The Gillibrand-Rubio Amendment Must Pass: Pilots Aren’t The Only Ones Seeing Things Going Bump In The Night

Written by Bob Plissken - 2 December 2021

Note: Bob Plissken is a Former Intelligence Analyst in the U.S. Marine Corps: see his biography at bottom of page

There is a myriad of reasons why the Gillibrand-Rubio Amendment (G-R Amendment) to the NDAA 2022 must pass so that the UAP transparency movement can go full steam ahead.

From the outside, it appears that the U.S. Navy has taken the lead on sharing UAP data within the intelligence community.  It would make sense, as each Naval Carrier Strike Group (CSG) has the supporting infrastructure to track, categorize and intercept air, surface, and subsurface craft that are within their controlled space.  

As we all eagerly await the contributions of the Air Force and newly established Space Force, this should be noted: the Marine Corps and Army both have their own capabilities and are likely making observations of unknowns in the skies. 

The G-R Amendment provides language to ensure the Marine Corps and Army will have a mechanism for their observations to be reported and included in the overall analysis of UAP.

Potential Unreported Observations

Back in August, I was perusing my social media feed when I came across a Pop Smoke article, “Paranormal Military Stories: Tales from the Gridsquare.”  

Pop Smoke is a site for military veterans with a stated mission to “entertain, advocate for and bring together Military, Veterans and like-minded.” As many of us do, I scrolled through the comments looking for funny and smart-ass remarks to entertain me further. 

In my hunt for entertainment, something quite startling caught my attention: potential unreported UAP observations by our then actively deployed ground forces. One account was as follows:

“The lights continued straight then all of a sudden made a sharp 45 degree back straight up (fast) into the sky until it disappeared”

I paused as the implications of what I was reading settled in, our ground forces are making observations, and as far as I know, their data points are not being collected. 

Take a look for yourself at the captured screenshots below.

Yes, lights in the sky could be U.S. or adversarial drones, civilian aircraft, or maybe intelligence surveillance reconnaissance blimp (ISR) platforms, such as the Aerostat. 

As a former active duty Marine who has had the painful privilege of experiencing deployments, I will attempt to put the above accounts into context, while addressing the potential prosaic explanations.

Tethered Aerostat Radar System (Above)

Context Of Unreported Observations

If you’ve never been in the military or on a deployment, please humor me for a moment before I continue. When you deploy to a forward area, it is generally between six months to one year in country. For the entire time of your deployment, you are on watch conducting your primary military occupational specialty, on patrol, on post etc.

Now imagine for a moment that you, the reader, are on a deployment to your own home.  Every night, I want you to go outside and guard your mailbox for four – eight hours, between midnight and 8am. 

After the first few days, you’d pick up routines of the local flora and fauna. You’d know who runs, who walks their dogs, and who starts their car from the warmth of their home. You’ll most likely even learn the names of the mail and package delivery people.  

After a month, you’d know the flight paths of aircraft, which way the shooting stars streak across the sky, spot multiple satellites every night, know the runners’ names, the dog walkers’ and dogs’ names. Perhaps even the names of the delivery person’s family.  You’d also know the local cats, raccoons, squirrels, their patterns and how they interact with each other.  

In basic terms, there is ordinary and then there is out of the ordinary.  Our veterans that made those comments, were speaking about out of the ordinary experiences from their normal and routine observations made from their posts.

Does this mean that all or any of their observations are absolutely something, lacking a mundane explanation? No, but they are worth further examination and could be a piece to the puzzle to corroborate observations made by other sensor systems, platforms or pilots.  

One comment stood out because it can be inferred that there are not only visual observations by Marines and Soldiers, but data collected by associated sensor systems.   

“ADA crews will tell you there’s all kinds of weird shit going on in the night sky”

What is Air Defense Artillery (ADA)?

The Army deploys multiple ADA systems, to include Patriot Missile Systems, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and the Avenger Air Defense system.  In 2020, Marine Corps began updating its ADA systems and is now in the process of rolling out the Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS).

According to the Army Times, our ADA forces are one of their most frequently deployed units in the military.  If our service members are forward deployed, there will be an ADA element in the theater with them to provide security from air threats.  Each ADA weapons system has a complement of supporting sensor systems specifically designed to ensure they can locate, track and potentially disrupt or kill inbound threats.  

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was designed and built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, with subcontracts going to Raytheon, Boeing, Aerojet, Rocketdyne, Honeywell, BAE Systems, MiltonCAT, and Oliver Capital Consortium. 

With the supporting radar system for our THAAD being the AN/TPY-2, it has earned the nickname of “Aegis ashore”. You may recognize the word Aegis as the system that has been detecting UAP observed by our Naval forces.  THAAD has similar capabilities and many of the same systems as Aegis.  

Raytheon Transportable AN/TPY-2

Back on Sept. 14, 2020 Tyler Rogoway and Joseph Trevithick of The Drive wrote an article about drone incursions over THAAD systems in Guam.  One of the reported incidents occurred in March 6, 2019 where a redacted FOIA document read, “tower #2 radioed to report that a bright white light was seen from LOCATION hovering over a field and quickly disappeared.”

 The United States currently has several transportable THAAD missile battery systems in its inventory, which could be relocated to any theater needing missile defense requirements. Raytheon is slated to complete the eighth transportable AN/TPY-2 in December 2024. 

Why The Gillibrand-Rubio Amendment Matters

The G-R Amendment is vital to providing a comprehensive data collection approach across all of our armed services. And the language used has enough teeth to ensure meaningful change is enacted. 

The amendment text states:

“Military and civilian personnel employed by or under contract to the Department of an element of the intelligence community SHALL have access to procedures by which they SHALL report incidents or information, including adverse physiological effects, involving or associated with unidentified aerial phenomena directly to the Office.”

I have taken the liberty to add emphasis to the word “shall” in the draft legislation.  In legal terms, when you see “shall”, it means that there is no wiggle room to get around it. You must do it or you are not obeying the regulation. 

If passed, this legislation will direct that all members of the DoD, civilian, military and Intelligence Community will have reporting procedures and they have to report incidents.  In essence, the incidents spoken about in the Facebook comments above will have reports associated with them.  That data could help feed future analytics. Right now, all that data is not being stored or processed. 

It is paramount that this data is stored and studied. Without speculating too much, there may be various origins of UAP, including foreign adversaries, such as China, which is rapidly accelerating its own technological capabilities. If such sightings are simply being brushed aside and not collected, that leaves us vulnerable.

Without the G-R Amendment, one of our most widely deployed military sections, our Air Defense Artillery units, with their associated sensor systems, may not have a mechanism to contribute towards UAP reports - and that is a problem which must not be buried by the DoD.

About the Author - Bob Plissken

Bob served as an Intelligence Analyst in the Marine Corps. As a Marine, Bob did two deployments that brought him from the halls of Mosul International Airport, Iraq, to the shores of Liberia, and many places in between. From his training and real-world experience, he learned analytical skills to process confusing information and present it in an understandable and useful manner.

Other than Bob’s real world experience, he had the privilege to receive formalized intelligence training, including Intelligence Specialist training, Counter Narcotics, Remotely Sensed Imagery / Geographic Information Systems, Asymmetric Warfare Intelligence Analysis and Counterterrorism Analysis, to name a few.

Bob earned his Bachelor of Arts in Criminology from State University and his Juris Doctor Degree from Suffolk University Law School. After passing the bar exam, he is to be sworn in as an attorney in mid-December 2021.

Bob has chosen not to reveal his real name at this time and Liberation Times respects his privacy.