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UFO: Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac breaks silence after 15 years

213 points by evo_9 7y ago

mylons 7y ago
I want to believe.
bloopernova 7y ago
The Independent is simply rehashing an article in New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-a... Would be better to link to the source, surely?
sschueller 7y ago
Aliens would be cool but I highly doubt it. In my opinion from all I heard and read it really sounds like an unknown weather phenomenon.
- galkk 7y ago
  The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
- justinclift 7y ago
  > Aliens would be cool ... Wouldn't that depend on capabilities and intentions?
  - meddlepal 7y ago
    They'd still be cool even if they were here to strip mine our planet, anally probe us, and then enslave our species... it would just be a kind of shitty situation all in all though.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      We definitely have different definitions of "cool". ;)
sixQuarks 7y ago
something smells fishy. He never looked at the object with his own eyes. C'mon. How can you not verify with your own eyes whether this thing was real or not? He says he was trying to capture the best video for later analysis. He couldn't have just glanced at the object for a second to make visual confirmation?
- electrograv 7y ago
  These military jets use what are effectively stabilized infrared telescopes, capable of tracking flying objects many miles away — long before human biological vision has any hope of seeing them. This is crucial because modern aerial warfare involves missile armaments effective at these distances, so much of it is a game of who can find and acquire a target lock on their enemy first. These phenomena are interesting because (1) multiple sensor systems from multiple platforms/locations consistently tracked the object in ways that corroborate each other, and (2) other pilots have actually flown close enough to report visual contact.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  He explained that. > No. I was more concentrated on looking at the FLIR. It was inside of 20 miles. You’re not going to see it with your own eyes until probably 10 miles, and then you’re not going to be able to visually track it until you’re probably inside of five miles, which is where Dave Fravor said he saw it. These are trained military pilots. Our eyes can’t see an object like that twenty miles out. If the system has a lock and it tells you it’s that far away, you don’t waste time and lose focus by trying to see for yourself something you already know you won’t be able to make out with the naked eye. Additionally, it’s not as if no one saw it with their naked eye. Fravor’s word is as as good as his, and he says saw it. The value here is in the fact that this pilot is telling you he was watching the machines confirm what his colleague had seen. I take man + machine as a harder proof than two men, and not much less than 2 men + machine. Edit: also seen by the squadron commanding officer: > And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well. So, yeah. Two men + machine, rather than three men + machine. What I find more interesting is that NORAD didn’t debrief him, which means they either knew who was behind it or were already tracking it separately and knew what they needed to know (both very possible). Or perhaps since everything he saw and all his maneuvers were better documented in the real-time system logs dump and FLIR capture than he would be able to reliably recall, there was literally nothing he could add.
mattlondon 7y ago
What I find kinda interesting about this is the HUD apparently being able to "lock on" or track or whatever the object. Are these HUD things around the object just visual bounding boxes around something with high contrast, or are the HUDs doing sensor fusion with IR and radar and other things? Not just for UFOs but I've seen similar things from gun cam footage in Iraq etc and wondered how it works.
- kitteh 7y ago
  No active radar. All the tracking pods have FLIR/CCDs on them that allow tracking of objects (which I believe is based upon contrasting white hot / black hot returns). A "point track" for example would allow you to track an object on the ground as it is moving (important when using laser guided ordinance where the beam has to follow it).
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    nit: ordnance
- fit2rule 7y ago
  >Are these HUD things around the object just visual bounding boxes around something with high contrast, or are the HUDs doing sensor fusion with IR and radar and other things? All of the above, and probably a bit more we're not really privy to.
- thdrdt 7y ago
  There is a Joe Rogan podcast with David Fravor, a pilot who also saw it. I believe he explains it's all visual locking but there are a lot if different camera types. https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Yep, I was going to mention that podcast. They have a camera pod that can literally just track fast moving objects visually (probably uses computer vision stuff internally). He also mentions how the camera pods can switch between standard, IR and a few other modes. The IR didn't show any heat large heat sources, which you'd see on a commercial jet liner or fighter jet.
bloopernova 7y ago
While I know that I'll never be able to sit down with the intelligence analysts who looked at this video and sensor information, I really wish I could convene some sort of group to do just that. I'd love to see some calculations on how much energy this UFO would have needed to perform the maneuvers it did. Whether there were any observable atmospheric effects like a wake even though there was no exhaust seen. Did it exhibit observable inertia, in other words did it move like bad movie special effects, or did it move like something real? In the comments in the NYMag original article, one person wonders if it was the result of some advanced spoofing/decoy technology. I'm not sure what could cause what the sensors observed, but the idea seems interesting and brings a cause "down to Earth" so to speak.
- mark-r 7y ago
  You would need to estimate mass before you could estimate energy. Any idea how you'd do that?
  - bloopernova 7y ago
    No idea at all! Maybe calculating for a range of different masses would then give a range of possible energies involved. Your point is pretty much why I'd like to see a bunch of experts dissect this phenomena. I want to see scientific rigor applied to this, and to see what conclusions can be drawn from the data available.
- cvshepherd 7y ago
  this recent article might have an answer or two for you: Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0233/v1 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0233/v1
mellosouls 7y ago
Commander Fravor reflected on his sighting: "I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-object-navy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-...
rolltiide 7y ago
What about the patent based on this observation filed and granted to the Secretary of the Navy? https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
- lammalamma25 7y ago
  I think Occam's Razor says a good lawyer convinced the patent office to make a bad decision. Could be wrong, but this is easily explained by incompetence.
  - _underfl0w_ 7y ago
    That sounds like Hanlon's Razor.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    What's the issue with this patent? It is a parallel construction of what was observed without the prior observation being specific enough for prior art. And if there was to be coercion or convincing, the US Navy Secretary would be good enough you'd think?
bebop 7y ago
Joe Rogan also had an interview with him recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ
sys_64738 7y ago
Usually these are waved off as being weather balloons being buffeted by the wind.
suby 7y ago
One of the most fascinating things about this UFO Navy story is that at least one of the UFO's employed radar jamming after being spotted.[0] To me, this is good evidence that we are not dealing with a currently unknown natural phenomina. [0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-unlike/story?id=51856514 https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-u...
