[HN Gopher] As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous
       phenomena
        
       Author : graderjs
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2023-02-05 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thehill.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thehill.com)
        
       | FpUser wrote:
       | I saw one myself when I was at University. Was watching night
       | sky, lying on a beach at Black Sea resort. Basically it looked a
       | regular satellite crossing a night sky of which one can usually
       | see more than enough. Suddenly the "satellite" has made an
       | instant 90 degree turn and kept going before disappearing over
       | the horizon.
        
         | nradov wrote:
         | You might have seen two satellites. The second one appeared to
         | intersect the path of the first from your perspective just as
         | the first one faded from view.
        
       | troyvit wrote:
       | Ever get the feeling this is how cats feel about laser pointers?
        
       | mabbo wrote:
       | I think what bothers us most about incidents like this is that
       | any country or human organization that had massive air
       | superiority over everyone else would inevitably use it to their
       | advantage.
       | 
       | And yet, here are the reports, but no one is coming forward to
       | say "yes, we Canadians actually never cancelled the Avro Arrow
       | and have been decades ahead of the rest of you all this time- now
       | please remove that Danish flag from Hans Island".
       | 
       | It's such a foreign idea that someone might have this advantage
       | and not use it that the best answer we have is "I guess they
       | aren't humans". Maybe that says a lot about us.
        
         | mxkopy wrote:
         | If this technology were developed by a private individual,
         | there's incentive to keep it hidden. No businessperson wants to
         | have a military grade target on their back, but I feel like
         | some are paranoid/wealthy enough to want to develop their own
         | tech
        
         | tarkin2 wrote:
         | This assumes the advancements can give a significant military
         | advantage, through cost of production and overall military
         | effectiveness.
         | 
         | And that the behaviour of other countries could be a problem to
         | the manufacturing country--trade and cooperation etc.
         | 
         | And if the advancements are used for spying then of course
         | they'll be kept quiet for as long as possible.
         | 
         | Showing your cards early, even if you think they're good, may
         | not be the best approach.
        
         | h2odragon wrote:
         | I assume Canadian UFOs run on maple syrup
        
       | motohagiography wrote:
       | It makes sense to slow roll UAP/ET phenomena anyway, as they
       | probably understand that beings of an emerging intelligence tend
       | to align to whatever they percieve as powerful (just as other
       | animals become dependent on human garbage dumps) and adapt to the
       | dependency instead of evolving and developing themselves freely
       | according to their natures.
       | 
       | The dependency arrests their development, and ethically, who
       | wants to be around just another bunch of pets? I could see there
       | being some distinction between domestication and actualization,
       | where the former stunts an evolution and the latter develops and
       | accelerates it. The more interesting question around UAPs for me
       | is under what conditions would we elevate a species on earth to
       | participate as peers in our own civilizations, and what would the
       | analogous criteria be for us to level up in the same way.
        
         | llamaLord wrote:
         | This conversation is going to happen pretty soon me thinks,
         | just about computers running AI models rather then animals.
        
       | 3pac wrote:
       | I saw a UFO maybe 12-13 years ago. It did not look like anything
       | a human would design, even with advanced technology. It looked
       | something like the oblong silver blob in The Flight of the
       | Navigator, just hanging there, "much in the way that a brick
       | doesn't." It must have been 5 km away so it would have been
       | pretty large. It was a breezy overcast day with low clouds, and
       | the moving clouds obscured but never completely revealed it. Its
       | stillness contrasted with the movement of the air, or any
       | aircraft I have ever seen. I stared at it for a few minutes to
       | make sure that my eyes were not deceiving me. I had not been
       | taking drugs. When I came back outside from fetching my camera,
       | it was gone, and I thought, well, this is how it goes, nobody
       | will believe me, so I won't even bother talking about it. I never
       | had more than a passing, pop-culture interest in UFOs.
        
         | dilippkumar wrote:
         | Aha! You're the person I've been searching for.
         | 
         | A person who has seen something that is incredible (literally)
         | and has a hard time following up because of a complete absence
         | of data/evidence to back up your claim.
         | 
         | Going back to your experience, what tools do you wish we as a
         | society had that would help us document your experience?
         | 
         | Did you try to document your experience? What were the barriers
         | you encountered? If you were to document it, where would you go
         | to document it?
         | 
         | Ultimately, we need a civilian infrastructure of sensors,
         | cameras etc pointing up at the sky to independently verify UAP.
         | The first step in such an effort is some sort of statistical
         | data that shows how often this occurs.
         | 
         | With such data, we can build a realistic null hypothesis: (x
         | number of cameras looking at y area of the sky for z years
         | should find 0 UFOs if the null hypothesis is true)
         | 
         | It's impossible for a civilian effort to even begin to
         | accumulate the data to make even vague guesses on what x, y and
         | z should be.
         | 
         | And so, identifying the barriers that you encountered to
         | document your experience is actually kinda important.
        
           | llamaLord wrote:
           | Can't tell if being sarcastic or not... But the vast majority
           | of us carry an at least 12 megapixel camera in our pocket
           | literally everywhere we go now...
        
             | NoZebra120vClip wrote:
             | https://xkcd.com/1235/
        
               | stevenhuang wrote:
               | The mystery of the lack of good footage in the age of
               | smartphones is less mysterious when one considers that
               | perhaps the phenomenon itself is intelligent.
               | 
               | And in fact if one considers witness testimony, that's
               | what it seems to be.
        
             | suddenclarity wrote:
             | This is my opinion as well but it should be mentioned that
             | wide angle lenses on phones are quite terrible at picking
             | up small things, especially in low light. I tried once 2-3
             | years ago when I noticed a bright light late at night from
             | my bedroom window. I'm 100% convinced it had a reasonable
             | explanation but it did bother me that I spent several
             | minutes without getting a decent image/video of something
             | my eyes could see clearly. Since then, I'm a bit more
             | understanding that phones doesn't capture everything but
             | with that said - there are still a ton of DSLRs and
             | telescopes. Unfortunately I didn't have the hindsight of
             | fetching mine.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | nradov wrote:
         | Could it have been a large mylar balloon?
        
       | bglazer wrote:
       | Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence etc. We should never
       | underestimate human capacity for self delusion and fighter pilots
       | are certainly not privileged in that regard.
       | 
       | It's also worth considering why this seems to be a phenomenon
       | that exclusively effects military aircraft. I can certainly
       | imagine that the military would not mind if it was seen as the
       | last line of defense against a mysterious, extremely powerful
       | force, especially when we're effectively in peacetime. Apparently
       | the aliens didn't pick up an interest in the tens of thousands of
       | sorties flown over Afghanistan or Iraq. It's also worth
       | remembering that the CIA was recently extremely vocally concerned
       | about a mysterious "sonic weapon" death ray that turned out to be
       | either frog noises or simply non-existent. The US government has
       | shown that its quite willing to completely fabulate or at least
       | tacitly support bullshit if it serves their purposes.
        
