Tweet

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

GO FAST is the third of three official USG videos selected for release after official review by multiple government organizations. While To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science was the first to obtain a copy, it should be available to any member of the press or

By tothestarsacademy.com 3-9-18

public via the Freedom of Information Act. This footage was captured by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon ATFLIR Pod that was being operated by a highly trained aerial observer and weapons system operator whom the government has spent millions of dollars to train. Go Fast reveals a Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast of the United States in 2015 and the object in view remains unidentified. Read further analysis of what is being observed in Go Fast by our team of experts including additional videos and reports on our community of interest:
Read more »

Tweet

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.

By Christopher Mellon The Washington Post 3-9-18

The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest.

A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015 (below).
Read more »

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

I must be doing something wrong. For months I have been hearing about Tom DeLonge, he formerly of Blink-182, who has entered the UFO arena with, allegedly, some highly-place contacts who will assist him in bringing the truth about alien visitation to the public. This began around 2015. According to Rolling Stone:

By Kevin Randle A Different Perspective

DeLonge contacted [John] Podesta [Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager] again this January [2016], sending an email with the subject, "General McCasland," apparently a reference to a former Air Force official with (according to DeLonge) information relating to the infamous Roswell crash. In the email, DeLonge insisted that McCasland was not a skeptic — despite the General's own previous insistence — and added, "When Roswell crashed, they shipped it to the laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. General McCasland was in charge of that exact laboratory up to a couple years ago. He not only knows what I'm trying to achieve, he helped assemble my advisory team. He's a very important man."

Of course, I suppose, we could look at this as so much hyperbole. It does sound impressive to say that he was in communication with an Air Force general who was in charge of the exact laboratory where the Roswell material was sent. The problem is that William McCasland didn’t take over the post until 2011, according to his official Air Force biography and the laboratory was created in October 1997. It was, however, a combination of four other labs, but there is no way of knowing if any of them were the ones to which Roswell material would have been sent in 1947 or if material had been sent there it would have remained until 2011.

Anyway, that just sort of shows that DeLonge had been talking about UFOs and mentioning Roswell for a number of years. He did have, and does have, the ear of some people with impressive sounding credentials, which, of course, doesn’t mean they have anything of interest to say about UFOs or Roswell, only that they have been around the government for a very long time and moved in some of the rarified atmosphere in Washington, D.C.

However, it does seem that DeLonge’s messages have been heard by the UFO community. In February, 2017, at the International UFO Congress, he was named UFO Researcher of the Year. This seemed a tad bit odd since he hadn’t done much in the way of original research or published much in the way of what he had learned that hadn’t been said before. He did say that in a couple of months that he would make an announcement about some “serious sh*t” he was into and that he was making some serious progress.

During the next several months, there had been hints about this announcement, some of them centering around Disclosure and some of them hinting about new information or new evidence concerning the Roswell crash. The speculation was that he had some incredible inside information that came about through his association with his former band. Somehow that had resulted in the contacts that provided the information.

After months of waiting, the announcement came on October 11. No, there wasn’t anything about new UFO evidence, it had nothing to do with Disclosure or government secrecy but everything to do with making money. Let’s look at that.

According to a story in the Huffington Post, by Leslie Kean, there had been “something extraordinary revealed today [October 11].” It told of high-level officials and scientists who had not been seen by many but who, apparently “have long-standing connections to government agencies which may have programs investigating unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP/UFOs). You can read the whole article here:


What strikes me in that very first paragraph is that we have been provided with a number of conditions. They have connections to agencies that may have been investigating UFOs… but then, may not. We eventually find out who these people are, but they are those in middle management or maybe in second tier bureaucrats but not the top people.

Then we learn that this is not about Disclosure, or about providing some stunning evidence of alien visitation, but about the “official launch of To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science,” or as they abbreviate it, TTS/AAS which they describe as a public benefit corporation. This organization will have three components, which are science, aerospace and entertainment. That last concerns me. Entertainment is not necessarily restricted to fact and we learn in other places that DeLonge has been planning the entertainment aspect since he left Blink-182. According to Rolling Stone:

But since DeLonge parted ways with Blink-182 in 2015, his interest in extraterrestrials has become more than a hobby. "The more I got into it, the more I realized it was all real," he tells Rolling Stone. "Then I was like, 'OK, what am I going to do about it?'" So he started spreading the word. He began creating a multi-part, multi-platform rollout of an entirely new philosophy, one based on the theory that aliens have been visiting Earth for most of our species' existence – and the only way for us to have a prosperous future on the planet is if we take that into account, and soon.