- thatsenough 7y ago
  Radar jamming is pretty well-known, isn’t it? For instance, you blast the target with noise across radar’s bandwidth, drowning out the return signal. There are various techniques and countermeasures, but it’s not alien technology.
  - suby 7y ago
    Yes, it's well known. It's human technology, but it's also almost certainly alien technology if we operate under the assumption that an alien species built something capable of travelling across the stars. Regardless, I'm not even necessarily saying that it is evidence of aliens. Merely that it evidence against the idea that this is something which is naturally occurring.
    - thatsenough 7y ago
      Merely that it evidence against the idea that this is something which is naturally occurring. Ah, yes that’s true!
willis936 7y ago
Anytime I try to pursue the UFO question I feel like I’m being intentionally gaslighted by government agencies. The public-ish analysis of UFOs, AATIP is an incredible farce. They focused on star trek warp drives and after the funding dried up they started hanging out with Blink 182 to smoke weed and pat each other on the back for being crazy alien believers. These aren’t sound scientific minds that are capable of analyzing the evidence available. Those people exist and I’m certain their analyses do as well, but no one gets to see them. I struggle to even come up with narratives as to why this specific case would be made public. Perhaps the intelligence agencies knew it wouldn’t be possible to cover up so the best they can do is release the evidence that was expected to make its way to the public and say nothing about it officially. If I put on a tinfoil hat I could say that the AATIP’s purpose was to instill doubt that aliens exist, but that would imply that they do exist. It seems that the intelligence agencies are behaving like they want to give as little information as possible about it. I can’t imagine the AATIP was made top-down. It appears to just be a congressman’s publicity stunt.
- Jd 7y ago
  Sometimes it has an easy explanation given typical information asymmetries and incentive structures. For example, you don't give away any of your external intel during a war (i.e. cold war) in the case that you are identifying something by your enemy that might be trying to hide from you. Letting them know you can detect them would be stupid. Also, for similar reasons, record and catalogue every strange phenomenon in case it could be something. The natural correlate from a citizen perspective is that the government is hiding something (i.e. UFOs). Of course it is, that's the point. But then the point becomes less of a point the less justification there is for wartime behavior, which then leads to increased speculation that the government is hiding something which at some points boils over into widespread public sentiment. Then at that point there is both incentive to do selective release and for the media to cover it since they know readers want to read about UFOs, etc. I think that's the Ockham's razor here.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    I don't think one can cover just anything in an open society. Even the truly secret military gear like the original H-bomb, F-117, A-12, anti-powerline bombs, and navy stealth helicopter were impossible to hide completely. At least the fact of their existence was out long before the public saw them. Even in paranoid USSR, people knew of computer guided recon drones, spy sats, Shkvals, Dvinas, R73 and Strelas — all of which were more secret than the bomb, and were equally bordering on "sci-fi" and unbelievable to the layman at the time. The leak of Shkval's existence was of particular embarrassment to the Union's military and counterintelligence. Supposedly, there were less than 50 people in the whole Union who were privy to info on them in full, but even before it entered service it became an "urban myth" among civilians in military cities and such.
fortran77 7y ago
This is just a summary of this article in NY Magazine: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-a...
CommieBobDole 7y ago
As much as I want to believe, I feel like this almost has to be some sort of disinformation campaign, either to cover up some sort of testing that the US military is doing and thinks someone else might have seen, or to make US adversaries think that we've made some sort of fundamental breakthrough and we're ineptly trying to cover it up by calling it a UFO. Probably the latter. Would be interesting to read the article about this in 50 years or so once the political landscape has changed and it's safe to declassify, but I doubt I'll be around then.
- sambull 7y ago
  There is definitely some sort of disinformation campaign, I guess its aimed at other nations. [0] I'm guessing this is part of the campaign, or else maybe alien tech? [1] I'll assume its to make someone else think we have tech we may not have. [0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-aerospace-tech-boss-claims-key-ufo-patent-is-operable https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a... [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjwkw/bob-lazar-says-the-fbi-raided-him-to-seize-area-51s-alien-fuel-the-truth-is-weirder https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjwkw/bob-lazar-says-the...
  - B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
    > aimed at other nations. Does anyone have one of those world heat maps for "belief in UFOs" by country?
  - rurban 7y ago
    Why alien tech? It certainly fits the description of modern Russian or Chinese cruise missiles acting in a swarm. But I'm baffled why they would they do this close to enemy territory. Loosing one of those would be the worst case.
- awb 7y ago
  One of the pilots in this incident was on Rogan saying how they used to fly silently without lights above remote campsites, then once they saw a campfire blast the lights and go straight up. They'd laugh as the UFO reports flowed in. Similarly, the stealth fighter was in operation for 20 years before the public knew about it. It's not unrealistic to consider top secret tech as a possible explanation. One counter point is usually: If we had tech this amazing, we'd be putting it to use commercially. However this tech might be autonomous and might need to be considering the G forces supposedly at play.
blhack 7y ago
Imagine trying to explain some fancy load balancing AWS deployment to somebody who has never used a computer beyond a flip phone. It would be completely foreign. That’s me (and also nearly everybody here) with regards to aviation and war making aviation machines. So while these articles and stories are definitely interesting, they might as well be fairy tales. The way our minds are reconstructing these things, and the way the mind of somebody involved in the relevant fields here (whatever they even are!) are likely very different. That all said: if somebody has a link to any more well informed discussions about this, I sure would love a link!
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Joe Rogan did a great Podcast with one of the pilots in this incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ Here's a short clip from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIG-i2WCfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIG-i2WCfg He's really knowledgeable, has a ton of flight experience and carefully details everything his and the other pilots see from their aircraft.
  - blhack 7y ago
    Yeah I loved that episode! I would love to see somebody who could lean against him intellectually interview him though.
    - multiplegeorges 7y ago
      This is a criticism that could be made of every Rogan episode.
  - krtkush 7y ago
    Fighter Pilot Podcast had him too. It was great to listen to - https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/episodes/035-ufos/ https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/episodes/035-ufos/
spookyuser 7y ago
