Retired Air Force major general missing for weeks once led Wright-Patterson, an Ohio base steeped in decades of UFO theories

By Alaa Elassar, CNN

(CNN) — Streetlights shaped like alien heads line the roads of Roswell, New Mexico, where murals of flying saucers streak across storefronts and tourists pose beside statues of little green men.

Nearly eight decades after a mysterious crash in the desert sparked global fascination with extraterrestrials, the small city remains synonymous with one of the world’s most enduring mysteries: the Roswell Incident.

In July 1947, the US military announced it had recovered the wreckage of a UFO from a nearby ranch before quickly retracting the claim, saying the debris was from a weather balloon.

The episode helped ignite decades of speculation that something far stranger had fallen from the sky — and that whatever was recovered, including rumors of bodies that didn’t belong to human beings, was quietly transported to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a sprawling military installation in Ohio long speculated to house secret government research into unidentified flying objects.

Renewed attention is falling on the base after the disappearance of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, a former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson whose career placed him at the center of some of the Pentagon’s most advanced aerospace research.

The US Air Force has repeatedly denied any extraterrestrial technology or “alien bodies” were ever in their possession. But Donald Schmitt, the lead investigator at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, says he believes the government is not telling the truth.

“We are presently up to 30 deathbed confessions, all admissible in a court of law, attesting that it did happen. I can’t say that about 99.9% of the other UFO cases, because they’re very fleeting. It’s a sighting, it’s a photograph, it’s a video. Now you see it. Now you don’t,” Schmitt said.

“With Roswell, you have the actual recovery of a craft, the remains, the wreckage and the crew, the bodies (from a craft of unknown origin),” he said.

Since the Roswell crash, over 1,600 reports of possible sightings have been made in the US alone, according to the Department of Defense, but Russia, China and Japan, among other countries, also are tracking sightings.

In recent years, both extraterrestrial enthusiasts and doubters have been drawn to dramatic government-released military videos and reports of unidentified aerial encounters, as well as high-profile congressional hearings featuring whistleblowers who claim firsthand knowledge of unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs, the modern term for UFOs.

But Wright-Patterson has played a central role in the US military’s real investigations into mysterious objects in the sky — from Cold War-era research programs to efforts to study UAPs.

While authorities say there is no evidence linking McCasland’s disappearance from his Albuquerque home to UFO research, the case has revived curiosity about the base and the decades of speculation surrounding it.

Here’s what we know about the mysterious military base and UFO lore.

Inside Wright-Patterson, once the heart of UFO investigations

Long before it became the subject of UFO speculation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was one of the most important research centers in the US military.

“If there was ever a center of gravity for research and development and for all the spooky things that the US government works on, Wright-Patterson’s right there at the top of the list,” said Luis Elizondo, a former Department of Defense intelligence officer who has advocated for greater transparency about unidentified aerial phenomena.

The base traces its origins to 1917, when the US Army established aviation facilities near Dayton, Ohio, during World War I. Military aviation was still in its infancy, and the site was chosen in part because of its proximity to the home of pioneering aviators Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright.

Wright‑Patterson’s historical association with the study of unfamiliar aerospace technology stems from its role during the Cold War as a center for US Air Force technical intelligence and analysis.

Eventually, the base evolved into one of the Pentagon’s primary hubs for aerospace research, engineering and intelligence. Today, the base hosts several key organizations, including the Air Force Research Laboratory, where scientists and engineers develop technologies ranging from advanced aircraft materials to cutting-edge propulsion systems.

McCasland, the missing general who retired nearly 13 years ago, once commanded the laboratory. Marik Von Rennenkampff, a former national security analyst during the Obama administration who also worked for the Department of Defense, described it as “where all the super secret research happens.”

The base is also home to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, which analyzes foreign aerospace systems and emerging threats.

“The lore is that people are inclined to believe that there was a crash at Roswell, and there’s been a lot of reporting over the years of witnesses and deathbed confessions, but allegedly, (the intelligence center) is where those retrieved materials were ultimately taken for research and study,” Von Rennenkampff said.

“It’s really a hub for all things in Air Force intelligence, military intelligence, but also has those very, very interesting links, both to UFOs and McCasland himself.”

Officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base referred CNN’s request for comment to the Department of Defense public affairs office at the Pentagon, which has not yet responded.

The lore of UFO and extraterrestrial sightings

In New Mexico, UFO lore is part of the cultural fabric. For decades, many residents have believed visitors from somewhere far beyond Earth may have landed on the plains east of the Sierra Blanca mountain range.

“I do remember stories from youth of those that spoke with some of the men that worked at the base that held the wreckage and the aliens they picked up and kept in storage there,” Nancy Crownover, who lives in Ruidoso, New Mexico, about 75 miles from Roswell, told CNN.

“I will say they were very believable. Much like I believe that my Native friend saw Sasquatch. There are always those that will say they don’t believe. I appreciate a world that is so much more fun and interesting with aliens,” Crownover said.

