Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation Review



Last Friday night Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation debuted on The History Channel.  The UFO Community was all abuzz leading into this.  People in Europe asked on social media how they could get their hands on a copy of the show.  On one popular UFO group page that I belong to 75% of the dozens of posts over the past few days were about this show or the people involved with it.  Worldwide, there was great anticipation for this historic event.

Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation Review
UFO Video from Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation
Few people were more eager to see the show than I.  It was nearly one year ago when I first spoke with the primary investigator on the show, Lue Elizondo, about my own UFO sighting while on duty in the US Army in Gagetown, New Brunswick, in 1992.  I could not wait to see how things turned out.

I had high hopes.  I tried to temper this as much as possible in order to not create unrealistic expectations.  One social media user expressed concerns about the History Channel creating lame reenactments.  I shared those concerns.  But I also had spoken extensively with one of the producers last summer and had a lot of confidence in the team's abilities to pull it off.  I was not disappointed.

I liked that the show started with the New York Times article about Elizondo.  I feel like that is where the modern era of UFO investigation really begins.  That article was what spurred me to come out of the shadows with my own story.  It kicked things off for a tremendous amount of new developments over the past two years, both for myself and for the UFO Community.

Unidentified spent about equal amounts of time airing the story of the Nimitz Encounter, detailed below, and explaining who the To The Stars Academy team is.  I will begin with the latter.

Who is To The Stars Academy?


"Who" is the right question, not "What."  In Unidentified, Politico National Security Correspondent Bryan Bender describes To The Stars Academy or TTSA, the research organization at the center of Unidentified, as being comprised of an "A-Team" of experts.  Lue Elizondo ran the government program at the Pentagon which investigated UFOs.  Chris Mellon was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for US Intelligence, a few years back.  Steve Justice was one of the top aviation engineers for Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks.  Hal Puthoff was a scientist for the CIA.

Who is To The Stars Academy
Who is To The Stars Academy
Many critics have said that since this A-Team was sewn together by the rock star Tom DeLonge, that TTSA has no credibility and will never produce anything meaningful.  Read on, to judge for yourself.

The Nimitz Encounter


The first time I spoke with Lue Elizondo and the Unidentified producer I was in contact with, each of them asked me if I had heard of the Nimitz Encounter.  I had not.  It was then no surprise to me that they led with this story.  To sum it  up, the Nimitz Encounter involved an untold number of Navy personnel who witnessed a "Tic Tac" shaped UFO.  The way it is described, it sounds like at least four people on two fighter jets saw the spaceship with their own eyes.  These are  highly credible "trained observers" who should have had the ability to know what they were looking at, or at least to know what it was not.  It was not an aircraft like any they had seen before.  One of the pilots captured video footage, locking on to the aircraft with his missile guidance system.  Many more Navy personnel witnessed these engagements via radar and communication channels.

This was indeed the story to lead off with because there were so many witnesses and there is video proof.  I have watched a YouTube video of one supposed expert (who would not show his face and wanted his voice disguised) attempting to debunk this video because pilots do not talk the way the pilots in the video spoke.  Most leading level-headed UFO Community members believe that so-called "expert" to be a fraud, meaning the video proof of the Tic Tac is valid.

Unidentified brought in their own experts.  Chris Cook is a retired Lieutenant Colonel who spent his career flying fighter jets, and Ross Aimer has 40 years of commercial pilot experience and now works as a consultant for the National Transportation Safety Board.  Neither expert questions the validity of the videos.  Both note the facts that the images they are watching appear to be like nothing they have ever seen, despite their many years experience flying and observing all types of respective military and civilian aircraft.  One mentions the Tic Tac does not even look like an aircraft.  They note the inexplicable way the aircraft are able to accelerate and that there are no exhaust plumes.  These are all also characteristics of the ship Mike, "The Other Witness" and I saw.