Hypothesis: Any aliens advanced enough to build an objecting moving as impossibly as the pilot says would also be advanced enough to not be detected doing so.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Intelligence in one area doesn't mean intelligence in another, it may also be that they don't care about being spotted.
  - monk_e_boy 7y ago
    Yep. We send drone deep into the ocean. To an Orca this is magical technology that isn't trying to cloak it's self.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  Or maybe... "Let's turn off the stealth systems and see if they keep regarding us as divinities like they did thousands years ago, keep attempting to shoot at us like they did in the last 50 years, or have evolved in the meantime therefore they're now ready to be welcomed in the galactic federation. Although from watching their entertainment and news feeds I'd bet this starship they won't be in another 3000 years".
- Zenbit_UX 7y ago
  That seems like false causality to me. If you or I made a really cool drone that could move that fast and be a major breakthrough in inertia, velocity and acceleration, would you bench it for 40years until you could make it invisible or would you test it out?
- remir 7y ago
  Unless they wanted to be seen as to observe our reaction.
throwaway7951 7y ago
https://www.ovnis-armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm https://www.ovnis-armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm The above discusses exploiting the Bethe Formula to produce a radiant point at some distant from a beam generator. IIUC the energy falloff suddenly increases below a threshold energy level therefore the particle beam will deposit most of its energy in a very short distance. Could the reported 'tic tacs' i.e. bright white elongated balls be the result of this? Would explain the supposedly physics defying nature of their aerial manoeuvres.
- ubertoop 7y ago
  Exactly my thinking... I just made a comment asking basically the same thing - Could this have just been an IMAGE projected via a satellite.
- andbberger 7y ago
  See also: the writing of Tom Mahood [1], some of the best and most authoritative I've ever seen on the subject. He also tears into Bob Lazar which is a nice bonus. [1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/looking-at-the-bob-lazar-story-from-the-perspective-of-2018/ https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  Imagine what the intersection of two long range masers might look like.
JRKrause 7y ago
Is there any part of this footage that can't be explained by a bit of matter stuck on the FLIR lens? Even it being apparently "cold" seems well explained by the dust/bug whatever casting a shadow onto the IR sensor array.
- nprateem 7y ago
  The object was allegedly tracked by ground-based radar
- djsumdog 7y ago
  The pilots claim they physically saw it too. And the pilot who made the video was the 2nd group up from the first who claimed they saw it from their cockpits. And the FLIR was tracking the target moving. If it was a piece of dust stuck on, it would have looked as if it were moving the same speed of the aircraft, wouldn't it?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bloopernova 7y ago
  It was captured by radar, and multiple other detection systems. The object had been observed before the pilot in the link flew. He was told to BOLO - be on the lookout - for this object.
jijji 7y ago
last week a story came out quoting an air force general saying that "technology exists that could transport a human anywhere on earth within an hour" [0]... [0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31445/recently-retired-usaf-general-makes-eyebrow-raising-claims-about-advanced-space-technology https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31445/recently-retired...
- joshuaheard 7y ago
  I think he was referring to the new NASA supersonic plane, and meant "hours", not "hour". https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-supersonic-research-aircraft-cleared-for-final-assembly https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-superso...
  - dkarras 7y ago
    >and meant "hours" Like a plane?
  - jijji 7y ago
    maybe... but the video of him speaking [0] (at the 12:00 minute mark) is unambiguous with his words -- "less than an hour" was his actual quote, and there is no mention about any specific plane or technology. [0] https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw
- goodcanadian 7y ago
  Sounds like he was referring to a suborbital rocket flight.
- nradov 7y ago
  Yes the Space Shuttle could basically do that.
shartshooter 7y ago
I stumbled upon this forum a while ago that seems to go into extreme depth trying to understand the gimbal videos/purported UFO sightings https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-encounter-with-unknown-object.9333/ https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-nav...
CyanLite2 7y ago
So let me get this straight: We believe an alien civilization has traveled across the galaxy with faster-than-light technology, and has deployed aircraft that has broken our known laws of physics. But is susceptible to 1970s-era infrared radar technology? Okay. Got it.
- monk_e_boy 7y ago
  Maybe they don't care if we see them?
  - cvshepherd 7y ago
    or maybe they want to be seen. either to gauge our reaction, or for the same reasons we want our own areal craft to be visible: to help avoid collisions.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  While I don't think these UFOs are anything alien in nature at all, it's worth noting that we make absolutely zero effort to hide our space exploration probes and rovers from potential discovery.
baybal2 7y ago
I think if we ever see an alien, he will either fly to us in a completely enormous nuclear rocket which we will spot years before his arrival and deceleration. This is in the case if there is really no other way to traverse stars besides conventional rocketry. But in case if there is a way to trick any of the fundamental physics we know after all, then very likely the guy will come right at our porch, and they've probably done so many times without us even noticing, and will only contact us, if ever, on their own terms. Given the premise is right, and somebody can really do something on the level of fundamental physical force manipulation for space travel, then there would be no reason for them to not dispense with conventional space travel altogether, or at least to a reasonable extent where this technology is more practical than giant nuclear rockets. And the same goes for things like stealth technology, or inertia control. If somebody can arbitrary manipulate gravity, entropy, or fundamental forces to travel stars, or make traversable wormholes, then inertia cancelation, invisibility by directly manipulating light, undetectable radio comms, and power sources unlimited or almost so by heatsink capacity should be child's play for them too.
- wonderwonder 7y ago
  This assumes they are not coming from some giant station on the other side of our sun, parked there for the last several hundred years. They could also be anywhere in our solar system, that our technology is not advanced enough to detect. We cant really keep track of all the space rocks floating near us and they aren't trying not to be seen.
  - ianai 7y ago
    How about they’re from a birth of life somewhere nearby but hard for us to detect - like oceans below the surface of Enceladus?
    - wonderwonder 7y ago
      I think that makes sense too, we are still finding out basic things about the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Space wise we are really just getting started.
mfer 7y ago
I'm reminded of other HN conversations on the patents around technology that could theoretically make this happen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208051
Tistel 7y ago
