The KASE Weekly | 11 November 2026
Ask for UFO files and you might expect a stack of strange sightings. New Zealand’s latest response was rather shorter. Elsewhere, a new observatory aims to get a much closer look at unidentified objects, while wildlife officials have offered a down-to-earth explanation for a reported Bigfoot encounter. Three stories, and three very different ways of looking for answers.
UFOs? What UFOs? New Zealand’s records search comes back empty
The New Zealand Defence Force says a search for UFO-related correspondence from January 2010 to June 2026 returned no results, according to RNZ’s 10 November report.
The Official Information Act request covered sightings, radar observations, images and communications with Five Eyes partners. NZDF said it searched using terms including UFO and UAP. That follows its 2010 release of 15 volumes covering correspondence from 1952 to 2009.
The KASE take
An empty search result is interesting, but it needs to be read at its actual size. It tells us what this search located. It cannot establish that nobody saw anything unusual over those sixteen years, and it does not demonstrate a cover-up.
We would want to see the full response, the systems searched and how reports are recorded. Would an unexplained radar return necessarily contain one of those search terms? RNZ quotes the response, but its article does not provide the underlying letter for readers to inspect. That leaves useful follow-up questions, rather than a solved mystery.
A new Galileo observatory plans to put UAP in sharper focus
In an announcement shared on 10 November, Avi Loeb outlined a planned Galileo Project observatory in Ithaca, New York. The accompanying release, dated 5 November, names Adam Weitsman as its funder.
The proposed system would use passive radar and software to select targets, then direct a 0.7-metre telescope towards them. It aims to collect clearer images and spectra, measurements of light that may help investigate an object’s properties. Development is expected to begin this month, with completion anticipated in roughly a year.
The KASE take
Trying to obtain better observations is a worthwhile response to blurry footage. The interesting part will be whether the system can follow an unusual target quickly enough and collect information that helps identify it.
For us, the useful milestones will be installation, calibration, successful tracking of known objects and independently assessable results. Weather, distance and viewing angle will still matter. This is a construction and research plan announced by the people involved. It is not an operating observatory’s discovery, and there are no new Ithaca detections to assess yet.
Bigfoot in Colorado, or a person tending sheep?
A Cowboy State Daily report dated 7 November revisits Lori Bowling’s account of a large, hairy figure beside Colorado’s Slumgullion Pass. She says she saw it on 28 July while travelling with her husband, who was driving and did not see the figure.
The new development is the wildlife agency’s response. Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson John Livingston suggested a sheep herder as a possible explanation, saying herders were working in the area at that time. He also said the agency had received no direct report of Bowling’s encounter.
The KASE take
A conventional explanation deserves checking just as an extraordinary one does. A person working nearby is a possibility, but identifying that person and placing them at the relevant spot would make the suggestion much stronger.
Equally, a witness’s confidence cannot settle the figure’s identity. We would want the exact viewing position, distance, duration and sightline, ideally reconstructed at the location. The report supplies no photograph of the figure. This remains an unresolved identification from July, with a fresh official response this week.
What would move the investigation forward?
This week’s stories leave us with three practical next steps: clarify what records were searched, collect observations good enough to analyse, and test an alternative explanation against the location. None requires us to dismiss a witness or accept an extraordinary conclusion before the evidence supports it.
If you could request one missing piece of evidence from these stories, what would you ask for, and why?
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