My column for the San Francisco Chronicle on drones and UAPs...

Always fun not to write about You Know Who...

The truth is out there about those New Jersey UFOs. Unfortunately, it’s boring

By Jack Ohman

Dec 17, 202

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The popular 1990s show featuring overly attractive FBI agents Scully and Mulder, “The X Files,” intoned that “the truth is out there.”

In the drone-plagued nights of New Jersey, residents there are asking what the truth, precisely, is with all the sightings in the past few days.

Naturally, federal authorities are telling people to remain calm, as they always do. Thus far, calm isn’t being restored.

Hundreds of sightings are now popping up, spreading throughout the East Coast, even over Ohio’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, home to a major research and logistics facility. The brass even closed the airspace there for a few hours.

Some have asserted that alien spacecraft and even alien bodies are stored there. OK.

Little did the Wright Brothers know, when they began their research and development of powered flight in Dayton, Ohio, that eventually powered aviation would not only be the engineering marvel they spawned but also a thriving UFO culture.

Referring to “UFOs” is now passé. The proper term is now “UAPs” or unidentified aerial phenomenon.

The past few years revealed some pretty bizarre sightings, by U.S. Navy pilots in particular, and the feds have advised everyone to remain calm, again.

But they don’t have an explanation that I’m aware of. Congress even held hearings on the subject. Former President Barack Obama was asked on camera about the Navy video, and he basically said, well, there are a lot of things about this we don’t know.

Again, OK. Try? Little help here? These things seem to be flying in and out of the ocean, are weird shapes and are generally troubling, even if they’re not alien test pilots. Or drone operators. I assume if they’re “illegal” aliens, President-elect Donald Trump has plans for them.

Up in Oregon, there were some equally strange UAP sightings last week, reported by experienced pilots who typically don’t want to report anything like this, because they would look like lunatics.

The opening scene of the 1977 Steven Spielberg film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” features Indianapolis Air Traffic Control Center personnel trying to make sense of an unusual target on their screens. They call the pilots, who have just been buzzed by hypersonic UAP.

“Air East 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind?”

“I don’t know what kind of report I’d file, Center.”

One Oregon medevac pilot, who was happy to report, stated that the lights were moving oddly, and one, a red circle, zapped up from his altitude to 50,000 feet and corkscrewed back down. I got nuthin’.

As my flying experience is mostly limited to Southwest “B” Group and watching “Airplane!” I am not qualified to analyze the data.

I called a buddy of mine in Portland, an experienced pilot, and asked him to comment on the New Jersey drone reports, as well as the Oregon UAPs.

He didn’t want to be quoted by name, but he offered a few pertinent observations.

He told me that larger drone flights are governed by something called Drone License Class Part 107, which requires drone operators to take exams in drone flight and follow federal procedures. Since any 12-year-old can buy a smaller drone, the kids don’t have to follow 107.

He noted that the sightings are sometimes mistaken for fixed-wing planes, and most of the larger drones are operated legally and have filed flight plans.

So far, this isn’t any fun.

He completely poo-poohed (a polite rephrasing) the notion that the drones are from an Iranian Mothership (I think Iranians are occupied in the Middle East at the moment, picking the glass out of their faces in Syria, along with their buddy Vladimir Putin). Nor are the drones Chinese, nor are they Russian.

Now the conversation was super non-fun.

He suggested, in my Agent Mulder Fever, that they were a bunch of Jersey bros enjoying a lot of attention from their hobby.

I asked him if a large drone could be weaponized. Well, maybe, but not a gun, he said. Maybe a small bomb? Maybe, but those would be heavy, and drones you could buy aren’t really designed to carry a payload of any size.

Finally, I brought up the Oregon sightings, and he answered with one word: “Starlink” — a string of low-altitude SpaceX satellites.

You knew that the omnipresent and annoying part-time President Elon Musk would somehow be involved in this. He was even somewhat of a UAP himself as he jumped up and down in authoritarian joy behind Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

A few years ago, the American public became aware that the Chinese government was sending up high-altitude reconnaissance balloons, and President Joe Biden even ordered one shot down.

Naturally, what’s left of the national news media is enjoying a little pre-Christmas Shark Week, what with the drones and the UAPs. On Dec. 25, I expect another mass national psychosis over reindeer-powered Unidentified Aerial Presents. I am reminded of the national freak-out on Halloween 1938 when Orson Welles aired “War of the Worlds,” a radio show about an alien invasion in … drum roll … New Jersey.

My guess is, like two Boston-area drone operators who were arrested for screwing around by Logan Airport, we will eventually figure out who’s doing this.

The truth is out there but, as in most cases, it’s boring.

Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist who also writes at https://substack.com/@jackohman

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