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These persistent, buoyant plasmas can appear in formation:

Occasionally and perhaps exceptionally, it seems that a field with, as yet, undetermined characteristics, can exist between certain charged buoyant objects in loose formation, such that, depending on the viewing aspect, the intervening space between them forms an area (viewed as a shape, often triangular), from which the reflection of light does not occur. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently been reported as black 'craft', often triangular and even up to hundreds of feet in length. ... A probable modulated magnetic, electric or electromagnetic (or even unknown field), appears to emanate from some of the buoyant charged masses.

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The effects of these buoyant charged masses are numerous:

The close proximity of plasma related fields can adversely affect a vehicle or person ... the observer sustaining (and later describing and retaining) his or her own vivid, but mainly incorrect, description of what is experienced. ... Radiated effects are reported in some very rare instances to be sufficient to cause scorching of human skin and damage to nearby terrestrial objects. ... [C]oupling to vehicle electronic and electrical systems can occur and affect equipment operation

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The possible value of understanding these phenomena is indicated:

scientists in the former Soviet Union have taken a particular interest in 'UFO Phenomena'. They have identified close connections with plasma technologies and are pursuing related techniques for potential military purposes. For example, very high power energy generation, RF Weapons, Impulse Radars, air vehicle drag and radar signature reduction or control, and possibly for radar reflecting decoys

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Further:

Attempts by other nations to intercept the unexplained objects ... have reportedly already caused fatalities

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And so, the conclusions and recommendations are:

No evidence exists to associate the phenomena with any particular nation ... [nor] that the phenomena seen are hostile

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And:

It should no longer be a requirement for DI55 to monitor UAP reports as they do not demonstrably provide information useful to Defence Intelligence

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A more preposterous conclusion I could not imagine.

As such, when people from the defense and intelligence world (who may be considered in a position to know about UFOs) join together to launch a public investigative project, we should take it seriously.

Quotes taken from the below pages of the executive summary. The full PDF is available here

 

[Mick West]

As such, when people from the defense and intelligence world (who may be considered in a position to know about UFOs) join together to launch a public investigative project, we should take it seriously.

Why? If the actual military and intelligence services as a whole have determined that there's nothing worth investigating, then why exactly should we instead trust the few people who used to work there and are big fans of UFOs?

Why don't we instead just look at the actual evidence.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

You didn't give a link to the source of your quoted material. It appears to be an article in the Daily Express: https://www.express.co.uk/news/weir...erate-and-vanish-MoD-report-PROVES-UFOs-exist

A tabloid; roughly equivalent to the National Enquirer.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

If you go to this link you'll find that this was a report written by a single man, using pre-existing reports to the MoD (Ministry of Defense). https://books.google.com/books?id=K_R0CQAAQBAJ&pg=PT91&lpg=PT91&dq=exceptional+velocities+and+vanish,+they+can+reportedly+alter+their+direction+of+flight+suddenly+and+clearly+can+exhibit+aerodynamic+characteristics+well+beyond+those+of+any+known+aircraft+or+missile+-+either+manned+or+unmanned.&source=bl&ots=sxs8m9tmes&sig=4H5V8bxA2ap9M4gv67ojqiWwgw0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKlMT96JvYAhUHKWMKHaIYD5wQ6AEILDAB#v=onepage&q=exceptional velocities and vanish, they can reportedly alter their direction of flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile - either manned or unmanned.&f=false

In the author's words:

It all looked so promising but almost immediately my high hopes were dashed. ...as I skim-read the main body of the report, it became apparent the study's conclusions were compromised by a major methodological flaw. For the project's main database, the author had fed details of more than 3,000 raw UFO sightings into a computer. ...They were the same run of the mill reports of lights in the sky that had been collected by the UFO desk since Churchill's time. Mr. "Condign" had access to three decades of data from the DI55 archive but had chosen to rely upon a largely uninvestigated ten-year sample that ended in 1996. ... Most were just one page length and contained a pitiful amount of information. Few if any had been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny that Alex Cassie's team had brought to bear on the flap of 1967-68. It was inevitable in light of Allan Hendry's work, that ninety-five percent or more of Mr. Condign's data would be contaminated with IFOs. His analysis was likely to be flawed from the outset.

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It just used raw reports from the general public that had never been investigated.

 

[John85]

Why? If the actual military and intelligence services as a whole have determined that there's nothing worth investigating, then why exactly should we instead trust the few people who used to work there and are big fans of UFOs?

Why don't we instead just look at the actual evidence.

