11 ms·

Pentagon UFO Videos Not Aliens

40 points by rrauenza 5y ago

bguebert 5y ago
>If it flies like a duck, is the size of a duck, and quacks like a duck . . . it probably isn’t an alien spaceship or ultra-advanced drone from a foreign power. But headlines such as “U.S. Navy Pilot Spots UFO” generate more clicks than “Pilot Sees Goose on Infrared Camera.” I was really hoping they were hiding aliens though.
fractalf 5y ago
That's the dumbest explaination I've ever heard. If it was that simple don't you think the air force would think of that before posting these vids?
- jjbinx007 5y ago
  Mick West posts some pretty compelling explanations of the phenomena shown in the videos: https://m.youtube.com/user/mickword https://m.youtube.com/user/mickword
  - dsyrk 5y ago
    It’s getting harder and harder for him recently to come up with conventional explications. I think the biggest problem will be when data from multiple systems is declassified as it will really challenge various debunking theories.
    - eloff 5y ago
      To be fair, as I'm always telling my wife, just because you can't imagine the explanation doesn't imply the alternative that it's a supernatural explanation (or substitute aliens here) is true. It most probably is just a failure of imagination.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Or, more likely, it will show more conclusively that, despite what a few spooks want to have everyone speculating, the phenomena are not impressive at all. Of course, no amount of data will put this to rest. When other instruments will have failed to register the same event, people will not accept the obvious conclusion (the one instrument that "caught" it was malfunctioning/misinterpreted one way or another), they will start claiming that not only are the objects special, they are also invisible to radar/infrared/[...].
      - dsyrk 5y ago
        What do you make of the US senators reactions? I mean they have received classified briefings on this topic and the incidents and there are multiple incidents where the UAPs are registered on multiple sensors, radar, FLIR, and human witnesses with all collaborating and consistent details. I default to skepticism and metabunk is a great read on many topics but we are probably nearing a point of failure to debunk on many incidents. There is something and the question is what is it.
        tsimionescu 5y ago
        I make of them the same thing I make in retrospect of US senator reactions to receiving classified briefings about WMDs in Irak: they could be complete fabrications, meant to deceive senators as much as the public. Furthermore, even if it is absolutely true that the military has a huge host of UAP that they have worked hard to identify and failed, and they are briefing the senators on the details, that does not mean that there is no explanation, it just means that trying to accurately explain a phenomenon that happened once or twice is extremely hard. I have a backlog of dozens of bugs in my product that a customer has seen once or twice, with logs that show me they are right, that make no sense given the code and that we have been unable to reproduce. Should I conclude that alien devices interfered with my software to deceive my customer? Obviously not: complex systems are complex and have many corner case behaviors that we may never have a completely satisfying explanation for.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  From TFA: > So why hasn’t the military given any of these explanations? > Well, the Department of Defense’s policy is to report even “incursions that are initially reported as UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] when the observer cannot immediately [emphasis added] identify what he or she is observing.” It is entirely possible that these examples were all identified after the initial report, but still bureaucratically classified as UAPs. The Pentagon has confirmed the footage is real, but has said nothing about the content of the footage.
aaroninsf 5y ago
This flavor of sniffy nothing-to-see-here dismissal stands a fair chance of aging exceedingly poorly. It reflects most of all how successful the US's long-term project to inculcate dismissive ridicule around UAP has been, but fails to yet understand that there is a pronounced pivot in tone in how official sources are discussing these things. That pivot is much more interesting and significant than any particular video, regardless of the weakness of Follett's criticisms. Part of that pivot which is significant is the change in terminology, from UFO to UAP. This may be simple bureaucratic bike shedding. It is also consistent with a change of framing motivated by aspects of the phenomenon which have not been reconciled with the conventional equation of them with "flying saucers" aka spaceships containing extraterrestrials. Those of us who watch these things over time are genuinely astonished at the rapid and comprehensive change in tone here, and the tea leaf reading going on is sometimes quite interesting. It is plausible that the decision to found a Space Force was one more childish impulse by Trump. It is also plausible that that founding and its continued build out under Biden is not unrelated to this pivot. As with much of the secret history of our times, those of us on the outside can only watch the outlines of the blacked out and redacted spaces, and infer what we can from their changes. This dismissal is