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The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program
- tomalpha 9y ago>”...largely funded at the request of Harry Reid...” >”Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s” I don’t know who these people are beyond the fact that one of them was apparently a US senator, but this comes across as capable of being perceived as a conflict of interest (whether true or not). And not necessarily a monetary conflict if the recipient was indeed a billionaire.
- skndr 9y agoIt's the same Bigelow creating inflatable space habitats: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/17/16488646/bigelow-aerospace-united-launch-alliance-b330-habitat-lunar-depot https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/17/16488646/bigelow-aerospa...
- akhilcacharya 9y agoYeah, seems like the potential for expertise is there.
- hutzlibu 9y ago"And not necessarily a monetary conflict if the recipient was indeed a billionaire." I have never heard of a billionaire who said, he has enough money ...
- staunch 9y agoAn F-18 pilot saying "there's a whole fleet of them" on radar is pretty incredible. https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005607812/look-at-that-thing-us-navy-jet-encounters-unknown-object.html?playlistId=1194811622217 https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005607812/look-at-tha...
- nsxwolf 9y agoWhat is that thing?!
- magnat 9y agoLooks like an insect stuck on the camera lens.
- rrmm 9y agoI wouldn't guess an insect, but it does seem to track too well to the heading change of the aircraft. There seems to be no independent movement other than an orientation change. Is the pilot in the video talking to a wingman or his weapons officer? (I think F-18E's are single seaters, but F-18F has a backseat).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jboggan 9y agoThere were multiple contacts and the F-18s had telemetry on the objects, it wasn't just an optical trick. Also how do two different jets see the same insect stuck on a lens?
- AgentME 9y agoIs there video available from multiple jets? Maybe they didn't ever clearly see it. Maybe they kinda thought they saw something, and lead themselves to believe they did because the other jet was so sure of it. About the radar comment: how often are there false positives on the radar? If they didn't see anything at all, would they have written off the radar results because they normally get that kind of noise? Maybe after thinking they saw something, they read too far into the radar noise. Yeah, I know I'm proposing a couple coincidences, but we only hear about the situations where all the coincidences line up. And really, a couple mild coincidences lining up like this must happen often across the world, and seems more likely to describe this case than this being something extraordinary.
- nkkollaw 9y agoThe video looks fake..?
- pmx 9y agoHow so?
- nkkollaw 9y agoI don't know, the clouds don't look real to me. I also wonder why resolution mist always be this low, my cell phone ($250) can shoot 4K and a plane that costs millions can't shoot video that is detailed enough to investigate the phenomenon.
- nradov 9y agoAvionics are always way behind consumer electronics due to safety and reliability certification requirements, as well as tiny production volumes. How well would your cell phone hold up to thousands of hours of intense vibrations, freezing temperatures, hard shocks, and hydraulic fluid leaks?
- lolufos 9y agoI think that video is from 2004, or at least the article makes mention of that, although the caption doesn’t date it.
- imjustsaying 9y ago>I also wonder why resolution mist always be this low "I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. " -Mitch Hedberg
- Spooky23 9y agoIt’s from a moving fighter jet at night at a significant distance. Not saying it’s ET, but that seems like a bit unreasonable beef.
- knowaveragejoe 9y ago
- ianai 9y agoSpend more looking for UFOs or, you know, we could invest in, say, cyber security for our elections and infrastructure programs...
- kilroy123 9y agoThe one guy featured in this article, Luis Elizondo, is apart of Tom Delonge's (guy from the rock band Blink 182) wacky new company To The Stars Academy https://tothestarsacademy.com https://tothestarsacademy.com. So yeah, I'm not sure he can be taken very seriously. Just listen to Tom Delong on Joe Rogan's podcast and see how wacky this all is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n_3mnJfHzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n_3mnJfHzY
- asdjasldkjkljd 9y agoTom Delonge is out of his fucking mind.
- throwaway7645 9y agoThat academy link is pretty "out there" and def hard to take seriously when you see consciousness and other things mentioned like that.
- moab9 9y agoYep. and the guy he went to work for after the project ended is a level vii thetan Scientologist and known crackpot.
- dang 9y agoSee also https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-object-navy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15941580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15941580), which is an extension of this story.
