Under increasing congressional pressure, the
United States government has recently passed the Schumer amendment, mandating that
by no later than February 23rd, 2024, the National Archives and Records
Administration must establish a UAP records collection to gather all government,
government-provided, or government-funded records relating to unidentified anomalous
phenomena, technologies of unknown origin, and non-human intelligence. The legislature also
allows for the creation of a second, non-public repository of UAP records whose release could be
deemed harmful to national security, and requires that Congress be notified of any decision to
postpone public disclosure of a document. These 'classified' documents will then be periodically
reviewed, though the government has a grace period of 25 years from the date of incident
before a review for disclosure is mandated. This move comes as a small victory for UAP
advocates, who include amongst their ranks a growing list of very high-ranking government
and military officials, as well as prestigious academics. The conclusion that an unknown
phenomenon is regularly appearing in skies all over the earth, and that it often poses a flight
hazard to aircraft, can no longer be ignored. But over 20 years ago, a French defense think tank had
already arrived at that conclusion- and as their report makes clear, the extraterrestrial
hypothesis can no longer be ignored. The COMETA report as it's known, was an
investigation that drew on government funding and was launched by the Institute of Advanced
Studies for National Defense, an organization that regularly advises government officials on
defense policy. The participants in the study were all high-ranking military officials or respected
academics, and included General Bernard Norlain, former director of the Institute, Andre Lebeau,
former president of the National Center for Space Studies, and French Air Force General Denis Letty.
Amongst other contributors was an all-star lineup of military and police officers, engineers,
and specialists in life and social sciences. The report was prompted by an outpouring of
UFO encounters by French military personnel, including pilots, as well as civilians.
There were significant concerns over both military and civilian flight safety, and no
formal investigation into the phenomenon had occurred for 20 years, prompting the creation
of a new committee seeking to raise awareness within the government of a pressing
national defense and public safety issue. One of the cases investigated and classified
amongst the 5% where no reasonable explanation could be found, included an encounter with a UFO
by a French fighter pilot on March 7th, 1977. At about 9pm, French military pilot Herve Giraud
along with his navigator were returning back to base on autopilot at about Mach 0.9. Suddenly,
both men spotted a bright glow coming from their three o'clock, matching their altitude and moving
extremely quickly Both men spotted a bright glow coming from their three o'clock, matching
their altitude and moving extremely quickly and directly towards them- the men feared that
they were on a collision course with the object. Giraud radioed the Contrexeville
military radar station and asked if they had any traffic near them. The
two men believed that the object was another military aircraft on an intercept
course in order to visually identify them. Ground radar said they had no track and requested
that the men check their oxygen. This is an emergency procedure, and indicative that the radar
controller thought the request was so abnormal that he feared the crew were experiencing
hallucinations due to a lack of oxygen. The object may not have been showing up on radar,
but it was very real, and the Mirage went into a bank trying to turn its nose towards the object.
In a move eerily similar to what American fighter pilots would report 30 years later just off the
coast of San Diego in the infamous tic-tac case, the object responded to their aggressive 3 to
4 G turn by maneuvering towards the plane's rear. With the object behind them and about 1500
meters away, Giraud suddenly banked left to try to reestablish visual contact. The glowing object
moved to his 11 o'clock and rapidly sped away. Bewildered by the encounter, the two men
resumed course for their home airfield, but they were both unsettled by the incident.
