Mysterious Drones Swarm Navy Ships and Air Force Bases

In this episode we cover a pile of recent UFO news. Ross Coulthart says Congress smells bullshit from the AARO historical report. Rep. Burlison and the UAP Caucus formally requested a UAP select committee. The Joint Chiefs released their new UAP reporting guidelines, which seems to contradict AARO’s finding that there’s no evidence of nonhuman craft. Oh, and multiple Navy ships and Air Force bases have been swarmed by mysterious drones. It’s a very exciting time!

QuickHits

A source told AskAPol that Reps Anna Paulina Luna and Matt Gaetz were “briefed by current military people that had a video of bodies.”
- Rep Gaetz spokesperson: “We can confirm that we received a briefing with Rep. Luna. We have no comment on the contents of that briefing at this time.”
- Rep Luna: “I cannot discuss these things, you know that. I'm sure we'll have field hearings. No comment.”
Speaking of field hearings: Rep Eric Burlison spoke recently about the difficulty of investigating the locations of craft provided to them by Grusch and others:
- "We have been given two locations that I can't speak of. And one of the frustrating things is that what we've been told is that I can't even tell my staff about these locations. So if we were to try to set up a field hearing… what I have been told at this point is that, by me even telling the staff what locations I wanna go look at is releasing information to them about this. So, this is why this is such a frustrating topic, is that all of these silly things keep getting in the way of us getting to the information. And the other thing I was told, and Grusch has said, is that if we do set up a field hearing where we try to surprise visit 'em, they're gonna move everything before we get there."
Matt Lazlo of AskAPol spoke to Sen Mike Rounds (one of only a few Senators who sit on both the Intelligence and Armed Services committees), and asked: “Are you read in on every program?”
- Sen Rounds: “Well, you never know if you’re read in or not.”
- Lazlo: “the US contractors, there could be something that you don’t know?”
- Sen Rounds: “You never know.”
Ross Coulthart told a story recently about being approached by two senior senators who thought the AARO historical report was bullshit:
- "These two very senior politicians came up to me and they said, 'Oh, you're the guy that did the Grusch interview.' And I said, 'Yes, that's me sir.' …And I realized who I was talking to, and these were two very senior senators, neither of whom are prominent at all, publicly, in the commentary on the issue. But what they took their time to say to me was how they can smell bullshit when they see it. And they were making the point to me that Congress is not letting this issue go. And I can't say a great deal about what I know is happening, but there is a very strong, bipartisan push in the Congress. That it's time. That basically, they're not buying [the AARO] historical-review report, which, essentially, was a whitewash… An attempt to put the whole subject matter back in the box and attempt to discredit David Grusch and other whistleblowers… Congress isn't letting go."

Joint Chiefs Issue UAP Reporting Guidelines

Recently the DODIG recommended that the Joint Chiefs issue guidance to geographic combat commanders regarding UAP encounters, and we learned they’d done so. Those guidelines have now been released thanks to a FOIA request by Douglas Dean Johnson:
- “The U.S. government has observed UAP in or near the territory and/or operating areas of the United States, of its allies, and of its adversaries, and observing, identifying, and potentially mitigating UAP has become a growing priority for US policymakers, lawmakers, and warfighters. The potentially ubiquitous presence of UAP defines the national security implications of those anomalies, which range from operational hazards and threats to technological and intelligence surprise to adversaries' strategic miscalculations.”
  - Ross Coulthart: “This shows how, in defiance of AARO’s disinterest, the Joint Chiefs are taking UAP now very seriously indeed.”
- Reports on UAP incidents are to be transmitted upwards within 96 hours, but UAP engagement reports should be transmitted within 12 hours. A UAP engagement is defined as a “kinetic or non-kinetic response to a UAP, intended to deny, disrupt, or destroy.”
  - All these reports will ultimately go to AARO
- They clarify that these guidelines are only for incidents that “demonstrate behaviors not readily understood by sensors or observers” and “demonstrate capabilities or material that exceed known performance envelopes.”

