3.16.08 Episode - Don Ledger

[valiens]

"Know Anything About That, Gene?"

How does that old saying go? Any publicity is good publicity? Really, Dave, you didn't know how that saying went? Gene, I think he was taking a jab at ya.

Poor Gene. He's the go-to guy for old sayings.

Meanwhile, Don's a good guest and I've always wondered why more ufologists don't make (or get) the same obvious point about all of this amazing technology in the sky not being ours: If it's ours, where is it? Why are we wasting our time on antiquated technology if we've got this type of magical equipment?

One would think that if even the Aurora was real and fully functional we'd have a fleet of them by now. We don't. It must not work too well. So what makes anyone think that technology vastly beyond the Aurora has been invented by us and is fully functional?

 

[Miah]

That is the exact point that really hit home with me in this show so far (still listening). Why would we still be spending big money to develop a propulsion system that we are already secretly flying around public areas? Makes no sense.

But to be more specific (maybe I missed this point), what exotic propulsion can we prove that the US government is still developing that they wouldn't be if these objects were theirs? Anyone?

 

[Gene Steinberg]

That is the exact point that really hit home with me in this show so far (still listening). Why would we still be spending big money to develop a propulsion system that we are already secretly flying around public ares? Makes no sense.

But to be more specific (maybe I missed this point), what exotic propulsion can we prove that the US government is still developing that they wouldn't be if these objects were theirs? Anyone?

I am concerned about that, too. We have an overextended military, and nothing to indicate that the technology is all that advanced. So where's the alien inventions that were given to The Silence Group years ago?

 

[DanielBrenton]

I am concerned about that, too. We have an overextended military, and nothing to indicate that the technology is all that advanced. So where's the alien inventions that were given to The Silence Group years ago?

Haven't listened to the show yet, but these comments caught me.

It seems like the parapolitics crowd would argue that there's a huge layer of secret government doing whatever it pleases, and little or none of that advanced technology "percolates" through. I'm not sure I buy that, but there was that issue of over 2 trillion dollars the Pentagon couldn't account for seven years ago.

I would be curious what Richard Dolan thinks on the issue. I've got a lot of respect for the guy and I would give that serious consideration. (I'm not dismissing Don Ledger's work by any means, I'm simply not familiar with it.) I remember Dolan's points from both The Paracast and Jeremy's interview where he talked about the relationship of government subcontractors to this kind of work.

 

[Miah]

I am concerned about that, too. We have an overextended military, and nothing to indicate that the technology is all that advanced. So where's the alien inventions that were given to The Silence Group years ago?

Haven't listened to the show yet, but these comments caught me.

It seems like the parapolitics crowd would argue that there's a huge layer of secret government doing whatever it pleases, and little or none of that advanced technology "percolates" through. I'm not sure I buy that, but there was that issue of over 2 trillion dollars the Pentagon couldn't account for seven years ago.

I would be curious what Richard Dolan thinks on the issue. I've got a lot of respect for the guy and I would give that serious consideration. (I'm not dismissing Don Ledger's work by any means, I'm simply not familiar with it.) I remember Dolan's points from both The Paracast and Jeremy's interview where he talked about the relationship of government subcontractors to this kind of work.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you missed the point.

We know the government spends trillions on black budget projects, but is some of that money going towards nuclear propulsion engineering (for example)? If so, why are they spending black budget money on that if they supposedly have mile long crafts that seem to already have this or better technology up and running now (if this is supposedly their projects being spotted)?

I do agree with you that Dolan should be questioned on this, add it to the question bank for his next visit.

 

[BrandonD]

If it's ours, where is it? Why are we wasting our time on antiquated technology if we've got this type of magical equipment?

One would think that if even the Aurora was real and fully functional we'd have a fleet of them by now. We don't. It must not work too well. So what makes anyone think that technology vastly beyond the Aurora has been invented by us and is fully functional?

I think that depends on what one is referring to when they use the term "we".

I think it's entirely possible that a govt/military group studying exotic technology splintered off from the US in the early 20th century, and has over time become a separate entity entirely. If that is the case, then we do not have any magical equipment at all. It belongs to this group, which would likely be in contact with parts of the US govt/military, but ultimately answers to no one.

I don't necessarily think this is the case, but I think it's a possibility that should be kept on the table.

