The U.S. Air Force General overseeing North American airspace said on Sunday after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects that he would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet, deferring to U.S. intelligence experts. “We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” he said, as the U.S. was unable to immediately determine the means by which they were kept aloft. The Telegraph has the story.
Asked whether he had ruled out an extraterrestrial origin for three airborne objects shot down by U.S. warplanes in as many days, General Glen VanHerck said: “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything.”
“At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it,” said Mr. VanHerck, head of U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command.
Mr. VanHerck’s comments came during a Pentagon briefing on Sunday after a U.S. F-16 fighter jet shot down an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the U.S.-Canada border.
The incidents over the past three days follow the February 4th downing of a Chinese balloon that put North American air defences on high alert. U.S. officials said that balloon was being used for surveillance.
Another U.S. defence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the military had seen no evidence suggesting any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin.
Mr. VanHerck said the military was unable to immediately determine the means by which any of the three latest objects were kept aloft or where they were coming from.
“We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” said Mr VanHerck.
The incidents come as the Pentagon has undertaken a new push in recent years to investigate military sightings of UFOs – rebranded in official Government parlance as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” or UAPs.
The Government’s effort to investigate anomalous, unidentified objects – whether they are in space, the skies or even underwater – has led to hundreds of documented reports that are being investigated, senior military leaders have said.
But the Pentagon says it has not found evidence to indicate Earthly visits from intelligent alien life.
William Kim writes in the Telegraph that the “most likely explanation is that they’re balloons – either civilian devices designed to monitor weather, or military technology from the People’s Republic of China similar to the one that made headlines the week before”.
Worth reading in full.
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I confess, I am equally frustrated that everyone carries around with them a way of accessing the entirety of human knowledge, and so few bother doing anything more than watching kitty video’s or asking their friends what they are doing.
Puppy videos are better.
Thanks to Joanna Gray for exposing this shocking truth. All these years I had just assumed that young people were even more adept than us old folks at using the internet as the vast, wondrous library it is, so it comes as a real shock to me that most young ones have no interest at all in that.
One small English quibble: it’s “reams”, not “reems”.
Really nteresting article. I think you are on to something here. Most people will default to ‘lazy’, given the chance and lack of stimuli.
I will be looking at my teenage children’s usage with this in mind.
One more reason to be glad that I’ll be dead soon.
When I wrote my PhD, I could only use hardcopy sources and I went through a LOT of books and journals to do it. The internet existed, but it was nothing like the resource it is now. When I quit teaching, half my students were using the internet to write their essays for them (and being caught out because the results didn’t sound like them. Thus I would type in what they’d written et voila! Source found and student got a b@ll@cking). To find they’re not even doing that much is depressing. I am reading academic papers, doing research, watching documentaries, listening to interviews… It’s all there for them. Why aren’t they seizing on it? What has changed in education that they no longer have the urge to learn even when it’s easy?
Stupid is as stupid does (or does not); the answer my be that the younger generation has become more and more stupid.
Ah yes.
But that’s just with Bliar’s genius stroke of increasing university attendance to 50% of yoof.
(In other words ensuring a cohort of students of below 50% IQ, as many kids can’t or don’twant to do that. And the appointment of “University Professors” who would be lucky to have been laboratory assistants back when I was at University.).
Now, we learn that our Uniparty (Labia,branch) chums look to ensure 70% of kiddies go to University. The outcome should be exciting.
Maybe forcibly jabbing children with 72 needles has something to do with it…
What do they eat in Scotland? Fascinating question.
Technology is great and we should ofcourse use it. —–But today Technology is using the people.———– In a very short period of time we have gone from no phones to where I now see young people waiting for the school bus or walking along the road all glued to their phones. I see young mums pushing their buggies with one hand on the phone and paying no attention at all to their baby. —————I think we have to class this now as some kind of phycological disorder.
It is tied up with changes to the family structure and lone parents and grandparents needing to provide 365 day support to their children and grandchildren in order to keep them dependant and home for as long as possible so they will never be lonely.
Jordan Peterson does a good analysis on this subject.
Yes, plus pots of extra benefit money for life, if they can get their sproggies declared “mentally disabled” under one or more of the hundreds of categories.
Going to a hospital appointment the other day I was carrying my current read, D Day, by Antony Beevor. “Good book? What’s it about?” Asks the nurse. “Er, D day”‘ I reply. “What’s that then?” She said.
It’s hopeless, isn’t it?