Estimate of the Situation 2000: The Black Triangles

by Harv Howard

hhoward@ecpi.com

(c) 2000

Mysterious aerial craft commonly called "flying triangles" and/or "black triangles" have been elbowing the classic, disk-shaped UFO aside in the last few years. These angular craft are seen more and more persistently. A family in Kentucky this last February witnessed a total of eleven craft moving as a group. What are they? Are they a black budget, highly innovative form of craft from the U.S. government/industry, or are they a new form of genuine UFO visiting us? This paper assumes the first possibility is the correct explanation. That assumption already is widely accepted in the UFO and aircraft enthusiasts’ quarters, but a detailed look at the possible parameters of such craft has not been explored.

Automatically these devices have been dubbed flying triangles. While certainly an apt identifier for the physical appearance of the craft (aerial, and triangular-shaped objects), that label creates a false impression of what is witnessed. As with the term Unidentified Flying Object, the term is incorrect in its most basic terminology because it is quite apparent from sighting reports of both UFOs and triangles that neither actually "fly" as do conventional AIRcraft. To enable and encourage that differentiation, the word "aircraft" will not be used here as a generic term for either triangle or UFO. Nor will triangles be referred to as UFOs. However, it must be pointed out that both styles of craft seem to use the same basic system for propulsion.

The simple term, flying triangles, identifies only a segment of a radically new form of transportation. Similar objects, such as boomerang-shaped craft, have operational characteristics strikingly similar to the triangles but are of a somewhat different design configuration while probably utilizing the same physics. What was clearly true a half-century ago to UFO investigators is doubly true today with the triangles. These craft are all using a totally new form of locomotion that borders on, if not, is, the ultimate mode of transportation.

The term "anti-gravity" is found frequently on the internet in discussions of triangles and other such exotic craft. Perhaps we should wonder if there is a clever and subtle disinformation campaign at work to guide us to think in terms of anti-gravity concepts for the triangles rather than a far grander concept.

Anti-gravity devices would be dandy for tooling around over Earth, but outward travel would be limited because the planetary gravity gradually weakens as the surface is left behind. At the edges of Earth’s field of gravity, the situation would be like trying to sail a boat without a wind blowing. When a genuine UFO or a triangle makes a sudden start, stop or right-angled turn, they are not canceling or avoiding gravity. Gravity has nothing to do with horizontal movement. These machines are canceling or avoiding mass. Otherwise everything inside would be raw meat on the bulkheads, and the ships would wrench themselves apart. The simple evidence of sudden stops, starts, and sharp turns from any one triangle sighting automatically disallows their being moved by an anti-gravity-based system or any lesser system than one canceling mass.

Did you ever see the space shuttle astronauts spin around for fun in their micro-gravity environment and then accidentally bump into a bulkhead or piece of equipment? They don’t suffer under the effects of gravity, but they still retain mass. Bumping into something in a micro-gravity environment has much the same result as on Earth; they can hurt themselves. Think about what would happen if the shuttle were capable of suddenly moved at a tremendous speed in a different direction than the one in which it and the floating astronauts had been traveling? There would be a definite mess on the bulkheads.

A machine capable of making a ship and contents without mass, on the other hand, would have no such handicaps. For that reason, we may suspect the builders and controllers of these remarkable devices strongly would have us and would be competitors think in terms of a meager anti-gravity device rather than something far, far more potent.

To combine the various shapes but similarly performing vehicles into one category, a new term is required to cover all of the machines operating on that basic principle whether they are shaped as triangles, boomerangs, or something else. No doubt there are secret, descriptive, official terminology for these vehicles as well as unofficial slang names. We, however, are left to our own devices. For the wont of something better, we shall use the term Mass Avoidance Transportation System, or the acronym MATS to denote all such craft regardless of shape.