The newest addition to this project is the book Sekret Machines: Gods, the first in a non-fiction trilogy he's co-writing with occult historian Peter Levanda.

Already we see some promotion for the books that DeLonge is writing which would be incorporated under the umbrella of TTS/AAS and get a hint about the financial aspects of all of this. In fact, Jason Colavito, on his website, looked deeper into the financial arrangements of the organization. You can read his entire analysis here:
Colavito lays out, in detail, how money will be raised by selling stock in the company and how much DeLonge is guaranteed for his part in all this. Colavito wrote:

DeLonge is soliciting investment by registering TTS AAS as a public benefit corporation—notably not a nonprofit—and he is framing his sale of $5 per share stock in the company as a chance to democratize investment. Under the 2012 JOBS Act, companies may sell stock directly to the public through a crowd funding website without needing to file an IPO with the SEC. DeLonge is taking advantage of this to sell $200 stock packages. The 2015 Title IV Regulation A+ allows companies to raise up to $50 million without a formal IPO…

It's interesting to see the difference between TTS AAS’s public face and what they confess in their financial filings. Publicly, TTS AAS is an educational enterprise divided into a number of units focused on cutting-edge fringe research. The science division is pursuing consciousness research and psychic phenomena. The aerospace division is looking for exotic propulsion technologies. The entertainment division is producing the Sekret Machines books, and a dystopian young adult franchise. Note carefully that space aliens and “disclosure” don’t occur as a research subject or a purpose for the company. And yet, the public protestations about using the company to promote human knowledge are belied by what we see in the financial documents. That’s not to say that there won’t be “educational” material, only that the company’s primary purpose isn’t science and education, as it pretends…

DeLonge, though, is certainly a beneficiary. Documents laying out what he gets paid make pretty clear that this is intended to be a very lucrative investment for him. DeLonge has a constellation of corporate entities that control the intellectual property he creates as a musician and now filmmaker. TSA, which the company abbreviates as TTS AAS, is legally obligated to pay all of DeLonge’s expenses in using his existing intellectual property to develop new TTS AAS multimedia products.

But, those of us interested in all aspects of UFOs and not the inner workings of a corporation created to make some money and produce multi-media products wanted to hear something about UFO sightings. Eventually we treated to one UFO report provided by “TTS Academy member Chris Mellon” who was, at one time, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence for two administrations. “He gave a synopsis of an event from 2004 that involved the battleship [sic] USS Nimitz.” I’ll give Mellon the benefit of the doubt here by saying that in his position he should have known that the Nimitz was an aircraft carrier and not a battleship. I suspect the reporter got it wrong. According to the story:

“Two F-18s approach, the four aviators see that the object has no wings or exhaust — it is white, oblong, some 40 ft long and perhaps 12 ft thick”, he [Mellon] said. “One pilot pursues the craft while his wingman stays high. The pilots are astonished to see the object suddenly reorient itself toward the approaching F-18. In a series of discrete tumbling maneuvers that seem to defy the laws of physics, the object takes a position directly behind the approaching F-18.”

The lengthy event occurred in broad daylight off the California coast, and gun camera footage was taken. At one point the object went from hovering at 80,000 feet to dropping at supersonic speeds, and came to a complete stop at 50 feet above the ocean. “More F-18’s are dispatched but with similar results,” Mellon stated. “The secret machine easily evades the F-18s. Dozens of military personnel aboard the various planes and ships involved are privy to these interactions.”

Okay. Not an overly spectacular sighting but it does suggest some evidence in the form of gun camera footage. It mirrors other sightings that have been reported over the years that include radar images, photographs of the radarscopes and many witnesses on the ships involved. Investigation into them have yet to provide the evidence to prove that there is alien visitation.

There was one other aspect of all this that bothered me as well. One of those now part of this was identified as Luis Elizondo. The Huffington Post reported:

Lue had resigned his position at the DOD literally the day before we met. I was able to verify who he was and what his tasks were at the Pentagon. He received the highest commendatons [sic] from his superiors. I was told that important unclassified [emphasis added] data and documentation are expected to be released through the Academy’s on-line Community of Interest (COI) in collaboration with the US government, which will be set up soon.

