London

ON the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at
O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering
over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on
radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet
radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are
designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out
signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it
really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several
witnesses?

A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads
people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in
the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data
and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness
that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in
espionage against the United States.

The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since
1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to
scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to
national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to
investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings
might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their
airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the
intelligence community.

Most of the incidents investigated in Britain have been easily
explained as misidentifications of stars and planets, aircraft lights,
satellites and meteors, but some cases have raised national security or
air safety issues.

On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American
Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An
examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a
level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than
ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on
subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft
aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a
clear security breach.

On March 30 and 31, 1993, there was a wave of U.F.O. sightings over
Britain. One witness described a triangular-shaped craft that flew
slowly over an air force base before accelerating away to the horizon
in an instant, many times faster than a jet. The British military
reported, “There would seem to be some evidence on this occasion that
an unidentified object (or objects) of unknown origin was operating
over the U.K.”

On April 23, 2007, a commercial airline pilot and some of his
passengers reported a huge cigar-shaped U.F.O. — the pilot estimated it
to be a mile wide — near the Channel Islands. At the time, air traffic
controllers reported to the pilot that radar picked up something, but
that it was “unknown traffic.”

In addition, there have been several incidents of near misses
between U.F.O.s and known aircraft — enough to prompt the Ministry of
Defense and the British Civil Aviation Authority to advise pilots, if
they encounter anything, “not to maneuver, other than to place the
object astern, if possible.”

The United States is no less vulnerable than Britain and France to
threats to security and air safety. The United States Air Force or the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration should reopen
investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country
has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply
recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s
out there.

VIEW/COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE:
http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2008/07/new-york-times.html