The Beauty and Terror of UFOs (UAPs, OVNIs, et al)
As the holiday season is upon us, with many of us looking for ways to fill in the days and nights to take our minds away from the travails of the global viral pandemic and other things that may be dulling thoughts of the festive period, consider the following, its homage to the era of GEPAN & at the end, details of a new French TV series you should checkout: UFOs (OVNIs) - the series is currently available on demand in Australia on SBS. For other countries check for local availability. Best wishes.
Senator Gillibrand’s staff summarised the state of play late in December 2021: “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena:
UAPs pose a significant challenge to our national security, appearing in sensitive U.S. airspace and around military personnel. Gillibrand’s amendment establishes an office that would replace the current Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and would have access to Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community data related to UAPs. By doing so, the office will have the authority to establish a coordinated effort to report and respond to UAPs, significantly improve data-sharing between agencies on UAP sightings, address national security concerns, and report health effects people may experience in relation to UAP events. The office will be administered jointly between the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, and will empower military and civilian personnel working for the DoD and Intelligence Community to report incidents and information involving UAPs.”
The US Defense Department’s UAP unit (AOIMSG) will apparently only investigate UAPs reported in sensitive military airspace, a major limiting factor. How well this works in the environment mandated by the approved act remains to be seen. The current brief of the AOIMSG will need to be broaden to met the requirements of the current legislation. The threat scenario seems to have mobilised key people in government – the “terror of UFOs” or to use the mandated language – the “terror” of UAPs - particularly with regard to the “nuclear connection”, cited most strongly in Robert Hastings’ excellent study “UFOs and Nukes”.
The LA Times reported on 16 December, 2021, via Dillon Guthrie, an attorney and past advisor on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:
“The office created by the Gillibrand amendment accordingly will take a broad approach by investigating UAPs across jurisdictional lines, prioritizing areas of scientific study and requiring various agencies to collaborate — not only the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration but also the Energy Department, intelligence community, NASA and others. It will develop a science plan to investigate striking physical characteristics of UAPs (like their speed) and potentially replicate any advanced UAP technologies. And the new office will seek to understand the global nature of these phenomena, directing outreach to foreign allies.
“In particular, the office will analyze whether UAPs represent foreign adversarial technology or otherwise pose a threat. That should be its top priority. The June report stated that UAPs, in addition to representing a flight safety hazard, “may pose a challenge to U.S. national security.” Given the regular sightings in military airspace — and the apparent connection between UAPs and nuclear technology — national security concerns are paramount.
In setting up this office, Congress has legitimized the long-ridiculed topic of UAPs. Yet its work does not end there. It must ensure that the office receives adequate funding and make clear that the office should be led by a civilian director with the expertise necessary to tackle these issues and cut through the Pentagon’s red tape.
“Of course, the perspectives of defense and intelligence officials will be crucial. But the Pentagon has a long history of obfuscating work relating to UAPs, whereas Congress can promote transparency. Once the office has delivered its first unclassified report, Congress should hold public hearings to discuss its findings.
“Now that legislators have marshalled action on UAPs, they need to make sure the new office does not become shrouded in secrecy.”
History gives us insights that are not particularly encouraging, but this seems a particularly memorable development, for the moment at least. Close analysis will show how worthwhile these developments turned out to be.
Despite past NASA history to the contrary, the current administrator of NASA, Bill Nelson, has made a number of positive statements about UAPs. In a livestream chat hosted by politics professor Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia School of Law alumnus (UVA) Center for Politics, on October 19, 2021, Nelson stated, “I’ve talked to those pilots and they know they saw something, and their radars locked on to it,” adding “And they don’t know what is. And we don’t know what it is. We hope it’s not an adversary here on Earth that has that kind of technology. But it’s something. And so this is a mission that we’re constantly looking, ‘Who is out there?’ Who are we?’ How did we get here? How did we become as we are? How did we develop? How did we civilize? And are those same conditions out there in a universe that has billions of other suns and billions of other galaxies?’ It’s so large I can’t conceive it.”
“Now there are even theories that there might be other universes,” adding, “If that’s the case, who am I to say planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours?”
This adds to the NASA statement of 26 June 2021: “NASA does not actively search for UAPs. However, through our Earth-observing satellites, NASA collects extensive data about Earth’s atmosphere, often in collaboration with the other space agencies of the world. While these data are not specifically collected to identify UAPs or alien technosignatures, they are publicly available and anyone may use them to search the atmosphere.
While NASA doesn’t actively search for UAPs, if we learn of UAPs, it would open up the door to new science questions to explore. Atmospheric scientists, aerospace experts, and other scientists could all contribute to understanding the nature of the phenomenon. Exploring the unknown in space is at the heart of who we are.”
It is this sense of exploring the unknown, confronting its beauty and terror, that also informed the Romantic generation of the 18thcentury, as they engaged with the burgeoning realm of scientific enquiry. Indeed, Richard Holmes 2008 book “The Age of Wonder” was subtitled “How the Romantic Generation discovered the beauty and terror of science.” The romantic momentum of discoveries is being echoed in the confronting contemporary search for understanding of UFOs (or UAPs).
