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It'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

by gfodor 9y ago

It'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 ago
This 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 ago
When 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.
- electrograv 9y ago
  Or more likely, if alien UFO visitation is real (a huuuuge IF), it’s more likely that programs like this have existed since the 1950s, and are now deeply entrenched within the government as “black programs” with unlimited “black budgets”, and likely some connection to the pentagon etc. The countless stories and admissions of former military and intelligence officers blowing the whistle on deep shadow governments always sound so crazy, but the sheer number of them over time is... disturbing. As a skeptic to conspiracy theories, I don’t know what to make of it. In any case: The pentagon shutting down a new independently started investigation group (in this hypothetical world where alien UFOs exist) would totally make sense, as it would be redundant to the extremely secret programs already in existence and only a liability for possible interference. They also wouldn’t be able to tell them why they’re shutting it down or cutting off funding, because th secrecy level of such a thing would go so much deeper. It’s hard to believe this has any credibility at all, but if this NYT article is genuine and the claims of real progress made by a small and brief program are real, I don’t know what to think to be honest.
  - hux_ 9y ago
    Well...they filed reports. You go to your local PD and you can find someone pointing at file cabinets full of all kind of reports. You will also find someone there ranting about how he is not getting enough funding to do his job well.
valuearb 9y ago
It’s pretty clear that people see UFOs all the time. The problem is when they are identified. My daughter sees one nearly every car ride, something in the sky that isn’t shaped like a plane, and certainly doesn’t move like one. Guess what? when we get closer it’s always an airliner, or a helicopter, or a balloon. It’s easy to get mislead by the light, the perspective, the shadows, the distance, etc. The really dumb part is the grandiose idea that aliens traveled immense distances to hide from us. The amount of energy needed to reach the a nearby star in any reasonable time is greater than the total of energy mankind has ever generated. If they have the technology and power to travel here, they have nothing to fear from us. We are ants to them. They only question is whether they’d even deign to contact us at all?
- madaxe_again 9y ago
  We’d make a good case study of a civilisation negotiating a critical juncture. I’d dare say we’d be of interest to sociologists and historians, and given where we’re at there might even be something of a careless stampede to gather data before the idiot quadrupeds wipe themselves out. There can’t be that many civilisations going through the hockey stick/environmental catastrophe stage in this galactic neck of the woods at any given time. As to contact - doubt it’s happened - it’d fuck up the data, and spoil the case study. So long as we keep on ignoring weird stuff because it’s weird the experiment is ok. As to distances - well, that’s our perception of it - the best we can do is brute force through 3d space - and if they can manoeuvre as they appear to be able to, they may well have some means of travel that is, well, alien to us, such as some variety of extra dimensional travel.
  - throwaway7645 9y ago
    How many species are at the hockey stick point is unknown...depends on what numbers you plug into the Drake equation variables. Could be rare or lots of us. I think the rest of your comment is plausible.
- passwordreset 9y ago
  When we (biologists) study other species, we travel long distances to examine them in their habitat. We try to hide so we can see them in their natural state, without our interference. If one suggested that this were 'dumb' or 'grandiose', then they would be ridiculed, as they would have exposed their own ignorance through that comment. The thought that a species might travel far to investigate another species in situ while attempting to avoid contamination is reasonable to a non-zero number of biologists.
Retric 9y ago
People lack depth perception in the sky which makes it easy to wildly misunderstand things. A great example shown by some UFO show was a side camera from the space shuttle. The footage has a nice curvature of the earth, with lot's of little specks that seem to be orbiting it way out in the distance. You see a maneuvering thruster fire then in slow motion a few heartbeats later these specks shoot off in a new direction. Now, if you assume they where large objects far away they must have been moving incredibly quickly and have insane acceleration. However, if you realize they are flecks of paint etc/ near the shuttle pushed out of the way by the maneuvering thruster then they where not actually moving fast relative to the shuttle at any point.
- gfodor 9y ago
  Your analysis is one of the more obvious explanations and as such it has been considered thoroughly before for the cases that remain unexplained. Typically these cases include radar signatures or other corroborating evidence.
  - imglorp 9y ago
    If the F-18 HUD footage in OP is real, that would indicate the avionics picked it up, tracked it, and reported the heading and velocity. This is also interesting because the FLIR showed the object as mostly black: not emitting heat as a jet would.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - pluto9 9y ago
      The object is hot. Military FLIR devices can be toggled between "white hot" and "black hot" settings. You can see the BLK/WHT indicator in the lower left corner of the footage. The pilot/observer toggles it at about 12 seconds into the video.
- electrograv 9y ago
  That’s why the FA-18 footage is so compelling to me. This is not the easily fooled human eye we’re talking about: Radar tracking and thermal vision almost completely eliminates simple optical illusions from the list of natural explanations. Even more bizarre is how the craft appears totally cold, while there is a warm thermal halo of some kind around the craft, with a pattern very reminiscent of high energy fields.
api 9y ago
Part of the problem is all the crazy mythology around the subject. But strip that off and it has always seemed to me that there is an interesting residue of facts. It's not enough to prove anything but it's enough to be intriguing. One possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that they are here but are just not making overt obvious contact. If this were true we'd probably be talking about a "post-singularity" super intelligence. It would be nearly immortal and thus very patient. Contact protocols might take thousands of years.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gfodor 9y ago
  After reading "The Dark Forest" I've leaned towards the idea that we are under pervasive observation (likely by hard-to-detect autonomous AI agents of some form, the origin of which is relatively inconsequential) and once the probability tilts towards a non-zero value that we are a threat beyond a certain blast radius we'll be wiped out. If that were true, and the message of that being the case were delivered somehow to our governments, the general status quo around these phenomena and the propaganda steering people away from caring about them would be explainable. People have barely gotten used to the idea of mortality, but to know your race was doomed to extinction with certainty would almost certainly cause massive civil unrest and a major disruption to almost all human institutions and culture that assume our collective future is unbounded. Perhaps this is too tinfoil but it's an internally consistent story, perhaps with the exception of how or why these agents would be detectable at all, when they surely could conceal themselves completely -- perhaps it's just probabilities though since there would not be much downside of detection by a primitive civilization such as ours.
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    > the message of that being the case were delivered somehow to our governments, That would make a fun plot for a movie. But having worked with the government and then also having observed leaks of top secret information and tools coming out the supposedly most secretive government institutions, I cannot believe they would be competent enough to keep that information under a tight lid for long. Someone, somehow would have ex-filtrated some proof by now. What I can see happening the government not necessarily encouraging but perhaps not discouraging either these rumors from spreading in order to divert attention from say testing of experimental aircraft.
drukenemo 9y ago
Thanks for the book tip, bought it immediately.
throwaway0458 9y ago
In the early 90s in southern OH, me and my brother watched an object exactly like those in the article, while 4 (IIRC) fighter jets attempted to intercept it. Unlike in the article, they did fire on it, and the object moved and accelerated faster than the missiles. They missed several times, until it disappeared and the jets turned back. I think how close they got in the article is the limits of our tech. We happen upon them randomly, and the crafts are so much more advanced than ours that it's impossible to knock one down to study it further.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  This is highly unlikely. There have been no occurrences of US military aircraft firing missiles at unidentified threats over Ohio, ever. To put it clearly - this did not happen. You didn't see what you think you saw.

