has anybody thought of working in R/D or defence contracting area.

It seems to me that the best way to find the 'truth' is to get into a good university and study physics or some other science related dicipline (work your ass off and get excellent grades) and then work for one of the major defence contractors like: boeing, lockheed martin, northrop gruman etc.
Once inside u would have to work hard to be noticed in order to move up the ranks and eventually into black and classified projects, at least u could have the satisfaction of 'knowing' albeit a fraction of the bigger picture.

Hmmm what about setting up an ATS scholarship fund?

Somehow i dont believe recieving funding from one of the most well known conspiracy / ufo websites would go down well with the screening process

Well, I worked for IBM Federal Systems Division, which was the aerospace/defense contractng arm, and for Talley Defense Systems, which built defense-related rocket motors and gas generators, and Motorola Government Electronics Group, which did guess what, and now Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.

All these jobs required a clearance at one time or another.

Out of my approximately 40 years of work all but seven years was either in the military or the aerospace defense field.

But the problem with getting conspracy people into high-tech aerospace/defense is that companies like that prefer to hire hard-headed skeptical types who are at home with solving problems based on evidence and logic; to be perfectly honest, conspiracy forums I'm aware of do not have a plethora of such people.

I would have thought it to be a given that when pursuing a career in defence etc to seek the truth u would not make your tendancies towards conspiracy theories and the like known. I am pretty sure u didn't draw attention to your interest in those kind of subjects and here u are.

[edit on 8-10-2004 by ufo3]

ufo3 says:

"I would have thought it to be a given that when pursuing a career in defence etc to seek the truth..."

I think that most people try to seek the truth regardless of what career you are in. However, I do not necessarily equate "trying to get some proof for a conspiracy which may or may not exist" with "seeking the truth".

"...u would not make your tendancies towards conspiracy theories and the like known. I am pretty sure u didn't draw attention to your interest in those kind of subjects and here u are."

Au contraire. Actually, a lot of my colleagues at work know about my idea of fun, which is to go various conspiracy-sites and share whatever knowledge I have. Since I work for a company which has some small interest in aviation, quite a few of my colleagues are retired military pilots, and they love to hear me clue them in on all the latest "chem-trail" stories. They realize it's all a hoax, of course, but they enjoy a good laugh as much as anyone.

As far as UFOs, most of my friends are like me: The understand that the chance of intelligent extrasolar life approaches certainty, but they don't think that the outer space guys have ever visited the Earth and they won't buy it, either, until they see some real evidence (engineers tend to be into that kind of stuff).

My Father was President/ CEO of a defense company that dealt closely with the Government. I didn't hear any stories about anything of interest but he was fiercely loyal to his company and a man of his word so if he DID know something he took it with him to his grave.

Jemison

Well, I am certainly loyal to my company; if I weren't, I wouldn't work here. Tthis doesn't mean that we're perfect by any means; anyone who's read any of the trade journals knows the saga of Mike Sears and Darlene Druyun pretty well.

I think most people with a shred of honor would, if their company were involved in hanky-panky, do the right thing and resign, then blow the whistle on them. I don't have much use for a person who is constantly bad-mouthing his employer while he's still taking their paycheck, but that's just basic integrity.

Now I've worked for four defense contractors. All of them have done classified work to which I am privy, and three of them have done classified work to whcih I am/was not privy. That's the basic idea behind "compartmentalization" and the "need to know" concept.

But my guess is that someone working AROUND a classified project -- especially if that person has a clearance and/or knows the folks working on the project enough to go out and have lunch with them -- will probably have a bit better information than those who do not work for the defense business, don't have or never had a clearance, are not engineers, and do not hang out with other people like that.

So far, I've not seen anything at work to support most of the hypotheses running around on the Internet, nor have I seen anything here to support most of those hypotheses, either.

This isn't to say that I have the straight skinny on everything military and defense oriented, because, of course, I do not. But there are enough things of which I do have first-hand knowledge that is in direct opposition to some of the hypotheses I read here, like the "chem-trail" or "VRTPE" myths, that it makes me skeptical of everything I read, especially when the supporting "evidence" seems to fall apart when I try to follow through on it.

I think most people with a shred of honor would, if their company were involved in hanky-panky, do the right thing and resign, then blow the whistle on them. I don't have much use for a person who is constantly bad-mouthing his employer while he's still taking their paycheck, but that's just basic integrity.

I agree. In my post I was saying that in regard to my Dad being CEO of a defense company if he had inside info on Area 51 or proof of aliens or something like that he would have never talked about it. I wasn't referring to illegal activities, just cool and interesting secrets. Sorry if my post was confusing.