To a UFO researcher, it seems apparent that the MATS craft operate similarly to classic UFOs in many respects. They frequently have bright, unmistakably different types of lighting than normal aircraft. They move about the skies at sometimes incredible speeds, far out-pacing conventional aircraft standards. As mentioned, they display the capabilities of instant stops, starts, and right-angled turns. They are noiseless or nearly so. A very common feature of their activities is that they frequently are seen moving slowly at very low altitudes.

There are differing characteristics of operations between the classic UFO and MATS vehicles, however. Most pronounced is that the MATS craft are exclusively creatures of the night. Rare is the instance of a MATS machine being witnessed in the daylight. UFOs, on the other hand, seem to not schedule their appearances according to light or darkness. This propensity for the MATS craft to operate under the shelter of night is entirely in keeping with past testing of super-secret aircraft. The U-2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117A stealth fighter, the B-2 Spirit bomber and many others were all prototyped and tested in the dark. The first three mentioned were deployed into operational status before the public was aware they existed. The first two were hidden from the public for many years.

Under the cover of darkness the U-2 or SR-71craft could be virtually invisible to the eye even at fairly low altitudes because they operated without running lights. Put them at operational altitudes and they were invisible, too small to see with the naked eye. The MATS are of a different breed, however. Their manner of operations at times evidently can produce various lighting displays. This, then, causes them to standout at night due to the uniqueness of the type and arrangements of the lighting and especially the (usually) brightness of the configurations; not to mention their propensity for low-level operations.

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Tim Ley, a Phoenix resident had one "wing" of the famous March 13, 1998 Phoenix boomerang object pass directly overhead. He, family, and neighbors were able to look directly up into the cavity from which the light was emitted. While only a couple of hundred feet above him, he and the others suffered no ill effects from the encounter nor was any noise apparent.

That case is an excellent example of why nighttime operations are the rule for these craft. First, they are intensely dark objects, frequently visible against the nighttime sky glow even when they display no lighting whatsoever because they are so dark. Martin-Marietta Corp. (now a division of Lockheed) has a classified, light and radar absorbing coating called Martin Black. It has been called the "blackest of all materials on Earth." Perhaps this or a related finish is used on the triangles. For it is rare if ever that they are reported being picked up on radar despite their huge sizes. Being that the craft are of an ultra-light-absorbing finish, it stands to reason that they were intended for operations under the cover of night. Again, that conclusion is buttressed by the actual evidence of when they are sighted. Black has been the preferred color for decades of secret aircraft coming from U.S. companies. Conversely, craft that seem to be genuine UFOs, meaning alien vehicles, rarely have any coloration. They usually have the appearance of being grayish or shiny metal.

images courtesy B. Cornet

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specimen courtesy the late Dr. Michael Wolf

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Daylight activities of MATS craft would make them very visible, of course, far more visible than the typical aircraft because of their blackness. In addition, the unique, simple form of a near-equal-lateral triangle would be easily discernable. Even at altitude they would seem impressively huge because they have a solid body mass. A triangle with a tip-to-tip span equivalent to a large aircraft would look far more massive and close because it would fully fill that area with its bulk. An airplane with the same wing span, on the other hand, resembles a modified T-shape with no part of it more than a few feet away from an edge. It is not hard to image that a black triangle hanging in the daytime sky would create hysteria in the citizenry below if the craft ventured as close to the ground then as they sometimes do in the dark. The words "sinister presence" come to mind.

Daytime photographs of such craft would be a real threat to their program of secrecy. Perverting the old saying, we can say, one good photograph of a daytime triangle would be worth a thousand verbal testimonies of nighttime sightings.

In addition to nighttime operations which make these craft difficult to see, evidently they also are of a very high level of stealthiness such that they display no radar signature. These talents also were developed decades ago for the stealth fighter. A book by Ben R. Rich tells how the stealth fighter displays no more radar return than a small ball bearing. In one instance, he recites how radar operators were gleeful when they thought they had detected a stealth fighter during radar-return testing as it sat on the ground. It turned out that all the radar had picked up was a bird perched on the plane’s tail. All of this took place more than fifteen years ago, several generations ago in the chronology of stealth technology.

