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‘I didn’t learn anything:’ Burchett on classified UFO briefing
Oct 27, 2023
Lawmakers who received a classified briefing regarding allegations the Pentagon is operating a secret UFO retrieval program described the effort as “pointless,” indicating much more would need to be done to get to the bottom of the issue.
Representatives told NewsNation not only did they not receive information on the alleged programs, they couldn’t even figure out the process for getting cleared to be briefed.
“We can’t even find out who is allowed to know,” Rep Scott Perry, R-Pa, said.
The classified briefing came after a public hearing on the subject following allegations from whistleblower David Grusch. Grusch worked on investigating unidentified aerial phenomena for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and claims he was told about secret UFO retrieval programs operating without congressional oversight.
The issue of UAPs has become a rare bipartisan subject among lawmakers. Reps Anna Luna (R-Fl) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) characterized the meeting as frustrating and pointless, as they were told they did not have the clearance to know more about the subject.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) is one of those who has led the effort to investigate Grusch’s claims. Speaking with NewsNation, he was careful not to blame the individuals who were sent to brief Congress, even as he described the effort as a game of whack-a-mole and compared it to the Winchester mansion, full of doors leading to nowhere.
“The federal government learned to do this during the Second World War,” Burchett said. “You have to imagine Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Manhattan Project, thousands of people working on the atomic bomb and less than 12 knew what it was.”
Burchett said the silos of information were deliberate, allowing leaders in the Department of Defense to send people with limited to tell the truth as they know it, even under oath, without revealing the bigger picture.
“These guys can swear under oath, they can take a lie detector test because they’re telling the truth as they know it,” Burchett said.
Burchett also speculated that the DoD was avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests and other oversight by putting some of the alleged programs in the hands of private contractors who aren’t subject to the same regulations.
Regardless of personal opinions on UAPs and whether they are alien in nature, lawmakers agreed it was critical for Congress to be able to provide oversight.
“We owe it to the American people to let them know where the money is being spent,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said.
Lawmakers indicated they would continue to push for more briefings and hearings in an effort to get to the bottom of the issue, even as they hit roadblocks.
“This is one more example that this isn’t our government,” Perry said. “We just get to live here in America and the government doesn’t answer to us.”
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/didnt-learn-anything-burchett-ufo-briefing/
EXCLUSIVE: FBI agents visit scientists building flying saucer at Falcon Space lab in New Jersey - and reveal they are part of 'X-Files like' government UFO investigation
UPDATED: 15:47 EDT, 26 October 2023
FBI agents visited a New Jersey lab where scientists are trying to build a flying saucer – after they received a report of dangerous uranium being used on site.
Mark Sokol, founder of the Falcon Space laboratory in Hawthorne, New Jersey, told DailyMail.com he was shocked when two federal agents showed up at his shop last Friday.
Sokol said the more senior of the two agents told him they had been tasked by Bureau bosses with looking into Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), the government term for UFOs – making him a kind of real-life Fox Mulder from the classic show The X-Files.
They didn't find any dangerous uranium, Sokol said, but were intrigued by the experiments going on at Falcon Space.
Sokol, 35, and his colleagues are attempting to use nuclear physics to make objects weightless, the first step towards building a functioning flying saucer.
They are inspired by verified reports of strange unidentified objects flying in extraordinary ways in our skies, seas and space, which are now being openly investigated by the government.
Sokol told DailyMail.com his goal is to figure out the technology behind these objects, which some believe to be extraterrestrial craft.
CCTV shared with DailyMail.com shows the two FBI agents flashing their badges and interviewing the inventor as well as pacing outside with a Geiger counter – a device used to detect radiation – which showed no harmful radiation at the lab, he said.
'They showed up on Friday right around noon,' Sokol said. 'They flashed their badges, said FBI, and asked if we had any enriched uranium.
'I laughed and told them no. One said that we're not in trouble and he wanted to come back at some point and pick my brain about UAPs because he's been tasked by the FBI, in investigating UAPs or UFOs.'
But if the senior agent is a real-life version of David Duchovny's Mulder, his partner didn't quite measure up to Gillian Anderson's Dana Scully.
Sokol said the more junior of the pair was fresh-faced and ‘probably in his early 20s’.
'They said they got a tipoff that I have enriched uranium. The only uranium we have here is a little piece that I got off Amazon to check our Geiger counter to make sure it's working.'
