According to recently declassified records dating back to the Cold War, two American F 86-D Saber attack jets were scrambled to confront an unidentified flying object in UK airspace during the spring of 1957. One of the pilots, Milton Torres, was only seconds away from firing a salvo consisting of two dozen rockets at the strange object that registered as something larger than life on his radar screen. Adding to the unusual circumstances of the operation was the speed at which both pilots had been given the command to open fire which, in this case, came before the jets were even in the air.

“I had a lock-on that had the proportions of a flying aircraft carrier,” Torres explained.  “I was only a lieutenant and very much aware of the gravity of the situation. I felt very much like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”

The declassified files show no official explanation for the event, which came about during a time of heightened tension between Western powers and the mighty Russian Republic. But UFO expert David Clarke believes the sighting might have been part of a secret U.S. project to create phantom aircraft on radar screens to test Soviet air defenses.

The object was reported to spend times hovering motionless in the sky before accelerating to speeds in excess of 10,000 kilometers per hour and flying erratically. Given that no human could survive the G-Forces of such acceleration, and such unnatural flight paths were traveled, there is no plausible way to conclude the object was piloted by anyone on Earth.

But was it from the great beyond

Since before the dawn of written language, humans have told stories of incredible people who come from beyond. In cave paintings we can see, what appears to be, disks in the sky. In Renaissance art we can see men in cone-shaped rockets. In the last century we have heard thousands of tales of people being abducted, or contacted, or witnessing vehicles of incredible technological prowess and design. But does this mean that we are being watched by beings of extra-terrestrial origin? To what purpose would these visits serve?

Even though this was a subject discussed several months back, it is certainly worth another look.

Looking For Signs

Where there are threats, real or imagined, there are opportunities for personal gain. This rule has been seen time and time again in human history, and it is seen yet again with some countries handling of the ongoing “War on Terror” If there were intelligent beings with technology superior to ours regularly coming down to Earth, we would have likely developed some kind of defense against them, if not made plans to go to war and conquer some planets for ourselves. Regardless of whether this would be some unified and altruistic “Us vs. Them” mentality, or one seized upon by capitalistic juggernauts and sold to us under the guise of self-preservation, we would be meeting these beings out there, rather than down here.

On top of this, when we examine the maneuvers performed by these supposedly inhuman vehicles, they defy the laws of motion and rationality that we have come to expect in objects throughout the universe. Why would a large vessel of scientific or military purpose accelerate to incredible speeds and decelerate on a dime only to hover a few hundred meters from where it was, only to do it again? Why would a craft that can travel untold light years need to jump a kilometer or two closer to an object at speeds in excess of Mach 12? It’s certainly not to get a better look at some human activity, as the sensory equipment on such a vessel would undoubtedly be so vastly superior to anything that we could imagine that the Hubble Space Telescope would look like a young child’s play-thing rather than a delicate instrument of science.

Then there’s the abduction issue. If humans are so interesting as to warrant a close up scientific examination, why would they be so kind as to return us to the very same place we were taken from after finishing whatever tests they might want to perform? Why bring us back at all? It would be far more interesting, from a scientific point of view, to keep us in captivity so that we could be studied in greater detail. At the very least, we could be brought back to some other world to be put on display in some exotic zoo or killed and put on display in some museum. If the tests are not meant to kill us, then clearly the beings realize that we have some type of capacity for sentience or intelligence, and the whole game of studying an indigenous species would forever be changed on this world.

Looking at how humans categorize, study and exploit living organisms for our own entertainment, it’s difficult to imagine a species with a greater level of intelligence or historical record to make such obvious errors in judgment.

Looking For Conspiracy

All this said there are some who feel that UFO’s are from other worlds, and that the human race has been grounded by a galactic commission that feels we’re not yet ready to explore the boundless reaches of outer space. The theory goes a little something like this:

In 1971, after NASA’s last manned moon mission, the UN was visited by diplomats from a grand coalition of planets who advised us to stop sending people to extra-terrestrial worlds. Instead, we are permitted to send robotic probes as far as the outer reaches of our solar system, but no farther. Faster-than-light vehicles are prohibited, and there is to be no study on anti-gravity or space-time distortion equipment. When the extra-terrestrial coalition believes we are ready to move on to the next stage of galactic exploration, they will let us know.

While the concept of being visited by a diplomatic group of extra-terrestrials is far-fetched and utterly fantastic, it’s most interesting to see that some people actually believe the UN is competent enough to enforce such a law. The UN has consistently failed to respond to anything in a timely fashion, and can no more manage other nations than it can manage its “Disaster relief” operations. Of course, there are several other wild theories about why man has not ventured beyond Low Earth Orbit since the Early-70s, but this was the one that seemed the most plausible … which doesn’t say much about the others.

Paying Attention

Considering the sheer vastness of space and the number of stars that we can see with our limited technology, there is very little doubt in the minds of millions that we’re not alone. To think that we are the only semi-intelligent creatures in the universe is beyond narrow-minded. It’s disappointing. Eventually we will make our way out among the stars and, when we do, it will be a great and wonderous thing to meet new people and new civilizations. To see how others have developed, biologically, technologically and sociologically, would be an amazing gift.

We had the opportunity to explore new cultures several hundred years ago during the era of colonization, and we blew it terribly. Let’s hope that the human race will once again have the opportunity to study and explore all that the universe’s inhabitants have to offer.

What do you think of the recent UFO file declassifications? Are these unidentified craft of extra-terrestrial origin, or are over-active imaginations making a mountain out of a mole hill? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.