Was "Bob Lazar's" Area 51 technology related to Fravor's 2004 UAP sighting?

Around 1989 Bob Lazar took Gene Huff and some others (John Lear and George Knapp I believe) to the outskirts of area 51 to observe something in the sky. What was it?

I don't know, but I'm going to present an explanation that seems plausible though it would be difficult or impossible to prove with any open source documents if the technology is still classified. According to this explanation, it wasn't an object at all, but a particle beam technology.

Was that related to what David Fravor saw in 2004 that he described as a tic-tac shaped thing with incredible maneuvering capabilities? I don't know but we can discuss that possibility.

First, let's take a look at what Bob Lazar took Gene Huff and others to see:

Bob Lazar UFO at A51



George Knapp comments that the video isn't really that impressive, but you can hear Gene Huff describing some incredible maneuvers (which don't appear on the video, they never do, why?)

Huff mentions a "step" maneuver which implied some sharp 90 degree angle movements and a sudden drop.

Making sharp 90 degree movements is very difficult for an aircraft because of inertia, but for a particle beam it's no problem. I also noticed the light doesn't look completely round but rather oblong, sort of like a tic-tac shape.

So what is a "particle beam"? You may think of the Large Hadron Collider which runs the world's most energetic particle beams, and it's an astounding feat of science and engineering to make such powerful beams. But making less powerful particle beams can be much simpler. For example, Let's look at the old Cathode Ray tubes used in televisions and computer monitors:

www.physics-and-radio-electronics.com...

In this CRT "Particle beam" technology, you can see there is an "electron gun" which uses a heater to produce electrons, which are then accelerated in an electric field (typical voltages in that application may range from 20,000 to 25,000 volts).

The accelerated beam passes through a focusing anode, and then through electric fields which can move the beam vertically and horizontally. You may know the CRT beams move very fast since they scan the entire area of the display multiple times per second. When this scanned movement of the beam strikes the surface of the CRT display, and image appears on the display.

So that technology is not too complicated and was found in many homes, but similar to the LHC it used a vacuum inside the tube so there wouldn't be air molecules to impede the beam of particles.

So what happens when you fire a particle beam of say, protons into the air, which can and does impede the flow of particles? To explain that I'll refer you to this link:

Looking at the Bob Lazar story from the perspective of 2018

Aside from dealing with Lazar’s science being absolute rubbish, I also need to discuss what those glowing objects, seen by many over Groom Lake, actually were. They were, as I apparently didn’t lay out forcefully enough 20 years ago, the result of the operation of a proton beam device. I repeat….THEY WERE GODDAMNED PARTICLE BEAMS!!! There, having said that I feel much better.

Now I didn’t exactly pull that theory out of my ass. It was, um….suggested to me that I might want to pay a visit to my university library and look up something called the Bragg Curve. In essence, it relates how far charged particles can penetrate into matter given their initial energy.

To be honest, my reaction was “Huh? What does this have to do with anything?” The response was something along the lines of “OK, moron, pull a certain dusty, old physics reference book and look at the Bragg Curve equations on pages so and so”. I dutifully followed my instructions, and after staring at the equations for about 20 minutes the skies opened and the rain of understanding soaked me.

I too was a bit puzzled how the physics of this proton beam would work, since comparing it to the CRT electron beam, there was no screen in the sky for the protons to strike, so why did they light up the sky where they did? The author made a separate link with more details about the proton beam physics of how that can work in the sky if you want to dig into the technical details:

So ya don’t believe it was a proton beam, eh?

So the way it works is, you don't need a screen. It's a property of the way the proton beam interacts with air that depending on the energy of the beam, it goes only so far in air, according to the Bragg Curve.

Could what David Fravor saw also have been a particle beam such as a proton beam? If you look at the video of the proton beam in 1989 near area 51, it's not a round light, it's oblong and sort of tic-tac shaped. Also the characteristics described are somewhat similar, such as a "jittery motion" observed at times, and the ability to make seemingly incomprehensible maneuvers that a solid craft couldn't make.