A spokeswoman for the FBI field office in Newark, New Jersey, told DailyMail.com: 'We receive information from the public each day through various reporting mechanisms.
'In general, when we get information about a situation involving illegal and dangerous radiological or hazardous materials, our agents investigate it.'
The spokeswoman did not comment on whether their FBI office had a designated agent for UFO-related cases.
Sokol described his lab as a bootstrapped community of scientists, engineers, and inventors hoping to crack anti-gravity, warp drives, and other futuristic technologies.
They are funded by donations and a few private investors passionate about the topic.
'We're researching UFO propulsion, trying to figure out propellant-less propulsion concepts that have been theorized to work throughout the years,' he said.
'There's lots of papers and patents that have been put out. But we're a lab where we actually put those theories to the test.'
Some of their experiments test the theory that objects' mass comes from the jumbled directions in which the subatomic particles of their atoms spin.
If you can get those tiny parts to spin in the same direction, it will make them weightless, so the theory goes.
'We've seen up to 17.8% weight loss in one experiment,' Sokol said.
He believes once they can get above 90%, they'll be able to make a floating saucer.
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Lab cofounder Jeremy Rys runs their YouTube channel Alien Scientist, where they post videos of their experiments and scientific discussions at their regular online 'Alternative Propulsion Engineering Conference'.
Rys was skeptical of the FBI visitors, noting that the senior agent had a background in financial crime investigations unrelated to X-Files-type probes.
'They said they were interested in UAP and the kind of stuff he was doing at the lab. It could be a shoe in the door,' he said.
'Maybe they're trying to trick Mark into opening up more because they know it's his passion.
'If you lie to federal investigators in any way, even just telling them the time on a broken clock, they can later put charges against you.'
Though the government has not officially confirmed it is using FBI agents to conduct UFO-related investigations on the ground X-Files-style, there are several hints that this is the case.
A 2021 law which created the latest incarnation of the Pentagon's UFO investigation office 'AARO' also ordered it to 'rapidly respond to, and conduct field investigations of, incidents involving unidentified aerial phenomena under the direction of the head of the Office'.
At a conference on January 11 this year, AARO director Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick presented a slide deck which listed the Department of Justice, ultimately responsible for the FBI, as one of its 'key partners and stakeholders'.
Kirkpatrick, a decorated physicist and intelligence official, also included one intriguing bullet point on his slides suggesting that AARO aimed to 'recover' downed UAP.
The slide said his office is involved in 'UAP detection, tracking, mitigation, and recovery'.
The US government has itself tried to build craft resembling classic flying saucers, though official records show it achieved little success.
In the 1950s the US Air Force hired a Canadian contractor to help it try to build a supersonic flying saucer.
Documents from the venture, codenamed Project 1794, were declassified in 2012, and include schematics that look like they come right out of a science fiction movie.
According to papers published by the National Archives, the saucer was designed to fly 'between Mach 3 and Mach 4, a ceiling of over 100,000 ft. and a maximum range with allowances of about 1,000 nautical miles'.
Despite indications of initial success at a relatively low cost, the project fizzled out after engineers apparently failed to get the craft flying higher than a few feet.
From 2015 to 2017 the US Navy filed for a series of patents for futuristic inventions including a triangular-shaped 'hybrid aerospace underwater craft' and a 'craft using an inertial mass reduction device' – or anti-gravity.
The supposed inventor, Dr. Salvatore Pais, boasted in the patent of possible 'extreme speeds' by his vehicle and the potential to 'engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level'.
But other physicists criticized the filings for their lack of specific technical details and allegedly nonsensical pseudoscience terms – fueling theories that the patents could just be propaganda to confuse America's adversaries.
The Navy told US engineering news site The Drive that they spent three years and $508,000 on the project, but ended it in September 2019 after failing to prove Dr. Pais' proposed science.
'No further research has been conducted, and the project has not transitioned to any other government or civilian organization,' a spokesperson for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division told the site in 2021.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12671139/FBI-agents-visited-New-Jersey-lab-UFO-investigation.html
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AFRL, Space Force to collaborate with Indian startups on space technologies
October 26, 2023
The Air Force Research Laboratory on Oct. 26 announced new Cooperative Research and Development Agreements, or CRADAs, between the U.S. Space Force and two Indian startups.
