"A theory often put forward to explain some of the most spectacular UFO sightings is that they might be prototype aircraft or UAVs. Of course, at any time we will be test flying various things that you won't see at the Farnborough airshow for several years, but the bottom line is that we test fly such things in certain areas so at least within government we can differentiate between black projects and UFOs. In view of the controversy about Aurora (an alleged hypersonic replacement for the SR-71 Blackbird) we did, in the case of the March 1993 UFO sightings, raise the issue with the US authorities, through the British Embassy in Washington. Was it possible that something had gone wrong with the normal processes for overflight of another country and could our UFO sightings be attributable to some US prototype? The answer I got back was extraordinary." - Sanjeev Singh

continued... "The Americans had been having their own sightings of these large, triangular-shaped UFOs and wanted to know if the RAF might have such a craft, capable of moving from a virtual hover to speeds of several thousand mph in an instant. We wish we had! The interesting thing about this was that somebody in the US was still clearly taking an interest in UFOs, despite the apparent disengagement from the subject in 1969 with the closing down of Project Blue Book. Sadly, a letter to the US Embassy about Aurora was the only document missing from the casefile released to Steel Spyda following their FOIA request for documents relating to the March 1993 UFO sightings. - Sanjeev Singh

This is Nick Pope, former head of UFO investigations for the Ministry of Defence, UK. I just learned (belatedly) that the MOD is releasing all their UFO-related files to the public. http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/ufos... Unfortunately they're not free downloads anymore. - Sanjeev Singh

Read Richard Dolan's UFOs and the National Security State http://tinyurl.com/64nuul and you may begin to suspect that something significant might be going on here. - Sean McBride

one-clicked. Thanks Sean. It seems weird that people can believe in evolution but not that other advanced alien civilizations exist (like Kurzweil). I think it's more likely that his assumption that "the first civilization to reach the singularity will take over the universe" is flawed. - Sanjeev Singh

so are the fancy-pants aliens following this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal affairs of other civilizations, consistent with the historical real world concept of Westphalian sovereignty. It has special implications, however, for civilizations that have not yet developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight ("pre-warp"), since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization. - bob

The singularity already happened, and we are inside of it. - Paul Buchheit

although it is vaguely possible aliens are visiting with awesome ships, it seems more likely to be more the product of the big-foot effect. - bob

Robbie, the big foot effect won't leave radar traces (maybe not this particular incident, but in others). - Sanjeev Singh

Wild - and with credible witnesses. - Hutch Carpenter

Hmm...Do these UFO sightings coincide with the appearance of nearby crop circles? - Gabe

perhaps, but all the information is pretty debatable and there are a lot of unknowns about the type of people who are collecting it - there seems to be a lot more big-foot style evidence than solid radar-trace type evidence - bob

gabe, there were! (of a type) "The witnesses then described their absolute astonishment at seeing all the cows standing in a circular formation in the middle of the field, all completely silent." - bob

Sanjeev -- the Kurzweil thesis on this particular aspect of the Singularity doesn't feel right to me. My instinct is that the universe is teeming with a wild variety of life forms, many of them much more technologically advanced than we are. Nothing would surprise me less than the reality that some of them may have visited, or are now visiting, our tiny planet. What I found most striking about the Dolan book was the sheer mass of reports from highly reliable eyewitnesses, often corroborated by radar. Something's up. - Sean McBride

space might well be teeming with life but its also (as i hear it) rather large and spread out - and, unless travel suddenly gets a lot cheaper with technology it seems like anything going through all the trouble to visit earth would probably do more than just fly by, scan a few cows, etc - also, i think people tend to overestimate government's competence at covering things up (or anything else for that matter) - bob

bob -- it's quite possible (probable, actually) that many life forms have developed technologies far more advanced than our own. As to what they might be up to, or how they operate, projecting human habits and motives on species that are very different from us and much more intelligent than we are will not take one very far. (How well do ants or gnats understand human beings?) Regarding government cover-ups: read Dolan's book. Governments often do run successful cover-ups. - Sean McBride

bob, the cover up is that the US government keeps saying "there's nothing to see here" instead of admitting that there appear to be craft of unknown origin occasionally operating in our airspace. This is different than saying "we know aliens exist, but lets just pretend they don't". They might not actually be aliens, maybe they are visitors from the distant future or past. - Sanjeev Singh

true, just about anything is possible, but its still a lot of things to line up, potentially jumping through narrow hoops when much wider hoops are available - Fry: Incredible. This place is just like the Ancient Egypt of my day. Osiran Slavemaster: That is no coincidence, for our people visited your Egypt thousands of years ago. Fry: I knew it! Insane theories, one; regular theories, a billion. Osiran Slavemaster: We learned many things from the mighty Egyptians, such as pyramid building, space travel, and how to prepare our dead so as to scare Abbott and Costello. Fry: Also, Wolfman. - bob

Here's the basic situation: we've got a huge collection of UFO reports from highly reliable eyewitnesses, often corroborated by radar and photographic evidence. Governments and military and intelligence establishments around the world have been paying close attention to this phenomenon since the 1940s. The behavior of these objects greatly exceeds the abilities of human technologies. The subject has been heavily censored by governments and the mainstream media. So: what's the deal. - Sean McBride

all this has happened before... - Robin Barooah

Does anyone here find the testimony on UFOs in this video to be NOT reliable or credible? If so, why? UFO Alien Disclosure Project pt 1 http://tinyurl.com/6d9jfk - Sean McBride