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From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 1997 04:15:49 +0200
Fwd Date: Fri, 08 Aug 1997 09:55:40 -0400
Subject: Air National Guard Captain Interviewed On Arizona

Found on the site of T.A.S.K. (Tri-State Advocates For Scientific
Knowledge).

"T.A.S.K. is a non-profit group dedicated to the study of UFOs and
other 'unusual phenomena.' It is the group's intent to conduct
investigations and research into these matters with the highest degree
of scientific integrity."

The URL of the interview is:

http://home.fuse.net/task/SULLINS.htm




On Tuesday, August 5, 1997, Capt. Drew Sullins,  of the Maryland Air
National Guard was interviewed by Kenny Young of T.A.S.K. regarding the
March 13th Arizona UFO reports.



YOUNG: Thanks for taking time from your busy schedule to talk this
afternoon about Project Snowbird and the flare droppings over Arizona
that generated some attention. One of the things I want to discuss is
the TIME DELAY in announcing the explanation for this event, which was
a duration of almost 4 to 5 months. Is there any reason to your
knowledge for this delay?

SULLINS: Yes there is, and I don't think people are going to believe
it, but it's the truth... it's a simple miscommunication. Apparently
when the military in Phoenix was first approached, they looked at their
flight logs, which are kept in two separate categories called
"RESIDENT" and "VISITING" logs. These logs chart all of the incoming or
outgoing air traffic. When the first inquiries of this went out,
DAVIS-MONTHAN didn't check the visiting flight logs. The Public Affairs
Officer down there called the people at operations who kept the flight
logs, and they said, "we didn't have anything up that day." After
several months, Captain Eileen Bienz was told by someone, and I can't
remember who, that there was a project called Snowbird, which was an
Air National Guard 'Op.' Bienz didn't have information on Snowbird,
because Arizona units don't participate in it. Snowbird is an operation
run during the winter when they take A.N.G. units located in the
northern U.S. When it snows and the weather gets bad, they fly their
units out there for a couple of weeks and train during the winter
because the weather for flying is so good. Bienz put two and two
together and checked the visiting flight logs, and sure enough it was
discovered that there was an Air National Guard unit flying around.

YOUNG: So the miscommunication was due to Davis-Monthan?

SULLINS: Yeah, it wasn't on my part. Captain Bienz called me up and
told me the whole story, just a couple of weeks ago and first I ever
heard of it, and said, 'now can you confirm these things?' So I called
our Ops guys of the 175th Wing & 104th Fighter Squadron, and they were
able to confirm for me that they were flying that night in that area
and dropping flares. The information was not held, as soon as we got it
together it was released.

YOUNG: Why had the pilots in this unit, knowing they did this, not come
forth in the hours after the publicity to announce the proper
explanation?

SULLINS: First of all, the deployment for the unit was on the last day
of a 15-day training mission happening during the first 2-weeks of
March. It was one of the last missions they flew out there, and by the
time it hit the news, they might have been gone. The story wasn't the
big news event in Baltimore that it was in Phoenix. I think they seemed
genuinely suprised that they were the cause of all the hub-bub.

YOUNG: When you say they were 'gone,' what do you mean by that?

SULLINS: They came back to Maryland. It was a 2-week training mission.
They were there the first 2-weeks in March, and so by March 13th, that
night, they landed and probably got up on March 14th or 15th and rolled
out of there.

YOUNG: There was plenty of national media exposure regarding this, and
also a second-wave of publicity in mid-June following the USA TODAY
article. Is there any reason these pilots or affiliates with the
squadron would not have come forth with this explanation in spite of
all this?

SULLINS: Well I honestly don't think that they knew. I really don't.
The lead pilot that night, a Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Ron
Henry, was retiring about that time... he's retired now and commuting
back and forth to Minneapolis and he's really busy. He's in the flight
training program for Northwest Airlines learning how to fly a DC-9, and
all these guys are really busy. They're citizen airmen and citizen
soldiers, so they have full-time jobs and careers, families and other
things they have to manage. Look, I'll be honest with you, until
Captain Bienz called me up, I honestly had not even heard about this. I
read two papers in the morning, one of them on the internet, one in my
office, and so if I could miss it, then I guess they could too.

YOUNG: Was the lead pilot and others involved aware that dropping these
flares would produce the results among the population below that it did?