If you're not familiar with David Fravor's "Tic-Tac" sighting, he discusses it in this Joe Rogan Experience video:
"Joe Rogan Experience #1361 - Cmdr. David Fravor & Jeremy Corbell"

Commander David Fravor is a retired US Navy pilot, who has a close encounter in 2004 with the so-called Tic Tac UFO

It's a little unclear whether such a light could be detected by radar but I suspect it depends on the radar and the filters used in the radar. There was no mention of radar in the "Lazar's show" beam, but in the 2004 Nimitz incident, Fravor said that he never tracked the "tic tac" on his own radar, but he was directed to that location by another radar tracking system, meaning it showed upon one radar but not another. This is not implausible if the different radar systems have different capabilities which I'm sure they do.

So a particle beam deployed from a submarine could easily run circles around David Fravor's airplane, if that's what he saw, though that's somewhat speculative but if the technology is still classified all we can really prove is the physics showing it's possible which is the point of this thread and the links here.

So maybe the particle beam Bob Lazar showed to his friends could be related to sightings of things which appear to be able to behave as a particle beam can behave, which might apply to David Fravor's 2004 "Tic-Tac" sighting.

By the way the link above explains the entire Lazar story pretty well and how Lazar's lie claiming it was a "UFO" instead of a particle beam kept him out of trouble since he knew it was a particle beam and was not revealing the true nature of the technology when he lied and said it was a flying object (rather than a particle beam). I don't know how factual that is, but I only have the information linked here to show that this seems plausible.

So, Did Lazar really show his friends a particle beam, and not a flying "object"? I think maybe so, what do you think?
Could that be related to what David Fravor saw in 2004? I think it's possible, what do you think?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Interesting post. Thank you.

I think both were driven by an anti-gravitic propulsion system that included inertia dampeners. Lazar's crafts were in the traditional "flying saucer" shape and the "Tic Tacs" are lozenge shaped, but they have some of the same internal mechanisms.

I think he showed them the saucer test just like he said.

originally posted by: schuyler
I think both were driven by an anti-gravitic propulsion system that included inertia dampeners. Lazar's crafts were in the traditional "flying saucer" shape and the "Tic Tacs" are lozenge shaped, but they have some of the same internal mechanisms.

The problem with those ideas is I've looked at the related patents and they don't seem very plausible and physics to support those ideas is not really established. That doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible, but the physics of the particle beam explanation seems much more plausible without having to do as much speculation.

Also your statements don't explain how Fravor's UFO "disappeared" which is pretty easy to explain with a particle beam...you just turn off the beam and what you see disappears as fast as you turn off the beam (or block it).

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: schuyler
I think both were driven by an anti-gravitic propulsion system that included inertia dampeners. Lazar's crafts were in the traditional "flying saucer" shape and the "Tic Tacs" are lozenge shaped, but they have some of the same internal mechanisms.

The problem with those ideas is I've looked at the related patents and they don't seem very plausible and physics to support those ideas is not really established. That doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible, but the physics of the particle beam explanation seems much more plausible without having to do as much speculation.

Except that Lazar explained that his work on the craft involved an anti-gravity system. In terms of patents, that, of course, assumes a human origin. The craft as Lazar described it seemed to fit quite small beings. He was inside the craft itself and saw several more. The particle beam explanation doesn't even begin to address that.

Also your statements don't explain how Fravor's UFO "disappeared" which is pretty easy to explain with a particle beam...you just turn off the beam and what you see disappears as fast as you turn off the beam (or block it).

I'm not sure he said it "disappeared." He said it moved quickly. I don't really see any evidence for a "particle beam" at all. In fact, it's all speculation.

originally posted by: schuyler
I think both were driven by an anti-gravitic propulsion system that included inertia dampeners. Lazar's crafts were in the traditional "flying saucer" shape and the "Tic Tacs" are lozenge shaped, but they have some of the same internal mechanisms.