A stealthy triangle by its very nature tells us that this is not a mere testbed for a new "flight" system but that the propulsion system has been successfully mated with a structural form which greatly enhances the effectiveness and capabilities of these vehicles (as weapons of war, of course).

Most, if not all, of our history of flight systems rely upon a three-axis system of control. This is consistent with the three bright lights found in most triangle and boomerang reports, one near each corner. If we are in the early stages of harnessing the alien way of doing things, we may still need to do that part of the system the old-fashioned way in order to get the control we need.

The triangles have been around for awhile, but they never received much attention until the incredible nighttime events over Belgium in 1991. One of the photographs taken at that time remains today as the best yet of the elusive craft. Coupled with the forthrightness of the Belgium air force in releasing the details of their attempts to intercept the objects, the case has become embedded into UFO history. –A place, by the way, where it does not belong.

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We have the indisputable evidence of the 1991 Belgium craft. It could be argued that it was the one and only such craft in existence at that time. But the history goes back further. I became interested in the craft in 1986. As a field investigator for a UFO group at that time, I conducted a 55-minute telephone interview with a man whom, along with his fourteen-year-old son, had witnessed three unusually shaped aerial objects cross the road in front of their car.

It was a late October Sunday evening about 9:30 on highway 69 north of McAlester, Oklahoma. A light rain was falling. The man first saw the approaching lights of the objects off to the side of the road. Once he realized they were something unusual, he woke his sleeping son to witness what he called UFOs. He stopped the car, and they got out. The craft were about 500 feet in altitude and crossed the road about 100 feet in front of them. They heard the sound of a low rushing of air. The following is taking from the written report.

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"Description: ‘Gigantic,’ witness said. Witness estimated approximate size of each object as that of a Boeing 747 fuselage, but somewhat resembling a ‘stingray’ shape, but definitely not to the extent that the objects had wings. The objects had blunt, flat noses with large, non-protruding cockpit windshields built into them. The front was the widest part of the craft. The lead craft had a huge –‘headlight’ on either side of the windshield. The lights were approximately two-feet across and were extremely bright. The cockpit of the lead craft and approximately half of its length was also lit but not as brightly. The witness thought he could see inside, but he did not notice any details. The three objects were exactly the same except for the difference in the lighting. Witness qualified all dimension and distance statements by saying that since the comparative sizes of the objects were unknown he could not be absolutely sure on his estimates. (In this interviewer's opinion the witness was more capable than the average person in making his judgments in this regard.)

                For comparison:               24 April 1997, Red Bank, NJ

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"All three objects had red and green lights on the underneath side and a red light on the tail. The objects were flying a modified ‘V’ formation. The lead craft was followed by a craft slightly offset to the right. On the opposite side (left), the third craft was almost parallel to the lead craft, but slightly trailing. The witness thought the craft were all at the same altitude. The formation was tight. There was only about a craft's length in between. The craft were dark colored and bore no visible markings."

The witness had spent 15 years in the army as a paratrooper and was familiar with all types of conventional aircraft. He later called the local airport to ask about unusual sightings that night. He was told with no elaboration that there were "maneuvers" in the area that evening.

It is relevant to the overall intent and scope of this work that another aspect of this affair be included. At the time I wrote up the sighting report, I was not in a position to travel to the location myself. I sent a copy to Walt Andrus, the founder and then international director of MUFON. In a cover letter I explained that it seemed an excellent and important case, and MUFON was welcomed to investigate it.

After four months with no communication from Andrus, I sent him a follow-up letter asking about the results from MUFON’s investigation. I was shocked by his response. His reply came in the form of an ordinary, hand-written post card. He wrote that the case was never investigated. He said that the objects were probably Chinook helicopters operating out of the army ammo plant at McAlester. --Case closed before it was opened, he seemed to say. Had he in mind the details of the case it is doubtful that he would have offered that explanation. The witness was a security guard at that same facility and was quite familiar with aircraft and the activities that went on there.