Remarking later that they felt like they were quote- being watched- and Giraud noted to his
navigator that quote- it's going to come back. As if on cue, a similar glowing object
appeared at the plane's 3 o'clock again. Either the object had somehow turned
invisible and rapidly maneuvered across the aircraft without the men realizing it, or
a second object was now making itself known. Alarmed, Giraud now felt that his aircraft was
in danger from the rapidly accelerating object, and he initiated an emergency 6.5 G bank to
disengage. The object followed the extreme maneuver easily, settling once more on his
tail at a distance of about 2,000 meters. Feeling like the best course of action
was to try to turn nose to the object, where if need be it could be engaged, Giraud
once more banked sharply into the object, only for it to suddenly dart off in the same
direction as the first object and disappear. The plane would go on to land safely, and an
investigation into the incident concluded that the object- or objects if more than one- must have
achieved supersonic speeds in order to maneuver upon the Mirage or disappear as quickly as they
did. Yet despite being nighttime in a quiet part of the country, no sonic booms were reported by
anyone in the vicinity that evening. Ultimately, the source of the objects would remain unknown,
and they themselves unidentified. However, it's curious that just a year earlier, an
Iranian pilot had experienced an extremely similar encounter that had almost ended poorly for
him, with a similar glowing object also performing aggressive maneuvers against him. The pilot even
felt threatened enough to arm a sidewinder missile and fire in self-defense- yet the moment the
missile was armed his instrument panel died. Another prominent case investigated in the
COMETA report took place in the same year as the Iran case. This case involved French Air
Force Colonel Claude Bose when he was a student pilot. On March 3rd, 1976, he was on a solo
training flight in a T-33 aircraft that had him navigate a specific itinerary. Other training
aircraft were following along in five-minute intervals behind him, and the night was dark
but cloudless affording excellent visibility. At an altitude of 6,000 feet, Bose spotted
what he initially believed to be a green flare being launched from the ground. The
light was nearly at the limit of his vision, but he was rapidly approaching it at over 400
kilometers an hour. What immediately alerted him to the anomalous nature of this object though
was the rapid acceleration of the suspected flare, with the object shooting past his elevation
within one to two seconds. Suddenly, what he'd thought was a flare stopped
its forward momentum and leveled off approximately 1500 meters above him, and
then rapidly dove down towards his aircraft. The object sped towards him
at an incomprehensible speed, coming close enough to fill up the entire front
windshield. Believing that impact was imminent, Bose- in a panic- let go of the joystick and
threw his hands up in a reflexive gesture. The object however diverted at the last
second and sped over his right wing, grazing it slightly as it passed and bathing
the entire aircraft in green light. Once back on the ground, Bose reported that the
object was about a meter to two in size, with a greenish tail similar to a comet-
though the center of the object had a very bright white light. While local radar had
not picked anything up, two other pilots in the same training flight reported seeing the
green object as well, corroborating his story. This near collision is a perfect mirror of similar
encounters reported by American pilots. In 2014, Navy F18 fighter pilot Ryan Graves encountered
a UFO alongside his flight commander. The object made an aggressive maneuver towards
them, passing by at extremely close range. The object was described as a dark
gray or black cube inside a sphere, and got within 50 feet of the lead aircraft.
The incident was so disturbing, that the flight commander called off the training mission,
and prompted the filing of a safety report. This was not a one-off event though.
Sightings of these objects became so common that they began to be worked
into mission briefings. The objects were observed remaining perfectly
still in very high-speed winds, then suddenly accelerating to supersonic
speeds and performing extreme maneuvers. On January 28th, 1994, a flight safety incident
involving a UAP ended up drawing the attention of the COMETA committee. On this day, an Air France
flight was cruising at 39,000 feet at 1:14 pm, on its way to London. The skies outside
were largely clear, and the chief steward, who was in the cockpit at the time, spotted
what he believed to be a weather balloon. Both the co-pilot and pilot also saw the object,
and believed it was an unknown aircraft- though none of the three men could identify it. The
object appeared to be banking at a 45-degree angle at an estimated altitude of 34,000 feet
and approximately 50 kilometers- 31 miles- away. The men all recognized that the object must be
very large for it to be this clearly visible, which is what prompted the steward to believe
it was a weather balloon at first. However, as the men watched the object changed shape
from a large, brown bell, to a chestnut brown lens- and then disappearing completely, this
explanation was quickly thrown out of the window. A later investigation revealed that the
Cinq-Mars-la-Pile control center had a radar track on an unknown object that corresponded
with the location and time as reported by the flight crew. The radar track was recorded for 50
seconds and was proven to cross the trajectory of the airliner, and did not correspond with any
filed flight plan. The object also seemed to disappear from view of radar at approximately the
same time that the crew reported it disappearing. The French report also drew upon well known
international cases, including the aforementioned Tehran UFO incident as well as a 1956 incident
at the joint US and Royal Air Force bases of Lakenheath and Bentwaters. On August 13th,
1956, radar tracked a UFO moving east to west and directly over the base at an estimated speed
of between 2000 to 4000 miles per hour. Though no sonic boom was heard, personnel on the ground