Schuyler.....did you say BOTH....as in you believe Bob Lazar's claims..?

originally posted by: celltypespecific

originally posted by: schuyler
I think both were driven by an anti-gravitic propulsion system that included inertia dampeners. Lazar's crafts were in the traditional "flying saucer" shape and the "Tic Tacs" are lozenge shaped, but they have some of the same internal mechanisms.

Schuyler.....did you say BOTH....as in you believe Bob Lazar's claims..?

I spent many years criticizng Lazar. You can probably still find some of my stuff on ATS. But if you look at what he has said, about the only thing you can ding him on is his educational claims. That he "padded his resume" seems apparent, through recently there have come forward a couple of witnesses to his Cal Tech claims. That is not yet widely known. This view will of course not be platable to the Lazar haters. I don't really care as the arguments are stale and simplistic.

However, within the context of THIS thread OP has used Lazar as a witness to the lights and he is used to bolster the idea that the lights are a result of a beam you can turn on and off. Yet Lazar has described the craft in great detail. I don't see how you can embrace Lazar's tale as to the lights, but reject his take about the craft. That is selective evidence.

If you want the most recent information on Lazar, check out the Jeremy Corbelll movie as well as his recently published biography: smile.amazon.com...

a reply to: schuyler

The OP is about the lights shown in the video and seen by multiple witnesses, and not about Lazars detailed craft descriptions.

But why should you care. It is all Lazar haters to you.

originally posted by: schuyler
Except that Lazar explained that his work on the craft involved an anti-gravity system. In terms of patents, that, of course, assumes a human origin. The craft as Lazar described it seemed to fit quite small beings. He was inside the craft itself and saw several more. The particle beam explanation doesn't even begin to address that.

I'm sure Lazar lied about his education. Records show he was talking courses at Pierce junior college, not MIT, and his (lack of) knowledge of physics is also more aligned with the education of an electronics technician than the education of a physicist. I don't see any evidence of what Lazar described at "S-4".

"Also your statements don't explain how Fravor's UFO "disappeared" which is pretty easy to explain with a particle beam...you just turn off the beam..."

I'm not sure he said it "disappeared." He said it moved quickly. I don't really see any evidence for a "particle beam" at all. In fact, it's all speculation.

Here is a quote from David Fravor from time 12:30 in the Joe Rogan episode youtube video embedded in the OP when he's making his final approach and closing in on what he sees:

"as I'm pulling up it's kinda starting to cross my nose and it starts to accelerate, and within less than a second as I start to pull right on to it and it crosses right in front of me it just goes "poof" and it was gone."

The "poof" is mimed with a magicians hand motion suggesting an object magically disappearing.

But if you don't think that means "disappeared", Fravor says about the same "poof" thing again, then gives a second-hand account that the pilot in the other aircraft who was observing events below from a position above at 20,000 feet said "it just disappeared" at 17:10 in this video:



So I think why he might have previously suggested it left at high speed is that if he saw it one second but not one second later, then his mind might have assumed it flew off faster than he could see it, but in this description he doesn't really say he can see it fly off. The unofficial "official" report George Knapp obtained, without attributing any quote to any of the pilots it says the tic tac left the area at supersonic speeds, so I can see where people might get the idea that it flew off at high speed, but apparently there was some chatter about this not agreeing with radar data that never saw the object leave that point. So I speculate Fravor has more recently been telling a story more compatible with the radar data, which may be the way he actually remembers it.

There may be a tendency for the mind to trick us into thinking an object must have flown off at high speed when we see it disappear. I've seen this in another video of a pilot who saw a light disappear and he said that it flew off really fast. The reason I know it didn't fly off really fast like the pilot said is that he was looking at a flare tied to a balloon and the flare just burned out, but I bring this up to illustrate how the mind works. If someone sees an object vanish, they may think more in terms of it flying off than of actually vanishing, even if it actually vanished as when the flare burned out.

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: schuyler

The OP is about the lights shown in the video and seen by multiple witnesses, and not about Lazars detailed craft descriptions.

But why should you care. It is all Lazar haters to you.

