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| 29.01.2009 | GEIPAN, nasty people? |
| 01.29.2009 | Denmark Air Force opens its UFO file. |
| 01.20.2009 | Woo woo! Obama's UFO. |
| 01.19.2009 | Alleged UFO over Germany. |
In France, GEIPAN is currently the service of the CNES with the mission to investigate UFO sighting reports, or "PAN" (UAP) reports in their terminology. Their website is at www.cnes-geipan.fr
GEIPAN had taken the initiative to collaborate with amateurs ufologists for field investigations. Some amateur ufologists wished for that in the past, or criticized the GEPAN or the SEPRA, the services which preceded GEIPAN, with the reason that they did not want to accept such collaboration.
When GEIPAN set up this collaboration, they issued a document indicating the rules for this collaboration. This document defines the relationship between GEIPAN and the amateur ufologists who accept to collaborate, reffered to as "IPN's". This document is here:
http://www.cnes-geipan.fr/documents/procedure_IPN.doc
It clearly states:
"There is no contractual bond between GEIPAN and the IPN, the relations are based on a freely accepted collaboration materialized by the acceptance of this document. The IPN can in no case claim any kind of GEIPAN membership." (bolded sentence by myself)
IPN's had to accept these conditions.
But, it was inevitable: there were amateur ufologists who had been accepted as IPN, who had accepted the rules at the start, but who could not refrain themselves to break this rule by letting know that they were collaborators of the GEIPAN. Perhaps by lapse of memory of the rule, perhaps to make themselves look important.
GEIPAN stopped its collaboration with them.
It was just as inevitable that some ufologists then started to stupidly criticize GEIPAN, and this is why tehre a re now on the French web silly pamphlets against GEIPAN.
Denmark's Air Force published it UFO file on January 29, 2009, providing a 30 MB file on their website at:
http://forsvaret.dk/FTK/Nyt%20og%20Presse/Pages/UFO.aspx
The content is in Danish.
British tabloid the sun reports on January 30, 2009, that fighter pilots were put on red alert over Germany, as air traffic controllers tracked a mystery object speeding across the entire country.
The Sun says investigators checked and ruled out conventional aircraft, weather balloons and freak atmospheric conditions, and that Axel Raab, of Germany’s air traffic safety office DFS, said: "We have ruled out all the conventional possibilities — it is a mystery." And: "It confused radar operators because it kept flicking on and off the screen. Then it simply vanished."
Apparently it occurred on January 19, 2009, with "dozens of reports" of the object; which was lost above "an area used by US troops on training exercises."
No data such as the speed, the sighting duration or witnesses names are provided by the Sun.
See: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2189149.ece
Later, the Austran Times published the same story, with the additional detail that the supposed UFO vanished over Grafenwoehr.
See: http://austriantimes.at/index.php?id=10895
Reports were published in the German press:
http://www.gea.de/detail/1175395
http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/stn/page/detail.php/1927600
http://www.swr.de/nachrichten/bw/-/id=1622/nid=1622/did=4420634/czsud7/index.html
http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/stn/page/1933745_0_2147_bundeswehr-wertet-radar-aus-ufo-koennte-drohne-gewesen-sein.html
Where we learn:
The object was seen visually from the airport of Stuttgart/Langen Monday evening towards 20:18, the air traffic controllers located on their radar in raw mode an unknown flying object, not identified as a registered flight, towards Herrenberg, and it did not answer their radio operator calls.
The controllers asked a pilot of an approaching cargo aircraft at an altitude of approximately 1100 meters to check it out, and he said he saw the object, intermittently, at an altitude which he estimated to be with approximately of 2000 meters.
Stuttgart air safety sent a police helicopter in pursuit, the object flew at a speed of approximately 100 km/h in the direction of the North-East of the air saftey buildings, but could not be better identified. Several police cars were also in the action.
Langen Air safety siggested it could be an ultraloght plane. Stuttgart airport said that it did not cause a problem for air safety.
The next day, other investigations found that the unknown aerial object had been detected in the south of Nuremberg by the Munchen radar, going then towards the North-East, to Grafenwoehr, a drill area for US troops, where it disappeared definitively from the radar screen.
The direction of the air safety indicated that the flying object had entered the German airspace close to Lahr in Südbaden, detected around 19 hours on the South of the Black Forest. It apparently entered German airspace from France and apparently left it in Czech where it probably landed.
Although the press sometimes speculates it was a drone, it seems to me quite clear that the course, speeds, the intermitence of radar detection, suggest some illegal flight of a clandestine ultralight plane, perhaps for some illegal traffic, currencies, or other. There is on the other hand no reason why a drone should take off from France amd land in Czech, clandestinely moreover.
German authorities indicate that the pilot faces a fine or a licence withdrawal since he did not answer the radio operator contacts attempts, but they estimate that there is little chance that this pilot can be found.
