Prestigious French UFO report marred by inclusion of 1990 Proton rocket part re-entry

Last year the prestigious French Sigma/3AF commission issued an important report.

www.scribd.com...

They conclude, in Googlespeak:

“Many documents and materials examined by the authors of this report confirm it. We have therefore retained, among some others but only as a working hypothesis, the possibility that most of the craft observed can have a non-terrestrial origin.”

Most of the contents will be familiar to seasoned UAP researchers. But because of the prestige of the sponsoring body, the Aeronautical and Astronomical Association of France, and the fact that their conclusions are favourable to the ET hypothesis, the report could have done much to promote serious scientific study of UAPs.

Tragically, the authors seem to have blown it. They report one of the most important sightings as follows:

On November 5, 1990, in France, between 6:15 p.m. and 7:45 p.m., many “apparatus” of various shapes were
observed and even filmed on two main routes: from the tip of
Finistère to Strasbourg, and the Basque Country to Nancy, passing through the Massif Central. The observations
ranged from a triangle with lights at the bottom, to an elongated wingless fuselage over two hundred meters
long [Gretz-Armainvilliers]. An
unusual silence was noted during most of these events.

The explanation for this sighting is here:

www.ufonet.nl...

as Jim Oberg first pointed out:

rr0.org...

How could 3AF have made such a blunder?

reply to post by Lowneck
I don’t think there’s a UFO researcher, or group/organisation, that hasn’t backed a wrong horse; it’s practically inevitable. They misidentify something as exotic or mysterious that later becomes identified and only the brave (or honest) ones recant and admit to it. Similarly, in the history of those who believe all sightings are misidentifications, very few have admitted to being wrong.

It’s only human nature and to be expected. When all’s said and done, our history of advancement has been a perpetual series of course adjustments as we re-evaluate and reflect on new information.
In this case, the researchers identifying the UFO as a Gorizont/Proton rocket are guys I respect. McGonagle, Clarke and Oberg have done great work in adding seasoning to the excesses of ufology. Rather than scratching our collective asses in dumb wonder at a reported sighting, they make the effort to check for alternative explanations.

I’ve only just this moment read the links and therefore remain open-minded. There was certainly a re-entry at the time of the sighting and that alone elevates the rocket stage to most likely explanation. I checked out the map on your UFOnet link and looked at the distance between the witnesses and the Proton’s trajectory – it’s 137 miles from Laarbruch to Luxembourg.

I won’t put words into Jim’s mouth and he’ll probably be along shortly to post a response. My impression of his SOP is that no matter the descriptions of witnesses, they are mistaken. In this particular example, the witness statements (if reliably related) are at odds with the Proton explanation. If the distance is at all accurate, it’s not easy to reinterpret their accounts with a straight trajectory when they’ve described the alleged UFO as travelling in the opposite direction, flashing multi-coloured lights or even approaching the jets. The pilots were adamant that they’d seen re-entries before, that the object had exercised angular manoeuvres and was like nothing they’d seen before.

From Jim’s point of view, this obviously means that they’d misidentified an object that had a prosaic explanation. With the Proton being in the skies at the same time, it’s hard to argue otherwise.

Just recently, I was travelling down the M60 (motorway) at night and the traffic was busy. For a few moments, it was difficult to judge where the road surface lay as my depth of field was temporarily lost. The on-coming headlights seemed to be ‘floating’ against darkness and size, speed and direction lost their bearings.

It caused me to think of pilots in the night sky and understand how easy it is to lose perspective.
In that light, I’m not ready to rule out the witness accounts, but it’s more probable that what was seen was indeed the Proton re-entry.

This doesn’t mean I share the view that all UFO reports are misidentifications or folkloric in origin. Still, when an incident has a likely explanation, why bother expending energy to promote the least likely? ‘Prestigious’ organisations have made numerous misjudgements throughout history and have all backed the wrong horse at some time (NASA, ESA, Harvard, Nobel Prizes etc etc).

Thanks for the discussion. I think the value of this kind of research can be significant, in that it's not one case here, one there, minor fly-specks on an otherwise sound data base. It indicates a general unwillingness -- maybe even an incapacity -- to do the vetting of stories that become part of the canon.

