The serpent reappeared on radar off Mandurah south of Perth Western Australia.
But does the story really end there? Even if the official explanation is to be believed, the obvious question remains: How did the military do it? Could they even do it?
A report by the UK’s Daily Mail contains some further clues about the “80km-wide formation”:
Mr Gray [Western Australian Weather Group administrator] said people had seen navy activity in the area, but he did not believe this caused the formation. ‘The thing that got everybody was how long it lingered on the radar and moved in the wind,’ he said. ‘It was slow moving, it was slower moving than an aircraft dumping fuel but too fast for a helicopter. The innuendo going around is not based on science.’
Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Rabi Rivett had said there was no explanation for the giant shape, but used a process of elimination to ruling out some causes.
‘It’s nothing meteorological. It’s not a cloud, radars don’t pick up clouds, that’s not what they’re for.’
He said military chaff had also been ruled out. ‘Sometimes military with the chaff can cause different formations, but the fact it maintained its shape as it moved north-west rules that out,’ he said.
‘If it was military-related they did a very good job of flying that signature in a very short period of time,’ he said. ‘It didn’t change shape as it moved – caught in the wind it would have changed.’
The comment from the Bureau’s meteorologist is important, because it apparently rules out the most obvious explanation – chaff. Chaff is a confetti-like material, usually aluminium, which military planes release to produce false readings on enemy radars.
But chaff would not maintain a precise shape while moving in the wind – it would disperse.
So could the shape have been formed by “ships and aircraft” moving in formation in a “routine” naval exercise, which was only visible due to unique “environmental conditions”, as the departmental statement suggests?
Not likely.
Why the Official Explanation is full of Holes
The first thing to note is that there was nothing particularly “unique” about the “environmental conditions” on 12 February. The weather reports of the day do not show anything exceptional. Furthermore, if this navy activity was “routine”, then it would be visible often, yet meteorologists had never seen anything like it.
Secondly, the Australian navy does not have any planes. It does have some helicopters, but its Air Fleet is based on the opposite side of the continent at the navy’s only air station.
The naval base near Perth, HMAS Stirling (Fleet Base West) is home to about a dozen vessels. Six of these vessels are submarines fraught with operational problems, of which an absolute maximum of four are ever deployable at one time, and sometimes only one. But operating underwater they would not show up on a weather radar anyway.
So that leaves about half a dozen frigates with the possibility of a few 80s-era 70b Seahawk helicopters which are soon to be replaced.
Although the statement only explicitly mentions the Navy, the Australian Air force also operates a training base near Perth. However Pearce Airbase has no operational fighting fleet. But it does have some BAE Hawks – a jet-trainer aircraft first developed 40 years ago – which are used to train novice pilots.
So even if we put aside the fact that the Defence Department statement only mentioned naval – not air force – exercises, and consider the possibility that the Air force’s trainer planes might have conducted a joint exercise with the Perth-based naval fleet, would they even be capable of producing this radar signature? Could they really combine into an immense, cohesive, continuous, unbroken ribbon formation long enough to span the English channel, form that ribbon into a giant S, and maintain that precise formation while moving together at matching speed?
It seems highly unlikely. Not only is it doubtful that such a disparate mix of vessels could move together at the same speed, but – even if they could – there are simply not enough military “ships and aircraft” in Western Australia to form a continuous unbroken S-shaped ribbon 80 kilometres long. The Navy has no major exercises scheduled off Western Australia in 2014 either, making it unlikely foreign vessels were involved.
Could the military have been testing some highly advanced secret technology? Given that the Australian defence force isn’t exactly using the most cutting-edge military hardware, this also seems unlikely. And if they really did possess some secret highly-advanced unknown technology, it’s doubtful they would test it directly in front of civilian radar which feeds live imagery to the internet 24/7.
The closer you look, the more the official story does not add up.
Was there a cover-up?
When it comes to UFOs being sighted or detected by large numbers of people, cover-ups are nothing new.
Even the most dramatic sightings are put down to ludicrous causes such as “flares” or even “swamp gas”, and the media is often willing to accept unsupported government explanations. Easy explanations provide a reassuring sense that life is nothing more than what it seems and there are no mysteries or greater realities to be found beyond the cocoon of consumer-oriented society constructed around us. Mainstream journalists, as the gatekeepers of the establishment who explain the world to the masses, have a stake in upholding the prevailing order. Accepting the possibility of intelligent life visiting our planet beyond the control or understanding of the powers that be just rocks the paradigm too much. Plus there have been concerted campaigns to ridicule or make light of UFO sightings over the years, making more open-minded journalists unwilling to risk their reputations by pursuing these issues.
So a familiar pattern plays out after these extraordinary events: a glib government statement is released, the media accept it without scrutiny, and even something as astonishing as an 80-kilometre-long flying serpent-shaped object is quickly dismissed and forgotten. After a bit of excitement, everyone goes back to the mundane daily grind, without thinking too much about what mysteries lie beyond, while journalists go back to status-quo reporting of the issues deemed relevant within the mould of the mass media construct.
But there is more going on in the universe than what we learn about in school or are told by the media. Keeping a lid on the UFO phenomenon goes hand in hand with keeping people as compliant consumers who don’t think too much about the bigger picture or awaken the potential of their consciousness.
Nevertheless, events like this continue and as they do more people are willing to challenge the prevailing attitudes of denial. Some believe that behind the UFO phenomenon are advanced civilisations wishing to inform the people of their presence. They are said to have a more highly developed level of consciousness than that of most people on this troubled world, and wish to help people here raise their own level of consciousness.
Whatever the case may be, it makes sense to actually examine and try to understand these extraordinary phenomenon and search for the truth, rather than search for an easy way to explain them away. If we allow these encounters to be swept under the rug, we will never really come to understand the mystery at the heart of them, and what significance they may hold for humanity.
UFO encounters will continue around the world, and governments and the mass media are unlikely to seriously acknowledge the possibility of alien contact any time soon. Those wishing to explore this phenomenon will have to go against the grain of a cosmically-censored civilization whose powerbrokers don’t want people venturing outside their box.
fine military morons, do it for us again, where everyone can see it happen LIVE! let me guess, it’s a secret and you can’t!?!?!