- akhilcacharya 9y agoThe most interesting part to me >Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft. >“We’re sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage-door opener,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program. “First of all, he’d try to figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn’t know anything about the electromagnetic signals involved or its function.” They claim to have physical evidence? Seems like a buried lede if even remotely true.
- WaxProlix 9y agoProsaic bits of metal and rock, perhaps, spun to be containing some sort of unknowable potential for unknowable purpose.
- crooked-v 9y agoThere's also "unexplained aerial phenomena" as the generic cover for materials recovered from the secret research programs of other countries.
- wolf550e 9y agoBut come on, if US intelligence agencies recovered metallurgy from Russian hypersonic missiles or something like that, why would they use UFO for cover? And why would they store it outside of AFRL? I think it's just a way to funnel taxpayer money, there is nothing real being investigated. Not extraterrestrial tech, not foreign tech, not even domestic tech.
- StanislavPetrov 9y ago
- olegkikin 9y agoI looks like the plane is making a left turn, and yet the object is dead center in the screen with barely any shake. And it's definitely not stabilized, because all the lines on the display are still. So maybe the pilot has some crazy ability to track a flying object perfectly while turning, but try doing it in any game and I think you will fail.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eric_h 9y agoI know nothing about the current state of military tech, but that looks like a targeting camera that has some sort of edge detection allowing it to track the object. The vertical lines to the left and right of the object appear computer controlled, to me, especially because they track the left and right edges of the object and the vertical length changes in a way that seems reactive to the object on screen. The brief moment where those lines don't have the object centered and then it just jumps back into place (at the very end of the video ~31-32s) screams computer assisted to me. In short, I don't think that's manual tracking, because I'm pretty sure that even a Navy pilot would have trouble tracking it that perfectly by hand.
- maskull 9y agocould be this ATFLIR pod, same reticle seen here: https://theaviationist.com/2017/09/21/heres-the-video-of-the-syrian-su-22-fitter-being-shot-down-by-a-u-s-navy-fa-18e-super-hornet/comment-page-3/ https://theaviationist.com/2017/09/21/heres-the-video-of-the...
- neurotech1 9y agoThe pod is an AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR[0][1], a type of IRST (InfraRed Search & Tracking) system. The pod is either cued by the F/A-18 radar, or automatically tracked by pod itself. The ATFLIR has a computer assisted stabilization system. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ASQ-228_ATFLIR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ASQ-228_ATFLIR [1] https://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/atflir/ https://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/atflir/
- neurotech1 9y agoCmdr. Dave Fravor was one of the most squared away F/A-18 pilots in the Navy. He is not some conspiracy "nut" and if he says he saw something, I'd believe him. He is held in high regard by those who served with him. Cmdr. Fravor was featured in the PBS Carrier series [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_(documentary) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_(documentary) [1] http://www.pbs.org/show/carrier/ http://www.pbs.org/show/carrier/
- michaelcampbell 9y ago> Cmdr. Dave Fravor was one of the most squared away F/A-18 pilots in the Navy. He is not some conspiracy "nut"... I see no correlation, implication, or relevance between these 2 statements.
- passwordreset 9y agoIt doesn't say this in TFA, but Fravor was one of the airmen who reported the incident to the NYT, hence the relevance. As he was allegedly denigrated by some as a nut, the 2nd sentence fragment is relevant as well. Neither correlation nor implication are needed to understand neurotech1's message; however, it does reference facts outside the article that one could gather from a quick google search, if desired. http://www.google.com/search?q=fravor+ufo http://www.google.com/search?q=fravor+ufo
- valuearb 9y agoSquared away people don’t have magic eyesight. It’s easy to get fooled.
- flipfloppity 9y agoExcept the object is clearly visible on the F-18's IRST camera footage. It was also picked up on radar by a surface cruiser and a nearby E-2 Hawkeye. See: https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/ https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/
- 9y ago
- remir 9y agoThere's no doubt there's a kind of aura of ridicule around the subject of UFOs and I'm sure credible people don't want to be associated with it. That being said, I think it's something worthy of exploration. My interest in the subject really began when I listen to people around me who saw and experienced things. It's one thing to read books or watch documentaries about UFOs, but it's another when normal "everyday people" who aren't interested in this kind of thing tell you their stories.
