UFOs, the Channel Islands and the Navy's 'drone swarm' mystery

https://thehill.com ^ | January 05, 2022 - 08:00 AM EST | BY MARIK VON RENNENKAMPFF, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR

[Red Badger]

The Navy has a perplexing mystery on its hands. For several weeks in 2019, unknown objects stalked U.S. warships off the coast of southern California. While the bizarre "drone" encounters remain unsolved, the incidents occurred in an area with a long history of UFO sightings, including two of the most credible encounters on record.

According to documents reviewed by The Drive, the first reports of unidentified objects hovering and flying near Navy vessels sparked a sweeping, high-level investigation. The Navy, working with the FBI and Coast Guard, now appears to have ruled out civilian activity or U.S. military operations as plausible explanations for the encounters. This leaves two possibilities, each with extraordinary implications.

Either a foreign adversary is spying on Navy ships around the Channel Islands (which lie just west of Los Angeles and San Diego), or devices of truly unknown origin are operating with impunity around U.S. (and allied) vessels.

The implications of a foreign power deploying drones to spy on American warships just off the California coast are immense. For starters, this scenario suggests a monumental U.S. counterintelligence failure.

Moreover, such a brazen and technically complex intelligence operation amounts to an enormous gamble for a hostile nation. Any shoot-down - as the Navy reportedly attempted - of a foreign surveillance drone so close to U.S. shores would invite sweeping geopolitical repercussions.

Importantly, if the UFOs that stalked the Navy warships were part of an adversarial intelligence collection effort, the objects' operators made little effort to conceal their presence. Videos taken aboard one U.S. vessel show the mysterious craft displaying bright and flashing lights. At the same time, Navy radar operators tracked the objects with apparent ease, even expressing surprise as the craft engaged in anomalous maneuvers. In another video, a spherical object (which has noteworthy parallels to UFOs observed by fighter pilots off the U.S. east coast) appears to descend slowly into the ocean.

To be sure, investigators and intelligence analysts must take seriously the possibility that a foreign power is spying on U.S. warships a stone's throw from two major American cities. But based on what is known publicly about these bizarre incidents, investigators should also consider the long history of UFO sightings around the Channel Islands. Decades of anecdotal reports are bolstered by two of the most credible encounters on record.

In a notable 2004 incident, air controllers aboard a Navy guided missile cruiser watched as mysterious radar tracks suddenly appeared around San Clemente Island.

The radar operators grew increasingly uneasy as the UFOs moved south at bizarrely slow speeds. With U.S. planes slated to conduct an air defense exercise in the same area as the unknown objects, controllers directed two F/A-18 fighter jets to investigate the nearest radar contact.

As the jets approached, all four aviators aboard the two-seat fighters observed a "Tic Tac"-shaped craft hovering and moving in extraordinary ways just above the surface of the ocean. The object, which had no discernible engines, rotors, wings or other control surfaces, then mirrored the maneuvers of the lead fighter jet before accelerating instantaneously out of sight.

After descending tens of thousands of feet in less than a second, the object reappeared on radar 60 miles away, implying unimaginably fast velocities and g-forces. Most perplexingly, the UFO appeared at a pre-determined rendezvous point known only to the aircrew and radar operators.

U.S. intelligence analyses ruled out highly advanced Chinese or Russian aircraft as plausible explanations for the bizarre encounter. For their part, the four aviators who observed the object believe that it was "not from this world."

A half century earlier, one of the most talented and prolific aeronautical engineers in history observed a UFO over the Channel Islands. His account is corroborated by four of America's most experienced test pilots and aerospace engineers.

Among many noteworthy contributions to American aviation, Clarence "Kelly" Johnson designed the legendary U-2 and SR-71 spy planes as the first head of Lockheed Martin's famed "Skunk Works" division. On Dec. 16, 1953, Johnson and his wife watched as a UFO with no apparent control surfaces or engines hovered for several minutes in the vicinity of Santa Cruz Island. The object then accelerated rapidly out of sight.

Unknown to Johnson, a Lockheed flight test crew, which included the company's chief aerodynamics engineer, chief flight test engineer and two highly experienced test pilots, observed the same object while flying northwest along the Los Angeles coastline.

Unsurprisingly, Johnson and the flight crew's descriptions of the incident are meticulously detailed. Most importantly, Lockheed's engineers and pilots explicitly ruled out a cloud formation as a plausible explanation for the incident.

Nonetheless, the Air Force, freshly charged with discrediting and "debunking" all UFO sightings, concluded that five of America's most credible observers were fooled by a small cloud.

Largely unknown in aviation history, Johnson was a firm believer in the existence of "flying saucers." In a letter informing the Air Force of the Channel Islands encounter (and another UFO sighting two years earlier), Johnson writes that the incidents left him "more firmly convinced than ever that such devices exist." According to Johnson, the 1953 encounter helped him win "some highly technical converts in this belief."

Importantly, the Lockheed engineers' and pilots' descriptions of the December 1953 incident refer to another credible sighting over the Channel Islands. In 1951, one of the company's top test pilots, Roy Wimmer, "sighted some lights over Catalina [Island]" that reportedly "stood still for a while and moved around" before disappearing. The parallels to the movement of the "drones" that recently followed U.S. warships are noteworthy.

A decade after the Lockheed encounters of the 1950s, a Navy photographer captured video of a UFO moving slowly over Catalina Island. Digitally enhanced footage shows that the object appears to lack control surfaces or obvious means of propulsion, bearing an intriguing resemblance to the strange craft observed by naval aviators in 2004.