understandable in a historical moment offering no shortage of profound quotidian crises. It also partakes of a world-weary cynicism which was taught, not learned; and IMO it misses the real story here. Note that Obama added comments to this fire this week. If this is disinformation and long con, e.g. by a spooked aerospace industry and military industrial complex looking for a new line of revenue, it is a very long con and one with a scale of duplicity, or complicity, inconsistent with the professionalism and careers and understood integrity of a lot of increasingly highly ranked people. That doesn't mean it's not a disinformation campaign. It does mean that if it is, it's unprecedented in potential impact in a way we haven't seen since the days of yellow cake Uranium. Either it's a story to be watched closely, not scoffed at because that's what you have always done in "serious" company.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Note that Obama added comments to this fire this week. If this is disinformation and long con, e.g. by a spooked aerospace industry and military industrial complex looking for a new line of revenue, it is a very long con and one with a scale of duplicity, or complicity, inconsistent with the professionalism and careers and understood integrity of a lot of increasingly highly ranked people. Perhaps its time to start doubting the integrity and/or professionalism of these people, rather than basic physics. Even if conspiracy theories/government long-cons are not extremely likely (though the government, military and intelligence agencies have a huge documented record of intentionally bold-faced lying to the public, such as the fabricated WMD Irak claims), they are still far and away more likely than physics defying alien spacecraft. Furthermore, even in the most captivating readings of these events, its obvious that these people have no clue what these phenomena actually are, so there is still no reason to actually follow the story other than morbid curiosity.
pvelagal 5y ago
Well, still don't have answers, only more theories about theories.
woeirua 5y ago
The debunkers are going to have a hard time reconciling their views with the fact that some pretty prominent individuals in our government are basically admitting that these are not terrestrial in origin [1]. [1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2021/03/22/ufo-sightings-made-public-new-report-former-intel-chief-says/4802595001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2021/03/22/uf...
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  When comparing predictions from long-standing physics with the vague insinuations of intelligence officers, you have to be extraordinarily gullible to believe the insinuations rather than the physics.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Physics hasn't even conclusively explained the Hessdalen Lights, and those are relatively easy to research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights The suggestion that "physics has already explained this" is unscientific wishful thinking when applied to more obscure phenomena with less available data.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      I'm not claiming that physics has explained this, I'm claiming physics implies that it's astronomically unlikely if not impossible for us to be visited by alien spacecraft.
      - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
        > I'm claiming physics implies that it's astronomically unlikely if not impossible for us to be visited by alien spacecraft What part of physics specifically? The one where there are billions of planets in out galaxy alone? Or the one where FTL travel is possible with warp drives?
terminalserver 5y ago
UFOs ..... universally, always, without exception pictured by grainy out of focus long distance cameras. That’s the real phenomenon, in a world full of high resolution superb optical equipment. Never ever once imaged clearly and never once imaged up close.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Same with Big Foot.
  - elevaet 5y ago
    Big Foot/Yeti are bears walking bipedally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqI_jC_qcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqI_jC_qcY It looks a lot more humanoid or ape-like when the bear is far away or the resolution is grainy.
- thebigspacefuck 5y ago
  I found this video enlightening. It’s a bunch of objects people might call UFOs getting zoomed in on by a Coolpix P1000 https://youtu.be/s64qV134Xis https://youtu.be/s64qV134Xis
- kimixa 5y ago
  I'd suggest that if they had clear images, they would be less likely to be "unidentified" flying objects, and then identified as mundane things. Like a known object with some unexpected angle or optical illusion making it appear to do "impossible" things, or a sensor artifact or interference. Or a combination.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExIGSZ3UUAQ22gV?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExIGSZ3UUAQ22gV?format=jpg Q.E.D.
- partiallypro 5y ago
