Not professing to have any information regarding the source(s) or intents behind three of the four "objects" that were shot down violating U.S. air space other than what is sketchily reported, I will confess that some of it — aliens or not — makes no logical sense.
Apart from the first one, the big stratospheric Chinese espionage balloon now confirmed to have carried information collecting and transmitting instruments which drifted in from the south, the others which were smaller and lower apparently had northern origins.
Does this suggest that they were only noticed, and subsequently targeted, because of public uproar about the Beijing balloon that disrupted a planned high-level meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese officials?
Having discovered all three within as many days, does this indicate that such occurrences as the other three have been relatively frequent, perhaps undetected, or maybe not given much reporting notice, until potentially tied to public national security concerns?
And whereas there has previously been numerous reported "paranormal" unidentified flying object (UFO) or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings over the span of many years, some involving respected military and commercial pilot reports and photographic recordings, the amazing features that garnered public interest were their seeming gravity and physics-defying aerial capabilities.
Like, for example, sighted objects described as tubular "shaped like Tic Tac candy" without flight surfaces such as wings or visible propulsion means leaving no "signature" vapor trails that can accelerate or change direction so rapidly no human pilot could survive the G-forces and can move in and between different environments such as space, the Earth's atmosphere, and even water.
How likely is it that "primitive" human aerial technology — archaic winged aircraft and ballistic missiles — would be able to "shoot down" such agile, maneuverable craft whether unmanned (or "unaliened") or not? If aliens are also capable of embarrassment, it's probably wise not to return to their home galaxy — planet — whatever.
And here's another rather curious reporting feature that one of those objects targeted on Feb. 12 by an F-16 jet firing an AIM-9x short-range air-to-air missile at an altitude of 20,000 feet over the Great Lakes region was "hexagonal" in shape ... in other words, clearly not a balloon.
If you don't believe me, try to find a hexagonal-shaped balloon for Suzy's next birthday party that doesn't become round ("balloon-shaped") when inflated.
Then, in order to levitate, the rigidly flat-faceted pressurized structure would also have to be lighter than air, which— with all due respect to very weird quantum mechanics — defies both physics and engineering sanity.
Which means that if government reports are accurate, those alien engineers are either incredibly dumb or amazingly smart.
In any case, I seriously doubt that we can blame or credit the Russians for these mysteries because they evidently don't know the answers either.
I'll flash back here to the late 1980s throughout the '90s when I was invited on numerous occasions to meet with highly respected top-level government, corporate and academic aeronautics, space scientists and engineers in Moscow soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
During one of those many visits, I enjoyed the pleasure of a private dinner at the home of Dr. Vladimir Malozemov, a senior professor at the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute, a leading technical university for advanced aircraft and spacecraft research, design, and cosmonautics training.
A framed photograph on my host's wall featured a Russian Buran launch vehicle, a close copy version of the American space shuttle design, being readied for liftoff from a pad in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
Something else in that photo was very surprising. The small image of some sort of object high above the massive Buran prompted me to make an unserious flip remark to my host that there appeared to be an "alien" vehicle in the picture.
Professor Malozemov then proceeded to show me the special reason he had hung that picture, a separate enlargement of that "other" craft overhead which, despite somewhat grainy resolution, was clearly geometrical in shape ... somewhat longer than in cylindrical diameter.
Although there was no scale reference to indicate its distance or size against the daylight sky, applying a common vernacular, I would describe it as definitely looking "intelligently crafted," and certainly not merely a photographic anomaly.
My host, (now deceased), explained that no one had even noticed the foreign object until it was discovered on the photographic print, but that there had been many such actual unexplained sightings in Russia.
Although no one mentioned it, maybe they worried that we were doing it, perhaps crediting us with being dangerously more technologically advanced as with our human moon achievements.
As for those aliens, if they were truly monitoring us and following our elections, they would probably find any such illusions enormously comical.
The most perplexing and frightening question of all: If they were to ask, "Take us to your leader," how could we seriously answer?
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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