More importantly, when there are enough cases of misperceived missile/space/eentry events, and not just one or two 'freaky' outliers, the opportunity arises to calibrate general witness propensity for misperception, and specifically, say, pilot responses.

If we only have this one case, I agree it is a stretch to say, 'Well, anything anybody sees in the sky at this time MUST be a distorted view of a [prosaic event]," because a lot of those reports really ARE significantly at variance with what we expect a missile/space/entry event to be perceived as. But the problem may be with our expectations, and if so, we'd better FIND OUT.

But the interesting thing is, is that we DON'T just have one case here, one case there, on the margins of an otherwise fundamentally sound data base.

What my investigations have revealed is that these stimuli are all OVER the data bases, books, and documentaries, have slipped through ALL the most 'professional' filters for 'IFOs', have infected and polluted the 'UFO data base' down to the roots with bogus 'faux-FO' stories that mimic EVERY different type of 'classic' UFO report -- maneuvers, chases, radar/EMI effects, 'intelligent' formation flying, even in a few cases, contacts with occupants of the objects, even sexual contact.

This is really scary, and its implications -- if verified by other investigators -- are profoundly revolutionary to classic attempts to walk backwards the 'UFO perception' to the original 'UFO stimulus'.

But maybe it's a way past the shadows and mists and mirages that ufology has been wrestling with, to no apparent progress, for decades.

And even then, the lesson is positive -- THAT there ARE phenomena of genuine interest disguised as 'UFO reports' that deserve more serious attention. I've long suspected that US intelligence agency interest in overseas UFO reports, particularly Russia/China, are motivated by the unacknowledged realization that those reports are not 'true UFOs' in the ETI sense but are valuable indicators of top secret military space/missile events. Wouldn't that be deliciously ironic?

reply to post by Kandinsky

Kandinsky,

Many thanks for your thoughtful reflections.

I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion here, so I'll follow your example and go into the case more thoroughly.

Still think it's unfortunate that the 3AP group chose this particular example to promote the ET hypothesis.

Oddly enough, I have very similar criticisms to yours, not on Jim Oberg's handling of cases possibly related to the 1990 Proton reentry, but on Dave Clarke's handling of Wayne Elliot's 1993 RAF Shawbury sighting.

drdavidclarke.co.uk...

Although Elliot's sighting was prompted by the excitement caused by the Cosmos 2238 reentry, Dave's 'helicopter' explanation for it seems a forced fit.

My impression is that after doing good work in the past, Dave Clarke decided to come out as a debunker and therefore decided to turn Elliot's important sighting into a 'possible helicopter'. Dave seems to be turning into another Hector Quintanilla.

I'd be much interested in your thoughts on the Elliot case.

Cheers.



doesn't seem to work


drdavidclarke.co.uk...

reply to post by Lowneck
I’ve read your link to Dr Clarke’s article and also Joe McGonagle’s analysis . From there, I read the original documentation of Elliot’s report..

It’s been a tough day at work so, if I’ve missed something glaringly obvious, feel free to torpedo the following thoughts.

They’ve covered a lot of the bases and it seems likely that a police helicopter could be the culprit for Elliot’s sighting.

It’d be interesting to read the weather data to get an idea of the conditions. I’ve had a brief look and was unable to find out much more than March ’93 was a rather dry month with 33mm rainfall (Met Office); not much use. Humidity, temperature, wind speed and rainfall would give us an idea of visibility and how defined the reported beam of light might be.

Elliot described the object as having three red lights. These are required on all aircraft and include police helicopters. If the heli is operating the ‘Nitesun’ spotlight, it’s conceivable that other nav-lights are rendered invisible to the human eye through brightness. The red light is on the left side (port) and would be the one Elliot saw as it approached his position.

The Nitesun beam may have been too bright for the rear white beacon to be seen and the green (starboard) light blocked by the object’s body. This much makes sense.

