So, as skeptics, do you all have predictions about the UAP situation for the next two years?
I'd guess it would be:
1. Grusch and other whistleblowers will fade away, with nothing coming of it.
2. No real evidence will come out for anomalous objects.
3. Future releases of material from government agencies will be more birds, balloons, and bokeh.
4. The Calvine photo(s) will prove to be a reflection in water or a model.
Borrowing your format, I'd guess
1. Whistleblowers and others suggesting an exotic cause for UAP reports will continue in much the same way as they do now. They will not fade away. Most who are currently "on the scene" will still be around in 2 years. A few might become less active or less visible for various reasons just like some people in other spheres of public life/ in the news do; a few new ones might emerge. I don't know enough about Grusch as a person to have an opinion about him specifically.
I think it's unlikely that any new whistleblowers comparable to Grusch will provide testable, convincing evidence of anything radically interesting. Partly because I don't feel Grusch did, partly because I don't believe there has ever been a fruitful UFO retrieval project that a whistleblower could reveal.
There may be a small number of more dramatic, first-person accounts from claimed whistleblowers in the manner of Jason Sands; they will have little impact outside of online discussions amongst dedicated believers and perhaps one or two sensationalist infotainment TV shows.
2. There will be no testable, convincing evidence for UAP being artefacts of exotic origin (either made by non-human intelligence, or radically advanced human technology using propulsion systems based on significantly different principles to those already in use).
I don't think such things are physically impossible, but they might be very improbable. Despite many claims over the past 80 years or so, none have been validated. I'm not sure there's anything different about our current time. Such artefacts (in either category) might not exist.
3. Future PURSUE/ equivalent releases from government sources will probably broadly reflect what we've already seen. Some will be seen to have likely prosaic causes (like the probable birds near an Iranian submarine, thread
DOW-UAP-PR067 Multiple Spherical UAP USO near Sub, the almost certain dislodged ice crystals observed during the Mercury-Atlas 7 flight, thread
DoW second release - NASA-UAP-D013, Mercury Atlas 7, May 24, 1962). Others will be harder to explain and proposed explanations will not be conclusive (and consensus might not be reached even amongst skeptics); releases of this type will be seen as evidence for exotic UAP by some, but (2) above will still apply.
In a world with literally
billions of visual spectrum cameras on smartphones, many millions of CCTV cameras (albeit most focussed on the ground environment), significant numbers* of superior visible spectrum cameras (including those working in parallel with IR imaging equipment in military optical suites like Raytheon MTS series), and where most combat aircraft have "gun cameras" but a smaller number have IR optics, I predict a disproportionate amount of PURSUE-type releases involving footage will continue to be from IR sensors. (I guess this is a sort of ancillary prediction not central to (3)).
4. There will be no progress on determining what the Calvine photo shows, though I feel Wim Van Utrecht and members here (esp.
@Andreas) have demonstrated/ are in the process of demonstrating that a similar photo (and potentially photos with the presumed jet in different positions) could be manufactured with quite basic supplies. I'm not underestimating the effort Wim and Andreas have put in, though! They have to produce a photo with a passable resemblance to the original; if the original is a fake, all the photographer had to do was manufacture an image with what looks like a strange thing in the sky and a plane (or planes), it didn't need to conform to anyone else's picture.
I'm not confident any more information will be gained from further study of the original photo (well, the copy Craig Lindsey had) but I know very little about photography, and further examination by other photographic analysts certainly wouldn't do any harm.
I suspect the only way we will get a definitive explanation (if it is a hoax) is if the original photographer or someone who knew about their hoax comes forward, is able to demonstrate who they are and show a credible connection to the known backstory, and explains how the photo(s) was produced. This might be unlikely after so many years, but who knows.
I guess there's an even more remote chance that the other 5 photos might emerge from some overlooked archive at
The Daily Record or Reach plc, or even the UK Ministry of Defence, and that they might contain further clues, but I very much doubt this will happen. I think they're lost.
If the photo is of a real event as described by the claimant(s), we might only know for sure if there's a return visit that provides better evidence.
This would be of vastly greater significance than the original photo (and would show (2) above to be wrong).
Maybe if a former pilot or pilots claimed they flew the aircraft (possibly plural) in the photo(s) and supported the claimed version of events, and could demonstrate their service/ work history in an appropriate organisation and state which type of aircraft they were flying (and preferably its/ their serial number(s)) and under whose direction they flew) it would be strong supportive evidence for the anonymous claim, but this hasn't happened yet and I'm guessing never will. But if the claimed version of events is true, that pilot (or pilots) must have existed.
To summarize, I expect that the UFO/ UAP scene will be much the same in two years' time as it is now. Many of the people connected to claims/ discussions about UFOs today, whatever their viewpoints, will still be around in 2 years. As in all areas of life, there will be some new notable figures and perhaps some current personalities will have bowed out. New sightings/ claims will have been made, some will be explained or debunked, as will some older cases (at least to some people's satisfaction) but many won't be.
There will be more photos, footage and perhaps other records that might be seen as evidence of unidentified flying things, some from government sources. I doubt (going on the evidence of the past 80 years) that dramatically convincing, testable evidence will be found for UFOs as exotic artefacts, but that possibility can't be ruled out. (Why some of us think that possibility might be very unlikely is discussed in other threads).
The Calvine photo will still be of interest but it probably won't be conclusively explained. However, it looks like it could be effectively reproduced with relatively limited resources, all available at that time, and with a little ingenuity; we have firm evidence that some UFO photos are hoaxes but not really any that some are of exotic artefacts.
*Although several magnitudes fewer than smartphone cameras.