I have heard a couple of podcasts that had some very credible US pilots talking about this. I think detecting life on other planets or aliens here would be great (so long as they are not trying to kill me yada yada). But, the most down to earth explanation is signal/sensor warfare testing. Bare with me for a moment. The web is part of the sensor array of a spider. There are species of insects that tap on spider's webs to send a false positive signal to the spider on the web that a tasty prey has become trapped. The spider goes over to where on the web the vibrations indicated the prey is trapped and bang the spider gets killed by the assassin bug. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11628322 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11628322 There is some evidence these signal warfare systems are being developed: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secretive-nemesis-electronic-warfare-capability-will-change-naval-combat-forever https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secret... I think these are newest iterations of the Wild Weasel style of counter weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel they could make drones go a fuel wasting wild goose chases etc. Or make the other sides drone defend the eastern front while you fly in from the west etc. more signal warfare stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka
- b06tmm 7y ago
  When I was in the Navy (1977 ~ 1981), our A-6E was equipped with an ECM suite that was designed to intercept and process pulse signals, automatically select the optimum countermeasures technique, and then apply the technique. One of these countermeasures was to send a return signal back to the radar, "telling the radar that the aircraft had accelerated (beyond the speed of light) and was now on the opposite horizon. The effect of this was reported to be a snapping off of the radar mast or tipping over of the mobile trailer the radar was in due to the torque of the radar dish moving to the new location.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    That's hilarious! Somebody probably had a lot of fun coming up with and testing that idea.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
Ah there it is, the ol' modified limited hangout[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
ubertoop 7y ago
I wonder... Could you project an image into the atmosphere via satellite. Maybe this was just an image. It accelerated with apparently 0 mass. It left no exhaust plumes. It was invisible to radar EVEN as they got close. Fit's all the criteria for something that isn't really even there.
- jameslk 7y ago
  Wasn't it captured on radar? That should eliminate this possibility
  - egfx 7y ago
    Yes, you can detect projections via radar. This projections aspect was also my thought on this for a while and I did some research on it. I’ll append the link to the paper later. Another thing that comes to mind is there was a post here recently that talked about concentrated laser beams technology which looks interesting to consider. Probably the easiest way to explain the erratic behavior.
    - egfx 7y ago
      Here is the source: https://books.google.com/books?id=AZoSALzL3V4C https://books.google.com/books?id=AZoSALzL3V4C
- thekingofh 7y ago
  I'm thinking if you concentrate 10 powerful lasers at one point in the atmosphere it would be possible to generate a plasma that could be moved around at speeds that would be impossible for an aircraft. What I don't know is if that would be detectable via radar, which supposedly this phenomenon is.
8bitsrule 7y ago
If these are alien craft, maybe they're not flying through space ... or even warping space (Alcubierre-ish) but just leaping through it. Like stepping through a curtain. If our whole understanding of space is wrong, then they'd be asking themselves "why are they making it so hard?".
dang 7y ago
Url changed from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-flying-saucer-chad-underwoord-dave-fravor-a9254671.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-flyin..., which points to this.
jostmey 7y ago
If the video is real then my guess is we are looking at a glider being towed at supersonic speed. The air-tow could be flying higher in the atmosphere beyond the reach of basic ground defense systems. The glider would not give off a heat-plume but could have enormous maneuverability
oh_sigh 7y ago
There sure are a lot of "I want to believe"-ers in this thread, who are presumably mostly normal, rational individuals for most of their lives until something like UFOs tickles them the right way. I bet a lot of these same people have their minds boggled that some people are anti-vaxxers, or think global warming isn't real.
willis936 7y ago
After reviewing the footage with someone familiar with IR imaging, they pointed out that it looks like a FLIR sensor that was pointed at the sun for a prolonged period. There is only one piece of evidence and it doesn’t seem sufficient.
elkos 7y ago
I don't claim that's the case but there's at least one missile: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon) hypothesised to produce plasma stealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth). My understanding is that a plasma stealth object should be high velocity and be optically bright to visual and IR. I don't maintain an hypothesis that that is the case but if any of my airmen would see such an object I would definitely like to have a report on that.
BrandoElFollito 7y ago
I am not following UFO information but I think I have only heard about them in my country (France) only twice in the last 15 years. I heard about cases in the US much often. US are also probably 3 times or size (population) and 10 times (or whatever) military size - so maybe the numbers are consistent across countries. I wonder however how much culture plays a role in the sightings. All UFOs in movies land in the US. You have Area51 and the extraterrestrial highway. You have Roswell and tranformers inside the Hoover Dam. If I see a weird thing in the sky, UFO will be the 7th possibility on my list. Maybe in the US UFOs landing is business as usual for pepole ?
- fritzthecat 7y ago
  I have seen strange things happening while camping out under a Cessna 172 together with fellow european pilots in Sedona, Arizona in 1995. Multiple lights in the Sky, zigzagging across the sky in very similar fashion to what those F18 pilots report. I know you were trying to be cynical, but maybe there is something strange going on there.
  - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
    No, I am not trying to be cynical. My point is that if the news/reporting on UFOs in the US is much more prevalent than in, say, France, it is no surprise that people jump to that conclusion quicker than elsewhere. The movies are one another reason for that. This is just an idea, I do not know how statistically sound this is. To give a counterexample, everytime I switch on the radio on a station which is supposed to have people talking (France Culture for instance) and I hear music, I assume they are on strike. I do not think than an American would jump on that conclusion.
dragonelite 7y ago
Aliens, traverses interstellar space just to troll humans.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  Or they just don't care about humans, but are sucking out some valuable resource that we're not aware of. I keep thinking about that Bob Lazar interview, he claimed these alien aircraft fly off of a stable isotope of element 115. What if that element was rare, and they are mining it from, say, the core of our planet.
cybert00th 7y ago
I have a friend who has worked in US military black ops projects since at least the early '90s. And back in the mid '90s he told me there were aircraft being built and tested which had flight characteristics similar to those described here. This report is about a sighting in 2004, so it's more than possible that 10-ish years on, advances had been made that make this sighting quite believable. (edited grammar)
teslaberry 7y ago
werner von braun said the military would invent any excuse including faking the existence of aliens to justify ever increasing budgets for scret military research projects in space. space is the high ground. you cannot win withoit dominating it. you will definitely lose without some presence in it. there are 2 types of nations those with nukes and yhose without. this applies to space as well.

