Why the likelihood of UFOs, aliens playing peekaboo with humans is remote

Among those who have reported sightings are highly trained pilots equipped with cutting-edge technology, but…

Is the US military establishment (loosely called the Pentagon since it is headquartered there) hiding alien bodies and spacecraft? Conspiracy theorists have said so for decades. These accusations have gone mainstream after a former US intelligence officer repeated them at a Hearing on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) called by the US House Oversight National Security Subcommittee.

Conspiracy theorists adore UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), as the US defence forces refer to them. At the hearing, retired navy pilots, whose testimony must be considered credible, described encounters with weird flying objects, quite apart from the sensational claims by the former intelligence officer.

Over decades, pilots of various air forces, as well as commercial pilots, have sometimes encountered phenomena they cannot explain. These incidents have to be taken seriously since the witnesses are experienced flyers, unlikely to mistake a weather balloon for an alien craft.

Most UAP incidents can be explained on investigation as balloons, experimental aircraft, rockets, satellites or natural stuff like ball lightning, auroras, ionised clouds, or unusual astronomical events. Over a 70-year period, the US has examined more than 12,000 such sightings, and at least another 1,000 such sightings have been investigated by Soviets, UK defence forces, etc.  A few cannot be explained. That’s when the exotic explanations pop up.

In one of the most inexplicable of such incidents, pilots from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz were flying off the coast of California in 2004. They scrambled to investigate strange radar sightings. Several pilots and crewmen saw weird objects, which they dubbed “tic-tac”. They took videos, including one with an infrared camera, of something approximately 12 metres long that showed up first at 24,000 metres and dropped almost instantly to 6000 metres, and hovered before dropping to the sea.

In another such set, pilots from the USS Theodore Roosevelt off the US East Coast in 2014 and 2015 scrambled to investigate crazy instrument detections of flying objects, which continued to show up on radar and infrared but not to the naked eye. Again, there were multiple trained witnesses. The Pentagon has released several videos from these two incidents and from a few other sightings.

All these involved pilots and radar technicians with cutting-edge instruments. By definition, the witnesses are among the most highly trained and experienced people around when it comes to identifying flying objects. Their testimony is that no known aircraft could have performed the manoeuvres they saw. If these objects were secret exotic aircraft, the US Navy could have simply told them to shut up.

Retired intelligence officer David Grusch, a major, claimed the US had a long-term programme to capture craft of non-human origin, as well to retrieve non-human biological material. However, while Grusch says he spent years investigating UAP claims and interviewed many people, he admitted he had no direct knowledge to back his assertions up. He also claimed the Pentagon knew far more than it was willing to reveal about UAPs.

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to assume defence establishments will be reluctant to reveal classified material. But many of the UAP claims are, frankly, absurd.

Let’s lay out some of the popular “theories”. Writers like Erich von Daniken and his followers claim aliens visited the Earth millennia ago and built the pyramids, Stonehenge, the Iron Pillar of Chandra in Delhi, etc. Some of these pseudo-archaeology devotees even say aliens seeded life on Earth.

A second lot are abduction enthusiasts. Aliens picked “somebody” up, gave them a thorough examination, flew them somewhere, and released them.

A third lot believe alien craft have crashed in remote parts of the world and that the wreckage, corpses, etc., have been gathered and squirreled away. Roswell, New Mexico, is a favourite locale for this event. The exotic material is supposedly stored at the US Air Force flight testing centre in nearby Area 51.

The fourth lot are the pilots, sailors, and other apparently sane people who have seen weird flying objects. Their claims are taken seriously often because there are multiple, credible accounts. This doesn’t mean these are sightings of alien vessels – it just means there is no clear explanation.

If you poll the scientific community about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, most agree that there’s a very high probability of its existence. Most also agree there’s a very, very low probability aliens will appear on Earth. Practically no scientist believes aliens will abduct random people and play peekaboo with military aircraft.

The nearest star to our sun is four years away if you travel at the speed of light. Distance makes contact with an alien civilisation unlikely. If aliens had the technology to travel interstellar distances and visit, they would be centuries ahead in development. It’s hard to imagine such technologically superior aliens would hide away and abduct random people without ever trying to get in touch.

The UAP hearings will add grist to all the conspiracy mills without, however, throwing much light on the subject. Meanwhile, scientists carry on looking at radio signals from space and the chemical signatures of exoplanets in the hope of unearthing possible signs of intelligent life.