 

[mike]

Another great episode, thanks to the hosts, guest and sponsors for a great listen.

i must admit had i been in command of the submarine, i would have been itching to put a torpedo or a depth charge smack bang in the middle of the roadside assistance craft , and hope to salvage the one under repairs.
it would seriously have tested my discipline to do nothing, but i having said that im glad they didnt, very very unsporting in anyone's sign language.

i tend to think we can get away with it though if we do shoot down the odd airborne one, i think we are "below legal age" for prosecution so to speak.

i see a similar mindset from people who film sharks for a living, and then get bitten, they usually reply oh well we knew the nature of the animal and we were the ones in its natural space, so we dont blame the shark.

as for reverse engineering it makes sense for any govt to keep a lid on that sort of thing, both the russians and chinese made angry mewlings about the recent display of surface to sat missile tech.
the govt that sucessfully reverse engineers the ability to build and place motherships over every capital city on earth will be the supreme rulers of earth by proxy. any nation with nukes that gets a whiff your even half way towards doing so would be serioulsy thinking about a pre-emptive strike

but what i enjoyed most about this episode was the idea that their technology could breakdown, are there any other famous examples of this roadside assistance scenario ?

 

[icculus]

Meanwhile, Don's a good guest and I've always wondered why more ufologists don't make (or get) the same obvious point about all of this amazing technology in the sky not being ours: If it's ours, where is it? Why are we wasting our time on antiquated technology if we've got this type of magical equipment?

Of course I don't have any answers—but a few random thoughts. What if the technology ( alien or homegrown ) has properties that, in the wrong hands, could be extremely dangerous both from a financial and destructive standpoint. What if the tech is so radically different that,when replicated could create limitless energy, or a bomb with unimaginable power. Perhaps our government thinks it can trust itself but would rather this not fall into the hands of other governments? Perhaps the oil companies like their monopoly? Who knows.

I can see a need to develop technology in parallel tracks. There certainly is a need for stealth blimp and whatever for espionage—in the "normal" environment, however if the S*** hit the fan the other stuff can be brought out. Oh and as far as money goes and the way in which the Black Budget is apparently financed—600 million here and there is peanuts ( this is refering to the blimp Don was talking about )

sidenote: Catherine Austin Fitts ( sp ? ) would be a great guest to talk about this.

 

[Schuyler]

Our hosts tried hard to keep Ledger from getting too detailed. Good try. I thought the Shag Harbor segment was superior to the rest. The Texas information was just so inconclusive. Ledger obviously has a detailed knowledge of Shag Harbor. I know he rambled a bit, but it was a good listen. Thanks for the show.

 

[DanielBrenton]

I would be curious what Richard Dolan thinks on the issue. I've got a lot of respect for the guy and I would give that serious consideration. (I'm not dismissing Don Ledger's work by any means, I'm simply not familiar with it.) I remember Dolan's points from both The Paracast and Jeremy's interview where he talked about the relationship of government subcontractors to this kind of work.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you missed the point.

Miah --

No, I don't think I did miss the point. I'm not saying that I buy the kind of thing the parapolitics crowd would argue, but I would want to hear what Dolan would say on the issue to see if there he would lend any credence to the idea of an entirely segregated technology "base." And your point about adding to the question bank is noted.

I don't think we can conclude that "Aurora" was a wash-out. I think more folks than myself have heard stories -- from sources I can't verify, unfortunately -- that suggest some of our existing aircraft far exceed the capabilities that are officially acknowledged. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that surface to orbit aircraft exist, but I can't prove it either way, of course.

I would like to suggest that why we wouldn't see any evidence of this percolating through to everyday use and public awareness is that 1.) this would undermine the technological advantage, and 2.) since when would we think the "black ops" side of the government would have any sense of accountability to the public world? Getting the "public" sector of the government to do anything of benefit to the public at large is like pulling teeth, the secret side would be less so.

No, it wouldn't make sense that technological achievements on this order would stay "bottled up" like this, but I don't know, and I think to get the answers we have to go out and do the legwork or look to experts we can trust to give us some clarity on the issue.

(Edit to include question added to question bank.
You can read it here.)

 

[Miah]

I try to keep my posts short, and perhaps I overcomplicate them by doing so at times...

The original question is could UFOs (like Stephenville) possibly be ours? I wondered that about many UFO cases, are they perhaps top secret test flights.

The counter question to prove it can't be (simplified) is; Is there any proof that the government is still actively developing propulsion systems that are inferior to what UFOs seem to be capable of?