Dr. Claude Poher, of the French equivalent to NASA, CNES, began to sense these echoes, when he deeply explored the Colorado University “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects” (often referred to as the Condon Report, after its projector director, Dr. Edward Condon). Poher found that contrary to Condon, the report substantiated that there was a real UFO problem, with about a third of the cases examined for the Condon Report categorised as unexplained. What did Poher do? Well, he would eventually win support for the establishment of GEPAN (Groupe D’etude des phenomenes Aerospatiaux non identifies) – a UFO study group within CNES in 1977, which went on to do some excellent research, some of which went a long way to supporting a UFO reality, not the least being the Trans-en Provence case of 1981, in which a UFO landed and left behind compelling physical evidence – a ground trace that yielded fascinating data. If many of the thousands of the worldwide physical trace cases received similar attention as the Trans-en Provence case, we would have a much greater and more compelling body of physical evidence data. Instead we have thousands of lost opportunities – a huge measure of the failure of mainstream science to properly examine the UFO phenomenon.
In an article in “Frontiers of Science” (an interim publication in the journey of IUR - the International UFO Reporter) May-June 1981, Dr. Allen Hynek identified the problem stating, “Here we come face to face with the charge that after thirty years of dealing with UFO reports we still have no really convincing “hard data”, i.e. parts of a UFO, unimpeachable residues from soil samples, unequivocal evidence that a UFO caused damage to animate or inanimate matter. Yet the fact is that we do have large amounts of such evidence … I grow livid when such charges of “no data” are made. After years of frustration without the funds to pay for adequate laboratory and other professional work, I bristle at the lack of understanding on the part of scientific skeptics, who wouldn’t get to first base without well-funded research projects with staff, travel and laboratory facilities …”
“All we have are abortive, often amateurish attempts at data gathering, data analysis, and feeble attempts at laboratory studies (on a charity basis, of course), all of which dwindle into inconclusion and frustration … It is my contention that “hard” data may well have been present in many UFO cases but their discovery and definitive establishment has repeatedly gone by default for lack of professional (funded) treatment. It has always been the case of “too little too late,” necessitated by the use of volunteers bolstered only by their unselfish devotion to the pursuit of an overwhelming mystery,” Hynek concluded.
Dr. Hynek lived to see the beginnings of some “thorough, professional study” in the work of GEPAN, specifically the Trans-en-Provence UFO landing physical trace case of January 1981. Indeed, given access to the GEPAN files, at the direct invitation of the French government, he found all of the GEPAN cases to be very well investigated.
I wrote an article for the “UFO Research Australia Newsletter” (UFORAN), Volume 1, No. 1, January-February, 1980, entitled “GEPAN – the beginnings of the science of ufology?” I noted, “During 1978, GEPAN’s activities expanded and a seven-level structure was adopted, namely: rapid intervention procedures, physical trace analyses, radar alert group, qualified expert evaluation group, national card index group, statistical analyses group, and “Sim-UFO” group. The first 6 are self evident activities, however, the latter requires clarification. Sim-UFO refers to a contraction of optical simulation of UF0, through which the deployment of a piece of optical equipment with “identikit” – style slides are used to derive and quantify the witnesses’ “binocular” view of the sighting environment.” I wrote that GEPAN approaches were a good model for scientific investigations of UFOs.
A long time head of the official French UFO agency GEPAN, Jean-Jacques Velasco (who I met in June, 1987, in Washington D.C., when I lectured at the MUFON “International Symposium on Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon” about the Australian UFO experience), described the organisation’s activities and his own evolution in UFO thinking in “France and the UFO Question”, a chapter of Leslie Kean’s 2010 book “UFOs – Generals, pilots, and government officials go on the record.” Remarkably, the former head of CNES (the French equivalent to the NASA administrator), and chairman of the steering committee for GEIPAN (the current expression of GEPAN, extending its education function), Yves Sillard, gave his own commentary and position on the UFO question in that book. For Sillard, UFOs were a matter “no longer in doubt.” He even wrote his own landmark book in 2007 (in French) “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: A Challenge to Science.”
An important workshop focusing on the scientific examination of UAP UFO observations was held at CNES headquarters in Paris on 8-9 July 2014. It proved to be an important step in the long road of developing a viable UAP UFO science.
The GEIPAN workshop in Paris – CAIPAN – Collecte et Analyses des Informations sur les Phenomenes Aerospatiaux Non Indentifies –
“allow the exchange of methods, tools and experiences between people with practical, specific knowledge in the analysis of rare and unpredictable phenomena, whether natural or artificial (unidentified aerospace phenomena, lightning, fireballs, etc).”
“This is really a dream come true for many of us,” stated Dr. Jacques Vallee in his presentation of his research paper at the workshop, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – A strategy for research.” His paper’s abstract indicated, “After years of ideological arguments based on anecdotal data the field of UAP research appears ready to emerge into a more mature phase of reliable study. Renewed scientific interest now exists in many countries, based on credible official or semi-official documents. Without pre-judging the origin and nature of the phenomena, a range of opportunities arise for investigation, hard data analysis and new theoretical exploration. In order to avoid repeating past errors, however, such projects need to generate new hypotheses and test them in a rigorous way against the accumulated reports of thousands of observers.