I KNOW that. That's the friggin' point! OP used Lazar & Co in his argument about the lights but totally ignored Lazar's description of the craft. SO it is a beam of light or is it a craft? I see no evidence that it is a beam of light.

originally posted by: schuyler
I spent many years criticizng Lazar. You can probably still find some of my stuff on ATS. But if you look at what he has said, about the only thing you can ding him on is his educational claims. That he "padded his resume" seems apparent, through recently there have come forward a couple of witnesses to his Cal Tech claims.

The bigger problem than his lack of demonstrating his physics education, is his lack of demonstrating knowledge of physics. As numerous physicists who have reviewed Bob Lazar's physics claims will tell you, his physics is complete garbage.

So the problem is much bigger than padded educational claims on a resume, it's the fact that Bob doesn't know physics and any physicist can tell that from reviewing his claims, and would be able to tell that from interviewing him. So, there's no way he got hired as a physicist to reverse engineer an alien craft or do anything else a physicist would do. And there's no way a physicist would get paid about $1000 for 6 months, so Bob's pay claims and the length of time he worked on the project also don't make any sense.

So there's a lot more than just padded educational claims on a resume to worry about. Since you say you criticized him a lot before I'm not sure what turned you around but there are huge problems with his story. There are some things that need explanations though, and the link I provided in the OP provides some of the best explanations I've seen that put the puzzle pieces together so they actually fit.

Looking at the Bob Lazar story from the perspective of 2018

The following isn’t a complete list, but covers most that occur repeatedly (I’m assuming you already have familiarity with the details of Lazar’s story else it’s unlikely you’d be reading this) :

• Lazar worked at Los Alamos, showed George Knapp around there and people seemed to know him. His name was in the phone book in 1982.
• The Los Alamos newspaper story on Lazar and his jet car called him a physicist with the lab.
• In Las Vegas, security personnel, observed by others, visited Lazar at his home.
• Lazar was noted by friends and family to “disappear” as part of a job.
• He was able to correctly describe certain aspects of the facilities at Groom Lake.
• He identified a location known as S-4 in the Nellis Range.
• Lazar was able to correctly name specific people involved in the security process.
• Edward Teller appeared to react visibly and uncomfortably when asked about Lazar in an interview.
• He received a W-2 form from the government.
• After Lazar’s story broke, some media members observed possible government surveillance and intimidation efforts.
• Also after Lazar went public, persons around Lazar observed what appeared to be a vigorous and threatening government attempt to silence him.
• Lazar “knew” about Element 115 long before it was ever synthesized.
• And finally the absolute best, Lazar knew about the Wednesday night tests, and showed others.

The posters bring up some damn good points. How IS one to explain all these without there being a hidden saucer facility at Papoose Lake? Well, it turns out there is a very good reason all these things probably did, in fact, happen, and why Lazar still holds to his nonsensical story. Spoiler: It’s about saving his ass.

originally posted by: schuyler
I see no evidence that it is a beam of light.

Beam of particles (protons), says my source, not a beam of light. The particles end up making light through the physics described. Look at the video in the OP from about 35-37 seconds, where you can see a rapid horizontal movement of the beam with a very sudden start and stop to the movement. A beam can easily move like that without violating any physics, since as I mentioned an electron beam can zigzag all over the CRT display multiple times per second rather easily. So what makes the proton beam harder is that it takes more energy, but still well within reason for a proton beam to do that, if you look at the calculations in the physics explained in the OP links. There is no known physics that would allow a physical craft to move like that; "anti-gravity" and "anti-inertia" are not science, they are science fiction.

The physics behind particle beams is not speculative. As I explained the CRT technology is based on particle beams and was so cheap and easy to make that most people had televisions and or computer monitors in their homes with those particle beams. Firing proton beams into the air is a little less generally understood but the physics of generating a beam and using fields to manipulate the direction would be essentially the same, and it's rather dangerous to fire high energy proton beams in the air, so you'd need a test facility like area 51 where the air space is restricted to test that (or you could also try it 100 miles off the coast of San Diego where the Navy is testing their new radar equipment, to see if it can spoof radar which it apparently did for the more powerful radar, but not the less powerful radar).