Unclassified data? The Internet is awash in unclassified data. The vast majority of the Project Blue Book files can be found at Fold3. John Greenewald’s Black Vault is loaded with all sorts of unclassified documents relating to UFOs. Even the FBI’s website provides information about UFOs. And now we are to be treated to another source that will provide us with unclassified documents. Wow.

In fact, this was underscored when Rolling Stone reported, “Subsequent books in the Sekret Machines trilogy will move away from ancient texts to focus on claims of interactions with aliens documented by government agencies since the 1940s, many of which are available by Freedom of Information Act requests and a recently digitized cache of CIA documents.” More unclassified documents that can be obtained by anyone who cares to do so.

Which, of course, moves us away from any meaningful research and puts us back in the entertainment camp. There are too many shows today that rely not on solid research but on the entertainment value of the show. Tell us a story, no matter how ridiculous and we’ll climb onboard even if it is so incredible that it can’t be true. Entertain us first and worry about the reality later. Ironically DeLonge and his co-author had something to say about that. According to Rolling Stone, “…they’re not claiming that everything you've seen on shows like Ancient Aliens is real. ‘Humans are responsible for building the pyramids, for instance,’ says [Peter] Levanda. ‘I think we can agree on that. But what was the impetus behind it? What we're saying is the initial contact is what prompted all this. Not that there were aliens out there telling us how to build pyramids. I think that just devalues the entire conversation, and we're trying to get beyond that.’"

That, of course, is something that many of us have said for years. I didn’t single out Ancient Aliens in the past but have pointed a finger at Hangar 1 and Unsealed: Alien Files which seemed to be based more on speculation and wild stories than on cases that added some real value to UFO research.

There is one other point that has been mentioned in the past that should be bothersome to all those interested in UFO research. According to Rolling Stone, “DeLonge's plan is bigger than just a few books. In addition to the nonfiction series, he is writing a historical-fiction trilogy with novelist A.J. Hartley, the first book of which was released last spring, as well as a documentary and a scripted film, all of which discuss the theory that we're not alone.”

And the additional irony here is that I point this out. Almost since I published my first book on UFOs, one of the criticisms is that I also write science fiction as well. I have kept the science fiction away from my UFO writings and I’m not the only one who has investigated UFOs and who has written science fiction. Bruce Maccabee, Whitley Strieber, Don Ecker and Nick Pope have all written fiction. The difference here, subtle though it might be, is that we have not put the science fiction under the same umbrella as our UFO research. And, of course, DeLong’s plan might not affect the rest of the organization’s goals, but it is just one more worrisome aspect of all this.

We learn, at the end of the news conference, that TTS/AAS “… intends to release game-changing information of the type interested people have been seeking for a long time.”

But the problem here is that this is the same claim that has been made for months about DeLonge’s research and activities and no matter who he has pulled in, he has yet to make any stunning revelations, other than he is forming a corporation to exploit the UFO field. This announcement ended, not so much with a bang, but with a whimper. We have learned nothing that we didn’t already know and it seems that we were promised much the same thing that has been promised by so many others over the last half century. The real point doesn’t seem to be research but entertainment, which, of course, is not always a bad thing… it’s just there has been too much entertainment in the UFO field and not enough research.
Read more »

LAS VEGAS - A team of former spies and spooks came out of the shadows Wednesday to talk about UFOs. The men formerly worked in national security positions within the

By George Knapp KLAS TV 10-11-17

Pentagon or intelligence agencies, which is where they were first exposed to classified information about UFO encounters.

Now, they've signed on with rock star Tom DeLonge in his quest to build a public company that could study and harness exotic technology.
Read more »

Luis Elizondo is a career intelligence officer whose experience includes working with the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, the National Counterintelligence Executive, and the Director of National Intelligence.

