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The Chance Vought V-173 “Flying Pancake” is a one-of-kind aircraft that dates back to WWII. Designer Charles H. Zimmerman theorized that aircraft could fly at very slow speeds with an extremely low-aspect ratio wing design. Zimmerman minimized drag by placing large-diameter propellers at the end of the circular airfoil wingtips, maintaining a uniform flow of air over the flat pancake's single wing. Proof-of-Concept Even though the proof-of-concept Chance Vought V-173 "Flying Pancake" exhibited unusual flight characteristics, the V-173 could almost hover, survived forced landings including a nose-over, and could be piloted effectively. Did you know? Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, piloted the V-173 "Flying Pancake" on several occasions and found it very responsive. The V-173 "Flying Pancake" is believed to be responsible for several UFO sightings by the general public in the early 1940s. About our Aircraft Proudly restored by the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation, the "Flying Pancake" arrived at the Museum in 2012. The extensive restoration took over eight years to complete with more than 25,000 volunteer labour hours. This unique aircraft is on long-term loan from the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum.

Ex-mission specialist Bob Oechsler, who worked for the US space programme in the 1970s, used his expertise in robotics to study the UFO phenomena and made some startling discoveries. Oechsler, 71, died on June 6 after a two and a half year battle against lung cancer. According to an online obituary, he "passed away peacefully surrounded by family" in Edgewater, Maryland. He leaves behind wife Kristen and children Dan, Tracey and Skylar, along with two grandsons and siblings. Colin Andrews, a well-known British crop circle investigator, told The Sun: "My sincere condolences to the family and friends of well known UFO researcher Bob Oechsler. "I presented with him on several occasions in a number of countries. Bob's research was greatly respected." Bob worked on the docking collar of the Apollo-Soyuz project, the first international space mission between Russian and the US, plus several other deep space projects. But his work in the field of UFOlogy in the 1980s and 1990s shot him to worldwide fame as he investigated a series of high-profile cases. Bob was allegedly invited to be a consultant for the Nasa-backed 'Cosmic Journey Project', a travelling exhibition featuring a full scale mock-up of a space shuttle and space camp. One third of the exhibition was to feature UFOs and extraterrestrials, including a 600-seat auditorium that became a Bio-Tech spaceship and a UFO pre-show area with interactive kiosks. Bob claimed he had meetings with top brass from the Pentagon who backed the project. Recalling an alleged discussion he had with a general in Washington, Bob claimed their talk involved an "exhibit showing an alien/ET corpse in a cryogenic tank". "The general described the tank as a space-age looking coffin with blue tube lighting inside the clear lexan cover, propped up at an angle so it wouldn't look so much like a casket," he said. "It seems he was concerned about using the real thing versus a mock-up, and he queried me at length about my thoughts on public perception and whether or not the public would believe such an exhibit was real, or how it could be authenticated with official plaques of some sort." "I suggested that a companion autopsy report with colour photographs might help the credibility aspect. "As a matter of fact, I got the impression they had a lot of bodies to choose from!" Directors denied he ever worked for them as a consultant after the project was scrapped, and claimed it was only ever an exhibition of mock-ups of aliens and flying saucers. Nasa also denied he visited the places he did and was ever shown UFOs. In 1989, Bob managed to speak with Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a former Director of Naval Intelligence and Deputy Director of the CIA, who informed him that the US Government had possession of technology of non-human origin. In a recorded telephone conversation, Bob allegedly asked: "Do you anticipate that any of the recovered vehicles would ever become available for technological research? Outside of the military circles?" Admiral Inman replied: "I honestly don't know. Ten years ago the answer would have been no. Whether as time has evolved they are beginning to become more open about it, there's a possibility." Bob also probed video footage of the Chinese lantern shaped objects filmed by builder Ed Walters over his house. He spent five months analysing the footage using the operational facilities at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and concluded the UFO was not a radio-controlled model. Another famous case he probed was the so-called Guardian footage when a family in Canada watched a UFO land in their field. In an interview with BBC Radio 1 in 2007, he described one UFO he'd been shown, explaining: "It was about a 30 foot diameter disk shaped craft. "It had a small dome around the centre portion. There were protruding flanges equidistant around the outer edge." The project was later shelved in the early 1990s for budget reasons along with other Nasa projects including SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Due to COVID-19, Maryland is under restrictions, and a funeral service will be held for Bob at a later date. His death follows the passing of other world famous UFO researchers such as Stanton Friedman, Bob Dean and Dr Karl Wolfe.

Leaked footage has been posted on social media featuring United States Navy warships “swarmed” by unidentified flying objects (UFOs). In the video, shared by investigative filmmaker Jeremy Corbell on Instagram, he claims that the footage was filmed in the Combat Information Center of the ship on July 15, 2019. Earlier this month, he also uncovered another video that US Naval personnel having a close encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO) which appeared to be spherical and making a controlled descent into the ocean. The latest unclassified clip shows sailors aboard the Omaha witnessing at least nine UFOs swarming the ship at speeds approaching 160mph. "Holy s*** they’re going fast," a sailor is heard saying, before adding, "Oh, it’s turning around." As per Fox News report, the Pentagon had previously confirmed that an 18-second video that Corbell had leaked of three UFOs hovering above the USS Russel in July 2019 is authentic. While sharing the latest video, Corbell wrote in the caption, “This is corroborative sensor data demonstrating a significant UFO event series - where unknowns were swarming US Navy warships. This type of cross-platform information verification is both unique and rare in the pursuit of the UFO mystery.”

