5 ms·

This is either a pretty elaborate disinformation campaign or … some pretty interesting stuff in terms of our understanding of physics. It's also interesting ho

by spenvo 5y ago

This is either a pretty elaborate disinformation campaign or … some pretty interesting stuff in terms of our understanding of physics. It's also interesting how these alleged observations seem to exclusively happen within restricted US airspace over oceans - but not over US land. Other UFO HN threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=UFO&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... My bet has to be on it being an elaborate disinformation campaign, to throw off our nationstate adversaries and keep the public in fear and/or distracted. It requires one to be super cynical, but our government has done worse to US citizens in terms of disinformation [0] (but not since the 70s that i know of). That explanation accounts for why these sightings only appear to happen in the US, and is (to me) far more believable than an encounter with otherworldly technology. At least with respect to the 2004 encounter, I think the least likely explanation is that the object belonged to another superpower - b/c it feels like something totally out of reach in multiple domains for 2004 tech. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%20(syllabic%20abbreviation%20derived%20from,disrupting%20domestic%20American%20political%20organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%....

senortumnus 5y ago
I've been pondering these reports as well, and my hunch is that the US is recognizing an increasing occurrence of drone or otherwise long distance, stealth aircraft that are regularly penetrating US airspace... and they want to know more. A regular feature of such articles is a well respected aviator stating, "if I'd seen it while alone, I might not have reported it." Even if it just gets US mil personnel to feel more comfortable reporting unidentified aerial things, ie by distancing that experience from UFO kookery, then it's a PR campaign success. edit: what's in the videos? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- XorNot 5y ago
  I mean a UFO that's just an unidentified foreign drone is ... a UFO until we have a different explanation. UFOs == aliens was a connection that came about later.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  But then why would army, navy or air force be ok with unidentified things around their training grounds? If it was a civilian drone they would go after it and people controlling it, a foreign spy plane would cause diplomatic turmoil. Its either their misinformation campaign, testing of their next gen tech, or aliens. Listed by probability with first being in high 90s.
sollewitt 5y ago
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a32452418/3d-plasma-object-ufos/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a32452418... Not only that they happen in the US, they frequently happen to US military, the very kinds of sensors arrays you would want to spoof.
hooande 5y ago
There's no way these are advanced technology from any country. If someone invented any technology that's 100X better than the state of the art, not to mention something that violates the laws of physics as we know them, it would be impossible to keep it a secret. There would have to be too many people involved. At a minimum you'd have credible rumors, like there were during the Manhattan and Apollo projects
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- graderjs 5y ago
  If you go looking there are "credible" rumours. So-called "whistleblowers" or "SSP insiders" are videotaped on Gaia and other places to share their story. You can certainly find these if you look a bit. I trust the "whistleblowers" and "former insiders" less than thousands of random civilians who see things in the sky or have experiences tho. But your mileage or trust of different sources may vary and that's totally cool. Clearly something is going on. I definitely agree we didn't simply "invent" this. If these are ours or we know how they work, we had to have help building them. Otherwise it's just too weird to consider an entirely parallel set of physical theories that tens of thousands of people must have learned and put into practice and it's not credibly in the open. There has to be something else stopping that from coming out, which to me implies secret cooperation with a civilization way beyond our own.
astronautjones 5y ago
> It's also interesting how these alleged observations seem to exclusively happen within restricted US airspace over oceans - but not over US land. and they almost all happen over declared testing areas where the air force has trialed new stuff on navy crews without telling them in the past...
- graderjs 5y ago
  Honestly that's just sampling bias. The current high profile crop are only from Navy pilots. But there's lots of data of unexplained things happening over other areas (Phoenix lights, Belgium wave, Mexico City UFOs). The difference now is that instead of random civilians, or other country militaries, saying they saw it and being ignored by the media mostly, the US armed services are pushing the story out there. None of that means that armed services are the only ones that have encountered this or have evidence of it. But the coordinated narrative, "authority source" and push definitely raises the prominence of these stories in relation to others.
  - ping_pong 5y ago
    The Phoenix lights were easily explained by flares that disappeared behind mountains.
    - postalrat 5y ago
      Not what people claimed they saw earlier that night.
    - graderjs 5y ago
      "Easily explained" is not really cutting it for a lot of people. And that's cool. That's part of the difficulty with this, everyone has different thresholds where they're convinced about something which basically none of us have any idea is. What's "easily explained" for guy X might be "way too convenient" for gal Y. ;p ;)x
    - Dysseus 5y ago
      Most of the UFO sightings occurred around 8:15-9:00 PM, while the flairs were known to be ignited around 10:00 - 10:30 PM. Really bizarre fact about the Phoenix lights, the Governor of Arizona at that time has admitted he saw the UFO (UAP - whatever) [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=ufos+generals&qid=1621299260&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offic...
spfzero 5y ago
I am guessing since the sightings don’t occur over land that might be because no one is looking for them there. The Navy is very keen on sensor technologies, and trying out new, more powerful ones. These are always tested offshore. Any rival power that wanted to keep tabs on them would be in the vicinity of the sensors being tested.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
Occam's razor principle says it is the first one, honestly it does not belong to HN articles, and should be treated as click bait.
gridspy 5y ago
> It's also interesting how these alleged observations seem to exclusively happen within restricted US airspace over oceans - but not over US land. Sounds like the detected craft were attempting to be stealthy and were caught out by military use of cutting edge technology as the "rules changed." That and we only hear about the well documented cases, where advanced sensors meet recording technology from multiple sources - military systems in other words. It would also be easier to find strange unauthorized stuff in the less populated and more heavily scrutinized areas - no fly zones monitored regularly by military staff for instance. Over land there is a lot of legitimate traffic to "hide" in.
wcoenen 5y ago
Couldn't the "elaborate disinformation campaign" just be TV shows? The "ancient aliens" crap has been airing in the US for about 10 years now, it must have had some effect on the beliefs of the population by now.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  Aliens were far more in in the 80’s and 90’s than they are today especially as far as the UFOs, abductions and other more fear inducing stuff goes...
  - MikeDelta 5y ago
    When the X-files stopped, so did the aliens it seems.
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      X-Files was just Cold War paranoia without the Russians.
TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the increased political instability across the US and other countries. A certain subset of the population is prone to conspiratorial thinking. What better way is there to distract those people from political issues? This is kind of backed up by the fact that the countries that are releasing the most UFO stuff are the ones experiencing the largest spike in instability.
- krapp 5y ago
  I don't think anyone is distracted by this to the exclusion of all other considerations, certainly not of political issues. Even conspiracy theorists are capable of holding more than one thought in their head at a time.
Brian_K_White 5y ago
You can't have multiple forms of advanced military targeting and recording and corroboration and high degrees of trust in the chain of possession and the observers themselves etc, any place other than where all that stuff is operating and operating in that heightened state like a training exercise or any other actual operation. When was the last time the Navy was flying a bunch of fighter jets with all their hottest weapons and targetting tech active over your house? We do have lot's of what IS "any place other", which is randos cell phone an dash cam footage. We quite rightly dismiss most of it, but it exists,ans it's all that can possibly exist, and so there is no discrepency to find "interesting". I also don't find it remarkable at all that Russia and China aren't publicizing their own "nutcase" stories any more than we ever did, especially considering their pilots are pprobably even less likely to report anything even slightly odd that will end their careers. It's not interesting at all.

