Contagion journalism: following the leader

And keep those UFO non-scoops coming

What if someone flipped a switch and we could suddenly perceive reality through an enhanced light spectrum, the way birds do, and see what birds see? How long would it take us to lose our minds?

A transcript of an interview between a reporter for The Guardian and former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick offers refreshing clarity on the puff piece that dropped in the venerable British daily last Friday. The loaded language employed by Kirkpatrick to trivialize the UFO phenomenon is a matter of record, and his famous resentment of critics – congressional and otherwise – won’t be repeated here. The real value of the verbatim dialogue is its unfiltered lens on a “scoop”-besotted reporter playing suckup to a wounded man who despises being Mr. Flying Saucer.

To be sure, the questions posed by reporter Daniel Lavelle reveal his own predisposition for debunking; “true believers,” for instance, is the label he applies to Kirkpatrick’s detractors. And as the hour-long interview evolves, Lavelle’s language grows more fraternal.

“What do you think their motivation is? I mean,” Lavelle says, “are they grifters, in the purest sense of the word? They know they’re lying [and are] trying to fool people?” He references Lee Harvey Oswald by name in a question about former intelligence officer David Grusch, whose sworn testimony on hidden UFO technology programs riveted Congress last summer, and adds: “Do you think David Grusch is a patsy of this UFO lobby, that he’s been told this stuff because he’s a useful idiot, and he’s gone forward with it?” Re the New York Times’ 2017 story on the secret Defense Intelligence Agency UFO program: “Is the Department of Defence embarrassed that it got duped by Robert Bigelow to get 22 million to investigate ghosts and skinwalkers and things?”

It was like noblesse oblige, man

Kirkpatrick set the tone from the get-go, when Lavelle asked “What was it about UFOs or UAP that interested you?” Sounding like a kid sentenced to scrubbing toilets for misbehavior, Kirkpatrick replied, “Nothing, actually. It was an assignment.” But he recovered in time to make it sound like he hadn’t just wasted 18 months of his life: “You know, truth be told, it’s an interesting area only because . . . looking for something that is unknown is really the same thing in sciences . . .”

Equating the study of UFOs with science – hmm, fascinating. A little declasse, maybe, but it ain’t spoon-repair, neither. Kirkpatrick got in a few digs at lawmakers and military pilots that didn’t make the article. But one thing he brought up rated a full stop, and it concerned the translucent cube-in-a-sphere-shaped UFOs reported by Navy pilots over the Atlantic in 2014-15.

SK said AARO had learned of commercial drones fitting this description rolling out of Asia three or four years ago. “An example,” he assured Lavelle, “of a cube in a sphere drone that exists today, you know, that don’t require aliens.” Actually, Kirkpatrick was pulling his punches; if he’d really wanted to show off, he could’ve thrown in U.S. Patent 2,463,517, aka the “Airborne Corner Reflector.”

The Navy got the patent in 1949, and that obscure little nugget was recently reexamined by Tyler Rogoway and The War Zone. In a creditable effort to find something, anything, that might compare with what the Navy pilots were encountering, TWZ ran a story in 2019 about high-altitude balloons configured to produce radar signatures for exercises over the ocean after WWII. But the idea that those contraptions or their successors might’ve slipped their knots and disrupted naval training missions over restricted airspace . . . well, bubble-shaped commercial slow-mover drones from China and/or Singapore carry a little more logic. But not much.

Also: throw in a little parallax, a little bokeh, and watch these sky lanterns hall ass and fly circles around F-22s.

While The Guardian was recycling Kirkpatrick’s grievances and calling it news, former F-18 pilot Ryan Graves was appearing remotely before a European Parliament panel convened in Brussels to lend support for a transparent, standardized, and internationally coordinated UFO/UAP reporting system. A “true believer” by Guardian standards, Graves’ unit was subjected to several near-misses with those sphere-cube “range foulers" a decade or so ago.

Graves’ team monitored the UFOs as they hovered, hit Mach 1 speeds, and outlasted the interceptors’ fuel supplies. He told his European audience how the 5-to-15 foot-wide UAP remained “motionless against hurricane force winds” and split formation-flying warplanes. As a consequence, Graves decided to do something, and formed Americans for Safe Aerospace. Last year, the activist nonprofit led by former military pilots waged a successful legislative fight to provide legal protections and secure reporting options for pilots compelled to share what they see.

