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> Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels. Fairies, ghosts and angels don't show up on radar or FLIR and the In

> Apply this to reports of something other than UFOs, like, say fairies, ghosts or angels. Fairies, ghosts and angels don't show up on radar or FLIR and the Inspector General of the DoD has never launched an investigation into how they have been handled by that department.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Are we talking about the three US military videos that surfaced in recent years? I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. In one case, you could literally use the numbers on the recording and some middle-school level geometry skills to calculate that the tracked object is a bird. And it's quite easy to guess why these videos were released. They're technology demonstrators. The general public can think UFOs if they want, but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter".
- tgflynn 5y ago
  Mick West's explanation of the FLIR1 video (the one from the Nimitz incident), that it was an ordinary aircraft, makes zero sense because given the quantity and quality of situational awareness data available to the pilots who captured the video it would require an extraordinary degree of incompetence to make such a mistake. I'm no expert on naval technology but given my limited understanding of carrier strike group operations this was my intuitive belief from the first time I heard this theory. Since then a number of knowledgeable people have confirmed that this explanation makes practically no sense.
  - simonh 5y ago
    It doesn't take incompetence to make a mistake, any of us can make mistakes even in things we're highly competent in. Optical artefacts are particularly difficult to account for. Take Go Fast for example, they're highly competent experienced aviators, but they still very clearly completely misidentified what, in hindsight, is obviously a bird. Clearly if trained operators can make a mistake like that, other mistakes are possible, so you can't just discount the possibility as absurd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8 I can easily see someone thinking an image is of a near object when it's actually a far object, and we know for a fact that highly trained operators can make terrible mistakes using complex tracking equipment.
    - stevenhuang 5y ago
      Consider for a moment that it's not a bird. Have the epistemic humility to realize that such pedestrian explanations are likely to have been proposed and ruled out during internal analysis, before public release. Also, birds don't move like that on radar.
      - simonh 5y ago
        Have you actually reviewed the analysis, using the instrument data in the video to calculate that it was a typical size and was actually moving at a typical speed and altitude for a bird? If so, what is your critique of the calculations?
        stevenhuang 5y ago
        See David Fravor's commentary on the videos. He's one of the jet pilots from the Nimitz incident. https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9711 https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9711 Specifically in the Go fast video: https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9829 https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9829 The object is shown colder than the ocean; it can't be a bird.
    - tgflynn 5y ago
      > Optical artefacts are particularly difficult to account for. We're not talking about optical artifacts. The aircraft had radar and it also had access to data from radars installed on the surface ships. The entire system is designed to make identifying friendly targets easy and to give pilots an overview of the tactical situation. IFF in aerial combat has been a solved problem almost since World War II.
      - simonh 5y ago
        I’m not sure which case you’re referring to, but in the FLIR1 incident they were tracking something optically while nothing appeared on radar. The proposed explanation is that the object was a much bigger commercial plane than they thought, much further away. Cameras are just as much, if not more susceptible to optical effects than human eyes. It’s quite plausible that a plane could be thought to be say 20km away, when actually it was 5x as far and outside radar range. IFF and radar aren’t going to help you if tye object isn’t actually where you think it is, so most of your sensors are looking in the wrong place. In the Go Fast case we actually have all the instrument data we need. From the data on the recording and some basic trigonometry we can see the object was very small only a metre or so across, was approximately half way between the plane and the surface, and was actually only travelling at modest speed commensurate with that of a bird. I can’t _prove_ to you that it was a bird, but I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions.
- king_magic 5y ago
  > but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter" I don't really buy that. I don't think some sort of fancy high resolution, possibly AI-driven bird (drone/jet/etc.) tracking is a particularly impressive capability that would have the Russian & Chinese militaries shaking in their shoes.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    A bird is smaller than a missile and has a weaker radar response than a stealth fighter. Being able to track a bird in flight over the sea, while yourself flying far above and much faster than it, clearly communicates you'll also be capable of tracking enemy missiles and drones from distance. For technology in active military service it is impressive. It's also not about "shaking in their shoes", but about making the other powers aware. This is the soft war that's been happening ever since first two human groups met each other - showing off your sticks and stones to deter others from trying to attack you in the first place.
- zionic 5y ago
  >I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. No, you haven't. Every "debunking" has itself been thoroughly debunked.
  - simonh 5y ago
    The 'debunk the debunkers' videos I've seen are hilariously, worst fringe of flat earth level wrong headed. They very much reminded me of the attempts to 'debunk' SpaceX rocket landing videos as fake, all of which died out when they landed multiple rockets in daylight in front of tens of thousands of people. IIRC one of the air force videos couldn't be readily explained, but that was just because there wasn't enough information in the video to calculate scale or relative motion, so it could have been anything. The other two were definitively explained.
