Flying Objects
In the past few weeks, the U.S. has shot down 4 UFOs, (Unidentified Flying Objects). Okay, my apologies, I am showing my age, they are now known as UAPs, (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). At any rate, they are flying things that are not supposed to be buzzing around our airspace. The first one, (February 4), was a well documented, Chinese surveillance balloon. The military waited until it was out over the ocean where falling debris would not be any danger to people on the ground. Some, or most of it was recovered from the water, no one is really saying so far. The other 3 were shot down over Canada and the U.S. and the descriptions of each are very vague for now.
UFO sightings have increased considerably from March, 2021 to August, 2022 with some 247 new reports, mostly from the U.S. Navy and Air Force. This is nearly an astonishing double the 144 UFO sightings in the last 17 years. Clearly something is going on. Of course, now, it is not such a stigma in reporting UFOs as it has been in the past. But perhaps, the military was concerned about secret aircraft, and wanted to discourage people from talking about things that they saw in the sky. Balloons are a very cheap way of overflying other countries. A large number of sightings, some 163 of them were balloon or balloon-like thingies in the sky while 26 were possibly unmanned aircraft or drones. Many others are admitted to have possibly been glitches due to equipment and faulty observation.
What could be a bit scary is that 171 UFO sightings were not easily explainable. They exhibited unusual performance and flight capabilities and many of these have been seen near sensitive military installations. Someone is interested in what we are doing militarily, and are not being overly cautious about snooping around. I have, of course, my own ideas. Over the years in my cartooning work, I have a character that is a UFO that buzzes around Earth, checking out our culture and observing our behavior. These benign visitors are endlessly fascinated by our many oddities and their remarks are a source of much amusement. Hopefully, that is all these sightings are, interested beings in our ability to resist an invasion or to, wait, what? No one is going to want our planet, we have messed it up to a serious degree, it would take an invading force too much money and effort to put things to right. So by my estimation, we are pretty safe for the time being. But you never know, Let’s hope that they keep shooting things down when they can find them, and making up good stories when they can’t.
(Shameless plug here. A new book of my collected cartoons from over the years is making a debut in another week. “All the Monoliths in the Universe” is available from Hemelein Press in Provo, Utah. It has almost 600 cartoons from 5 previous publications in one large book. Very fun stuff, if I say so myself.)