by spenvo 5y ago

senortumnus 5y ago

I've been pondering these reports as well, and my hunch is that the US is recognizing an increasing occurrence of drone or otherwise long distance, stealth aircraft that are regularly penetrating US airspace... and they want to know more. A regular feature of such articles is a well respected aviator stating, "if I'd seen it while alone, I might not have reported it." Even if it just gets US mil personnel to feel more comfortable reporting unidentified aerial things, ie by distancing that experience from UFO kookery, then it's a PR campaign success. edit: what's in the videos? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

XorNot 5y ago
I mean a UFO that's just an unidentified foreign drone is ... a UFO until we have a different explanation. UFOs == aliens was a connection that came about later.
me_me_me 5y ago
But then why would army, navy or air force be ok with unidentified things around their training grounds? If it was a civilian drone they would go after it and people controlling it, a foreign spy plane would cause diplomatic turmoil. Its either their misinformation campaign, testing of their next gen tech, or aliens. Listed by probability with first being in high 90s.

sollewitt 5y ago

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a32452418/3d-plasma-object-ufos/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a32452418... Not only that they happen in the US, they frequently happen to US military, the very kinds of sensors arrays you would want to spoof.

hooande 5y ago

There's no way these are advanced technology from any country. If someone invented any technology that's 100X better than the state of the art, not to mention something that violates the laws of physics as we know them, it would be impossible to keep it a secret. There would have to be too many people involved. At a minimum you'd have credible rumors, like there were during the Manhattan and Apollo projects