Something extraordinary was revealed today. Former high-level officials and scientists with deep black experience who have always remained in the shadows came forward on one platform. These insiders have long-standing connections to government agencies which may have programs investigating unidentifed aerial phenomena (UAP/UFOs). The team includes a 25-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, a Lockheed Martin Program Director for Advanced Systems at “Skunk Works”, and a former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. Today marked the official launch of To The Stars Academy of Arts &

By Leslie Kean The Huffington Post 10-11-17

Science (TTS/AAS) an innovative Public Benefit Corporation which will advance research into unexplained phenomena and develop related technology. It has established three synergistic divisions: Science, Areospace, and Entertainment. “We believe there are discoveries within our reach that will revolutionize the human experience,” says company President and CEO Tom DeLonge. Please see my previous story,- released yesterday - for background on today’s announcement which was live-streamed and is archived on the company website.
Read more »

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Rocker Tom DeLonge has finally released information about a big UFO project he has been teasing for months.... In February 2016, rocker Tom DeLonge made headlines when he announced at the International UFO Congress that he had big UFO news to reveal and it would be coming in a few weeks time. HIs address to the conference was recorded and in response to being awarded the UFO Researcher of the Year. However, the news never

By Alejandro Rojas OpenMinds 10-10-17

came. Some gave up on anything being revealed. I had faith, but I also had messages from DeLonge letting me know he had been delayed, but that the information was still on the way.

Finally, the wait is over, and we now know his new project will be tiled To the Stars Academy, and its mission is to “strive to be a powerful vehicle for change by creating a consortium among science, aerospace and entertainment that will work collectively to allow gifted researchers the freedom to explore exotic science and technologies with the infrastructure and resources to rapidly transition them to products that can change the world”
Read more »

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Something extraordinary is about to be revealed. Former high-level officials and scientists with deep black experience who have always remained in the shadows are now stepping into the light. These insiders have long-standing connections to government agencies which may have programs investigating unidentifed aerial phenomena (UAP). They intend to move into the private sector and to make all declassified information, and any future knowledge, available for all to see. The team includes a 25-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations; a Lockheed Martin Program Director for Advanced Systems

By Leslie Kean The Huffington Post 10-10-17

at “Skunk Works”; a former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; a DoD Senior Intelligence officer who, among other sensitive responsibilities, ran a Pentagon aerospace “threat identification” program focusing on unidentified aerial technologies. And well placed and experienced professionals, from Intelligence and high academic positions, are also on board ― please see information on the Team for reference as you read.
Read more »

!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

About six months ago, our board at UFODATA was privileged to welcome Christopher Mellon as the newest member of our team. Chris spent nearly 20 years in the federal government serving in various national security positions. For the first time, he has agreed to speak publicly about his experiences within government as they relate to UFOs. It is unusual for a man of Chris’s stature to speak openly about UFOs, which gives his statements great weight. His positions during the Clinton and Bush administrations involved high clearances; in fact, there are few people who have enjoyed such deep and wide-ranging

By Leslie Kean The Huffington Post 5-9-16

access to compartmented programs in both the Defense Department (DoD) and the intelligence community. Chris is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal and the Defense Intelligence Agency Director’s Medal.

At DoD, Chris served on a small committee that provided oversight of all DoD special access programs, in order to eliminate potential waste and duplication. The oversight included visits to Area 51 and other sensitive facilities. He also spent over a decade on the Senate Intelligence Committee, involved in oversight of NRO, CIA, NSA and other intelligence organizations. He became the first Congressional official to review all of the NSA’s compartmented programs.

I wanted to know what Chris had to say about Hillary Clinton’s implications that the government may be withholding classified UFO documents. ...
Read more »

The Department of Defense last week asked Congress to enact a new exemption from the Freedom of Information Act for military tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as rules of engagement, that are unclassified but considered sensitive. A similar request by DoD last year was not acted upon by Congress.

Steven Aftergood Secrecy News 3-15-16

DoD justified its current proposal as a military necessity, and as a matter of common sense:

“The effectiveness of United States military operations is dependent upon adversaries, or potential adversaries, not having advance knowledge of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that will be employed in such operations. If an adversary or potential adversary has knowledge of such information, the adversary will be better able to identify and exploit any weaknesses, and the defense of the homeland, success of the operation, and the lives of U.S. military forces will be seriously jeopardized.”

