Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Sci-Fi

Air Force Pushed Out UFO Investigator (yahoo.com) 114

J. Allen Hynek started as an Air Force consultant brought in to help explain away early UFO reports, but over time he grew frustrated with what he saw as the government's effort to minimize unexplained cases rather than seriously investigate them. Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an article from Popular Mechanics, in collaboration with Biography.com, that argues Hynek's shift from skeptic to advocate helped shape modern ufology, and that the Air Force's attempts to control the narrative may have deepened the public distrust and conspiracy thinking that followed. From the report: Do you think the U.S. government is hiding, and possibly reverse-engineering, extraterrestrial technology? Think again. Or better yet, don't think about it at all. Nothing to see here. That's the underlying message of a report released in 2024 by the Department of Defense. The 63-page "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) " concludes that the DoD's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) "found no evidence that any [U.S. Government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology."

The AARO, as The Guardian summarizes, is "a government office established in 2022 to detect and, as necessary, mitigate threats including 'anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.'" This report came on the heels of, and in contradiction to, what was arguably the most high-profile hearing on UAPs -- formerly known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs -- in decades: the August 2023 testimony of "whistleblower" Dave Grusch.

[...] The 2024 AARO report stated that during the time Hynek was working with Project Blue Book [the U.S. Air Force's best-known UFO investigation program], "about 75 percent of Americans trusted the [US government] 'to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.'" But, the report noted, since 2007, that number has never risen above 30 percent. "This lack of trust probably has contributed to the belief held by some subset of the U.S. population that the USG has not been truthful regarding knowledge of extraterrestrial craft."

Ultimately, the Air Force's efforts to stifle Hynek -- pressuring him to offer the public standard responses to questions he wasn't even allowed to ask -- appears to have backfired. Ironically, the Air Force's attempts to quiet suspicions only fueled them, leading to more conspiracy theories and distrust. People came to believe that the government was hiding the truth, contrary to Hynek's actual revelation: that, in reality, the people at the top may not care much about finding the answers after all.

Air Force Pushed Out UFO Investigator

Comments Filter:
  • by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yaho[ ]om ['o.c' in gap]> on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @07:44AM (#66093036) Homepage Journal

    Governments and officials like to control power, information, and behaviour.

    In practice, you can tightly control at most one of those. Try to dominate all three, and the other two usually decay into something dysfunctional and ultimately malignant. That is the price of over-centralising everything at once.

    If the government had confined itself to power, and the Air Force to discipline and airspace, while allowing researchers to access and assess the evidence properly, we would likely have far fewer delusions and far less paranoia today. Yes, that would have required the Air Force to maintain secrecy through actual competence rather than narrative management, but that discipline would probably have done them a great deal of good. They might even be better able to distinguish fact from fiction now.

    • Disinfo (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @09:18AM (#66093138)
      I think it has less to do with that, and more to do with using UFOs as a disinformation campaign.

      Want a cheap way to flush out spies? Leak that we have alien technology, say it's in a warehouse in the desert, and wait to see who starts poking around.

      Want a cheap way to test air defense radar? Make a weirdly shaped mylar balloon that has been profiled using your own radar. Fill it up with helium and launch it downstream from a sensitive military site. Wait to see how long it takes for them to scramble fighters to check it out. All you need is a balloon, a tank of helium, and a radio you can buy online for $50.
      • You mean upstream.

        • Nope, it's very difficult for saloons to go upstream

          (yes, I actually got what you mean, but hopefully that helps you understand why the grandparent said it the way they did. You go upstream so you can "launch it downstream")

          • saloons? balloons. I guess it works for both, if your saloon is on a raft.

          • That's now how prepositional phrases work. "Downstream from" is singular concept, it provides a direction. You're defining where you launch it relative to a different point.

            If you say "downstream from", you're saying the launch point is already past the site. If you want it to drift to the site, you'd have to launch it 'upstream from' the site.

        • by drnb ( 2434720 )
          You mean upwind. :-)
      • by jd ( 1658 )

        The first problem is signal to noise ratio.

        That sort of disinformation ramps up the noise fast. The signal then merely needs to look indistinguishable from the noise. It is so so much easier to hide out amongst freaks, geeks, and weirdos. Even Johnny English could hide out in such a crowd and not remotely stand out.

        Nononono. If you want to pick out the signal, you need to reduce the noise in both quantity and volume. The signal then has nowhere to hide.

        The second problem is the advertising.

        What does it real

        • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

          That sort of disinformation ramps up the noise fast. The signal then merely needs to look indistinguishable from the noise. It is so so much easier to hide out amongst freaks, geeks, and weirdos. Even Johnny English could hide out in such a crowd and not remotely stand out.