The Nimitz Encounter
The Nimitz Encounter
The Nimitz story is initially told by a Navy pilot whose identity is being hidden.  A minor criticism for me was this veiled attempt at hiding the identity of the Wingman Pilot in the first team who saw the Tic Tac.  She was obscured due to her concerns about the future of her career.  I get that.  When Mike and I tried to tell our fellow soldiers about our sighting, we became the laughing stock of our unit.  Few people we spoke with were ready to accept the possibility of life on other planets let alone the concept that aliens might want to come down and check out our military capabilities.  Elizondo and the producer both told me that I could have my identity hidden if I wanted.  I told them no, after (then) 26 years I was finally ready to tell the world about what happened and I did not care who knew.  That seemed surprising to both of them.  Perhaps it was because of their experience with the Wingman Pilot.

There are very few female pilots in the Navy.  The Wingman Pilot's face was hidden but you could see the style of her haircut and hear her voice.  Elizondo makes it clear that her name is never to be used in internal communications but it would not be difficult for her superiors to figure out who was on the USS Nimitz on the day of her encounter.  It seemed silly to hide her identity.  The only plausible reason for doing so was to make this pilot comfortable in telling her story.  Again, I get that.  "Mike," the other witness to my story, told the producers of Unidentified that he would only go on the record if his face and voice could be obscured.  He had different reasons, which I respect, even if I disagree with them.

At any rate, identity obfuscation aside, I commend the Wingman Pilot and her Commander for coming forward with their stories.  As the woman told her story you could hear it in her voice that a weight was being lifted off her chest.  She had been holding back this information for over a decade, walking around with a secret she felt she had to tell someone but lacking the courage to tell it.  And who would she tell?  This was a secret which affected US national security.  But she had to keep her mouth shut about it out of fear of retribution.  Finally, she had someone she could confide in, with Lue Elizondo.

I have wondered for decades, why does nobody in the US government seems to care that superior forces are strolling onto military bases like they are walking on the beach.  Unidentified reports that Chris Mellon, a very high-ranking government official, in his time, has asked the same question: Why is no one doing anything about this?  I wanted to tell my story to someone the entire time - not just anyone (and in fact I told almost no one) but the right person in a position to do something with the information.  Apparently, I am not the only one who felt this way.

Another similarity between the Nimitz Encounter and my own is that the pilots were unarmed.  They flew some of the deadliest aircraft on our planet but they carried no ordnance.  They were on a training mission and did not expect to see an alien spaceship that day.  I too was on a training mission during my encounter and was armed with a powerful, fully automatic M-16 A1 rifle.  But I carried no ammunition.  I could not have taken a shot at the spaceship if I wanted to, though I shudder to think what might have happened if either I or the Nimitz Encounter personnel had taken a shot at our respective subjects.

The Wingman Pilot also noted that the hair on the back of her neck was standing up, during her encounter.  I have written about this too.  The difference though, is that this physical reaction happened to me moments before I saw the spaceship, like I sensed it was there, whereas it happened to her once her encounter began.

I point out these similarities to highlight my judgement that this witness is credible.  She is noting details that are difficult to make up unless you have actually been in one of these situations.

Her commanding pilot was a man named David Fravor.  He has since retired from the military and presumably feels more comfortable going on the record because he now has nothing to lose in respect to a military career.  Fravor backs up the Wingman's story, adding additional details from his own perspective.  This is important in further validating the Nimitz story.

What I like about this approach is that now we have two highly credible people, one of whom has no issues about appearing on camera.  When you have one person with a story like this, skeptics will say to themselves, "It sounds like s/he believes they saw something and I believe they believe that but I'm not sure they know what they saw."  From my perspective, having had my own close encounter, it is frustrating when people do that.  But here you have two people going on the record with the same story.  That makes it harder for the skeptics to dismiss what the pilots know they saw.

The Observables


An underlying theme to the show was the threat to national security that these UFOs play.  My mom stopped by yesterday and I made her sit down and watch Unidentified with me.  Her first comment was an expression of doubt about UFOs being a threat.  I suspect many other viewers who are not part of the UFO Community shared her opinion.  I paused the show and explained to my mom that when my sighting happened I was guarding an ammunition stockpile.  The spaceship was undoubtedly checking out the ammo in order to ascertain our military capabilities.  On top of that, anyone with the technology to get from there to here, which could be a distance of hundreds of light-years (we do not know), has an understanding of physics which is thousands, if not millions, of years ahead of us on Earth.  How could we compete, militarily, with civilizations like that.