       | hwillis wrote:
       | Why don't commercial pilots report the same things? I believe
       | they have far more time in the air.
       | 
       | It seems very, very unlikely aliens would have any interest in
       | our military capability. Even ignoring the technological
       | implications of interstellar flight or the ability to enter our
       | atmosphere without being detected, these objects are apparently
       | _massively_ more capable than any kind of vehicle we have. To
       | them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna.
       | 
       | It seems very likely that fighter pilots and finely-tuned
       | military equipment would be very eager to pick up false signals
       | from background noise and interpret it as vehicles that stretch
       | out understanding of physics.
        
         | epistemer wrote:
         | On the navy video I remember one of the guys mentioning they
         | think it is a drone.
         | 
         | It such hubris to believe those are alien craft and not foreign
         | military drones. As if alien craft is the more probable
         | explanation than another country having drones the US Navy does
         | not.
        
         | gfodor wrote:
         | An autonomous monitoring system for galactic-scale existential
         | risk bearing technologies would def have probes that monitored
         | the technological development of remote civilizations.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | mach1ne wrote:
           | I sometimes wonder if these galactic powers (if they exist)
           | will prevent the creation of AGI.
        
             | steve1977 wrote:
             | You mean, another AGI besides them?
        
             | willis936 wrote:
             | If they don't then is that evidence that AGI is NBD?
             | 
             | To be clear: I don't think this is a good line of thinking
             | from the beginning, so I'm not surprised when the
             | conclusions are not useful.
        
               | mach1ne wrote:
               | The point isn't to derive useful conclusions. The fact
               | that we have no idea about the probability of the
               | existence of extraterrestial intelligence seems to make
               | it inherently impossible to derive any conclusions from a
               | formula where they play a vital part.
        
               | [deleted]
        
         | sidlls wrote:
         | "To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna."
         | 
         | To play devil's advocate for a moment: they'd have to know the
         | capabilities of these jets to make that determination, and
         | observation of some sort would be required to do so.
         | 
         | "Artifacts" (anomalous errors) appear on flight systems'
         | sensors all the time, and atmospheric distortions can easily
         | appear to the naked eye as flying/moving objects. I don't buy
         | either that other countries have such advanced technology or
         | that extraterrestrial intelligences are visiting us: the
         | simpler explanations I noted cover more or less every published
         | UAP we have seen.
        
           | kcplate wrote:
           | >> To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna
           | 
           | I always find it odd that we ascribe a human understanding of
           | logic to an alien species. Seems to me we wouldn't know jack
           | shit about motivations, capabilities, approaches to decision
           | making, etc...
        
             | Teever wrote:
             | well we make some reasonable baze line assumptions for an
             | intelligent life form -- they have self preservation
             | instincts and as such likely operate on some base level of
             | game theory.
        
             | akomtu wrote:
             | From the descriptions, the aliens act like we would with a
             | slightly better tech: they act like rangers in a national
             | forest monitoring suspicious activity of smart beavers, but
             | otherwise don't mess with the wildlife.
        
               | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
               | That's just the ones we can see.
        
               | TechBro8615 wrote:
               | We call them smart beavers, but the other beavers call
               | them conspiracy theorists.
        
         | stevenhuang wrote:
         | They do, in fact all the time.
         | 
         | You just don't hear about it because of stigma.
         | 
         | See this NARCAP (civilian flight safety) report
         | https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20 for a case where a FedEx
         | flight crew documented an encounter with the commonly reported
         | pulsating orb type anomaly. There is a video.
         | 
         | Observed behavior:
         | 
         | > The UAP/Light came from above and stopped/hovered near FL37,
         | about the same altitude as the aircraft, shone a light on the
         | 767 and briefly approached the aircraft. Then it instantly
         | matched the speed, and heading of the aircraft and maintained a
         | consistent separation.
         | 
         | a. The light descended vertically, stopped abruptly, and shone
         | a light on the 767 causing the crew to believe that there was
         | another airliner on a collision heading with its landing lights
         | on.
         | 
         | b. It changed direction from vertical descent to a sudden
         | stop/hover, to approaching the aircraft briefly, to taking the
         | same heading and speed of the aircraft at about the same
         | altitude and an estimated distance of 1-2k ft.
         | 
         | c. It matched the altitude, speed, and heading of the aircraft,
         | 575mph and at 37,000ft for over 32 minutes.
         | 
         | d. The UAP/Light changed colors and turned away from the
         | aircraft on a perpendicular heading, West, just inside the
         | Mexico/US border.
         | 
         | e. The UAP/light did not have wings or running lights. It was a
         | new and unique observation to the experienced air crew.
         | 
         | > It seems very, very unlikely aliens would have any interest
         | in our military capability
         | 
         | And in fact, apparently they do here too. It's been documented
         | these UAPs have an interest in our nuclear capabilities. There
         | has been many testimonies from people in the military these
         | UAPs buzz around nuclear silos and apparently are able to
         | disable them. See this well researched video for information on
         | Robert Hastings https://youtu.be/l4EXL7jgqns
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | I find the Alaska case to be the most interesting. As the
           | visual report of an object was supported by detections from
           | the Soviet facing long range radar that were state of the art
           | at the time.
        
           | shortcake27 wrote:
           | Here's the thing that gets me. A 767 costs hundreds of
           | millions of dollars and yet I've filmed better videos with a
           | potato. Why is the pilot filming with his smartphone? Why
           | does the plane not have a sophisticated high-quality purpose-
           | built camera system that can record phenomena like this?
        
             | jcims wrote:
             | The SLS costs $4B per launch and apparently has very little
             | onboard imaging capability.
        
             | yunohn wrote:
             | Huh? Are you seriously asking why commercial airliners
             | don't have 4K GoPros to record UAP/UFOs?
        
               | edgyquant wrote:
               | Yes. Why is that unreasonable?
        
               | nradov wrote:
               | It's unreasonable because installing and maintaining
               | aviation qualified cameras is expensive. You can't just
               | strap a consumer action camera to the wing and expect the
               | FAA to approve. Airlines have no incentive to pay for
               | extra cameras.
        
               | bluepizza wrote:
               | There are plenty incentives to including imaging as part
               | of black boxes. Nothing unreasonable about it. It would
               | help elucidate several non-UFO normal life kind of
               | incidents.
        
               | actually_a_dog wrote:
               | Yep. It's the same reason why a lot of planes still have
               | a "no smoking" light even though smoking hasn't been
               | allowed on planes for years. If they took them out,
               | they'd have to recertify the electronics. It's much
               | easier and cheaper to have a useless light that always
               | stays on than to go through that process to remove it.
        
               | gizmodo59 wrote:
               | Many commercial airlines at least international (like
               | emirates) have cameras all over. You can even watch it
               | from your seat.
        
               | yunohn wrote:
               | They're not 4K and they're not meant to be aimed at UAPs.
               | IME they don't have long term storage either.
        
               | shortcake27 wrote:
               | No, that's not what I'm asking, because a GoPro costs
               | about $400. I'm asking why they don't have something 10x
               | better than a GoPro.
        
               | willis936 wrote:
               | I'm wondering why a multi-million dollar aircraft doesn't
               | have a $10k imaging system when I put a $300 imaging
               | system on my $30k car. If I'm willing to spend 1% to
               | understand equipment damage then why would this logic not
               | follow for a billion dollar fleet of aircraft?
               | 
               | Like-minded drivers have caught amazing videos of
               | meteors. Planes could do the same for supposedly
               | legitimate UAP sightings.
        