          You're overthinking things. You don't care about the riff-raff who hang out in the Lil' Ale'inn. You make it seem like it's easy to get a janitorial job at the facility and monitor the heck out of those who apply. Also any government workers whom seem over-eager to get their hands on documentation coming out of the site, which is all, also, disinformation, so who cares if any other country gets it.

          What does it really require to monitor an aircraft? Active RADAR? No. Passive RADAR using civilian radio transmissions would be undetectable and can be done in post-processing as long as you have a good enough recording that's adequately timestamped and location stamped.

          "UFO" balloons aren't to monitor aircraft. They are to test air defense radar. How good an enemy's radar is at

          • by jd ( 1658 )

            Only idiots spy in person. They either pay for an insider or do all monitoring remotely. When was the last time an actual foreign agent was caught in a base? Now look at the number of times they've used USB keys to import malware, used cash to pay off insiders, or used remote sensing technology like microphones capable of analysing vibrations in windows, or other tracking devices.

            I'm looking at where spies are caught. And they are never caught trying to be janitors on bases. If they're caught at all, then i

      • I think it has less to do with that, and more to do with using UFOs as a disinformation campaign. Want a cheap way to flush out spies? Leak that we have alien technology, say it's in a warehouse in the desert, and wait to see who starts poking around.

        And: want to get people to not take seriously reports of secret experimental aircraft being tested in Nevada? Make people think they're UFOs.

    • In the military, the mission - and only the mission - matters.

      Most of the officers in the position to observe a UFO are not in the position to order an investigation. Even if they were, they'd have to justify the use of taxpayer dollars to support what could easily be characterized as a "curiosity" rather than the fundamental mission of air power. The best most of them can do is record their experience in the debrief, and rely on civilian scientists to investigate it further.

    • ... [if the] Air Force [confined itself] to discipline and airspace, while allowing researchers to access and assess the evidence properly ...

      Those two things might inherently be in conflict. What if the evidence is of an undisclosed weapons program?. As others have pointed out, "UFOs" can be an excellent cover story to distract, useful disinformation.

      ""In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies" -- Winston Churchill

      ""All warfare is based on deception" -- Sun Tzu

      Maybe peacetime too, or at least cold war times?

    • No this is classic conspiratorial thinking. The government SUUUUUUUUCKS at controlling information. But they are dicks and are very good at acting like it.
  • by phayes ( 202222 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @07:48AM (#66093040) Homepage

    JAH thinks that the % of people who don't trust the USG is because "The USG refused to take my theories seriously when I edged my way into the deep end of the pool". That says more than enough about how seriously anyone not wearing a tin foil hat should be taking anything he says. Note to JAH: It's not always about you.

    • Although I absolutely agree with you, attempting to control the narrative on - well - just about everything is precisely what the USG has gotten into trouble over, pretty much every year since it was founded.

      Although there is absolutely no evidence for aliens, it was important that this conclusion was reached organically by researchers. Paranoia and delusions of "secret knowledge" are the natural result of being told what to think, which means that you ideally want to avoid telling people what to think.

      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        ... attempting to control the narrative on - well - just about everything is precisely what the USG has gotten into trouble over ...

        But aren't there things it should attempt to control the narrative over, for example undisclosed military weapons programs?

        Back in the day, how many triangular UFO sightings were the F-117 Stealth Fighter under development? Shouldn't the USG have lied regarding those?

        • by jd ( 1658 )

          There's a problem with that -- it fools those whose opinions are irrelevant, but masks the presence of those whose actions are extremely relevant.

          There is absolutely nothing easier than hiding in a group of nutters. With surveillance for the last 50 or so years being mostly remote and passive, that's all they need to do. As long as the signal-to-noise ratio is poor for those trying to maintain secrecy, but exceptionally good for those trying to steal those secrets, then such efforts are counterproductive.

          Th

    • by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @09:59AM (#66093212)
      It does seem to be a very conspiracist explanation, one man's "evil gummint trying to control the narrative" is another man's "government doesn't understand why it should be employing a crackpot who spends his time creating a lot of work for everyone around them".
  • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @08:01AM (#66093048)

    The smoking man always seems to be just one step ahead....

  • I was abducted and probed by aliens. I tried telling this to govt. people. They did not take my claims seriously and think that I am some kind of kook.

    Do you need further proof that our govt. is in on the grand conspiracy and is full of corrupt bureaucrats?

  • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @08:26AM (#66093070) Journal

    Imagine you are a manager or a CO and you have an employee who keeps spending an enormous amount of time working one something you know is pointless.

    You'd tell them to find a more productive use of their time, and if they can't you might tell them to find other employment.

    • by Toad-san ( 64810 )

      The "you know is pointless" part is what I'm concerned about.

  • Ireland and America have things in common. For one, we don't lock our insane people up. But it seems that every Spaceship visiting earth makes a beeline for North America, and hangs around there looking for notice, or to get chased for fun.

    Wake up guys. Maybe if you locked your nutcases up.......
    • by thogard ( 43403 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @08:37AM (#66093082) Homepage

      Ireland and Italy and Spain have its share of people who see angels. Oddly the number of UFO sightings and angel sightings are highly concentrated around areas with geological pressure Peltier related electrical oddities. Oddly New England has ghost issues around the similar geology.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        >geological pressure Peltier related electrical oddities
        Did you mean piezo? Because otherwise I have no idea what you're talking about and can't find anything on google with "geological peltier."

      • In the past, people saw fairyland and demons or angels. In my generation it was UFOs and aliens. What changed was the objects of the human imagination, not the world around us.

        And if aliens land in New York tomorrow, I'll have to eat my words. Until then, I stand by them

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Ireland and Italy and Spain have its share of people who see angels. Oddly the number of UFO sightings and angel sightings are highly concentrated around areas with geological pressure Peltier related electrical oddities. Oddly New England has ghost issues around the similar geology.

        The lower number of UFO sightings in Italy and Spain might have something to do with the fact that in Italian and Spanish "UFO" is "OVNI" (Objecto Volantador No Identificado in Spanish). No idea what it is in Gaelic but I'm sure it's hard to pronounce.

        Ireland like most countries has it's share of nutters, however unlike the US they don't give them a megaphone and a load of Adderall.

        Fun Fact: Flying Saucer in Italian is Disco Volante and was also the name of an Alfa Romeo.

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] [Kids in the Hall]

      It is still funny all these years later.

    • OK, but that's just the opposite of true. How did you form that conclusion?

      The strongest cases are from Zimbabwe, Australia, and Brazil.

      The strongest US cases are from Arizona and New Hampshire with very few witnesses and almost no physical evidence.

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Is that the Brazilian case described on Slashdot a couple weeks ago? Where an American foot surgeon creatively interpreted some ordinary events to sell a book?

        I wonder if the Zimbabwe and Australian cases you're talking about might be similar?

    • I remember seeing a study about schizophrenics. For some reason Americans tend to hear voices that are destructive and violent. In other countries these voices are mischievous. https://news.stanford.edu/stor... [stanford.edu]

    • by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @10:04AM (#66093226)

      Wake up guys. Maybe if you locked your nutcases up.......

      That's one take, but I don't think it's the most helpful one.

      People want to believe (reassuring) fantasies. Religion, for instance. The fantasy that aliens are walking among us is an appealing one. It comes with a side-order of "and some day they may help us with our woes." It comes with a side-order of "we are interesting and valued." It comes with a side-order of "I have figured out things the government is hiding from me."

      It's not - in most cases - anything to do with mental illness. It's about the human condition, feeling things like inadequacy and being uncomfortable with responsibility and helplessness. Emotions are not insane, in most cases.

      Lock up jihadists (of all sects, not just the ones whose primary languages that word comes from) way before worrying about UFO believers.

    • Nah. The aliens want a good challenge, so they naturally try to play with the US Air Force and US Navy.
    • Wake up guys. Maybe if you locked your nutcases up.......

      If we did that, there would be no candidates for public office!

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Maybe if you [Americans] locked your nutcases up...

      Our Supreme Court gave the most egregious ones immunity from that.

  • by J. L. Tympanum ( 39265 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @09:11AM (#66093126)

    In an age when everyone has a high-quality camera in his pocket, how come the only evidence we have of these extra-terrestrial craft are fuzzy blobs?

    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Because otherwise you could easily tell it is just a photo of a pie plate.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Everybody who says this has never tried filming an aircraft at night with a cell phone. Try it!

      NASA has some beautiful 40-inch lenses for filming rocket launches and aerospace tests.

      And even those don't resolve much at night too far out. IIRC they weigh about 200 lbs (10 stone for the Europeans). So why doesn't NASA just use an iPhone?

