Lt Col (retired) Lionel Muntford is the director of the Air Weaponry Institute, an independent think tank, and a consultant to the Lockheed “UFOChaser” design project.

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If it wasn’t clear before, Pentagon evidence to the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, and Counterproliferation this week has shown just how serious the threat to our national security, and to Western interests more generally, UFOs really are.

(I use the accurate term UFO — attempts to rename these aircraft UAPs are, in my view, political correctness gone mad.)

Whatever you call them, it’s clear they are a real threat. They may be operated by aliens, or by Russia or China, but there are no plausible scenarios in which these aircraft are well disposed toward us.

And regardless of their intention, the fact that the world’s dominant military superpower, the United States, is unable to stop hundreds of unidentified, potentially hostile aircraft from operating, almost insouciantly, within its airspace — often in close proximity to its finest military hardware and most classified military facilities — should alarm every serious security and military thinker.

Australia, which has a landmass equivalent in size to the US, as well as vast territorial waters, is surely receiving similar aerial visitations. For those who would argue that we lack the potential attraction of the world’s best military gear to analyse, as almost certainly these UFOs are doing to the US military, I would point out that the presence of some kind of UFO base in Bass Strait has long been rumoured — and would certainly make a useful strategic vantage point for operations over the Pacific.

Yet the absence of any UFO policy on the part of the Labor opposition in this election campaign demonstrates, surely, the lack of substance on the part of a party that likes to boast of having established the alliance with the United States, but which has gone missing when called on to help the US militarily.

National security and defence, more than at any time since the Cold War, demand a weight and seriousness that are increasingly rare in Parliament. Labor’s failure to address the challenge of UFOs shows that it is simply not there at all on the left. John Curtin must be rolling in his grave.

It is true that the Coalition has also failed to publicly address UFOs, preferring a “softly softly” approach. But it has boosted military spending, and purchased the finest aircraft humanity has to offer, the F-35. Pentagon insiders have told Crikey that, in the event UFOs turn out to be hostile, it is the formidable F-35 we would send in against them. While wargaming such conflict scenarios is inherently difficult, the F-35 would surely give a good account of itself, and humanity.

The UFO challenge shows that we must dramatically increase our defence spending still further, perhaps to 4% of GDP, in order to give ourselves the best chance of dealing with potential threats. Some may mock and deride basing defence investments on what they claim to be the stuff of science fiction. But it is surely best to take a safety-first, insurance-based approach to the issue.

That is not to say that there aren’t ridiculous conspiracy theories being peddled on blogs and the social media and the like. One particularly absurd suggestion is that there is some link between the UAPs identified and discussed by the Pentagon, and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. There is certainly no credible evidence to link Palmer to UFOs, although the ranks of UAP voters do appear to include a disproportionately high number of people who claim to have been abducted and anally probed by alien beings. However, this appears to be one “election interference” conspiracy that has no basis, even in the arguably improbable event that evil space aliens have travelled billions of light years to involve themselves in Australian politics.

But a Labor victory would surely be welcomed by these aliens, eager to continue their probing of holes in our defences, and perhaps other holes as well. Adults in the room are needed at this crucial time.