- valuearb 9y agoWhat’s worth exploring is space. Better telescopes, more monitoring, etc will actually tell us something about tye possibilities or existence of alien life. Chasing down misidentified flying objects and hoaxes will not. The idea that numerous spaceships, each with more potential kinetic energy than mankind has created in its entire history, are just flying around our atmosphere without leaving massive and easily recordable emissions is ludicrous.
- madaxe_again 9y agoIt’s ludicrous if you assume they’re using diesel engines and air screws or something. If they can snap accelerate with essentially infinite jerk, as observations seem to suggest, then they’re not playing by the same rule book as us, and have fancy inertialess tech that’s beyond our ken. I’m not some true believer in little green men, just a scientist who won’t rule out what seems impossible just because it seems so. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and all that.
- valuearb 9y agoClarkes law isn’t a scientific principle. The only way that UFOs can be alien technology is if it violates all known laws of physics. Which makes them just as likely to be caused by Jesus Christ as aliens. Yet somehow i never see believers rushing to church. Otherwise you can only examine through the lens of the known physics, which makes them being alien spaceships impossible.
- 9y ago
- maxsavin 9y agoThey're out there folks
- blhack 9y agoHow much do the various militaries and defense contractors communicate with one another? Is it possible that we end up spying on our own technology across departments/contractors?
- dwaltrip 9y agoWhere is the HD footage that actually shows features of the mysterious "unidentified objects"? Why is all the evidence grainy and obscured? The prospect that life from another star system traveled hundreds of trillions of kilometers, only to hide for the past few decades, peeking out briefly for low-quality photoshoots, is beyond absurd.
- mratzloff 9y agoI don't know if alien spacecraft have visited Earth or not, but nothing says they would have to be piloted by aliens. If they exist, they could just as easily be robotic drones.
- dwaltrip 9y agoThat's a good point. Of course, it's possible. I just think it should be the last explanation we consider, after definitively crossing everything else off the list.
- mistersquid 9y ago> If they exist, they could just as easily be robotic drones. While perhaps literally included in the group of "robotic drones", one interesting possibility would be craft piloted by highly-developed machine intelligence, what we might call sentient AI.
- probably_wrong 9y agoI once tried to take a picture of a deer, that I saw running away from me and hiding behind a tree. I knew perfectly well were it was, in which direction it would go, and had enough time to set my phone's camera properly. And yet, thanks to a slow auto-focus and low light, my pictures ended up a blurry, unrecognizable mess. Not even I would believe my story. I gained a lot of respect that day for people who claim to have seen something and yet have no evidence other than blurry, shaky films. If I couldn't do it under perfect conditions, I don't expect a random guy to become all of a sudden a great photographer. In fact, if I wanted to get a picture of a plane right now, with the equipment I have at hand, it would be barely more than a small, dark spot. I don't know whether UFOs are real (and, even if they are, if they really are aliens and not weird, unknown airplane prototypes). But the lack of HD footage would not be on my top list of reasons against it.
- rl3 9y ago>A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Except that, if said technologies are of man-made origin, then the United States is—given its rich history with regards to black aerospace programs—the most likely operator. Maybe Nick Cook was more right than I've been willing to admit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957586
- codeonfire 9y agoMy guess is they send regular pilots up on training to see if they detect whatever latest stealth drone they are also testing. They obviously are not going to tell the pilots beforehand.
- pfisch 9y agoThat does not adequately explain what happened over O’Hare airport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_... or any of these other sightings really.
- chronic193 9y agoAt least take an off the shelf computer vision algorithm, feed it through an adversarial network and generate some fake images. I saw a UFO today. I have no pics. How can I report it? Yeah, sure.
- gfodor 9y agoIt's been pretty clear for some time now for those who study the facts that there is a very good chance there are real objects in the sky that maneuver in ways that conventional aircraft are unable to and cannot be explained adequately as other observed phenomenon. The taboo around this subject due to the common hypothesis they are due to extraterrestrials is a shame because there's been plenty of documented evidence that not only has this been going on but that governments around the world take it seriously enough to investigate it. I found this book to be a good take that avoids hyperbole and tries to stick to the evidence and facts: https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089 https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offic... If you were to ask me to guess, my bet is that current and past government programs to investigate these objects have concluded that a) they are non-threats to US national security and that b) performing further invasive means to investigate them past our current level of understanding is too risky to pursue. So (again if I had to guess) the consensus is, theories of their origin aside, "don't look into it further, and be assured that there will be no harm in not doing so," which is why you can see a program like this shut down without necessarily assuming that it was a waste or a wild goose chase.