The agreements are with artificial intelligence startup 114AI, which builds dual-use software for space domain awareness, and 3rd Itech, an imaging sensor supplier and developer of computer chips, integrated circuits and other semiconductor technologies.
These are the Space Force’s first CRADA with non-U.S. companies.
The companies will work with AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate to advance “innovation in Earth observation sensors and space domain awareness,” AFRL said.
The CRADAs are part of a Biden administration initiative to promote joint technology development with India. The U.S. Department of Defense and the Indian Ministry of Defense in June announced the India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS-X), an effort to bring together universities, startups and think tanks to work on emerging technologies.
U.S. defense contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which manufacturers advanced unmanned aircraft for the Pentagon, last year announced strategic partnerships with both 114AI and 3rd Itech.
Space domain awareness, Earth observation
“I have had the pleasure of meeting with many companies and universities while in India and am consistently impressed by the talent of the country’s engineers and scientists, and eagerness to collaborate with our Space Force,” said Merrick Garb, head of the Global Partnerships Directorate at the U.S. Space Force.
He said the agreements with 114AI and 3rd Itech seek to “advance the state-of-the-art in space domain awareness and Earth observation sensor technologies.”
“This CRADA represents a significant step forward in our quest to push the collaborative boundaries of space technology,” said Wellesley Pereira, mission area lead for space information mobility at AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate.
https://spacenews.com/afrl-space-force-to-collaborate-with-indian-startups-on-space-technologies/
Gearing up for EarthCARE
Oct 27, 2023
ESA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency are gearing up for a momentous milestone in Earth observation as launch of the EarthCARE satellite approaches.
Following years of rigorous development and extensive testing, the satellite is now undergoing its final round of tests in Europe before being shipped to the launch site early next year – bringing us one step closer to gaining unprecedented insights into the role that clouds and aerosols play in the climate system.
With global climate change increasingly affecting our planet, EarthCARE's advanced instruments and technology are poised to provide invaluable data for climate research, improve the accuracy of climate models and support numerical weather prediction.
Specifically, EarthCARE, which is short for the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer, will answer some critical scientific questions related to the role that clouds and aerosols play in both reflecting incident solar radiation back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface. This delicate balance is an important factor in regulating Earth’s climate.
Although it is known that clouds play an extremely important role in atmospheric heating and cooling, they remain one of the biggest uncertainties in our understanding of how the atmosphere drives the climate system.
EarthCARE's unique set of four instruments will provide a holistic view of the interplay between clouds, aerosols and radiation.
Its cloud profiling radar will provide information on the vertical structure and internal dynamics of clouds, its atmospheric lidar will provide cloud-top information and profiles of thin clouds and aerosols, its multispectral imager will provide a wide-scene overview in multiple wavelengths, and its broad-band radiometer will measure reflected solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation.
The fact that these different measurements are all taken at the same time allows scientists to better understand Earth’s radiation balance.
EarthCARE is the largest of ESA’s Earth Explorer satellites to date and, carrying such a comprehensive instrument package, development and testing has, unsurprisingly, been complex over the years.
More recently the satellite spent around 12 months at ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in the Netherlands – the largest satellite test facility in Europe.
This 3000 sq m, environmentally-controlled facility hosts test equipment to simulate every aspect of the space environment, from the vacuum and temperature extremes of Earth orbit to the violent noise and vibration of a rocket launch.
With these tests completed in the Netherlands, the satellite has now been shipped to Airbus in Germany for the last round of checks, which included testing for the transmitted shock when separating from the rocket’s adapter ring.
ESA’s EarthCARE Project Manager, Dirk Bernaerts, said, “We are extremely happy to see EarthCARE in great shape, with the tests demonstrating that the satellite will withstand the rigours of liftoff and the harsh environment of space.
“We will soon be gearing up for the launch and then very much look forward to seeing our satellite deliver the data that is so needed by the scientific community.
“In fact, next month we are holding a science and validation workshop to help familiarise the science community with EarthCARE products, tools and databases, and more.”
The satellite is scheduled to be packed up and shipped to the Vandenberg launch site in California in early March, where it will be prepared for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in May.
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/EarthCARE/Gearing_up_for_EarthCARE
>They flashed their badges, said FBI, and asked if we had any enriched uranium
well that's interesting