EDITORIAL

THE GIST OF THE MATTER

This RB issue is a purely ufological one. A prominent place in it is occupied by the paper "History of State-Directed UFO Research in the USSR" by Dr. Yuliy Platov and Colonel (ret.) Boris Sokolov. The authors have been for a long time (from 1978 till 1996) involved in organizing and conducting UFO research according to a program sanctioned by the highest authorities of the Soviet Union. The former is a prominent specialist in ionospheric physics, the latter was (until his retirement) a leading official at a big military scientific research institute.

The main result of this program is, to my mind, very essential. It has been convincingly proved that some 95 percent of observations of UFOs "in the broad sense of the word" (that is, objects and phenomena incomprehensible to the observer) are due to launches of military and space rockets and weather balloons, whereas some five percent are the "UFOs in the strict sense of the word", that is objects and phenomena whose nature and origin defy any explanation in terms of existing scientific conceptions. This is certainly an important finding, worthy to be broadly promulgated. And certainly, this is the maximum of what could be done under the conditions in which the researchers worked—at a practically zero level of funding and with a very limited number of direct participants.

A new question is however arising in this connection: why was there no further shift towards serious investigations of the "genuine UFO phenomenon"? Generally speaking, anything unknown needs to be explained. One can however suppose that it was the nature and the real magnitude of the UFO problem that played a crucial role in this seemingly unexpected stop. Basically, it is an extra- scientific, practical problem, which has faced mankind in the course of its "usual", "everyday" activities. (Scientific problems arise as a result of "scientific activities". But UFOs were neither discovered in a scientific experiment, nor predicted theoretically.) Such problems are, as a rule, solved either in a "simple", practical way, based on ready-made formulae, or with the help of the scientific community. In the latter case society (usually represented by state authorities) charges certain research institutions to study the question in detail and to propose a well-founded solution that can be practically used.   

Here the situation is basically the same. The Soviet authorities were for a long time pursuing a rather ostrich policy in respect of the UFO phenomenon. Due to the Petrozavodsk event, they had to pull out their heads from the sand and charge the Academy of Sciences, together with the military, to answer the following three questions: Is the UFO phenomenon indeed for real? If yes, what is it? Can it be in any sense dangerous? The first question has been successfully answered: yes, the UFO phenomenon in the strict sense of this term is for real. (The fact that in any "post-project" publication, the paper in question included, 95 percent of its volume deals with the explained part of the phenomenon, is certainly of secondary importance.)

Thereupon it would have been reasonable to move from visual chance observations by—even if experienced—eyewitnesses to instrumental observations. If the objects and processes composing the unexplained part of the UFO phenomenon do objectively exist in the atmosphere and near space, irregular as they are, it is evident that their physical characteristics can be determined only with the help of sophisticated technical means. The latter may include general-purpose equipment (military radars, as well as other surveillance systems) and/or specialized instruments (designed and built specially for UFO tracking), but in any case they must have the ability to monitor—ideally—the whole near-Earth space, say, from altitudes of several hundred meters to a few thousand kilometers.

Why has nobody in Russia ever attempted to develop UFO research in this direction? Supposedly, the answer is simple: too much money and effort would have been needed for this work. One can suspect it was this conclusion that stopped the Russian UFO investigations soon after the existence of the real object of study was at last proved. In the very grave economical situation of the early 1990's Russia simply could not allow herself to allocate the necessary funds for an endeavor comparable in its dimensions with the A-bomb, the first sputnik, and the Apollo projects.

This solution was probably fairly reasonable. But was it correct indeed? Is the behavior of governments (both Russian and those of richer countries) in this situation responsible in any sense of the word? Science did perform its "initial" task: it has proved that genuine UFOs do exist. To put it otherwise, we can say with sufficient confidence that mankind has met with something unknown in the very area of its existence. To which extent this unknown may be dangerous, remains, naturally enough, unknown as well. To state, for example, that "although we do not know what these objects are, they are certainly not alien spaceships" means to contradict the most elementary norms of logical thinking. In fact, we cannot know that genuine UFOs are not alien spaceships until we do know what they are. Further still, as was theoretically substantiated by Michael Hart as far back as 1975, if there exist in the Galaxy any extraterrestrial civilizations, their probes and starships must be present in the Solar System.¹ And to state, as did the author of the same work, that UFOs do not exist and therefore there are no ET civilizations in the Galaxy, means to go beyond the limits of any logic at all.

In this situation, fraught at least with possible surprises, governmental institutions should exhibit more responsibility than they did in the past. Today, when the existence of genuine UFOs may be considered as proved, it would have been hardly rational to thrust our heads back into the sand or even to continue collecting chance observations of UFOs, both genuine and not. Yes, science is the main (in fact, even the only) cognitive instrument of our terrestrial civilization, but to study properly such a practical problem as the question of the UFOs origin and nature, the research work must be organized in an appropriate manner—as a large-scale (better if international) state-directed research project with the necessary funding and state-of-the-art technical equipment. Ufologists are inclined to veil the real situation and to think that the UFO problem may be successfully solved at the level of amateur groups—that is, mainly with the "strength of brains and enthusiasm", rather than with the "power of money and technology". The reality is however different. Brains are certainly indispensable in any investigation, but the real extent of the quest for the solution of the UFO problem goes far beyond the scope of the potential of amateur organizations or even dedicated scientific research institutions. This is a global task requiring a joint effort of all official bodies and individuals who are responsible enough to seriously think about the future of the human race.

Notes and references

        ¹ See: Hart M. H. An explanation for the absence of extraterrestrials on Earth.—Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1975, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 128-135.

— Vladimir V. Rubtsov 

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