THE BEGIN-SADAT CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 183 The Pentagon’s UAP Task Force Franc Milburn © The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies Bar-Ilan University Ramat Gan 5290002 Israel Tel. 972-3-5318959 Fax. 972-3-5359195 [email protected] www.besacenter.org ISSN 0793-1042 November 2020 Cover image: Screen capture of US Navy footage of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, US Department of Defense The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies is an independent, non-partisan think tank conducting policy-relevant research on Middle Eastern and global strategic affairs, particularly as they relate to the national security and foreign policy of Israel and regional peace and stability. It is named in memory of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, whose efforts in pursuing peace laid the cornerstone for conflict resolution in the Middle East. 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In June 2020, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence unveiled the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) at the Office of Naval Intelligence—a successor to the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This paper dives down the rabbit hole with Defense Department insiders, scientists, and declassified material to find answers to a host of questions: Are mystery craft near-peer adversary platforms or exotic US platforms? What is the technology behind them? What kind of threat do they pose? What are the geostrategic implications? And what are we not being told? Franc Milburn is a strategic and operational advisor. A former intelligence officer, he is an alumnus of Sandhurst and the London School of Economics. He has previously written for the Middle East Economic Survey, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. @FrancMilburn On August 4, 2020, the Pentagon announced the establishment of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). This followed Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Marco Rubio's June 17 report, which was attached to the Senate Intelligence Authorization Act for 2021. Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist approved the establishment of the multi-agency UAPTF, which is to be led by the Navy under the “cognizance” of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (OUSDI). The task force was created to “[improve] understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAP,” with the mission “to detect, analyze and catalog UAP that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.” Presumably, “UAP” refers to the same craft that the military, FBI, CIA, DIA, and others have been detecting and analyzing for the past seven decades. The release stressed the Pentagon’s “paramount concern” for “the safety of our personnel and the security of our operations.” The Department of Defense [DoD] and military departments “take any incursions by unauthorized aircraft into our training ranges or designated airspace very seriously and examine each report.” These incidents appear to now be taken more seriously in public than the much-maligned Project Blue Book, about which one UFO historian commented: “The Air Force baked it, the press served it, and the public ate it.” The Blue Book, which ran from 1952 to 1969 and succeeded projects Sign (1948) and Grudge, summarized its investigations thus: • No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security; • There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and • There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” were extraterrestrial vehicles. Despite these conclusions, military and scientific interest in UFOs continued in secret after 1969. The Senate Intelligence Committee currently “supports the efforts [of the UAPTF] at the Office of Naval Intelligence [ONI] to standardize collection and reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena, any links they have to adversarial foreign governments, and the threat they pose to US military assets and installations.” The Committee directed the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), together with other agencies, to submit a report within 180 days of the date of the enactment of the Act to congressional and armed services committees on UAP. A key question about the UAPTF is this: Why isn’t the US Air Force leading it, when the stated mission of the Air Force is to “fly, fight and win...in air, space and cyberspace”? A recent podcast from the To The Stars Academy, which includes former Pentagon, intelligence, and aerospace insiders, suggests that this might reflect lingering stigma over the Blue Book, adding that there is a logic to the Navy’s taking the lead in view of its global mobility. Some Navy reports derive from the same areas where the USAF operates. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon suggests that the Air Force had difficulty acknowledging “mission failure,” describing it as “a bitter pill to swallow.” Lack of forthrightness might also have played a part. “AATIP did not have the access to sensitive classified Air Force information, [which was] in different stovepipes. Congress is making it very clear they want all hands on deck. They want all these organizations to contribute everything they have regardless of what compartment it’s in. They want the full picture.” Mellon’s colleague Louis Elizondo, a TTSA director, former career counter-intelligence officer, and former AATIP director, says: “Everything is a potential threat until one is sure it is not a threat… when you look at what we are seeing from an intelligence perspective, there seems to be key interest in our military capabilities and specifically in our nuclear capabilities. If that's the case and we don't know what they are, we don't know how they work, we don't know who's behind the wheel, we don't know what their intentions are and somehow they can operate with impunity in our airspace, I think it's a safe bet to say… that something with this level of technological capability could be a threat, should it want to be a threat…Anyone who says for sure they know it's not a threat – they don't know what they are talking about.” Journalist Tom Rogan writes that the Navy “is front and center for a simple reason: its nuclear platforms keep attracting UFOs.” The Committee requires “Identification of any incidents or patterns that indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic [nuclear] or conventional forces at risk.” UAPs have regularly appeared at or near nuclear weapon sites ever since the late 1940s. Rogan says, “The ‘potential threat’ here is that the UFOs can detect and intercept these platforms on land, on sea, or undersea, and with impunity.” One particularly alarming claim concerns the destruction in flight of an ICBM by a UFO. Another serious consideration is the possibility of accidental nuclear war through misinterpretation of UFO data. The Committee alludes to the “stove-piping,” saying it “remains concerned that there is no unified, comprehensive process within the Federal Government for collecting and analyzing intelligence on unidentified aerial phenomena, despite the potential threat. The Committee understands that the relevant intelligence may be sensitive; nevertheless, the Committee finds that the information sharing and coordination across the Intelligence Community has been inconsistent, and this issue has lacked attention from senior leaders.” This is a fairly damning indictment, as information sharing and coordination is essential when it comes to dealing with American adversaries. Dr. Robert McGuire spent 27 years at the Institute for Defense Analyses and has decades of industry, government, and intelligence community experience. In a recent interview, he said: “If you have all these national assets, the issue is how can we use them to do a better job to figure out what the heck these things [UAP] are and why they are here and where they are going…. each of these assets is operated by an entity. And the entity jealously guards its prerogatives, its budgets and control of the assets it has been given to control. And it determines and distributes the data that comes from that asset…Total stove-piping. Each of these instruments has exquisite capabilities… People just cannot begin to imagine just how amazing these assets are.” McGuire stressed the necessity to protect capabilities so that adversaries cannot learn how to evade detection. He suggested multi-sensor fusing by algorithm into a single product, and described the problem of instrument “filters” that eliminate unwanted “noise.” UAP may emanate filtered out signatures that need to be add to the filter library. He went on: “Let's suppose a large spacecraft enters our atmosphere and is detected by some camera. Well let’s suppose it is moving at high speed and giving off electromagnetics. It’s tearing up the atmosphere and we have these sensors all over the world listening... until we fuse all these things together, we don't know how to make them work collaboratively.” In a tweet, he added, “All bodies emit blackbody radiation. If observed platforms use something like the Alcubierre drive, then blackbody photons are shifted according to the general theory of relativity to far field observers into the visible spectrum.” Asked by the author if this means they can be tracked, he responded: “I think yes and one should look for a big shift/change when the things accelerate.” Dr. Bruce Cornet, who carried out a nine-year investigation in New York State, told the author that craft he filmed, including a cigar-shaped object that “unfolded” wings and control surfaces that resembled “a black 707,” were emitting “reverse Doppler” and false commercial jet acoustic signatures in a deliberate effort to evade detection. The cigar-shaped object later stopped in mid-air and rotated 180 degrees. “Many times, they tried to mimic conventional aircraft sounds—jet engine sounds—sometimes propeller sounds… but the one thing that they couldn't do was produce a normal Doppler sound,” he said. Cornet spoke to prominent theoretical physicist Dr. Jack Sarfatti, who told him that according to his theory about how UAP hulls work, their meta-materials used reverse Doppler. “This corroborated his [Sarfatti's] ideas that the craft were anti-gravity.” Sarfatti, a futurist, comments on this in one of a number of scientific papers he graciously shared with the author: “Explaining US Navy Close Encounters with Tic-Tac UAV.” This was a commentary on Dr. Hal Puthoff's groundbreaking 2018 lecture, in which Puthoff (currently VP for science and technology at TTSA) provided hitherto classified details about the DoD's UAP program. Sarfatti says: “Bruce Cornet claims to have measured this reverse Doppler effect in sound waves from UAVs [Unidentified Aerial/Aerospace Vehicles]. The strong gravity near field distortions will blend electromagnetic waves bouncing off the Tic-Tac, causing apparent mirage shape-shifting and even stealth cloaking, if desired by the controlling, probably fully conscious AI post-quantum computer (autonomous drone).” The Senate Committee specifically mentioned data of the following types: geospatial [National Reconnaissance Office and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency], signals, human and measurement and signature intelligence, and “centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government, regardless of which service or agency acquired the information.” The FBI was included. Absent from explicit mention was NASA—a key aerospace player—and its contractor, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), which, though not a federal agency, has ears to the sky. The Department of Energy (DoE) also has a stake in UAP, given the latter's interest in DoE nuclear sites, as do the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board for flight safety reasons. The US Space Force, though under purview of the USAF, also deserves mention. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations will have a data repository on UAP, and Air Force Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command likely have crash retrieval roles. There was no reference to allies, despite the fact that US agencies have been liaising with counterparts from Brazil, Spain, and the United Kingdom for years. There is also no mention of private sector aerospace companies. The question “ours or theirs?” can be construed different ways. UAP might be exotic American tech, near-peer adversary platforms, or something else entirely. Chris Mellon addresses this in series two of the show Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation. On a podcast, he says: “We know that UFOs exist. This is no longer an issue. The NAVY itself has publicly acknowledged the fact that they exist, and NAVY pilots—active duty pilots—have gone on the record in The New York Times acknowledging the fact that they exist. So, the issue now is: why are they here, where are they coming from, and what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?” Mellon emphasizes recent military UAP experiences like the 2004 Nimitz/Tic-Tac encounter, which is particularly notable because the witnesses are so credible and the incidents are backed up with sensor information. He believes a breakdown in the UAP reporting system means sensitive installations and locations are being entered on a regular basis but are not being passed up the chain of command. “That's why we consider this a potential threat, and that's just not acceptable.” Key Assessments (Source: Tic-Tac Executive Report, 2004): • The Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) was no known aircraft or air vehicle currently in the inventory of the United States or any foreign nation. • The AAV exhibited advanced low observable characteristics at multiple radar bands rendering US radar based engagement capabilities ineffective. • The AAV exhibited advanced aerodynamic performance with no visible control surfaces and no visible means to generate lift. • The AAV exhibited advanced propulsion capability by demonstrating the ability to remain stationary with little to no variation in altitude transitioning to horizontal and/or vertical velocities far greater than any known aerial vehicle with little to no visible signature. • The AAV possibly demonstrated the ability to 'cloak' or become invisible to the human eye or human observation. • The AAV possibly demonstrated a highly advanced capability to operate undersea completely undetectable by our most advanced sensors. The language in the Senate Committee report was not drafted by Mellon but by congressional staffers. It is clear, however, that Mellon and TTSA had a strong influence on the Pentagon’s release of Navy video evidence, Navy UAP acknowledgement, UAP reporting guidelines, briefings of lawmakers, interviews with military witnesses, and suggestions of intelligence platforms for tasking and driving the investigative agenda forward. Senator Rubio said on CBS in July: “The bottom line is that if there are things flying over your military bases and you don’t know what they are because they’re not yours and they exhibit—potentially—technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal, that, to me, is a national security risk and one that we should be looking into… If it’s something from outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we've seen some technological leap on behalf of the Chinese or the Russians or some other adversary…. Our perspective is there is someone flying in the airspace that no one else is allowed to fly in and we don’t know who it is and it isn’t something we have. We need to know what that is.” Dr. Lani Kass, a dynamic, engaging academic, is a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a board member of the US Air Force Institute of Technology. A former professor of military strategy at the National War College, she has served as special assistant to the Chief of Staff, US Air Force and as senior policy advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She told the author: “I’ve always kept an open mind on the subject. Not dismissing ET—it’s idiotic to assume humans are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, but I tend to focus on horses before zebras when I hear the clacking of hooves.” She continues: “How much does anyone know about the B21? I’m more inclined to believe it’s terrestrial tech—ours or adversaries’—buried super deep in a compartment very few folks even know to exist—much less what’s in it.” She warns against a Western mindset of complacency and “cognitive dissonance” regarding Chinese tech advances. The key point here is not which theory Dr. Kass prefers, nor what she is willing to divulge; it is that a highly educated, open-minded former advisor to America's most senior uniformed officers is willing to discuss UFOs on the record. This would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. One problem with the Chinese tech theory is that much has been stolen from the US or otherwise acquired from Russia, with advanced Chinese fifth-generation aircraft reportedly having issues and requiring Russian engines. As for UAP, there are “five observables” (as well as a sixth, to be described later in this paper). These observables are characteristics captured by sensors and on visuals that don't easily lend themselves to known or suspected terrestrial platforms. The five observables are instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic velocity, low observability, positive lift, and multimedium travel. Dr. Puthoff remarked on the Nimitz case, “The F-18s could not obtain lock with their radars because they were stealthy, but Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) could pick them up to some degree based on their heat signatures. The Advanced Aerospace Vehicle appeared to demonstrate advanced acceleration, aerodynamic, and propulsion capability beyond anything that we knew existed on the planet.” One scientific study, “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles,” notes: “Estimated accelerations range from almost 100 G to 1000s of Gs with no observed air disturbance, no sonic booms, and no evidence of excessive heat commensurate with even the minimal estimated energies… In many cases the number and quality of witnesses…and the equipment used to track and record the craft favor the latter hypothesis that these are indeed technologically advanced craft. The observed flight characteristics…are consistent with the flight characteristics required for interstellar travel…if these observed accelerations were sustainable in space, then these craft could easily reach relativistic speeds within a matter of minutes to hours and cover interstellar distances in a matter of days to weeks, proper time.” The study goes on: “Furthermore, these craft appear to violate the laws of physics in that they do not have flight or control surfaces, any visible means of propulsion apparently violating Newton’s Third Law, and can operate in multiple media, such as space (low Earth orbit), air, and water without apparent hindrance, sonic booms, or heat dumps. The nature, origin, and purpose of these UAVs are unknown. It is also not known if they are piloted, controlled remotely, or autonomous. It has been made clear by US officials that if these craft were hostile, then they would pose a serious threat. If some of these [craft] are of extraterrestrial origin, then it would be important to assess the potential threat they pose. More interestingly, these [craft] have the potential to provide new insights into aerospace engineering and other technologies. The potential of a serious threat, the promise of advancements in science and engineering, evolving expectations about extraterrestrial life, and even a deeper understanding of the acts of misperception and misinterpretation are all important reasons for scientists to seriously study and understand these objects.” (Source: Kevin H. Knuth, Robert M. Powell, and Peter A. Reali, MDPI) In Unidentified, Mellon says: “The phenomenon is real. These are not American or Russian or Chinese vehicles. If there is another intelligence from another system that is vastly more advanced and sophisticated than we are, and we were able to establish contact and communication, it would be the equivalent possibly of gaining hundreds of thousands or millions of years’ worth of knowledge in days, months, or weeks.” Some of the most incredible revelations come from a current Pentagon insider who has been involved in phenomenology research for the best part of a quarter century. In his own words, in communications seen by the author, he was “a DoD-deputized advisor to the Nimitz and Roosevelt investigator under a subcontract to the DoD” and senior scientific advisor to AATIP. Dr. Eric Davis is currently adjunct professor at the Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics and Engineering Research at Baylor University. His profile includes combined work experience in aerospace physics, astronomy, and astrophysics; experience in national security and DoD, DoE, intelligence community and aerospace industry special projects. He was previously chief science officer for Earth Tech, working for long-term associate Hal Puthoff and Bigelow Advanced Aerospace Studies and the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), conducting phenomenology research and servicing a DIA contract, known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), to generate 38 scientific reports for AATIP, projecting exotic physics and technologies to 2050. In an interview in May 2020, Davis revealed that AATIP had not ended in 2012 as previously believed but continued under a new name, new leadership, and in a new location—none of which he would disclose, but which we now know to be the UAPTF. Davis did reveal that he is still a consultant to the Pentagon's UFO program and that it is still under the purview of the OUSDI. “This is an intelligence operation to gather data, analyze and evaluate it and recommend courses of action… and I have a history in this business going back to 1996, so the program director knows me very well, knows my boss very well; knows my former boss very well.” The following are emails seen by the author that reveal startling revelations about the UAPTF (all emails in this study are reprinted by permission): On Aug 13, 2020, at 3:31 PM, Eric Davis wrote: “Sorry, Sid! You’re off on a time-wasting diversion from the facts. The F-18 FLIR [forward looking infrared] videos are NOT hoaxed. I was a DoD-deputized advisor to the Nimitz and Roosevelt investigator under a subcontract to the DoD, and I perfectly know the provenance of those videos plus all of the associated Aegis weapon system and other radar, as well as all of the pilot reports. These are the facts and are true. This squeamish little nonsense about being sceptical and considering alternative narratives as a valid hypothesis is a sign of cognitive dissonance. Regards, Eric Eric W. Davis, Ph.D., FBIS, AFAIAA Adjunct Professor, Early Universe, Cosmology & Strings Theory Group Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics & Engineering Research, Baylor University” From: Sid Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2020 4:37 PM To: Eric Davis Subject: Re: TicTac Video Actually Shows An F18 - my upcoming video with Sid “Thanks Eric. I think everyone would like the videos to be authentic. I cannot comment on the mathematics that Mike speaks of, but if he is correct then it raises different questions. If you are confident about the authenticity of the videos then my question to you then is whether these craft are possibly our own or do you personally feel they are extraterrestrial? Sid” On Aug 