Jaime Maussán is an acclaimed and established investigative journalist that has been researching the paranormal and extraterrestrial phenomenon of our world for over 50 years. He is based in Mexico but travels all over the world to interview famed UFO hunters, our extraterrestrial origins, and cases of contactees. Jaime is the host of the popular show Tercer Milenio in Mexico, one of the most popular programs in Mexican television.

Dr. James McDonald (1920–1971), was Senior Physicist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and also Professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Arizona, and was thus perfectly qualified to lead a scientific study of the UFO phenomenon. In the 1950s McDonald had his own UFO sighting, and this experience led him to begin a private, quiet investigation of UFOs which would last for many years. In the early-to-mid 1960s McDonald went to the staff of Project Blue Book, the Air Force's official study of UFO sightings, and began to look at the UFO cases in their files. And what he found appalled him: not only was Blue Book's staff scientifically unqualified to investigate UFOs, but the Air Force's hard-line "Anti-UFO" policies had caused Blue Book's staff to simply invent many of their "explanations" for UFO incidents out of thin air, without even a brief investigation or interviews with the eyewitnesses. By the late 1960s, McDonald had investigated hundreds of UFO cases – including many from the 1940s and 1950s which the Air Force had claimed to have "solved" – and offered convincing evidence that the cases were still "unsolved". He also used his scientific expertise to critique the beliefs of UFO "debunkers", such as Dr. Donald Menzel, a Harvard University astronomer and fierce UFO critic. Unlike McDonald, Menzel refused to interview UFO witnesses (since in his view UFOs couldn't possibly exist, any UFO witness was obviously mistaken in their observation and therefore interviewing them was a "waste of time"). Menzel's "armchair investigations" of UFO cases were often revealed by McDonald to be unscientific and illogical. Menzel, who was never able to specifically rebut McDonald's scientific and forceful criticisms of his UFO "explanations", resorted to personal attacks on McDonald, calling him a "pseudoscientist" and a "crank". This would become a pattern with McDonald's critics: they would often ignore McDonald's thoroughly-investigated, detailed studies of UFO cases, and would instead concentrate upon attacking him personally. By 1966 McDonald was convinced that the UFO mystery was real and that it posed a major "challenge to science", and so he devoted himself full-time to investigating the phenomenon and to convincing the mainstream scientific community of his beliefs. He quickly emerged as a leading spokesman for "UFOlogy" – the scientific study of the UFO phenomenon. In effect, McDonald mounted a one-man crusade to convince his fellow scientists, and the general public, that UFOs were "serious business" and a subject worthy of scientific study. It was an unfair battle, for while McDonald limited himself to critiquing Klass's theories and "explanations" for UFO cases, Klass ignored McDonald's scientific arguments and concentrated on personal smears and innuendo. By 1970 McDonald's life was falling apart, partly from his blackballing by other scientists, partly from the vicious personal attacks by Klass, and partly from the fact that his crusade had left little time for his family, and his wife wanted a divorce. In 1971 came the final blow. McDonald was called to testify before a congressional committee on the new supersonic transport (SST), a plane which McDonald had studied and was convinced would harm the atmosphere. Although the subject had nothing to do with UFOs, and McDonald was not speaking on that topic, a New England Congressman who wanted the SST to be built (because it would bring jobs to the voters in his district) tried to discredit McDonald's criticisms of the SST by turning the hearing to a "discussion" of McDonald's belief in "little green men". This tactic caught McDonald completely by surprise, and although he tried to defend his UFO studies and pointed out that UFOs and the SST had nothing to do with each other, the Congressman repeatedly ridiculed McDonald and implied that anyone who believed in UFOs couldn't be trusted about their SST testimony. By the end of the hearing open laughter and ridicule of McDonald could be heard in the congressional chamber. In fact, McDonald's criticisms of the SST were supported by many other scientists and the project was eventually dropped. However, McDonald was personally devastated and humiliated by this unfair attack, and later in 1971 he walked into the Arizona desert and shot himself in the head; but he didn't die. Although wheelchair-ridden, somehow, several months after his first attempt, he allegedly got in an automobile, drove to a pawnshop, purchased another pistol from his wheelchair, drove to the desert and shot himself again. His death was devastating to UFOlogy, as it had lost one of its greatest leaders and spokesmen. Many of his investigations and writings (especially his brilliant paper Science in Default) remain the best of their kind in the study of UFOs, and have never been adequately rebutted by his critics.

