You cant really blame Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer last month for nearly stammering when his guest told him about virtual dogfights between military jets and UFOs over the United Kingdom.
Youre kiddin me. What - dogfights? Hemmer went on: If there was a dogfight over the hills of England, over the countryside of England, wed know about that by now, would we not?
Only if youre paying attention, which the MSM isnt. As Nick Pope reminded him, the British Ministry of Defence has been putting declassified UFO archives online for the past couple of years. He also reminded Hemmer the encounters arent limited to the UK.
Pope, who worked the MoDs UFO desk in the early 1990s, was in Washington, D.C., in November 2007 to join an international panel of pilots and authorities convened by the Coalition for Freedom of Information. Among those representing the dogfight aspect to the UFO problem was retired Iranian air force general Parviz Jafari.
In 1976, Jafari was ordered to destroy a UFO buzzing Tehran after another Iranian jet interceptor lost its control panel and turned back. Jafari was nearly blinded by the glare of the object during his approach. As one of the smaller lights broke from the bigger one and surged toward his Phantom F-4, Jafari attempted to fire a Sidewinder missile, only to discover his controls had shut down. Maybe the most surprising element of this story was how the world found out about it in Defense Intelligence Agency documents recovered through FOIA.
Also among the 07 panelists was former Peruvian fighter pilot Oscar Santa Maria Huertas, who survived a harrowing encounter with a metallic, dome-shaped UFO in 1980.
My unit commander ordered me to take off in my Sukoi-22 jet to shoot down the spherical object, he informed media gathered at the National Press Club. It was in restricted airspace, without clearance, and we were concerned about espionage.
I approached the object and strafed sixty-four 30mm shells at it. Some projectiles went towards the ground, and others hit the object fully, but they had no effect at all. The projectiles didnt bounce off; probably they were absorbed. The cone-shaped wall of fire that I sent out would normally obliterate anything in its path. The UFO outmaneuvered Maria Huertas subsequent attempts to fire, then took off.
Citing air safety and national security ramifications in a New York Times op-ed piece last year, Pope is renewing his call for formal scientific studies of UFOs.
I see no value in re-evaluating the Colorado Report, Pope e-mailed De Void, alluding to the governments sham study that ended all official inquiries in 1969. This is history and while ufologists might be interested, I don't think the media and the public would be. I think a meaningful UFO study would have to be led by the USAF, with the involvement of NASA and the wider (non-governmental) scientific community.
I'm not familiar with the US system, but with the UK model in mind, one option to establish credibility might be to establish an oversight committee, with an independent Chair.
Studies or no studies, the challenges to military systems worldwide continue. Greece recently released documents and flight recordings indicating it had ordered jet fighters in November 2007 to investigate a UFO that shadowed an Olympia Airways passenger jet. Two other airliners reported the UFO, which resembled a star, except that it changed shape, moved erratically, and took off before pursuit the planes could get a good look.
Greek authorities blamed you guessed it Venus. Details at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4577717/Fighter-jets-scrambled-after-UFO-follows-plane-over-Athens.html