  Go to an airshow and take pictures. Most of them will be awful. Taking pictures of aircraft that are miles up in the sky is not easy for an amateur photographer, even today with better cameras most people are relying on digital zoom instead of optical zoom. Anyhow -most- of the photos taken from US Aircraft are clearly balloons, some consumer but most spying; it's a huge intelligence failure that these incidents aren't reported to the higher ups when -most- of it is clearly enemy spying. The War Zone did a few good pieces on this. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31151/area-51-veteran-and-cia-electronic-warfare-pioneer-weigh-in-on-navy-ufo-encounters https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31151/area-51-veteran-... https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones... As for the super high speed phenomena being observed, I have serious doubts that it is an adversary given US defense spending, so they are either secret projects or something beyond. The article (from NRO) claims the fast objects are distorted by a parallax effect but seem to ignore the radar signature showing similar speed to what is visually observed...not the speed of a bird or a balloon. The theories in this NRO are pretty laughable to be perfectly honest in regards to some of the cases that are clearly not commercial aircraft, birds, etc as the author claims. Clearly making a joke out of what is possibly a serious national security issue in regards to enemy spying, especially. The Drive (War Zone) write ups take the issue far more seriously, and rightfully so, I'd recommend them.
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INTPenis 5y ago
I was surprised to read that Obama has even entertained these UAPs with a statement. That really shows evidence for a completely different conspiracy theory going back at least 2000 years. Simple bread and circuses. And this is part of the latter.
Geee 5y ago
I think it's a psy-op to distract people from what's happening in the economy. They have a collection of topics which they release when people start talking too much about money printing, which could potentially lead to a mass panic and hyperinflation.
- blumomo 5y ago
  Here we go, they flood the news channels to distract people from the actually relevant stuff which we are not supposed to see. The threat by invisible enemies is a clever meme, hopefully more people are going to understand that.
- krapp 5y ago
  Someone always suggests this, or something along these lines... but there's no evidence that people are actually distracted by this to the exclusion of all other concerns. It's a minor story for the vast majority of people.
  - Geee 5y ago
    Hyperinflation is a nasty feedback loop. News is one important control valve to keep it from going haywire. What do you think they're going to say? Do you think they try to reassure people that there isn't a reason to fear inflation?
    - krapp 5y ago
      I don't know what they're going to say, if anything, but I'm certain they're not fabricating a UFO scare to distract people from the economy, that's cartoon logic. If the government wanted to use the news to influence people's perception of the economy, even through deception, they would do so through news about the economy, not by hoping for second or third order effects from reporting on something completely different.
      - Geee 5y ago
        Well, I can't find any other explanation for why they release these cartoon news. Even Obama made a statement.
joshuaheard 5y ago
The "tic tac" Nimitz incident (not a video) was confirmed by radar, most of other military sightings were too. This would disprove the visual effect explanation as set forth in the article. Military experts have studied these and said these objects exceed our understanding of physics. There is only one explanation: an extraterrestrial origin.
- codezero 5y ago
  What if your military systems have been compromised and the UAV is the thing that compromised them?
- verdverm 5y ago
  Do you believe advanced radar to be infallible? Do you think the military could be developing radar fooling technology to trick the other side?
  - joshuaheard 5y ago
    It could be some vast disinformation conspiracy, but I take the evidence at face value, Occam's razer and all that. I doubt they would try and fool our enemies by claiming aliens. It's not just radar, it's the consistency between eyewitness reports, video, and radar. I'm only talking about the recent military sightings that are being declassified.
    - rOOb85 5y ago
      What if it's not about making the enemy believe in aliens, but making the enemy believe there is technology available that is "other worldly" advanced. Basically a psyop.
      - krapp 5y ago
        Any adversary modern enough to be worth the effort knows what the laws of physics are, and they have a working intelligence apparatus that likely gives them an idea of what our cutting edge technology should be capable of. No such adversary would likely believe the claim that the US has suddenly developed physics-defying technology thousands of years ahead of what should even be feasible, which they just recently decided to leak like a sieve about. And the only thing the US does with this technology is troll their own military. If it is a psyop, it's a stupid and obvious one.
ecommerceguy 5y ago
I'm not sure what to believe but I like to get 2 sides of a story. I found this site very interesting. https://www.uaptheory.com/ https://www.uaptheory.com/