The man who launched the entire phone hacking scandal had become a paranoid recluse who believed someone was out to get him, a friend has revealed. Sean Hoare, who was found dead at his flat in Watford, Hertfordshire, had spent much of the last weeks of his life 'hiding' in his flat with the curtains drawn. A post mortem examination revealed that there was no third party involvement in the death. Officers are not treating the death as suspicious although it will be several weeks before they have full toxicology results. A friend and neighbour claimed Mr Hoare, 47, had become increasingly reclusive and paranoid in recent weeks. ‘He would talk about someone from the Government coming to get him,' he said. 'He’d say to me, “If anyone comes by, don’t say I’m in”. 'He was physically going downhill. He was yellow in colour and wasn’t looking well for the last month. ‘He had a constant struggle with alcohol and talked to me about how much he had put his wife through. ‘He did say something about phone hacking and I think that was his main worry. He had definite concerns with the media. He did mention he was paranoid and would mention conspiracy stuff.’ Former News of the World journalist Mr Hoare had accused former Tory media chief Andy Coulson of lying about his role in the affair. He said that when editor of the paper, Mr Coulson actively encouraged his staff to intercept the calls of celebrities. It was his explosive claims last autumn that reignited the scandal and ultimately led to the tumultuous events of the past fortnight which have shaken the political, police and media establishments. Police were investigating the possibility that he had killed himself, saying his death was ‘not thought to be suspicious’. His death came after: The Metropolitan Police was left in turmoil as counter-terrorism officer John Yates was forced to follow Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and resign; Mr Yates faced investigation over claims that he secured a Scotland Yard job for the daughter of hacking suspect Neil Wallis; David Cameron cut short a trip to Africa and said he will fly back to Britain today after agreeing to delay Parliament’s summer break to discuss the affair; London Mayor Boris Johnson infuriated Number Ten by refusing to say whether the PM should quit over his hiring of Mr Coulson; Police recovered a bag containing a computer, phone and paperwork found in a bin near Rebekah Brooks’s London home. Last week, Mr Hoare was back in the spotlight with further claims, telling the New York Times that reporters at the News of the World were able to use police technology to locate people using their mobile phone signals in exchange for payments to police officers. Mr Coulson, who quit Downing Street in January and was arrested over hacking earlier this month, has strenuously denied Mr Hoare’s allegations. He issued a statement last year that he had ‘never condoned the use of phone hacking and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where phone hacking took place’. But Mr Hoare told Radio 4’s PM programme that phone hacking was ‘endemic’ at the newspaper and said of his former boss: ‘He was well aware that the practice exists. To deny it is a lie, simply a lie.’ Police could not rule out suicide but friends suggested natural causes was also a possibility as he had been suffering from ill health. A Hertfordshire Police spokeswoman added: 'The man's next of kin have been informed and the family are being supported by police at this sad time.' Officers have yet to confirm arrangements for an inquest to be opened. His solicitor David Sonn said: ‘I last spoke to him a week ago and he seemed fine. I am shocked and saddened. It is a terrible tragedy.’ He added: ‘In giving his statement to the New York Times, he was arguably the catalyst for everything that has happened since.’ When Mr Coulson was made editor of the News of the World in 2003, he recruited Mr Hoare as a showbusiness reporter. They had previously both worked on The Sun’s showbusiness column Bizarre. One former colleague said: ‘At The Sun, they were absolutely the best of buddies. They used to go out to Covent Garden and socialise all night together. Andy would cover for Sean, or vice versa, if one of them was too hung over for work. ‘I last saw Sean at a do not all that long after he left the News of the World. He was looking very scrubbed and sober and I asked what he planned to do, and he said he wanted to get back into journalism but added, “Journalism has turned its back on me”.’ Mr Hoare was sacked from the News of the World over drink and drug problems in 2005, and last year sources at the paper said that his claims should be treated with ‘extreme scepticism’. But a friend who saw him more recently described him as ‘sober’ and wanting to rebuild his career. The Great Sean Hoare, (1963 – c. 17 July 2011) Legends Never Die,

Andy Danzinger his involvement in the historic electioneering is not his most memorable recollection. For Mr Danzinger it was an "incredible UFO sighting" he had in 1989 - nearly 20 years before he met the US president. In an interview with Clayton Morris on Fox News' Fox and Friends show Mr Danzinger told the host: “I was just a first officer in a commuter airliner turboprop. "I was flying from Kansas City International Airport bound for Waterloo, Iowa. There were crystal-clear skies in Kansas City. Crystal clear skies in Waterloo.” He said "soon after takeoff" he and the captain spotted a “massive disk” in the sky. He said: "It was dimly visible through the clouds, and the object appeared to be pacing the aircraft. We knew the object was not the moon, as we could see the moon on the opposite side of the cockpit. "Soon after, the object turned into a giant red ball." The presenter asked Morris asked if any passengers witnessed the UFO, to which Mr Danzinger replied: "The captain did, but I don’t know about any of the passengers.” Morris said he had previously been told by a number of other pilots that they have also seen UFOs but generally keep it quiet. Mr Danzinger explained that "most" pilots have seen at least one UFO but most of those don't widely discuss it for fear of it affecting their job or ridicule. Danzinger said there was no formal policy to not speak about UFO sightings at his airline or any one he had ever worked for, but that there was an “unwritten” rule of sorts. He said: “We were young. We were new in our careers, and the way people tend to be ridiculed about all of this, you just kind of kept quiet. You don’t want to be brandished as being crazy. That was one of our concerns before we actually reported it to air traffic control. We discussed it amongst each other. Is this something that is going to jeopardise our career?’ The government seems to discount every single report that ever seems to come out. The news media, at least in the past, tends to ridicule every UFO report, so, you know, that was all going on really big back in the 1980s.” The pilot said other airmen had said that since he "came out" as a UFO witness, that they are hopeful of some legitimacy being given to the subject. He said: "Virtually all pilots believe in UFOs. Pilots have said to me: "Wow, maybe this is finally going to get the stuff out. I have seen stuff. It is about time someone actually came forward, and you are actually getting some press, and maybe people will start believing this a little bit more. “with billions of stars and trillions of planets out there, ‘ya gotta believe,’ and almost all of us [pilots] do.”

Russia's UFO's, 1995- SKY TV Special Report. The Russian Military tells all about their UFO encounters during the Cold War and includes never-seen-before footage. This includes reports that a UFO hovered over a nuclear missile silo and took control of the nuclear warheads for 15 seconds. Broadcast by SKY TV on 16th January 1995.