Rep Burlison and the Select Committee

Rep Burlison started the process to request a select committee focused on UAP. Cosigners include the rest of the UAP Caucus—Reps Burchett, Moskowitz, Luna, Mace, and Ogles, as well as Rep Gaetz.
- “Given the Oversight Committee's role as the principal investigative body in the U.S. House of Representatives and its broad authority to investigate ‘any matter’ at ‘any time’ under House Rule X, we believe it is proper for the committee to investigate and assess how transparent and accountable the federal government is when it comes to UAP… Given the long history of the DoD and IC's lack of cooperation and transparency, it is in the best interest of American taxpayers for Congress to investigate UAP on a bipartisan basis and ultimately provide much needed transparency to the public.”
- Rep Burlison: “We’ve reached out to Speaker Johnson, and this formal letter is the next step… I’ll look forward to hearing from him. I know that we’ve got Chairman Comer on our side…”
  - According to the Springfield Daily Citizen, which published a big interview with Rep Burlison, he “wants to make sure a special committee on UAP is part of the negotiations. If there is a new speaker, they will likely need to commit to the select panel to get Burlison’s support.”
- Asked about AARO’s historical report saying there’s no evidence of an illegally hidden crash retrieval program: “I don’t [trust the Pentagon on this], because they weren’t transparent with us in a SCIF setting. They could have brought forward evidence, they could have explained what these special access programs actually do, but they are not willing to do that with Congress.”
In the wake of the select committee news, Rep Burlison blew up on UFO twitter, because in an interview, he was asked what he thinks of Lue Elizondo and David Grusch’s claims, and part of his answer was “I don’t believe most of what they’re telling me.” What’s funny about this is he started talking about this because he was complaining that in the past, people have twisted his words:
- “I've been pretty clear from the beginning that I've been very skeptical all the way. I was misquoted the last time I was on this Discord chat about my view on angels. And so, if I can, I want to clarify things.”
- “In discussing these objects, I said very clearly, I think that the most obvious explanation, the Occam's razor to me, is that what we're seeing is experimental aircraft that are being done by more likely the United States military industrial complex. I can conceive of a scenario where one military project is working on one particular type of experiment and it crashes. And they're working with one contractor. And then another agency of the military is working with a different contractor. And then you can keep going and keep going. And now, if something crashes, they're all kind of wondering what are these objects. And so what concerns me, in my view, is a scenario where we're paying our military contractors to reverse engineer each other's programs.”
- Someone asked what he was doing to make sure he’s not being purposely misled by people like Lue Elizondo.
- “Right. I don't believe hardly anything that they tell me. This is why I was pretty blunt at the beginning of all of this that I'm from Missouri. You're going to have to show me. So, what I can say is that it has been validated to me that there is over-compartmentalization. It's been validated by the office of the inspector general that many of Grusch's claims, while they can't verify his claims about aliens, his claims about the processes and the way in which information is not being conveyed to Congress has been validated. And that to me is enough… I owe it to the American people to be responsible to follow through.”