13, 2020, at 4:21 PM, Eric Davis wrote: “Mike has no mathematics nor access to the original Navy data. He wasn’t a part of the AATIP/AAWSAP or ONI investigations, so he’s just putting out false story for whatever reason. Eric” On Aug 13, 2020, at 5:41 PM, Sid wrote: “So then, Eric, if we can dismiss Mike’s contribution then in your opinion are they earth-based technologies or extraterrestrial?” On Aug 13, 2020, at 5:46 PM, Eric Davis wrote: “Those craft are off-world as I’ve told two Senate committees’ staff and DoD agencies. Eric” “That (my response of a minute ago, posted below) is not my opinion, but is where the physics and the facts lead. Eric” It is interesting to speculate on Davis’s comment that he was a “DoD-deputized advisor to the Nimitz and Roosevelt investigator.” So was this investigator one person or two? Is Davis talking about being an advisor during AATIP days—i.e., from 2007 onward—or pre-2007? If the latter, then what was the name of the program pre-AATIP and which part of the DoD was running it? Navy? Air Force? DIA? Why were Air Force officers taking custody of hard drives from Nimitz group ships and aircraft, and was Davis privy to a 2004 pre-AATIP Air Force investigation? Col. John Alexander, a legendary Vietnam War Green Beret, has briefed at the highest levels of government, including White House staff, National Security Council, Congress, Director of Central Intelligence, and senior DoD officials. He is a former Pentagon insider and expert on UFOs and the potential use of remote viewing, psychokinesis, and other psychic skills in military operations. Dubbed by Louis Elizondo “a Godfather of everything weird and spooky at the Pentagon,” he is a colleague and friend of Davis from NIDS and Skinwalker Ranch days. Responding to Davis's revelations, Col. Alexander told the author: “In short, I agree with Eric. We worked together when he was with NIDS. Think I referred him to Bob [Bigelow] to get hired. As we discussed [in an earlier interview with the author], the objects are not made by humans. That said, the ET hypothesis is too simple. Trying to raise the complexity issues with [the general public is well beyond their comprehension—so simply stating “not man-made” should meet the needs of most people. Importantly, there have been sightings for millennia. That excludes the possibility of foreign development. Reports of interactions between humans and sentient non-humans have also been stated since recorded history and in all cultures. That leads me to infer that whatever we are observing, there is no one simple answer and these phenomena (yes, plural) are probably beyond our ability to imagine.” In response to the UAPTF disclosures, Alexander told the author that “While they [UAPTF] may think they have been asked to review UAPs, in reality they have been handed a project with the complexity of cancer.” In 1985, Alexander formed the Advanced Theoretical Physics Group, so named to evade Freedom of Information requests about UFOs. The group was described by the Washington Post as “The Voodoo Warriors of the Pentagon.” Alexander writes: “The ATP project… allowed me to function within acceptable limits while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of traditional credibility. It also required finding the right network of people... Venturing into studies of psi phenomena and UFOs was not seen as career-enhancing. Membership included people from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, plus…defense aerospace industries and… the Intelligence Community…. at least one representative from the Lockheed Skunk Works was present…There were cases involving military weapon systems that posed a significant threat and should be investigated. Multisensory data supported observations of physical craft that performed intelligent maneuvers that were far beyond any known human capability. Examples included: extremely rapid acceleration (0 to 4,000 MPH near instantaneously). Speeds that are not achievable by any manned craft today. Very fast, sharp turns (90 degrees or more and producing g-forces that would exceed human survivability). Abrupt disappearance from radar (long before stealth technology was developed). Interrupting electrical systems without physical damage to them. Study of the UFO data could provide a potential for a leap in technology. This would not require access to a craft, but could be derived from scientific examination of the reports determining the theoretical physics required to achieve such results.” If this sounds familiar, then one wonders what the DoD been doing chasing its tail since ATP and reinventing the wheel. If we go back to August 1954, for example, we see that the Air Force updated its AFR 200-2 “Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting” manual, which considered UFOs to be “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.” It lists the objectives of UFO reporting thus: “First as a possible threat to the security of the United States and its forces, and secondly, to determine technical aspects involved.” It seems not much has changed. The recent revelations beg the questions: why now, and why were we not told all this before? In June 2019, Louis Elizondo went on the record admitting that the US Government has debris from a UFO in its possession. The New York Times (NYT) quoted Davis in July, saying: “Mr. Davis, who now works for Aerospace Corporation, a defense contractor, said he gave a classified briefing to a Defense DoD agency as recently as March, about retrievals of off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” The same article issued a correction for former senator Harry Reid after writing: “Mr. Reid, the former Democratic senator from Nevada who pushed for funding the earlier UFO program… said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied. ‘After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports—some were substantive, some not so substantive—that there were actual materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession,’ Mr. Reid said in an interview.” The correction read: “An earlier version of this article inaccurately rendered remarks attributed to Harry Reid, the retired Senate majority leader from Nevada. Mr. Reid said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied; he did not say that crashes had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades.” Reid did tweet in April 2020: “I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this [video] footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The US needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications.” Discussing metamaterials, the NYT stated: “No crash artifacts have been publicly produced for independent verification. Some retrieved objects, such as unusual metallic fragments, were later identified from laboratory studies as man-made…in some cases, examination of the materials had so far failed to determine their source and led him [Davis] to conclude, ‘We couldn’t make it ourselves.’” The NYT concluded: “The constraints on discussing classified programs—and the ambiguity of information cited in unclassified slides from the briefings—have put officials who have studied UFOs in the position of stating their views without presenting any hard evidence.” The NYT followed with another piece that said: “Current officials are now concerned about the potential threat represented by the very real, advanced technological objects… And if technology has been retrieved from downed objects, what better way to try to understand how they work?... Going from data on a distant object in the sky to the possession of a retrieved one on the ground makes a leap that many find hard to accept and that clearly demands extraordinary evidence. Numerous associates of the Pentagon program, with high security clearances and decades of involvement with official UFO investigations, told us they were convinced such crashes have occurred, based on their access to classified information. But the retrieved materials themselves, and any data about them, are completely off-limits to anyone without clearances and a need to know.” Dr. Jacques Vallée and Stanford's Dr. Garry Nolan are conducting research into three categories of purported UFO-related materials. Journalist Alejandro Rojas nailed Davis on crash retrievals in April 2019: “There have been crashes, the superpowers on the earth have had their share of crashes and they have recovered the vehicles from their crashes. And so that's why Jacques Vallée and I agree that even though these things behave like a conscious spiritual psychic energy, they do have an advanced technology, they have hardware, and there’s a craft and there’s occupants or UFOnauts that he calls them, Jacques Vallée calls them UFOnauts. So, there is [sic] UFOnauts running these craft. Whatever they may be. So, they have that technology. We do too. And it's a very super-sensitive topic because it’s something that your listeners are probably going to be shocked at. People with need to know access authorization and security clearances involved with that type of work are the only ones that know. The vast majority of the rest of the government really doesn't know. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, firstly because of the stove-piping that is going on in compartmentalized programs. The crash retrieval program is a very small program. It is not a huge government infrastructure. It is a very poorly funded program. I do know that the program was terminated [in] 1989 for lack of progress in reverse-engineering anything that they had—any of the hardware that they had. And they’ll resurrect it maybe every so often—so many years will go by and they’ll try it again. And they may still succeed, but the compartmentalization is a killer. Scientists cannot communicate with other scientists to get help. If you are in the crash retrieval program—or any black program for that matter—and you hit a roadblock, you can’t just call your best buddy or any expert that you don’t know… If your small group of experts is stuck, you are screwed. The point is that these things [UAP] are operating; they go way outside the envelope of our engineering and physics technologies, and I can guarantee you that no laws of physics are broken whatsoever, it's just that its either the existing laws we have, we haven’t extrapolated it further enough or expanded it enough into realms or areas of phase space where we can discover new solutions to these existing physical laws, which would give us advanced propulsion and power, that would produce this type of technology once you have an engineering and manufacturing technology to create these things, so that’s where we’re at.” He expands on this in a recent email: “There’s no need to violate the laws of physics, and in this instance, none have been observed to be violated which is in accord with other observational and technological UAP data inputs going back for several decades. Instead, what one observes is a technology that exceeds the most advanced of human thought and engineering capabilities that requires a new frame of reference for understanding a new materials science, a new propulsion physics, and a new power physics. Human science hasn’t discovered everything...yet.” Asked in the interview whether it will be possible to develop technology based on observation of the phenomena, Davis replies: “It's really hard to predict. Probably long-term, not near-term…. And these things don’t look like anything we can manufacture on earth, so we don’t have the manufacturing or industrial technology for it. For example, that’s what the 38 papers that the DIA wanted in their [inaudible] to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies contract, was to take the physics and engineering of 2009-2022, extrapolate it to 2050, are we going to be able to have the physics and engineering and the