Graham Bethune is a retired commander and pilot for the United States Navy. He has provided testimony about his encounter with a 300-ft UFO in 1951. The UFO was emitting a “monstrous circle of white light on water” that travelled 10,000 feet straight up in a fraction of a second. The story of Cmdr. Graham Bethune is one of the most intriguing UFO encounters in history. It happened in 1951, when he was a young pilot stationed at Keflavik Air Base in Iceland. The base was used by NATO as a staging area for aircraft and crews headed to Europe during the Cold War. Bethune was flying his Navy R5D Transport and was transferred to Air Transport Squadron One in 1950. He was sent to Keflavik, Iceland, with two other officers after a government meeting in Washington, D.C., during which Iceland’s encounters with unidentified flying objects were discussed. At that time, he asked about UFO sightings in more detail and was told about circular objects with lighted undersides that resembled no craft known to have been tested at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland and Virginia where he worked. Bethune asked the men if they were told anything by the U.S. government about the aircraft they had found. “Your government said they were experimental, probably experimental Russian bombers,” one man said. The flight was normally about ten hours—but this particular night, a wind of 16 knots blew against them. At 1:00 a.m., Captain Bethune noticed something in the water below the horizon that looked like a city at night. He watched it for a while, but because he could see no definition, he called flight engineer Kinden’s attention to it. Kinden looked but did not know what it was because there were no ships plotted in that area and the guard ship said that there was no Northern Light activity or bad weather reported in that region. “I saw something below the horizon, on the water, that looked like approaching a city at night. It was just kind of ambient light, with no definition whatsoever. But it looked like we were approaching a large city at night. So I watched it for a while about 1:00 am,” said Graham Bethune. “Finally I called Kindens attention to it, who was sitting in the right seat. He was route checking me. He took a look at it but didn’t know what it was. We couldn’t figure out, there is an ocean out there. We had passed over the guard ship already. The guard ship had told us the weather was clear and no Northern Light activity, and there were no ships plotted in that area,” Graham Bethune continued. In addition to being an experienced pilot, Bethune, as all Navy pilots are trained navigators, knew how to navigate by the stars — making him uniquely qualified to judge what he saw that day. The fact that Bethune was both an experienced pilot and graduated in 1943 from Pensacola Academy Air adds credibility to his story. His account is one of the most detailed and convincing UFO sightings on record. “All Navy pilots are trained navigators, which is very important because we had to know all of the star systems. I navigated maybe 13 years around the planet with the stars. And when I first graduated from Pensacola in 1943 I went to the South Atlantic and we were hunting German submarines. This was all night flying. Everything we did was at night in patrol planes,” said Graham Bethune. The pilots were on course and hundreds of miles from shore, according to control. They stood there for a bit, drifting to the right of it. At 10,000 feet, their heading was 222 degrees, and they were originally 40 miles away. They could see definite lights and a pattern on the lake when they were approximately 25 or 30 miles away. So they couldn’t figure out what was going on with that pattern. The base at Argentia was the target destination, so they sent the crew chief back to get Al Jones, the other plane commander. 31 passengers and two VIP crews were on board, each including a pilot. A VIP crew member made a report at that time that crew members of an aircraft also come forward.

A Pakistani journalist who interviewed Osama bin Laden says the terrorist leader claimed to have his own nuclear and chemical capabilities. After the attacks on 9/11, military experts were speculating on where bin Laden or others might gain access to atomic weapons and much of the speculation focused on so-called suitcase nukes. Investigative reporter George Knapp spoke with some locals who have some hands-on experience with those kinds of weapons. This story originally aired on Nov. 12, 2001 on KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, NV.

Think Angelina Jolie shooting curved trajectory shots with her gun in the movie Wanted. Well, the end result is not exactly fictional anymore (the technique is). I recently stumbled upon the following video demonstrating DARPA’s new self-steering bullet technology and it blew my mind. The video shows new missile-like self-steering projectiles hitting a moving target, only this time these are not missiles but 0.5 calibre sized sniper bullets (0.5 inches internal diameter of the gun’s barrel). As seen in the video, enabled by technology, a novice-sniper seems to be able to make a fairly good shot. On a funnier note, I see it like the autotune technology that helps music artists to fit their out of tune recording to a perfect tune. Jokes aside, watching this smart bullet change its path mid-air, stirred up the curious cat that lives in my head. I would have had a tough time sleeping without knowing how DARPA’s self-steering bullet actually works. So, armed with free journal access (being a Ph.D. student has its perks), I fired up my google scholar and started looking for white papers with some mention of these keywords. With this technology being developed under DARPA, it’s of course one of those hush-hush things and was sure I won’t find much. Still, I was happy to glean a tiny hint of its inner workings. Also, I do not intend to get into trouble by revealing too much information. My intention to get to know the basics of what could make something like this work. The Project Initially this effort to develop smart ammunition that could adapt in-flight to maneuverer the trajectory was born in May 1995 with the name BLAM (Barrel-Launched Adaptive Munitions). It was mostly an effort to increase accuracy and the range of big sized medium-range air to air rounds fired from aircraft guns which had very bad hit rate. The conclusion of BLAM program evolved into a REAM (Range-Extended Adaptive Munition) program from 1997 to 1998. It focussed on developing the same ability for a much smaller sized 0.50 calibre ammo. This concluded with great results and the efforts continued with a $22 million project – EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) in 2007. The end result we see in the video has been a cumulative result of years of science and technology. The specific part of this extended effort which resulted in a technology that could help relatively smaller sniper sized bullets to steer got completed back in Feb 2015. I wonder how the effort must have progressed since then.