As for the case itself, it indicates that there were unusual machines in the air fifteen years ago. But it tells us more. Far from being a single prototype vehicle undergoing testing in safe, secluded areas of the southwest, here were three vehicles, far from any testing facility. This detail is indicative of a program many stages beyond the mere testing of a new craft. Factor in the three craft in a tight, low-level formation on a rainy night and arguments about their being experimental craft involved in a testing regimen becomes weak. What can be concluded is that as early as 1986 the U.S. government had in operational status incredible craft that defy all conventional parameters of flight and which lend themselves precisely to the family of craft under discussion here.

Payload capabilities for triangles may be done entirely differently than what always has been the case for conventional aircraft. Think in terms of payloads not limited to the ability of the craft to actually lift that weight via wings and thrust. Instead, consider a mass nullifying vehicle, that could lift-off regardless of whether its cargo areas were filled with steel ingots or cotton candy. The weight probably would make no difference once the ship, and thus, the cargo, are surrounded in a massless state. Perhaps the only critical aspect of a payload is its physical size being able to fit in the craft’s cargo compartment. This can well explain why some triangles are so massive. They can be built to move gigantic, impossible loads that would snap the under carriages and rip the wings from regular aircraft. The engineering of these craft would have the advantage of not suffering under the law of diminishing returns as befalls the building of typical aircraft when they are designed for lifting weighty loads.

The tremendous sizes reported for some of the triangles—on the order of sea-going ship sizes, makes it difficult to envision secure bases for such craft on Earth. Runways—a necessary, telltale hallmark of a base for conventional craft would be unnecessary since they have helicopter-like takeoff and landing abilities. But the sheer magnitude of the vehicle size alone coupled with its unique shape would make it difficult to conceal. For example, it is not uncommon to find reports stipulating size estimates of 600 feet to over a quarter mile in length (and larger!) for triangles and boomerangs. Any of these estimates preclude these vehicles being sheltered on the ground in typical hangers and especially cave-type underground hangers. Maybe the smaller of these craft could be housed in free-standing hangers with no interior supports, but such structures would be remarkable in themselves, entirely unique in outside appearances if seen from the air and still far larger in length and breadth than the largest of their normal kind.

Another possibility would be in camouflaged bases where the craft merely set out in the open (more or less) with netting, obscuring moveable structures, fog machines, or heat-generating devices place around or on them to disguise their true forms from various "seeing" sensors and instruments. With no telltale runways nearby, they would be difficult to distinguish from thousands of industrial complexes that dot the landscape. About the only clues to something being suspicious about the bases would be a necessary isolation from all other areas of human activities.

Could it be that these craft do not require a base at all, but are permanently "based" far above the Earth, but not necessarily in orbit? They would not require an orbital motion to sustain themselves. They could loiter about as they choose. Their ideal haven up there would be to keep maneuvering to constantly be in Earth’s shadow. To avoid chance detection by optical instruments (blocking an astronomical body by their bulk), they would keep a low profile by keeping their thin cross-sections turned toward the ground. They would be kept there, ready to drop down in the dark to the surface in a minute’s time.

The presence of UFOs here around us over the decades has proven that their manner of propelling force is reliable and superior. While we may be neophytes in tapping into that manner of power, it seems basically far simpler than the complex aircraft we maintain today. A type of vehicle that is permanently aloft is not out of the question if the mechanism is of a simple, reliable enough design. We have extreme difficulty envisioning such craft because all of our current aircraft equipment requires constant checking, refueling, and frequent, periodic maintenance. However, we have only to look at a nuclear submarine to see that we have had for decades a craft type that operates independently in its environment over the long haul without constant and necessary attention to every aspect of its existence.