213 points by evo_9 7y ago

I want to believe.

The Independent is simply rehashing an article in New York Magazine: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-a... Would be better to link to the source, surely?

sschueller 7y ago

Aliens would be cool but I highly doubt it. In my opinion from all I heard and read it really sounds like an unknown weather phenomenon.

galkk 7y ago
The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
justinclift 7y ago
> Aliens would be cool ... Wouldn't that depend on capabilities and intentions?
- meddlepal 7y ago
  They'd still be cool even if they were here to strip mine our planet, anally probe us, and then enslave our species... it would just be a kind of shitty situation all in all though.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    We definitely have different definitions of "cool". ;)

sixQuarks 7y ago

something smells fishy. He never looked at the object with his own eyes. C'mon. How can you not verify with your own eyes whether this thing was real or not? He says he was trying to capture the best video for later analysis. He couldn't have just glanced at the object for a second to make visual confirmation?

electrograv 7y ago
These military jets use what are effectively stabilized infrared telescopes, capable of tracking flying objects many miles away — long before human biological vision has any hope of seeing them. This is crucial because modern aerial warfare involves missile armaments effective at these distances, so much of it is a game of who can find and acquire a target lock on their enemy first. These phenomena are interesting because (1) multiple sensor systems from multiple platforms/locations consistently tracked the object in ways that corroborate each other, and (2) other pilots have actually flown close enough to report visual contact.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
He explained that. > No. I was more concentrated on looking at the FLIR. It was inside of 20 miles. You’re not going to see it with your own eyes until probably 10 miles, and then you’re not going to be able to visually track it until you’re probably inside of five miles, which is where Dave Fravor said he saw it. These are trained military pilots. Our eyes can’t see an object like that twenty miles out. If the system has a lock and it tells you it’s that far away, you don’t waste time and lose focus by trying to see for yourself something you already know you won’t be able to make out with the naked eye. Additionally, it’s not as if no one saw it with their naked eye. Fravor’s word is as as good as his, and he says saw it. The value here is in the fact that this pilot is telling you he was watching the machines confirm what his colleague had seen. I take man + machine as a harder proof than two men, and not much less than 2 men + machine. Edit: also seen by the squadron commanding officer: > And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out there as well. So, yeah. Two men + machine, rather than three men + machine. What I find more interesting is that NORAD didn’t debrief him, which means they either knew who was behind it or were already tracking it separately and knew what they needed to know (both very possible). Or perhaps since everything he saw and all his maneuvers were better documented in the real-time system logs dump and FLIR capture than he would be able to reliably recall, there was literally nothing he could add.

mattlondon 7y ago

What I find kinda interesting about this is the HUD apparently being able to "lock on" or track or whatever the object. Are these HUD things around the object just visual bounding boxes around something with high contrast, or are the HUDs doing sensor fusion with IR and radar and other things? Not just for UFOs but I've seen similar things from gun cam footage in Iraq etc and wondered how it works.

kitteh 7y ago
No active radar. All the tracking pods have FLIR/CCDs on them that allow tracking of objects (which I believe is based upon contrasting white hot / black hot returns). A "point track" for example would allow you to track an object on the ground as it is moving (important when using laser guided ordinance where the beam has to follow it).
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  nit: ordnance
fit2rule 7y ago
>Are these HUD things around the object just visual bounding boxes around something with high contrast, or are the HUDs doing sensor fusion with IR and radar and other things? All of the above, and probably a bit more we're not really privy to.
thdrdt 7y ago
There is a Joe Rogan podcast with David Fravor, a pilot who also saw it. I believe he explains it's all visual locking but there are a lot if different camera types. https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Yep, I was going to mention that podcast. They have a camera pod that can literally just track fast moving objects visually (probably uses computer vision stuff internally). He also mentions how the camera pods can switch between standard, IR and a few other modes. The IR didn't show any heat large heat sources, which you'd see on a commercial jet liner or fighter jet.

bloopernova 7y ago

While I know that I'll never be able to sit down with the intelligence analysts who looked at this video and sensor information, I really wish I could convene some sort of group to do just that. I'd love to see some calculations on how much energy this UFO would have needed to perform the maneuvers it did. Whether there were any observable atmospheric effects like a wake even though there was no exhaust seen. Did it exhibit observable inertia, in other words did it move like bad movie special effects, or did it move like something real? In the comments in the NYMag original article, one person wonders if it was the result of some advanced spoofing/decoy technology. I'm not sure what could cause what the sensors observed, but the idea seems interesting and brings a cause "down to Earth" so to speak.

mark-r 7y ago
You would need to estimate mass before you could estimate energy. Any idea how you'd do that?
- bloopernova 7y ago
  No idea at all! Maybe calculating for a range of different masses would then give a range of possible energies involved. Your point is pretty much why I'd like to see a bunch of experts dissect this phenomena. I want to see scientific rigor applied to this, and to see what conclusions can be drawn from the data available.
cvshepherd 7y ago
this recent article might have an answer or two for you: Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0233/v1 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0233/v1

mellosouls 7y ago

Commander Fravor reflected on his sighting: "I have no idea what I saw. It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-flying-object-navy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-...

rolltiide 7y ago

What about the patent based on this observation filed and granted to the Secretary of the Navy? https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en

lammalamma25 7y ago
I think Occam's Razor says a good lawyer convinced the patent office to make a bad decision. Could be wrong, but this is easily explained by incompetence.
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago
  That sounds like Hanlon's Razor.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  What's the issue with this patent? It is a parallel construction of what was observed without the prior observation being specific enough for prior art. And if there was to be coercion or convincing, the US Navy Secretary would be good enough you'd think?

bebop 7y ago

Joe Rogan also had an interview with him recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ

sys_64738 7y ago

Usually these are waved off as being weather balloons being buffeted by the wind.

suby 7y ago

One of the most fascinating things about this UFO Navy story is that at least one of the UFO's employed radar jamming after being spotted.[0] To me, this is good evidence that we are not dealing with a currently unknown natural phenomina. [0] https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-unlike/story?id=51856514 https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-u...