While The Guardian was busy dry-humping Kirkpatrick’s leg, a retired Navy admiral who was alerted to those troubling UAP encounters in 2015 made news by producing the first-ever white paper for The Sol Foundation, a top-drawer civilian startup bringing professional multidisciplinary skills to bear on the phenomenon.

Former deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Tim Gallaudet would also qualify as one of The Guardian’s “true believers.” Inspired by fellow Navy officers going public, Gallaudet began sounding off about those airspace security lapses last year. In the Sol Foundation report, he took a swipe at AARO’s “apparent apathy” in response to the military’s flagging “domain awareness” during UFO incidents.

Blithe attitudes, Gallaudet wrote, “should be unacceptable to U.S. taxpayers,” and he unveiled an aggressive plan of action for a methodical collection of data generated by anomalous underwater activity. Although continued or feigned ignorance could “jeopardize U.S. maritime security,” Gallaudet also envisioned a silver lining. Research might well present “an unprecedented opportunity for maritime science.”

UAS now? OK, whatever

When it comes to the ones that got away, the military prefers less evocative euphemisms to UFO, or even UAP. Once upon a time, in the autumn of 1975, during aerial penetrations of half a dozen Strategic Air Command bases, the default term was “helicopters.” That’s what official reports blamed for the felony-level violations of no-fly zones above nuclear arms installations, although no helicopters were ever identified or brought to justice.

In the 21^st century, when it came to military UFO incidents, “drones” replaced helicopters — but another semantic twist is nigh. While The Guardian was microwaving Kirkpatrick’s tired shtick, The War Zone (them again) was covering a story about intruders shredding controlled airspace over Langley Air Force Base in Virginia last December. The culprits are being called “uncrewed aerial systems,” or UAS.

A LAFB spokesperson acknowledged “multiple incursions throughout the month of December” and that “The number of UASs fluctuated and they ranged in size/configuration.” No details on what they looked like; fortunately, base defenders couldn’t muster enough of a response to piss ‘em off: “None of the incursions appeared to exhibit hostile intent,” reported the PIO, “but anything flying in our restricted airspace can pose a threat to flight safety.”

While The Guardian was giving Kirkpatrick a soapbox to rag on UFO dupes -- “There’s the absolute true belief,” he told Lavelle, “which would suggest it is more akin to a religion than an actual factual thing” – researcher Douglas Dean Johnson (another “true believer,” most likely) scored a major coup with a reply to his FOIA.

Last week, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Staff, released a detailed, nine-page list of reporting instructions to its global command structure concerning yet another acronym – sUAS (small Manned Aircraft Systems). With the ultimate goal of “detection and mitigation of potential threats,” the directive left little room for interpretation. The obligations, categorizations, reporting channels and deadlines for filing UFO eyewitness accounts are clearly spelled out, before being routed to AARO. But an admission in the opening summary of this “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Reporting and Material Disposition GENADMIN” document is potentially massive.

‘Potentially ubiquitous presence’

Citing “a growing priority for US policymakers, lawmakers, and warfighters,” Joint Staff didn’t sound like they were here to dance: “The potentially ubiquitous presence of UAP defines the national security implications of those anomalies, which range from operational hazards and threats to technological and intelligence surprise to adversaries' strategic miscalculations.”

Johnson acquired the “Controlled Unclassified Information” document just days after Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (and, probably, another “true believer”), was called to testify about the “multiple” events over Langley and the phenomenon at large. On the front end of a three-month investigation, Guillot told the Senate Armed Services Committee the task was a bit overwhelming:

“NORTHCOM, as part of my 90-day assessment – to tell the truth, the counter-UAS mission has dominated that so far, in the first month . . . I wasn't prepared for the number of incursions that I see . . . This emerging capability outstrips the operational framework that we have to address it.”

That begs a question or two:

Are we really seeing an uptick in UFO activity? Or are these reports simply the result of deploying sharper sensors and filters? Some UFOs are detectable exclusively through infrared imagery; what humans perceive via visible light is just one slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. Could we even handle reality if, instead of the three cone receptors assigned to our species, we suddenly became tetrachromatic, like some birds, fish and reptiles?

Studies indicate we humans can see 10 million colors. But butterflies and birds can see 10 billion with a B colors. How would having those ocular abilities affect our morale, productivity and basic interactions? Could we handle it if, like honeybees — our fellow trichromats — we could suddenly see in the ultraviolet realm, presently off limits to human vision without an optical assist? Would we be seeing UFOs, er, UAS, flying all over the place? Everything everywhere all at once? ‘Potentially ubiquitous,’ even?”

Stay tuned, folks. The Guardian’s all over it.