This year’s proposal was drafted as an amendment to the existing FOIA exemption for DoD critical infrastructure. [...]
Read more »

!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Some of you will be aware that in 1994 the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) official policy of accepting and investigating UFO sightings, or “Unusual Aerial Sightings” (UAS) as they called them, was massively downgraded to almost nothing at all. I knew there would be a paper trail (beyond what was already released years ago) which hadn’t been appraised before. In September, 2015, using the powerful Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, I submitted a detailed request to the Department of Defence (DoD) for any material that “went into” this policy downgrade. They issued me, at some cost, 42 pages of never-before-seen administrative records from that era. This is the third and final Part of this series. For those who wish to start from the beginning, have a look at Part 1 and Part 2.

By Paul Dean The UFO Chronicles 2-7-16

Beyond what I have highlighted previously, there are some more records that are of some interest. A 3 page “Message Form” dated 24th December, 1993 was sent to six “Air Indicator Groups” (AIG). An AIG is a list of preset destinations for internal message routing. This particular message was titled “Unusual Aerial Sightings: Revised Policy” and had a file reference 138/93/DGPP. DGPP stands for Director General of Plans and Policy. The author was Air Commodore S. T. James who was DGPP for the RAAF in 1993 and 1994. See below:


Another item which is of note is a reference copy of RAAF Headquarters document which forms a front cover sheet to the dry UAS Policy as it stood in 1984. Indeed, it was 1984 when the RAAF had last changed the policy when they made the decision to cease investigating any and all sighting submitted to them. Only sightings deemed of possible defence or security significance were to be studied. Anything less was simply logged, with a courtesy letter written to the witness. So, what did the 1984 policy look like when crammed into one page? Signed by Air Vice Marshal, J. W. Newman, who held the role of Deputy Chief of the Air Staff from 1984 to 1985, see this outline of the 1984 UAS Policy below:

- click and or right click on image(s) to enlarge -

I could continue providing textual transcription and imagery of this significant piece of Australian DoD history, but this series needs to be finalized, and anyone who wants to study the records provided to me merely needs to ask. It is absolutely worth other researchers having a look at this material. I have taken much away from these records, and, if nothing else, it proves that the RAAF can locate and prepare 20 year old records with what appeared to me to be relative ease. Also, in regards to the redactions of text found in this release, on the 17th of January, 2016, I appealed the DoD’s FOI decision makers and asked for the blacked-out text to be released in full. I expect an answer by February’s end.

Finally, one very last piece of history that I wish to share is a copy of the RAAF’s 6 page UAS Sightings Annex A, parts 1 and 2. Part 1 was the actual pro forma questionnaire for witnesses to fill out if they so wished; and Part 2 was the Unit Investigation form, which was a RAAF officer’s “investigation” working papers for any given case. These clean, blank forms are how they appeared in the 1980s and early 1990’s. See below.



Read more »

In 1994, the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) policy of accepting and investigating UFO sightings, or “Unusual Aerial Sightings” (UAS) as they called them, was downgraded to virtually no policy at all. But, like all things in modern government, there had to be a paper trail. In September, 2015 I submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Department of Defence (DOD) for any material that “went into” this policy downgrade, and I was recently provided with never-before-seen administrative records from that era. I have discussed some of these records in Part 1 of this series, which can be found here.

By Paul Dean The UFO Chronicles 1-29-16

In this Part 2 of the series, I aim to continue providing imagery and discussion regarding this important release of information. In Part 1, the main item I studied was Wing Commander (later Group Captain) Brett Biddington’s (ret) lengthy draft of background information and suggestions which would soon morph into the 1994 downgrade of their UAS policy. One surprise was the level of security classification on much of this material. I also emphasized that some of it remains classified, and has been redacted (blacked out) so it could be released to me.

So what of RAAF Biddington’s final draft for the Chief of Air Staff? At 7 pages long, it differs somewhat from the first draft that Biddington wrote. Firstly, it has a cover page as one may expect, and is somewhat more formal, as we shall see. Firstly, the front cover page has “COVERING SECRET” stamped squarely in place. The title states “BREIF FOR CAS” – “CAS” is the acronym for Chief of Air Staff. Below this is “UNUSUAL AERIAL SIGHTINGS POLICY”. And in the bottom left, is the all-important “Brief prepared by WGCDR B. Biddington.” I have imaged this above.

