Big Sur is a region located on the central coast of California, United States. Big Sur is located where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean.
The Big Sur UFO is a reported UFO incident that took place during a 1964 Air Force deployment to a mountaintop near Big Sur, California. The deployment was a mission was to film Atlas missile tests from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Since 1982, Robert Jacobs, who had overseen the mountaintop team, has claimed the team filmed an “intelligently controlled flying device” that followed a missile and emitted a “beam of energy” to disable the weapon.
Writing in 1993, Kingston George, the project engineer, argued the team had actually recorded the release of decoy warheads and chaff designed to prevent the weapon being intercepted by Soviet defenses. According to George, Jacobs did not have clearance to be told the truth of what they had recorded and mistook decoy deployment as extraterrestrial interference.
From August to November 1964, the United States Air Force deployed personnel to the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest in California along with a special light-sensitive telescope borrowed from Boston University. Their mission was to “collect low-light-level photography of missile launches into the Air Force Western Test Range from Vandenberg Air Force Base”. Lt. Robert Jacobs was the on-site commander for the Big Sur location, which was managed by the 1369th Photo Squadron.
During the deployment, the team successfully captured nine launches from Vandenberg. During one such launch, of an Atlas missile nicknamed “Buzzing Bee”, the team was able to capture footage of a re-entry vehicle deploying decoy warheads, a highly-classified technology designed to prevent American nuclear weapons being intercepted by Soviet defenses against ballistic missiles.
The story gained wider circulation in the 21st century. UFO author Robert Hastings further popularized the story in 2007. In 2021, Jacobs participated in a press conference about his interpretation of the incident.
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