Nuclear power is probably the basic power source for the triangle family of craft. For decades we have been told that nuclear power was impractical for use in aircraft because of the requirement for heavy shield necessary for the reactor. But given that the mass of the craft is unimportant due to the very nature of the application, that makes nuclear power as the prime candidate for a power source. And of course, nuclear power has been used for several decades in sea-going vessels, starting with the USS Nautilus submarine in 1955.

Triangles may be based on the Moon. While startling in concept, that possibility follows perfectly the curve of possibilities for such a remarkable form of transportation. A trip to the Moon would not resemble in any form the dangerous Apollo shots of the space program several decades ago. Time and effort required for the triangles to make such trips would be a fraction of the Apollo trips. The new ships would leap-frog beyond the split-second timing, lengthy planning, programming, and reliance upon the correct operations of multiple systems required for rocket flights. The hazards of the trip would be inconsequential, routine. Travel times would be quick and safe.

As a place for war of weapons, the Moon is the logical choice. We could not ask for a more secure territory than the Moon. Based on the Moon, the ships would be entirely safe from all forms of aggression. Such bases would be totally untouchable by hostile earthly governments without similar devices.

Not only would the capabilities of the triangles allow them easily to be based on the Moon, such would allow our presence there to be far, far more extensive than mere support bases. The "off-earth" defense aspect of the bases themselves would become secondary to other endeavors. Command and control facilities would be there also of course. Perhaps tunneled into the side of lunar mountains would be maintenance and assembly plants for the larger triangles. A complex of emergency bunkers for the President and top-level government officials could be expected to be there for use during truly dark days.

If the Moon, why not Mars? Forget the two-year roundtrip requirements necessary for conventional rocket ship standards. If traveling to the Moon were common place, passage to Mars would be easily achieved. The failure of NASA to publically investigate the Martian enigmas may be because the secret forces that operate the triangles have visited there already.

These machines will drastically change the way warfare is carried to the enemy. Machineguns and small, unguided rockets will be old-fashioned tools left to smaller, conventional jet fighters. While the triangles may well carry advanced cruise missiles, smart bombs, and even nuclear weapons, the big-ticket items for them will be powerful, chemical-fueled killer lasers. That is not a hypothetical dream weapon. Last year the government announced that contracts had been let and work begun to incorporate that type of laser system into the fuselage of a fleet of 747-type aircraft.

They have produced these remarkable craft for a long period of time relatively speaking. And the devices, of course, are ultra-high, secret war weapons. But at some point they will/must be revealed to the public. The eventual impact of what they will bring into our lives is staggering. The revelation will go far beyond revealing something as inconsequential to our everyday lives as their taking the wraps off of the F-117A stealth fighter or the B-2 bomber, for examples. Those craft had a very limited impact on our everyday lives. –Mostly just a drain on our pocketbooks.

The MATS craft, however, open an astounding new world of transportation to us all. Travel about the face of Earth—not to mention in space—will be revolutionized. A new era is now possible. New industries will come and some old ones will go to dust. Warfare will be vastly changed. Ocean-going cargo ships will stop plying the seas. All cargo, whether now shipped by air, ground, or sea will go via this new system. The airlines will drastically reduce their costs of maintaining their fleets, and the inventory of aircraft they retain. In sum, triangles will move people and cargo further, faster and cheaper.

What remains as a hindrance to the eventual day of revelation, however, is the dark fact of the UFOs being entirely responsible for these new technologies. Our officials and leaders are trapped. More correctly, they have trapped themselves. Regardless of how they will attempt to break the news of the development of the triangles, the connection between the long denied UFOs and these new craft of our own will be inescapable and undeniable in any plausible sense. Did the triangles come about from the dissection of captured disks? Or did we simply conclude from their obvious actions that they were defying mass and we set out on our own quest to solve the mystery? Either way the signs points back directly to the UFOs. Unveiling the triangles to the public also means acknowledgement of the UFOs is in the offering.

