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So, in at least a couple of cases, these events coincide with the deployment of new air defense tech with advanced information processing capabilities? One shou

So, in at least a couple of cases, these events coincide with the deployment of new air defense tech with advanced information processing capabilities? One should at least consider the possibility that they are machine-generated artifacts, possibly responses to unusual conditions that have mundane explanations.

lugg 7y ago
Or its just aliens.
api 7y ago
Wasn't there optical and IR footage? Seems unlikely that many discrete systems would all have ghosting artifacts at the same time and location. Or maybe I am mixing reports. I've read about several recently.
- etrevino 7y ago
  Yeah, as I understand it there were visual sightings as well.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  IR is optical too; same phenomenon can affect both.
  - api 7y ago
    Both radar and IR? From different vantage points? Seems just as far fetched as aliens or someone else's (China, Russia?) black budget tech saying "hi." Or hell maybe it's some of our own secret tech being tested against our own conventional tech. That would explain why the military brass showed up right after. They were collecting their data. I have to come out of the closet though and say I don't totally dismiss aliens. I would need a lot more evidence to make it more than a speculation, but IMHO it is not an unreasonable one. The discovery that Earth like planets are likely common makes the Fermi paradox very paradoxical. One potential answer is indeed "they are here but are not making overt contact." There are numerous rational reasons an intelligence might avoid overt contact, too many to list here...
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      You wrote optical and IR. Anyways, the only footage I've seen so far is that FLIR video from a plane showing a weird object that happens to precisely follow the rotation of the camera and behave exactly as you'd expect an internal reflection in sensor optics to behave. Given that this is apparently the only footage publicly available from that incident, I'm inclined to discount the reports that some people say they saw something on other instruments.
      - macawfish 7y ago
        I was under the impression that the camera/plane was tracking the object
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        It was. But the video looks like the camera software is trying to track something that's on or within the camera, thus doing a steady rotation at roughly uniform rate. In plane's frame of reference, this footage would correspond to an object trajectory shaped like a circle centered around the plane. That's a pretty weird trajectory to have. See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9D8dzl4zGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9D8dzl4zGk. And tell me, why would the UFO start rotating exactly at the moment the camera is about to cross 0 degrees, and persist through what looks like camera axis reorientation, continuously rotating at the rate about 2x of the rate camera axis rotates?
        tatersolid 7y ago
        Most gimbal-based mechanical systems systems are made to rotate “unnecessarily” to avoid gimbal lock when two of the gimbals are about to coincide. The fact that this happens at very near zero degrees makes perfect sense if that’s where the gimbals would become aligned and locked.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  The footage was IR only... The pilots audio discussed 'seeing' the things, but it's not 100% assertained, except via post-hoc assertion by the rights owner of the video, that the pilots aren't referring to what they see on their MFDs.
  - wbl 7y ago
    There is no rights owner. It was made by government employees in the course of official duties hence uncopyrighted.
dontbenebby 7y ago
>One should at least consider the possibility that they are machine-generated artifacts I'll certainly consider that as a partial explanation, but IIRC some pilots made visual contact as well.
nasseri 7y ago
The article detailing the tic-tac incident has links to video interviews with roughly 15 pilots who made visual contact with the UFO, and whose stories corroborate one another.
fnord77 7y ago
or even worse - some sort of external hacking that produced fake targets that the Navy proceed to chase around. Over and over in the articles, pilots were quoted as saying they never actually saw the UFO despite the radar sensors saying it should be right in front of them
- instantwhat 7y ago
  That is not true at all. What articles did you read? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20071582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20071582
instantwhat 7y ago
That makes no sense. Testimony from the pilots who intercepted the object indicates the object demonstrated awareness of their presence. Watch this video of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 squadron commander (not an average military pilot) who intercepted one of the objects and engaged in aerial maneuvers with it. He describes intercepting the object, flying about one mile away from it, with the object demonstrating awareness of his presence by mirroring his maneuvers. Then he flew aggressively at it, and the object responded by rapidly flying away. It then showed up on radar at the position he was returning to, where he had been flying a combat air patrol before he was sent to intercept the object, indicating that the object had been aware of his aircraft all along. The commander also said that the flying object appeared to be maneuvering about 20,000 feet over an unknown object which was submerged just beneath the ocean surface. https://youtu.be/jCaruUtiPHo https://youtu.be/jCaruUtiPHo Other testimony recounted at https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-ufos-and-department-of-defense https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is... mentions that the ships had been tracking these objects on radar for a few days already, with them appearing suddenly on radar at 80,000 feet, rapidly descending vertically to 20,000 feet, and then flying straight up again, disappearing past 80,000 feet. The ships went to non-drill battle stations while the aircraft intercepted the object.
- maxander 7y ago
  It makes perfect sense- in the same way that your reflection in a mirror "demonstrates awareness of your presence." An illusion generated by a sensor glitch or interference is entirely liable to move around when the sensors and interference moves around, and flight computers tracking the glitch would plausibly show it "performing maneuvers" that make no sense for physical objects, such as the ones you describe.
  - instantwhat 7y ago
    > It makes perfect sense- in the same way that your reflection in a mirror "demonstrates awareness of your presence." The commander in the video did not describe it as being like a reflection. Why don't you watch his 6-minute testimony and then offer an informed opinion? > flight computers tracking the glitch would plausibly show it "performing maneuvers" that make no sense for physical objects, such as the ones you describe. This is an example of "coming up with less-extraordinary theories that contradict the evidence," as gfodor said[1], because you have asserted "glitches" in "flight computers" and ignored the pilots' eyeballs, which corroborated the radar contacts that had been observed over several days. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072598
noetic_techy 7y ago
Radar Contact (on multiple days) + FLIR Contact + Human Eyeball confirmation by two types aircraft in which these things buzzed them != a technical anomaly. Watch the recreation and the eyewitness testimony videos from multiple vantage points. https://youtu.be/PRgoisHRmUE https://youtu.be/PRgoisHRmUE (recreation of ONE of the west coast incident, starts at around 9:00 in) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is.. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is.... (note the embedded videos of testimonies) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-.. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-.... (new tech, east coast incident years later)