by gfodor 9y ago

mratzloff 9y ago

This 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 ago

When 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.

electrograv 9y ago
Or more likely, if alien UFO visitation is real (a huuuuge IF), it’s more likely that programs like this have existed since the 1950s, and are now deeply entrenched within the government as “black programs” with unlimited “black budgets”, and likely some connection to the pentagon etc. The countless stories and admissions of former military and intelligence officers blowing the whistle on deep shadow governments always sound so crazy, but the sheer number of them over time is... disturbing. As a skeptic to conspiracy theories, I don’t know what to make of it. In any case: The pentagon shutting down a new independently started investigation group (in this hypothetical world where alien UFOs exist) would totally make sense, as it would be redundant to the extremely secret programs already in existence and only a liability for possible interference. They also wouldn’t be able to tell them why they’re shutting it down or cutting off funding, because th secrecy level of such a thing would go so much deeper. It’s hard to believe this has any credibility at all, but if this NYT article is genuine and the claims of real progress made by a small and brief program are real, I don’t know what to think to be honest.
- hux_ 9y ago
  Well...they filed reports. You go to your local PD and you can find someone pointing at file cabinets full of all kind of reports. You will also find someone there ranting about how he is not getting enough funding to do his job well.

valuearb 9y ago

It’s pretty clear that people see UFOs all the time. The problem is when they are identified. My daughter sees one nearly every car ride, something in the sky that isn’t shaped like a plane, and certainly doesn’t move like one. Guess what? when we get closer it’s always an airliner, or a helicopter, or a balloon. It’s easy to get mislead by the light, the perspective, the shadows, the distance, etc. The really dumb part is the grandiose idea that aliens traveled immense distances to hide from us. The amount of energy needed to reach the a nearby star in any reasonable time is greater than the total of energy mankind has ever generated. If they have the technology and power to travel here, they have nothing to fear from us. We are ants to them. They only question is whether they’d even deign to contact us at all?