The basis of your objection is wrong. The report recommends that DI55, which is to say Defence Intelligence, no longer analyse UAP observations, but states that relevant findings related to technological applications were passed on to the MOD. That does not mean that there is nothing worth investigating, but the opposite. And we should not mistake the narrow (and doubtful) implication that DI55 will no longer be investigating UAP with the broader conclusion that no one else in the military will either.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

If you go to post 113 and follow the link, you'll find that this report is useless.

I highly recommend that you buy and read Allan Hendry's UFO Handbook.

https://www.amazon.com/Ufo-Handbook-Investigating-Evaluating-Reporting/dp/0385143486

The gist: Ninety-five percent of all properly taken and researched UFO reports can be resolved to IFO reports.

However Hendry also concluded that the 5 percent of cases he was unable to resolve had no unique features in relation to the IFO cases. It's possible that the 5 percent residual could also have been generated by the same processes as the IFO reports.

 

[Mick West]

An interesting glitch on their home page:

22 Dec 2017 02:00:05 UTC http://archive.is/TooSg


22 dec 2017 19:35:08 UTC http://archive.is/G0HW0


Investors gone up from 2561 to 2583 (+22)
Amount raised reduced from $2,256,397 to $1,663,595 (-$592,802)

However as of right now it's back up to 2,587 & $2,265,819

 

[Count Otto Black]

I'd like to point out that although this whole "building an actual flying saucer that breaks the laws of physics as we know them" kerfuffle is what gets all the publicity, on its website TTS provides a breakdown of how they plan to spend their money, starting at $50m, the most they were legally allowed to ask for, though apparently they hoped to raise even more. Here's the bottom end of the scale:

1. $5 Million Raise
   
   The net proceeds to the issuer, after total offering expenses and commissions will be approximately $4 million. TTS AAS plans to use these proceeds as follows:
   • Approximately $1.8 million on operating expenses, which includes employee salaries in the amount of $1 million through 2018. We intend that, of the total employee compensation, $450,000 will go towards compensation of executive-level employees and $450,000 on employees with advanced science, Department of Defense or similar experience. The remaining approximately $800,000 in operating expenses will go towards infrastructure, logistics solutions, office rent, warehousing and shipping expenses.
   • Approximately $100,000 towards the lease of larger office premises and/or research facilities and/or warehousing.
     
     
   • Approximately $75,000 towards durable inventory, which includes records, books, comic books, apparel and accessories.
     
     
   • Approximately $50,000 on sales and marketing expenses through 2018.
     
     
   • Approximately $1.5 million towards acquisitions or strategic partnerships in the Aerospace and Science Divisions.
     
     
   • Approximately $75,000 to support initiatives related to the company’s public benefit purpose – science and art education, research to benefit the public, citizen science, and support for veterans..
     
     
   • Approximately $400,000 to repay a loan from Our Two Dogs, Inc.
     
     Less Than $5 Million Raise
     
     If the offering size were to be less than $5 million and above the $1 million minimum, TTS AAS would adjust its use of proceeds by reducing planned growth of employee headcount, reducing operational costs, and slowing down projects or not making investment in projects. The company is also required under the loan to Our Two Dogs, Inc. to repay 10% of the net proceeds from funds raised in this offering, up to $400,000 in this scenario.

Content from external source

You will notice that if they raise $5m, and the way things are going they'll get about half of that, the only item on that list which could be interpreted as "actually building flying saucers" is the one second from bottom, which includes the words "research to benefit the public". It's true that $1.5m is earmarked for "acquisitions or strategic partnerships in the Aerospace and Science Divisions", but this seems to mean hiring people who know how to build spacecraft that use conventional technology and thus might actually work.

So he's only allocating a measly $75k, or 1.5% of the total sum raised (if he'd raised more starting capital, the proportion he planned to spend on these things would have been no more than 2% of the gross, no matter how large it was) to this harebrained scheme, and even that amount is shared among a ragbag of other worthy causes, such as "science and art education", whatever that may be, and donations to charities for war veterans. It looks as though he plans to spend more on comic books than he does on starships.

By the way, in case you're wondering, Our Two Dogs, Inc. is a company owned by Tom DeLonge and registered as a hot dog stand, at whose listed street address there is nothing resembling a fast food joint at all. Curiouser and curiouser!

Oh, one other thing. Since the absolute minimum TTS required to commence operations was $1m, if it hadn't raised even that much (and remember, $1m is only 2% of what they were hoping to get), those few unlucky investors would have been guaranteed a return of absolutely nothing. Bearing this in mind, a graph of how the number of investors and the amount invested rose over time would be interesting, if anybody has the figures and can be bothered to plot the graph.