thatsenough 7y ago
Radar jamming is pretty well-known, isn’t it? For instance, you blast the target with noise across radar’s bandwidth, drowning out the return signal. There are various techniques and countermeasures, but it’s not alien technology.
- suby 7y ago
  Yes, it's well known. It's human technology, but it's also almost certainly alien technology if we operate under the assumption that an alien species built something capable of travelling across the stars. Regardless, I'm not even necessarily saying that it is evidence of aliens. Merely that it evidence against the idea that this is something which is naturally occurring.
  - thatsenough 7y ago
    Merely that it evidence against the idea that this is something which is naturally occurring. Ah, yes that’s true!

willis936 7y ago

Anytime I try to pursue the UFO question I feel like I’m being intentionally gaslighted by government agencies. The public-ish analysis of UFOs, AATIP is an incredible farce. They focused on star trek warp drives and after the funding dried up they started hanging out with Blink 182 to smoke weed and pat each other on the back for being crazy alien believers. These aren’t sound scientific minds that are capable of analyzing the evidence available. Those people exist and I’m certain their analyses do as well, but no one gets to see them. I struggle to even come up with narratives as to why this specific case would be made public. Perhaps the intelligence agencies knew it wouldn’t be possible to cover up so the best they can do is release the evidence that was expected to make its way to the public and say nothing about it officially. If I put on a tinfoil hat I could say that the AATIP’s purpose was to instill doubt that aliens exist, but that would imply that they do exist. It seems that the intelligence agencies are behaving like they want to give as little information as possible about it. I can’t imagine the AATIP was made top-down. It appears to just be a congressman’s publicity stunt.

Jd 7y ago
Sometimes it has an easy explanation given typical information asymmetries and incentive structures. For example, you don't give away any of your external intel during a war (i.e. cold war) in the case that you are identifying something by your enemy that might be trying to hide from you. Letting them know you can detect them would be stupid. Also, for similar reasons, record and catalogue every strange phenomenon in case it could be something. The natural correlate from a citizen perspective is that the government is hiding something (i.e. UFOs). Of course it is, that's the point. But then the point becomes less of a point the less justification there is for wartime behavior, which then leads to increased speculation that the government is hiding something which at some points boils over into widespread public sentiment. Then at that point there is both incentive to do selective release and for the media to cover it since they know readers want to read about UFOs, etc. I think that's the Ockham's razor here.
- baybal2 7y ago
  I don't think one can cover just anything in an open society. Even the truly secret military gear like the original H-bomb, F-117, A-12, anti-powerline bombs, and navy stealth helicopter were impossible to hide completely. At least the fact of their existence was out long before the public saw them. Even in paranoid USSR, people knew of computer guided recon drones, spy sats, Shkvals, Dvinas, R73 and Strelas — all of which were more secret than the bomb, and were equally bordering on "sci-fi" and unbelievable to the layman at the time. The leak of Shkval's existence was of particular embarrassment to the Union's military and counterintelligence. Supposedly, there were less than 50 people in the whole Union who were privy to info on them in full, but even before it entered service it became an "urban myth" among civilians in military cities and such.

fortran77 7y ago

This is just a summary of this article in NY Magazine: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-a...

CommieBobDole 7y ago

As much as I want to believe, I feel like this almost has to be some sort of disinformation campaign, either to cover up some sort of testing that the US military is doing and thinks someone else might have seen, or to make US adversaries think that we've made some sort of fundamental breakthrough and we're ineptly trying to cover it up by calling it a UFO. Probably the latter. Would be interesting to read the article about this in 50 years or so once the political landscape has changed and it's safe to declassify, but I doubt I'll be around then.

sambull 7y ago
There is definitely some sort of disinformation campaign, I guess its aimed at other nations. [0] I'm guessing this is part of the campaign, or else maybe alien tech? [1] I'll assume its to make someone else think we have tech we may not have. [0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-aerospace-tech-boss-claims-key-ufo-patent-is-operable https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29232/navys-advanced-a... [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjwkw/bob-lazar-says-the-fbi-raided-him-to-seize-area-51s-alien-fuel-the-truth-is-weirder https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjwkw/bob-lazar-says-the...
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
  > aimed at other nations. Does anyone have one of those world heat maps for "belief in UFOs" by country?
- rurban 7y ago
  Why alien tech? It certainly fits the description of modern Russian or Chinese cruise missiles acting in a swarm. But I'm baffled why they would they do this close to enemy territory. Loosing one of those would be the worst case.
awb 7y ago
One of the pilots in this incident was on Rogan saying how they used to fly silently without lights above remote campsites, then once they saw a campfire blast the lights and go straight up. They'd laugh as the UFO reports flowed in. Similarly, the stealth fighter was in operation for 20 years before the public knew about it. It's not unrealistic to consider top secret tech as a possible explanation. One counter point is usually: If we had tech this amazing, we'd be putting it to use commercially. However this tech might be autonomous and might need to be considering the G forces supposedly at play.

blhack 7y ago

Imagine trying to explain some fancy load balancing AWS deployment to somebody who has never used a computer beyond a flip phone. It would be completely foreign. That’s me (and also nearly everybody here) with regards to aviation and war making aviation machines. So while these articles and stories are definitely interesting, they might as well be fairy tales. The way our minds are reconstructing these things, and the way the mind of somebody involved in the relevant fields here (whatever they even are!) are likely very different. That all said: if somebody has a link to any more well informed discussions about this, I sure would love a link!

djsumdog 7y ago
Joe Rogan did a great Podcast with one of the pilots in this incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ Here's a short clip from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIG-i2WCfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIG-i2WCfg He's really knowledgeable, has a ton of flight experience and carefully details everything his and the other pilots see from their aircraft.
- blhack 7y ago
  Yeah I loved that episode! I would love to see somebody who could lean against him intellectually interview him though.
  - multiplegeorges 7y ago
    This is a criticism that could be made of every Rogan episode.
- krtkush 7y ago
  Fighter Pilot Podcast had him too. It was great to listen to - https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/episodes/035-ufos/ https://www.fighterpilotpodcast.com/episodes/035-ufos/

spookyuser 7y ago

Hypothesis: Any aliens advanced enough to build an objecting moving as impossibly as the pilot says would also be advanced enough to not be detected doing so.