  - wokwokwok 5y ago
    Is this what we’re reduced to? No you didn’t. Yes I did. No you didn’t... Talk about low bar to discussion. They have been debunked; even if you refuse to believe that, the overwhelming body of evidence, statistically, shows no consistent conclusive evidence. So, what do you want to believe? That there are one or two pieces of “evidence” to prove “it’s all true”, or that there are thousands of pieces of evidence which have shown no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. This is how conspiracy theory stuff grows; people hang on to the few outliers. ...now when its true, the body of compelling evidence grows over time (see COVID vaccine -> blood clots) and eventually there is enough of a body of evidence that it starts to be compelling. ...but no matter how “smoking gun” your one example is, it does let make it convincing even if it’s true. What we haven’t seen is a growing compelling body of evidence for ufos. That’s fair reason to believe that... > No, you haven’t Yes. I have.
- pmayrgundter 5y ago
  I haven't seen a debunking that dealt with the aviator accounts. All I've seen are hypotheticals about how the videos could be anything but what the aviators reported, and yeah, so far have just dismissed or ignored their accounts altogether. Interested to see otherwise!
- stevenhuang 5y ago
  I've been following this topic closely and it was never the case that there was a definitive explanation. There were many theories and counter theories. It would be misleading to say the matter is settled. It's also doubtful to propose this is a technology demonstration. The ability to track objects is not a differentiator; there are plenty videos online showing similar HUDs. In any case the public release has been degraded specifically to withhold information on their optical capabilities.
  - sthnblllII 5y ago
    That is simply not true. Here are the explanations for all three at a middle school level. There is literally nothing interesting in those videos and interpreting them as evidence as Extraterrestrial Aliens is simply inexcusable at this point. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWWGmiZs4JA&pbjreload=101 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWWGmiZs4JA&pbjreload=101
    - stevenhuang 5y ago
      Those explanations are misguided and thunderfoot is just rehashing (badly) the points raised by Mike West. See commentary by David Fravor, one of the jet pilots in the incident https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E&t=9671s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E&t=9671s
      - sthnblllII 5y ago
        David Fravor's testimony is contradicted by the video evidence. What specifically in Dr. Mason's analysis do you think is incorrect? Thanks.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

Are we talking about the three US military videos that surfaced in recent years? I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. In one case, you could literally use the numbers on the recording and some middle-school level geometry skills to calculate that the tracked object is a bird. And it's quite easy to guess why these videos were released. They're technology demonstrators. The general public can think UFOs if they want, but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter".

tgflynn 5y ago
Mick West's explanation of the FLIR1 video (the one from the Nimitz incident), that it was an ordinary aircraft, makes zero sense because given the quantity and quality of situational awareness data available to the pilots who captured the video it would require an extraordinary degree of incompetence to make such a mistake. I'm no expert on naval technology but given my limited understanding of carrier strike group operations this was my intuitive belief from the first time I heard this theory. Since then a number of knowledgeable people have confirmed that this explanation makes practically no sense.
- simonh 5y ago
  It doesn't take incompetence to make a mistake, any of us can make mistakes even in things we're highly competent in. Optical artefacts are particularly difficult to account for. Take Go Fast for example, they're highly competent experienced aviators, but they still very clearly completely misidentified what, in hindsight, is obviously a bird. Clearly if trained operators can make a mistake like that, other mistakes are possible, so you can't just discount the possibility as absurd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8 I can easily see someone thinking an image is of a near object when it's actually a far object, and we know for a fact that highly trained operators can make terrible mistakes using complex tracking equipment.
  - stevenhuang 5y ago
    Consider for a moment that it's not a bird. Have the epistemic humility to realize that such pedestrian explanations are likely to have been proposed and ruled out during internal analysis, before public release. Also, birds don't move like that on radar.
    - simonh 5y ago
      Have you actually reviewed the analysis, using the instrument data in the video to calculate that it was a typical size and was actually moving at a typical speed and altitude for a bird? If so, what is your critique of the calculations?
      - stevenhuang 5y ago
        See David Fravor's commentary on the videos. He's one of the jet pilots from the Nimitz incident. https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9711 https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9711 Specifically in the Go fast video: https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9829 https://youtu.be/aB8zcAttP1E?t=9829 The object is shown colder than the ocean; it can't be a bird.