Whether what is seen in the Area 51 outskirts video is actually a particle beam is speculative, since the only way it could be factually proven is probably for someone to break their security oath to reveal classified area 51 information. But I suggest it's the least speculative proposal I've seen, since the physics the particle beam is based on is not speculative. If you have a problem with speculation, then you should be even more concerned about abandoning the least speculative explanation in favor on one from a proven liar like Bob Lazar whose physics description completely contradicts what we know about physics. So you've gone from dismissing speculation based on scientific principles, to preferring science fiction explanations from a known liar whose knowledge of physics is completely in contradiction with observation and even you admit he lied about being educated in physics. Whatever witness said Bob Went to Cal Tech is irrelevant since Bob's physics explanations are total garbage, as any competent physicist will tell you.

originally posted by: schuyler
I don't see how you can embrace Lazar's tale as to the lights, but reject his take about the craft. That is selective evidence.

First, it's not selective evidence. There is a video which is actual real evidence of what at times behaves like a particle beam, not like a craft. There is ZERO evidence, none, of such a craft and there is overwhelming evidence that Bob Lazar lied about his education, about being a physicist, about being hired as a a physicist, about reverse-engineering anything, and so on. Bob was also wrong about element 115 when he said it couldn't be synthesized in a lab, so contrary to people saying synthesis of 115 somehow proved Bob was right, it actually proved he was wrong. So what we have to do is take the real evidence, like the video, Bobs lying about his education and lying about being a physicist, Lying to Bob Bigelow about having some element 115 which Bigelow realized was an industrial emulsifier and not element 115, and so on, and sort out the truth from those facts. I think the source I linked has done a good job making sense of what evidence we do have.

Maybe it's more like this is maybe more related to another highly speculative particle beam in 2004. After all, it's speculated that it's a different utilization of the technology that make these craft "go".

Lazar's story sounds outrageous and the science suspect at best. But, if you do a little substitution for a few things, maybe it's not so crazy after all. His gravity wave generator and the way he describes it working sound suspiciously similar to other things. Things like BEC experiments that can create an ergosphere of negative energy. Or how you might be able to amplify plasmonic waves from ultra short/intense laser pulses in a BEC/FC medium to bring it above the Schwinger limit. Or that maybe when Bob talks about the speed being unlimited, it's that if sort of is...that we can metric engineer the quantum vacuum to just move the speed of light higher? Theories like Superfluid Vacuum Theory and recent experiments with spinning around really cold stuff real fast give a lot of this sort of conjecture merit.

originally posted by: DirtyBizzler
Lazar's story sounds outrageous and the science suspect at best. But, if you do a little substitution for a few things, maybe it's not so crazy after all.

"Suspect at best"? That's not a reasonable characterization in my opinion or in the opinion of competent physicists who have reviewed Bob's physics. This assessment is from Tom Mahood whose Masters involved experiments related to exotic gravitational propulsion methods:

basic science in Lazar’s tale

First and foremost, I need to touch on the basic science in Lazar’s tale. In the world of scientific research the harshest insult that can be leveled against someone’s work is that the person “is not even wrong”. In other words, the research or theory is so bad it really can’t even be discussed coherently. If I were feeling charitable, and I’m not, I suppose Lazar’s story may just barely reach the “not even wrong” level.

Now as someone with a real Masters in Physics (with a focus on gravitation, no less!) I could go on for many pages pissing all over Lazar’s nonsensical tale. But it would have to become very technical and the hardcore Lazar believers would not be swayed, so why should I bother?

I've heard the theme before that "What Bob said was A but maybe what he meant was B" which is not exactly what you're saying but it's not that far from that. I think he has to be judged by what he actually said and did, not by second guessing something that might make sense to replace his nonsense claims such as what he said about element 115 being a source of anti-gravity using his re-named version of the strong nuclear force, or in his attempt to defraud billionaire Bob Bigelow using fake "element 115". This goes way beyond a padded resume:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: mirageman
Jacques Vallee noted Bob Bigelow sussed him out pretty quickly pretending he had the mysterious stable version of E115 but it was in fact industrial emulsifier.

