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Keep in mind one branch of the military was successfully flying this in 1977: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Have_Blue_bottom_view.j

Keep in mind one branch of the military was successfully flying this in 1977: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Have_Blue_bottom_view.jpg/220px-Have_Blue_bottom_view.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Ha... (a picture of Have Blue - the precursor to the stealth fighter. It defiantly looks like something out of this world to the eyes of someone in 1977)

dkersten 9y ago
And then there's stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar So, really, its likely that any UFO is military in nature, rather than extraterrestrial.
- gfodor 9y ago
  This is a common retort (in my view, to make people feel better and not have to consider the implications otherwise) -- here's the pentagon official in charge of the program stating unequivocally that these are almost certainly not related to any aircraft in any national inventory https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-at-the-pentagon-spent-million-to-study-ufos https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-at-t... The thing that makes these interesting is the fact that they exhibit aeronautic behavior, while tracked by multiple computers and witnesses, that is not physically possible with known methods of propulsion, not because they look like shiny discs.
  - justonepost 9y ago
    Why would he necessarily know the complete inventory? Presumably there are top secret programs where it's all very much a need to know basis.
    - dkersten 9y ago
      Or he knew them but didn't want to reveal anything about them.
    - neonhomer 9y ago
      Exactly, it all goes back to the movie Independence Day, he doesn't know everything so he has "plausible deniability!"
  - deepnotderp 9y ago
    There's nothing that's not physically possible here, just bottlenecked by G forces limitations on human passengers. Given the fact that drone technology testing was extremely popular at the time, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just experimental drone testing.
    - robotomir 9y ago
      There are no exhaust trails or visible jet engines in the footage, so I'd say those UFOs are outside the limits of the physically possible as we understand it.
    - gfodor 9y ago
      How can you possibly make this claim? The director of this program is on record saying that after deploying extensive analytical resources at the Pentagon onto all the evidence (cross referencing radar signatures, satellite feeds, etc) and leveraging internal expertise to rule out alternatives there remain cases for which there remains no explanation consistent with the idea that these are aircraft in any government's inventory or any other natural phenomena. Either this person is lying, or somehow otherwise should be given no credibility, or the government has decided to reveal that there are in fact objects in the sky whose origin are, to the best of our country's ability to analyze them, unknown. This person specifically ruled out the idea in their NPR interview that these objects are part of some hidden government advanced aircraft program. You can believe what you want to sleep better at night, such as that there is in fact some hyper-advanced tech the government has that this program was kept in the dark about, but there's not much wiggle room at this point other than to accept that the level of public acknowledgement of the UFO phenomena by the federal government (and particularly, the department of defense) has changed significantly now and that there is a very high prior that there are objects in the sky whose origins are a mystery.
      - amazingman 9y ago
        Indeed. I’m as skeptical as it gets re: UFOs—and in general, really—and I have no idea how to process these videos without coming to the conclusion that something significantly outside of all current human understanding is going on.
- garmaine 9y ago
  Reading about the Avrocar, I am surprised the design was not taking up more recently. It’s kind of the jet equivalent of the quadracopter, in terms of its operating envelope. It seems like all the problems that Frost had back in the 50s could’ve been fixed with modern design tools and competitions fluid dynamics. Except for the inability to achieve high speed flight let alone Mach 3.3 which military was interested in. But I wonder about using the flying saucer design has more efficient drone or regional delivery system, as it has the efficiency of jet power with the mobility of a helicopter, and its short range and low speeds are not a concern in those applications. I hope some enterprising aeronautical engineering student at Calpoly parters with some compsci engineers at Stanford to take this up...
justonepost 9y ago
That would be the simplest explanation. Given the huge amount of money spent on US military, the value of having advanced military aircraft in their inventory, and the desire to keep the technology secret and out of enemy hands - military based UFOs seems like a reasonable conclusion. The fact that the aircraft is moving at G forces unsustainable by biological life isn't surprising either given advances in drone tech. It would also make sense to shut the UFO program down as well if it was ending up with these secret programs getting accidentally revealed.
greywolf 9y ago
that's a paper airplane!

dkersten 9y ago

And then there's stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar So, really, its likely that any UFO is military in nature, rather than extraterrestrial.

gfodor 9y ago
This is a common retort (in my view, to make people feel better and not have to consider the implications otherwise) -- here's the pentagon official in charge of the program stating unequivocally that these are almost certainly not related to any aircraft in any national inventory https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-at-the-pentagon-spent-million-to-study-ufos https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-at-t... The thing that makes these interesting is the fact that they exhibit aeronautic behavior, while tracked by multiple computers and witnesses, that is not physically possible with known methods of propulsion, not because they look like shiny discs.
- justonepost 9y ago
  Why would he necessarily know the complete inventory? Presumably there are top secret programs where it's all very much a need to know basis.
  - dkersten 9y ago
    Or he knew them but didn't want to reveal anything about them.
  - neonhomer 9y ago
    Exactly, it all goes back to the movie Independence Day, he doesn't know everything so he has "plausible deniability!"
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  There's nothing that's not physically possible here, just bottlenecked by G forces limitations on human passengers. Given the fact that drone technology testing was extremely popular at the time, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just experimental drone testing.
  - robotomir 9y ago
    There are no exhaust trails or visible jet engines in the footage, so I'd say those UFOs are outside the limits of the physically possible as we understand it.
  - gfodor 9y ago
    How can you possibly make this claim? The director of this program is on record saying that after deploying extensive analytical resources at the Pentagon onto all the evidence (cross referencing radar signatures, satellite feeds, etc) and leveraging internal expertise to rule out alternatives there remain cases for which there remains no explanation consistent with the idea that these are aircraft in any government's inventory or any other natural phenomena. Either this person is lying, or somehow otherwise should be given no credibility, or the government has decided to reveal that there are in fact objects in the sky whose origin are, to the best of our country's ability to analyze them, unknown. This person specifically ruled out the idea in their NPR interview that these objects are part of some hidden government advanced aircraft program. You can believe what you want to sleep better at night, such as that there is in fact some hyper-advanced tech the government has that this program was kept in the dark about, but there's not much wiggle room at this point other than to accept that the level of public acknowledgement of the UFO phenomena by the federal government (and particularly, the department of defense) has changed significantly now and that there is a very high prior that there are objects in the sky whose origins are a mystery.
    - amazingman 9y ago
      Indeed. I’m as skeptical as it gets re: UFOs—and in general, really—and I have no idea how to process these videos without coming to the conclusion that something significantly outside of all current human understanding is going on.
garmaine 9y ago
Reading about the Avrocar, I am surprised the design was not taking up more recently. It’s kind of the jet equivalent of the quadracopter, in terms of its operating envelope. It seems like all the problems that Frost had back in the 50s could’ve been fixed with modern design tools and competitions fluid dynamics. Except for the inability to achieve high speed flight let alone Mach 3.3 which military was interested in. But I wonder about using the flying saucer design has more efficient drone or regional delivery system, as it has the efficiency of jet power with the mobility of a helicopter, and its short range and low speeds are not a concern in those applications. I hope some enterprising aeronautical engineering student at Calpoly parters with some compsci engineers at Stanford to take this up...

justonepost 9y ago

That would be the simplest explanation. Given the huge amount of money spent on US military, the value of having advanced military aircraft in their inventory, and the desire to keep the technology secret and out of enemy hands - military based UFOs seems like a reasonable conclusion. The fact that the aircraft is moving at G forces unsustainable by biological life isn't surprising either given advances in drone tech. It would also make sense to shut the UFO program down as well if it was ending up with these secret programs getting accidentally revealed.

greywolf 9y ago

that's a paper airplane!