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  That article is claiming that the accelerations some have computed based on instrument readings for some unidentified objects are impossibly high. To avoid this impossibility, they claim that the only logical explanation is that the craft are curving space time in such a way as to actually have 0 acceleration, which they claim is somehow possible. First of all, the only theory of curved space-time that we have doesn't allow 'at will' curving, by simple conservation laws. Second of all, the amount of curvature needed to achieve the apparent acceleration is proportional to that acceleration, and so is the mass-energy required to produce that curvature. If it were possible to curve space time so much that you appear to accelerate at 12000g, you should also be able to accelerate to 12000g. I haven't done the math, but I would expect the amount of mass required to be well above the Schwartzschild limit, meaning that whatever the UAP was before attempting such a maneuver, it would quickly become an easily-identified black hole afterwards. Obviously, the explanation that is far more in line with current physics than the article's exotic space-curvature drive would be various glitches in the instruments used to assess the speed of the 'objects'.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Looking up the math a little bit, and assuming that in order to curve space-time enough to achieve 12000g you would need a mass that is 12000 times the earth's mass, the Schwarzschild radius for such a mass is 106m. So, if the observed object was less than 212m across, it could not have appeared to accelerate at 12000g by curving space-time without collapsing into a black hole.
crazydoggers 5y ago
The linked video in the article showing how a triangle iris creates triangle ufos is brilliant, and seems obvious after you see it. https://youtu.be/-r2oaQWmqkk https://youtu.be/-r2oaQWmqkk Debunking this stuff is not as exciting as believing in aliens, which is why it’s a never ending battle. But the problem is when people who can make policy get duped. Again, we need better science education and should demand such for those we elect.
- 13years 5y ago
  This is why those we elect should never be involved in science. It was never supposed to be the role of government. The expectation that those we elect should be knowledgeable over the entire domain of knowledge that represents important things we care about is unreasonable and is why they always fail our expectations. Instead, the domain of their responsibility should be very limited as to not impact everything in our lives.
  - slver 5y ago
    Those we elect are not “involved in science”. Still you’re supposed to have higher bar for representatives, instead of saying “representatives are dumb”. You realize this essentially says those being represented are also dumb. Or there is a systemic flaw to address
    - 13years 5y ago
      Government is involved in science everywhere. Through both policy and investments. Everyone always points out how some politician has failed to understand some aspect of technology or some particular deep domain of knowledge. This problem is never going to get better because it isn't feasible that those who spend their lives mostly trying to understand how to campaign and influence you to vote for them are going to deeply understand anything about complicated subjects of the world. It is the entire reason the original role of government was essentially to protect your liberties. Not decide how you should live your life or what is true or false in the realm of deep fields of knowledge.
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jeppesen-io 5y ago
This is a rather irritating article - the publicly available knowledge tells me it’s not known what this is. There have been reports from U.S. military pilots that can’t explain what it is. Thats with the stigma of talking about this, until recent policy changes I have no idea what these events are - but I’m suspicious of anyone who feels comfortable to say it absolutely is or is not anything specific As mentioned in this thread, even with the cameras in a military fighter jet, video is hard to get in good quality at the distances seen in aviation
lend000 5y ago
Confidently making conventional statements about truly unknown phenomena is the easiest way to seem smart, if you aren't. Lots of psychological barriers are preventing people from examining this topic with an open mind (on both sides of the debate, mind you -- ufology can become borderline religious if you stray too far). Fundamentally, it's an annoying topic because it's currently unprovable. If there were really aliens here for as long as consistent phenomena have been observed (at least since the 1940's, but possibly for most of human history), then the ball would be in their court. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to assume that such an advanced civilization would have the capability to keep a low profile if desired, even if they had a significant amount of activity on our planet. And if the types of organizations (militaries of rival superpowers) that could collect interesting data did so, could they and would they really disperse it on a wide scale against the wishes of "the phenomenon?" The interesting ones are the close encounters. Someone in this thread might scoff at testimony describing unmistakably unidentifiable phenomena that lacks compelling video evidence, while simultaneously reposting "I believe victims" on Twitter. Pick one. Do you think credible witness testimony is admissible, or do you not? Millenia of justice systems are built on this concept. Even "hard evidence" all comes down to trusting the people in the chain