To obtain the proper perspective on the depth of this matter, we need to consider that the decline in all phases of NASA’s funding, agendas, operations and especially, spirit, can be directly attributed to our having a secret, better way than dangerous rockets. In mankind’s hands today is a phenomenal new way of transportation that totally breaks with our checkered history of "flight" and which discards every concept of bird-like flight we cherish and on which we have build a multitude of industries. Maybe future history will show that it was worth, in an economical sense, to allow NASA to wither and die for the sake of the triangles. But without question future history will show that the power given to us by the triangles is a development as fully revolutionary and no less evolutionary than the invention of the wheel.

An integral aspect of a secrets-keeping conspiracy requires that disinformation be regularly fed to whatever counter system that is looking for the truth being shielded. In this instance it would be especially directed toward the UFO field, the far smaller group of enthusiasts interested the latest models of high-tech aircraft and finally, to the general public. If they can create confusion, if not chaos, in the UFO field, they retain control and avoid accurate assessments being reached of the true characteristics and ownership of the mystery devices.

One way to slant such tales away from the truth is to provide fake sighting accounts containing details that can be attributed only to true alien machines. An account, for example, of an actual landing will be almost necessary. The presence of beings of small stature moving around a grounded triangle will be a brazenly direct way to convey that impression. This technique recently was utilized in a report from a foreign country. With the tap on a computer "send" key an intriguing and detailed story that cannot be easily dismissed (nor proven) enters the culture to distort the picture as desired.

Another angle of the disinformation agenda also has been played. It attempts to allow us to deduce that the craft are indeed ours, but not quite the stupendous craft as less detailed but far more credible reports would indicate. One such story was a recent first-person account passed around on the internet. It details the story of a fellow on a boat in San Francisco bay(!) who supposedly shot multiple holes in a triangle which hovered low over his boat. As he reloaded, two guys poked their heads out of a bottom hatch of the craft. One called him an "idiot" and demanded him to stop shooting. The craft then slowly moved off while making a "hissing noise."

We are left to conclude on our own that the hissing noise was gas escaping from his multiple bullet holes in the craft. The total package of what the reader was supposed to get from the story was that the craft was U.S. made and was an unusually shaped lighter-than-air ship. The end result was an exciting and detailed first-person account that seemed credible because it linked with earlier published articles (planted?) in legitimate magazines "revealing" the secret development of stealth blimps. Such craft are interesting, but are nothing truly exotic or of much utility. –At least the tale was partly right. The triangles are made by the U.S. That tactic of mixing in some of the true with the false is a strong element in a well-contrived disinformation campaign.

Another indication that the craft are of an earthly origin is evident in how unofficial representatives for the military/industrial complex have handled the situation. In the last few months there have been seemingly revealing and explanatory articles posted on the internet about the triangles. The writer makes every effort to portray the objects as nothing more than advanced AIRcraft. Albeit, extremely advanced aircraft over and above what we are accustomed, but still atmospheric flyers nonetheless, dependent upon jet/rocket engines, wings, runways, and other sundry and typical aviation encumberments. In these articles, by this ever-constant UFO debunker, there is not even a mention of the amazing maneuvers that have been reported by multitudes of witnesses of these craft. Such propaganda from that area is to be expected. The UFO-like capabilities of triangles cannot be discussed even in general terms from that side. For this is part of their self-made trap.

Part of this campaign seems to be to allow people to witness the craft, but not for the authorities to ever acknowledge the reports. (As evidenced by the recent CAUS court case attempting to get government information on triangles. The government’s response was tosay it didn’t have any such data. It won.) By creating a mythology around the uniquely shaped craft (especially on the internet), they accomplish two tasks. First, they blur the honest, eyewitness reports by interjecting phony reports and dubious information into the compiled records. This tactic hinders the investigators because such information falls outside of the norm. Usually, bogus reports are fairly obvious, because to achieve the task of fouling up the system, they must contain some extraordinary bit of information counter to what the general field of information indicates. (The details of the "hissing" triangle described above are an example.) Competent investigators discount such tales to a large degree, but they cannot totally ignore them because such accounts usually contain a tantalizing grain of truth or two.