The Air Force on Friday unveiled its newest stealth bomber aircraft, the B-21 Raider, in Palmdale, California. Built by Northrop Grumman, the bomber was named in honor of the “courageous spirit” of airmen who carried out the surprise World War II Doolittle Raid. The sixth-generation aircraft is expected to help the Air Force “penetrate the toughest defenses for precision strikes anywhere in the world,” Northrop Grumman’s press release said. Six bombers are currently in “various stages of final assembly” in California, according to the release. The event on Friday was even more significant given that it marked the first time in more than 30 years a new US bomber has been publicly unveiled since the B-2 Spirit was presented in 1988. While the US originally planned to have a fleet of 132 B-2s, just 21 were ultimately purchased. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the newest US stealth bomber in a speech Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. He called the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider a “major advance for American deterrence” and said it would be the backbone of the US bomber fleet in the future. Austin, who attended the unveiling of the B-21 in Palmdale, said Saturday that the years ahead would be a “decisive decade” as the US faces competition from China and the threat of Russia. The release of the new bomber comes amid heightened tensions between the US and both China and Russia. Just days ago, the Pentagon released its annual report on China, which said the country has doubled its number of nuclear warheads in a fraction of the time the US expected it to. By 2035, the report said, China could have roughly 1,500 nuclear warheads – an “accelerated expansion” of its stockpile, a senior defense official told CNN. The next years, Austin said Saturday, “will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherit an open world of rules and rights – or face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear.” The B-21 was designed with that competition in mind. Northrop Grumman’s rundown of the new bomber’s abilities said that while adversaries “continue to invest in and develop advanced weapons,” the B-21 will allow the US to penetrate enemy air defense and hit targets “anywhere in the world.” “America’s defense will always be rooted in deterring conflict. So, we are again making it plain to any potential foe: the risk and the cost of aggression far outweigh any conceivable gains,” Austin said at the Friday unveiling. “This is deterrence the American way.” While Friday marked the “first time the world’s first sixth-generation aircraft (was) seen by the public,” Northrop Grumman said, airmen and aircraft enthusiasts alike will have to wait until next year to actually see one in the air. The first B-21 flight is expected to happen in 2023, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said, though she emphasized that the timing of the first flight “will be data and event, not date, driven.” The Air Force previously said that the new nuclear-capable stealth bomber, which has the ability to carry both nuclear and conventional weapons and which will fall under the Air Force’s Global Strike Command, will be “the backbone of the future Air Force bomber force,” designed in a way that is ripe for future modernization efforts. The service named Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, as the home of the B-21 and home to the aircraft’s training program. Each aircraft was anticipated to cost $550 million when the price was set in 2010; after adjusting for inflation this year, Stefanek said, the cost of each aircraft, including training materials, support equipment and other components of the bomber, is $692 million. The Air Force plans to purchase at least 100 of the stealth bombers. “Even the most sophisticated air defense systems will struggle to detect the B-21 in the sky,” Austin said at the unveiling. The B-21 has been built with long-term sustainability and maintainability in mind, Northrop Grumman said in the release. It has also been designed to be rapidly upgraded when future threats demand it – a process that can often be slowed down by bureaucratic red tape and delayed timelines when it comes to older military aircraft and vehicles. The bomber won’t undergo “block upgrades,” according to Northrop Grumman, which is a method of periodically upgrading parts of a system. Instead, the company said new “technology, capabilities and weapons will be seamlessly incorporated” through software upgrades. “This will ensure the B-21 Raider can continuously meet the evolving threat head on for decades to come,” the company said.

The incident occurred on the frosty winter morning of December 12th, 1978, not far from Skipton in North Yorkshire. At 4:30 a.m., a lonely police patrol car was driving on a remote country road along the Cononley Moor. In the car were Sgt. Anthony Dodd and Constable Alan Dale, who operated the radio. It was very dark and the road was lit only by the headlights of the car, the silence broken only by the noise of the motor and the occasional messages over the radio. Dodd loved that kind of mysterious stillness in the middle of a bare and unspoiled countryside, with dark houses snuggling up against the low hills as if seeking shelter from the cold winds, and the stone walls that divided the meadows from time immemorial. It was the land of sagas and legends, of witches and elves, spirits and wills-o'-the-wisp, which lured unfortunate wanderers in the moor towards inescapable death. There was a magic in the air which, even thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the Celts must have been aware of, as is shown on the mighty sacrificial altar stones in the middle of the moor. Suddenly, a loud static noise, hissing and rustling, tore Sgt. Dodd out of his reverie. They were just then driving into a curve when, to the right, a bright white light seemed to be diving towards them in a glide. They thought it was a burning airplane so they drove to the side and stopped the car to see what was happening and where it would land, in case help was required. It was, however, no airplane but a big shining disc which flew over their heads at a speed of about 40 mph. At its closest, it was hardly 100 feet away from them, so that they could see a number of details. "What on Earth was that?" asked Constable Dale breaking the silence, brought back to reality by the penetrating cold. Sgt. Dodd's answer came minutes after that. "don't know, but it was wonderful." From that day onwards Dodd started collecting all the information about UFOs that he could get, including, of course, the book "Flying Saucers Have Landed" by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski. His personal encounter with a saucer that resembled Adamski's saucer like a twin had convinced Dodd that Adamski must indeed have had an encounter with a UFO. Since retiring in 1988, Dodd dedicated himself fully to his "cosmic hobby" as he calls it, and was one of Britain's leading UFO researchers. Adamski was the first person to have spoken about contact with aliens who resembled human beings. After him many others reported such encounters. With Adamski, the age of the contactees had begun. Tony Dodd passed away peacefully around midnight on March 25th, 2009.