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
graderjs 5y ago
If you go looking there are "credible" rumours. So-called "whistleblowers" or "SSP insiders" are videotaped on Gaia and other places to share their story. You can certainly find these if you look a bit. I trust the "whistleblowers" and "former insiders" less than thousands of random civilians who see things in the sky or have experiences tho. But your mileage or trust of different sources may vary and that's totally cool. Clearly something is going on. I definitely agree we didn't simply "invent" this. If these are ours or we know how they work, we had to have help building them. Otherwise it's just too weird to consider an entirely parallel set of physical theories that tens of thousands of people must have learned and put into practice and it's not credibly in the open. There has to be something else stopping that from coming out, which to me implies secret cooperation with a civilization way beyond our own.

astronautjones 5y ago

> It's also interesting how these alleged observations seem to exclusively happen within restricted US airspace over oceans - but not over US land. and they almost all happen over declared testing areas where the air force has trialed new stuff on navy crews without telling them in the past...

graderjs 5y ago
Honestly that's just sampling bias. The current high profile crop are only from Navy pilots. But there's lots of data of unexplained things happening over other areas (Phoenix lights, Belgium wave, Mexico City UFOs). The difference now is that instead of random civilians, or other country militaries, saying they saw it and being ignored by the media mostly, the US armed services are pushing the story out there. None of that means that armed services are the only ones that have encountered this or have evidence of it. But the coordinated narrative, "authority source" and push definitely raises the prominence of these stories in relation to others.
- ping_pong 5y ago
  The Phoenix lights were easily explained by flares that disappeared behind mountains.
  - postalrat 5y ago
    Not what people claimed they saw earlier that night.
  - graderjs 5y ago
    "Easily explained" is not really cutting it for a lot of people. And that's cool. That's part of the difficulty with this, everyone has different thresholds where they're convinced about something which basically none of us have any idea is. What's "easily explained" for guy X might be "way too convenient" for gal Y. ;p ;)x
  - Dysseus 5y ago
    Most of the UFO sightings occurred around 8:15-9:00 PM, while the flairs were known to be ignited around 10:00 - 10:30 PM. Really bizarre fact about the Phoenix lights, the Governor of Arizona at that time has admitted he saw the UFO (UAP - whatever) [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=ufos+generals&qid=1621299260&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offic...

spfzero 5y ago

I am guessing since the sightings don’t occur over land that might be because no one is looking for them there. The Navy is very keen on sensor technologies, and trying out new, more powerful ones. These are always tested offshore. Any rival power that wanted to keep tabs on them would be in the vicinity of the sensors being tested.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

Occam's razor principle says it is the first one, honestly it does not belong to HN articles, and should be treated as click bait.

gridspy 5y ago

> It's also interesting how these alleged observations seem to exclusively happen within restricted US airspace over oceans - but not over US land. Sounds like the detected craft were attempting to be stealthy and were caught out by military use of cutting edge technology as the "rules changed." That and we only hear about the well documented cases, where advanced sensors meet recording technology from multiple sources - military systems in other words. It would also be easier to find strange unauthorized stuff in the less populated and more heavily scrutinized areas - no fly zones monitored regularly by military staff for instance. Over land there is a lot of legitimate traffic to "hide" in.

wcoenen 5y ago

Couldn't the "elaborate disinformation campaign" just be TV shows? The "ancient aliens" crap has been airing in the US for about 10 years now, it must have had some effect on the beliefs of the population by now.

dogma1138 5y ago
Aliens were far more in in the 80’s and 90’s than they are today especially as far as the UFOs, abductions and other more fear inducing stuff goes...
- MikeDelta 5y ago
  When the X-files stopped, so did the aliens it seems.
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    X-Files was just Cold War paranoia without the Russians.

TheAdamAndChe 5y ago

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the increased political instability across the US and other countries. A certain subset of the population is prone to conspiratorial thinking. What better way is there to distract those people from political issues? This is kind of backed up by the fact that the countries that are releasing the most UFO stuff are the ones experiencing the largest spike in instability.

krapp 5y ago
I don't think anyone is distracted by this to the exclusion of all other considerations, certainly not of political issues. Even conspiracy theorists are capable of holding more than one thought in their head at a time.

Brian_K_White 5y ago

You can't have multiple forms of advanced military targeting and recording and corroboration and high degrees of trust in the chain of possession and the observers themselves etc, any place other than where all that stuff is operating and operating in that heightened state like a training exercise or any other actual operation. When was the last time the Navy was flying a bunch of fighter jets with all their hottest weapons and targetting tech active over your house? We do have lot's of what IS "any place other", which is randos cell phone an dash cam footage. We quite rightly dismiss most of it, but it exists,ans it's all that can possibly exist, and so there is no discrepency to find "interesting". I also don't find it remarkable at all that Russia and China aren't publicizing their own "nutcase" stories any more than we ever did, especially considering their pilots are pprobably even less likely to report anything even slightly odd that will end their careers. It's not interesting at all.