madaxe_again 9y ago
We’d make a good case study of a civilisation negotiating a critical juncture. I’d dare say we’d be of interest to sociologists and historians, and given where we’re at there might even be something of a careless stampede to gather data before the idiot quadrupeds wipe themselves out. There can’t be that many civilisations going through the hockey stick/environmental catastrophe stage in this galactic neck of the woods at any given time. As to contact - doubt it’s happened - it’d fuck up the data, and spoil the case study. So long as we keep on ignoring weird stuff because it’s weird the experiment is ok. As to distances - well, that’s our perception of it - the best we can do is brute force through 3d space - and if they can manoeuvre as they appear to be able to, they may well have some means of travel that is, well, alien to us, such as some variety of extra dimensional travel.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  How many species are at the hockey stick point is unknown...depends on what numbers you plug into the Drake equation variables. Could be rare or lots of us. I think the rest of your comment is plausible.
passwordreset 9y ago
When we (biologists) study other species, we travel long distances to examine them in their habitat. We try to hide so we can see them in their natural state, without our interference. If one suggested that this were 'dumb' or 'grandiose', then they would be ridiculed, as they would have exposed their own ignorance through that comment. The thought that a species might travel far to investigate another species in situ while attempting to avoid contamination is reasonable to a non-zero number of biologists.

Retric 9y ago

People lack depth perception in the sky which makes it easy to wildly misunderstand things. A great example shown by some UFO show was a side camera from the space shuttle. The footage has a nice curvature of the earth, with lot's of little specks that seem to be orbiting it way out in the distance. You see a maneuvering thruster fire then in slow motion a few heartbeats later these specks shoot off in a new direction. Now, if you assume they where large objects far away they must have been moving incredibly quickly and have insane acceleration. However, if you realize they are flecks of paint etc/ near the shuttle pushed out of the way by the maneuvering thruster then they where not actually moving fast relative to the shuttle at any point.

gfodor 9y ago
Your analysis is one of the more obvious explanations and as such it has been considered thoroughly before for the cases that remain unexplained. Typically these cases include radar signatures or other corroborating evidence.
- imglorp 9y ago
  If the F-18 HUD footage in OP is real, that would indicate the avionics picked it up, tracked it, and reported the heading and velocity. This is also interesting because the FLIR showed the object as mostly black: not emitting heat as a jet would.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - pluto9 9y ago
    The object is hot. Military FLIR devices can be toggled between "white hot" and "black hot" settings. You can see the BLK/WHT indicator in the lower left corner of the footage. The pilot/observer toggles it at about 12 seconds into the video.
electrograv 9y ago
That’s why the FA-18 footage is so compelling to me. This is not the easily fooled human eye we’re talking about: Radar tracking and thermal vision almost completely eliminates simple optical illusions from the list of natural explanations. Even more bizarre is how the craft appears totally cold, while there is a warm thermal halo of some kind around the craft, with a pattern very reminiscent of high energy fields.

api 9y ago

Part of the problem is all the crazy mythology around the subject. But strip that off and it has always seemed to me that there is an interesting residue of facts. It's not enough to prove anything but it's enough to be intriguing. One possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that they are here but are just not making overt obvious contact. If this were true we'd probably be talking about a "post-singularity" super intelligence. It would be nearly immortal and thus very patient. Contact protocols might take thousands of years.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gfodor 9y ago
After reading "The Dark Forest" I've leaned towards the idea that we are under pervasive observation (likely by hard-to-detect autonomous AI agents of some form, the origin of which is relatively inconsequential) and once the probability tilts towards a non-zero value that we are a threat beyond a certain blast radius we'll be wiped out. If that were true, and the message of that being the case were delivered somehow to our governments, the general status quo around these phenomena and the propaganda steering people away from caring about them would be explainable. People have barely gotten used to the idea of mortality, but to know your race was doomed to extinction with certainty would almost certainly cause massive civil unrest and a major disruption to almost all human institutions and culture that assume our collective future is unbounded. Perhaps this is too tinfoil but it's an internally consistent story, perhaps with the exception of how or why these agents would be detectable at all, when they surely could conceal themselves completely -- perhaps it's just probabilities though since there would not be much downside of detection by a primitive civilization such as ours.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > the message of that being the case were delivered somehow to our governments, That would make a fun plot for a movie. But having worked with the government and then also having observed leaks of top secret information and tools coming out the supposedly most secretive government institutions, I cannot believe they would be competent enough to keep that information under a tight lid for long. Someone, somehow would have ex-filtrated some proof by now. What I can see happening the government not necessarily encouraging but perhaps not discouraging either these rumors from spreading in order to divert attention from say testing of experimental aircraft.

drukenemo 9y ago

Thanks for the book tip, bought it immediately.

throwaway0458 9y ago

In the early 90s in southern OH, me and my brother watched an object exactly like those in the article, while 4 (IIRC) fighter jets attempted to intercept it. Unlike in the article, they did fire on it, and the object moved and accelerated faster than the missiles. They missed several times, until it disappeared and the jets turned back. I think how close they got in the article is the limits of our tech. We happen upon them randomly, and the crafts are so much more advanced than ours that it's impossible to knock one down to study it further.

grkvlt 9y ago
This is highly unlikely. There have been no occurrences of US military aircraft firing missiles at unidentified threats over Ohio, ever. To put it clearly - this did not happen. You didn't see what you think you saw.