A group of more than 200 scientists reviewed UFO research in Alabama.

From 6 to 8 June, the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) held its annual conference in Huntsville, a city nicknamed “Rocket City” due to its longstanding ties to aerospace research.

The city is home to the NASA Marshall Space Center and the Redstone Arsenal, where the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the Army Aviation and Missile Command, the Army Futures Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center are based.

The city is also in the running to become the new headquarters of Space Command.

Private contractors are not to be outdone: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Teledyne Brown Engineering and Aerojet Rocketdyne, among others, have earned Huntsville the nickname 'The Pentagon of the South'.

It was in this context that the SCU conference took place over three days at the Von Braun Centre.

It opened with a presentation by John Stratton, the former director of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). Active between August 2020 and November 2021, the UAPTF was then recreated as the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group (AOIMSG), which was headed by Dr Sean Kirkpatrick. In 2023, this group was renamed the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Group (AARO), and its function is to investigate cases of military encounters between advanced platforms and US forces. The group is currently headed by Dr Jon Kosloski.

Stratton's intervention was characterized by a series of assertions from this veteran of the US Department of Defense, who is now employed by Radiance Technologies. Having been tasked with investigating the invasion of US airspace by advanced platforms, he explained that he had begun trying to determine their origin by questioning his contacts within the Department of Defense. However, he was unable to find a program that could have generated such aircraft. Nevertheless, during his investigations, he managed to retrieve data proving the existence of these aircraft. More worryingly, analysis of this data seems to indicate a preference for secret military sites.

As the UAPTF investigation progressed, Stratton became aware of another, older and much larger group gathering the same information, but with no desire to cooperate. During this period, he also briefed Congress in classified meetings and received their support.

Nevertheless, the issues surrounding the presence of these advanced platforms could not wait until the end of the investigation. He stated that there were frequent interactions taking place along the East Coast. These objects were observed by military personnel, as well as by imaging systems and multi-band radars.

During the question-and-answer session at the end of the interview, Jon Stratton clarified that, although these platforms seem to defy our engineering, his team understands the physical laws governing their technologies. He explained that he had wanted to pass this information up the chain of command, but was slowed down by the administration until the UAPTF was eventually disbanded.

One of the most interesting presentations at the conference was given by Kevin Knuth, a physicist from the University at Albany. He began by presenting a series of publications that he had coordinated with Dr Matthew Szydagis for a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Progress in Aerospace Science. He explained that no scientist could now claim that no work had ever been done on the subject, given that the published corpus listed 506 references.

However, he expressed difficulty in finding authentic images of advanced platforms and said that these would be a useful future resource.

In a rare statement on the Roswell case by a scientist, he returned to the events of 1947, when the military initially claimed to have recovered a flying saucer before saying that it was the remains of balloons. Dr Knuth explained that, during that period, there were numerous other reports, including one with several hundred witnesses.

Regarding the suggestion that the Roswell case was explained by Mogul balloons, he said that this did not make sense. No launches had taken place during that period, and any balloon launched earlier would have had to remain stationary at a high altitude in winds of 300 km/h. He then stated that the historical report by the former director of AARO, Dr Kirkpatrick, would never have passed a review committee. He cited the Val Johnson case as an example, in which Dr. Knuth claimed that an advanced platform had collided with a car.

After discussing advanced platforms that have been detected in the ocean since the 19th century, he concluded his presentation by talking about how green balls of light had been observed near strategic installations in the United States between 1948 and 1951 by renowned scientists and astronomers, triggering crisis meetings in Los Alamos.

Another interesting presentation was given by Dr Silvano Colombano. Having worked at NASA, he said that most people there were open to the idea of advanced platforms, but resistance came from the institution and Congress, as some elected officials considered it to be an unjustified expenditure of public funds.

He then shared his views on the field of advanced platform research. In his view, one of the major problems is the lack of clarity with which scientists conducting research on the subject present themselves. Another problem is defining the criteria for admitting evidence. What would be accepted by scientific consensus as irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial origin? As this question remains unresolved, efforts are tentative.

He also warned of a recurring problem in this field of research. Since the scientific fields required to investigate a case or area are so diverse, investigators must be able to rely on specialized, multidisciplinary teams; otherwise, they will inevitably make mistakes, which will perpetuate the stigma.

He then emphasized that, as a field study, the study of these advanced platforms should be designed as a statistical study of numerous cases, since errors would always be present in a minority of the observed cases. Similarly, errors in some cases could not invalidate the entire research, as they were due to the conditions of the field investigation itself.