- mratzloff 9y agoThis article was co-written by the author of that book. I also recommend that book for those who are curious about evidence-based, well-researched accounts. Written by a journalist. It leaves aside the question of extraterrestrial origin as unprovable and only attempts to answer the question, "Is this phenomena real?"
- frankquist 9y agoWhen I first read the program or its funding had ended, I, like you, also concluded that this was an indication that the Pentagon saw no reason to take it further. But then I jumped into the deep end: who knows the program('s funding) has been discontinued? It could live on in more secrecy, with the discontinuation of its more public form as a decoy. Am I being tinfoil hatted here? It's what I would probably do if I were the Pentagon and found out the program has merit.
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- volgo 9y agoIMO, the fishy part of the article is the cronyism involved in this program: "The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space." So... Harry Reid's friend is absolutely convinced there are aliens, gets Reid to convince congress to fund the program, and all the money goes back to his own company? Not fishy at all.
- frankquist 9y agoSay that you are interested in investigating puzzling phenomena, and you have the money. What more logical step is there than to approach your senate majority leader friend? Such oddball connections are probably the only the way such a program would ever get funded. Edit: well, obviously he didn't have the money. Misspoke. I meant the means (a company with the required infrastructure).
- volgo 9y agoNo, the logical step is to stop and think whether or not you should use public money to do this. If he raised some VC funding, he can go hunt Minotaur for all I care. But this is my money he's using to do this. No thanks
- dawnerd 9y agoI’d rather my tax money go towards huntin aliens than fighting wars TBH. I mean yeah, there’s lot of other things I’d like to see funded but this seems like a drop in the bucket when we’re talking the grand scheme of things.
- golergka 9y ago> No, the logical step is to stop and think whether or not you should use public money to do this. People in first-world countries are usually OK with spending public money on science. So, if you consider it legit science (and he does), it makes perfect sense for him to lobby spending public money on it.
- valuearb 9y agoA partial list of things more believable than UFOs are Alien spaceships 1) Chemtrails. 2) 9/11 conspiracies. 3) JFK assassination conspiracy. 4) Vaccines cause autism. 5) Cell phones cause cancer. etc, etc. The only theory less believable than UFOs being Aliens is flat earth.
- noetic_techy 9y agoOr just very advanced earthly technology hidden in plane sight via the ridicule of people who lump it in...
- flipfloppity 9y agoInteresting read that expands further on the Navy pilot encounter: https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/ https://fightersweep.com/1460/x-files-edition/ Worth noting that the object was observed by a total of 3 F-18s, an E-2 Hawkeye, and a cruiser on the surface.
- madaxe_again 9y agoIt’s totally anecdotal, and I’m just some guy on the internet, but I’ve seen these, or at least something similar, twice - once above Bath, UK, in 2012 - the first hint something was up was a pair of sonic booms as two typhoons hurtled into the airspace over the city. Needless to say, ran out of the office to gawp, and the fighters were circling a thing hovering at about 20,000 feet - bulky ovular object with greebles and lumps, just sitting there in the sky. As they approached it moved sideways as though on rails, and after a few minutes, a cloud formed around it, which then dissipated over a minute - the thing was gone. This was written up in the press the next day as a helicopter pilot in distress. Here’s the story the press ran with - there was no helicopter, I swear it. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129133/Sonic-boom-rocks-large-Britain-Typhoon-jets-despatched-helicopter-emitting-hijacking-signal.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2129133/Sonic-boom-r... The other was at night in the Kazakh steppes, watching a triangle of lights dance in impossible fashion, before zooming up into the sky and disappearing - although given that I was near Baikonur, I give more credence to this one being man made. But the thing over Bath was enough to break my mind. I still struggle to believe I saw anything. Others who saw it with me took the helicopter story and clung to it, because the alternatives are just too damn weird to process. I can understand why the pilot in the story you link was mocked - giving credence to something like this invokes painful cognitive dissonance. Anyway. I’m just a guy on the internet, but I know I saw something. Also, don’t forget Foo Fighters - pilots have been seeing odd things since at least WWII. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter Oh, and there was this peculiar sighting a few years ago - not by me, but credible and bizarre - but again, maybe mundane. https://jpcvanheijst.com/red-lights-over-the-pacific-ocean-august-2014 https://jpcvanheijst.com/red-lights-over-the-pacific-ocean-a...
