There are many points of view in the study of the UFO phenomenon. When you ask a question to a group of UFO researchers, you can get a variety of answers depending on who you ask and what day of the week it is. There are so many schools of thought it’s hard to keep them all straight, and that’s just the UFO researchers. Then there are the critics.
One of the arguments the critics offer is the fact that they claim that “Radar has never recorded the actual entering of UFOs into our atmosphere.” This eliminates the possibility that they could be alien spacecraft travelling to earth from a distant solar system. Therefore, the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) cannot be a viable theory. In their minds, the argument is over.
But wait a moment. Let’s have a closer look at this discourse, and see if we can’t delve a little deeper into what’s happening, and try to shed some light on the issue. To begin with, where did this idea that no UFOs have ever been tracked entering earth’s atmosphere come from? We have to go back into UFO research history – way back – some 45 years. This was in fact a statement by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, quoted by Charles Bowen in an article in a magazine titled, “Flying Saucer Review.” Dr. Hynek was the civilian consultant for the United States Air Force’s “Project Blue Book,” a project that was promoted as an attempt to investigate and determine the nature of so-called unidentified flying objects (its true purpose was to discredit the entire phenomenon). And to add insult to injury, Dr. Hynek was mis-quoted. The original quote was – “UFOs have never been recorded entering the earth’s atmosphere from outside.” Dr. Hynek never mentioned radar, but the addition of radar by various critics seems to add credibility to the quote. And what those various critics don’t tell you is, Mr. Bowen’s article is dated 1974 (Flying Saucer Review Vol. 20, No. 2), and much has transpired since then.
Most importantly, the Defense Support Program (DSP). This is a system of reconnaissance satellites controlled by the United States Air Force that detect such events as missile or spacecraft launches, or nuclear explosions. Initiated in 1970, the system has been enlarged and upgraded numerous times since then. It was effective in detecting the launch of Iraqi Scud missiles during Desert Storm. The system is operated by the Air Force’s 460th Space Wing, and has tracked numerous UFOs known as “Fastwalkers,” that approach earth from deep space at very high speeds.
According to Dr. Robert Fish, a Princeton computer science professor, “One of the government programs that collects hard data on unidentified flying objects is the USAF DSP satellite program.” He went on to say, “On occasion, I had lunch with a few (employees) in the cafeteria of a highly classified organization in El Segundo, CA. No one could get into the cafeteria without TS/SCI clearances, so this was not a ‘lightweight group of gossipers.’ One of these times, a member of that group was really excited – he said they’d just picked up a Fastwalker. He described how it entered our atmosphere from ‘deep space’ and zipped by the DSP satellite pretty closely on its way to earth. Not only was it going very fast but it made a 30 degree course correction which means it did not have a ballistic (free fall) reentry trajectory that a meteorite might have. So, it was under some sort of control…”
Dr. Fish concludes by saying, “Somewhere within the USAF program office is many years’ worth of Fastwalker data. If someone were to collect and analyze it, patterns will emerge that provide information about various types of craft and their destinations, which would add substantiation to eyewitness claims on the ground about UFO activity.”
This is also mentioned by UFO researcher Richard Dolan in his book, “UFOs and The National Security State” (pp. 288, 289). He writes that the Defense Support Program tracks on average about 500 fastwalkers a year. That’s a considerable amount of space-bourne traffic, and pretty much silences the critic’s argument about no UFOs ever having been detected approaching earth from deep space.
So what is going on? Is this definitive proof of the existence of extraterrestrial craft visiting earth? In my mind no, but it does lend credence to the fact that something is going on, that UFOs are not simply the product of delusional people’s imaginations. As any good detective will tell you, one must approach any mystery with a certain amount of skepticism, and let the evidence determine the conclusion. Too many people want to believe one way or the other, and see only what supports their point of view. But having said that, some 70 years of evidence is mounting, and it’s clear something is happening, something very real, very tangible, and very physical. But the final and most important question, which may never be answered, is –
What?