lugg 7y ago

Or its just aliens.

api 7y ago

Wasn't there optical and IR footage? Seems unlikely that many discrete systems would all have ghosting artifacts at the same time and location. Or maybe I am mixing reports. I've read about several recently.

etrevino 7y ago
Yeah, as I understand it there were visual sightings as well.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
IR is optical too; same phenomenon can affect both.
- api 7y ago
  Both radar and IR? From different vantage points? Seems just as far fetched as aliens or someone else's (China, Russia?) black budget tech saying "hi." Or hell maybe it's some of our own secret tech being tested against our own conventional tech. That would explain why the military brass showed up right after. They were collecting their data. I have to come out of the closet though and say I don't totally dismiss aliens. I would need a lot more evidence to make it more than a speculation, but IMHO it is not an unreasonable one. The discovery that Earth like planets are likely common makes the Fermi paradox very paradoxical. One potential answer is indeed "they are here but are not making overt contact." There are numerous rational reasons an intelligence might avoid overt contact, too many to list here...
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    You wrote optical and IR. Anyways, the only footage I've seen so far is that FLIR video from a plane showing a weird object that happens to precisely follow the rotation of the camera and behave exactly as you'd expect an internal reflection in sensor optics to behave. Given that this is apparently the only footage publicly available from that incident, I'm inclined to discount the reports that some people say they saw something on other instruments.
    - macawfish 7y ago
      I was under the impression that the camera/plane was tracking the object
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        It was. But the video looks like the camera software is trying to track something that's on or within the camera, thus doing a steady rotation at roughly uniform rate. In plane's frame of reference, this footage would correspond to an object trajectory shaped like a circle centered around the plane. That's a pretty weird trajectory to have. See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9D8dzl4zGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9D8dzl4zGk. And tell me, why would the UFO start rotating exactly at the moment the camera is about to cross 0 degrees, and persist through what looks like camera axis reorientation, continuously rotating at the rate about 2x of the rate camera axis rotates?
        tatersolid 7y ago
        Most gimbal-based mechanical systems systems are made to rotate “unnecessarily” to avoid gimbal lock when two of the gimbals are about to coincide. The fact that this happens at very near zero degrees makes perfect sense if that’s where the gimbals would become aligned and locked.
NikkiA 7y ago
The footage was IR only... The pilots audio discussed 'seeing' the things, but it's not 100% assertained, except via post-hoc assertion by the rights owner of the video, that the pilots aren't referring to what they see on their MFDs.
- wbl 7y ago
  There is no rights owner. It was made by government employees in the course of official duties hence uncopyrighted.