“Drone” Swarms

There have been reports of drone swarms around military assets for a few years now. A news site named The War Zone has covered these, mostly from the angle of “The US military is underprepared for the threat of cheap adversary drones attacks and surveillance.”
- In 2020, they reported on a drone incursion over an Air Force base on Guam, where quadcopter-like vehicles with bright spotlights flew in from over the water.
- In 2021, they reported that multiple Navy destroyers off the coast of California were swarmed by drones over several nights in 2019. These nighttime encounters were described with flashing red or steady white lights and able to match speeds with the destroyers. The article noted one encounter that lasted over 90 minutes, “significantly longer than what commercially available drones can typically sustain.”
  - “Commercially available drones are not commonly capable of flying for such long durations across great distances with speeds in excess of 45 miles an hour. Based on the pooled data available from the deck logs, we estimate the drones traversed at least 100 nautical miles in the July 14th incident. Furthermore, the drones were able to locate and catch a destroyer traveling at 16 knots in conditions with less than one nautical mile of visibility. Equally baffling, their operators appear to have coordinated at least five to six drones simultaneously. Then there is the question of line-of-sight control, and control methods in general, which make the capabilities described all that much more puzzling.”
- A followup report in 2022 added more details:
  - Some of the drones were visually identified as quadcopters.
  - “These drones flashed or shined ‘a searchlight or photographic device’ at the ship's bow and bridge multiple times.”
- And this month, they reported that Langley Air Force Base was swarmed by drones for several weeks back in December.
  - Air Force Gen Gregory Guillot said “I wasn’t prepared for the number of incursions that I see… This emerging capability outstrips the operational framework that we have to address it.”
Navy Pilot Ryan Graves: "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. And because they look slightly different than what our average threat would look like, everyone wants to ignore it. So if we had a Chinese or Russian fighter jet flying out there watching us it would be a major deal. But because it looks slightly different we want to ignore it."
Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence: “It is not just Langley; other critical bases and facilities, as well as Navy ships at sea, are experiencing what appear to be the same strange, unaccountable intrusions… Congress should hold hearings on these intrusions over Langley and the larger pattern of drone and UAP intrusions we have been experiencing. If this is Russia, or more likely China, we have a huge problem on our hands. I’ve been publicly and privately suggesting for years now that Congress dig more deeply into the US air defense threats and capabilities due to this ongoing pattern of activity, which unfortunately seems to be accelerating.”
Lue Elizondo, former head of AATIP: “You have drones that can fly really far, and they can fly fast, using wings. Those drones that fly really far and really fast don’t have a real loiter capability, they don’t usually hover. They can hover, but you’re either really good at flying far or you’re really good at hovering. Those that hover, don’t have as long as what we call loiter capability as those that fly on a fixed wing. And so, therein lies the problem. Either you can hover for a short period of time or you can fly for a long period of time.”
- “But, in order to get to a bunch of Navy ships that are 100 miles off the coast, you either have to fly there or you have to launch from somewhere close by. And these things, unless they are GPS controlled and would be able to follow a ship, I’m not gonna say it’s impossible, but you have to have someone operating, you have to have someone flying, you have to have an infrastructure. So for every drone you see flying, you have to have an operator, you have to have batteries, you have to be on a certain frequency, there’s a lot of things. You have to have a base for it to land and a base for it to take off. In the open ocean, you’re limited. You can’t just pop out of the water, you have to expect that you’re gonna have to launch from another boat.”
- “And not a single one of these have been shot down, not a single one of these have ever been recovered from the ocean, not a single one of them has had a mechanical issue, not a single one has been able to be intercepted.”

References

AskAPol: Reps. Luna & Gaetz shown "video of bodies," according to source
Barnett Parker: Gaetz confirms briefing with Luna
AskAPol: Sen. Rounds on UAPs around military sites: "we're not sure where they're coming from"
Ross Coulthart: “We can smell bullshit when we see it.”
D. Dean Johnson: FOIA Release: Joint Chiefs issue worldwide UAP reporting requirements
Ross Coulthart: “The Joint Cheifs are taking UAP very seriously indeed.”
Rep Burlison: “I formally requested that the Speaker establish a UAP select committee.”
Rep Burlison: “The American people deserve the truth.”
Springfield Daily Citizen: If ‘the truth is out there’ about UAPs, Eric Burlison wants to know
Rep Burlison: “Lue Elizondo and David Grusch’s claims merit further investigation.”
Rep Burlison: “If we set up a field hearing, the’re gonna move everything before we get there.”
Rep Burlison: “I’ve been clear from the beginning that I’m skeptical.”
The War Zone: Mysterious Drone Incursions Have Occurred Over U.S. THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Battery In Guam
The War Zone: Multiple Destroyers Were Swarmed By Mysterious ‘Drones’ Off California Over Numerous Nights
The War Zone: Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They’re UFOs
The War Zone: Mysterious Drones Swarmed Langley AFB For Weeks
Gen Guillot: “I wasn’t prepared for the number of incursions that I see.”
Chris Mellon: “It’s not just Langley.”
Lue Elizondo: “Not a single one of these drones has been shot down.”

Episode 41, posted on March 17, 2024