“Unfortunately such a repository of reliable global data does not yet exist. Furthermore, the level of difficulty in assembling it has either been ignored or underestimated. The purpose of this paper is to briefly review previous work in the compilation of UAP databases and outline some new directions for research. We also raise the question of identifying researchable issues and consistent ontologies in the UAP domain.”
During December, 2021, I binged-watched a 12 part French TV series that was airing, on demand, on our Australian SBS free-to-air TV network. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. The series – “OVNI(s)” or “UFO(s)” directed by Antony Cordier – gives a fictionalised, comedic journey through “the beauty and terror” of UFOs, UAPs (or OVNIs in French parlance), creating a potent and entertaining vision of GEPAN’s early days (1978) and the then contemporary UFO narrative. Now, of course, given the shows style, much of the series is inaccurate, but I had closely studied the evolution of GEPAN as it unfolded, and saw that the series provided fragments and hints of a wonderful resonance with the times. There are cases and situations that any seriously engaged researcher will recognise as informing the creative sparks of threads that run through the series.
For example, fictionalised elements of the Franck Fontaine abduction milieu of 1979 (a year after the initial series setting) runs riotously through the first season, liberally diluted with allusions to the Raelian contactee movement. Jacques Vallee addresses the actual case in his book “Revelations – alien contact and human deception” (1991), arguing for a staged deception event organised by a covert agency of human origin.
Fernandez highlights screen writer Dargent’s observations, "The GEIPAN still exists today, but the sub-topic of the series was to explore a world we had never known, " ... The one in which their parents grew up, this France which was beginning the end of the Thirty Glorious Years, where certainties were starting to falter and where a certain enthusiasm was manifested in spite of everything. A time of the gold rush in the fields of science, a faith in progress, a belief in discovery. " We wanted to both revisit the picturesque nature of the genre and restore the energy of that time through the characters. "
“A time when, unlike today, GEIPAN surveys were carried out in the field, door-to-door and in a trench coat. The two authors tried to put in pictures the science, the notion of discovery and the fascination with UFOs emanating from this period. " The fact that GEIPAN was created at that time is quite emblematic; at the start, the idea was to put the best engineers of CNES on the spot to try to understand, to know if there was a potential scientific discovery to be made ... It was a time when there was really this desire to believe in it! "adds Clémence Dargent. Subsequently, GEIPAN became a public service dedicated to the search for rational explanations of the cosmos, "a French exception allowing to have an official and state response to give to these mysteries. "
“Throughout their research in the INA archives, the authentic testimonies of people interviewed at that time fascinated them. " There was at GEIPAN a very strong human contact. They, who are engineers, found themselves facing people having difficulty in expressing themselves and in describing what they see. " The two screenwriters subsequently met people. directors of the institute, who answered them very quickly. " We wrote them an email when we were still at Fémis, ten minutes later we received an answer offering to come and see them in Toulouse! We said to ourselves that they should not have many UFO cases to be treated at that time, "laughs Martin Douaire.
“In Toulouse, they meet Xavier Passot, head of GEIPAN from 2011 to 2016. " We discovered his small office, with children's drawings, and what he called" his lulu box ", in which he kept the testimonies. the wackiest. He had a sleeveless knitted sweater with his little GEIPAN badge pinned on it ... [With Clémence] we started to think more and more that the series was going to be a comedy. "
“Xavier Passot then puts them in contact with two people who participated in the beginnings of the research group: the director Alain Esterle, who is somewhat the equivalent of the character of Didier Mathure in the series, and François Louange, a computer scientist who inspired them. the character of Rémy, played by Quentin Dolmaire. " They were really passionate, they lived a time when we had the impression of inventing a discipline, a method ... The impression of being adventurers of a new science."
While the actual GEPAN researchers, UFO witnesses, researchers & enthusiasts might take issue with aspects of the series, its trajectory is entertaining, imaginative, informative, and somewhat addictive. Despite the series’ light comedy touches, the parody and the excesses that play with the real history of GEPAN, I enjoyed the show.
I prefer the open science based trajectory of collaborative ventures like GEPAN (GEIPAN) to the hatchlings of a skewed, narrow visioned approach that seems to pivot around the classified military intelligence approach.
The open scientific approach also engages with the human journey, that is celebrated, perhaps to excess, in this engaging tilt at the “beauty and terror” of our engagement with UFOs, UAPs, OVNIs, et.al. - whatever you call this most fascinating mystery.
Enjoy the series (I’ve avoided spoilers (except for somewhat clarifying the above image), and it looks like there will be a 2nd season) but do try to deeply engage with the realities the show plays with – the real science story and the reality of UFOs, UAPs, OVNIs, and the phenomenon’s many iterations.
posted by Bill Chalker at 11:58 PM
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