and at the Bentwaters control tower reported seeing a bright light flying at approximately 1200
meters and moving at quote- an incredible speed. Simultaneously, the pilot of a military transport
flying over the base reported that a bright light had passed just below his plane, also at a
quote- incredible speed. Over at Lakenheath, the shift supervisor alerted the radar operators
to the activity being detected at Bentwaters. Suddenly, an object was spotted
approximately 40 miles away, hovering stationary and at nearly the same
axis as the object that had just been spotted over Bentwaters. Lakenheath approach radar
confirmed the sighting with its own track, when suddenly the object went from hovering to
supersonic speed, making multiple and sudden course corrections that brought it to an abrupt
stop for three to six minutes at a time. The object was tracked going from a speed of zero to
an estimated 590 miles an hour instantaneously. Half an hour later, a Venom two-seat fighter
plane was dispatched to investigate the object. Acquiring the target visually and with radar,
the pilot reported it suddenly disappearing on him. However, Lakenheath air traffic radar
control center tracked the object moving 16km east of the base, and put the pilot on a new
vector. Approaching it again, the pilot got close enough to radio that his quote- machine guns
are locked onto him. However, the object sped away once more. Tracked by radar, the object had
suddenly positioned itself behind the fighter jet, and seemed to be following it at a very
close distance. The pilot would confirm this as he made visual contact with the UFO now in
pursuit. Despite every attempt to shake the UFO, including aggressive steep dives, climbs,
and high-G turns, the UFO stayed at a steady, constant distance from the aircraft for ten
minutes. Low on fuel, the fighter was forced to return to base, and the object followed him for
a while before coming to a standstill in mid-air. The object now seemed to make several short
moves on radar before finally speeding away in a northerly direction. A radar expert
on the Condon Commission who reviewed the case would go on to say quote- If one
considers the strong credibility of the information and the coherence and continuity
of the reports, as well as their high degree of "strangeness, " this UFO case is certainly
one of the more troubling cases known to date. Interestingly, nearly thirty years later a similar
incident would occur at the former RAF station in Woodbridge. Known as the Rendlesham Forest
incident, it would also involve the detection of stranger UAP activity culminating in an
American Air Force police team investigating what they believed to be a downed aircraft.
However, according to members of the search team, led by the base deputy commander, Lieutenant
Colonel Charles Halt, they encountered a glowing, metallic craft of unknown origin. Halt
would famously record the incident live on his micro-cassete recorder, becoming one
of the most bombastic UFO events in history. Similar incidents that occurred in
Cold War Russia were investigated, drawing curious parallels to what was being
reported in the West. On March 21st, 1990, as reported by Aviation General and Air
Defense Forces commander Igor Maltsev, combat aircraft were dispatched to intercept
an unknown radar contact. The Soviet Union took UFO detections extremely seriously,
given that they were the victims of US spy plane overflights during a significant portion
of the Cold War. Upon approaching, the combat jets discovered a disk 100 to 200 meters in
diameter, with two flashing lights on its sides. The object suddenly performed an S-shape maneuver
and came to a hover over the ground. Moments later, it sped off at two to three times the
maximum speed of the pursuing aircraft. General Maltsev would summarize over one hundred UFO
sightings collected by unit commanders thusly: The movement of the UFOs was not accompanied by
any type of noise and was characterized by an astounding maneuverability. The UFOs appeared
to completely lack inertia. In other words, in one fashion or another, they
had overcome gravity. At present, terrestrial machines can scarcely
exhibit such characteristics. All the way across the world though, prominent
UFO events were being reported as far away as South America. On July 31st, 1995, a
Boeing 727 en route from Buenos Aires to San Carlos de Bariloche was preparing
to land. Suddenly, a power outage plunged the entire town into darkness, and the
control tower- working on emergency power- instructed the aircraft to standby for a
few minutes before making his approach. Finally cleared for landing, the pilot reported
seeing what he thought was a strange star in the sky. Banking away and into a descending
turn, the crew was startled upon completing their turn to discover an object described as
a large unknown aircraft flying parallel on their right-hand side. The object matched
speed and was described as having three lights in the middle of it. As they continued
their flight together, the airport suddenly experienced another power failure, causing
the approach ramp and runway lights to go out. The pilots were forced to abort their landing
and pull back up into the sky, turning once more to reposition themselves for another
approach. The object, now glowing brightly, moved behind the aircraft, and as described by
a second aircraft in a holding pattern overhead, suddenly came to a stop and ascended before
stopping once more. It moved back in the direction of the landing aircraft and followed it from
behind before speeding off towards the mountains. The entire ordeal lasted several minutes and
was observed by the pilots, passengers on the airplane, inhabitants of the city below, and the
air traffic controllers, as well as the aircraft lingering in a holding pattern overhead.
No official explanation was ever given. The COMETA committee however discovered that prominent UFO events were also
being reported by ground personnel. On August 16th, 1954, a mass sighting
of a UFO occurred in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and was reported
on by a former artillery officer and chief of technical services for Air France. At 5 pm,
Air France personnel spotted a large green ball in the sky moving at a very fast rate.