               | namaria wrote:
               | Well would you increase the budget of your production
               | grade deliverables for maybe proving to internet forum
               | visitors that your product sometimes is in the presence
               | of weird phenomena?
        
               | shortcake27 wrote:
               | Are you suggesting NARCAP is an internet forum?
        
               | mkl wrote:
               | More "why don't they have general-purpose dashcam-
               | equivalents", for capturing anything of interest, e.g.
               | the near-miss that was on HN yesterday.
        
           | mr_sturd wrote:
           | The pulsating in the NARCAP video looks like the camera
           | trying and failing to find focus on anything that it's
           | looking at.
           | 
           | Interesting though.
        
             | rcme wrote:
             | Were their eyes failing to auto-focus? Did you watch the
             | video with sound? They're talking about it pulsating as
             | they film it.
        
             | stevenhuang wrote:
             | Camera autofocus is commonly brought up but in this case
             | the crewmen were able to attest to the pulsating with their
             | eyeballs, in addition to the other strange behaviour as
             | noted in their testimony.
        
           | jvanderbot wrote:
           | That video looks like a distant light / laser that's tracking
           | the airplane, going on and off target.
        
             | picture wrote:
             | The "going on and off target" effect seen here is likely
             | the camera's autofocus.
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | >Why don't commercial pilots report the same things? I believe
         | they have far more time in the air.
         | 
         | They do. Here's a Forbes article about it[0].
         | 
         | I'm firmly in the "it isn't aliens" camp but there are no
         | shortage of UFO/UAP reports with multiple, credible
         | eyewitnesses.
         | 
         | [0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2021/06/26
         | ...
        
         | narag wrote:
         | _To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna._
         | 
         | Maybe not. Even when it all started, a few cases were
         | alledgedly air combat:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantell_UFO_incident
         | 
         | Other incidents crashes, like Roswell. Obviously I cannot vouch
         | for any of those :-) just wanted to point that air fighters at
         | the time were much less sophisticated than today. Maybe people
         | that travels between stars are not so interested in bringing
         | state-of-the-art war machines with them. The technology to
         | maneuver a drone or vehicle at incredible speed or angles might
         | still be vulnerable to bullets or missiles.
        
       | snickerbockers wrote:
       | There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards
       | anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and
       | other professionals who ought to know better.
       | 
       | Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume
       | that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or
       | whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore
       | physical observations just because they seem like something that
       | might support what fringe idiots believe.
        
         | joe_the_user wrote:
         | What's "fantastical" about unexplained lights?
         | 
         | I mean, I GN an adult Dungeons and Dragons centered on multiple
         | worlds and I love considering different worlds and how they
         | might work. But the people who extrapolate the unexplained to a
         | claim that there's some fantastical things that science is
         | suppressing seem so starved for "the fantastical" that they're
         | distorting the entire situation. Science isn't there to squash
         | your fun. Science doesn't deny that uncertainty is a constant
         | part of ordinary human experience - scientifically established
         | positions are merely a reliable tip of an iceberg of
         | uncertainty.
        
         | Fezzik wrote:
         | The close-minded approach is to accept someone's fantastical
         | claim because you want to, or just because the claim is being
         | made, when the claim is contrary to mountains and centuries of
         | evidence. The open-minded take incorporates all the possible
         | evidence to reach the most likely conclusion. And the
         | conclusion is never, so far, either aliens or magic. It's just
         | silly to conclude that an observation that has no immediate
         | natural explanation will not be explained naturally and is,
         | instead, the work of aliens or magic. Especially in light of
         | the fact that everything we have explained, thus far, has had a
         | natural explanation.
        
         | pixl97 wrote:
         | For the longest time we didn't know the lightning event we now
         | call sprites occurred. Pilots had said they saw such things bit
         | without evidence at the time no one had any idea if they were
         | real or not. Probably plenty of other explainable events that
         | we've not captured yet out there.
        
         | ceejayoz wrote:
         | It is important to be open minded to the possibility of mundane
         | explanations for these observations.
        
         | smiley1437 wrote:
         | Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan
         | Standard)
        
       | stevenhuang wrote:
       | Glad to see this topic finally discussed here.
       | 
       | With the shift in government posture and establishment of the
       | All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
       | (https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/310005...)
       | it will only be a matter of time until more service members come
       | forward with their experiences and enough data is gathered to
       | ascertain the inevitable: these craft are real and we've been
       | visited by nonhuman entities since maybe even the beginning of
       | human existence.
        
         | mbnull wrote:
         | I do remember the comment thread on the 2017 time article here
         | on hn. Opinions already have changed considerably in the last 5
         | years. It also appears as if the process of disseminating
         | information still accelerates (with promis coming out as
         | experiencers and so on). I can only advise everyone to consider
         | C.G. Jung and read Jaques Vallee.
         | 
         | This situation is very complicated, but not at all bad in the
         | end. As far as I can tell, nobody got the real answers, not the
         | pentagon, nor the religions.
        
           | stevenhuang wrote:
           | I second those recommendations.
           | 
           | Reality may be not as we think.
        
           | harimau777 wrote:
           | Could you expand on how Jung is related? I think of him as a
           | researcher in psychology which doesn't seem connected? I may
           | be missing what you are getting at.
        
       | runjake wrote:
       | I worked on stealth aircraft that would occasionally cause
       | civilian UFO reports.
       | 
       | It was common for the reports to mention that these UFOs
       | maneuvered unlike any man-made aircraft, which was always a good
       | chuckle because they were usually just flying straight or banking
       | normally.
       | 
       | However when seasoned military pilots like Fravor speak on the
       | matter, I listen. When a bunch of them speak about the same
       | incident, I take them at their word.
        
         | jackmott wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | cma wrote:
         | Fravor admitted to UFO pranks in the 90s (gliding over camp
         | fires and then turning on afterburners). Some were found
         | reported on UFO forums at the time.
        
           | hartator wrote:
           | Yeah, it can undermined his credibility a bit. Maybe a prank
           | from someone else?
        
         | dopeboy wrote:
         | What would you say is the most credible incident that everyone
         | should take seriously?
        
           | runjake wrote:
           | The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?).
           | 
           | Extremely detailed visual and sensor events.
           | 
           | Tons of human witnesses. Tons of activity.
           | 
           | There was a detailed Reddit thread on the incident from a
           | Seaman many, many years ago long before news of the Tic Tac
           | came out.
           | 
           | I'm on mobile but perhaps someone else can paste the thread
           | URL.
           | 
           | Could be an elaborate hoax but that's one heck of a long con
           | game.
        
             | jml7c5 wrote:
             | Weren't there only four witnesses? The pilots were the only
             | ones who saw anything with their own eyes. And there's been
             | no release of sensor data or video, so it's hard to judge
             | its quality. (The 'FLIR1' video was taken later, by
             | different pilots who did not see their object visually, and
             | simply shows a distant hot object slowly moving left, with
             | no inexplicable manoeuvers.) That the ship radar was
             | purportedly bouncing between maximum altitude and
             | reasonable altitude suggests a software or hardware issue,
             | or electronic interference.
        