The point that leaves me puzzled is Elliot’s account of three red lights. Like I said, I’m tired and could be missing the obvious…aircraft don’t have three red lights. Also, police helicopters are noisy SOBs and if they fly overhead it’s hard to avoid concluding ‘helicopter.’

now I’m convinced that what I saw has been explained. I have to accept that the noise like a humming and the beam of light are very similar to what you would expect of a police helicopter.”

Elliot's email from Clarke's Cosford file

The first sentence is affirmative and the second is more equivocal – cognitive dissonance? I think the heli explanation is more probable, but Elliot doesn’t seem so sure. For me (tired etc), it's a grey case; not black and white.

Incidentally, I had a couple of emails with Dave Clarke and he was a helpful guy.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Kandinsky,

Many thanks for your observations, duly noted as always with your thoughtful posts.

After reading this in Clarke's Cosford piece:

a Dyfed-Powys police helicopter following a stolen car down the A5 between the A49 junction…The observer was using

between the A49 junction and what, Dave..?

and noting various other clues in Clarke's piece I became suspicious. Google Earth showed that a Welsh helicopter coming down the A5 could not possibly explain Elliott's sighting (reported at the time both to a local police officer and to Nick Pope at the MOD) of a UAP that reached its lowest point 1km from RAF Shawbury and then passed over the base.

I then suspected Clarke of using the unknown airman's helicopter story as a ruse to bully Elliott (whose privacy he should have respected, as Pope did) into admitting that in light of the 'new evidence' what he saw might have been a helicopter.

What we now need, I guess, is for Clarke's mysterious airman to come out into the open and tell us precisely what his evidence is.

Reverting to the theme of this thread, I appreciate Jim's comments and intend to respond in due course.

Cheers.

reply to post by JimOberg


Jim,

Many thanks for your reflections.

First, since I haven't yet investigated the French sightings of 5 Nov 1990 properly, Kandinsky may have a point. It's possible that like some of the 31 March 1993 UK sightings, some of the 1990 French sightings may have been of genuine unidentified objects.

But assuming you're right, having myself had the responsibility of writing technical reports for attention at government/intergovernmental level, I found it extraordinary that the authors of the French report could make such a blunder. Had I made a mistake like this in one of my professional reports, I'd have been sacked.

That set me thinking. I think you're right about the deep-rooted nature of the problem in UFO research. There's a simple word for it - amateurism.

And it started with the amateurism of debunking astronomers such as Menzel and Hynek in their forays into atmospheric physics, the amateurism of Blue Book, the amateurism of Condon. It was an amateurism that infuriated James McDonald and, after his narrow defeat by Condon, led to the total lack of funding for professional UFO research.

As McDonald repeatedly made clear, UFO research is an extremely exacting field, demanding the very best scientific professionals. The amateurs who stepped into the breach did their best. But, as you say, their best wasn't good enough.

So if I was asked to prepare a professional UFO report, I'd do something like this:

For analysis of alleged UFO crashes and their remains, I'd ignore Roswell, bypass the amateur Valery Dvuzhilny and go straight, with an interpreter, to the twenty or so Russian chemists and other scientists who have analyzed Dalnegorsk-related material in their university laboratories. There's been a vast professional effort here, and any professional UFO report would need to take account of these scientists' findings.

For insights into space technology and UFOs, and perhaps some inside information on the Dalnegorsk researchers, I'd go to you.

But for pilot psychology and UFOs I'd go first to Richard Haines. And I'd ask him "Does Jim Oberg know what he's talking about in this field?"

You can guess what I suspect his answer would be.

Cheers.

I'd be delighted to learn how Haines replies, since for almost twenty years he has refused to reply to ME when I've raised these kinds of questions.

My 'open letter' to him can be found here [I'm still waiting]:

www.outtahear.com...

Now, how about the general issue of Soviet space and missile activity masquerading as UFO stimuli? I surveyed your article in the March/April 1991 issue of IUR on "UFO activities in the Soviet Union", and found you really hadn't scratched the surface in seeking obvious, prosaic explanations. Furthermore, your new Russian friends appear to be congenitally incapable of recognizing space and missile activity.

