---
alias:
- Ron Blackburn
- Ronald Blackburn
- Dr. Ron Blackburn
- Colonel Ron Blackburn
category: UFO & Anomalous Phenomena
created: 2026-10-02
relations:
- fn: 1
  role: Skunk Works, Burbank, according to John B. Alexander
  start: 1984
  type: employed_by
  with: '[[Lockheed Aircraft Company]]'
- fn: 2
  role: listed under Lockheed in Jack Houck's note of May 21, 1985 and in Oke Shannon's
    attendee list
  start: 1985-05-21
  type: member_of
  with: '[[Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group]]'
summary: Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel at Lockheed in Burbank whom John B.
  Alexander named as co-founder of the 1985 Advanced Theoretical Physics group, and
  who appears in contemporaneous notes of its meetings.
tags:
- Person
- UFO
- Lockheed
- AirForce
- ATP
- 1980s
updated: 2026-10-02
---

Ron Blackburn is a retired [Air Force](/organizations/us-air-force/) lieutenant colonel who, according to [John B. Alexander](/people/john-b-alexander/), was working at the [Lockheed Aircraft Company](/organizations/lockheed-aircraft-company/) Skunk Works in Burbank, California in 1984, when the two met after Alexander took over the Army's New Thrust project. Alexander wrote in 2011 that UFOs were "among areas of common interest between Blackburn and me." The Loose Threads authors, summarizing Alexander's book, write that the two met in a secure facility at Lockheed to compare notes and create an invitation list for the [Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group](/programs/advanced-theoretical-physics-working-group/).[^1]

### In the 1985 Notes

[Jack Houck](/people/jack-houck/)'s handwritten page of May 21, 1985, headed "Advanced Physics," places the name "Ron Blackburn" and a second name that may be read "Don Keuble" with the word "Lockheed" beside the circled objective "Does the evidence support an R+D project?" A page of Oke Shannon's notes headed "Attendees," from a meeting the Loose Threads authors date to August 7, 1985, lists under the heading "Others," and the label Lockheed, Ron Blackburn, Milt Janzen and Don Keuble.[^2]

### In Vallee's Journals

[Jacques Vallee](/people/jacques-vallee/) recorded in February 1990, in a passage quoted by the Loose Threads authors, "Over lunch today the enigmatic Colonel Ron Blackburn decided to come clean with me in anticipation of our trip to [New Mexico](/places/new-mexico/). . . He'd co-founded what I jokingly nicknamed the 'Secret Onion' group and co-organized a national panel on UFOs. In the first case, his co-founder was John Alexander; in the second case, it was none other than [Kit Green](/people/kit-green/), who never told me about this."[^3] The Loose Threads authors write that Blackburn "indicated to Jacques Vallee that he was directly involved in the TRESTLE's construction during his time with AFWL" (the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base), quoting Vallee as recording him saying, "Those are the electromagnetic pulse testing facilities I built for the Air Force. Thousands of volts flow between those towers."[^3] They also write that a May 1990 entry in Vallee's journal says Blackburn had developed "magnetic UFO detectors" at Kirtland, and that a 1990 entry has Vallee taken by [Ed Dames](/people/ed-dames/), Blackburn and other Army personnel to a high mesa in New Mexico to watch for UFOs at a location said to have been determined by the remote viewing initiative [GRILL FLAME](/programs/stargate-project/).[^3] In August 1990 Vallee recorded Kit Green as saying that Howard Blum's account of a secret group "simply alluded to John Alexander's and Ron Blackburn's proposed project," and that "it went nowhere."[^3]

[^1]: Alexander, John B. *UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities,* 2011, as quoted in Elizondo, Daniel, and The Hermetic Penetrator, "The Loose Threads Report," Anomaly Archives, 2022, p. 20, https://anomalyarchives.org/wp-content/uploads/PDF-Loose-Threads.pdf. The book was not opened.
[^2]: Houck and Shannon notes as reproduced in the Loose Threads Report, pp. 15 and 188 (page images read directly; originals not seen).
[^3]: Vallee, Jacques. Journal entries of February, May and August 1990, as quoted in the Loose Threads Report, pp. 21 and 66-67 and the sections on EMP testing and on Ed Dames, which gives volume numbers only for the May and "1990" mesa entries (*Forbidden Science: Volume Four*); the February and August 1990 entries fall in the period of that volume. The books were not opened. No Blackburn publication or Air Force Weapons Laboratory record was found. Sole source for the passages so cited.