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Date of sighting: July 25, 2020 Location of sighting: Chandler, Arizona, USA The eyewitnesses were out near a field and caught sight of a silver round object gliding over the field. The UFO was not a perfect circle but almost cube like in shape. The speed of the craft was much faster than the wind, so we know it was not a balloon. The object had no wings, propellers or tail, so its not a drone or plane. It flew in a straight line, never deviating form it. Arizona is famous for having UFOs sightings...so much so they have a highway passing through called the Extraterrestrial highway. Thats how frequently they get sightings. They name freeways after them. Because of the perfect hight from the ground it hovers, its unique curved cube shape, its metallic outer shell and its location...this is 100% alien in origin.

Mystery Wire is dedicated to reports on Area 51, UFOs, military technology, paranormal, mysteries and just great news stories. The site is your portal to the world’s largest archive of journalistically vetted news stories, interviews and special investigations into a diverse universe of strange, unknown and unsettling subjects. Veteran newsman George Knapp has been bringing great stories to the KLAS-TV audience in Las Vegas since 1981, establishing a national reputation for treating unusual topics with serious journalism.

Glenys Messiah from Frenchs Forest, a residential suburb of Sydney Australia, tells guest compere Ita Buttrose about the time she saw a UFO out the front of her house in 1980.

A video depicting a UFO being shot by the Romanian military raises questions. A friend of the person who posted a handful of UFO videos recorded the alleged UFO video on September 2, 2021 in Romania. Witness say a bright orb flew for about an hour in the skies over the Romanian Black Sea. The poster says with certainty that this is not about a drone or Chinese Lantern. A video depicting a UFO being shot by the Romanian military raises questions. A friend of the person who posted a handful of UFO videos recorded the alleged UFO video on September 2, 2021 in Romania. Witness say a bright orb flew for about an hour in the skies over the Romanian Black Sea. The poster says with certainty that this is not about a drone or Chinese Lantern. Watch Video The videos contain no sound but give juicy details of what happened that day. Watch the video below and read on. Criticism Debunker Mick West thinks it looks like some kind of target practice, but that claim is questioned. Here is why … A user claims he has spent his entire childhood living near a military base, and that he has spent more than ten years along the seaside, far closer to the airfield there than in these films. Because there are people in these regions, training flares or balloons are never used. Because of the distance, the airbase’s land is considerably higher up, and when / if they do target practice, it is never visible from civilian houses. For safety reasons, the military is allotted a section of the sea that is not near civilian facilities. Because there are so many sea resorts, Chinese lanterns and drones are highly frequent, but they are never too bright, and they are never shot at by the military because they are authorized to be used in that area, and they are aware of it. This is really unique, and he has never seen anything like that on the Romanian coast or elsewhere in the country.

The Original Website here at- https://www.dreamlandresort.com/ LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Air Force aren’t talking about the reason two dozen agents broke down the doors of a pair of Nevada homes in early November. The search warrants, served at properties owned by dreamlandresort.com manager Joerg Arnu, led to the addition of the text “NEW: Endorsed by the FBI and USAF OSI” in bold, yellow letters on the home page. The sarcastic reference is to the Nov. 3 events that upended Arnu’s life. “My life has been very much turned upside down by all this,” Arnu said of the search warrant executed on his properties. The site, managed by Arnu since 1999, is a central clearinghouse for anything and everything related to the world’s most famous “secret” base. Military watchdogs, including many who formerly worked at the Groom Lake facility, post photos and video of the base, chat about its rich history, and speculate on what classified projects might be under development in the Nevada desert. “There’s absolutely nothing that I would consider classified or that I know to be classified on my website,” Arnu said. “It’s pretty much the same stuff that you find on other websites also, and I’ve repeatedly actually stated in my discussion forum that if ever anyone has a legitimate issue with what I’m posting, let me know. And I will take it down.” Two teams of federal agents, more than a dozen in each group, bashed in the doors of two homes owned by Arnu. One in Rachel, Nevada, not far from the base. The other in Las Vegas. They seized computers, phones, files, and a wealth of personal property. Arnu said he has no idea what the agents were after. Approximately 40 pages of the search warrant are sealed, according to Arnu. “The case is sealed so well we don’t know what these 40 pages include,” Arnu said. “Probably a justification for the search, but at this point, I don’t know what it is.” A sign placed near the Area 51 US Air Force installation warns passersby that photography of the area is prohibited as is trespassing, which carries a maximum punishment of a $1000 fine, sixth months imprisonment, or both. Strictly enforced: A sign placed near the Area 51 US Air Force installation warns passersby that photography of the area is prohibited as is trespassing, which carries a maximum punishment of a $1000 fine, sixth months imprisonment, or … Read More Area 51 has become so well known and draws so many curious people to its boundaries that the public sometimes forgets just how strenuously the government defends its secrecy. For years the Pentagon would not acknowledge its existence, although Russian satellites took detailed photos of the base, and curious visitors could snap close-ups photos of its facilities. In the mid-1980s, after the US Air Force took charge of the base from the Central Intelligence Agency, security forces illegally seized control of 89,000 acres of public land around the base. They later asked congress for permission. The the early 2000s a friend of Arnu’s, fellow Area 51 watchdog Chuck Clark, took 8 News Now on a tour of public lands surrounding the base revealing a network of motions sensors hidden in the dirt to warn the base when anyone approaches. Days after that news report aired, Clark’s Rachel, Nevada home was raided by the joint terrorism task force. His computers and cameras were seized. Clark later moved from Nevada and left Area 51 behind. The secrecy surrounding Area 51 has likely fanned the flames of public and media curiosity, which is one reason Arnu’s website exists. “What’s the big secret,” the public wonders. Arnu said his attorney told him he will likely never get his computers and cameras returned, even if it’s unlikely he will ever be charged with a crime. He thinks the raid was entirely about sending a strong, if vague, message. “At this point I don’t know exactly what I’m up against, but my best guess is that because my residence is close to Area 51 and my website, Dreamland Resort, is kind of prominent in the field, that I’m being used to send a message to the Area 51 community,” Arnu said.