See Forbidden Science 4

I wasn't my intention to make a Lazar bashing thread, rather the intent was to discuss an interesting application of particle beams and how it's a technology that can make a "tic-tac" shaped light in the sky that can fly circles around aircraft without breaking or even stretching any laws of known physics. But if people mischaracterize the Lazar story, I'll try to correct the misconceptions.

I'm not crazy about the excuses people make for Bob regarding his statement about element 115 that it can't be made in a lab. Then we make it in a lab and prove Bob wrong, and people want to try to make excuses for Bob and say "maybe what he meant was....", but no, what he said was we can't make element 115 in a lab, and we did make it in a lab, so he was wrong about that too. The element 115 scientists made in the lab wasn't the fake element 115 Bob Lazar used to try to defraud Bob Bigelow either.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Could be like Edgar Fouche. Somebody obviously told him something, just what he was told was partly BS. Rotating mercury plasma...no. Rotating Superfluid BEC...maybe

a reply to: DirtyBizzler
At least Fouche admits he's writing fiction. He says his lawyer told him he could write what he wanted as long as it was fiction, which some people naively think means it's not really fiction, but it's really fiction, just as he says it is, which you apparently realize.

If Tom Mahood is right about Bob Lazar, he couldn't do what Fouche did and admit his flying saucer story was fictional to say it was really a particle beam even if he wanted to, without possibly facing jail time since he's not allowed to talk about the particle beam. So he's stuck in his lie for now. If the particle beam is ever declassified, then it might be possible for Bob to fess up, but he should still check with a lawyer first on that and he will probably stick to his lie even then, since telling the truth won't help his book sales.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

You wouldn't get much funding for lights/holograms....for the really big bucks you'd want to be showing up on radar.

Cast your eye over this:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Directed Energy generated atmospheric plasmas would be great.

Plasma stealth is a poorly understood field but from what I can gather- Plasma is reflective to radar at the right frequencies (am happy to be schooled why if not).

originally posted by: Jukiodone
a reply to: Arbitrageur

You wouldn't get much funding for lights/holograms....for the really big bucks you'd want to be showing up on radar.

Cast your eye over this:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

That's close enough to the topic of this thread to be discussed in this thread, since it's a different way to create an atmospheric plasma using the intersection of two lasers, though not really the topic of this thread which is that an atmospheric plasma in the shape of a tic-tac can be generated more easily with a single proton particle beam.

If the Tic-Tac Fravor saw in 2004 was a proton particle beam tic-tac and if the accounts are correct, whether it showed up on radar or not appears to have depended on the radar system. The E2C Hawkeye planes with powerful dedicated radar systems were tracking it and are apparently what the air controller used when directing Fravor to that location, to investigate the radar signal. However when Fravor arrived at that location, he could only see the Tic-Tac visually, but said he didn't get it on his own radar, and the air controller reported "merge plot" which meant that on the resolution of his radar display, the unidentified radar signal (presumably that of the Tic-Tac) and Fravor's plane signals had merged, plotted at the exact same point on his radar.

Since the radar on Fravor's plane was much less powerful than that of the E2C more powerful radar plane, it's not surprising when the more powerful radar can pick up things the less powerful radar can't. This is the Hawkeye E2C that was in use in 2004 which has a 24-foor radar disk on top that can even pick up stealth aircraft which less powerful radars can't:

E-2C / D Hawkeye Airborne Early Warning Aircraft

The E-2C Hawkeye has a distinctive 24ft diameter radome above the rear fuselage.

A claimed DARPA insider, Robert Duncan talks about the intersecting lasers in this video, go to about 26 minutes:



At 27 minutes he confirms what you say that atmospheric orbs of plasma can reflect radar (he says radar deflection but he probably means radar reflection):

"This technology has been around far longer than civilians know about. It's a way that the Air Force is creating orbs in the sky, many intersections, through these high powered lasers. Now you can't see the lasers because they are out of our visual range, but where they intersect, they'll create a glowing ball. That's great for Air Force because you're ionizing the air and that creates a radar deflection (sic) for your enemy, you can make it look like entire fleets are about to approach and bomb and what not, it's all an illusion."