of custody, since things can be doctored so easily nowadays. Want to claim crazy or spontaneous mass hallucination? Prove it. Show the mechanism in the brain. Reproduce in a lab. Put a name to the disease. The burden of proof is on you to describe why our justice systems are built on a complete farce. I personally have sane family members, who, in a group, circa 1970, had a close encounter in broad daylight so unmistakable there is no way it could have been anything but an intelligently controlled flying object with incomprehensible capabilities. And shamefully, being a rational and proud engineer, I did not believe them until the last few years when really interesting data started coming out on the phenomenon and I did a deep dive. Do I know what these objects are? No. But I'm pretty confident the guys I knew who went on to work in defense couldn't come up with objects being described given 100 years, let alone with the technology available decades ago. Most of the DoD is running on 10-25 year old Windows machines.
- jeppesen-io 5y ago
  Thank you - You said in a much more eloquent way than I did in this thread This line hit home for me > Lots of psychological barriers are preventing people from examining this topic with an open mind (on both sides of the debate, mind you
CommieBobDole 5y ago
While I don't think these are aliens or represent some sort of advanced military technology based on previously-unknown principles of physics, I can't really get behind the article's "Nothing is going on here, this is just people misunderstanding how cameras work" explanation either. There is some sort of reason that the US military has been oddly open about all this. My thought would be that it's some sort of disinformation campaign, though it's hard to tell who it's directed at and what the exact purpose would be. But if the US military was seeing stuff they can't explain and they thought it might be an adversary (or aliens, who would fall into the category of "potential adversary until proved otherwise"), the last thing they'd do is publicly admit to being bamboozled. My thoughts on what this might be are, in descending order of probability: - An attempt to convince US adversaries that we have developed some sort of advanced capability (see the various odd patents filed by the Navy and Salvatore Pais), and that we're falsely claiming we're seeing these things as part of a disinformation campaign to draw attention away from it. "No, we definitely don't have any secret glowing, non-ballistic hypersonic drones we're going to defeat you with in the next conflict. You definitely shouldn't spend billions of dollars trying to counter something like that". - An attempt to convince US adversaries, who have developed some sort of advanced drone which we have been able to identify and counter, that we have not in fact identified and countered it, and are completely incompetent and clueless. "Oh no, what is that terrifying and confusing thing that we keep seeing? Definitely not that new advanced Chinese drone that we stole the plans for in 2016 and can shut down remotely with the press of a button. Nope, no idea. Please don't improve it, since we clearly have no idea what it is". - An attempt to draw attention away from actual aircraft we've developed whose capabilities are similar to (but probably more in line with established physics) the aircraft seen in the released videos. "Yeah, we're seeing those things too. No idea what they could be. Let us know if you figure anything out" I guess there's still a possibility that it's actual aliens, and they're trickling the information out to avoid a panic, but that would be so far down the list that it's not really part of the same list anymore. But even in that situation, it would only happen after there was contact and they were reasonably sure of their motivations; if they were still unknown, then this information would be classified at the highest level, and we would probably not know about it.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
senectus1 5y ago
Unidentified Flying Object != Alien Its just an object, that appears to be flying that we have not yet identified. Nothing even remotely controversial about that.
crazydoggers 5y ago
I came back to check on comments here. I cannot believe how poor most of these comments are. It’s unbelievable. HN used to be a place where educated, well though out discussions occurred. Now there’s barely an ounce of critical thought. It’s horrible and sad. Why? I can only surmise. HN perhaps has gotten more popular, more cool, so has had in influx of more people? Either that or I’m getting older and the newer generation has lost even more critical thought ability than I’d imagined. Seriously I cannot believe that almost all comments here are conspiracy minded comments arguing against an article that is simply clear and critical thinking. I beg and implore anyone reading this to read the following book. Even if one person does and learns better critical thinking abilities, it’d be a win. https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ref=nodl_ https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Da... For the time being, I feel like I need to step away from HN comments altogether. It ends up being the most depressing part of my day.
thelastinuit 5y ago
Like Fran: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTermh1w_0A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTermh1w_0A

