No Mere Balloons?

An Open Letter to Ryan Graves, Concerning the Ambiguity of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

This is an open letter to Ryan Graves regarding statements made in his recent Politico article. In that article, Graves makes the bold claim that “advanced objects” using “technology we cannot explain” are “routinely” flying in US airspace and that this has been inexcusably ignored by the military.

Ryan, I’d like to focus first on some declarative statements you made regarding UAP (UFOs) detected by Navy pilots in 2014. These are statements that I feel need some clarification and (ideally) some supporting data.

Graves: “These were no mere balloons.”

None of them? How many would you say were unambiguously not balloons or other airborne clutter? Consider that, of the pilot reports with sufficient data to be characterized, as per the last UAP Report, the majority were balloons.  Do you actually have the data to demonstrate otherwise? How much data?

Graves: “The unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) accelerated at speeds up to Mach 1, the speed of sound.”

How many times did this happen? How quickly did they accelerate? Recorded with what instruments? Did anyone see this happen, or just radar returns? What was the quality of the return? How many instances of this were there? What could cause an erroneous reading like this? Are there unambiguous recordings of this happening? When did you last see this data?

Graves: “They could hold their position, appearing motionless, despite Category 4 hurricane-force winds of 120 knots.”

These could be balloons. As you know, visually you can’t accurately tell if something at altitude is moving slowly when your relative speed is very high. So how was it measured? Was this measurement unambiguously tied to an actual object? How many times did this happen?

Graves: “They did not have any visible means of lift, control surfaces or propulsion — in other words nothing that resembled normal aircraft with wings, flaps or engines.”

Exactly like balloons.

Graves: “And they outlasted our fighter jets, operating continuously throughout the day.”

Exactly like balloons.

Graves: “I am a formally trained engineer, but the technology they demonstrated defied my understanding.”

Unless they were balloons, and, based on the last UAP report, there are a LOT of balloons (and some drones and other clutter) being reported as UAP. Probably there are hundreds more that were not reported.

Graves: Advanced objects demonstrating cutting-edge technology that we cannot explain are routinely flying over our military bases or entering restricted airspace.

That’s a strong and unambiguous statement. Yet you present no more than ambiguous anecdotes to back it up. The ODNI UAP report you then cite also contradicts this lack of ambiguity, saying: “Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.”

Key word: “appeared.” The unambiguous data isn’t there.

They expand on this, saying, “limited data on UAP continues to be a challenge” and “Regardless of the collection or reporting method, many reports lack enough detailed data to enable attribution of UAP with high certainty.”

Which all seems rather ambiguous. These are appearances of unusual things, which need more analysis, and are based on not enough detailed data. 

Of course, unidentified flying objects should be reported, investigated, and, ideally, identified. I fully agree that there should be no stigma to reporting sightings of unidentified objects.  

But the statement “advanced objects demonstrating cutting-edge technology that we cannot explain are routinely flying over our military bases or entering restricted airspace” is not backed up by the data (according to ODNI/AARO).

Unambiguously attributing scores of sightings to “advanced objects” with “technology we cannot explain” feeds into the “UFOs are Aliens” narrative. Unless that narrative is backed up by unambiguous data, then feeding that narrative is feeding the stigma, which seems contrary to your stated goals.

Finally, there seems to be an unfortunate potential for a perception of conflict of interest here, one that needs to be addressed. Americans for Safer Aerospace has a noble sounding mission (if perhaps based on ambiguous data regarding something that has not yet caused any accidents, if it’s even real), but your other company “Merged Point” is raising investor funds to, essentially, use UFOs (aka UAP) to make money. You say that:

Unlocking further understanding of UAP will enable radical breakthroughs in our understanding of critical technologies and entirely new fields of science that are currently unknown to us.

MERGED POINT will target investments into technologies that translate these learnings into critical Energy & Transportation technologies needed to create a sustainable and secure future.

These are admirable (and potentially lucrative) goals, but their fulfillment requires that UAP are not mere balloons (or other clutter).  The investors’ returns require the “UFOs are aliens” (or “UAP are NHI”) narrative to be true. So, unfortunately, there is going to be a perception that you are promoting that narrative for those reasons.

So, we need more than convincing-sounding assurances from credible people. We need actual unambiguous data. Lacking that clarity, the possibility still remains that many of the things that appear to be interesting are, in fact, mere balloons.