The circumstances of some legitimate triangle sightings are very indicative also. When a sighting is too good to be true, there is the possibility that perhaps the sighting was not by happenstance but by design [see also The Performance]. In June of 1998, this writer and about twenty others persons witnessed a slow-moving triangle as it moved over Laramie, Wyoming. We just happened to be attending the Rocky Mountain UFO Conference held each year in Laramie. The time was about 10 p.m., and just happened to be about half-hour after the close of the last scheduled session for the evening. It just happened to be a beautiful mid-June evening, a nice time for UFO enthusiasts to be outside looking up. The object came from the west and just happened to fly almost directly over our heads. Being an unknown object , it was not possible to determine how big it was or its altitude. It was very slow moving and gave the appearance of being at a moderate altitude. Its size when first seen was about that of a thumbnail's width at arm’s length. Its lighting was different than most triangle sightings. It just happened that it consisted of bright, eye-catching strobe lights. There were three large, bright ones, and five, six or more, smaller strobes. All were flashing in random order, never repeating, one at a time. The object was in view about twenty minutes and was video-taped during the latter part of its dog-and-pony show. If the intent was to make the assembled UFO enthusiasts jump up and down over seeing a "UFO," the mission failed miserably. Most of the witnesses were excited at seeing a triangle, but most also believe it had the words "U.S. Air Force" stenciled somewhere on its body.

In this trap they have made for themselves, the keepers of the secrets have brought upon themselves an absolutely hilarious paradox. Their arsenal of arguments which they have fired off over the decades to dismiss UFOs is virtually useless with the triangles.

The unique and visual clues of the triangles make them extremely difficult to dismiss as is done with most UFO sightings. None of those arguments work well if at all. The distinctive shapes of the angular craft certainly cannot be said to be astronomical or meteorological phenomena such as planets, stars, meteors, "temperature inversions," "swamp gas," or lenticular clouds. Neither can the explanation be that of misinterpreted conventional objects such as aircraft, rockets, balloons, etc. Hoaxes. How is a 600-feet or larger triangle hoaxed? "Psychologically induced hallucinations" were also touted as an explanation by the air force. (But this addition to the list, by the way, can be suspected of being a clever psychological-trick, not necessarily an explanation. In plain words it says that some witnesses may be labeled crazy for having a sighting. Implicitly implied is that anyone reporting a sighting of really strange objects and events that defy explanation by any of the other possibilities may run the risk of being called crazy.) That one, as do all of the other explanations, suffers when applied to the triangles.

They have three avenues for focusing attention away from the true nature of these machines. They seem to utilize all three. One, they can not directly and officially address the topic at all without saying something which will come back later to haunt them. So officially they say nothing. Two, they can insist unofficially—but not too strongly--that the ships are a new type of fairly conventional aircraft, nothing to get too excited about. Three, they can have the triangles perform activities typical of UFOs so that the general public will tend to associate the triangles with UFO. That connection made and, through the magic of the media, the triangle sightings become virtually self-debunking to the average person.

The goal seems to be to buy time. They can do that if they can deflect the public’s interest into believing that the triangles are just the same, no-consequence, UFOs that have been seen for half a century. Then at some point if they reveal them for what they are, then they have blunted the sobering news of alien worlds and alien UFOs with marvelous devices of our own doing. That would put us on a (seemingly) higher par with the extraterrestrial. And in the turmoil to follow, they would hope we forget all about the decades of denials about the real UFOs and their hiding of their UFO wantabes from us for so long.