technology/industrial base that will produce a vehicle that will match the Tic-Tacs by 2050?” Davis opines: “Because what happens if the Tic-Tacs decide to turn against us; and they used their advanced weaponry—whatever they have—against us and start hurting people, destroying things? We’ve seen hints of that in Project Blue Book's investigation into the Northern Tier silo encounters with the giant UFOs that shut down their warheads’ navigation systems. And that happened multiple times. It happened in the late 60’s and it happened in the mid 70’s. And so we know they are quite capable of rendering our warheads and ICBMs useless…which is dangerous, because if the Soviet Union had decided to launch a war right then and there, the damn UFOs [would] have rendered it impossible for us to do a counter-strike, because our goddamn ICBMS up in the Northern Tier were shut down. And then there's Colares [Brazil], where the box-shaped UFOs were actually killing people and injuring large numbers of people. And they were using beams to do it. So, UFOs have not been benevolent. They have not shown any space brotherly love and peace type movements towards us. It has all been just hide and seek, hide and seek, and we’ll use stealth as far as possible so that humans don’t see us in the environment and then when we expose ourselves, we expose ourselves, do our little fun games and then take off. They may be testing our technology. They may be testing the US Navy's capabilities when they do this and they have also done this with the Air Force too. What are they doing it for? They are not humans so they don't think like humans. In case they decide to become aggressive, we're screwed.” Dr. Sarfatti says of Davis: “We disagree on how to explain them [UAP] with physics. I think we agree they are an imminent military threat.” Interestingly, Col. Alexander does not see the phenomena as a threat, telling the author that as their tech and other capabilities were so far ahead of ours, they could have already defeated us (humanity) any time they wanted to and continue to be able to so. He believes that if they did want to destroy or enslave mankind, then they would use some kind of biological agent, as they have no need to use mechanical craft. Dr. Travis Taylor, an aerospace engineer and astronomer who has worked on various programs for the Department of Defense and NASA, writes in his book An Introduction to Planetary Defense – A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion: “We would be the Natives if attacked by aliens…Will they be nice or nasty? Do we wish to become extinct as some natives did?...Or will we fight back? Perhaps we should prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Now is the time for preparation before it is too late!” Referring to unarmed Navy F18s in the Nimitz incident, Davis states: “So that was a test that could not be performed, to see whether you could shoot one down [because the Navy F18s were unarmed]… it’s about planning for potential eventualities and we have to worry about something more advanced that could be overwhelming our military technology, so we’ve got to be able to extrapolate to 2050 will our physics be there, will our engineering be there, will our industrial manufacturing technology be there to produce Tic-Tac-type technology….the military needs to be looking at making the weapons and that's why we have the 38 papers.” Some of Davis's interview comments are confirmed in another intriguing email seen by the author: On Aug 28, 2020, at 2:35 PM: “We (Hal [Puthoff] and I for the AAWSAP) were NOT tasked to explain the Tic-Tac, or UAP, propulsion and power physics plus their other attributes. Instead, we were tasked to extrapolate 2009/2010 engineering-physics (of a variety of technical topics that were published as 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Document reports) to the year 2050 in order to determine whether American engineering-physics can approach or approximate, or not, the observed characteristics and capabilities of Tic-Tacs / UAPs in a scenario where the Tic-Tacs/UAPs might become a future threat to the US. The ground rules and assumptions that were established for the 38 DIRD reports allowed us to speculate when hard empirical data on Tic-Tac/UAPs was unavailable. You CANNOT EVER definitively explain Tic-Tacs/UAPs unless and until you actually have such a craft in your lab to examine/measure it for the purpose of comparing its measured properties/capabilities with one’s theoretical predictions. A speculation or hypothesis is no good in absence of the hard empirical data needed to validate the hypothesis with, and the empirical data must not be limited to the F-18 FLIR videos, surface warship radar, and the pilot reports. Eric” In an August 2020 email to Sarfatti, Davis comments: “I have no UFO propulsion physics projects to be funded because my new employer doesn’t fund that type of research topic. I know that a few USG personnel already know who you are and what you’re about, but exotic or UFO propulsion physics research is not in their portfolio. Actual research falls under the purview of the military service labs and the DoE labs…Your UFO propulsion idea will have to stand up to scrutiny by the defense science, military service labs’, and DoE labs’ review boards/panels.” Col. John Alexander wrote to the author: “In your latest email you address TTSA [To the Stars Academy]. As you might guess I do know most of them. Have seen all the conspiratorial BS about being a covert intel agency. They are not. Yes, they, and maybe you, focus on the threat aspect. When I was running the Advanced Theoretical Physics project in the 1980’s, I did the same thing. The reason was funding. I’d do it again now if that was the goal. As I have pointed out before, the Department of Defense responds to threats…The point was, that is how funding could be obtained.” Alexander continued: “over 99 percent of Americans” are “near clueless as to how the [U.S. government] functions.” Dr. Davis makes an interesting comment on commercial applications of Tic-Tac tech: “And on the flip-side of that, boy that would be wonderful if we could get there because commercially it would revolutionize transportation and energy on the earth.” Commander David Fravor, the aviator who intercepted the Tic-Tac in 2004, also has things to say about the technology, which was far beyond anything he had seen previously or since—technology that could change the world. Theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre writes: “It is shown how, within the framework of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes, it is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed. By a purely local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region is possible. The resulting distortion is reminiscent of the “warp drive” of science fiction. However, just as it happens with wormholes, exotic matter will be needed in order to generate a distortion of spacetime like the one discussed here.” (Source: “The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast Travel Within General Relativity”) Dr. Robert McGuire explains: “The following is a rough analogy. Your spacecraft is a surfboard. You have a machine that generates waves that travel very fast through the water. The water doesn’t move fast but the wave does. You ride the wave and you go fast. The hard part is making the wave machine work.” Dr. Sarfatti says the technology behind the Tic-Tac UFO (2004 Nimitz incident) is not mysterious at all: it folds space into a warp drive in such a way as to get to where and when it desires with tiny amounts of energy. Sarfatti claims we can build our own Tic-Tacs quickly and that it would be in America’s best interests to do so, as Russia already has a head start. Such spacecraft would render all our conventional weapons obsolete, he explains, particularly if the warp capacity were weaponized. Sarfatti says high frequency gravity weapons (HFGW) are possible (“TIC-TAC has that weapon I predict”). He told the author that HFGW are “planet destroyers.” He says: “such craft can be manufactured with technology though not yet off-the-shelf in three to eight years depending on the scale of the effort… The smoking gun fact is that Tic-Tac is both a low energy non-FTL [non-faster than light] warp drive fighting machine, making our Top Gun pilots look like Haile Selassie’s cavalry with spears against Benito Mussolini’s tanks, machine guns and airplanes in 1935.” He describes Tic-Tac as “a weapon that rendered Commander Fravor’s F18 like a mouse played [with] by a giant Schrodinger cat.” Fravor’s wingman, interviewed on Unidentified, commented on the intercept: “It was so unnerving because it was so unpredictable. High-G, rapid velocity, rapid acceleration…so you were wondering, how can I possibly fight this?” “Engineering the metamaterial is the big problem, just like refining the required isotopes at Oak Ridge in Manhattan Project was the big problem that John A. Wheeler managed in WWII,” says Sarfatti, who studied under nuclear physicist Hans Albrecht Bethe—an important contributor to the Manhattan Project who described himself as “the midwife” of the H-bomb. Sarfatti says the US military is “at imminent risk of total defeat… no defense against low-power warp/wormhole T^3 [Tic-Tac tech] weapons.” He states that the US needs T^3 in case non-human powers prove unfriendly. He talks of “practical engineering physics solutions to a pressing military security issue.” T^3, he says, is the manipulation of space and time itself with small amounts of energy… some applications that immediately come to mind are: • Effective force shield defending planes, ships, tanks, soldiers from bullets, missiles, explosive debris. • Corrupting ICBM launch codes (Bentwaters/Rendlesham) creating temporal distortions in the launch circuitry. • As proven in the actual attempts of the F18s to engage the Tic-Tacs in 2004 and 2015, a good Tic-Tac pilot can easily win in any dogfight with an F18 pilot of equal skill. A recent article recounts: “Lt. Ryan Graves, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who has been in the Navy for a decade has come forward after talking to the Navy and Congress about the events he and his squadron mates witnessed between 2014 and 2015…Graves described how strange craft would appear in their training airspace and persist there not for minutes, but many hours, or even days at a time.” Graves said: “These things would be out there all day... Keeping an aircraft in the air requires a significant amount of energy. With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.” Graves also related how the UAP followed his strike group up and down the East Coast for months and then on deployment to the Middle East. Sarfatti predicts: “Control of the gravitational field with relatively small amounts of energy has many possible weapons applications. For example, a narrow laser-like beam of gravity curvature from Tic-Tac to F18 could do many things depending on its intensity from effective EMP [electromagnetic pulse] to tearing the F18 apart like falling into a black hole.” The Scientific Coalition for Ufology's report, “A Forensic Analysis of Navy Carrier Strike Group Eleven’s Encounter with an Anomalous Aerial Vehicle,” examined the extreme speed, acceleration, and power outputs demonstrated by the Tic-Tac UFOs. By some estimates, the craft reached speeds as high as 104,000 mph and had a parabolic trajectory that contained as much energy per second as the detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon. Sarfatti also posits a connection between the infamous Skinwalker Ranch and T^3 weapons: “The Skinwalker Ranch star gate portal hovering 1,000 feet over a place on the ranch can easily be a WMD. It can be controlled to be benign or to fry the area below as seen in the radiation reported on History Channel. The Tic-Tac