Mark McCandlish and the Alien Reproduction Vehicle
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 9 May 2001 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Propulsion & physics (topic) |
| People | Mark McCandlish, Brad Sorensen, Thomas Townsend Brown |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 145 |
| Year | 2001 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2001 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 14 |
Mark McCandlish (1953–2021) was an American aerospace illustrator who said a friend had seen secret flying saucers, called "Alien Reproduction Vehicles" (ARVs), at an Air Force display in 1988. He presented the story, with a detailed cutaway drawing, at the Disclosure Project's press conference in Washington in May 2001.[1][2]
The story
McCandlish said he had been offered the chance to accompany a friend, usually identified as Brad Sorensen, to an event at Norton Air Force Base in California in November 1988, but took a well-paid illustration job instead. According to McCandlish, Sorensen came back saying that in a hangar shown to a higher-level group of visitors he had seen three disc-shaped craft, displayed one at a time behind tall screens. The craft were said to have been built by copying recovered alien technology, and were nicknamed "Flux Liners". Later versions of the story placed the hangar at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, linked to Lockheed's Skunk Works.[1][3]
The drawing
From his friend's descriptions McCandlish drew a detailed cutaway of the craft, which has been widely reproduced. He described a segmented capacitor array in the lower hull, charged to over about 1.25 million volts, which he said would produce a mass-reduction effect; a central column acting as a high-voltage switch; and a spinning internal disc. He linked the design to the electrogravitic ideas of Thomas Townsend Brown and called it 1960s technology.[1][3]
Disclosure Project
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McCandlish was one of about twenty witnesses at the National Press Club event organised by Steven Greer's Disclosure Project on 9 May 2001, which called on Congress to hold hearings on UFO secrecy.[2][4]
Assessment
The account is second-hand and unverified, and Sorensen has not publicly confirmed it in detail. Even a sympathetic analysis notes that the energy source is never specified, the mass-reduction physics is asserted rather than modelled, and no buildable plans or demonstrations exist. The testimony notes that Townsend Brown sat on NICAP's first board of governors, and that a 1988 Air Force study could not reproduce the Brown effect. McCandlish gave his last detailed ARV presentation at an alternative propulsion conference shortly before his death in 2021.[1][5]
People and topics
- Mark McCandlish — Aerospace illustrator who drew the alleged "Alien Reproduction Vehicle".
- Disclosure Project — Steven Greer's campaign for UFO disclosure, best known for its May 2001 press conference.
- Brad Sorensen — Friend of Mark McCandlish who said he saw secret discs at Norton AFB.
- Norton Air Force Base — A California air base linked to claims of secret aircraft displays.
- Electrogravitics — The claimed link between electricity and gravity promoted by Thomas Townsend Brown.
- Thomas Townsend Brown — Physicist and inventor who promoted "electrogravitics" and proposed Project Winterhaven.
- NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
On the Timeline
- Westwood on MJ-12 disinformation (2001) (5 May 2001) — A consultant tells Vallée the MJ-12 documents are disinformation.
- Mach effect experiments (June 2001) — Researchers publish an experiment on changing the mass of test samples.
See every 2001 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "Mark McCandlish: reverse engineering the Flux Liner ARV", AltSci · altsci.net · archived copy
- "Group calls for disclosure of UFO info", ABC News (May 2001) · abcnews.go.com · archived copy
- Skunk Works — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Patrick Gross, "Greer's Disclosure Project", UFOs at close sight · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- Thomas Townsend Brown — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- A historian on the Disclosure Project — History News Network · historynewsnetwork.org · archived copy
- Disclosure Project briefing document (2001, PDF) — Internet Archive · archive.org · archived copy
- Mark McCandlish: the 'Flux Liner' ARV — AltPropulsion · altpropulsion.com · archived copy
- youtu.be · youtu.be · archived copy
- abcnews.go.com · abcnews.go.com · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
- cufos.org · cufos.org · archived copy
- wired.com · wired.com · archived copy
- en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
Further reading
- Skunk Works — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Thomas Townsend Brown — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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