Thanks also for the opportunity to link to my 1985 challenge to Bruce Maccabbee about the burden of proof against the 'Null Hypothesis' for UFO rerports, here:

www.debunker.com...

reply to post by JimOberg



All great, Jim, IF you assume that your explanations are in fact the correct explanations. In several instances that is almost assuredly true, and people should be more appreciative of your work, and expertise; in other cases, however... there is room for interpretation (i.e., one has to ignore quite an uncomfortable amount of witness data in order to support your hypothesis.)

Also, in other forums, including several months ago at DeVoid, I've seen you slam Haines and NARCAP for not acknowledging some of your explanations. You did this for one specific case (I believe it had to do with pilots witnessing a re-entry in Japan), and I was highly surprised to hear that NARCAP would simply ignore what sounded like a pretty good explanation by you. So I went and read the NARCAP report, and guess what... they HAD discussed the possibility of the 'UFO' having been the re-entry you mentioned.

In other words, in at least one of the handful of instances you consistently cite as evidence of NARCAP/Haines' neglect with respect to your possible explanations, you're simply incorrect. (And that's the only one I bothered checking.) Yet you continue to speak of this as if they've simply ignored you, when it can clearly be shown that your hypotheses have been considered. So, don't you think that affects YOUR credibility more than that of Richard Haines or NARCAP? I do. So maybe you want to tone it down a bit with that?

Also, since you're so interested in human mis-perception, why not have a serious discussion of some of the more perplexing multi-witness radar-visual cases? There appear to be ATS members with legitimate radar/electronics expertise on these forums, and I'm sure they'd jump in when appropriate. I'd imagine electronic detection to be HIGHLY useful to you as you seek to gauge and calibrate eye-witness reliability. Don't you think?

Detailed reply in a day or two...

reply to post by JimOberg


jim, with all due respect, i have a question... generally speaking, has it ever occurred that you might have considered 'atmospheric plasma' as a probable prosaic answer for any observed 'stimuli' without the need to evoke the 'misidentification' factor...

reply to post by JimOberg


Jim,

Many thanks for the links.

I'll give a lot of thought to the points you make. Especially as I've found flaws in the work of both Haines and Maccabee myself.

I still tend to think of them as both basically good, clever and industrious people, unfortunately contaminated by the amateurism of some of the ufologists surrounding them. But it's just possible I might change my mind.

To change my overall stance on the UAPs, though, you'd need to demonstrate that Jim McDonald was a flawed, dishonest, lazy scientist, that Menzel understood atmospheric physics better than he did, that Condon made a serious personal contribution to his own report and that Hynek was wrong when he thought he was right and right when he conceded he'd been wrong.

Cheers.

Originally posted by Lowneck
To change my overall stance on the UAPs, though, you'd need to demonstrate that Jim McDonald was a flawed, dishonest, lazy scientist, that Menzel understood atmospheric physics better than he did, that Condon made a serious personal contribution to his own report and that Hynek was wrong when he thought he was right and right when he conceded he'd been wrong.

I think it's far too early to think about trying to chance anyone's stance on the phenomena loosely refered to as 'UFOs'. All I can hope to contribute to, is to improve the methodology that interested investigators apply to evidence that comes their way, and evidence that they actively seek and unearth. Otherwise, the future only holds decade after decade, generation after generation of repeating the same conceptual traps and detours, make-believes and excuse-making, ferocious blaming and scatter-shot demonizing, all the while enhancing the likelihood that genuinely interesting phenomena will be overlooked or misinterpreted. And it sounds to me that I have nothing to add to the productive level of your methodology.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets
reply to post by JimOberg

 

All great, Jim, IF you assume that your explanations are in fact the correct explanations.

Exactly. It is critically important to settle on a core collection of several dozen 'classic' pilot misperceptions of space/missile events, in order to actually UNDERSTAND -- rather than fanatasize about -- the human process of perception, interpretation, and recollection that can actually be demonstrated to have occurred.

Without such a core corpus of cases, it will be impossible to accurately, realisticly assess what all the OTHER reports actually mean.