has dual capability both as a warp drive vehicle as depicted above and as a traversable wormhole portal.” A recent Sarfatti proposal to the European Defence Agency (EDA) concerns “Innovative Solutions/Technologies for the Countering of Swarms of UAVs, specifically on the Protection of Static and Dynamic Land Facilities and Platforms”: “The proposal outlines the design of a craft [“aero-spacecraft”] embodying a multi-level lattice-within-a-lattice metamaterial that both controls the ambient gravitational field with small amounts of energy and acts as a super-AI system for monitoring its environment and providing fully autonomous, conscious decision-making aimed at the creation of a Black Hole weapon or a Stealth Cloak system, or a Force Shield that can protect against Swarms of UAVs and other types of ballistic threats or against any type of impulse weapons.” Sarfatti calls this a “Swarm-Hole.” Sarfatti and colleague Maurice Passman have collaborated on what they believe is Tic-Tac's highly advanced conscious AI. Commander Fravor USS Nimitz Close Encounter 2004 reported Tic Tac under intelligent control. • Sarfatti predicts the Tic Tac is a conscious AI machine. • The meta-material fuselage, he says, will be found to have a nano-scale quantum dot artificial neural net, that is as conscious as we are, if not more so, when externally resonantly pumped into the Frohlich macro-quantum “laser-like” phase of active living matter. • The quantum dot network emulates our own sub-neural protein dimer (“quantum dot”) micro-tubule network (Hameroff). • This same Frohlich resonant pumping is essential to the stealthy/cloak low energy/non-FTL warp drive so obvious from the observations. • “It’s a very efficient technology.” Sarfatti confidently predicts. Sarfatti and Passman's observations are based on interviews with USN pilots who observed Tic-Tac visually and with sensors. The author asked Sarfatti about TicTac's remarkable predictive capabilities: “How did Tic-Tac intelligence know where the CAP [combat air patrol] point was in the Fravor/Nimitz incident? Seems like there are a few possibilities off the top of my head: • Human agent inside USN vessel or aircraft communicating with Tic-Tac. • Tic-Tac hard-wired into Navy comms [communications] and navigational systems / technical surveillance / bug). • Tic-Tac is decrypting Navy comms / reading nav and data systems. • Some kind of quantum computing capacity and an advanced predictive algorithm. • Tic-Tac reads minds. • Tic-Tac is from future, so it knows where CAP is already. • Tic-Tac understands English and USN comms terms.” Sarfatti replied, “Good analysis Franc. I have had direct contact with Tic-Tac Intelligence is my current assessment of my experiences starting in the 1940s using Bayesean inference. On that basis all your items above can be true. They are not mutually exclusive.” An aforementioned study estimates that the probability of the Tic-Tac’s selecting the CAP point correctly was minute (Kevin H. Knuth et al., MDPI). Sarfatti's EDA proposal states: “Here, a theoretical framework is proposed for a breakthrough energy and gravitational ‘metric engineering’ propulsion system that builds on accepted engineering theory, advances in ‘metamaterials’, as well as consciousness theory, new mathematics and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to permit development of an aerospace vehicle (crewed or un-crewed) with ‘conscious AI capabilities’.” He says: “In the mid-1990s, the engineering of an Alcubierre-type propulsion system was deemed impossible practically because of the need for unfeasible amounts of energy to fuel it—the equivalent of a Jupiter-sized mass. Advances in metamaterials technology, however, and a new kind of mathematics—provided within this proposal—hold out the promise of an engineering pathway to an aerospace craft that exhibits two essential characteristics: ‘fully conscious AI’ and breakthrough propulsion physics. In ‘active mode’, the spacecraft realizes the Alcubierre propulsion drive by controlling the way it warps space-time to produce its own zero-G-force geodesic motion…Minimal amounts of energy are required due to the high efficiency of the metamaterial lattice’s electromagnetic susceptibility resonant responses to the Frohlich pump electromagnetic field. In ‘passive mode’, the craft is…both fully conscious of its surroundings and fully reactive to them in terms of decision-making. If the negative meta-material resonances are suitably designed, the proposed aerospace [vehicle] can generate an exterior anti-gravity universal effective force shield aka a quasi ‘white hole’.” Respected old-school aeronautical engineer Dr. Paul R. Hill began to collect and analyze UFO evidence in the 1950s, but could not publish anything UFO-related while employed as a senior propulsion and aeronautics engineering-physicist by NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics. After he died in 1991, Unconventional Flying Objects was finally published. Hill knew UFO technology so far exceeded terrestrial technology that UFOs could not be of human design and he favored the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH): “The advanced technologies relate mainly to vehicle propulsive fields. Being knowledgeable of US Government secrets on propulsion, I have known from the start that UFOs could not possibly be of Earth-technology manufacture. Unconventional objects employ heat beams, paralyzing beams, and force beams as tools and weapons, generally applied in moderation. The UFO field engine, like our atomic power plants, has the property of being radioactive…UFOs have made enough people sick with the typical symptoms of radiation poisoning…It is concluded that the observer is hit or missed by the radioactive rays depending on his proximity and the sharpness of focus of the harmful rays, as well as whether the UFO tilts so that the rays strike the observer.” This is what TTSA has referred to as a “sixth observable”: changes to the body and brain as a result of exposure to the phenomena. Dr. Kit Green—another Davis/Puthoff/Alexander colleague—wrote one of the 38 Defense Intelligence Reference Documents on this entitled: “Clinical Medical Acute & Subacute Field Effects on Human Dermal & Neurological Tissues,” which includes a catalogue of “UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects.” Hill continues: “In 1968, Dr. Robert Wood…said people could feel themselves shaken or vibrated by the field…wherein such items as people, walls, cars, and water are set to vibrating. Several witnesses mention the UFO hum or whine as a sound felt as well as heard…If the field frequency is raised to ultrasonic values in a focused beam, this form of internal vibration would amount to a heat weapon. If UFOs use this form of heat weapon, the energy is not transmitted by the atmosphere, but across space by the UFO force field and directly deposited in objects (or people) having a different resistance to the field vibrations than their surroundings or supports. The greatest energy release occurs at the interfaces or contact surfaces, accounting for surface burns. Many people have concluded that UFOs use ultrasonic vibrations as a weapon. Maybe they do. All that it would require would be a beamed force field with a sizeable cyclic component of the field of appropriate frequency. For this special application possibly, it would be entirely cyclic with no net force. Perhaps the regular UFO power plant can assume the weapon function by raising the cyclic field frequency to ultrasonic values.” Dr. Eric Davis references Hill's contribution in an email: “In his posthumous book, Dr. Paul, who had a close encounter experience in the 1940s, gave a physically precise (non-advanced propulsion physics) explanation for the ultrahigh accelerations and lack-of-sonic booms observed in UAP sightings. He did not know general relativity theory but yet his unique, ingenious physics solution used a key feature of general relativity theory while expressing it using old fashioned jargon to describe what we today would call “artificial spacetime curvature effects” (a.k.a. gravitational forces), i.e., what Hill called “artificial acceleration fields”.” Davis continued, “Hill showed how UAP acceleration field propulsion mitigates the negative aerodynamic effects of ultrahigh speed/acceleration motion through the atmosphere… In the last chapter of his book, Hill laid out the aeronautical fluid flow expressions and their corresponding data graphs to show how an ‘artificial acceleration field’ (warp bubble) deployed around the structure of a UAP prevents the formation of a compression wave in front of the UAP that turns into a supersonic shock wave.” Davis’s close colleague Dr. Hal Puthoff also favorably reviewed Hill's work. A declassified secret British report was completed in December 2000 by Defence Intelligence 55. DI55 has been described as a “space weapons section” responsible for “assessing the scientific and technical aspects of UFO reports since 1967.” The report, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region,” stated that UAP information studied revealed that UFOs—whatever their origin—were of “no defence significance.” Information studied “does not have any significant Defence Intelligence value. However, the study has uncovered a number of technological issues that may be of potential defence interest.” The report continues: “The close proximity of plasma related fields can adversely affect a vehicle or person. Radiated effects are reported in some very rare instances to be sufficient to cause scorching of human skin and damage to nearby terrestrial objects… Within the influence of the field, and effectively in its near probable near-field discharge path, coupling to vehicle electronic and electrical systems can occur and affect equipment operation. Although this effect has been limited to the temporary malfunction of internal combustion engines and radios within the UK, it is of importance that aircraft equipment could exceptionally be affected for a limited period, according to authoritative open scientific reports from the USA.” The report did reference a 1977 incident in Finland involving military personnel and radio frequency (RF) jamming from UAP exposure. (Interestingly, Commander Fravor claimed radar jamming by Tic-Tac in the Nimitz encounter.) “It was also clear…that this could only be the result of technologies which encompass scientific and engineering attributes which are well beyond even the far-term aspirations of any aerospace industry on earth. For example, attributes and abilities which allow a vehicle and any occupants to: emit “some sort of invisible field, which, when in close proximity, can reportedly cause humans and equipment to respond in unusual ways. At worst, a close range exposure to a UAP can cause some disturbing mental and physical effects and cause electronics and electrics to temporarily malfunction. The conditions for the initial formation and sustaining of what are apparently buoyant charged masses, which can form, separate, merge, hover, climb, dive and accelerate are not completely understood. Nevertheless, the underlying physics may have some military application in the future in the form of active visual, radar and IR decoys and passive electromagnetic spectrum energy absorbers… The relevance of plasma and magnetic fields to UAP were an unexpected feature of the study. It is recommended that further investigation should be into the applicability of various characteristics of plasmas in novel military applications.” The report assessed: “There is no evidence that any UAP, seen in UKADR, are incursions by air-objects of any intelligent (extra-terrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent… Attempts by other nations to intercept the unexplained objects, which can clearly change position faster than an aircraft, have