UFO's and Defense What Should we Prepare For

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"Stripping the UFO phenomenon ofits irralional layer"
Foreword by Professor Andre Lebeau, Former chairman of the Centre National
d'Etudes Spatiales
(CNES) (French National Center for Space Studies]
It is not looked on highly in certain scientific circles to be preoccupied with phenomena
that are deemed to come under the heading of popular mythology or that are, at any rate,
outside the realm ofscience. Such was the case with stones falling from the sky, which
was long considered in our country to be the stuffoffable. However, the day that a
meteorite shower over the town of Laigle permitted a collective and indisputable
observation, it entered into the domain of science. One century later NASA, no doubt
hastily, elevated these stones to proof of the existence of primitive life on Mars.
_Phenomena ofthis type pose a preliminary problem for the scientific approach: does a
scientific fact exist? •
When the phenomenon is a matter of experimentation, the criterion to be used is simple~
the reproducibility of the experiment is the touchstone and furnishes the fact that must
then be interpreted. But the situation is more difficult when the phenomenon is not open
to experimentation, when repeated observation is the only basis on which one can go, as is
the case in astronomy and for the most part in geophysics. However, when the fact, albeit
rare, is collectively and indisputably visible, it is easy to elevate it to the status ofscientific
object. The existence of eclipses, comets, and novas has been recognized_since ancient
times,._even though their interpretation long contained - and sometimes still contains - a
religious dimension. Thus collective and simultaneous observation plays the same role as
the reproducibility of experiments.
This is not true when the event is not only rare but discrete as well, and when there is a
very small amount of evidence at each occurrence, which opens the door to various
suspicions. Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, fall into this category. One runs up
against additional difficulties in the case of UFOs, firstly that of how many human
activities, especially since the beginning of the space age, have generated atmospheric
phenomena the origin of which is not immediately ascertainable by those who observe
them. In any case, UFOs, the origin of which cannot be attributed to either a human
source or a natural mechanism that has been identified by science, are mixed in with a
background noise the origin of which, although difficult to identify, is not at all
mysterious.
Moreover, and above all, the existence of unexplained manifestations, both in the
atmosphere and occasionally on the surface of the earth, inevitably gives rise to a
fundamental question: are we alone in the universe? Could some of these phenomena be
the work of extraterrestrial beings? This question gives the UFO issue a sociological,
media-related, and even religious dimension in a domain that is not that of science and
scientific methods. And it is the very existence of this dimension that elicits reactions of
rejection in the scientific community.
However, a dispassionate examination of the situation should lead those who believe in
the value of scientific method to consider that the very existence ofa strong irrational
environment is another reason to apply the precepts of this method to the issue of UFOs.
COMETA has tried its luck at this in the report that it is presenting, supported, namely,
by the work performed by GEPAN, which later became SEPRA. The significant place
granted to sightings, to testimonies, and to the analysis ofcases that have been explained
shows the major role played here by the establishment of facts. But we also find in this