Interest in UAPs surged decades after the Roswell Incident, fueled by the release of military videos showing objects moving in ways that seemed to defy physics.

One of the most widely discussed episodes was the USS Nimitz UFO Incident in 2004, in which Navy pilots reported seeing unidentified objects performing abrupt maneuvers at incredible speeds over the Pacific. Similar encounters by military aviators around the world added to the public’s fascination — and skepticism — about what might be lurking in the skies.

“At first I thought, ‘this is squarely tinfoil hat territory,’” said Von Rennenkampff, but hearing credible military pilots describe encounters, backed by radar and video data, changed his perspective.

Von Rennenkampff said he heard retired Navy Commander David Fravor, former skipper of the VFA-41 squadron known as “Black Aces,” talk on a podcast about witnessing along with three other pilots a Tic Tac-shaped UAP off the San Diego coast in 2004, “doing this really extraordinary maneuvering, without wings, tail propulsion, and then suddenly shooting off, literally in front of their eyes.”

The Pentagon released in 2020 three short videos showing the flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects moved.

Project Blue Book was also one of the US Air Force’s most sustained official investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena, running from the early 1950s until its closure in 1969.

Von Rennenkampff noted the project has been criticized by some researchers as more of a public relations effort than a rigorous scientific inquiry, because explanations were often offered for cases the Air Force wanted to dismiss.

“The CIA explicitly said it should be the government’s objective to ‘debunk’ UFO sightings, and after that, Blue Book really became a debunking operations, no matter how credible, how many witnesses, they slapped these truly absurd ‘explanations’ on UFO sightings,” Von Rennenkampff said.

Businessman and historian David Coleman, a 51-year-old from outside Chicago, says he became a true believer in the UFO and extraterrestrial topic after his own otherworldly encounter shortly after he moved to Quito, Ecuador, in 2009.

“I saw an irregularly shaped set of lights on something that definitely could not be an airplane or a helicopter or a drone, also no noise,” Coleman told CNN. “The lights were a circular shape and white, a white ring of lights on the outside and then a red single light in the center.”

“This is what triggered my curiosity to research the subject. And from curiosity, it definitely turned into somewhat of an obsession,” he said.

Coleman says his belief that aliens are real has not changed his day-to-day life.

“Their record for non-interference is pretty much 100% in terms of being looked at as peaceful in a general sense,” Coleman said. “I think society has evolved enough that we could handle UFO disclosure. I don’t think it’s going to rock the foundations of religion. I don’t think it’s going to topple the markets in terms of economic questions.”

But on the flip side, he says there is also a darker side looming that does scare him.

“If you start to look at the accumulated data between human abductions and animal abductions, there’s definitely something scary going on …some sort of biological interest on the part of the visitors to collect anatomy,” Coleman explained.

Congressional hearings and modern whistleblower claims

In recent years, unidentified aerial phenomena have moved from the fringes of public discussion into the halls of Congress, signaling growing bipartisan interest in understanding unexplained aerial sightings.

Three retired military veterans testified in 2023 at a House hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena – commonly known as UFOs – warning the sightings are a national security problem and the government has been too secretive about them.

David Grusch, a former Air Force intelligence officer, alleged the government has covered up its research into the unidentified sightings and said he reported information to the intelligence community inspector general.

Grusch testified the US government not only has UAPs in its possession but also the remains of the allegedly “non-human” pilots of the aircraft. However, when he was pressed, he made it clear this was what he has been told by others. “That’s something I’ve not witnessed myself,” he said.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, also spoke during the hearing and demanded all information included in UAP reports be released immediately.

“To our military leaders, if there’s nothing to conceal, let Congress go to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Dugway Proving Ground or even Groom Lake in Nevada. We should have disclosure today,” he added. “We should have disclosure tomorrow. The time has come.”

President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post in February he was directing the Pentagon and other federal agencies to release government records related to extraterrestrial life and UFOs.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, established to collect and analyze reports of UAP’s across air, sea and space domains, is “working in close coordination with the White House and across federal agencies to consolidate existing UAP records collections and facilitate the expeditious release of never-before-seen UAP information,” a Department of Defense official told CNN.

But even with Trump’s vow of transparency, the path from protected file to public record is often obscured by layers of bureaucracy that may result in a slow-moving release of heavily redacted extraterrestrial files – or none at all.

Still, some people who study UFO lore fear not just professional consequences, but for their very safety.

Von Rennenkampff told CNN even credible military personnel and pilots are cautious about sharing what they know.

“Whistleblowers who have come forward to Congress and alleged a fairly vast conspiracy involving UFO retrievals and reverse engineering have said that they literally fear death,” he added.

However, experts are careful about making any assumptions regarding McCasland, the missing US Air Force major general.

“My personal hope is that he is found safe and happy, and maybe he just got lost in the woods,” Elizondo, the former Department of Defense intelligence officer, said.

CNN’s Jason Morris, Chris Boyette, Sabrina Castro, Danya Gainor, Jeremy Herb and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.

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