If so, why would they do that?

For example, if we know that the government is currently developing Nuclear propulsion, it would be really hard to believe that these UFOs belong to them when the UFOs are obviously using something superior to nuclear propulsion already. The UFOs have no flames coming out of them for example, so could they really be nuclear? Could nuclear propulsion allow them to do some of the maneuvers reported?

This in itself could basically damn-near prove that they can't be ours. It's really late, maybe this post wasn't needed, Valiens made the point clearly to me.

 

[Manu]

My comment about the show is non-substantive: David did a good job trying to keep Ledger somewhat focused without appearing rude. His rambling, meandering speech was extremely frustrating to listen to, and I was almost amazed at David's restraint. The guy must've phoned in after spending all morning at 2nd Cup.

 

[valiens]

Daniel Brenton says:

"I would like to suggest that why we wouldn't see any evidence of this percolating through to everyday use and public awareness is that 1.) this would undermine the technological advantage...."

What technological advantage do we have if we don't use it? If we have "smart" bombs that are actually smart and don't go off course and blow up wedding ceremonies in Iraq, why would we not use them?

But if we keep the conversation to just aircraft, I'm trying to think of a reason not to use the best stuff or next-to-best available. The only reason I can come up with is that we're waiting to see if China, or some other up-and-comer, will ever flex its muscle militarily, so that we can kill that threat off with our amazing, magical technology. So maybe in that scenario we'd never play our trump card unless provoked by a challenging superpower.

But that seems like fantasy to me.

By the way, what was the Aurora supposed to be able to do? It's a stealth craft that can achieve mach 6 (if it exists). I know nothing of aeronautics so let me ask:

Is that impressive compared to what some of these UFOs are capable of? If the Aurora, or something close to it, is the next technology to be released to the public, but the technology kept hidden is approx. 50 years ahead of what we know about, does it seem like we'd have something that can make 90 degree turns, shoot straight up, stop on a dime, make no noise, etc. in 50 years based on the line of current technology and direction of advancements the military wants to take?

 

[Koji K.]

My .02 USD: If we have stuff like the Aurora, we probably use it sparingly so we don't have another Gary Powers incident. I'm certain we *do* have stuff like Aurora, because we always have- the U2 was ahead of its time, then the SR-71, then the stealth fighter, and so on.. it just seems at least moderately likely we've got something now that's at least a decade or two ahead of what we're currently seeing "in public."

But these are not UFO's, or at least not the "real" UFO's, IMO. I don't think even 50 years from now we'll have something capable of doing things like the O'Hare UFO, or any of 1000 other examples.

Or, maybe we will... but I think this would be something truly next-gen, perhaps even reverse-engineered (much as I am skeptical of those accounts), and NOT nuts and bolts based. People assume because we have something sitting in a hangar at Area 51 it's got to be something "physical," something we can take bits off and use in our current line of aerospace weaponry... I think if we are replicating "UFO performance" in any way, it would imply something very very different from the "UFO's in a hangar" scenarios that abound.

 

[Chuckleberryfinn]

Perhaps they do use their photon torpedoes and lazer blasters. We just don't hear about it.

 

[truthseeker]

One would think that if even the Aurora was real and fully functional we'd have a fleet of them by now. We don't. It must not work too well. So what makes anyone think that technology vastly beyond the Aurora has been invented by us and is fully functional?

Consider this situation...
If Aurora is indeed real, we have to ask ourselves what is it using for an energy source? It's probably not your standard jet fuel, but something exotic in nature. If this is the case, I'm guessing that powers that control this technology probably do not want to reveal this energy source to the world because it would most likely displace the current fossil-fuel infrastructure that the world relies on. It probably makes more sense to invest in and improve upon the antiquated technolodies that still use the old-fashioned jet fuels for propulsion. Granted, they still do an impeccable job when it comes to warfare.

Oh, and they still probably spend a great chunk on developing Auroras and the like - and this can probably explain some of the UFO sightings that we've seen. But I doubt we'll be seeing this techonogy in our garage any time soon. Gotta feed that OIL cash-cow while it's still breathing...

 

[DanielBrenton]

Daniel Brenton says:

"I would like to suggest that why we wouldn't see any evidence of this percolating through to everyday use and public awareness is that 1.) this would undermine the technological advantage...."