faissaloo 7y ago
Intelligence in one area doesn't mean intelligence in another, it may also be that they don't care about being spotted.
- monk_e_boy 7y ago
  Yep. We send drone deep into the ocean. To an Orca this is magical technology that isn't trying to cloak it's self.
squarefoot 7y ago
Or maybe... "Let's turn off the stealth systems and see if they keep regarding us as divinities like they did thousands years ago, keep attempting to shoot at us like they did in the last 50 years, or have evolved in the meantime therefore they're now ready to be welcomed in the galactic federation. Although from watching their entertainment and news feeds I'd bet this starship they won't be in another 3000 years".
Zenbit_UX 7y ago
That seems like false causality to me. If you or I made a really cool drone that could move that fast and be a major breakthrough in inertia, velocity and acceleration, would you bench it for 40years until you could make it invisible or would you test it out?
remir 7y ago
Unless they wanted to be seen as to observe our reaction.

throwaway7951 7y ago

https://www.ovnis-armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm https://www.ovnis-armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm The above discusses exploiting the Bethe Formula to produce a radiant point at some distant from a beam generator. IIUC the energy falloff suddenly increases below a threshold energy level therefore the particle beam will deposit most of its energy in a very short distance. Could the reported 'tic tacs' i.e. bright white elongated balls be the result of this? Would explain the supposedly physics defying nature of their aerial manoeuvres.

ubertoop 7y ago
Exactly my thinking... I just made a comment asking basically the same thing - Could this have just been an IMAGE projected via a satellite.
andbberger 7y ago
See also: the writing of Tom Mahood [1], some of the best and most authoritative I've ever seen on the subject. He also tears into Bob Lazar which is a nice bonus. [1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/looking-at-the-bob-lazar-story-from-the-perspective-of-2018/ https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
hindsightbias 7y ago
Imagine what the intersection of two long range masers might look like.

JRKrause 7y ago

Is there any part of this footage that can't be explained by a bit of matter stuck on the FLIR lens? Even it being apparently "cold" seems well explained by the dust/bug whatever casting a shadow onto the IR sensor array.

nprateem 7y ago
The object was allegedly tracked by ground-based radar
djsumdog 7y ago
The pilots claim they physically saw it too. And the pilot who made the video was the 2nd group up from the first who claimed they saw it from their cockpits. And the FLIR was tracking the target moving. If it was a piece of dust stuck on, it would have looked as if it were moving the same speed of the aircraft, wouldn't it?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bloopernova 7y ago
It was captured by radar, and multiple other detection systems. The object had been observed before the pilot in the link flew. He was told to BOLO - be on the lookout - for this object.

jijji 7y ago

last week a story came out quoting an air force general saying that "technology exists that could transport a human anywhere on earth within an hour" [0]... [0] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31445/recently-retired-usaf-general-makes-eyebrow-raising-claims-about-advanced-space-technology https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31445/recently-retired...

joshuaheard 7y ago
I think he was referring to the new NASA supersonic plane, and meant "hours", not "hour". https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-supersonic-research-aircraft-cleared-for-final-assembly https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-superso...
- dkarras 7y ago
  >and meant "hours" Like a plane?
- jijji 7y ago
  maybe... but the video of him speaking [0] (at the 12:00 minute mark) is unambiguous with his words -- "less than an hour" was his actual quote, and there is no mention about any specific plane or technology. [0] https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw
goodcanadian 7y ago
Sounds like he was referring to a suborbital rocket flight.
nradov 7y ago
Yes the Space Shuttle could basically do that.

shartshooter 7y ago

I stumbled upon this forum a while ago that seems to go into extreme depth trying to understand the gimbal videos/purported UFO sightings https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-encounter-with-unknown-object.9333/ https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-nav...

CyanLite2 7y ago

So let me get this straight: We believe an alien civilization has traveled across the galaxy with faster-than-light technology, and has deployed aircraft that has broken our known laws of physics. But is susceptible to 1970s-era infrared radar technology? Okay. Got it.

monk_e_boy 7y ago
Maybe they don't care if we see them?
- cvshepherd 7y ago
  or maybe they want to be seen. either to gauge our reaction, or for the same reasons we want our own areal craft to be visible: to help avoid collisions.
newnewpdro 7y ago
While I don't think these UFOs are anything alien in nature at all, it's worth noting that we make absolutely zero effort to hide our space exploration probes and rovers from potential discovery.

baybal2 7y ago

I think if we ever see an alien, he will either fly to us in a completely enormous nuclear rocket which we will spot years before his arrival and deceleration. This is in the case if there is really no other way to traverse stars besides conventional rocketry. But in case if there is a way to trick any of the fundamental physics we know after all, then very likely the guy will come right at our porch, and they've probably done so many times without us even noticing, and will only contact us, if ever, on their own terms. Given the premise is right, and somebody can really do something on the level of fundamental physical force manipulation for space travel, then there would be no reason for them to not dispense with conventional space travel altogether, or at least to a reasonable extent where this technology is more practical than giant nuclear rockets. And the same goes for things like stealth technology, or inertia control. If somebody can arbitrary manipulate gravity, entropy, or fundamental forces to travel stars, or make traversable wormholes, then inertia cancelation, invisibility by directly manipulating light, undetectable radio comms, and power sources unlimited or almost so by heatsink capacity should be child's play for them too.

wonderwonder 7y ago
This assumes they are not coming from some giant station on the other side of our sun, parked there for the last several hundred years. They could also be anywhere in our solar system, that our technology is not advanced enough to detect. We cant really keep track of all the space rocks floating near us and they aren't trying not to be seen.
- ianai 7y ago
  How about they’re from a birth of life somewhere nearby but hard for us to detect - like oceans below the surface of Enceladus?
  - wonderwonder 7y ago
    I think that makes sense too, we are still finding out basic things about the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Space wise we are really just getting started.

mfer 7y ago

I'm reminded of other HN conversations on the patents around technology that could theoretically make this happen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208051