Also, in other forums, including several months ago at DeVoid, I've seen you slam Haines and NARCAP for not acknowledging some of your explanations. You did this for one specific case (I believe it had to do with pilots witnessing a re-entry in Japan), and I was highly surprised to hear that NARCAP would simply ignore what sounded like a pretty good explanation by you. So I went and read the NARCAP report, and guess what... they HAD discussed the possibility of the 'UFO' having been the re-entry you mentioned.

In other words, in at least one of the handful of instances you consistently cite as evidence of NARCAP/Haines' neglect with respect to your possible explanations, you're simply incorrect. (And that's the only one I bothered checking.) Yet you continue to speak of this as if they've simply ignored you, when it can clearly be shown that your hypotheses have been considered. So, don't you think that affects YOUR credibility more than that of Richard Haines or NARCAP? I do. So maybe you want to tone it down a bit with that?

No, not a bit. They had the avenue to a prosaic explanation staring them in the face, and they flubbed it. For any number of reasons -- bias, ignorance, plain stubbornness, or whatever -- they didn't carry out the kind of investigation of the potential prosaic explanation that would have been required to eliminate it from possibility.As far as I can tell from the documentation [and I'm counting on you to tell me where I'm wrong] they just chose to slough off the possibility, possibly because the case was so appealingly 'unsolvable'.

Maybe they included mentioning it just to mock the 'force-fit' pseudo-explanations that debunkers grasp at desperately, in their view? I dunno.

Also, since you're so interested in human mis-perception, why not have a serious discussion of some of the more perplexing multi-witness radar-visual cases? There appear to be ATS members with legitimate radar/electronics expertise on these forums, and I'm sure they'd jump in when appropriate. I'd imagine electronic detection to be HIGHLY useful to you as you seek to gauge and calibrate eye-witness reliability. Don't you think?

We have to crawl before we can walk, run, or even fly. Until we have a corpus of cases that demonstrates unequivocably the astonishing degree to which pilot testimony CAN diverge from original stimuli [and the space/missile events provide us the best, if not the ONLY, genre of cases for which this can be accomplished], I would not dare to presume that a generic "might-have-been-X-Y-Z" suggestion would carry ANY argumentative credibility.

In addition, and just as important, when we see how UNLIKELY and flukey were the recoveries of critical evidentiary keys to some of these cases, we can gain an appreciation of how likely it might be that such information has never been found, and can never be retrieved, in other cases. This allows us to demonstrate that absence of evidence is NOT evidence of its absence, just evidence of our limited insight into all relevant factors contributing to an incident.

Here's where the 1984 "Exactly-at-4:10-AM' airliner case over Minsk is so instructive. The eyewitness accounts, reportedly corroborated by ground radar and physical effects, make any 'gross misperception' suggestion look like a severe stretch, deserving of scorn and ridicule. But purely by accident, in THIS case we also have ground witnesses located in Scandinavia to the same apparition. And by a mind-bogglingly lucky break, we have the actual drawings made in the co-pilot's log in real time, later published in one and only one Moscow magazine, together with drawings of OTHER missile launchings published in provincial Russian newspapers, sent to me by a helpful correspondent in the 1990s because of their spaceflight connection..The odds of such insightful evidence EVER even existing, or then ever seeing the light of day, and then ever all co-existing in the files of one person who drew conclusions from them, are astronomically insignificant.

So the notion that we actually should expect that string of near-impossibilities to happen EVERY time is preposterous.

[/quote

It's good to see an intelligent discussion with all parties being reasonable and polite; the thread's a genuinely decent exploration of possible explanations for sightings.

I also have a high opinion of Haines' work and can accept he's fallen short, in some analyses, without undermining his overall credibility. It seems there's a familiar trap whereby some commentators assert the need to rule out a body of work based on a few errors. This has been applied to you, Jim, as much as some apply it to Dick Haines. I'm not prepared to dismiss either of you because you both have subject knowledge I don't. The same can be said, for example, about Kottmeyer or Bullard - they are both well-informed and yet differ distinctly in their interpretations of particular incidents; Father Gill's PNG sightings being one that springs to mind.

