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wave, no such answer could be found. There i is only one solution and this is to tell the truth. The truth i is aos a4 a aa 4 1 that the Air Force could not determine the origin of the objects witnessed by thousands of people. It is not easy to admit that authorities in charge of air defense and airspace management are not capable of finding an acceptable explanation, but, in my opinion, this is better than issuing false explanations. The Belgian government was honest and acknowledged publicly that it could not explain the many sightings. Nevertheless, military authorities should not wait to take action until they are forced to do so by the public and the media. They should be concerned about the possible security implications of unusual air activities. If reliable witnesses report the presence of UAP that have not been picked up or identified by the civil aviation authorities and the air defense systems, it should be admitted that there may be a problem and an effort should be made to conduct more in-depth investigations with qualified experts. ww What if these crafts had more aggressive intentions? Who would have been responsible if incidents had occurred? The question remains: wera . 44 a 14 a4 Which military authority dares to tackle this problem, or rather, which military authority dares to recognize that there is a problem? Is this "ostrich" policy the right approach? Formally investigating reliable UFO reports would create an atmosphere of openness and transparency, and motivate other witnesses to come forward with their experiences. Such investigations would provide the scientific basis for relevant authorities to express an official opinion vis-a-vis the UFO problem. However, it seems a wake-up call will be required for us to formally acknowledge that there is a problem. A major accident would serve as such a wake-up call, but this is not what we hope for; on the contrary, this is something that we want to prevent. We must all be prepared for the next UFO wave, wherever it may occur. an CHAPTER 3 PILOTS: A UNIQUE WINDOW INTO THE UNKNOWN The Belgian UFOs did not appear to create any kind of safety hazard for aircraft in flight, as far as we know, and General De Brouwer made it clear that the objects displayed no threatening behavior. Yet, as I stated in the second point to be considered in the Introduction, this is not always the case. Some of our most compelling reports on UFO encounters have been provided by Air Force and commercial pilots, and sometimes aviation safety is compromised. Shortly after publishing my first story about the COMETA Report in the Boston Globe, I became interested in the question of UFOs and aviation safety. After all, if these things really are out there, one would expect that at