             | godelski wrote:
             | > The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?).
             | 
             | The Tic Tac UFO? That's probably one of the best explained
             | events (debunked). Short answer is that there was sense
             | misreading and a gimbal lock. Some people even simulated
             | it[0]. I wouldn't call this an elaborate hoax, but an
             | optical illusion and an event that took some expertise to
             | understand. Expertise that a pilot wouldn't have.
             | 
             | I should add that finding that link was nontrivial. Faster
             | through Google but searching through YouTube just came up
             | with UFO videos and no debunking. This is probably part of
             | the problem.
             | 
             | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs
        
             | jseliger wrote:
             | The original appears to have been deleted, but you may be
             | referring to https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/
             | my_ufo_encount...
        
             | marcusverus wrote:
             | Check out Joe Rogan episode 1361 with Commander David
             | Fravor (who witnessed the UFO first-hand). They show the
             | footage and Cmdr. Fravor talks through it around the 24
             | minute mark. Pretty fascinating stuff.
             | 
             | https://open.spotify.com/episode/16If5PVe6ouxeDwNbtu0iC?si=
             | 8...
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | Were they really really big, black and triangular?
        
           | runjake wrote:
           | The B-2A was.
           | 
           | Some other stuff were stealthy cruise missiles. Not too big
           | but they flew so low that they would cause some "shock and
           | awe".
        
           | DonHopkins wrote:
           | Yellow, Black and Rectangular.
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNfPkdCRf8
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | There are/were also pilots specifically going for that
         | effect...
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6nox5_QStw&t=1082s
         | 
         | This despite the existence of people like Rendlesham's Colonel
         | Halt, and so on, is, indeed, a very interesting military-UAP
         | venn-ecosystem. I think it's a fascinating combination to
         | study.
         | 
         | Military psychology also naturally disincentivizes "looking
         | into things" (see for example Colonel Halt's thoughts on "what
         | to do about it"[1]) and there's a ping-pong false dichotomy
         | that develops: Did we make it or didn't we; Did we cause it or
         | didn't we. It's the perfect recipe for meaningless distraction
         | from very important questions.
         | 
         | This problem also further isolates important aspects of the
         | military role in potentially damming up exploration & science
         | efforts, especially when we examine its comparatively premium
         | level of day-in, day-out access to what are de facto
         | scientifically-capable exploration & discovery tools.
         | 
         | Is it any wonder, in that light, that the accompanying de facto
         | "scientists", i.e. pilots, radar operators, and privileged
         | officers, are seeing extraordinary things? No. And that's a
         | huge opportunity wrapped up in a problem, because the
         | chartering mindset interferes.
         | 
         | 1. "There's no doubt it was something beyond anything we know
         | or understand. [...] I have concerns, but I don't think we can
         | do anything about it. I think this is beyond us."
         | 
         | "So: Quit worrying about it." -- From just after the 8m mark
         | in:
         | 
         | https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswsp9
         | 
         | (An example of a rather stunning mindset, given the
         | circumstances, and in comparison to the known-reliable mindset
         | of exploratory effort / scientific learning & exploration)
        
           | cma wrote:
           | Fravor admitted to the same kind of pranks on Joe Rogan.
        
       | supernova87a wrote:
       | In grad school in astronomy, there was a fellow grad student who
       | was extremely excited after a night's observations that he'd
       | discovered something remarkable -- it was an unexpected distant
       | galaxy that appeared in his images that night, and had all the
       | right signatures because it appeared in different filters,
       | different exposures, and you could see it there in the image
       | files, raw.
       | 
       | Turned out, it was noise / amplifier signal correlated with the
       | adjacent chip dumping overexposed pixels on readout. He was
       | embarrassed after a professor pointed out (after inspecting the
       | files) that it always appeared on the same exact pixel
       | coordinates on the array, but learned his lesson to try to
       | disprove your own observations with independent tests.
       | 
       | I wonder how much some of these unidentified phenomena might be
       | checked for some similar effects. After all, these pilots aren't
       | reporting things seen with their eyes, they're looking at imaging
       | displays that have been processed. And maybe... were recently
       | illuminated with lasers... hm? There certainly seem to be a
       | pathology of similar reports of "the object never moved in the
       | viewfinder, and would imply the ability to move suddenly at
       | supersonic speeds"
        
         | pmarreck wrote:
         | > I wonder how much some of these unidentified phenomena might
         | be checked for some similar effects.
         | 
         | come on, man. at some point, after enough of these reports,
         | toeing the line you're toeing starts to look ludicrous. these
         | are trained observers, pilots who know what to expect in the
         | sky. and do not take lightly that there is still a certain
         | amount of embarrassment (a social cost) to even coming forward,
         | so to even make this claim is still a brave act at this point.
         | 
         | At least watch this 60 Minutes short piece about this
         | phenomenon with interviews with real Navy pilots before you
         | assert things like this:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY
        
       | robbiex88 wrote:
       | If you haven't listened to it yet, highly recommend the Ryan
       | Graves episode on the Joe Rogan Experience.
        
         | stevenhuang wrote:
         | Or the one with Lex Fridman.
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/qLDp-aYnR1Y
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | I used to occasionally watch JRE and at the time found some of
         | the episodes to be interesting thought experiments. But then I
         | watched one episode where the guest expert was talking about a
         | topic in which I had enough familiarity to recognize that they
         | were completely bullshitting their way through the interview
         | and attempting to sound mysterious in order to avoid providing
         | any factual information. Recalling the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
         | [0], I concluded that every previous episode I had watched was
         | equivalent BS and I haven't watched another one since.
         | 
         | 0.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | That doesn't seem to make much sense. Even if one guest is
           | 100% bullshitting, why would that mean the next guest is too?
           | I mean, it'd be fair to conclude that Joe is full of shit
           | since he's always there, but with all of the people who have
           | been on the podcast I can't imagine all of them are frauds
           | who have no idea what they're talking about.
           | 
           | Stay skeptical, by all means, and don't count on the show to
           | fact check everything for you, but why automatically dismiss
           | them all as BS without evidence and without even hearing them
           | out? If you found the show interesting before, you're
           | probably missing out.
        
       | phtrivier wrote:
       | So UFOs are now UAPs, but at least we're sliiiiighly further on
       | the path to admiting that they're either Chinese, Russians,
       | Americans, or very surprising.
       | 
       | And I agree it's something to be monitored, and we must not
       | assume any sighting is a joke - but it does not mean we have to
       | assume any sighting is extraordinary either.
        
       | zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
       | Could be a projection
       | https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/05/11/us-nav...
        
         | traverseda wrote:
         | They even patented it! Yeah that's pretty obviously what this
         | is.
        
       | snowpid wrote:
       | It is very fascinating that it is not discussed in other
       | democratic countrise.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | isaacg wrote:
       | These videos just look like optical artifacts of the lenses of
       | the cameras, as discussed here: https://youtu.be/jHDlfIaBEqw
       | 
       | Is there any evidence that there's more to these videos than
       | that?
        
         | likeabbas wrote:
         | There's tons of evidence that Mick West is wrong and these are
         | not artifacts of the lens
         | https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1598090753011781634?s=...
        