The next page is has SECRET stamped at the top, as well as “Page 1 of 7” directly underneath. Below that is “DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE” and “(AIR FORCE OFFICE)”. A line of text referring to the existing UAS policy states “Ref: AF 84 3508 Pt l (14)” and is followed by a center-of-page heading “BRIEF FOR CAS” and “UNUSUAL AERIAL SIGHTINGS – POLICY” underneath. The first sub-section is headed here, not surprisingly titled “BACKGROUND,” along with the remaining pages below:





Now that I have presented the final copy of the massive policy change material that the Chief of Air Staff saw and approved, it is worth having a look at the differences between WGCDR Brett Biddington’s draft and the final product. The draft, which can be examined in my Part 1 of this series, is shorter in regards to page numbers. This is because the line spacing and text is more tightly packed. Also, the final product for the Chief of Air Staff came with a front cover. The level of detail that Biddington goes to in the two products is somewhat different, also. Most importantly for us is the text that discusses RAAF interest in Unusual Aerial Sightings, especially around what I believe to be discussion on re-entered space debris and new (at the time) long-range aerospace surveillance.

For example, in relation to an “extra-terrestrial threat” to Australia, the draft version states on Page 2:

I think that an extra-terrestrial threat to Australian security is not likely to develop without some foreknowledge from astronomical and other surveillance systems. X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X The means by which such searches might be conducted are numerous and will vary with particular circumstances.

Compare that to the same topic in the final version, on Page 6:

Should unambiguous extra-terrestrial contact with earth occur (which may or may not be associated with UAS), however remote that possibility might be, levels of organisation well beyond the RAAF will be interested and involved. Should the RAAF be required respond, how we do so will be defined not by extant UAS policy but by instructions from Government. It follows that there is no valid reason for the RAAF to retain a formal interest in UAS.

In the draft version the redacted text is, I believe, most likely discussing long-range radar systems (and possibly other aerospace monitoring technologies) that were being evaluated or in initial stages of operation back in the early 1990’s. In the final version, the “extra-terrestrial threat” isn’t mentioned until Page 6. Also in the final version, there is an extra segment in the “RAAF Interest” sub-section which is worth an extra look and comprises lightly of material in the draft, as well as new discussion:

The enormous improvements in surveillance technologies in the past 20 years make it possible to predict when large items of space junk are likely to fall to earth and where they are likely to fall; this occurred with SKYLAB in 1983. Civil and military aviation communications in Australia are highly developed and initial indications that an aircraft is in difficulty are increasingly likely to come from within the system and not be dependent on external observation of flaming wreckage and falling debris. Witness observations of such events remain important but not from the UAS perspective.

Another difference between the two versions of this policy change material, although small, is the reference to the vanishing of pilot Frederick Valentich and logistical concerns. Paragraph 5, Page 2, of the draft version reads:

At a more mundane level, the UAS mechanism has provided information about missing and crashed aircraft. The disappearance of the pilot Valentich into Bass Straight (flying a Cessna) is a case in point.

Paragraph 8, Page 3, of the final version reads:

At a more mundane level, the UAS mechanism has provided information about missing and crashed aircraft.

I can’t see any meaning to this variance in content. The audience (the Chief of Air Staff), one presumes, expects rapid-fire information with minimum distractions. However, it will be of mild interest to those who have studied the Valentich disappearance. Speaking of the Chief of Air, an additional sentence found in the final version, which may have been tailored especially for him, can be found on Page 2 within the “Community Interest” sub-section:

Neither accusation has caused the RAAF serious embarrassment or concern.

Another difference between draft and final versions, which could be easily missed, is within the mention of probable downed space junk. The draft says:

The most recent example known to me occurred in the late 1970s/early 80s when a RAAF SQDLDR was dispatched at short notice to central Queensland..

The final version says:

The most recent example is thought to have occurred in the late 1970s/early 80s when a RAAF SQDLDR was dispatched at short notice to central Queensland.

See that? The passage of text “…example known to me occurred…” and “example is thought to have occurred” is subtly dissimilar. What meaning this has, keeping in mind the audience who was to review this material, is unknown to me. There are many other variances between WGCDR Brett Biddington’s draft policy review and the final product. Significant work would go into detail every single one. Even then, so little meaning can be attributed to many of them that attempting to do so scarcely seems worth the effort some twenty-two years later. In my next, and final, part of this series, I will discuss some of the other pages in the 42 page PDF that makes up this significant release by our Department of Defence.
Read more »