I then explained the Prime Directive to my mom - not that I am a Trekkie or that I believe with certainty that there is actually a Prime Directive but it would make sense given the fact that there are no diplomatic relations with aliens (that we The People know of) and aliens have not yet destroyed a major city.

A new development in UFOlogy presented by Unidentified is the five distinct cararcteristics of a UFO which Elizondo calls "The Observables."  These Five Observables include:

  • Anti-Gravity
  • Instantaneous Acceleration
  • Hypersonic Velocity
  • Low Observability
  • Trans-Medium Travel

Anti-Gravity is the ability to fly without apparent means of propulsion or lift.  This includes hovering in place.
Instantaneous Acceleration is the ability to reach a high rate of speed in a short amount of time.
Hypersonic Velocity is speeds over 3700 miles per hour or five times the speed of sound.
Low Observability is the capacity to cloak or conceal, meaning the aircraft can appear to be translucent or even invisible.
Trans-Medium Travel is the ability to move through space, air, and water.

Elizondo notes that having the ability to do any one of these five characteristics would be a "game changer," technologically.  I agree and am glad to see this guide for future observations.   There is one more, though, that was left out.  I emailed Lue and the Unidentified producer I have been in contact with, about it last night and am eager to see if either replies with any thoughts.

The Sixth Observable is one that I recently stumbled upon in my own investigations, interviewing other sighting witnesses.  Most witnesses note that the aircraft they observe make no noise.  Mine was silent too.  But I have also written many times about how just prior to my sighting the crickets, frogs, and other nighttime woodland critters all stopped making noise.  Did they know something was up?  After the spaceship was away from the site I was guarding I could hear a faint static sound, like a TV with nothing to display.  It was barely audible and I think I could only hear it because of an unusually wide range of hearing that I have.  Around that time, the noises of the woods returned.

The Observables
The Observables
I have spoken with a few other folks who have their own stories, recently.  A common data point is that not only did the aircraft they observed not make any sound, but the crickets stopped chirping.  That made me wonder, did the crickets actually stop chirping or were they silenced by something?  If it is the latter, perhaps these UFOs are not in fact silent.  Maybe they make an incredible amount of noise but they employ some type of Sound Field Silencing technology in order to travel undetected.

If I am right, this would explain how these ships are able to accelerate to hyper-sonic velocities without creating an audible sonic boom.  Maybe there is indeed a sonic boom but it is deadened, like putting your hand over the receiver or the speaker of a phone, or dissipated like diluting a solution to the point it is no longer detectable.  According to Mike, the other witness to my sighting, our UFO zipped off into space in a streak of light without creating any sonic booms.

I would like to see this Sixth Observable added to the list.

Conclusion


Looking through the posts by the UFO Community the show seemed to be well received.  There were some nit-picky things that people pointed out like how Elizondo holds his phone to his ear while driving.  This would result in a traffic ticket in many US states.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt and replied that maybe he was in a state where that is not the law.  Others suggested that maybe his Secret Clearance allows him to do that.  I do not know that this is true.  But either way, it is a minor issue and one which does not diminish Elizondo's credibility.  Everyone speeds a little or commits other minor traffic offenses every day.  This is really a non-issue in regard to UFOlogy.

One UFO Community member described the recreations in the show as being geared towards, "Neanderthals."  I must be a Neanderthal then because I thought it was well done.  I have seen more than my share of cheesy reenactments, not only of UFO encounters but also of countless crime stories.  Mrs. M. cannot get enough of those murder mystery shows.  But I was impressed with how tasteful these reenactments were.  They were also few and far between.  More of the show was about the eye-witness' verbal accounts and about the people who were bringing this to us.

My overall view on Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation is high.  I give it a thumbs up.  The first episode was well produced and highly informative.  The witnesses and experts all come off as credible.  Perhaps this will silence critics who have said that Tom DeLonge and TTSA will never produce anything worthwhile.  More importantly, I hope that by releasing this information to the public, in the manner in which it is being presented, we will enter a new era of discussion, investigation, Disclosure, and action on the UFO problem.



Enjoying this blog?
Also follow me
If you have seen an alien spaceship or any type of unidentified flying object (UFO) contact me using the Contact form on this page.  You may remain anonymous if you want.  I will not ridicule you or try to tell you why you are wrong.  I get it, I saw one too.

Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.

Comments