There's a new sheriff in town for those who want to report seeing unidentified flying objects (UFOs). For one thing, you're no longer seeing UFOs hovering or zipping across the skies with impunity (and zero respect for international borders). You are now seeing UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena. Whatever they are, these UAPs/UFOs have been making our latest jet interceptors look like Snoopy's Sopwith Camel and Eddie Rickenbacker's Spad, two of World War I's greatest wood-and-canvas fighter planes.
The new Pentagon office in charge of investigating these UAPs/UFOs is ensconced somewhere inside the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security. Naturally, not everyone is happy about the new office, especially UFO/UAP/whatever researchers who have spent many years chasing "lights" in the night skies or "disk-shaped" and "cigar-shaped objects" that sometimes appear in broad daylight, hover around a bit, and suddenly zip off at speeds slightly beyond unbelievable. Oh, and once in a while, UFOs/UAPs/whatevers have been observed suddenly diving smoothly into the sea when they apparently get tired of Navy or Marine jets chasing them like gnats. So, researchers, investigators, and chasers are particularly unhappy that some really detailed and revealing incident reports may get classified by the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security and filed away in a grimy warehouse for decades.
I'm no expert on this, and I've never played one on TV. However, I have had one very clear sighting of a UFO in my lifetime. I've written about it previously, elsewhere. But to summarize: in the summer of 1957, I was a young teenager who sometimes stood in his front yard and watched military aircraft approach the then-new Little Rock Air Force Base about 15 miles away. I loved building model planes, and real-life examples of my favorite aircraft sometimes flew right over my neighborhood. One day, what I initially thought was a B-47 jet bomber rumbled past about 3,000 feet up. However, it more likely was one of the new RB-47 reconnaissance jets outfitted with the latest electronic surveillance equipment. Some of these also were stationed at Little Rock AFB. Declassified reports have since indicated that there were numerous sightings of UFOs/UAPs getting near RB-47 reconnaissance bombers in the summer of 1957, as well as at other times. And many of the reports came from the aircrew members themselves.
During my sighting, a grayish-white disk suddenly and silently appeared in the sky near the tail section of the plane. It coasted along with the jet for a few seconds and then stopped in midair while the RB-47 continued its landing approach. My initial impression was that someone had bailed out of the plane, and I was looking straight up at the parachute. But I could see no one dangling beneath it. The disk-shaped object began to drift away gently in a new direction. Suddenly, it gained speed, zipped incredibly fast toward a distant cloud, and vanished.
What did I see? The same thing many other people have reported seeing for decades: a light-colored, disk-shaped object; a UFO/UAP/whatever that can hover in the sky and then move away at an incredible pace without making a sound.
What do I think I saw? I'm convinced I saw a genuine UFO. A UAP. A flying saucer.
Where do I think it came from? I can barely spell "astrophysicist," but I do have a few half-baked and half-burned theories. Given the distances between galaxies, stars, and planetary systems in our universe, I doubt that little gray or green beings are simply joyriding around the Earth in their equivalents of '57 Chevys. Yet, anything is possible, and there is much we really do not understand about our universe. In my mind, UFOs/UAPs may be reconnaissance drones from truly distant planets. They may be vehicles from a parallel universe. They may be from a future time. Given that some of them have dived into the ocean and disappeared, they may be from an undiscovered advanced civilization that lives deep in the sea or inside the Earth, or Mars, or Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. Some of the bigger UFOs/UAPs might even be inhabited by alien space tourists or alien astrobiologists seeking to find intelligent life on Earth (good luck with that) or checking up on how some of the life forms that their ancestors seeded here long ago have been fairing over the centuries or eons.
I may be wrong, I may be somewhat correct. Or, I may be nowhere close to right or wrong in my guesses. Perhaps the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security will set us straight someday. I promise to be only mildly surprised if he or she tells us it's been the ancient Aztec, Inca, and Mayan air forces toying with us all these years, just as Erich von Däniken hinted at in his 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?
Si Dunn is a writer, screenwriter, photographer, and semi-skilled digital laborer. He currently ponders some of the great, unanswered questions of the universe while working at home at a small table in the urban wilds of Austin, Texas.
Photo by Si Dunn. (And yes, I know that's a lens flare, not a real UFO/UAP/whatever.)