40 points by rrauenza 5y ago

>If it flies like a duck, is the size of a duck, and quacks like a duck . . . it probably isn’t an alien spaceship or ultra-advanced drone from a foreign power. But headlines such as “U.S. Navy Pilot Spots UFO” generate more clicks than “Pilot Sees Goose on Infrared Camera.” I was really hoping they were hiding aliens though.

fractalf 5y ago

That's the dumbest explaination I've ever heard. If it was that simple don't you think the air force would think of that before posting these vids?

jjbinx007 5y ago
Mick West posts some pretty compelling explanations of the phenomena shown in the videos: https://m.youtube.com/user/mickword https://m.youtube.com/user/mickword
- dsyrk 5y ago
  It’s getting harder and harder for him recently to come up with conventional explications. I think the biggest problem will be when data from multiple systems is declassified as it will really challenge various debunking theories.
  - eloff 5y ago
    To be fair, as I'm always telling my wife, just because you can't imagine the explanation doesn't imply the alternative that it's a supernatural explanation (or substitute aliens here) is true. It most probably is just a failure of imagination.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Or, more likely, it will show more conclusively that, despite what a few spooks want to have everyone speculating, the phenomena are not impressive at all. Of course, no amount of data will put this to rest. When other instruments will have failed to register the same event, people will not accept the obvious conclusion (the one instrument that "caught" it was malfunctioning/misinterpreted one way or another), they will start claiming that not only are the objects special, they are also invisible to radar/infrared/[...].
    - dsyrk 5y ago
      What do you make of the US senators reactions? I mean they have received classified briefings on this topic and the incidents and there are multiple incidents where the UAPs are registered on multiple sensors, radar, FLIR, and human witnesses with all collaborating and consistent details. I default to skepticism and metabunk is a great read on many topics but we are probably nearing a point of failure to debunk on many incidents. There is something and the question is what is it.
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        I make of them the same thing I make in retrospect of US senator reactions to receiving classified briefings about WMDs in Irak: they could be complete fabrications, meant to deceive senators as much as the public. Furthermore, even if it is absolutely true that the military has a huge host of UAP that they have worked hard to identify and failed, and they are briefing the senators on the details, that does not mean that there is no explanation, it just means that trying to accurately explain a phenomenon that happened once or twice is extremely hard. I have a backlog of dozens of bugs in my product that a customer has seen once or twice, with logs that show me they are right, that make no sense given the code and that we have been unable to reproduce. Should I conclude that alien devices interfered with my software to deceive my customer? Obviously not: complex systems are complex and have many corner case behaviors that we may never have a completely satisfying explanation for.
tsimionescu 5y ago
From TFA: > So why hasn’t the military given any of these explanations? > Well, the Department of Defense’s policy is to report even “incursions that are initially reported as UAP [Unidentified Aerial Phenomena] when the observer cannot immediately [emphasis added] identify what he or she is observing.” It is entirely possible that these examples were all identified after the initial report, but still bureaucratically classified as UAPs. The Pentagon has confirmed the footage is real, but has said nothing about the content of the footage.