SULLINS: No, I don't think they would have known because it's a
standard routine training mission out there. Flares are dropped alot on
that range. On that particular night, the visibility and atmospheric
conditions were such that the things could have been viewed from the
southwestern suburbs of Phoenix. These flares can be seen from hundreds
of miles if the weather conditions are right. Apparently, they're not
the only unit out there that dropped flares. Who's to say, perhaps the
weather conditions and everything just kind of came together and these
things could be seen from Phoenix.

YOUNG: You speculate that other units could have also been involved?

SULLINS: The only units we had flying that night were the eight
aircraft from the 104th Fighter Squadron.

YOUNG: What about the arguments that the flares were visible longer
than 1-hour, when the actual burn-time for parachute flares would be
around 4 or 5 minutes?

SULLINS: They were dropping alot of flares. They were over that range
for over an hour. One aircraft would go in, drop a couple of flares,
make its run and attack a target, then another aircraft would come in
from behind and illuminate the range again, so they were continually
dropping flares in that area.

YOUNG: So the pilots could see the flares from their plane?

SULLINS: Oh yes.

YOUNG: Would they have been able to visualize that this could be
something the population below would notice as well?

SULLINS: I can't speak for the pilots because I wasn't flying, but the
dropping of flares out there is so routine that I don't see why they
would've had any cause for alarm.

YOUNG: Again, the delay in this announcement is somewhat odd. How many
men would have been involved with the 104th Fighter Squadron that would
have had knowledge of this operation?

SULLINS: There were eight aircraft. Eight pilots.

YOUNG: Were there also officers loading the flares in pods under the
wings who would have had knowledge of this?

SULLINS: I'd have to call the squadron on that, but once Davis- Monthan
checked the visiting flight logs, they were able to explain it. The
base knew about it, but they just didn't check the visiting flight logs.

YOUNG: How would this activity have been specified or listed on a
flight log?

SULLINS: That's a good question. I don't have an answer to that one.

YOUNG: Do they list flare exercises in flight logs?

SULLINS: Anytime you're flying at night in the A-10 Thunderbolt on a
night training exercise, it's probable that you'll always be dropping
flares. It's very routine, there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OUT OF THE
ORDINARY about what they did out there.

YOUNG: It was obviously extraordinary in light of the public reaction
to the operation.

SULLINS: Well that was, but not the mission itself.

YOUNG: Do they announce flare exercises in advance so as not to cause
public alarm?

SULLINS: No.

YOUNG: They do not?

SULLINS: No, they never have before. It's never produced this public
response before and our pilots have flown this same mission out of that
range a number of times before, and done so without so much as raising
an eyebrow.

YOUNG: Would all the reports of a triangular object, mentioned in the
USA Today article, be attributable to the flare droppings?

SULLINS: I don't know. I've only seen videotapes twice, and they looked
like flares to me.

YOUNG: I recalled that some of the early reports on this that some Air
Tower Operators were looking at these flares and at the same time
detected no radar track of any aircraft on radar. Could you please tell
me if eight A-10's which were dropping flares would have any Stealth
capabilities which would have caused them not to be detected by radar?

SULLINS: Nope, and the pilots told me that they had everything
operating that night and that they should've shown up on radar. Sky
Harbor International Airport held radar surveillance for this area, and
I don't want to speak for them, and don't know what their coverage area
is, but I understand that the area is restricted military airspace. Sky
Harbor International Airport will have to answer for those questions.
The A-10's do not have any Stealth technology on it, and they were
flying with all of their navigation radar systems and everything
operating.

YOUNG: Since we had some alarm and concern generated from the public
over the March 13 flare droppings, would it be possible to duplicate an
identical event for the public, and arrange for the media to be present
to document the event?

SULLINS: As the pilots explained it to me, it may have been the
atmospheric conditions that night which allowed this thing to be seen
so far away in Phoenix, but I'm not so sure we could replicate or
duplicate the exact conditions that night. But secondly, it costs a
hell of a lot of money to fly these planes for an hour, and I don't
know that the United States Air Force would authorize that expenditure.
I'd be willing to bet that since this has happened, a whole bunch of
flares have dropped over that range since then.

YOUNG: So a repeat performance to satisfy the populace would not be
possible?