Believing the green ball to be a meteor, the witnesses waited for the imminent explosion
as the object disappeared behind a nearby hill. However, a minute later it reappeared
and flew directly over the witnesses. The object passed by close enough to be identified
as a quote- sort of a metal rugby ball preceded by a clearly detached green lens-shaped portion
that shot sparks from its rear. The 'ball' appeared to be about forty meters long, and
the green lens-shaped portion of the object then separated itself and moved just under 40
meters in front of the object, trailing long greenish sparks from its rear. Passing overhead
by an estimated 50 to 100 meters- an estimation made possible by the known height of a nearby
hill- the object seemed to cause a power outage in buildings as it passed above them, and sent
nearby animals into an extreme state of anxiety. The craft departed towards the west, and
two or three minutes later an identical craft was observed above a farm school.
Animal herds there also went into a panic, despite being used to the presence of large
Air France planes in the sky above. Given that the farm school was 93 miles away, assuming the
second object was the same as the first object, then it would have to have moved at
hypersonic speeds to get there. The object was witnessed by hundreds of people
on the ground split up between the two sites. On December 9th, 1979, a UFO was spotted very
close to the ground by a Mirage fighter pilot. Air Force Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Pierre Fartek
was living near the town of Dijon, and at 9:15 AM he and his wife witnessed an unusual object in the
field right outside their house. Fartek estimated the object to be about 20 meters in diameter
and 7 meters thick, hovering approximately 3 meters above the ground and in front of a grove
of trees known to stand about 15 meters tall. The object was described by Fartek
and his wife as being the shape of two saucers inverted on top of each other,
and did not appear to have any portholes or lights. The upper portion was a metallic gray
and the lower portion a darker bluish color, with a perfectly delineated separation
between the two halves. The object appeared to be in constant motion, almost as if
trying to remain balanced and upright, and did not make any noise nor cause any
turbulence on the grass on the ground. Fartek and his wife observed the object for
an unknown amount of time, when suddenly it began to oscillate faster, with it appearing
to tilt slightly forward in the same manner as a helicopter as it takes flight. Suddenly, the
object moved away at a low altitude and extreme speed, making no noise and leaving no presence
of its passing behind. On later investigation, Fartek's neighbors and their children
all confirmed witnessing the same object. Back to Russia, a compelling case
involving Russian ground troops drew the attention of the COMETA committee.
This incident occurred late in July 1989, and was originally recorded by the KGB and
later declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union. The account was recorded by a KGB
agent and includes seven written testimonies from witnesses who observed the event from
two different sites at the same base. Sadly, if there was any radar data gathered,
it was not included in the report. On the night of July 28th to 29th, multiple
UFOs were spotted by soldiers at a distance of between 3 to 5 kilometers, between
the hours of 10:15 PM and 11:55 pm. Three objects in total were observed, with one
moving silently and in very jerky movements, abruptly starting and stopping to hover. At
some point, the UFOs must have been detected by radar- though such data is missing from the
KGB file or was not declassified along with the parent report- as an interceptor sped out of
the night sky towards one of the objects. The UFO was observed to move at what was described
as such incredible velocities that it made the intercepting fighter jet appear to be standing
still by comparison. Despite breaking the sound barrier, the only sound the soldiers heard was
the roaring of the intercepting jet's engines. Later that night, two other soldiers testified
to witnessing another UFO between 11:30 PM to 1:30 AM in the morning. The UFO was described
as a metallic disk approximately 4 to 5 meters in diameter and surrounded by a brightly
lit hemispherical dome of some sort. The witnesses observed the silent craft move
over a missile depot, where it shot down a phosphorescent green light while approximately
300 meters away from them and 20 meters above the depot. The beam of light seemed to move
across the storage structure as if scanning it, and a security response team was dispatched but
did not approach the silent object. Instead, the security team along with the original two
witnesses observed the craft as it hovered over the facility for approximately
two hours, never once making a noise. This account was especially compelling given the
similarity between this account and reports of UFOs over American nuclear weapon sites. Famously,
UFOs were spotted hovering over active Minuteman nuclear missile silos throughout the Cold War,
and occasionally bathing the silo below them with a similar beam of light as if scanning the
contents of the silo. An outside observer may be tempted to claim the Russians may have
simply been a victim of copycat hoaxing, but the extreme secrecy of the Cold War and
lack of communication between the East and the West would make it almost impossible for
average Russian soldiers to have ever heard of UFO incidents over American facilities-