reportedly already caused fatalities. However, there is no indication that deliberate UAP chasing has caused this in the UKADR.” The report recommended, however, that ”No attempt should be made to out-manoeuvre a UAP during interception… pilots should be advised not to manoeuvre, other than to place the object astern if possible.” The report also went into some detail about the effects on humans. DI55 kept an open mind: “In order to take an unbiased approach the possibility of some sort of exotic vehicle, either terrestrial or from space could not be ruled out until all available evidence had been examined. While it is clear that there are no artefacts on which any hands-on technical assessment can be made the possibility of technologies beyond the scope of human engineering and conception could not initially be ruled out. Even if it were discovered that such craft actually exist and were the product of other intelligent beings, any attempt to reproduce the exceptional performance achievements attributed to UAP could only be attempted using existing technology. The effects observed visually, on radar or through the apparent radiating field from UAP might be advantageous, for example as a countermeasure or decoy… any attempt at the description of possible or probable technologies to construct a vehicle would be at the limits of current human understanding and involve technologies which may appear (one day) to be possible.” The Soviet Union and Russian Federation had their own experiences with UFOs. Most startling for the Soviets, according to researcher Robert Hastings, an expert on the relationship between UFOs and nukes, was the Byelokoroviche incident, in which a disc-shaped UFO apparently hovered over a nuclear missile base for an extended period. At one point during the encounter, a number of nuclear missiles suddenly activated—without authorization from Moscow or any action being taken by the missile launch officers—and were preparing to launch! Had they done so, World War III would have very probably been underway. Fortunately, after 15 seconds, the anomalous activation ceased and the missiles returned to stand-by status. A subsequent investigation by the Soviet government discovered no equipment malfunctions that would have explained the event. It is evident that the Americans were not the only ones losing control over their nukes due to incursions by UFOs over highly sensitive launch sites. The Soviets also lost aircraft, according to Britain’s DI55 and pilots considered UFOs “a definite threat.” Former Soviet Union Aircraft Incidents Sokolov reported: “We had 40 cases where pilots encountered UFOs. Initially they were commanded to chase, then shoot. When our pilots would engage the UFO it would speed-up, our aircraft would give chase, loose control and crash. That happened 3 times and twice the pilots died. After that the pilots we told to observe and change course and get out”. “The pilots viewed UFOs as a definite threat”. Sokolov says “the military were interested in UFOs including the belief that if the secrets of the UFO could be described they would be able to win the competition against prospective enemies by incorporating the technology”. Dr. Hal Puthoff referenced Soviet “Thread 3” research, which a respected UFO researcher has also commented on. In his lecture on the DoD UAP program, Puthoff said: “This is a document in the program we dug up out of the Soviet Union [Thread-3]. It’s a very thick document. It shows that the Soviet Union had a massive program also trying to get to the root of all of this. In this document a number of research institutes and military institutes are listed. Of course, they had the same concerns we did. Is there a threat from the phenomena or might the Americans make headway before us and that be a threat?” The UK's DI55 report noted: “There is evidence from openly-published scientific papers, that scientists in the former Soviet Union have taken a particular interest in UFO Phenomena...and are pursuing related techniques for potential military purposes. For example, very high power energy generation, RF weapons, Impulse Radars, air vehicle drag and radar signature reduction or control, and possibly for radar reflecting decoys.” DI55 quotes a Russian source as saying: “The military were interested in UFOs including the belief that if the secrets of the UFO could be described they would be able to win the competition against prospective enemies by incorporating the technology.” Sarfatti told the author: “There is no defense against T^3 weapons with conventional technology and I am quite sure that Vladimir Putin has been aware of this for about five years or more while our guys scratch their balls. The US Navy Close Encounters with Tic-Tac and anomalies at Skinwalker Ranch are now qualitatively understood by me and a few others, and among other things are a greater military threat than nuclear weapons in the wrong hands because control of space and time itself on a local scale is a weapons technology for which there is no defense with conventional military weapons systems. Vladimir Putin is allegedly aware of me and this reality I was told by two Russians who track my work… US Space Force is dead in the water without this technology if Russia or China get it first…Putin’s physicists know better, I strongly suspect, and they are laughing at us.” Ominously, he divulged in response to a question by the author on how many American/Western adversary scientists follow his work: “Approximately 300 Iranians on LinkedIn… tracking my Tic-Tac weapons-related physics…I have 6,000 contacts on LinkedIn - no time to filter them. I don’t know off hand how many Russians and Chinese - fewer than Iranians it seems.” The author has examined some of the Iranian contacts, who turned out to be scientists at regime-linked research universities and Iran's space program. Col. John Alexander is unconvinced that Russia, China, or anyone else already has this tech or will develop it any time soon. This belief is likely based on his years of experience at the Pentagon, high-level contacts, and Davis/Puthoff Green peer group. The author asked Dr. Sarfatti if a Tic-Tac with its surrounding field would be susceptible to directed energy weapons like lasers, EMP devices, air to air missiles, railguns, or nuclear warheads detonated in proximity. He replied, “Perhaps not if the surrounding warp field is strong enough. This is a topic for research. A white hole artificial event horizon generated by the metamaterial prevents anything from entering no matter how powerful the rocket engine.” The author then asked: “Some cases suggest that radar and infrared homing air to air and ground to air missiles are not guaranteed to bring down a craft exhibiting Tic-Tac characteristics. For air to air missiles, the 1976 Tehran episode is a prime example. Cannons like 23mm Gatling type have also been shown to do nothing to UFOs…UFOs very often cause weapon systems on fighter aircraft to fail and avionics... and have effects on ground vehicles and other machinery with electrical circuits. Is this a result only of the field surrounding them, or do you think they could have some advanced electronic warfare and electronic counter-measures that beat anything terrestrial powers have?” Sarfatti: “EMP [from Tic-Tac] with low power metric engineering should not be difficult. Again, these are all problems for research.” Despite unsubstantiated claims of multiple UFOs (up to nine by one count) being brought down by “electromagnetic pulse weapons,” Alexander told the Huffington Post in December 2017, “No chance! Zero chance! In the 1980s, I was the guy developing all of the pulse-power weapons systems. We couldn’t have done it then. In the 60s, they had a laser system, but your range was extremely limited, and we didn’t have operational laser weapons in that time frame.” Alexander expanded to the author: “Would put zero credibility on anything he [the former USAF pilot in the Huffington Post article] said. The concept is not new. Corso [Colonel Phillip] claimed that our radar systems of the early 1960s could bring down UFOs. In fact, he told us that in a face-to-face encounter with ET at WSMR [White Sands Missile Range], he had to request the radars be turned off so ET could zip off. From a straight engineering perspective that doesn’t make sense. If one believes these are ET craft that must transit the galaxy, they would have engineering capable of withstanding a wide variety of radiation threats. Anything we could throw up would be minuscule compared to what they would have encountered getting here. As [the Huffington Post article] mentioned, in my last assignment [at the Pentagon]… I had access to all of the tactical DE [directed energy] programs of the Army. The DE, especially HPM [high-power microwave], concepts have taken on mythical proportions—and mostly BS. Even by the late 1980s nothing under development would be a threat to such advanced technology. Chickenpox [as a weapon against ET] may work in a movie script, but there are no extensive vulnerabilities ET would not have remedied.” In his book, Alexander elaborates: “The contention that there were so many possible UFO crashes is puzzling… It appears that ET must have a quality control problem. According to the proponents of these crashed UFO theories, there is an alien civilization, possibly several, which has developed the technology to traverse the universe, visit Earth on demand, and yet they keep falling down. Since some people believe that the Roswell incident happened when two UFOs ran into each other, and UFOs reportedly have hit aircraft on more than one occasion, it would mean that ET has not perfected their collision avoidance systems either. For civilizations that are ostensibly at least a thousand years in advance of our own, it seems surprising that some of their subsystems are not even on par with the current aircraft and automotive technologies of us Earthlings.” Another issue would be crash damage, as an email to Jack Sarfatti suggests: “****** seems to agree with you on that point. I asked him how dangerous he thought an Alcubierre style warp drive could be and he seemed to think that in some conditions, a spacecraft could crash without causing a lot of damage, but depending on what you were doing with the spacetime warping, he seemed to think that it could be extremely dangerous.” Who or what are they, where do they come from, and what do they want? These questions are complicated, as there are likely more than one type of Non-Human Entity (NHEs), given the variety of types of craft and occupants reported. Many books have been written on this topic and the answers are known to nobody, or only a very few inside certain US unacknowledged special access programs (USAPS), or black projects of other powers. It is very unlikely that they have all the answers either, as will become apparent below. Solely based on narrow observation of terrestrial science within our current understanding, NHEs could be biological, biological cloned, synthetic-artificial, or a combination of technology and biology. In his April 2019 interview, Dr. Davis says: “We do know one thing. We know they're there. We don't know their origin because they don't want to communicate that to us.” Col. Alexander says: “As for the ETH [extraterrestrial hypothesis], I’m not a fan as you know. IMO it is just too simple an explanation. That does not mean there are not real encounters with entities of some sort. My point is that there have been reports of encounters between humans and sentient non-human entities throughout the entirety of human history and in almost all cultures. That they arrive in little tin cans (UFOs) is a relatively new aspect.” One 1960s biologist and cryptozoologist had ideas about what these uninvited visitors might be and where they come from. David Marler's excellent work on Triangle