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team" to investigate. Two more were seen on November 12; one "appeared to be sending a beam of light to the ground intermittently" and then disappeared. Unlike the full reports we have on the Iranian, Peruvian, and Belgian aerial pursuits of UFOs by armed fighter jets, the more abbreviated NORAD logs do not reveal the mission of the U.S. Air Force scrambled jets. Would the pilots have fired at the UFOs if they were close enough and in a position to do so? Did they not consider the objects to be a potential threat to national security? What actions on the part of the objects could have provoked Air Force aggression? Defense Department reports state that UFOs were pursued by U.S. Air Force fighter planes after the objects hovered over three supersensitive nuclear missile launch sites, also in 1975, according to the Washington Post. "A string of the nation's supersensitive nuclear missile launch sites and bomber bases were visited by unidentified low-flying and elusive objects," the Post reported. The sightings were recorded on radar over installations in Montana, Michigan, and Maine. The objects hovered, in some cases as low as ten feet off the ground. "In several instances, after base security had been penetrated, the Air Force sent fighter planes and airborne command planes aloft to carry on the unsuccessful pursuit. The records do not indicate if the fighters fired on the intruders" - the Post continues (emphasis added). And, it says, during these pursuits, the attempts to "detain" the objects were also unsuccessful. Detain? This is peculiar; how would the military detain one? Chances are, the only way to detain such a craft would be to physically disable it, or shoot it down. The Post statement suggests that the Air Force may have tried to do just that, but we don't know, and have not yet been able to find out. We do know a great deal, however, about what happened in 1976 over Tehran, and about the 1980 incident in Peru, partly because of U.S. government interest in both cases, which led to the filing of American reports with intelligence agencies. One can assume that the cases of Jafari and Santa Maria must have been of particular interest not only because the pilots took military action against the UFOs, but also because they actually interacted with them. In both instances, there was an interplay of actions and response over an extended period of time, a type of communication, between a vulnerable man in a small plane and an unknown, highly technological flying machine. Neither pilot knew where it was from, or why it was there. But during this lengthy engagement, both were able to observe the objects at very close range. The national security aspect is obvious—or perhaps global security would be a more apt phrase. In their attempts to shoot down the UFO, neither pilot was successful, but for different reasons. Santa Maria penetrated the object the first time with a barrage of shells, which had absolutely no effect, but in subsequent attempts the object shot up