         | mach1ne wrote:
         | The countless eye witnesses for one.
        
           | scotty79 wrote:
           | Human perception is easily manipulated by peer pressure.
        
             | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
             | So is human misperception.
        
       | klghqr wrote:
       | The press and politicians started hyping up the UFO issue last
       | year when it was clear that we were headed for cold war 2.0.
       | 
       | It is a great narrative to get more funding, get people
       | interested in space and the MIC, etc.
       | 
       | The timing is suspect, it seems like just another manufactured
       | crisis.
        
         | localplume wrote:
         | that doesn't make any sense though. UFOs dont get people
         | interested in "space". if its aerospace then rockets and
         | spacecraft do that just fine, and if its hard sciences then
         | there are a billion other cool, real things. the MIC? yeah UFO
         | people are famously pro-government and pro-military. the most
         | well known media featuring UFOs/aliens, the X-Files, is full of
         | government-related conspiracy theories.
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | That doesn't actually make sense, though. UFO believers were
         | losing their minds thinking "disclosure" had finally come, but
         | most politicians never even mentioned it and the press never
         | presented it as a crisis.
         | 
         | If the government wanted to create fear and panic in order to
         | justify funding, they had numerous real-world scenarios to draw
         | on. Manufacturing a meme about UFOs is a stupid way to do that,
         | assuming "it was clear that we were headed for cold war 2.0."
         | 
         | The report itself didn't even manufacture a crisis. It was
         | lackluster at best, failing to reach a definite conclusion,
         | much less hype up an imminent threat that presumably needs
         | funding.
        
         | stevenhuang wrote:
         | Truthfully, it can be both.
         | 
         | Never let a good crisis go to waste, etc.
         | 
         | For example with project bluebook, UFO sightings have been
         | discredited through ridicule and served double duty as
         | smokescreen for legitimate secret military development such as
         | the U2 spy plane.
        
       | scotty79 wrote:
       | I'm really surprised fascination and mystery that many HN users
       | display here.
       | 
       | After all software developers and systems administrators of all
       | people should be the first to doubt veracity of output of various
       | devices and what their users believe about them and their output.
        
         | suddenclarity wrote:
         | Topic aside, people have blind spots when it aligns with their
         | beliefs.
        
       | alexfromapex wrote:
       | This pilot and another, commander David Fravor, have both given
       | separate accounts that there are very technologically advanced
       | craft well beyond US capabilities in US airspace (detected by
       | multiple radars/instruments) on Joe Rogan's podcast. It's very
       | interesting and would love to hear honest reports from the
       | government on how much the level of activity is increasing.
        
       | likeabbas wrote:
       | I really wish people would take a look at the extensive analysis
       | some scientists have done to show the 3 navy videos of UAP are
       | showing flight characteristics that defy our laws of physics.
       | 
       | This guy on Twitter has done a fantastic job to show the GIMBAL
       | object performed what we can only describe as a "vertical u-turn"
       | https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1504855791060148224?s=...
       | 
       | This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous
       | acceleration to over 20,000 mph
       | https://www.explorescu.org/post/2004-uss-nimitz-strike-navy-...
       | 
       | Here is a paper from the National Aeronautical Observatory in
       | Ukraine that tracked UAP via their two telescopes in different
       | cities going Mach 15, stopping, and changing directions
       | instantaneously https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.17085.pdf
        
         | marmetio wrote:
         | What do you want people to get out of those analyses? They
         | quantify the incredible observations, but they don't explain
         | how those observations could be possible, nor rule out other
         | explanations.
        
           | likeabbas wrote:
           | At least in terms of the 3 navy video, I would argue that the
           | data purports, with high confidence, that the craft did
           | exhibit flight performance characteristics that we cannot
           | explain with modern technology or physics. And these are just
           | the three videos that got released. Many people with security
           | clearances have come forward and said the AATIP database has
           | hundreds videos (with the classified sensor data) of craft
           | showing advanced flight performance characteristics.
           | 
           | I want people to understand that this phenomenon is real, and
           | it's happening constantly. So much to the point that it's
           | affecting military training operations and putting our
           | fighter jet pilots at risk.
        
             | marmetio wrote:
             | We had AATIP and now we have UAPTF. They do stuff and brief
             | Congress about it. Why is that not good enough?
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | UAPTF is now AARO. But it's not enough for congress to be
               | briefed. If what we're seeing is a better understanding
               | of physics, than this would affect everyone's lives
        
               | marmetio wrote:
               | Then maybe they can mitigate the risk without you knowing
               | about it.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | What is that supposed to mean? This is about gaining a
               | further understanding of reality; the universe
        
               | marmetio wrote:
               | > it's affecting military training operations and putting
               | our fighter jet pilots at risk
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | I didn't forget. This issue could be both a security risk
               | for our military members, and also an exciting venture
               | for science.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | marmetio wrote:
               | If it was just a science thing or they didn't care about
               | the security risk, I don't see why they'd keep forming
               | new organizations that are increasingly secretive.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Because it's not just a science thing. It's a potential
               | threat. Threat is defined as capability x intent. We are
               | seeing these things with insane capabilities, but not
               | really any intent (other than maybe observing our
               | technology).
        
               | marmetio wrote:
               | We have AARO for addressing the threat. Why is that not
               | good enough?
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | I'm skeptical and so lean pragmatic on the issue.
             | 
             | Fighter pilots at risk? If the military believed that they
             | would already be fully engaged in solving the problem. In
             | which case there is little for me or any other civilian to
             | do.
             | 
             | And you say fighter pilots at risk but, and this will sound
             | callous, an actual incident that caused a loss of aircraft
             | would be more compelling. It does away with the _may_ be at
             | risk proposition. And, again, I suspect the military would
             | be fully engaged in understanding the issue. Doubly so.
             | 
             | I guess I also believe that things leak. There isn't going
             | to be a secret program that is so far advanced that it
             | counters known physical laws.
             | 
             | It sounds as though you are certain that it is military in
             | nature so no need to speculate as to whether it is
             | extraterrestrial in nature.
        
               | stevenhuang wrote:
               | If you want to understand the stigma of reporting UAPs as
               | a military pilot, see Ryan Graves interview with Lex
               | Fridman:
               | 
               | https://youtu.be/qLDp-aYnR1Y
               | 
               | > There isn't going to be a secret program that is so far
               | advanced that it counters known physical laws.
               | 
               | I think you've misread this part--parent is not saying
               | these are ours, not at all.
               | 
               | We're all in agreement that if what we're seeing is real,
               | these would be non-human in origin.
        
               | JKCalhoun wrote:
               | If they're non-human in origin then the whole thing is
               | even less actionable. We're not going to learn the
               | secrets of hyper drive just because the military
               | acknowledges that these are real phenomena.
        
               | blep_ wrote:
               | I don't know. We would learn that some things are
               | possible which we thought were impossible, which means
               | physics took a wrong turn somewhere and we need to back
               | up and keep looking. Even if it's not the secrets of
               | hyper drive, that's probably going to lead to _something_
               | interesting.
        
