So, I was talking to my son and catching up on the dramatic developments in the life of his family and the grandkids. Really about the most amazing interchange you can have, spanning generations and framing a prospective future.

We normally talk on his commute home, so there is plenty of time to talk about other things. The current mess in national politics is one, and as Arrias mentioned on Sunday, there appears to be a growing number of American citizens who expect kinetic conflict between the body politic in the middle term.

That depresses me a bit, as a person sworn to uphold the Constitution, and there is no office I am aware of where I can go to turn it back in. Then, suddenly, as I was following along in the conversation of the jug-handle turn my son was doing off Telegraph Road to make the last two turns into his driveway. The matter of the Alien Spacecraft came up.

I laughed. I was a kid in the days of the Air Force Project Blue Book, which amid the dawning Atomic and Space Ages (and Hollywood sci-fi classics) made us think that just about everything in this wide wild world was possible.

I embraced Blue Book. It helped to explain everything by adding an extraterrestrial component. To my transitional self, it was a tremendous disappointment when the Blue Suiters announced that they had completely investigated all aerial encounters, had concluded that all of them- heck, I will put that as ALL OF THEM- were fully explained by natural phenomenon, there was nothing to see and just move along.

Like most folks, I accepted the results of Blue Book and moved on with my life, though I sure liked the crazy movies.

I spent a fair amount of time in the tactical aviation community, and never saw or heard anything about saucers or aeronautical Tic-Tacs or anything else. So, when my son asked if I knew anything about the recently released videos of the unidentified object tracked by Navy Super Hornet fighters, I had to sigh.

I had seen the video- very interesting- a couple months ago but had no way to verify anything about them.

“So, it this real?” he asked. I had to pause for a moment. When I was a budget guy in the Intelligence Community, we funded some strange things. I mean, really strange. But there certainly was evidence that strange things exist in this world, and if they could be weaponized they might be game changers in stopping the Red Army hoards pouring through the Fulda Gap headed for the English Channel.

We were willing to explore a lot of odd things, just in case.

What has been in the news this week is that Project Blue Book had been brought back in two later iterations, and the one currently known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). What I told my son was that this is all about resources, at day’s end, and there had to be profound evidence for the re-allocation of funds.

We bureaucrats plan pretty well, so to introduce a program that will gobble assets and produce evidence no one wants to deal with means there is something there.

What that is? I don’t know.

The possibilities we talked about were that the flying things were ours, part of advanced Skunk Works technology like the famous U-2 Dragon Lady and the magnificent SR-71 Blackbird. Worse, the Russians or Chinese may have made a breakthrough that is going to be real trouble when conflict comes.

The last remaining possibility is the one that Blue Book told us was not possible.

Upon consideration, I conclude that I am pretty sure I am not alone.

This whole perplexing story could suggest you are not, either.

Copyright 2019 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com