They’re Here (Sort Of)

So, they’re here. The aliens, that is. I mean the ones from outer space. Just when you thought the news cycle couldn’t get crazier, an Air Force veteran claimed this week that the military has been retrieving spacecraft of “non-human origin” for decades and concealed that fact from Congress.

David Grusch is a decorated combat veteran who served as an officer in the Air Force in Afghanistan. He also worked for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. He represented both on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, which is now known as the “All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office” (AARO). The Pentagon has renamed UFOs “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” or UAPs.

Grusch believes that the military has been “purposely and intentionally” concealing the existence of the program to avoid Congressional oversight. The goal all along has been to reverse engineer the vehicles to appropriate the technology to advance the military’s propulsion and weapons systems. Grusch claims that not just vehicles but corpses and even live pilots have been retrieved.

However, the head of the AARO, Sean Kirkpatrick, insists that his office has found “no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics.” And while the government has not explained away Grusch’s claims with weather balloons or swamp gas, it still chalks up most UFO sightings to natural phenomena or man-made objects, including the 144 documented encounters with the military between 2008 and 2022.

“We execute our mission objectively and without sensationalism and we do not rush to conclusions,” Kirkpatrick stated. The AARO follows “rigorous methodology” as it works “to normalize, integrate and expand UAP reporting beyond the aviators—to all service members—including mariners, submariners and our space Guardians.” This last group refers to the Space Force, which was created in the Trump administration. If you think “Guardians” and “Space Force” sound like names from a video game, you’re not alone. I suppose “Avengers” will be next, but I’ll leave that for another post.

I might have been more sympathetic to Grusch if not for another, recent report of a UFO that crashed in Las Vegas of all places. According to an eyewitness, a “tall, skinny alien creature with greenish color” eight feet tall emerged and hid in a backyard. The creature had a “weird-looking face, big feet and big shiny eyes and a big mouth.” It telepathically rendered the eyewitness powerless until it could get away, although no one seems to know how it escaped. I’m thinking maybe it traveled through time or shape shifted through space.

If I sound skeptical, that’s because I am. This, despite my own experience with what I would describe as a UFO on a commercial flight from San Jose to (again) Las Vegas. Heading southeast over the desert, I looked out my window and saw a thick, cigar-shaped structure at about our altitude just north of our jet. It must have been miles away but still appeared massive, almost like a dirigible. I followed its movement until it disappeared in cloud cover. And then that was that. I went back to reading.

It turns out that populations are being engineered, not spacecraft.

That’s my attitude toward UFOs. I remain unimpressed. They are unidentified but not inexplicable. And how can they be explained? By human creation and design. It is easy to get caught up in fantasies and conspiracies. People want to believe in alien worlds and visitors from other dimensions, because such beliefs distract us from the tragedy of life. It also gives us a taste of the transcendent, of mystery. Look at the popularity of The X Files (1993-2018).

But I think the answer lies closer to Carl Gustav Jung’s explanation of UFOs as reflecting a collective need on the part of societies, especially during times of broad upheaval. In other words, we create these phenomena, at least on a psychological level. I also do not discount the real possibility that greenish looking creatures in backyards play a part in social control. It turns out that populations are being engineered, not spacecraft.

Interestingly, Grusch was involved in drafting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023. That act gives more than 800 billion dollars of taxpayer money to the defense department. It allows for the creation of the Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare. I don’t expect “irregular warfare” to involve little green, gray, or white aliens but more pandemics, monetary control, drug use, surveillance, social unrest, and limits on the Constitution for the sake of security and convenience. Aliens will provide the pretext for the reset, except they don’t actually exist.

Grusch’s story rubs me on another, more fundamental level. This has to do with the underlying subtext in these stories of human beings as just one species among many in the universe and that we should be humble in the face of such breadth and diversity. I think that is true. After all, as the saying goes, we have a lot to be humble about. But I also believe we are more than specs of dust and the Earth more than Carl Sagan’s “pale, blue dot.” To believe anything less would be nihilistic and irrational.

Did I not mention that, according to Grusch, the government has retrieved spacecraft from many different alien species? Think of what a distraction that will be. It already is. Mission accomplished.

Image credits: Danie Franco; Jonatan Pie; Bill Jelen; Robynne Hu; Jeswin Thomas. “Amazing” retrieved March 31, 2015 from efanzines. First published as Amazing Stories magazine, Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., Vol. 31, No. 10, October 1957, cover, Public Domain.

Editorial sources: Brett Tingley, “Pentagon Has ‘no credible evidence’ of Aliens or UFOs that Defy Physics,” Space.com (April 19, 2023); Brian Entin, “Military Whistleblower Claims US Has UFO Retrieval Program,” NewsNation (June 6, 2023); “Chris Eberhart, Greg Wehner, “Crashed Las Vegas UFO Witness ‘Terrified’ by 8-foot Creatures in his Backyard: ‘100% Not Human,'” Fox News (June 10, 2023); Matt Steib, “Ex–Intelligence Official Says Government is Hiding Alien Technology From Congress,” Intelligencer, New York (June 7, 2023); Adam Gabbat, “US Urged to Reveal UFO Evidence After Claim that it Has Intact Alien Vehicles,” The Guardian (June 6, 2023); C. Todd Lopez, “DOD Office Moving Ahead in Mission to Identify ‘Anomalous Phenomena,'” DOD News (December 17, 2022).

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