               | nl wrote:
               | > We're all in agreement that if what we're seeing is
               | real, these would be non-human in origin
               | 
               | I don't agree with this at all.
               | 
               | Firstly I suspect it isn't real.
               | 
               | But if it is then I think it's most likely some human
               | group has a technological breakthrough and it using it
               | like this.
               | 
               | Say a US adversary wanted to give a "don't fuck with us"
               | message to the US military. Outperforming state-of-the-
               | art US fighters would be a good way to do it.
               | 
               | And just because the HN forum commentators don't know who
               | it is doesn't mean the US intelligence community doesn't
               | know. It might be broadly known that the Kamerians have
               | access to this tech, and the knowledge is classified "to
               | avoid broad panic".
               | 
               | There might be secret briefing to congress about it,
               | which would explain perfectly why there is an apparent
               | lack of action. All responses are classified.
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | > these would be non-human in origin.
               | 
               | So they must be natural in origin. There's no other
               | option.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | The direct quote from former DoD officials is that these
               | aircraft are most a likely non-human intelligence.
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | And not Santa? I'm shocked. I guess they are too old to
               | believe in Santa. But hey, dumb enough to believe in
               | aliens on Earth.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Like the other commenter said, there's a huge stigma
               | amongst military officials to not report these events
               | because the stigma is a career ended. That's why the
               | government added legislation mandating the DoD create a
               | channel for these events to be reported.
               | 
               | Diving a little deeper, if the military suspected these
               | aircraft were foreign adversary then this would be big
               | news. But they don't. They believe it's something else
               | entirely, which is why it's not been public headlines
               | until recently.
        
             | willis936 wrote:
             | Three videos is not a preponderance of data. The number of
             | photos taken in the past day exceeds the number of photos
             | taken in the past year exceeds the number of photos taken
             | in the 20th century. We have cameras in space, we have
             | cameras everywhere we have people, so then where is the
             | expected increase in observations? UFO sightings have been
             | relatively steady, with peaks and valleys as the zeitgeist
             | ebbs and flows. If we don't assume UFO presence as constant
             | (ie it might go down when we have more observing
             | capabilities) then there's little information to be
             | learned. At some point it turns into metaphysics.
             | 
             | Case studies are great, but I have not seen convincing,
             | properly skeptical analyses. As they say: it's never
             | aliens. People, unfortunately, are typically willing to see
             | what they want to see.
        
               | mach1ne wrote:
               | If the events happen mainly at altitudes, smartphones
               | have a hard time capturing them. There's also the
               | argument that since these would be super-intelligent
               | beings, they might aim for a level of exposure that
               | they're confident won't make the grand public believe in
               | their existence.
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | >There's also the argument that since these would be
               | super-intelligent beings, they might aim for a level of
               | exposure that they're confident won't make the grand
               | public believe in their existence.
               | 
               | The public by and large, more or less, already believes
               | in their existence. There are actual _religions_ built
               | around aliens, this has been been a part of pop culture
               | since the 1940s. If they 're trying to obey something
               | like the Prime Directive and prevent cultural
               | contamination then they seem to be doing a terrible job.
               | Picard would be ashamed.
        
               | guhidalg wrote:
               | LOL! What? Aliens are worried about being exposed? Why?
               | Did you ask them?
               | 
               | Answer: not aliens, just a big PsyOps to give the
               | military more funding.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Unfortunately most of this data is highly classified and
               | not going to leak. We do have cameras everywhere, but I'm
               | not sure how many civilian devices can capture a good
               | video of something going Mach 15+.
               | 
               | All I can say to you is to look into the last NDAA
               | legislation. These former DoD officials have convinced
               | congress members enough to include legislation to further
               | study UAP and create a system for pilots to report their
               | events properly.
               | 
               | One final note: a true scientist should never rule out a
               | possibility. Blanket saying "it's never aliens" is wrong,
               | because one day we almost for sure will find alien life
               | in the universe.
        
           | throwbmw wrote:
           | Many of the characteristics of these beings are consistent
           | with Jinns as described in Islamic teachings. Initially
           | described in Quran and further elaborated in Hadith and then
           | by various Sufi masters. Sufi masters engagement with these
           | creatures was through intense meditation. And according to
           | their estimates there may be more than 5 billion of them.
        
             | harimau777 wrote:
             | I'm not that familiar with the folklore around Jinn. Do the
             | similarities go beyond those you could draw for other
             | legendary creatures like ghosts or angels?
        
               | edgyquant wrote:
               | Jinn are angels (or angels are Jinn) according to Islam.
        
             | marmetio wrote:
             | Many of the characteristics of Qui-Gon Jinn are consistent
             | with midi-chloreans as described in Star Wars teachings.
             | Initially described in The Phantom Menace and further
             | elaborated in the Expanded Universe and then by various
             | Jedi masters. Jedi masters engagement with these creatures
             | was through intense meditation. And according to their
             | estimates there may be more than 5 billion of them.
        
         | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
         | This seems like strong evidence that the "tic tac" is not a
         | flying _object_ per se, but rather something like the focal
         | point of a high-E-field laser? (Or a crossing point between two
         | such beams?)
         | 
         | If the object in question is not a physical object so much as a
         | light show, it could undergo all sorts of impossible manouevres
         | including instantaneous acceleration and even the appearance of
         | exceeding the speed of light.
        
           | jnurmine wrote:
           | This is what I've been pondering too as a possible
           | terrestrial explanation.
           | 
           | Perhaps some fancy machinery can beam modified waveforms not
           | only with microwaves, but with frequencies high enough to
           | reach infrared and/or visible light.
           | 
           | And perhaps some kind of an elongated blob is the state of
           | the art now.
           | 
           | And later, as the technology matures, one might expect more
           | detailed movie-prop like "UFOs" to appear. Hoping to see a
           | TIE fighter or Jetsons' space car soon.
        
           | swagasaurus-rex wrote:
           | Seen through instrumentation, aberrations or artefacts from
           | the sensors, or even active jamming could explain the
           | instantaneous acceleration
        
             | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
             | That's true, but "abberations or artefacts" are more of a
             | low-effort non-explanation than an explanation, and
             | unlikely to satisfy anyone who isn't already skeptical.
             | Active jamming is... the kind of role that a high-intensity
             | two-photon laser would be being tested for.
        
               | JKCalhoun wrote:
               | What would a "high-intensity two-photon laser" be? A two-
               | photon X-ray laser?
        
               | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
               | Ah, I don't mean that the laser outputs only two photons,
               | but that it (might) be designed around 2-photon
               | interactions, so if you have two very-high-intensity IR
               | lasers and the beams meet at a point in space, that
               | crossing point could locally ionize the air as though it
               | consisted of a beam of photons with higher energy.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics
        
               | traverseda wrote:
               | https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plas
               | ma
        
           | andbberger wrote:
           | ion beam. look at the energy dissipation rate charts for ion
           | beams in matter.
        
             | traverseda wrote:
             | I suppose that works as a weapon, and would be
             | electromagnetically steerable. Not exactly safe but...
        