B. Bushel, chairman of the Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works facility where the most advance craft in the world are dreamed up and produced, made an interesting statement. During an interview broadcast on England’s Discovery channel, he said: "Anything you know about or ‘think’ you know about, has already gone into production and the replacement is already operational or in development."

Some persons may assume that as an overstatement or ever as a typical, gross exaggeration of a chairman talking up his company. Those not putting too much importance in his remark should read the several books that detail the workings of the Lockheed’s famed facility, especially the book already mentioned by the late Ben R. Rich entitled Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of my Years at Lockheed. Having done so, they will come away with a different view, a view that Bushel was hardly stretching the truth but was telling it much like it is without giving away secrets. That is not to say that Lockheed is the producer of the triangles. The U.S. has several aerospace companies that could be the builders. A strong possibility exists that it being such a big and revolutionary project that all of them are involved to some degree.

Some people cannot fathom that there can be a long-lived conspiracy kept in place by government and the aerospace industry surrounding the triangles. The key to acceptance is to understand that this is not a new conspiracy fashioned from scratch for this project. It is simply a newer, bigger, and better generation of the older conspiracies having shucked itself of the old clothes of the U-2, SR-71, F117A and a multitude of others over the decades to take on a larger, cloaked garment.

The secrecy of the triangles has to be on a par with the one enshrouding the UFOs themselves because they are intertwined. Regardless of how we discovered the principles and methods for the triangles, that one area of knowledge and technology gives us an incalculable advantage over the rest of the world. The secret is bigger than the splitting of the atom.

It is easy, therefore, to understand why there has not been an outcry from whistleblowers in government or the military during the years and years of secrecy. We, outsiders, can easy label the program as a massive conspiracy. Those involved in getting it funding, and those thousands and thousands of personnel building, maintaining, and flying the vehicles undoubtedly see the endeavor as wonderfully legitimate. They would argue it is a proper avenue of research and development for national security reasons that must live in the black budget programs until the truth is revealed or no longer can be contained. Those of us outside that envelope have little choice but to make educated guesses about what is really going on inside. All we can do is this: voice our objections across the world on the internet.

*******

This article was not intended to be "scientific" in its approach. Nor does it fit the standards of proper journalism. The goal was something different. There was a vacuum surrounding the triangle topic and the intent was to vividly flesh it out in prime time.

This article is generally fashioned according to the "standards" of a military-intelligence style of assessing a topic under scrutiny. It looks at a collection of unclear, real world events and bits of evidence. It attempts to assemble them in some sense of understanding and order by factoring in the potential for far-reaching implications beyond the obvious and the normally accepted limits of that area.

When intelligence agencies are trying to determine whether the enemy is building a totally new version of a fighter plane, for example, they focus on anecdotal data to build their case. They may use various aspects of science, but they don’t need scientific proof to "prove" their case, and they don’t call up the enemy and give them equal time to offer denials and their version of the truth. Military intelligence is a remnant of an age-old human survival trait. It is a formalized residual of the hunter/prey, eat or be eaten, imperative that has carried us to this point in time.

Many of our social and governmental organizations would have us leave all investigatory matters of this type in their hands. That would allow them to select the time of revealing what we are to know and what we are to believe. Finding ourselves more and more in such confining circumstances these days is due not so much to a natural social advancement over the centuries of governments and major institutions taking that burden from the average person’s shoulders, as it is a refining of the art of subtle control. Some would prefer to call it Social Engineering.

(Few people will recognize that the title for this article comes from the ill-fated mid-1948 assessment of the UFOs as made by officers on the staff of the official air force UFO investigation group called Project Sign. The report was entitled the "Estimate of the Situation." As intelligence officers doing their job of gathering sighting reports and other non-disclosed military-gained information, they concluded from the evidence that UFOs were alien spacecraft. They wrote the estimate stipulating that "fact." The high-brass in the Pentagon refused to accept the conclusions of the report and ordered it destroyed.)

Bruce Cornet, webmaster

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