      And chemical rockets aren't even accused of using a plasma-envelope gravity drive like some experimental military craft. Even the B2 uses an electric field to minimize turb

    • That high-quality camera in your pocket is designed to take high-resolution photos of relatively-stationary subjects from several feet away. Using that same camera to capture video of objects many miles away while they're moving at many hundreds of miles per hour will not yield similar results. That doesn't mean that aliens exist but it does mean that the expectations people are placing on video evidence of UAPs, whatever their origin, are not in line with the actual capabilities of most of our equipment.
    • We don't. Some of the evidence is from military videos showing very sharp featured shapes moving in ways that defy physics. A congressional investigation couldn't figure out what it was. Someone on youTube pointed out that the aperture of the camera matched the seen shape and when you're out of focus on a distant object like the moon, you see the camera's aperture. They recreated the UFO video near exactly by getting the same camera, un-focusing it at the moon, and shaking it around. And suddenly a ver

      • Is that what happened to the quicksand? It was so commonplace when I was growing up that my parents felt it necessary to teach me how to survive it. I'd been wondering what happened to it all.

        Or maybe the problem is that all the quicksand was split between Gilligan's Island and deep in the Congo where Tarzan was hanging out. And they've either been rescued or died.

    • Oh please, what's next, you're going to say that every indistinct shadow in the woods isn't bigfoot?

      That's just what they want you to think.

    • There are accounts of people who've witnessed a UFO, and for whatever reason, "didn't feel the urge to snap a photo". There are UFO researchers who've encountered a UFO, with camera in hand, and yet, are dumbfounded that they "didn't feel like taking a picture" or " it hadn't occurred to them" until after the fact.
  • Ironically, the Air Force's attempts to quiet suspicions only fueled them, leading to more conspiracy theories and distrust.

    There is some necessary secrecy around military operations, and where there is doubt, it's generally beneficial to err on the side of caution. And this is a reasonable thing to accept unless the whole nation is subservient to the military. And look at where the money goes... it is. But it's not really the military, is it? It's really the corporations which profit from supplying it.

    But if your goal is national defense, shouldn't you cap those profits? Not doing so decreases military readiness through overspe

  • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @09:34AM (#66093164) Homepage Journal

    People take this drivel seriously? Two tabloids of the "Bat Boy has love child with Hillary Clinton's horse" school?

    • Can you suggest some sources of alternative facts?

      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        That you are looking for alternative facts, instead of actual facts, says everything that anyone needs to know about you.

  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @09:39AM (#66093178) Homepage Journal

    These projects are all run out of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Remember, they run the F-14 and F-18 program currently and just had a $250M stealth drone shot down over the Eastern Med.

    Blue Book was the Air Force poking their node where it didn't belong.

    Forming Space Force was an attempt to reconcile this spat.

    But a lot of the research happens e.g. off the coast of Puerto Rico. That's where the biggest acknowledged Naval research station is located.

    It's why they won't let Puerto Ricans become independent, but for goodness sake, repeal the Jones Act permanently to stop the economic suffering of these people. They're legally Americans and the DC regime has them under embargo and sanctions. It's infuriating.

  • Obama said the U.S. does not have any alien technology and had no knowledge of any contact with any alien life forms by the U.S. government ever. No other president has indicated any evidence of alien contact or technology at all. They have no reason to lie.

    So unless it is such a big conspiracy that even the president doesn't know...which I doubt...it's nothing more than entertainment and fantasy.
    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      A former president has every reason to lie. He is not free to share classified information, nor in a position to declassify it.

      I think the idea that aliens have (other than perhaps those composed of smallish numbers of cells that perhaps hitched a ride on some meteor) having come to earth is pure fantasy.

      However I would consider any former office holder or ranking military officer about the least reliable source on something like that. Even if they had been in a position to know, they'd be the most closely

      • Re:Obama (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @10:26AM (#66093254)
        This administration would've leaked it on accident on Signal and then later on purpose on Truth Social by now.
        • Re:Obama (Score:4, Informative)

          by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday April 14, 2026 @01:02PM (#66093474)

          Well, see, here's the real deal.

          The problem is, some interns were verly late for a couple hearings - so they were running down a hall in the capitol. These kids were carrying large boxes of photos - some with evidence that UFOs exist and do anal probing, others with explicit Epstein photos. Well, the first intern tripped... which then sent most of the others to the floor as well. All the UFO and Epstein photos are now mixed together, and they're having a hard time figuring out which belongs to which set.

          Weird thing is, Trump appears in both sets of photos.

      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        A former president has every reason to lie. He is not free to share classified information, nor in a position to declassify it.

        A former president used to be a president, and on the way out the door they could have declassified anything they wanted to. None of them did. Left, right, or center, none of them. Many joked about asking about UFOs once they got into office.

