The Truth About the 2017 UAP Videos

While the five major UFO/UAP stories of 2017 through 2019 are widely known — nicknamed as FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST from 2017; and SPLASHDOWN and the TRIANGLES videos from 2019 — there is a less well-known event from 2017 that got much less press coverage.

And yet it provides a more rational explanation of what’s behind these objects.

This event also explains why the Pentagon has been willing to throw nominal support behind the first five videos, despite them being easily recognized examples of standard artifacts from the sensing and recording equipment themselves.

Setting the Scene

In the summer of 2017, mainstream media was buzzing with coverage of the first three UAP videos,^[1] as we covered in our previous newsletters.

Many outlets erroneously reported that these were Pentagon-supported proof of UFOs flying in our skies.^[2] In reality, the only thing the Pentagon would later confirm is that the videos came from US military craft piloted by US military officers.^[3]

At no time did the Pentagon nor the Navy claim these were extraterrestrial craft, even though some of the pilots involved — most notably Navy Commander David Fravor, piloting an F/A-18 from the carrier USS Nimitz — claimed the objects performed maneuvers ‘impossible’ for currently known piloted aircraft.^[4]

Speculation ran high: was this the beginning of Disclosure on the part of the Pentagon, possibly followed by more revelations from the US government?^[5]

Were these objects the beginning of an alien-led contact effort, or worse, imminent alien attacks against US military assets?

As calls for action on the part of Congress began to be raised,^[6] a different and much more serious UAP event was about to occur. One that involved not just military aircraft but commercial airline traffic as well.

This time, almost no one talked about this much more serious event.

From Nevada to California and Oregon

On October 25th, 2017, at around 4:30 PM PST,^[7] the FAA air traffic radar in Oakland, California, picked up an object flying out of the southwestern Nevada. It was heading west towards northern California airspace.

Initially, the craft was visible on radar, but it then made a sharp turn to the north and disappeared off the radar (more about this unique feature later).

Significantly, radar returns indicated the craft was doing in excess of Mach-1 when it made its tight right-hand turn. Very few aircraft can do that, and nearly all of them are military.

The craft was reported to be flying at 862 mph (Mach-1.12), so it was clearly not a commercial aircraft. It was also reported to be flying at around 37,000 feet altitude, 2,000 feet higher than commercial airliners that usually stay close to 35,000 feet, unless landing or taking off.^[8]

The craft began to pace commercial airliners flying towards Oregon and Washington State, so the FAA controllers asked several pilots in the area if they could spot the craft. Several pilots reported seeing something.^[9]

Most of the reports stated there was an indeterminate white object some miles to their east, outpacing the commercial traffic. None of the aircrews could determine what type of craft it was, although one pilot suggested the craft was ‘big.’

Though how he could determine that without knowing the craft’s distance puts his estimate in doubt. One aircrew was able to keep eyes on the craft from first spotting it over northern California until they had to land at their destination in Portland, Oregon.^[10]

Because the craft didn’t respond to repeated attempts to contact it by the FAA controllers, and because it broadcast no transponder signal, the FAA eventually contacted NORAD and requested military assistance.

Some months after the event, the U.S. Air Force released voice recordings between them, the airline crews, and the FAA controllers. Although some small sections of the recordings were blank (most likely due to redacted military callsigns), the story they paint is not a comforting one.

The FAA seemingly had no idea what to tell the airliners when the U.S. Air Force decided to send a pair of armed F-15s into that commercial airspace to try and locate the unidentified craft.

Somewhere between northern Oregon and the Seattle, Washington area, the nearest commercial airliners lost sight of the object. It wasn’t picked up again visually or on radar, and the Air Force claims they never located it.

There was no initial news coverage of this event, until pilots who overheard the FAA commercial traffic reported it on a Reddit thread.^[11] This led to a two-part report on the website The War Zone at TWZ.com.^[12]

Their efforts through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) led to an eventual release of not just the radar data but the actual audio as well, confirming all of the details previously discussed.^[13]

While this October event preceded the massive coverage that occurred following the release of the three first UAP videos in mid-December, 2017, they actually came just a few weeks after a confidential October 4th media briefing between certain unnamed intelligence officials and New York Times reporter Leslie Kean, at a Pentagon City hotel.^[14]

At that meeting, Kean also met Luis Elzondo, a controversial figure in the UFO community after his claim that he ran a Pentagon-based UFO/UAP study group going back several years, but for which he could provide little proof.^[15]

Interestingly, Elizondo could provide proof that he worked for the U.S. Army Counterintelligence service,^[16] which is tasked to ‘detect, identify, assess, counter, exploit and/or neutralize adversarial, foreign intelligence services, international terrorist organizations, and insider threats to the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense (DoD).’

It’s interesting to note that one of the only two other counterintelligence services in the DoD is the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). This has long been thought to be behind the notorious Men in Black episodes that have plagued UFO sightings and witnesses for decades.^[17]

Armed Fighters to Intercept

Strange white craft outpacing commercial airliners, first on radar then off radar, within visual sight of several commercial aircraft, an event so serious that armed fighters are sent aloft to intercept and possibly shoot this object down.

This strange event is sandwiched between unofficially released UAP videos slyly supported by the Pentagon, while behind the scenes, an ex-Pentagon counterintelligence agent sets up the biggest UFO discussion in decades across multiple mainstream media outlets. What does this all mean?

We’ll reveal the most plausible answer in our next newsletter.

^[1] https://tothestars.media/blogs/press-and-news/to-the-stars-academy-of-arts-science-acknowledges-the-pentagons-official-release-of-uap-video-footage

^[2] https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/16/politics/pentagon-ufo-project/index.html

^[3] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/15/politics/unidentified-aerial-phenomena-defense-department/index.html

^[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-object-navy.html

^[5] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-weigh-in-on-pentagon-ufo-report/

^[6] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/16/pentagon-ufo-search-harry-reid-216111/

^[7] https://www.twz.com/16079/airliners-and-f-15s-involved-in-bizzare-encounter-with-mystery-aircraft-over- oregon

^[8] https://aviex.goflexair.com/flight-school-training-faq/commercial-plane-altitudes

^[9] https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/78ktlp/strange_nordo_aircraft_in_the_flight_levels_above/

^[10] https://www.twz.com/18473/faa-recordings-deepen-mystery-surrounding-ufo-over-oregon-that-sent- f-15s-scrambling

^[11] https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/78ktlp/strange_nordo_aircraft_in_the_flight_levels_ above/