  - tgflynn 5y ago
    > Optical artefacts are particularly difficult to account for. We're not talking about optical artifacts. The aircraft had radar and it also had access to data from radars installed on the surface ships. The entire system is designed to make identifying friendly targets easy and to give pilots an overview of the tactical situation. IFF in aerial combat has been a solved problem almost since World War II.
    - simonh 5y ago
      I’m not sure which case you’re referring to, but in the FLIR1 incident they were tracking something optically while nothing appeared on radar. The proposed explanation is that the object was a much bigger commercial plane than they thought, much further away. Cameras are just as much, if not more susceptible to optical effects than human eyes. It’s quite plausible that a plane could be thought to be say 20km away, when actually it was 5x as far and outside radar range. IFF and radar aren’t going to help you if tye object isn’t actually where you think it is, so most of your sensors are looking in the wrong place. In the Go Fast case we actually have all the instrument data we need. From the data on the recording and some basic trigonometry we can see the object was very small only a metre or so across, was approximately half way between the plane and the surface, and was actually only travelling at modest speed commensurate with that of a bird. I can’t _prove_ to you that it was a bird, but I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions.
king_magic 5y ago
> but what Chinese and Russian militaries saw was, "holy shit, US can auto-track a far-away bird from a jet fighter" I don't really buy that. I don't think some sort of fancy high resolution, possibly AI-driven bird (drone/jet/etc.) tracking is a particularly impressive capability that would have the Russian & Chinese militaries shaking in their shoes.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  A bird is smaller than a missile and has a weaker radar response than a stealth fighter. Being able to track a bird in flight over the sea, while yourself flying far above and much faster than it, clearly communicates you'll also be capable of tracking enemy missiles and drones from distance. For technology in active military service it is impressive. It's also not about "shaking in their shoes", but about making the other powers aware. This is the soft war that's been happening ever since first two human groups met each other - showing off your sticks and stones to deter others from trying to attack you in the first place.
zionic 5y ago
>I've seen all of them clearly and thoroughly explained away. No, you haven't. Every "debunking" has itself been thoroughly debunked.
- simonh 5y ago
  The 'debunk the debunkers' videos I've seen are hilariously, worst fringe of flat earth level wrong headed. They very much reminded me of the attempts to 'debunk' SpaceX rocket landing videos as fake, all of which died out when they landed multiple rockets in daylight in front of tens of thousands of people. IIRC one of the air force videos couldn't be readily explained, but that was just because there wasn't enough information in the video to calculate scale or relative motion, so it could have been anything. The other two were definitively explained.
- wokwokwok 5y ago
  Is this what we’re reduced to? No you didn’t. Yes I did. No you didn’t... Talk about low bar to discussion. They have been debunked; even if you refuse to believe that, the overwhelming body of evidence, statistically, shows no consistent conclusive evidence. So, what do you want to believe? That there are one or two pieces of “evidence” to prove “it’s all true”, or that there are thousands of pieces of evidence which have shown no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. This is how conspiracy theory stuff grows; people hang on to the few outliers. ...now when its true, the body of compelling evidence grows over time (see COVID vaccine -> blood clots) and eventually there is enough of a body of evidence that it starts to be compelling. ...but no matter how “smoking gun” your one example is, it does let make it convincing even if it’s true. What we haven’t seen is a growing compelling body of evidence for ufos. That’s fair reason to believe that... > No, you haven’t Yes. I have.
pmayrgundter 5y ago
I haven't seen a debunking that dealt with the aviator accounts. All I've seen are hypotheticals about how the videos could be anything but what the aviators reported, and yeah, so far have just dismissed or ignored their accounts altogether. Interested to see otherwise!
stevenhuang 5y ago
I've been following this topic closely and it was never the case that there was a definitive explanation. There were many theories and counter theories. It would be misleading to say the matter is settled. It's also doubtful to propose this is a technology demonstration. The ability to track objects is not a differentiator; there are plenty videos online showing similar HUDs. In any case the public release has been degraded specifically to withhold information on their optical capabilities.
- sthnblllII 5y ago
  That is simply not true. Here are the explanations for all three at a middle school level. There is literally nothing interesting in those videos and interpreting them as evidence as Extraterrestrial Aliens is simply inexcusable at this point. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWWGmiZs4JA&pbjreload=101 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jWWGmiZs4JA&pbjreload=101
  - stevenhuang 5y ago
    Those explanations are misguided and thunderfoot is just rehashing (badly) the points raised by Mike West. See commentary by David Fravor, one of the jet pilots in the incident https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E&t=9671s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E&t=9671s
    - sthnblllII 5y ago
      David Fravor's testimony is contradicted by the video evidence. What specifically in Dr. Mason's analysis do you think is incorrect? Thanks.