           | likeabbas wrote:
           | It absolutely could be an adversary spoofing our sensor
           | systems. But, I would argue the testimonies of the 4 pilots
           | that saw the object with their own eyes may rule that out
           | (unless it was some kind of hologram).
           | 
           | Whatever it is, we need to further study it because more and
           | more military pilots are seeing them and their military
           | exercises are being disrupted
        
             | traverseda wrote:
             | A ball of super heated plasma would show up visually.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Have you heard Cmdr Dave Fravor's testimony of the
               | incident? A ball plasma does not exhibit intelligent
               | movement as the way the tic tac began to mirror him as he
               | descended on to it
        
               | traverseda wrote:
               | Sure it does, this small scale demo can even draw the
               | death star in mid air
               | 
               | https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plas
               | ma
               | 
               | That's certainly no natural phenomenon!
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | As I said to another commenter, I'm not discounting the
               | possibility of this being human tech. But, wouldn't
               | adversaries need other ships or satellites to launch this
               | holographic plasma from, and wouldn't we have tracked
               | those before seeing the tic-tac (or other unidentified
               | craft) on radar?
               | 
               | Many reports are actually happening over the United
               | States airspace. How could the military not track the
               | planes the plasmas are being launched from being over our
               | airspace? And suppose this is Chinese tech over our
               | airspace - HOW IS THAT NOT A HUGE STORY? The blimp is the
               | perfect example - if this stuff was Chinese, it would be
               | a huge story.
        
               | traverseda wrote:
               | It's classified US technology, obviously. That's why it
               | mostly appears near military installations that have
               | significant power production capabilities (things like
               | nuclear aircraft carriers, possible nuclear submarines).
               | 
               | The fact that the military isn't investigating it implies
               | to me that they already know what is it. Now why they're
               | letting pilots talk about it on the Joe Rogan experience
               | I don't know, but whether that was a simple mistake or
               | they just felt like not keeping those pilots in the loop
               | at all was better, well that's not unexplainable.
               | 
               | So yeah, ground based plasma hologram projection is a
               | specific, real, technology that can produce results that
               | match the description of the UFOs. I'm not speculating
               | here, all the data I've seen has matched the description
               | of a ball of plasma and these systems can make balls of
               | plasma appear in mid-air at any location you want, at any
               | speed and with any flight characteristics.
               | 
               | Once you know what technology has been used to make the
               | "UFOs" the rest is pretty easy.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Let's take this hypothesis and run with it. What you're
               | saying is there's a faction of the government that is
               | fucking with our military operations and endangering our
               | pilots. How is this not headline news? How is this not a
               | problem?
        
               | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
               | What if the ball plasma was the product of the end of
               | someone's high-power gimbal-mounted laser, which they
               | were intelligently steering while watching him fly?
        
             | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
             | That's the thing! A high-intensity laser (or microwave,
             | etc) can certainly produce a visible phenomenon, through
             | heating or ionization of the air, scattering, etc. It
             | wouldn't necessarily be visible through sensors only.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | It totally could be. I have to wonder where the laser
               | would be shot off from though. Either a satellite above,
               | which we should see, or a submarine/ship near by, which
               | should be tracked on sonar.
               | 
               | Whatever it is, we need to find out. I'm not 100% on the
               | ET hypothesis. This could be human tech and just
               | spoofing. But we need to know
        
           | traverseda wrote:
           | Yep, seems like the obvious answer. Especially as these
           | phenomenon are mostly observed near military installations
           | and places with a lot of power generation capability.
        
           | saiya-jin wrote:
           | We have already existing phenomena - ball lighting. It can
           | spawn in the middle of nowhere, scorch stuff or people, go
           | through walls, disappear, move slowly or relatively fast...
           | my father saw once down their street, with these
           | characteristics (without harming anybody). That it can also
           | jump around at non-trivial speed and doing maneuvers
           | impossible to current technology is not that hard to imagine.
           | And that's just one example I came up just now.
           | 
           | Given how many hoaxes exist, how many people blindly believe
           | basically anything, how many folks happily take advantage of
           | that at any cost, and host of other known facts, very very
           | hard skepticism is in place.
           | 
           | Oh and since its HN, we all know all software has tons of
           | bugs, including military stuff. But no, little green men have
           | nothing else to do just show off mostly to US air force but
           | otherwise be untraceable, and watch us kill each other and
           | whole ecosystem over stupid stuff.
        
         | mrtksn wrote:
         | > This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous
         | acceleration to over 20,000 mph
         | 
         | Would't it mean that the footage doesn't actually show real
         | objects then?
         | 
         | You see a Mona Lisa on the wall in your friends house, before
         | you assume that your friend has the original or that Leonardo
         | Da Vinci painted two of those and this is the other one you
         | will need to go through many many other scenarios because you
         | know a thing or two about the painting and your friend. You
         | don't just throw away all your constructs about the world on
         | the first observed anomaly.
        
           | likeabbas wrote:
           | Nobody is throwing away all of the constructs of what we
           | know. This may turn out to be sensor malfunction. But the DoD
           | has over 300 events of unidentified objects that exhibit
           | interesting flight characteristics. At the very least we
           | should not be ignoring this data, but studying it deeply to
           | figure out what it is.
           | 
           | Either it's a foreign adversary with advanced technology, an
           | adversary that is spoofing our sensor systems, or it's
           | something else. Whatever it is, We need to find out
        
             | mrtksn wrote:
             | Of course it's interesting and worth investigating but
             | there is underlining suggestion, dog whistle if you wish,
             | that these are records of extraterrestrial activity or
             | physics beyond our understanding. It's a new age mysticism.
        
             | AnimalMuppet wrote:
             | Do you have any reason to suppose that we _are_ ignoring
             | it? Any reason to suppose that we are _not_ studying it
             | deeply?
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Yes. The Chinese blimp being a huge news story, but the
               | 300 unidentified objects over US airspace (some with
               | performance characteristics that we cannot explain) is
               | the biggest reason. Some in the government are studying
               | this for sure, but it's not getting the attention that it
               | needs.
        
             | j0057 wrote:
             | There are plenty of explanations for these videos that
             | don't involve alien species traveling multiple light years
             | to troll American air force pilots, like
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs and
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGzJ9dx3n4o.
        
               | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
               | Honestly the "it's aliens" explanation is so unlikely
               | that I'd put "Wakanda is real" above it in my probability
               | tables.
        
               | sambull wrote:
               | Even one that the Navy itself patented..
               | https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | youtubers can hand waive off a few grainy videos. You
               | can't waive off corroborating classified data from radar,
               | sonar, satellites, and military pilot testimony.
        
               | j0057 wrote:
               | I'm not sure why I even tried...
        
           | narag wrote:
           | _> This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous
           | acceleration to over 20,000 mph
           | 
           | Would't it mean that the footage doesn't actually show real
           | objects then?_
           | 
           | Maybe, but consider the context: even if the acceleration was
           | more "reasonable", wouldn't you feel something's missing? I
           | mean any indication of a propulsion system, like reaction
           | gases or propellers.
           | 
           | My point is: if we're watching something we have no idea how
           | it works, it doesn't make sense to tell it how it _should_
           | behave.
           | 
           | How could one vehicle move if not using jets, rockets or
           | other known means? Maybe creating some kind of field? A field
           | gives accelereation instantly and uniformly. So if you can
           | manipulate a field, everything inside it will accelerate as
           | fast as you can gauge it and without feeling G forces. That
           | thing could even have a crew.
        
