UFOs - Leslie Kean [7]
Historically, it was the U.S. Air Force that, some fifty years ago, invented the term “unidentified flying object” to replace the popular but more lurid phrase “flying saucer.” The Air Force defined a “UFO” as “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.” This is the definition embraced by all the contributors to this book, and the definition employed by all relevant government documents and official pilot reports.
If an object in the sky cannot be identified but we still can’t rule out the possibility that it could be if we had more data, then it is not a true unknown. In that situation, we can’t determine either what it is or what it is not. Again, a genuine UFO, the UFO we are concerned with in this book, is an object that, for example, exhibits extraordinary capabilities beyond known technology while being documented on radar and observed by multiple qualified people, to such an extent that enough data is obtained and enough study is undertaken to eliminate other known possibilities.
Because there is so much baggage associated with the term “UFO,” some scientists and other experts have employed a new terminology to separate serious studies from the more frivolous. Instead of “UFO,” some of our contributors have chosen to use “unidentified aerial phenomena” or “UAP,” which can be used in both the singular (for the phenomenon) and the plural. Richard Haines, former NASA senior scientist and aviation safety expert, defines UAP as:
The visual stimulus that produces a sighting report of an object or light seen in the sky, the appearance and/or flight dynamics of which do not suggest a logical, conventional flying object and which remains unidentified after close scrutiny of all available evidence by persons who are technically capable of making both a full technical identification as well as a common-sense identification, if one is possible.7
In the context of this book, the terms UFO and UAP mean essentially the same thing and will be used interchangeably, although some writers prefer to use one or the other exclusively. “UAP” suggests a broader scope, incorporating perhaps a wider range of phenomena, which, for example, may not appear to be a flying object. No matter which acronym is employed, the phenomenon is often motionless or hovering, not flying, and sometimes is simply seen as unusual lights rather than a solid object, especially at night when brilliant illumination overpowers the observation of any physical structure. “UAP” maintains the clarity that these unusual objects and lights may represent many types of phenomena originating from different sources.
A second fundamentally important point is that roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained. Within the remaining 5 to 10 percent, once an object has been determined to be a genuine UFO by the proper standards, then all we know is what it is not: something man-made or natural, or an outright hoax, of which there are unfortunately too many. Examples of phenomena sometimes mistaken for UFOs are weather balloons, flares, sky lanterns, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting the sun, planes reflecting the sun, blimps, helicopters, the planet Venus or Mars, meteors or meteorites, space junk, satellites, sundogs, ball lightning, ice crystals, reflected light off clouds, lights on the ground or lights reflected