What technological advantage do we have if we don't use it? If we have "smart" bombs that are actually smart and don't go off course and blow up wedding ceremonies in Iraq, why would we not use them?

Jeremy --

How do we know we're not using them? We didn't know about the U2 until the Soviets shot one down.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'm just saying that there may be possibilities in all this we're not aware of because of the way the game is being played.

I should note that I'm not suggesting Aurora and/or any hypothetical decedents have anything to do with extraterrestrial technology.

 

[valiens]

I know I'm out of my league on this one, but here's the question from a new angle....

I'm thinking that when the stealth bomber was unleashed everyone was ooh-ing and aah-ing over how futuristic it looked and so it must account for a lot of--maybe most of--the UFO reports. I mean that was conventional wisdom--we've all heard people brush off UFO reports with that one, right?

However, the stealth bomber really just looks like a sports model airplane. It cannot perform drastic maneuvers, dead stops, et. al. in silence, on par with how most flying UFO reports go. Plus...it looks like a plane. A Trans Am plane. Some UFOs don't even look aerodynamic.

So, while to Joe Blow, these new planes look so futuristic that they must account for most UFO sightings, I'm going with... not so much. Futuristic, yes. Futuristic PLANE, which is what the Aurora looks like. It looks like this because they are building off of predecessors, off of what worked, and what works are planes.

What doesn't seem to work are round craft and, I assume, mile-long triangles. For those to work we'd need a drastically different propulsion system, as noted.

All of this is to say, if we have that propulsion system and the ability to drive vehicles that look nothing like planes and outperform everything--if we have this secret parallel track of super technology--then why isn't the Aurora on the market? It can't possibly compete with the stuff of the parallel track. Why not sell it?

It could be true that it, too, doesn't use a normal propulsion system and we want to stick with fossil fuels for as long as possible, but isn't the time up for that right about now? Plus, can it really be all that impressive a system on the scale we're talking about if it's still limited to propelling a plane and not contributing to a complete change in the structure of the craft?

 

[Miah]

The Aurora does allegedly use exotic propulsion (pulse detonation wave engine?):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_aircraft
http://tinwiki.org/wiki/Aurora_Aircraft

Check out the contrail that starts from Area 51 and crosses the entire US on a weather map (at 5:30 in) here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sNByHb5VB0I&feature=related

 

[truthseeker]

I know I'm out of my league on this one, but here's the question from a new angle....

I'm thinking that when the stealth bomber was unleashed everyone was ooh-ing and aah-ing over how futuristic it looked and so it must account for a lot of--maybe most of--the UFO reports. I mean that was conventional wisdom--we've all heard people brush off UFO reports with that one, right?

However, the stealth bomber really just looks like a sports model airplane. It cannot perform drastic maneuvers, dead stops, et. al. in silence, on par with how most flying UFO reports go. Plus...it looks like a plane. A Trans Am plane. Some UFOs don't even look aerodynamic.

So, while to Joe Blow, these new planes look so futuristic that they must account for most UFO sightings, I'm going with... not so much. Futuristic, yes. Futuristic PLANE, which is what the Aurora looks like. It looks like this because they are building off of predecessors, off of what worked, and what works are planes.

What doesn't seem to work are round craft and, I assume, mile-long triangles. For those to work we'd need a drastically different propulsion system, as noted.

All of this is to say, if we have that propulsion system and the ability to drive vehicles that look nothing like planes and outperform everything--if we have this secret parallel track of super technology--then why isn't the Aurora on the market? It can't possibly compete with the stuff of the parallel track. Why not sell it?

It could be true that it, too, doesn't use a normal propulsion system and we want to stick with fossil fuels for as long as possible, but isn't the time up for that right about now? Plus, can it really be all that impressive a system on the scale we're talking about if it's still limited to propelling a plane and not contributing to a complete change in the structure of the craft?

If Aurora is using some sort of exotic propulsion system, even though it's only limited to propelling a plane as opposed to other super secret technology that supposedly is being developed in the black op world, I'm guessing it would still pose a risk to the fossil-fuel status quo, because it is so drastically different than any conventional energy sources or propulsion systems that were ever used. Releasing it would be catastrophic to the powers that want to prolong our usage of fossil fuels.
However, as far as Aurora goes, I doubt that it's using anything more fancy than a scramjet which as far as I know still has a way to go in development. Maybe it's just not there yet in terms of functionality and usability in the battle field. Releasing it to the public would be pointless.