Tistel 7y ago

I have heard a couple of podcasts that had some very credible US pilots talking about this. I think detecting life on other planets or aliens here would be great (so long as they are not trying to kill me yada yada). But, the most down to earth explanation is signal/sensor warfare testing. Bare with me for a moment. The web is part of the sensor array of a spider. There are species of insects that tap on spider's webs to send a false positive signal to the spider on the web that a tasty prey has become trapped. The spider goes over to where on the web the vibrations indicated the prey is trapped and bang the spider gets killed by the assassin bug. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11628322 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11628322 There is some evidence these signal warfare systems are being developed: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secretive-nemesis-electronic-warfare-capability-will-change-naval-combat-forever https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secret... I think these are newest iterations of the Wild Weasel style of counter weapons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel they could make drones go a fuel wasting wild goose chases etc. Or make the other sides drone defend the eastern front while you fly in from the west etc. more signal warfare stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka

b06tmm 7y ago
When I was in the Navy (1977 ~ 1981), our A-6E was equipped with an ECM suite that was designed to intercept and process pulse signals, automatically select the optimum countermeasures technique, and then apply the technique. One of these countermeasures was to send a return signal back to the radar, "telling the radar that the aircraft had accelerated (beyond the speed of light) and was now on the opposite horizon. The effect of this was reported to be a snapping off of the radar mast or tipping over of the mobile trailer the radar was in due to the torque of the radar dish moving to the new location.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  That's hilarious! Somebody probably had a lot of fun coming up with and testing that idea.

GhettoMaestro 7y ago

Ah there it is, the ol' modified limited hangout[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

ubertoop 7y ago

I wonder... Could you project an image into the atmosphere via satellite. Maybe this was just an image. It accelerated with apparently 0 mass. It left no exhaust plumes. It was invisible to radar EVEN as they got close. Fit's all the criteria for something that isn't really even there.

jameslk 7y ago
Wasn't it captured on radar? That should eliminate this possibility
- egfx 7y ago
  Yes, you can detect projections via radar. This projections aspect was also my thought on this for a while and I did some research on it. I’ll append the link to the paper later. Another thing that comes to mind is there was a post here recently that talked about concentrated laser beams technology which looks interesting to consider. Probably the easiest way to explain the erratic behavior.
  - egfx 7y ago
    Here is the source: https://books.google.com/books?id=AZoSALzL3V4C https://books.google.com/books?id=AZoSALzL3V4C
thekingofh 7y ago
I'm thinking if you concentrate 10 powerful lasers at one point in the atmosphere it would be possible to generate a plasma that could be moved around at speeds that would be impossible for an aircraft. What I don't know is if that would be detectable via radar, which supposedly this phenomenon is.

8bitsrule 7y ago

If these are alien craft, maybe they're not flying through space ... or even warping space (Alcubierre-ish) but just leaping through it. Like stepping through a curtain. If our whole understanding of space is wrong, then they'd be asking themselves "why are they making it so hard?".

dang 7y ago

Url changed from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-flying-saucer-chad-underwoord-dave-fravor-a9254671.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-flyin..., which points to this.

jostmey 7y ago

If the video is real then my guess is we are looking at a glider being towed at supersonic speed. The air-tow could be flying higher in the atmosphere beyond the reach of basic ground defense systems. The glider would not give off a heat-plume but could have enormous maneuverability

oh_sigh 7y ago

There sure are a lot of "I want to believe"-ers in this thread, who are presumably mostly normal, rational individuals for most of their lives until something like UFOs tickles them the right way. I bet a lot of these same people have their minds boggled that some people are anti-vaxxers, or think global warming isn't real.

willis936 7y ago

After reviewing the footage with someone familiar with IR imaging, they pointed out that it looks like a FLIR sensor that was pointed at the sun for a prolonged period. There is only one piece of evidence and it doesn’t seem sufficient.

elkos 7y ago

I don't claim that's the case but there's at least one missile: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon) hypothesised to produce plasma stealth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth). My understanding is that a plasma stealth object should be high velocity and be optically bright to visual and IR. I don't maintain an hypothesis that that is the case but if any of my airmen would see such an object I would definitely like to have a report on that.

BrandoElFollito 7y ago

I am not following UFO information but I think I have only heard about them in my country (France) only twice in the last 15 years. I heard about cases in the US much often. US are also probably 3 times or size (population) and 10 times (or whatever) military size - so maybe the numbers are consistent across countries. I wonder however how much culture plays a role in the sightings. All UFOs in movies land in the US. You have Area51 and the extraterrestrial highway. You have Roswell and tranformers inside the Hoover Dam. If I see a weird thing in the sky, UFO will be the 7th possibility on my list. Maybe in the US UFOs landing is business as usual for pepole ?

fritzthecat 7y ago
I have seen strange things happening while camping out under a Cessna 172 together with fellow european pilots in Sedona, Arizona in 1995. Multiple lights in the Sky, zigzagging across the sky in very similar fashion to what those F18 pilots report. I know you were trying to be cynical, but maybe there is something strange going on there.
- BrandoElFollito 7y ago
  No, I am not trying to be cynical. My point is that if the news/reporting on UFOs in the US is much more prevalent than in, say, France, it is no surprise that people jump to that conclusion quicker than elsewhere. The movies are one another reason for that. This is just an idea, I do not know how statistically sound this is. To give a counterexample, everytime I switch on the radio on a station which is supposed to have people talking (France Culture for instance) and I hear music, I assume they are on strike. I do not think than an American would jump on that conclusion.

dragonelite 7y ago

Aliens, traverses interstellar space just to troll humans.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
Or they just don't care about humans, but are sucking out some valuable resource that we're not aware of. I keep thinking about that Bob Lazar interview, he claimed these alien aircraft fly off of a stable isotope of element 115. What if that element was rare, and they are mining it from, say, the core of our planet.

cybert00th 7y ago

I have a friend who has worked in US military black ops projects since at least the early '90s. And back in the mid '90s he told me there were aircraft being built and tested which had flight characteristics similar to those described here. This report is about a sighting in 2004, so it's more than possible that 10-ish years on, advances had been made that make this sighting quite believable. (edited grammar)

teslaberry 7y ago

werner von braun said the military would invent any excuse including faking the existence of aliens to justify ever increasing budgets for scret military research projects in space. space is the high ground. you cannot win withoit dominating it. you will definitely lose without some presence in it. there are 2 types of nations those with nukes and yhose without. this applies to space as well.