New Realities, October 17, 2026

New Realities with Alan Steinfeld

UFO Intentions, Atomic Site Patterns, and Seventy Years of Institutional Denial with Larry Hancock

Host Alan Steinfeld talks with researcher Larry Hancock about UFO Intentions, the book he co-wrote using strategic-intelligence methods to trace seventy years of sighting patterns around atomic weapons sites, military bases, and government disclosure efforts.

A 1964 Sighting Sparks a Lifetime of Research

Alan Steinfeld opens the show by introducing Larry Hancock, who has studied UFOs since 1964 and recently co-authored UFO Intentions. Hancock traces his interest to that summer in Oklahoma, when local radio stations carried live reports of police watching a formation of lights in the sky. Stepping outside, he saw a bright oval object overhead that he later learned was a military jet on afterburner, even though the Air Force denied sending any aircraft and claimed the sightings were really the constellation Orion, a claim Hancock, already an amateur astronomer, knew was impossible. He explains that his team spent seven years applying strategic-intelligence practices, the methods analysts use to study an adversary who never behaves predictably, to UFO sighting data. His earlier book, Unidentified, tested the theory that the objects were Soviet or captured German technology and found that scenario did not hold up, which pushed him toward the broader study published in UFO Intentions.

Patterns Around Atomic Weapons Sites

Hancock describes the clearest finding from his research team's pattern analysis: UFO sightings in the late 1940s cluster first around sites where radioactive materials were refined and produced, then shift to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the first atomic bombs were assembled and stockpiled, and later move again as warheads are deployed to bases across the country and eventually to missile sites in the 1960s. Each shift follows the weapons rather than repeating at earlier locations, a trend Hancock says shows clear intention rather than coincidence. He contrasts that solid data, drawn from Air Force studies that ran through 1970, with a troubling gap afterward, when the Air Force stopped investigating reports and no comparable records resumed until renewed congressional interest around 2020. Hancock points to a seven-hour 2024 incident at White Sands Missile Range, where helicopters and radar tracked unidentified orbs that lined up and flashed their lights in sequence, a display he reads as deliberate signal