Image credit: James Madison University
A new website is being created to allow the public to report possible Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon skirting through the skies.
This new site is being established at the James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, permitting citizens to specify the time and location of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) sighting, upload videos, and describe the object. Reports would go into a database to be analyzed further.
The website’s development comes under the university’s Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT) program, an effort to cut across disciplines for a senior capstone project to be undertaken by students.
Image credit: Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
Important topic
“When the Director of National Intelligence makes a formal statement saying that these unknown objects are real, that they have been detected by the most advanced systems in the Department of Defense’s arsenal, and that they do not belong to the United States, you know that this is an important topic and that the stigma surround UFO sightings is changing,” says Chris Bachmann, professor of ISAT.
Tim Walton, associate professor of intelligence analysis at the university, adds that the recent intelligence report, among other things, concluded that some sightings were real, “exhibited technologies different from and superior to publicly acknowledged American technology, could be a potential security threat, and the sightings should be further studied.”
Walton spent 24 years as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Under the direction of Walton and Bachmann, the website is designed for cross-referencing UAP sightings with all known flight path data during the time and location of the sighting to determine if the sighting is a plane or something else.
UAP have been reported by Navy pilots unlike anything they have ever witnessed.
Image credit: Enigma Labs/Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich
Civilian involvement
Walton believes civilian involvement in this project is vital to its success. “The exact numbers are unclear, but sightings by civilians are likely to be more numerous and certainly of wider scope (over land and water) than those by the Navy, he explains. “Moreover, the data collected can be dealt with without revealing any defense secrets,” according to a university statement.
“For years, the gun cameras of Navy fighter pilots flying off of aircraft carriers have picked up strange objects behaving in very unusual ways – rapidly accelerating and decelerating, appearing and disappearing, and making abrupt 90-degree turns,” Walton adds. “I served in the Navy between my undergraduate and graduate studies and later worked at the Central Intelligence Agency for 24 years, so this sort of thing catches my attention.”
Shown at Congressional hearing, Video 1 2021 flyby movie showing a purported UAP.
Credit: Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Conventional/unconventional
According to the university statement, Bachmann notes that many of the civilian sightings are actually conventional aircraft. For example, atmospheric conditions can cause unusual contrails that catch the viewer’s attention; or the sun’s angle reflecting off a plane executing a turn causes a bright light that disappears without a trace.
“But some of the civilian sightings can’t be explained as conventional aircraft – and knowing which ones remain unexplained will greatly help experts focus on which sightings merit further investigation,” Bachmann says.
