The Executive Air Affair

a reply to: smurfy

I will allow Mr Ing to give advice on making Runes for under $10 though...they might work

lol... I am starting to doubt even that :-)

BT

a reply to: F4guy

There is an RKR Corporation in Denver. It is a small plumbing supply company and most certainly is not a "top 100" US corp

Haha, I found that company also when doing the initial fact checking, but I assumed that it was just a placeholder name to keep the actual company out of it. I am getting bs vibes as well, but I can live with just this detail.

But, as others have pointed out above, there are many other iffy details.

I guess if we were to identify the actual plane it would have to be a Citation belonging to a international telecom company, which I believe was described to be blue and gold. And prior to 2007.

However, since even the FOIA documents seem to be fictional, I don't know how much point there is to checking up on this.

BT

Well, I guess some of us can't help ourselves, so I did a little more light digging in an idle sort of way.

Apparently, and according to the authors own website he has been featured on numerous TV and radio channels. CNN among them. There is a quote from one Laura Boast with Discovery Channel, which it turns out is a real person who worked as a segment producer for Discovery Channel Canada from 2005 to 2013, according to LinkedIn



And yes, he has indeed been on television as a Forensic Intelligence Expert. On the Business News Network.



Here he is again, as a security expert, on CBS News




Mr Ing seems also, as has already been mentioned, to have an above average interest in both the paranormal and the occult. I find it a bit curious how often the occult and the ufo phenomenon seem to crop up together.



Aleister Crowley's watch, no less.

So, the question then remains, if one is a bona fide Forensic Intelligence Expert, why would one publish a story in a book that has such fatal flaws? I am quite puzzled by this author.

BT

His "doctorates" are from Knightsbridge, an infamous diploma mill.

a reply to: Bedlam

So, what you are saying is that the media is not so thorough when it comes to checking the credentials of their "experts" :-)

To be fair, what he claims in his "story" is just that he was hired to check the aircraft for bugs and other electronic devices (as well as explosives I believe), but he gives no record of which company he has worked for so this is again somewhat of a dead end.

I am curious, however, about this so called ADVIS system that he describes. Does it even exist? I know there are optical systems in many military planes, of course, but a system that auto-id's planes from registration numbers and general shape, would it have any merit? If you don't have any means of engaging an unknown "threat", what would be the point of having such a system on a transport plane? I think this is also a bit weird, as is so much else in this tale.

Any input?

BT

a reply to: beetee

Well, even the military used to turn a blind eye to it until a bunch of officers in Huntsville at the arsenal got caught with doctorates from Trinity College and University, including Bearden.

It's an on again off again thing. But they do screen for it now. When I see people that are sort of on the cranky side of things claiming doctorates, the first question I ask is do you actually have one, in this case no. The second would be "in what" as many have humanities degrees trying to claim expertise in physics. It rarely crosses over.

But in this case, it's clearly a diploma mill.

Next, ADVIS was a real system, but it's used to collect low res multispectral ground imagery. Mostly to get an idea of how crops were doing or if you were planting dope.

a reply to: Bedlam

Well, even the military used to turn a blind eye to it

Hehe, yes, but to put someone on the screen as an "expert" withouth verifying credentials is a bit more severe, in my opinion, than just ignoring a few "doctorates" at an arsenal :-)

Maybe I have to much faith in journalism...

ADVIS was a real system, but it's used to collect low res multispectral ground imagery.

The claim here, I believe, is that it is used to aid in aircraft identification, as a supplement to transponders and radar. The system, allegedly, functions by automatically panning cameras on a target guided by the planes radar and other instruments, and a computer will then try to match the registration numbers and characteristics to a (presumably) onboard database.

Now, I find this quite far fetched, if not totally unfeasible. I have found a aviation related project for automatic identification in a few research proposals, but then it is suggested used for identifying aircraft on the ground at airports. Using OCR, which is a technology that is troublesome at the best of times, is not something you would want to make decisions automatically on threat scenarios. At least, I would not.

I guess the idea of an identification system of this kind on a business jet seems a bit pointless to me. I mean, what is the point of knowing what plane is within visual range, if you have no offensive capability? If it is going to take you down, you are well done for in that situation anyway. So, it seems a bit "stupid" to be honest. If you were chasing after smugglers in a Coast Guard plane, yes! But on a corporate business jet?

I have found examples of countermeasures that can be installed in this type of aircraft, or at least similar types, such as Matador from BAE systems. Even an israeli CAEW&C system that can be installed in a Gulfstream. But ADVIS seems just a bit too useless to cram into such a plane, just so you will know who are shortly going to blow you out of the sky.

Thank you for your input. Much appreciated :-)

BT

Altitudes are always MSL (above mean sea level). DEN is 5430 MSL, so 7000 is pretty low.

But even if it were 7000 AGL (Above Ground Level) that's still REALLY low for a turbine powered aircraft.

The altitude may not be an issue. If they were flying under ATC then they may have been stacked at that altitude for a short period of time.
The detail of the "shadow escort" is odd and one would think it would not even be included since it does not add anything to the account. It does not have to be a military escort but its still an odd detail to include if its completely made up.
Makes me wonder f the "doctor" is telling a story that was relayed to him but using himself in place of the real person.
He gets some of the details wrong because he did not get the complete story.

a reply to: Dragoon01

Well, the claim is, of course, that he was aboard himself to sweep for bugs and other threats. That portion of the story is almost as long as the actual encounter, if not longer.

I have not read the rest of the book, but I think what he allegedly presents is "cases" from his "career".

There are, as has already been raised in the thread by myself and others, some red flags.

1. No civilian CEO ever gets a shadow escort from the airforce, no matter what his company might be, as remarked by Bedlam.

2. The only reference to a height is given about ten minutes or so before the encounter and is then about 7000 feet when the plane levels out. I am guessing he knows the height they are going to fly at from a previous briefing because how would he know if not? He is in the cabin after all. Some feel this is too low to be realistic for a Cessna Citation.

3. The system used to try to identify the unknown craft is described in much detail. It is given as the ADVIS system and uses OCR like functionality and pattern recognition to match unknown aircraft to a database of knowns. No such system is known to exist, and the actual ADVIS system seems to be connected to ground monitoring of crops and such.

4. He claims the crew were interviewed by Air Special Investigations upon landing at their destination. Which is an odd term for AFOSI. We don't know where the plane landed four hours later, but it might be somewhere in Canada if approx four hours flight is sufficient time in this plane to get there. He makes reference to the Official Secrets Act which might also be a pointer towards Canada. Or might be a sign it is all made up.

5. He claims the affair, and his report no less, is featured on the backcover on a "Conspiracy book" and was released from a FOIA request in redacted form. Nobody has (so far) come forward with any knowledge of which book this might be, and I have not been able to find it. The story is also not very well known, which is even more odd if it was featured on the back cover of a published book as a "teaser" to buy the book.

6. It would also seem the author has a lot of ttitles he might have purchased at a diploma mill, according to some.

So, although it is a neat little story, it is also starting to smell a little.
It is almost, in fact, now difficult to see the UFO for all those red flags fluttering at 7000 feet :-)

BT

What happened with the shadow escort? I wonder if their comms and navigation went down also?

a reply to: AlphaDalpha

Well, the original story in the book says nothing about this. However, they were not in the immediate vincinity at the time it happened, because they had not met up with the flight yet.

As far as I can tell, the story is that this happened not long after takeoff.
The "shadow escort" were flying out of a different airport.

BT