aaroninsf 5y ago

This flavor of sniffy nothing-to-see-here dismissal stands a fair chance of aging exceedingly poorly. It reflects most of all how successful the US's long-term project to inculcate dismissive ridicule around UAP has been, but fails to yet understand that there is a pronounced pivot in tone in how official sources are discussing these things. That pivot is much more interesting and significant than any particular video, regardless of the weakness of Follett's criticisms. Part of that pivot which is significant is the change in terminology, from UFO to UAP. This may be simple bureaucratic bike shedding. It is also consistent with a change of framing motivated by aspects of the phenomenon which have not been reconciled with the conventional equation of them with "flying saucers" aka spaceships containing extraterrestrials. Those of us who watch these things over time are genuinely astonished at the rapid and comprehensive change in tone here, and the tea leaf reading going on is sometimes quite interesting. It is plausible that the decision to found a Space Force was one more childish impulse by Trump. It is also plausible that that founding and its continued build out under Biden is not unrelated to this pivot. As with much of the secret history of our times, those of us on the outside can only watch the outlines of the blacked out and redacted spaces, and infer what we can from their changes. This dismissal is understandable in a historical moment offering no shortage of profound quotidian crises. It also partakes of a world-weary cynicism which was taught, not learned; and IMO it misses the real story here. Note that Obama added comments to this fire this week. If this is disinformation and long con, e.g. by a spooked aerospace industry and military industrial complex looking for a new line of revenue, it is a very long con and one with a scale of duplicity, or complicity, inconsistent with the professionalism and careers and understood integrity of a lot of increasingly highly ranked people. That doesn't mean it's not a disinformation campaign. It does mean that if it is, it's unprecedented in potential impact in a way we haven't seen since the days of yellow cake Uranium. Either it's a story to be watched closely, not scoffed at because that's what you have always done in "serious" company.

tsimionescu 5y ago
> Note that Obama added comments to this fire this week. If this is disinformation and long con, e.g. by a spooked aerospace industry and military industrial complex looking for a new line of revenue, it is a very long con and one with a scale of duplicity, or complicity, inconsistent with the professionalism and careers and understood integrity of a lot of increasingly highly ranked people. Perhaps its time to start doubting the integrity and/or professionalism of these people, rather than basic physics. Even if conspiracy theories/government long-cons are not extremely likely (though the government, military and intelligence agencies have a huge documented record of intentionally bold-faced lying to the public, such as the fabricated WMD Irak claims), they are still far and away more likely than physics defying alien spacecraft. Furthermore, even in the most captivating readings of these events, its obvious that these people have no clue what these phenomena actually are, so there is still no reason to actually follow the story other than morbid curiosity.

pvelagal 5y ago

Well, still don't have answers, only more theories about theories.

woeirua 5y ago

The debunkers are going to have a hard time reconciling their views with the fact that some pretty prominent individuals in our government are basically admitting that these are not terrestrial in origin [1]. [1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2021/03/22/ufo-sightings-made-public-new-report-former-intel-chief-says/4802595001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2021/03/22/uf...

tsimionescu 5y ago
When comparing predictions from long-standing physics with the vague insinuations of intelligence officers, you have to be extraordinarily gullible to believe the insinuations rather than the physics.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  Physics hasn't even conclusively explained the Hessdalen Lights, and those are relatively easy to research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights The suggestion that "physics has already explained this" is unscientific wishful thinking when applied to more obscure phenomena with less available data.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    I'm not claiming that physics has explained this, I'm claiming physics implies that it's astronomically unlikely if not impossible for us to be visited by alien spacecraft.
    - jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
      > I'm claiming physics implies that it's astronomically unlikely if not impossible for us to be visited by alien spacecraft What part of physics specifically? The one where there are billions of planets in out galaxy alone? Or the one where FTL travel is possible with warp drives?