Jemison

Yeah, for the last 25 years. 4 things:

1) The good stuff is so compartmentalized, you will only find out one or two "whee" things in a career.

2) If you are the kind of guy who belongs, you will get into what you're doing. Including the need to keep it from the general public.

3) When you read about what you do here, you are ROTFLMAO all day. Show what you read to your coworkers, so they get a laugh.

4) In my experience, Top Secrets are a coverup for a screwup. The interesting things are all Secret.

My father was a decorated military officer in a three-letter agency. I briefly followed in his footsteps as an independent contractor for a separate agency.

Our situations were very different. He saw himself as performing his oaths as a military officer. In the middle of his career, when I was a young child, he achieved a very high clearance and worked underground during the cold war. There was one family day in 5 years, and what I saw was amazing. It's all outdated by today's standards, but at the time, everything was state of the art. By the end of his career in the late 90's, he was a nuclear arms specialist working side-by-side with independents. The only time I saw his workplace was at his retirement party, and that is by far the coolest thing I ever saw.

He'd come home from work, though, pale as could be, sometimes trembling. Once I became older he would say very cryptic things like, "you don't know how close it came today..." He had troubles sleeping, but he used his insomnia to get a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering. He got a phone call on 9/13/2001, but he was given the opportunity to refuse, which he did. He is now happily remarried and working part-time as an ESL instructor on the Gulf coast. One neat thing is the last time I talked to him we talked about declassified info for the first time, seeing who knew what.

My experience, the only thing that was great about it was the salary, and knowing internally that I was assisting the war on terror. Depending on your position, there's a lot of things you give up. You can't talk to your family or friends about anything, even when you know they may be hurt, as an independent you don't get any recognition for your work. I uncovered activities that I believed were worthy of at least a parade in Times Square, but again, I can't ever speak or write about it. There are no pats on the back. Just very mundane appreciations like : "Thank you for your time and service." I reported to only one person the entire time. It isn't like the movies when you get handed a badge and can move throughout the building looking at cool inventions (though I must admit the building I reported to was the second coolest thing I ever saw).

The old adage is true. Don't call them, they'll call you.

I had no clearance. I was providing raw data that would later be investigated and filed away as they saw fit. When I would brief/debrief, EVERYTHING I said was written down. If I yawned, it was written down. I was unimportant most of the time.

The fun point of the month was when I would hang out and drink with other independents in our "off" time (lots of off time - lots of cocktails), and I would also mingle with single Colonels . But even in the presence of others with my same duties, we rarely talked about what we knew, or what our specialty was.

It was then that I started drinking alone. I had NO ONE to talk to.

I ended up not being able to handle it. Maybe it's a man's world after all. I had too many feelings and emotions, plus a big underlying factor that I was trying to hide. I attended many universities-it was all free-but could never focus enough on one task to finely tune my specialty. I ended up becoming clinically insane. I asked to get out, and was eagerly "retired"
within a week. It was never said to me, "Don't tell anyone anything..." It was a clearly understood fact.

So, here I rant at ATS, where I know every keystroke of mine is being watched, and everything I download is catalogued. I do not even tell my doctors about what I did...I can only say that I was an independent contractor. Hell, even if I did tell them they'd just write it off as a delusion. Perhaps you will as well. I know the truth, and God knows the truth, and that is all that matters.

[edit on 18-10-2004 by dotgov101]

When i was working on my undergrad degree i performed an intership at a local plating chemical supplier. We mostly dealt with electroless nickel plating, but i did formulate an Immersion tin solution.

fascinating electrochemical wonder that was....

Anyways, one of the small R&D projects that i worked on required the immersion plating of very small copper grids with tin. I was told that it was for "military applications", come to find out, it was used as a shield placed between the cockpit glass to redirect atomic particles. I'm not sure if it was for tactical nuclear strike type radiation protection or if it was for near earth space flight or just for high altitude particle protection. Our competitor, Atotech, won the contract due to bad business practices on my ex-bosses behalf.

Another interesting project to come along came from Seimen's Westinghouse was a bid from NASA to plate 8 large panels w/ Ni-B alloy. They wanted as much boron in the alloy as possible to get the highest melting point and hardest surface available. I was thinking that it was for atmospheric re-entry, but i'm not sure. The panels were about 1 square meter each. Some had small transmission type channels carved in them and others had small holes, but nothing really strange.

I agree, getting in with any type of military applications R&D lab will help you out on some little things. One thing i've learned, it's not what you know...it's who you know or as i like to say, "it's who knows you."


[edit on 19-10-2004 by speedmojo]

read my sig. That will be an easy way to see the things you want to see.