Now, with Congress forcing the government to take the UFO phenomenon seriously for the first time, investigators must consider whether the objects that followed Navy warships are linked to the long history of inexplicable - yet highly credible - encounters in the waters off southern California.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.

[jimmygrace]

If they make no efforts to conceal, you should be able to down a few with flak and get your answer.

[PghBaldy]

Einstein–Rosen bridges (wormholes)?

[allendale]

Speculative nonsense. Absolutely no evidence that such entities exist.

[maddog55]

While the bizarre "drone" encounters remain unsolved...

Drone? They have no idea what they are. If it was made in China it would have never made it that far and we'd find them laying all over the beaches after being washed up.

Not the Russians because tube technology can't handle the "G" forces.

Not the US because we can't seem to wrap our science around a bad cold.

My guess:

After reading the post today about the covid jab being nano-technology that reassembles in the body and works off a terahertz frequency and something to do with 5G (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4027138/posts) I'm guessing this is the alien invasion and the Reptilians have started their takeover!! Good news is us Purebloods will save humanity by avoiding 5G cell technology and the jab.

Our only real hope for survival is maybe the "Greys" will intervene and stop the Reptilian advance.

Otherwise I guess I'll wake up in the Matrix and swallow the red pill and find out the truth behind the lies, providing the opportunity to forever change my knowledge and perception of reality.

Meanwhile, those taking the jab or the "Blue" pill chose a life of ignorance, refusing to shatter the illusion they’re living in.

Sarcasm for those taking the blue pill !!

[PghBaldy]

Perhaps. The point was to your Einstein comment. The theories of wormholes negates your Einstein either/or statement.

[larrytown]

That was a group (university-private coop iirc) that was surveying for crop blight/diseases for some study.

[ArtDodger]

Its winter. I have a more pressing worry about ice weasels attacking me at night as I walk from my car to my house.

[larrytown]

Face it. You either believe Einstein or you believe in UFOs.

Well, there's always MAGIC!

[Openurmind]

(Waiting for the scoffers...)

No Scoffing from me. We tend to limit our own scope of possibility with deep set lack of objectivity. I believe there is more than one universe too, possibly as many as there are galaxies we just don’t see them yet.

Not seeing them yet does not mean they are not there. Someday we might if keep looking with objectivity and drop the firewall. :)

[null and void]

I have a more pressing worry about ice weasels attacking me at night as I walk from my car to my house.

As you say...

[allendale]

Einstein mused about many things. He famously said that imagination is more important than intelligence. That may be true. However his theories of relativity and the observation that no physical entity can travel faster than the speed of light, the enormous density of any object even approaching such speeds, is the key point when referencing Einstein to debunk UFO fantasies.

[Red Badger]

[The Sentient Sheep]

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” - Arthur C Clark

[Mr. K]

It must be nice to be so confident in your ignorance. Especially when you’re wrong.

Einstein’s equation DO NOT limit the ability to travel light years via various methods. Wormholes being one of them.

Do you honestly believe we know everything there is to know about physics? And are limited but what we know now? You’re like a sceptic from the 1900’s who said metal object could never fly.

Bob Lazar said he worked on anti-gravity propulsion at area 51 (actually a sub-area called s4). Over the years more and more of his statements proved true. Like the existence of area 51 itself, then the existence of the even more secret S4. Also element 115.

[Red Badger]

I will believe Russia and/or Chinese spy tech before I believe in UFO tech....................

[AnglePark]

He famously said that imagination is more important than intelligence.

No, he said that imagination is more important than KNOWLEDGE. Big difference, and it applies directly to this discussion. Your vision (of the universe) is based on knowledge, and not on imagination that would allow one to see the possibilities.

There is already a pattern in history of technology "breaking" natural laws -- laws that were said could never be broken -- and that trend will continue.

[null and void]

Clarke's law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Dallen's law: I still stand in front of any AM machine [3-D printer] and call it witchcraft, even though I know exactly how it works and why it works. (Robin Dallen, TCT magazine Vol 7, issue 5, North American edition, page 032)

[GingisK]

Einstein is not God. There were things he did not understand. He also said “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

It is possible that in our mere 150 years of technology we haven't learned everything.

[GingisK]

There is nothing in there that mentions this topic.

[The Sentient Sheep]

Here’s a hint at what will be revealed (by the biden administration):
“The space aliens are very disappointed in our progress to stop global warming, to rid ourselves of the climate destroying use of fossil fuels and not embracing 100% “renewable energy. They are also very upset that the masses are not discarding evil capitalism for utopian socialism . The space aliens have sternly warned the US Government must give every single black person a reparation of $500,000 year for life to make up for what Whitey has done to them in the far past and that black folks are to be completely unaccountable for their behavior. The space aliens believe there is no male or female either. In fact, to the shock of Normal Americans, it will be revealed that what the space aliens want from us if IDENTICAL to the current madness of the leftist in power now. (Who Knew !) And if we do not change , they will destroy us with a Death Star or something much much worse that that Flu. Think I’m kidding folks ? The Government has ulterior motive for everything. We have be subjected to a blizzard of blatant lies for quite a while so a few more really big whopper’s should not come as a surprise. A large majority of our feckless ingrate citizens are so easily manipulated by pure B.S. that I would not put it past the lib’s to pull a stunt like this. They are probably studying Orson Welles and the affect of his War of the Worlds broadcast to see how they can improve it. You’ll see...