We're all humans and prone to errors of judgement, loyalties and sometimes we stand by ideas past the point of no return. According to the platitudes, 'sorry' is the hardest thing to say, but in this field 'I don't know' could have the edge...

To off-set this tendency, as Jim points out and Lowneck demonstrates, it's always worth making the effort to read a little more deeply and check out the research of people with better, or greater, subject-knowledge.

When I first read the claims that pilot sightings are all misinterpretations, hallucinations or even BS exercises to reap rewards from the National Enquirer, it was useful to check out the experts. One of the better examples of pilot error study is found in an FAA pilot-training chapter....





These images are from the manual - FAA - Human Factors in Aviation Chapter 1 The pdf lends an insight into the diverse causes of pilot error and should be read by anyone taking the position that pilots are infallible or that they are worse observers than anyone else.



I've no doubt that posters in this thread are informed and take the time to check out the research. Likewise, standard aviation training ensures that pilots and crew are also aware of the possible errors in judgement. In that light it seems, to me, peculiar to relegate so many pilot sightings to naive, ill-informed bemusement.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
When I first read the claims that pilot sightings are all misinterpretations, hallucinations or even BS exercises to reap rewards from the National Enquirer, it was useful to check out the experts.

That claim has never been made by me, although I've heard it from scoffers.

The claim to which the onus probandi attaches is the contra-positive: that ALL pilot reports of apparent prosaicly non-explainable stimuli CANNOT be misperceptions of earthside processes/activities/apparitions.

To prove that there is no possible way to explain these reports except by currently unrecognized stimuli, the advocate has to establish that pilots CANNOT make such misinterpretations.

Yes, the deck is stacked, and the burden is not symmetric. The playing field is tilted.

We all have to deal with that.

Me, I'd like to define a set of pilot reports of unarguably prosaic missile/space events, compared with how the events were interpreted by the witnesses. The word 'reluctance' barely scratches the surface of the reaction to this proposal from mainstream ufology.

But I'll keep nagging.

AFTER we have reached that agreement, would be the time to inspect other non-solved pilot reports to see how they differ fundamentally [if at all] from what the misisle-space-IFO reports looked like.

This new approach could be productive. Current approaches don't strike me as getting anywhere.

reply to post by JimOberg

The claim to which the onus probandi attaches is the contra-positive: that ALL pilot reports of apparent prosaicly non-explainable stimuli CANNOT be misperceptions of earthside processes/activities/apparitions.

This is where so many stumble and fall. By taking the view that *all* pilot sightings are either explainable or non-explainable it's possible that something unknown remains unexplored.

To prove that there is no possible way to explain these reports except by currently unrecognized stimuli, the advocate has to establish that pilots CANNOT make such misinterpretations.

Once more, this is predicated on a binary view of either/or. There needn't be an assumption that *all* reports are explainable, one way or the other, if we accept that there are phenomena that remain unexplained according to current science.

On these terms, 'advocate' is too strong a term, and a red herring, when the argument they offer is only uncertainty and a willingness to suspend judgement until more data becomes available.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by JimOberg

 

The claim to which the onus probandi attaches is the contra-positive: that ALL pilot reports of apparent prosaicly non-explainable stimuli CANNOT be misperceptions of earthside processes/activities/apparitions.

This is where so many stumble and fall. By taking the view that *all* pilot sightings are either explainable or non-explainable it's possible that something unknown remains unexplored.

Here's where we arrive at a productive agreement.

First, phenomena of genuine interest can be found among the UFO reports -- I've proved that by identifying the missile/space events which really had gone unrecognized prior to my work. I suspect cosmonaut Kovalyonok saw a South African IRBM test in 1981, too -- while flying directly over their testing range. And others...

Second, nothing can be proved regarding the absence of ETI activity on Earth, since it can be presumed that any sufficiently advanced technology could render itself completely undetectable to humans. Anf further -- it doesn't HAVE to be 'completely'. Some UFO reports could indeed by sparked by genuinely unknown stimuli -- it cannot be logically disproved.

And it doesn't have to be, since the argument for positive proof is the topic on the debate table.