It’s a bird, it’s a plane…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/02/2023 (1201 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the news of the downing of a fourth aerial craft over North America, there is a great deal more attention being paid to objects observed and detected in the sky.

While most media are calling them “unidentified objects” that are flying in the atmosphere, a few are breaking the apparent stigma of labelling them “unidentified flying objects” or UFOs, which is what they are. This, despite a concerted effort among researchers and military personnel to refer to these objects are “unidentified aerial phenomena” or UAPs.

The change in moniker is mostly due to a desire to avoid the baggage associated with the term UFO, which in popular culture is associated with aliens from other planets. As more scientists are starting to study these phenomena closely, and after the Pentagon admitted it is gathering intelligence and eyewitness reports from military personnel regarding UAP, it was deemed necessary to make the subject seem more respectable and steer discourse from any suggestion of bug-eyed monsters.

The reality is that the term UFO itself was created by military investigators to distance the study of unidentified objects away from the former term “flying saucers,” which definitely was equated with extraterrestrial visitation.

But as more objects are being tracked and monitored by NORAD and other surveillance systems worldwide, it might be time to revisit the term UFO. That’s what these are, after all. Unidentified flying or floating objects manoeuvring without authorization in sovereign airspace. The issue of where they originate is secondary, and all official indications are that they are terrestrial in nature, sent aloft by foreign powers.

What is most concerning is that there is growing evidence that such objects or those of a similar nature have been seen, detected and reported over North America for decades, without much interest by authorities. This is because reports of UFOs have been largely ignored by scientists and the military establishment because of the stigma that interest in such things is frivolous and foolish.

But now, it may be time to rethink that view. Serious UFO researchers and organizations have long been collecting eyewitness observations of strange aerial phenomena. Most cases have turned out to have relatively simple explanations such as stars, satellites, drones, aircraft — and balloons. Exactly the types of objects now of extreme interest to the security of nations.

For example, a study of 768 UFO reports filed in Canada in 2022 included the observation of a large balloon on July 5 over New Brunswick. That evening, the pilot of an American Airlines Boeing 787-8 from Chicago to Rome reported seeing “a large white balloon with an attached box and long tail” at about 40,000 feet. The pilot could not tell whether the balloon was ascending, descending or in level flight. It is not at all unreasonable to think that this object would have been similar in nature and intent to those tracked and shot down.

In fact, many reports of balloons and other curious objects abound in lists of UFOs reported to UFO groups, organizations, researchers and aviation authorities. There was even a sighting of the first, infamous “Chinese spy balloon” from a Canadian pilot on Jan. 31, 2023, as it passed over Canada before it reached Montana.

An Air Canada Airbus flying from Vancouver to Winnipeg at 35,000 feet over Cranbrook, B.C., reported “a large balloon about 4,000 feet above them with something hanging from it,” and NORAD was duly advised.

Although UFO researchers have been generally ostracized because of their interest in unusual objects reported to them, given national security seems at stake, perhaps it’s time to take ufologists seriously. Such researchers may have already collected data that could prove useful in dealing with unidentified objects flying over sensitive locations, and may receive reports of objects of interest in the coming days, months and years.

Chris Rutkowski is a Canadian science journalist who has written extensively on unidentified phenomena.