which begs the question: how and why do Cold War Soviet UFO encounters so perfectly mirror
those that occurred on American military sites? Sometimes though, the committee investigated
cases of actual alien beings. One such case occurred at Valensole on July 1st, 1965. A local
villager, Maurice Masse, left his home at 5 am to go work on his lavender fields just outside
of the village. As he was about to start his tractor at approximately 6 am though, he heard a
hissing sound that drew his attention. The sound came from behind a small hill at the edge of one
of his fields, and he moved to investigate. Upon clearing the hill, he was surprised to discover
a small craft about 90 meters away from him in his lavender field, which he described as
a pill-shaped vehicle similar to a Renault Dauphine. The vehicle stood on six legs and had
a central pivot point that they attached to, with a large tube protruding from under
the belly of the craft and into the ground. Masse had no inclination that the strange
craft was alien, and instead thought that it was a weird vehicle being used by
thieves who were after his lavender. He approached the craft stealthily, and
when he got to within 10 meters of it, he spotted two small beings on the other
side of it described as having large, pudgy heads and white skin. One of the beings
aimed a tube device at him, and he was immediately paralyzed to the spot, unable to move as
the beings entered the craft and flew away. A subsequent police investigation discovered
the site where the craft had allegedly landed, complete with indentations in the soil and
puncture marks from the tube described by the farmer. It seems a slam-dunk
case- except for a few problems. First, Masse had not reported being paralyzed
to the police in his initial report. Instead, he stated that he had seen one of the alien
beings inside the craft through a clear dome-like covering, similar to that used by the famous
Jettsons. That being spoke to the one outside the craft in a “guttural” language which prompted
it to run inside, and the craft took off. A month later, he reapproached the police to change his
story and included the part about being paralyzed. This is problematic, and has cast significant
doubt on Masse's story. If this was a hoax, it's unclear why Masse would return
a month later to contradict himself and add more details- but the fact that
the type of craft described by Masse is rarely ever described anywhere
else also adds doubt to his story. A far more credible case however occurred
just two years later. On August 29th, 1967, at about 10:30 am, two children were watching
their family's herd as it grazed. The young teenagers were alerted by their dog that one of
the cows was about to jump over the stone wall that lined the perimeter of the family's
field. Running off to chase the cow away, the boy was surprised to spot four other
children on the opposite of the road the field ran alongside. He called his sister
over, and the two moved for a closer look, as they knew all the children in the village and
were curious why any of them would be out here. No sooner had he called for his
sister though that he noticed an extremely bright sphere back and away from
the unknown children. Approaching closer, the two realized that the figures were not
children at all, but rather small beings standing no taller than 1.2 meters. Two of the
figures were standing close to one of the figures, while a third was kneeling in front of it,
its attention occupied by something on the ground. A fourth noticed the children and turned a
mirror-like device towards them that blinded them. They called out to the beings, but they quickly
ran back towards the sphere, levitating up to the top of it and diving inside of it head first.
The children were not at an angle to tell if the sphere had an opening at the top or if they moved
through the sphere itself as they entered. The bright sphere gave off a loud hissing sound and
then rose up into the sky in a spiral pattern at a very fast speed. A strong odor of sulfur filled
the field in the wake of the craft's departure. The family contacted the French Gendarme, with
one arriving promptly and investigating the site where the alleged sphere had sat. There
he found many small prints and testified to the very strong odor of sulfur. The
children's father, mayor of the town, also testified to the children smelling of
sulfur when they had ran back home. As the investigation widened, another witness who had
been at a nearby granary stated that he had also heard the strange hissing sound, dispelling
any notion of a helicopter being involved. According to the family doctor, the
children's eyes were affected by the blinding device used on them, which
caused their eyes to water for several days. Allegedly, the children also suffered
psychological distress after the incident. The French report goes on to detail many
other UFO reports investigated by their team, local law enforcement, or the military. While some
criticism has been levied against the report due to methodology in specific cases, the inescapable
conclusion is that the same phenomenon reported globally was being reported by French witnesses
as far back as the 1950s. It's these similarities between global reports that indicate the presence
of a global phenomenon of unknown origin, and the skeptical assumption against it relies
wholly on ignoring physical and radar data, and claiming that every single witness
throughout history has been lying or a fool. Hardly a credible explanation. Now go check out UFO Chased a Military
Plane, or click this other video instead!