SULLINS: I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just saying that I'm the
wrong guy to ask. You're not going to get the Maryland Air National
Guard to fly all the way across the country to replicate the event.
That's a request that'll have to be made to the United States Air Force
in the Pentagon, and that would then be handed down to the National
Guard Bureau, and it goes from echelon to echelon, through the
bureaucratic process. Davis- Monthan could assist there, if one were to
inquire when the next training mission would be scheduled over Luke AFB
where A-10s will be dropping flares from between 10 and 15 thousand
feet. That is essentially all you have to replicate. The thing that
people are getting all bent out of shape about is the fact that I never
offered this as the 'definitive explanation' for what happened. We only
offered this up because an inquiry was made to the military regarding
unidentified lights. We released all the information on our operation,
but we are not prepared to say definitively that these are, in fact,
the lights. I'm not trying to stir anything up here, but I can only say
that our unit was there, we flew these missions, we dropped these
flares. Alot of people think it's flares. Some of the pilots who've
looked at the videos flat out said it was flares. According to what
every military expert and A-10 pilot told me leads me to believe it was
flares.

YOUNG: Since another demonstration would be difficult, would it be
possible to notify the public in the event of future exersizes of this
nature?

SULLINS: Look, I gotta be completely candid here, we're not going to
pick up the phone every darn time we do something. Military operations
are just that - military operations. They're not things that the public
is used to seeing on an everyday basis, and if everytime we conducted
something that we thought the general public would find unusual, I'd
spend my whole life on the phone telling people about our training. And
in Maryland, we don't drop flares. And the reason we dropped so many
flares in Tucson is because its one of the few places we can go to
execute that mission. There is no place in Maryland that we could drop
these flares safely. The Warfield A.N.G. base outside of Baltimore is
not properly equipped to load, handle and store these type of flares
and other ordinances. When we go to Arizona, we fly lots of these
missions, and try to maximize our time out there because we can't do it
at home. So we don't have any need to call people here at home and tell
them our plans.

YOUNG: If it were ever deemed needful to announce anything, who would
be contacted?

SULLINS: I would put out the release. If my boss came to me and said
that we were going to be conducting an exersize that would alarm the
general public, then I would put out a news release to the TV, radio
and newspapers.

YOUNG: Do you also handle NOTAM (Notice To Airmen) reports or
advisories to other airports or pilots in the area of exersizes?

SULLINS: I don't know what a NOTAM report is, I've never heard of one
here.

YOUNG: I do appreciate your time and detailed information today.

SULLINS: My pleasure.




COMMENT:


It was obvious that Capt. Sullins was knowledgeable about the flight
operations of the Maryland A.N.G. and familiar with the flare
maneuvers.

He had clearly handled several of these questions previously, and had
also indicated that he interviewed several of the pilots involved. He
may have been briefed on how to handle these inquiries, as much of what
he said was strikingly similar to comments made to me by a captain from
the 178th Fighter Group and 162nd Fighter Squadron Flying Unit Fighter
Operations division from Springfield Air National Guard base after a
separate but identical incident happened in Southern Ohio on March 26.
I found Sullins to be courteous and very professional.

However, I am uncomfortable by the fact that the pilots of the eight
aircraft responsible, or the other airman involved in the unit
operations of the 175th Wing & 104th Fighter Squadron, would supposedly
have 'not heard' of the March 13th debacle involving UFOs over Arizona.
I cannot fathom that these persons would not "do the right thing" and
put the matter to rest as abruptly as possible.

Recall that Snowbird remained in Arizona at least the following
afternoon, or possibly several days after the March 13th event, giving
them plenty of opportunities to hear of the UFO reports which had
saturated the Arizona media.

Furthermore, Sullins seemed befuddled by the lack of radar returns for
the A-10 activity from Sky Harbor International Airport. He also didn't
elect to address the reports of a triangular object supposedly
observed, and dismissed the public reaction of a 'routine' exersize to
weather conditions, an identical scenario first advanced to T.A.S.K.
from the Springfiled A.N.G. units after the Ohio disturbance on March
26.

In an honest assessment of this drama, I must observe that the Arizona
scenario is highly suspicious and all-too-similar to the March 26th
Ohio happening. And due to the delayed confession from the Maryland Air
National Guard, one must seriously consider if an ulterior motive may
be at work in this travesty.

The Ohio event dealt also with a large, triangular object traveling
overhead, and also a 'bouncing' object that was witnessed by a fire and
E.M.S. coordinator from New Vienna, Ohio. The Arizona flare
explanation, like the Ohio story, is complicated by nagging
inconsistencies that come against the flare explanation.

I am satisfied that flares were there, but if the other reports are to
honestly considered, then we only have a partial resolution to this
very interesting mystery.


K. Young