Here's why. As soon as the fundraiser was launched, there was a flurry of investment from the faithful who were always going to buy shares at the first opportunity, but it very quickly tailed off, ands within a few days it had stuck at about $500k, and was rising so painfully slowly that it was obviously never going to get anywhere near that magic figure of $1m. Then, two weeks in, something odd happened. Literally overnight, although the number of investors hadn't risen dramatically, the cash total had trebled! It almost looked like somebody added $1m to the pot just when Tom needed that to happen so he wouldn't lose face.

The fact that the company would now at least attempt to do something and return on investments was no longer automatically going to be zero led to another flurry of investing almost identical to the one right at the start, and tapered off in an identical way, with about twice the previous number of shareholders and about $2m, or about twice what they had before, not counting that mysterious million. Since when both figures have continued to climb ever so slowly, even after the release of those long-awaited and inevitably underwhelming videos.

So it looks very much as though TTS not only had to borrow $600k from its own CEO through a shell company with a silly name disguised as an invisible burger joint (which the investors are going to have to pay him back, in addition to the $100k he's contractually guaranteed every year for the use of his name and music, which everybody knows they need to make spaceships with), he also had to buy almost half the shares so far sold to prevent an embarrassing failure before he's even started. Does anyone have a list of who invested how much and when? Because given Tom's extremely juvenile sense of humour (the company is called TTS AAS for crying out loud!), I bet there's a cluster of people suddenly investing far more than anybody else all at the same time who have names like Hugh Janus and Ivor Woody.

 

[qed]

An interesting glitch on their home page:Investors gone up from 2561 to 2583 (+22)
Amount raised reduced from $2,256,397 to $1,663,595 (-$592,802)

However as of right now it's back up to 2,587 & $2,265,819

That's simply because the capital is in Bitcoin.

 

[Redshift7]

The To The Stars Academy homepage currently shows zero investors and zero dollars raised. It's been that way for at least the past 2 hours.

 

[sitarzan]

I don’t fully understand what part the entertainment/film side plays in all this...

My guess is the "entertainment" part is about them cashing in on the whole docutainment programming boon; à la The History Channel, Discovery, Nat Geo and whatnot.

I'm a total disbeliever in extraterrestrial visitation, ghosts, Big Foot, etc. But I've watched shows like UFO Hunters, Hangar 1: The UFO Files, Unsealed Alien Files, Finding Big Foot because I found it very "entertaining" to pick them apart and identify the flaws and fallacies in what they say and do. For me, watching shows like that is like going to the critical-thinking gym; they give my incredulity muscle a good workout.

And of course believers are entertained by them because shows like that pander to their beliefs.

Also there's something entertaining about the sheer goofiness and unbelievabilty of those kind of shows. That cartooniness together with just enough of a nod to science fiction is the same reason that a lot of people (myself included) find Futurama so entertaining.

And too, whenever real scientists inevitably criticize TTS AAS on scientific grounds, they can always play the, "We never claimed it as a scientific certainty; it was always presented as merely Entertainment" card.

The overt "entertainment" angle is the only thing that sets Delonge's thing apart from all the other similar endeavors @Z.W. Long listed. If Delonge has any success in this game, it will be measured (in my opinion) in how well he "entertains" us (including skeptics and believers).

 

[bume]

There's a new article in New York magazine that refers to the earlier Nimitz story that was linked at the beginning of this thread:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/new-york-times-ufo-report.html

I hadn't paid attention to that link earlier but now that I read it, it really changed my view of what TTSA has actually published so far. That story from March 2015 already contains even more details and names than what TTSA has now been promoting, and is apparently written by someone who knows Fravor personally. It also mentions that the video was already leaked to YouTube years ago.

It also contains this likely reference to Elizondo's group:

He told me that a government agency with a three letter identifier had recently conducted an investigation into the AAVs and had exhaustively interviewed all parties involved.

Content from external source

All that doesn't really take anything away from the actual case, it is pretty amazing assuming what we are being told is true, but as for TTSA it seems the Gimbal video, that lacks any other details and is being discussed in another thread here, seems to be the only new piece of information they have provided so far. Unless that has also been available somewhere already...

That story from 2015 doesn't claim that the picture in question here is in any way connected to the event, and also contains other unrelated images for apparent illustration purposes only. So to me this curious coincidence hints that TTSA has probably used that story as their source, even though they had direct access to Elizondo.