During the question and answer session, however, Dr Colombano noted that one of the difficulties was that some people had answers to the scientists' questions but refused to disclose them, which he believed went against the scientific paradigm.

Much of the conference was devoted to presentations of observation instruments. Dr Wesley Watters showed his 'Noctifer' detector, which is designed for low-cost nighttime observation. It is capable of rapid deployment in the field and is equipped with a collection of sensors for the multimodal observation of the environment and the automatic processing of recorded trajectories.

Dr Hakan Kayal presented his project for an advanced platform detection observatory on Mars. This observatory would use relay stations initially designed to retrieve data from exploration robots, taking advantage of the absence of flying technology in the Martian atmosphere. A ground test will be conducted on Germany's highest mountain. Dr Kayal called for collaboration between scientists and government institutions to develop surveillance systems capable of covering strategic areas and conducting research on advanced platforms.

Dr Stephen Bruehl demonstrated how to conduct a study by grouping observations of advanced platforms and looking for correlations between their shapes, speeds, behavior and radiation levels, with the aim of establishing an initial taxonomy. He noted that his preliminary studies seemed to indicate a link between the shape of the craft and their capabilities.

Dr Laura Domine presented the results of calibration tests conducted at the observatory set up by Dr Avi Loeb's Galileo Project at Harvard University. She also discussed data fusion issues, explaining that efforts made to study UAPs could be applied to many other scientific fields requiring environmental monitoring. One remaining challenge is developing a way to select interesting information, given that each observatory generates vast amounts of data.

Gene Greneker presented some fascinating research on EM radiation detection and passive radar use. He demonstrated how radio systems could be set up to recover signals emitted by these platforms for characterization purposes. Coupled with a passive radar system that detects Doppler shifts and shows sudden accelerations of advanced platforms in the environment, this greatly reduces the number of potential candidates detected. The addition of a second antenna, which is specifically used to retrieve the background signal that illuminates the object, enables the device to retrieve the signal from the craft itself by subtraction.

In terms of field investigations, Ben Hansen presented an interesting study based on the observations of Officer Robert Klein. Klein observed a ball of light illuminating his patrol vehicle before moving away towards a lake, and he managed to film it. Ben Hansen and his team tested the response of a camera with a Thai lantern and a drone equipped with LEDs to verify the response curves to light.

Ben Hansen found other witnesses who had observed similar events, some of which dated back to 2013.

The conference also provided an opportunity to learn about the various projects currently underway at the SCU.

One such project is the Drone Project, which involves studying over 17,000 cases of aerial encounters between platforms and pilots. Statistical analysis of these cases shows that the vast majority of them occur above 400 feet, which is an altitude requiring a special permit to fly.

The GR project is dedicated to studying the correlation between advanced platform propulsion signatures and the equations of general relativity.

The Intentions Study Project aims to identify recurring patterns in the detection of these platforms in order to deduce their objectives and anticipate strategic defense issues.

The USO Project preserves the archives of Carl Feindt, who investigated marine sightings. This project also studies cases of platform crashes in a marine environment and their effects on the surrounding water.

Finally, the Database Project intends to compile an atlas of all existing databases on observations of these devices, using AI to search for recurring patterns.

During the rest of the conference, Keith Taylor presented various ongoing efforts to raise public awareness of the subject, while Stephen Grosvenor provided an exhaustive list of ways to analyze sightings. He then presented some avenues for reflection based on the intentions — hostile or friendly — that might motivate the pilots of advanced platforms. Courtney Bower reflected on shifting the study of these objects towards local SETI research and showed that published precedents for this approach to scientific research already existed.

One of the final presentations was one of the most interesting. Dr Matthew Szydagis presented the results of his ongoing research into debris that was recovered in 1996 by Art Bell and previously examined by the AARO, using the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge laboratory, under the auspices of the University of Tennessee and the Battelle Institute. Using neutron activation analysis, Dr Szydagis detected uranium in the debris. However, the origin of this debris is still being debated today.

The closing panel of the conference was devoted almost entirely to issues surrounding research funding, with panel members explaining that one of the major difficulties in advanced platform research was the need to rely on personal funds, unlike in all other fields of research, which can apply for grants from public bodies.

A question of great interest was asked at the end of the conference. When asked whether interdimensionality could explain these objects, Dr Domine replied that, in the absence of supporting data, this concept could not be considered experimentally.

This conference provided an opportunity to review current research and demonstrate the vitality of an emerging science, represented mostly by United States researchers during the conference. It will be interesting to see if institutions eventually agree to fund public research on advanced platforms, given that a government agency has existed on this subject for several years.