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- nyolfen 9y agoany old excuse to link this excerpt from adam curtis' hypernormalisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQX08u9PGPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQX08u9PGPA
- jorblumesea 9y agoThe fact that the military is not concerned is the most telling sign. In many ways the military would rather you believe in flying saucers instead of looking for black projects and it's suspected that the original UFO myths were perpetrated by the government to cover up top secret aircraft development. Had someone seen the SR-71 in the 70s, it would have been considered a UFO or "alien technology" because it was so ahead of its time. Many maneuvers "impossible for a plane" are impossible due to the pilot being human, not due to the plane not being capable. The F35 is capable of flight that would legitimately kill the pilot. No pilot, and suddenly you have lots more room to try crazy stuff including extremely high G speeds and turns, wingless designs or just crazy ideas.
- deepnotderp 9y agoHonestly after seeing the crazy stuff the Su 47 Berkut is capable of, I'm almost certain half of these things are just experimental drones.
- phkahler 9y agoI find the video a little odd. The pilot is tracking the object in his center of view but is not turning aggressively to intercept it.
- ceejayoz 9y agoThe video is from the FLIR camera, which is gyroscopically stabilized and locked onto the object. I don't think you can tell what the parent plane is doing unless part of it comes into the FLIR's view. News helicopters have the same tech.
- rasz 9y agoYou could make video tracker like this yourself for ~8 years now using free software, running in real time on cheap laptop/phone. Machine learning source code from 2010: https://github.com/evilsantabot/motld https://github.com/evilsantabot/motld example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2qR60hrD2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2qR60hrD2w
- starrychloe 9y agoSee also https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/40234/what-is-this-unknown-object-in-this-military-video https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/40234/what-is-t...
- hawktheslayer 9y agoIt's always crazy to see HN and Drudge link to the same article.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- valuearb 9y ago“The Pentagon quietly ran a $22 million program to study unidentified flying objects from 2008 to 2012 at the behest of former Senator Harry Reid, the New York Times reported on Saturday, after considering numerous accounts of unexplained phenomena that could involve advanced technology developed by foreign governments or even aliens dropping in to spy on our crapsack world. For years, this program had federal contractors scurrying around trying to identify unexplained phenomena like Mulder and Scully instead of developing new and innovative ways to kill people. The unclassified but secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was funded $22 million from 2008 to 2011, with the vast majority of the funding going to Bigelow Airspace. That’s a company conveniently owned by one of Reid’s friends and donors, Robert Bigelow”
- avenoir 9y agoMy grandmother's sister was married to a man who served as Captain of the 1st rank on a nuclear submarine in the Soviet and maybe even Russian Navy (I don't know exactly when he retired). As I found out later in life, he was also one of the liquidators of Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the effects of which ultimately led to his early death in early 2000s. I know for sure he already retired from military by mid 90s when I was about 10 or 11. Right around that time, me and my pops used to visit them in Moscow on just about every summer break and I remember during one of our stays with his family my dad asked him about this particular subject. His response is something I still remember word-for-word which would translate roughly to "We know they exist. There are people (in the government) working on this. I don't know anything more and this is all i can tell you." I'm not trying to make any conclusions here or get ridiculed. Just sharing something that came from a man who must've had a pretty high clearance in Soviet military. Or maybe he was just trolling us lol
- kevinskii 9y agoWhen I was in submarine sonar school, one of my instructors claimed to have heard sounds under the sea that were not of this world. He said that they made him believe in alien visitation. In the many years and countless thousands of miles of voyages that followed, I never heard a goddamned thing. Oh well.
- ianai 9y agoYou and he were probably using entirely different generations of sonar.
- inks 9y agoI had a Captain while doing my service in Finland he was convinced he had seen a UFO while aboard in Europe during the late 70s, he stood by it even when he was showed the spirit and claimed we must have copied it.