UFOs, forwarded by Col. Alexander, concludes: “These are craft of unknown origin. We appear to be confronted with something other than human technology, therefore the implications are profound. The objects may be spatial, temporal, or dimensional in origin.” What is clear is that the first triangles were seen in the early 1890s, which is before the Wright brothers, before the USAF, and before Lockheed Skunk Works, home of exotic and revolutionary platforms like Stealth. Elizondo says: “AATIP had the required clearances regarding the origin, the issue was no one actually knew the answer. And... let’s not confuse the term ‘extraterrestrial’ with ‘interdimensional,’ ‘superterrestrial,’ or ‘ultraterrestrial’ [sic] …lots of other options than simply ‘them aliens out there’.” Alexander talks in his book about “precognitive sentient phenomena” (PSP) at Skinwalker Ranch—a kind of poltergeist on steroids—that he was researching alone at night for John Bigelow's NIDS organization. The mission was to explore UFO sightings on a ranch that “has been a focal point for a wide range of phenomena for at least decades, possibly centuries.” Relating a daylight cattle mutilation incident that occurred within 300 meters and in the direct line of sight of a rancher, he surmises: “As inconceivable as it seems, the best explanation was that the mutilation actually took place at another location and the body returned. Only two alternatives allow for that scenario: an invisible UFO or interdimensional interaction, and both exceed our understanding. This is a case in which PSP proved to be completely in charge, and absolutely malicious.” Alexander told the author: “As for the PSP, I’d guess the options are limitless. It was clear at the ranch that the “it” was in control. Brandon [Brandon Fugal, the ranch owner] sees that as potentially dangerous as was evident in the Skinwalker Ranch series. According to him, Tom, the ranch foreman, was seriously attacked. Also, from a UFO perspective, there have been several injuries. The Brazilian case with UFOs zapping people on the island is probably best known example. The concept of the Trickster again is near universal and appears in many myths. I argue we need to look at the panoply of observations, then step back and do macro-pattern analysis. Your question about spatial, temporal, or dimensional in origin, the answer is both yes and I don’t know. All of the above are possible. IMO there does appear to be a consciousness component. However, that does not mean that some interactions don’t take place in physical reality as we know it. Remember, at the end in my UFO book I indicate that the topic is terribly complex and possibly beyond our (human) capability to imagine. Given the minuscule resources used to research the topics, I don’t expect any breakthroughs soon. BTW I do think we should try. As for the structure of observed UFOs, that is problematic. We have from little balls of light to hard craft miles in diameter. Then there are thousands of variations in between. IMO it is the variety of observation that is problematic (and argues against the ETH)…I am not familiar with the incidents you mentioned about malevolent NHEs but will look it up. The notion of “remotely induced heart attack” is reminiscent of research in Soviet use of parapsychology in which KGB defector Kokolov reported such experiments.” Dr. Sarfatti believes T^3 derives from future humans: “We are talking time travel to the past, instant travel to moon, Mars, stars.” He is joined here by Dr. Michael P. Masters, a professor of Biological Anthropology with specializations in hominid evolutionary anatomy, modern human variation, archaeology, and biomedicine. In Identified Flying Objects, he theorizes that: “these aliens—rather than being from a different planet in a distant solar system—may simply be us, from a different time in the distant future. As I worked toward becoming a professor of biological anthropology…it became increasingly evident that if these “aliens” are in fact real, then they must be part of the hominid lineage, and clearly toward the future end of our current position along the fourth dimension of space time. Additionally, in the same way that we have come to understand the current human condition by examining the morphology and culture of our hominid ancestors, it seemed reasonable that these “aliens of time” may also be working to probe their own evolutionary past, by dint of the much more sophisticated anthropological tool of time travel.” He calls these travelers “extratempestrial.” What we are being told, or not being told, by the US Government (USG) and major allies is the subject of wide debate. The author will necessarily restrict comments to what has been presented here. If people working for USG are saying UFOs are real and that they have conducted retrievals of “off-world” vehicles not made on this earth, then there are a lot of questions to be asked, including (but not limited to) the following: How long has USG had these vehicles? When and where and how did they acquire them? How did the vehicles crash? Where does this leave crash retrieval cases as documented by researchers? Where did these vehicles come from? What was in them? Were any NHEs recovered, and if so, were they alive or dead? Is there ongoing communication with NHEs on earth or elsewhere? Why have UFOs and retrievals been kept from the public, for how long, how, and by whom? What are the full political, economic, technological, and geostrategic implications of the recovered technologies? How much success has there been in understanding these technologies? What else is being covered up? What does the historical UFO presence indicate about the intentions of the intelligence(s) behind them? An important question, not least for families and comrades of those affected, is how many UFO intercepts have been attempted and what were the losses in crew and aircraft? Were losses the result of deliberate aggression by UFOs or humans, accidental, or the result of interaction with them? Frank C. Feschino's Shoot Them Down! The Flying Saucer Air Wars Of 1952 examines the disappearances of large numbers of USAF aircraft and pilots in UFO intercepts. Richard Dolan's scholarly two-part tome on UFOs and the National Security State examines secretive official preoccupations with UFOs and their concealment from the public. In the Nimitz case, witnesses have described what could best be described as a cover-up. The aforementioned interview with the NYT journalists elicited this: “[E]ven if there are crashes that have been reverse engineered, our sense is that they have not made a lot of progress with that reverse engineering, and I don’t think anybody knows that much about where these craft are from, or all the questions everybody has a desire to understand,” although this assessment is open to question. Another important question is who is actually running these projects, how they are funded and what illegal acts may have taken place. Are private sector companies running unsupervised black projects? A fascinating case here is the “Wilson Document,” named for Admiral Thomas Wilson, a career intelligence officer, who was serving as Vice Director for Intelligence to the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the alleged events unfolded. Dr. Eric Davis figures prominently in the story. The affair has all the necessary key words and phrases: intelligence, “unacknowledged special access program [USAP],” aliens, crashes, “aerospace technology contractor.” The words allegedly uttered by Wilson, and reminiscent of the recent NYT article, are: “technology that was not of this Earth—not made by man—not by human hands.” The author believes it quite possible the affair is true—or elements thereof—based on his knowledge of the researchers involved, including Richard Dolan (who claims to be protecting his source and is thus unable to definitively prove his theory) and long-time intelligence insider Dr. Robert McGuire as well as Dr. Davis, whose statements were already presented. However, their comments do not constitute iron-clad evidence in this particular case; nor does an intriguing five-hour discourse by an anonymous X-Files character, however cleverly the supposed dots are connected. Proof requires an indisputably genuine document, recording, or verifiable insider going on the record. Anything else is supposition and theory. Not all researchers believe the document is genuine, but the case is certainly worthy of further investigation. A very simple system is available to grade sources and information, and ufology would benefit greatly from its application. Source reliability is graded from A (completely reliable) to F (cannot be judged). Information is graded from 1 (confirmed by other sources) to 5 (cannot be judged). If a source chooses to remain anonymous, then neither the source nor the information he or she provides can be assessed in public, so any claim based on either remains theory or supposition. Stating that one knows someone who says X, Y, or Z is not proof. If the Wilson Document proves authentic and there is a USAP or USAPs studying non-human tech run by private enterprise and outside the purview of senior USG officials and lawmakers, the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the UAPTF will have to identify them, and lawmakers may need to subpoena them. If there has been analysis of craft and occupants for decades and perhaps even interactions with NHEs and/or the civilizations they come from, then any hitherto secret programs would be the place to start the investigation. Those hiding behind anonymity, with nothing to lose, who call on TTSA members to go on the record about everything they know, risking jail and loss of security clearances and effectively ending lifelong careers based around phenomenology, demonstrate wishful thinking about the classified world and those who keep its secrets. Not everyone is an Edward Snowden. With that said, this does chime with a popular theory that TTSA is a disinformation/deception operation on behalf of some nefarious agency and/or the “gatekeepers” of UFO secrecy. If true, then it is curious that former AATIP director Elizondo has publicly addressed the conspiracy issue and his own part in it on Twitter: “Disinformation never stands the test of time… This movie [The Phenomenon] reinforces the obvious coverup that I was privy to... and you all were victim... BTW, there is A LOT more than just those videos and photos! I am confident as time progresses more will follow… the truth? now what? imagine being the guy who has all the secrets only to find out later that you really don’t? and neither does your boss!... now consider the fact that Chris [Mellon] had the job of “knowing all the secrets”, but this is one secret he wouldn’t be allowed to know. Is this illegal? is this unethical? is this rogue?