Presidents have contact with aliens? Former American President Dwight D. Eisenhower had three secret meetings with aliens, a former US government consultant has claimed. The 34th President of the United States met the extra terrestrials at a remote air base in New Mexico in 1954, according to lecturer and author Timothy Good. Eisenhower and other FBI officials are said to have organised the showdown with the space creatures by sending out ‘telepathic messages’. ‘Aliens have made both formal and informal contact with thousands of people throughout the world from all walks of life,’ he added. Asked why the aliens don’t go to somebody ‘important’ like Barack Obama, he said: ‘Well, certainly I can tell you that in 1954, President Eisenhower had three encounters, set up meetings with aliens, which took place at certain Air Force bases including Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico.’ He added that there were ‘many witnesses’. Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, is known to have had a strong belief in life on othe

MYSTERY WIRE — Thirty years ago, Nov. 6, 1989, KLAS aired the first part of a nine-part project called “UFOs: The Best Evidence.” It was the news series that turned Area 51 into a name known all over the world and revealed the name of Bob Lazar. That series was the highest rated local news series to ever air here, and it is still being felt today in the way news organizations cover the UFO subject. George Knapp looks back at the series and a new project being launched tonight. George Knapp: We spent nearly 8 months putting the original series together. It was my first foray into the wacky world of UFOs, but certainly not the last. It’s the series that made Area 51 famous, and while anyone who was around back then might remember it for that, the project had a much broader scope. Part 1 aired on this date in 1989. Here’s a glimpse of what it contained. Witness: “And I saw this huge saucer-shaped vehicle which … it was brightly lit. And it appeared to have dark areas portholes of some sort.” Witness: “Did you see that? You know everybody’s, ‘Did you see that?’ You know, everybody saw it. But nobody had an explanation.” Witness: “I do know what I saw. It wasn’t a plane, wasn’t a helicopter, it wasn’t a weather balloon. Wasn’t a satellite, wasn’t swamp gas. It wasn’t any kind of light by itself. There was an actual object.” Knapp: Many UFO sightings occur in broad daylight. Many involve multiple witnesses. The witnesses include pilots and policemen, even the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, people who are trained to be observant and whose judgment is trusted. UFO sightings date back to the dawn of recorded history in every country and every culture. UFOs have been around much longer than conventional aircraft and much longer than science fiction writers. There are even references in the Bible to what could be considered UFO sightings. John Lear: It’s something that people just don’t want to deal with. The press doesn’t want to deal with. And people aren’t going to listen to something unless Dan Rather or any of your big press people are going to tell them about it. And they’re just too spooked. The Air Force has made an art form of ridiculing people who have talked about this thing.” Knapp: If we know anything about science it is this: the truth is always changing. What is science fiction today is science tomorrow. For instance, back in the 1800s, the scientific establishment scoffed at persistent reports from peasants and farmers and other country folk about rocks that fell from the sky. It took more than 100 years for the French Academy of Sciences to finally concede that meteorites were real. Tonight, to mark the 30th anniversary, we are announcing another project. It is called Mystery Wire. It’s a website, a living, breathing archive and repository for decades of news stories and interviews, along with up-to-the-minute reports, not only about UFOs and Area 51 but military programs and secrets, historical mysteries, aerospace tech, the test site, and a lot more. We will be adding content daily and have years of news video, some of it seen only once, much of it, never seen anywhere. Mysterywire.com is the name and the link and it’s live, starting right now.

Real People alumnus Peter Billingsley was a spokesman for the Young Astronauts Program in the 1980s, and in that capacity he attended the launch of and witnessed the tragic explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986. I did not add this to the playlist for our Real People episode, and this is a big departure from the often-light-hearted presentation we give here, but the disaster is a key television memory for everyone who grew up in the era. The fact that a teacher was on board made this even more awful, if that was possible, and it remains one of the defining "Where were you?" moments of a generation. This is a remarkable clip. Watch this footage of Jane Pauley interviewing Billingsley on Today the next day following the explosion: Billingsley is so poised that you almost don't question the tastefulness of interviewing a kid--even a seasoned pro used to being on camera--about one of the most traumatic events of the decade--one he saw in person, no less. But I do. I don't really think it was a great idea, but full credit to Billingsley for pulling this off. Notice how at the end he deflects an opportunity to puff up his own role in the YAP, staying "on message" and emphasizing the larger aspects of his role and avoiding seeming at all immodest. It's kind of a thankless spot for Jane Pauley, too, but I think the segment ends up being as tasteful as it could have been, all things considered.