- nyolfen 9y agocould it have been sea mammals? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlrcbKlW4Tw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlrcbKlW4Tw
- swendoog 9y agoFrom the article: "A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered" Wait, what? What are the "technologies discovered"?
- valuearb 9y agoThis director is the sane crazy nut working with Tom DeLonge now.
- eksemplar 9y agoI never knew that HN was so full of people who might be spotted on reddits conspiracy subteddit.
- DoubleCribble 9y agoAnd if they do exist, then what? Piss 'em off by trying to kill or capture one?(more likely) Send Richard Dreyfuss up for an extended visit to Wyoming?(less likely)
- djffheioi1 9y agoWhat concerns me about these things is the likelihood of it being an earthbound experimental aircraft. If it's not ours, and it looks like magic to us, we're losing our air superiority.
- jl6 9y agoIt looks like a bug on the lens...
- Tasboo 9y agoSince people are sharing their own anecdotes, I'll share mine. Rather my dad's and my sister's anecdote. They were driving home one summer evening near sunset in Wisconsin when they saw in the perfectly clear sky ahead of them what appeared to be something floating in the sky. They way they described it was it looked like how a school bus might look at night from a distance with it's lights on in the inside except just the upper half of the bus, like a row of closely placed lights on a horizontal object. They say it moved around a bit in the sky, clearly some distance away from them and then slowly shrank and disappeared. These two people are not the type of people to lie about something like this. My dad hates science fiction and has zero imagination. My sister is a goody two shoes who would be hard pressed to adamantly lie about this. They told my mom and I this as soon as they arrived home. They looked like they saw a ghost or something when they told us. Adding to this, is that like a month or two later, we were talking to a friend of ours in the area and our friend also confirmed seeing the same object except they live about 10 miles east of us. The thing is, our friend just told us this without us bringing the subject up, so it wasn't like she was 'me too'ing our story. The friend was relieved a bit that someone else had seen what she had seen. Keep in mind, this is the middle of nowhere Wisconsin. Moderately poor area. Just farms, very small towns, and forests for miles. No planes fly this low in the area. No airfields for at least 30 miles, and the nearest airfield is for very small planes only. The only planes you see in in our area are ones way up in the sky. Googling the description of what they describe comes up with something that people refer to as a 'cigar' shaped ufo (the recent astroid sighting has muddied the google results of this a bit). So it seems at least some other people have seen something similar to this.
- aptsurdist 9y agoOne of the most fascinating aspects of the video is that the thing rotates. As others have noted, the camera is auto-centering the object. If you look at the object's movement relative to the clouds in the background, it seems that the object might be turning and exposing its broader side to the relative direction of travel as seen from the camera. And then slowing down in the plane as viewed from the camera. Note, this movement is relative and it's very hard to get a sense of perspective. So rather than slowing down, this could be the object banking and changing direction to move towards or away from the camera? Maybe it's just a foreign aircraft with some kind of wingless shape like the B-2 bomber? I can't find a good source, but it seems there are blogs talking about new foreign stealth drones that could look like this. (http://defence-blog.com/news/new-stealth-bomber-spotted-in-china.html http://defence-blog.com/news/new-stealth-bomber-spotted-in-c... -- not sure if this source is legit) P.S. This is all assuming that this is indeed some kind of flying thing and not some kind of mirage.
- jim_combinator 9y agoHarry Reid is as crooked as a dog's hind leg. In fact, that democrat putz is so crooked they'll have to screw him into the ground when he dies. Anyway, I hope his buddy Robert Bigelow the male gigolo finds something interesting and shares his wares because something's going on up there.
- dang 9y agoPlease stop posting uncivil, unsubstantive comments to HN. You're welcome here, but comments like this are not, regardless of how bad some other people may be. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
- neil_macintyre 9y agoDoes anyone have a link to the official government release of this information. I have been searching for sometime but only can find secondary news cites (and we all know they have there ways of messing with the facts).
- INTPenis 9y agoMilitary loves funding. I wouldn't be surprised if military guys were fanning the flames of the UFO claims in front of the right legislators to get the funding they want. Find out what a person truly believes in and you can rule them.