      • Presidents have also commented on this while in office. Generally, either dismissively or derisively.
  • There are loyalists installed at every level of the US government and Trump cannot keep his mouth shut. Case closed.
  • ...out the door at 20,000 feet, I presume?

  • There's already far too much evidence showing the real purpose of AARO is to further obfuscate the issue rather than conduct any legit investigations.

  • The FBI has a position open. You'll get your own office, in the basement, kinda out of the way of everything else. You may be paired with a Special Agent who is supportive but skeptical, who is often surprised to find that there is indeed some surprising element of the supernatural or extraterrestrial at play.

  • Posting a Fox link so the smooth brains will believe it. JD Vance thinks they are demons, not aliens. https://www.foxnews.com/politi... [foxnews.com]

  • We tend to assume that everyone else is as reasonable as we are.

    Quit doing that shit.

    We have a century of UFO reports, no clear photos we can authenticate, and no artifacts.

    We do however know that Roswell was designed to protect the TR-1 and similar projects.

    If alien civilizations exist, they either (1) have self-destructed like ours is currently doing or (2) have made it past that hump and do not want to contact us and receive our disease.

  • The actually unidentified flying object investigator that you want to figure out if something was an odd atmospheric phenomenon, something civilian, a foreign spy craft, or one of your own that wasn't supposed to be seen... or the kind who thinks he's Fox Mulder and wants to prove little green (or grey) men have nothing better to do than fly across light years of space to buzz rural closeted homosexuals and give them dreams of being sodomized by sex toys?

    • Oh, no, I'm sorry but you've misunderstood completely.

      These are investigators from UFOs. Aliens who work as crash and crime scene investigators and were trying to find how we crashed their ships, and if criminal charges were warranted. Roswell was quite the intergalactic scandal.

      We told them to stuff it, as we have our own agency that investigates crashes, and the NTSB doesn't need help from potentially hostile foreigners who failed to apply for visas before crossing our borders.

      • I would watch that show. Seriously.

        I'm not sure how straight you'd play it, it'd need some degree of comedy, but an investigative procedural where there's no human conspiracy, just some jaded and worn out alien gumshoe... there's potential there.

  • And for everyone who says they have an "open mind" on the issue, just give it up. There is no evidence of any alien craft/people/technology. EVERYTHING (that lends any credence) has been investigated with a fine comb. There is nothing that most physicists would want more than to find evidence of aliens. There is no way to keep it secret if it did exist. The US army would BROADCAST any alien technology to the world as a power play. I really don't have to argue this point; it should be obvious. JUST ST

    • Would the military broadcast it as alien technology, or just the best weapon ever? Not that it has happened, there are clear lines of development for any of the technologies people have claimed came from aliens.
  • Yeah, for some reason the AF doesn't want loonies in their org.

  • ...outed the whole UFO thing as a ploy to manipulate businesses into creating what became the military industrial complex. They would tease these companies with fake alien tech that supposedly could do the things they wanted developed, for example, night vision, lasers, cruise missiles, and semiconductors. It also outed the rivalry between high ranking officers in different branches of the military as potentially reaching into the realm of murder. All over money - to develop weapons... That's what UFOs are
    • I think everything he said should be dismissed as too noisy. His job was to lie, and his statements have been on all sides of the issue. When was he telling the truth? Can't tell. Did he ever? Dunno.
  • 1. Why would aliens from light-years away come all that distance, only either to crash into the oceon or perform anal probes on some hapless humans? Don't they have assholes of their own?

    2. All this talk about maneuvers that "defy physics" sounds to me like reflections off the glass of the cockpit. Reality does not defy physics.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Guessing motivations is poor evidence in either direction.

    • 1. That's one of my favorite questions. They know how to get here, but then crash? They are seen? Don't tell me you can cross deep space and still haven't figured out how not to be seen. One of my favorite claims was that UFOs were downed by... RADAR! They can fly between the stars, but radio waves can knock them out?

      2. If it breaks every rule we know for how physical objects move, then either we don't know all the rules, or they aren't physical objects. Or both.

      For example, there are a number

  • Aliens are so sneaky. They always hang out right at the edge of where our optics can see so they remain blurry and indistinguishable from balloons.

  • ...Streisando Effectux

  • I was driving near Area 51 when I saw the Flying Saucer Cafe. As I passed it, a saucer came flying out the front door. This was surprising, so I pulled into the parking lot and went in. I asked the waitress, "what was that?!!". She said, "We have an excellent cook, but sometimes he loses his temper and starts throwing the crockery."

As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.

Working...