dontbenebby 7y ago

>One should at least consider the possibility that they are machine-generated artifacts I'll certainly consider that as a partial explanation, but IIRC some pilots made visual contact as well.

nasseri 7y ago

The article detailing the tic-tac incident has links to video interviews with roughly 15 pilots who made visual contact with the UFO, and whose stories corroborate one another.

fnord77 7y ago

or even worse - some sort of external hacking that produced fake targets that the Navy proceed to chase around. Over and over in the articles, pilots were quoted as saying they never actually saw the UFO despite the radar sensors saying it should be right in front of them

instantwhat 7y ago
That is not true at all. What articles did you read? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20071582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20071582

instantwhat 7y ago

That makes no sense. Testimony from the pilots who intercepted the object indicates the object demonstrated awareness of their presence. Watch this video of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 squadron commander (not an average military pilot) who intercepted one of the objects and engaged in aerial maneuvers with it. He describes intercepting the object, flying about one mile away from it, with the object demonstrating awareness of his presence by mirroring his maneuvers. Then he flew aggressively at it, and the object responded by rapidly flying away. It then showed up on radar at the position he was returning to, where he had been flying a combat air patrol before he was sent to intercept the object, indicating that the object had been aware of his aircraft all along. The commander also said that the flying object appeared to be maneuvering about 20,000 feet over an unknown object which was submerged just beneath the ocean surface. https://youtu.be/jCaruUtiPHo https://youtu.be/jCaruUtiPHo Other testimony recounted at https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-ufos-and-department-of-defense https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is... mentions that the ships had been tracking these objects on radar for a few days already, with them appearing suddenly on radar at 80,000 feet, rapidly descending vertically to 20,000 feet, and then flying straight up again, disappearing past 80,000 feet. The ships went to non-drill battle stations while the aircraft intercepted the object.

maxander 7y ago
It makes perfect sense- in the same way that your reflection in a mirror "demonstrates awareness of your presence." An illusion generated by a sensor glitch or interference is entirely liable to move around when the sensors and interference moves around, and flight computers tracking the glitch would plausibly show it "performing maneuvers" that make no sense for physical objects, such as the ones you describe.
- instantwhat 7y ago
  > It makes perfect sense- in the same way that your reflection in a mirror "demonstrates awareness of your presence." The commander in the video did not describe it as being like a reflection. Why don't you watch his 6-minute testimony and then offer an informed opinion? > flight computers tracking the glitch would plausibly show it "performing maneuvers" that make no sense for physical objects, such as the ones you describe. This is an example of "coming up with less-extraordinary theories that contradict the evidence," as gfodor said[1], because you have asserted "glitches" in "flight computers" and ignored the pilots' eyeballs, which corroborated the radar contacts that had been observed over several days. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072598

noetic_techy 7y ago

Radar Contact (on multiple days) + FLIR Contact + Human Eyeball confirmation by two types aircraft in which these things buzzed them != a technical anomaly. Watch the recreation and the eyewitness testimony videos from multiple vantage points. https://youtu.be/PRgoisHRmUE https://youtu.be/PRgoisHRmUE (recreation of ONE of the west coast incident, starts at around 9:00 in) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is.. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27666/what-the-hell-is.... (note the embedded videos of testimonies) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-.. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-.... (new tech, east coast incident years later)