The link you posted gets into discussion about the intersection of three lasers being able to "paint" holographic imagery in the sky, far more complicated than simple orb or tic-tac shapes. I don't know how that would work.

Bedlam in that thread is apparently saying there are two Robert Duncans if I understand him correctly, one is a legit physicist and perhaps the other isn't. I'm not sure which Duncan that is in the video saying intersecting lasers can make plasma orbs in atmosphere. I do know that in a vacuum the lasers will pass through each other without interacting.

Now all we need is a facility near the event that has the power capabilities and maybe a breadcrumb trail that leads back to high powered directed energy research under the SDI.
Perhaps we could hit the jackpot and find a program/facility that utilised directed energy AND clandestine near space/orbital reflectors (the reported 80,000 ft radar tracks would qualify as "near space").

Pretty soon you'd have an entirely feasible proposition of RF return generating directed energy plasma blooms - with OTH capabilities, using accepted physics that dont break thermodynamics.

Who knows - plasma might be generation 1....there might be ways of generating other exotic transitional states if you mess around with the inputs/target airspace.

originally posted by: Jukiodone
Now all we need is a facility near the event that has the power capabilities and maybe a breadcrumb trail that leads back to high powered directed energy research under the SDI.
Perhaps we could hit the jackpot and find a program/facility that utilised directed energy AND clandestine near space/orbital reflectors (the reported 80,000 ft radar tracks would qualify as "near space").

Orbital reflectors wouldn't be required. If you follow the link in the OP to the free computer program you can download to crunch the physics numbers on how a proton beam interacts with the atmosphere, it comes with numerous demo settings, one of which is called "H (1 GeV) in Air (Death Ray???)", which means a proton beam where the protons have 1 GeV of energy. Here's the screenshot showing the demo button circled in red:

So ya don’t believe it was a proton beam, eh?


That's only 1/7000 of the proton energy at the LHC but it's still quite a bit. The range on that (distance where the plasma tic-tac appears) is about 40 km away, which is 131,200 feet, way more than 80,000 feet.

But it turns out you wouldn't need that much energy when firing vertically up into the sky, because the air gets thinner so the proton beam goes further in thinner air. That calculation is for a horizontal beam (though it's off a bit too since the curvature of the Earth means the density isn't constant for a straight line of 40 km).

So what that means is that you'd need far less energy than 1 GeV to make a plasma Tic-Tac at 80,000 feet but I think the density gradient of the atmosphere may be beyond the abilities of that free program so I don't know the exact energy requirement except that it would be somewhere less than 1.0 GeV but more than 50 MeV (0.05 GeV) which is the proton energy Tom Mahood guesstimated for the area 51 proton beam with range of a little over 1 kilometer (about 3600 feet). So, 0.5 GeV proton energy might be enough to reach 80,000 feet, but that's also a guesstimate on my part since doing the exact calculations in atmospheric gradients is beyond the capability of the free software for particle beam calculations. I think the energy needed is probably far less, since at 26000 feet Mt Everest climbers are already dying because the atmosphere is too thin to breathe, so most of that 80,000 feet is much, much thinner than what's used for the 1 GeV calculation.

The 50 MeV that Mahood assumed for the area 51 test is available from an off-the-shelf proton accelerator, here's a 70 MeV proton accelerator you can buy:

Best 70p Cyclotron

The BCSI 70p is a 70 MeV proton cyclotron.

So we are not talking pie-in-the sky technology for the area 51 test using a guesstimated 50 MeV proton beam when you can buy 70 MeV proton beam generators off the shelf. However the off-the-shelf unit may not make as many protons as you might like for a military application, but I think it shows that making proton beams in this energy range or even higher shouldn't be hard at all for the area 51 folks.