In October 1994, Bruce Campbell, a safety specialist with Astrotech Space Operations, based near Cape Canaveral, Florida, boarded an airliner in the Chinese city of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. He was heading south to the town of Xichang, in the remote mountainous region of the country bordering Burma and Vietnam. Along with a small group of American engineers, Campbell was there to help prepare for the launch, still more than a year away, of an American-built Intelsat satellite on a Chinese rocket. In the 1990s, U.S. satellite operators were still scrambling to buy rides on European and Chinese launchers following NASA’s decision to ban commercial payloads from the space shuttle in the wake of the 1986 Challenger accident. The Chinese government, determined to succeed in a competitive business, offered Western customers prices they could not refuse. So in 1992, the Intelsat consortium contracted—for a reported $56 million, about half the cost of a European Ariane launch—to send one of its seventh-generation communications satellites, Intelsat-708, into space on China’s still-untested Long March 3B rocket. Like many of his colleagues, Campbell had the background for working on sophisticated Western technology in remote and unfamiliar places. Born on a U.S. military base in Germany, he had followed in his father’s footsteps by enlisting in the Army, where he trained as a medic. After leaving the Army he got into the aerospace business, where his medical background proved useful in helping to design safety protocols for hazardous operations with spacecraft, including handling toxic propellants. Campbell, whose company was subcontracted at the time to the satellite builder Space Systems Loral, recalls that first trip to Xichang. After boarding a Chinese Y-7 turboprop airliner (a copy of the Soviet Antonov-24), he sat down next to a young Chinese man. From his window seat, the man kept looking at the landing gear; when it retracted shortly after takeoff, he smiled broadly. “You seem to be very happy,” Campbell said, pointing at the window. “Yes, we studied this landing gear in engineering school,” the man replied. Campbell’s new acquaintance explained that he worked for the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, which oversaw China’s Long March rockets. “Do you fly to Xichang often?” Campbell asked. “No,” the man replied. “It is too dangerous.” Squeezed between the mountains, the Xichang “airport” was actually a military runway housing a squadron of fighters guarding China’s southern border with Vietnam. To land in Xichang, civilian pilots had to perform a dangerous corkscrew maneuver, similar to the spiraling descent military pilots use in war zones. The visiting U.S. engineers found infrastructure at the space center to be “primitive but workable,” as an Intelsat representative put it later. Intelsat had taken pains to soften the culture shock for its employees and contractors, paying for a top-to-bottom renovation of a small hotel, installing safety equipment, and even sending a pair of chefs from the San Francisco Marriott to cook for the Westerners. Still, in the year leading up to the launch, Campbell and others were troubled by some of the things they saw and heard during their visits to Xichang. It wasn’t just the worry about espionage and the uncertainty over who might be listening in on them. (Campbell recalls that after he and his colleagues discussed over dinner the lack of a net on the hotel tennis court, a new net magically appeared.) It was more the Chinese attitude toward safety, which the Westerners thought was lax. Members of the U.S. team witnessed or heard from other colleagues about several close calls and accidents. The Intelsat-708 spacecraft was being prepared for launch at a satellite processing building several miles from the pad, which had been repaired after a solid-fuel rocket motor accidentally ignited and started bouncing around wildly in an enclosed room a few years earlier. In January 1995, a Long March 2E rocket carrying a Hughes Apstar satellite exploded shortly after launch from Xichang. According to Campbell, horror stories from contractors who had witnessed the explosion prompted Intelsat and Loral managers to forbid employees from watching the liftoff from the roof of the hotel, which, along with a large residential area for Chinese employees of the center, was just three miles from the launch pad, and not far off the rocket’s flight path. On the eve of the Intelsat-708 launch—scheduled for 2:51 a.m. on February 15, 1996—all personnel and guests at the hotel were ordered by Loral to go to the satellite preparation building, located south of the rocket’s expected flight path and separated from the launch pad by steep mountains. Several young local women from the hotel staff, exhausted by a long workday, pleaded to be allowed to stay behind to catch up on sleep, but Loral managers were unyielding—a decision that may have saved the workers’ lives.

One of the largest UFOs ever seen has been observed by the crew and passengers of an airliner over the Channel Islands. An official air-miss report on the incident several weeks ago appears in Pilot magazine. Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, flying close to Alderney first spotted the object, described as "a cigar-shaped brilliant white light". Scroll down for more Aurigny Airlines captain Ray Bowyer, 50, described what he thought to be a UFO as 'a cigar-shaped brilliant white light', similar to the image supplied by Dennis Plunket of the British Flying Saucer bureau As the plane got closer the captain viewed it through binoculars and said: "It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area. "It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realised it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a [Boeing] 737. "But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide." Continuing his approach to Guernsey, Bowyer then spied a "second identical object further to the west". He said: "It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was further away. It was closer to Guernsey. I can't explain it. This was clearly visual for about nine minutes. "I'm certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I'm saying is that I have never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying." The sightings were confirmed by passengers Kate and John Russell. John, 74, said: "I saw an orange light. It was like an elongated oval." The sightings were also confirmed by an unnamed pilot with the Blue Islands airline. The Civil Aviation Authority safety notice states that a Tri-Lander aircraft flying close to Alderney spotted the object. "Certain parts of the report have not been published. I cannot say why," said a senior CAA source. Earlier this year, however, the MOD declared its intentions to open its UFO files to the public.

In the fall of 1988, a Cheyenne Police officer reported a mysterious aircraft hovering over Wyoming's capital city. The officer told 911 dispatchers he saw a circular object with red, white, and blue lights moving slowly across the horizon. Other eyewitnesses also reported similar sightings. The story made national news, including this report from Denver's KWGN-TV.