While the Hunter Biden courtroom drama suddenly sucked all the air from the news cycle, three former defense officials appeared before the House Oversight Committee to warn that UFOs, or UAPs, pose national security risks.

The witnesses included a a former Navy pilot, a retired Navy commander and an ex-Air Force intelligence official who accused the government of being too secretive about these incidents. They also urged the intelligence community to become more transparent.

The most shocking testimony came from David Grusch, veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Grusch said he “absolutely” believes that the government has been holding non-human technology for decades. Not only that, but they’re holding non-human craft with non-human species inside.

So has Grusch seen these items, and in particular, the non-human species? Well, no. His information came from others, and besides, he couldn’t disclose what he knows in a public setting.

It’s all jaw-dropping, to be sure, but I’m more in agreement with Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO): So we’re to believe that aliens have come from billions of light years away only to bungle their way in earth’s atmosphere?

Yeah, color me skeptical.

UFOs Are More Terrestrial Than ET

Do a Google search for “UFOs” or “UAPs” and you’ll get a plethora of articles and websites from Ufologists. Those from serious skeptics don’t seem to jump to the top of search results.

Credit: xkcd.com/CC BY-NC 2.5. 

However, there is one writer who has for several years done extensive research into the issue. He is Tyler Rogoway, editor-in-chief and military editorial director for “The War Zone” page of the website The Drive.

I first became aware of Rogoway’s work when I encountered a 2021 article he wrote called “Adversary Drones Are Spying On the US And The Pentagon Acts Like They’re UFOs.” Drawn on two years worth of research by Rogoway and his team, this 10,000 word long-read begins with this:

We may not know the identities of all the mysterious craft that American military personnel and others have been seeing in the skies as of late, but I have seen more than enough to tell you that it is clear that a very terrestrial adversary is toying with us in our own backyard using relatively simple technologies—drones and balloons—and making off with what could be the biggest intelligence haul of a generation. While that may disappoint some who hope the origins of all these events are far more exotic in nature, the strategic implications of these bold operations, which have been happening for years, undeterred, are absolutely massive.

So — no aliens? Probably not.

Our team here at The War Zone has spent the last two years indirectly laying out a case for the hypothesis that many of the events involving supposed UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as they are now often called, over the last decade are actually the manifestation of foreign adversaries harnessing advances in lower-end unmanned aerial vehicle technology, and even simpler platforms, to gather intelligence of extreme fidelity on some of America’s most sensitive warfighting capabilities.

Now that’s frightening.

But there’s also a history of the United States using simple aerial deception dating back to the 1960’s. For example, the CIA used an electronic system called PALLADIUM to trick Soviet radar into interpreting radar reflectors on balloons as being incoming aircraft performing outlandish maneuvers over Cuba.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and it appears that our adversaries — such as China, for example — have been swarming our ships with deceptive balloons and drone swarms. In fact, in 2019, Ryan Graves, one of the whistleblowers on Capitol Hill, stated on the Kevin Rose podcast:

If we do have what we would call a ‘red threat,’ one of our traditional enemies that are using some type of perhaps new technology, or hard to identify technology that is out there in our working areas soaking up our waveforms and our radar and our sensor and our comms, watching our tactics on a daily basis, it’s a major, major intelligence failure to have these things out there.

Three years later Graves said before Congress on Wednesday:

If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem. If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety. 

I don’t have enough time or space to do justice to the research that Rogoway and his team provided. But if you would like to read the entire article, you can find it here. It’s thought-provoking information.

What Did We Really Learn From the Hearings?

Two years after his article on adversary drones, and on the eve of the House Oversight Committee hearings, Tyler Rogoway wrote:

Skeptics And Believers Alike Should Support A Congressional UFO Investigation

He continued:

Win, lose, or draw, it’s time to move this issue along. The subject has never been a healthy one, but now it has become extremely toxic in virtually every regard and it seems that many in power in Washington are buying into conspiracy theories surrounding it, for better or worse.

Rogoway still believes that the vast majority of sightings can be explained, but of course there are those with no ready explanations. Then we need to engage the best scientific minds, he said. However, I would caution against publicity seekers. And those type abound — they would regularly show up on Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News program spinning UFO yarns.

So what about David Grusch with his bombshell accounts of non-human craft and occupants?

First of all, Grusch is a respected former officer with highest security clearances. He has also served honorably in sensitive positions — at least as far as we know. He also did everything by the books and went through all the proper channels to file his whistleblower complaint.

However, as Rogoway noted:

Once again, the things he has said are nothing new, at least when it comes to the folklore of UFOs. The stories of government UFO crash retrieval programs and possession of alien bodies date back the better part of a century. 

And there’s the pesky little problem of Grusch not having personally witnessed his claims.

Did this respected intel officer with the highest clearances fall down the UFO rabbit hole a bit too far? Was he influenced by known folks who have stated similar claims or alluded to them for years without supplying evidence?

Moreover, Grusch revealed only information that the government had previously reviewed and approved. So despite his shocking claims, they’re not new nor particularly revealing. As Rogoway wrote:

But to quote Hans Solo — “It’s true… All of it,” — is a very different proposition than scattered tales, depictions in entertainment, fuzzy videos, and unsubstantiated stories. But basically, that is what Grusch is saying.

So despite the hype we didn’t learn anything about UFOs that we didn’t know before, did we? Congress took a welcome first step, but we need more, especially in these post-Covid days of little trust in our government.

Featured image: LUDOVIC. R/flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.