       | traverseda wrote:
       | Anything here that wouldn't be consistent with a tangible plasma
       | hologram being broadcast from a nearby military installation?
       | 
       | https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plasma
        
       | lizknope wrote:
       | Johnny Harris just made a good video on this last week.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQSxY7TR6mI
        
       | ttpphd wrote:
       | This is a great reminder that I need to bookmark metabunk.org,
       | where Mick West and others go into enormous detail about the UAP
       | evidence, including simulations and reconstructions.
        
         | likeabbas wrote:
         | Mick and others do a great job. But they often leave key
         | details out or selectively choose facts.
         | 
         | For example, with the GIMBAL video, the pilots are on record
         | saying the object is 6-8 nautical miles (NM) away as they saw
         | on their Situation Awareness (SA) Screen. Mick's attempt to
         | debunk the GIMBAL rotation asserts that the object was 30 NM
         | away, and he refuses to look at other evidence that contradicts
         | the statement.
         | 
         | Other scientists have done extensive efforts to show that the
         | rotation of the gimbal object directly correlates with the
         | flight path, which shows to be a vertical u-turn exactly as
         | described by the pilots who had access to the SA
         | https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1504855791060148224?s=...
         | 
         | Metabunk have debunked a lot of things very well. But they have
         | not debunked the 3 navy videos. I can provide more evidence to
         | the analysis on the other two videos to show that these objects
         | are exhibiting foight characteristics that are unique and defy
         | the laws of physics.
        
           | ttpphd wrote:
           | >and he refuses to look at other evidence that contradicts
           | the statement.
           | 
           | Hmm I'm doubtful about this. It would be very unlike him. I
           | found his explanation quite illuminating, and the pilot he
           | had a back and forth with was interesting.
           | 
           | It's been a few months since I checked but last I did, I was
           | satisfied that Mick made a good case for why the others are
           | wrong about the distance.
        
             | likeabbas wrote:
             | There's nothing to doubt. It's all on Twitter. TheCholla
             | has done a fantastic job showing here what f18s look like
             | at different distances on FLIR https://twitter.com/the_chol
             | la/status/1598090777950793729?s=...
             | 
             | Mick refuses to accept the fact the distance is 6-8nm as
             | the pilots stated it was shown on their SAs. Ryan Graves
             | asked Mick to present his analysis at a coalition of former
             | military pilots for them to debate him, but he said he was
             | "too busy".
             | 
             | Again, mick does a great job debunking things that should
             | be debunked. But you can't debunk something by claiming the
             | distance of the object was farther than it actually was
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | > But you can't debunk something by claiming the distance
               | of the object was farther than it actually was
               | 
               | ... farther than instruments indicated ... Which still
               | beats "it's aliens" by a long shot.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Multiple of the most sophisticated instruments for this
               | purpose on the planet are capturing this data. If the US
               | was flying F18s that misconstrued the range of a foreign
               | adversary by over 20 nautical miles, that would be a huge
               | story in of itself.
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | You trust the tech way too much to the point of not being
               | able to confidently reject the impossible.
               | 
               | This woderful US military tech tracked a guy in
               | Afghanistan for a day and bombed him thinking that water
               | he was carrying home to his children is explosive and
               | he's a terrorist.
               | 
               | It's not aliens.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | I am not rejecting the possibility of this being human
               | technology. to quote the former Deputy Secretary of
               | Defense for Intelligence "The Alien Hypothesis currently
               | best fits the facts".
        
               | scotty79 wrote:
               | Yeah. But that's impossible. So there, on Earth, are just
               | two kinds of intelligence.
               | 
               | Human intelligence and military intelligence. Because
               | there's no alien intelligence here.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | Everything is impossible until it is done.
               | 
               | We have been to space. We have theories that FTL travel
               | may be possible (Alcubierre drives, wormholes). The JWST
               | just showed us that galaxies formed as early as 300
               | million years after the Big Bang. Hell, we didn't know
               | there were planets outside of our solar system until the
               | 1990s. We still don't know what Dark Matter or Dark
               | Energy are. We have far more left to explore and
               | understand.
               | 
               | I despise people like you who try to diminish every
               | important scientific venture because you think you know
               | better.
        
           | dharmab wrote:
           | The SA page on the MPCD is very small and cluttered. Is it
           | possible that the pilots made a mistake?
        
             | stevenhuang wrote:
             | It's not an isolated incident. There has been many
             | sightings and direct action (e.g. fighter jets sent to
             | pursue) by members of US military as well as those in other
             | countries.
             | 
             | The Navy incident got the traction it did because the
             | original footage leaked years ago and only now
             | acknowledged.
             | 
             | If you're interested, see here for a documentary on the
             | Colares, Brazil UFO incident that occurred in 1977
             | https://youtu.be/Mr1NrnsdY5I
        
             | likeabbas wrote:
             | According to one of the pilots, there is a longer,
             | classified video of the incident that shows the SA page and
             | has the distance listed there.
             | 
             | People make mistakes, but data doesn't. And according to
             | these pilots and the former head of the DoD UAP program,
             | the data shows that there are craft moving in our airspace
             | with impunity.
        
               | noizejoy wrote:
               | > People make mistakes, but data doesn't.
               | 
               | But data collection, storage, retrieval and/or
               | interpretation may contain errors.
        
               | likeabbas wrote:
               | That's why it's important to look at all the reported
               | cases to get a probabilistic measure. The 3 videos
               | represent 2 cases that occurred. The DoD has over 300
               | unidentified cases currently. At least 18 exhibit flight
               | characteristics that don't seem possible.
        
               | cma wrote:
               | Wouldn't that be revealing classified info? Probably no
               | punishment if the "classified info" is made up as a prank
               | so he can freely claim it if it isn't real but would be
               | risking punishment if it was.
        
       | isthisthingon99 wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | jbm wrote:
         | That is a nearly 2 hour video without any links or any details,
         | with the top comment being from someone with the name "woke
         | world order". Can you please offer some synopsis beyond the
         | video title?
        
       | somat wrote:
       | On the subject of the term UFO.
       | 
       | The term Unidentified Flying Object is perfectly fine. But then
       | some people say "Aha, you mean aliens, right". No, It is like the
       | SQL NULL, No unidentified object matches any other unidentified
       | object. If I meant aliens I would have said it was an Identified
       | Flying Object(IFO) or perhaps an Extrateresteral Flying
       | Object(EFO), But all I said was that something was flying and I
       | could not identify it. Once you identify it, it is no longer a
       | UFO.
       | 
       | Apparently The military abandoned the term UFO mainly because
       | enough people attached more meaning to the term than it actually
       | has. And it got awkward to use because of that attached meaning.
        
       | hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
       | The pessimistic part of me thinks that was a top secret black
       | project of either drones or sensor interference.
       | 
       | The optimistic part of me thinks that was part of galactic
       | refugee flights that hide themselves in deep ocean, using the
       | humans as shields and can only be detected by the Empire if close
       | enough. This part of me sincerly believes I will join the
       | resistance by invitation.
        
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