… But… he... [Mellon] seriously decided to pursue the truth doggedly. Until… he found the office he was looking for. Imagine the frustration and anger he must have felt after realizing there was, indeed, a UFO office in the Pentagon?... Chris tried for many years in vain only to run into dead ends. But...persistence paid off, and he finally found what he was looking for. This is probably why he is so motivated to tell people the truth; he was a victim himself at one time…Chris M… is part of disclosure, not the coverup. He has put on the line EVERYTHING, including reputation… either way, the information was suppressed… I still feel those parties are part of the coverup… and maybe one day history [sic] will judge me as having some responsibility of that same coverup. Maybe I could have come out sooner? maybe I could have said more? the list of possibilities is endless…” Chris Mellon tweeted: “Senator Reid is absolutely correct [going on the record in the documentary The Phenomenon], the government has much more information on the #UAP phenomenon than it has shared. The challenge is identifying data that can be shared without compromising capabilities relied upon by our policymakers and military.” In The Phenomenon, Reid declares: “Why the federal government all these years has covered up, put brake pads on everything, stopped it, I think it’s very, very bad for our country.” Director James Fox asks: “Are you saying that there’s some evidence that still hasn’t seen the light of day?” Reid replies: “I’m saying most of it hasn’t seen the light of day.” Dr. Davis comments: “All this nonsense about planned disclosure or confirmation, that's all conspiracy theory nonsense and its one of the first order hypotheses…when people are uninformed about what's going on. The [USG] is such a big and complex organization, multiple organizations I should say. Parts of it are secret, other parts are not secret…and even the parts that are secret don't talk among themselves…because of compartmentalization… so there is no coordinated anything…as the [USG] is not that coordinated… there is no such thing as a coordinated or uncoordinated, or planned, or unplanned disclosure. That’s all been a salesman’s pitch that was invented by a lot of the more vocal, high profile celebrities in ufology; that's how they sell their books, that's how they sell tickets to their special events and that’s how UFO conferences sell tickets.” USG disclosure of the full extent of knowledge about UFOs, while desirable for some, may not necessarily be in the national interest. In the event that it were all to come out, how does USG protect tech advances, platforms and capabilities, communications with NHEs, possible current and past illegal activities, other programs that might be running or ran historically—all in such a way as to not compromise America? Certainly, any secret program should be under the purview of elected law-makers and potential illegal activities accounted for; but this is a far cry from total exposure to the entire world of America’s innermost secrets. No sane mind in the defense and intelligence worlds will want a Snowden-Assange-Manning-style meltdown on a cosmic scale that would give advantages to the West’s enemies. But this consideration is hard to comprehend (or irrelevant) for those who don't manage national security threats, those with agendas, and all those lacking critical thinking and reasoning skills. In any case, the most interesting reporting by the UAPTF will be in a classified annex where sources, methods, capabilities, and platforms are concerned. Dr. Davis says of Special Access Programs: “They are extremely costly to maintain, let me tell you this, the cost to maintain information, personnel and physical security for a Special Access Program can be tens of times larger than the cost of the program itself. The purpose of a Black Program with a Special Access Program security wrap is that you’ve got to limit the information and exposure to the information to as few people as possible in order to produce the maximum security protection against espionage by the enemy.” Highest security measures would appear eminently sensible, for whoever deploys T^3 first gains undisputed global and regional dominance against any terrestrial adversaries or combinations thereof. Dr. Sarfatti says: “Right now, we are in a war situation. Like the Manhattan Project. This is a real arms race, [and] whoever gets T^3 first wins the war. A fleet of metric engineered super Tic-Tacs would change the military balance of power decisively. But who will get them first? There is strong evidence that such a vehicle is of emerging interest to competing blocs (the US, Europe, China, and Russia)—both for its revolutionary ‘clean/green energy’ and transportation values and its potential for defense military applications.” The DoD's latest report to Congress on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” makes this assessment: “The People’s Republic of China’s strategy aims to achieve ‘the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ by 2049…a determined pursuit of political and social modernity that includes far-ranging efforts to expand China’s national power… and revise the international order…The Chinese Communist Party’s leadership has long viewed China as embroiled in a major international strategic competition with other states…in particular, the United States. China’s leaders stress the imperative of meeting key military transformation markers set in 2020 and 2035. These milestones seek to align the PLA’s transformation with China’s overall national modernization so that by the end of 2049, China will field a “world-class” military… it is likely that China will aim to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior to—the US military, or that of any other great power that China views as a threat to its sovereignty, security, and development interests.” The DIA's 38 scientific reports extrapolating engineering-physics to 2050 make even more sense with reference to China, in that the US military must stay ahead of terrestrial foes while trying to counter off-world threats. Former senator Reid, one of the prime movers for establishment of AATIP, said of the program in a 2009 letter to the then DEPSECDEF: “Ultimately, the results of AATIP will not only benefit the US Government, but I believe will directly benefit the DoD in ways not yet imagined. The technological insight and capability gained will provide the U.S with a distinct advantage over any foreign threats and allow the US to maintain its preeminence as a world leader.” Beijing will (in the author's opinion) likely have the same objectives. Given China’s interest in stealing US technology and supplanting US military and economic dominance, any American T^3 research into platforms that Mellon describes as having “dominant battlespace awareness” and the observables will be irresistible. The Chinese will be following the work of Davis and the UAPTF and have seemingly already approached Jack Sarfatti, and DI55 noted their interest in UAP two decades ago. Col. Alexander is unconvinced, however, that the Pentagon will take UAPTF findings seriously. He told the author that he wrote to DEPSECDEF in August, offering “to tell them [UAPTF] what we did over three decades ago… I’ll guess this is not a front-burner issue for them.” In September he wrote: “It has now been long enough to say that there has been no response to my DEPSECDEF UAP/UFO letter. Could mean several things. Most likely is they really don’t care about the topic and will do as little as possible to meet minimum Congressional requirements.” He continues: “IMHO, it is because it is not important to them. Does not cross the threshold of importance compared to real threats. Remember, [US military] have been at war for two decades. As far as high tech is concerned, look at what has advanced. F-35 is certainly not antigravity. Have seen robotics, flying, crawling and swimming but nothing that suggests a leap. Micro-everything and unfortunately better prosthetics. The question I always ask is “Compared to what?” Funding is zero-sum game and you run out of money long before you run out of important things to fund.” In another email he says: “In both white and black world there is intense competition for resources (money). There are some places where big bucks can be found and oversight not as good as it could be. But, none have unlimited resources as ***** claims. Black world competition is just as fierce as white.” Whether the U.S. can translate what it currently knows about UAP into a decisive advantage, may be affected not only by technological hurdles and foreign espionage, but by entrenched interests inside the intelligence community, known to some as ”The Collins Elite.” Dr. Davis observes: “And the problem is…very biased closed minds where the UFO subject is concerned, especially if you've got military and civilian leadership that have been raised and educated as evangelical Christians or other religious cults…where they object to UFOs as being satanic.” Chris Mellon says: “It would be tragic and ironic if we found out that some of these things were Russian or Chinese and we hadn't been investigating because someone thought they were demons. That's just not an appropriate mindset in this context.” Col. Alexander told the author: “I would hope that additional information be released about sightings by USG organizations. Understand that there are legitimate security concerns regarding the operational parameters of the sensor systems or the platforms. Unfortunately, I suspect a lot has to do with embarrassment at not being able to explain the observations. That is further complicated by religious opinions (work of the devil) etc. Both are real problems.” Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 154 The Oslo Disaster Revisited: How It Happened, Efraim Karsh, September 2018 No. 155 The “Separation” Fence: A Political Border in a Security Guise, Gershon Hacohen, October 2018 (Hebrew only) No. 156 The North Korean Air Force: A Declining or Evolving Threat? Noam Hartoch and Alon Levkowitz, October 2018 No. 157 The 1981 AWACS Deal: AIPAC and Israel Challenge Reagan, Arnon Gutfeld, November 2018 No. 158 Pakistan and Its Militants: Who Is Mainstreaming Whom? James M. Dorsey, November 2018 No. 159 American Jews and Their Israel Problem, Kenneth Levin, December 2018 No. 160 The West Bank’s Area C: Israel’s Vital Line of Defense, Gershon Hacohen, January 2019 (Hebrew), April 2019 (English) No. 161 The Islamic State’s Religious Nationalism: Challenging the Existing International Order, Galit Truman Zinman, April 2019 (Hebrew only) No. 162 Israeli Nuclear Deterrence in Context: Effects of the US-Russian Rivalry, Louis René Beres, June 2019 No. 163 A Geopolitical Crossfire: Al Azhar Struggles to Balance Politics and Tradition, Dr. James M. Dorsey, August 2019 No. 164 EU Funding of Illegal Palestinian Settlement in Area C, Edwin Black, September 2019 No. 165 What Happens to Israel If the US and Israel Go to War? Louis René Beres, September 2019 No. 166 Trump’s Trade Wars: A New World Order? James M. Dorsey, November 2019 No. 167 Land Combat Vehicles: Protection Comes First, Maxi Blum, November 2019 No. 168 The Soleimani Killing: An Initial Assessment, Hillel Frisch, Eytan Gilboa, Gershon Hacohen, Doron Itzchakov, and Alex Joffe, January 2020 No. 169 Iranian MIssiles and Its Evolving “Rings of FIre”, Uzi Rubin, January 2020 No. 170 Operation “Shahid Soleimani”: Iran’s Revenge, Uzi Rubin, February 2020 No. 171 The Coronavirus Crisis: Origins and the Way Forward, Hanan Shai, April 2020 (Hebrew only) No. 172 The San Remo Conference 100 Years On: How the Jewish National Home Entered International Law, Efraim Karsh, April 2020 No. 173 The Coronavirus Pandemic: Getting Back to Normal While Controlling the Disease, Maxi Blum, April 2020 (Hebrew) No. 174 Coronavirus, China, and the Middle East, Mordechai Chaziza, June 2020 No. 175 The Trump Peace Plan: Aiming Not to Make a Deal but to Make a Deal Possible, Douglas J. Feith and Lewis Libby, June 2020 No. 176 The COVID19- Crisis: Impact and Implications, Editor: Efraim Karsh, July 2020 No. 177 Palestinian Activists at Human Rights Watch, Gerald M. Steinberg and Maayan Rockland, July 2020 No. 178 Israel Versus Anyone: A Military Net Assessment of the Middle East, Kenneth S. Brower, August 2020 No. 179 The EU and Israel as Genuine Strategic Partners, Florin Pasatoiu and Christian Nitoiu, August 2020 No. 180 The Israel-UAE Peace: A Preliminary Assessment, Editor: Efraim Karsh, September 2020 No. 181 The American Public and Israel in the Twenty-First Century, Eytan Gilboa, October 2020 No. 182 Iran Behind the Scenes During the Second Israel-Lebanon War, Raphael Ofek and Pesach Malovany, October 2020 No. 183 The Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, Franc Milburn, November 2020 www.besacenter.org