terminalserver 5y ago

UFOs ..... universally, always, without exception pictured by grainy out of focus long distance cameras. That’s the real phenomenon, in a world full of high resolution superb optical equipment. Never ever once imaged clearly and never once imaged up close.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Same with Big Foot.
- elevaet 5y ago
  Big Foot/Yeti are bears walking bipedally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqI_jC_qcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqI_jC_qcY It looks a lot more humanoid or ape-like when the bear is far away or the resolution is grainy.
thebigspacefuck 5y ago
I found this video enlightening. It’s a bunch of objects people might call UFOs getting zoomed in on by a Coolpix P1000 https://youtu.be/s64qV134Xis https://youtu.be/s64qV134Xis
kimixa 5y ago
I'd suggest that if they had clear images, they would be less likely to be "unidentified" flying objects, and then identified as mundane things. Like a known object with some unexpected angle or optical illusion making it appear to do "impossible" things, or a sensor artifact or interference. Or a combination.
anonporridge 5y ago
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExIGSZ3UUAQ22gV?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ExIGSZ3UUAQ22gV?format=jpg Q.E.D.
partiallypro 5y ago
Go to an airshow and take pictures. Most of them will be awful. Taking pictures of aircraft that are miles up in the sky is not easy for an amateur photographer, even today with better cameras most people are relying on digital zoom instead of optical zoom. Anyhow -most- of the photos taken from US Aircraft are clearly balloons, some consumer but most spying; it's a huge intelligence failure that these incidents aren't reported to the higher ups when -most- of it is clearly enemy spying. The War Zone did a few good pieces on this. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31151/area-51-veteran-and-cia-electronic-warfare-pioneer-weigh-in-on-navy-ufo-encounters https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31151/area-51-veteran-... https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones... As for the super high speed phenomena being observed, I have serious doubts that it is an adversary given US defense spending, so they are either secret projects or something beyond. The article (from NRO) claims the fast objects are distorted by a parallax effect but seem to ignore the radar signature showing similar speed to what is visually observed...not the speed of a bird or a balloon. The theories in this NRO are pretty laughable to be perfectly honest in regards to some of the cases that are clearly not commercial aircraft, birds, etc as the author claims. Clearly making a joke out of what is possibly a serious national security issue in regards to enemy spying, especially. The Drive (War Zone) write ups take the issue far more seriously, and rightfully so, I'd recommend them.

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INTPenis 5y ago

I was surprised to read that Obama has even entertained these UAPs with a statement. That really shows evidence for a completely different conspiracy theory going back at least 2000 years. Simple bread and circuses. And this is part of the latter.

Geee 5y ago

I think it's a psy-op to distract people from what's happening in the economy. They have a collection of topics which they release when people start talking too much about money printing, which could potentially lead to a mass panic and hyperinflation.

blumomo 5y ago
Here we go, they flood the news channels to distract people from the actually relevant stuff which we are not supposed to see. The threat by invisible enemies is a clever meme, hopefully more people are going to understand that.
krapp 5y ago
Someone always suggests this, or something along these lines... but there's no evidence that people are actually distracted by this to the exclusion of all other concerns. It's a minor story for the vast majority of people.
- Geee 5y ago
  Hyperinflation is a nasty feedback loop. News is one important control valve to keep it from going haywire. What do you think they're going to say? Do you think they try to reassure people that there isn't a reason to fear inflation?
  - krapp 5y ago
    I don't know what they're going to say, if anything, but I'm certain they're not fabricating a UFO scare to distract people from the economy, that's cartoon logic. If the government wanted to use the news to influence people's perception of the economy, even through deception, they would do so through news about the economy, not by hoping for second or third order effects from reporting on something completely different.
    - Geee 5y ago
      Well, I can't find any other explanation for why they release these cartoon news. Even Obama made a statement.

joshuaheard 5y ago

The "tic tac" Nimitz incident (not a video) was confirmed by radar, most of other military sightings were too. This would disprove the visual effect explanation as set forth in the article. Military experts have studied these and said these objects exceed our understanding of physics. There is only one explanation: an extraterrestrial origin.

codezero 5y ago
What if your military systems have been compromised and the UAV is the thing that compromised them?
verdverm 5y ago
Do you believe advanced radar to be infallible? Do you think the military could be developing radar fooling technology to trick the other side?
- joshuaheard 5y ago
  It could be some vast disinformation conspiracy, but I take the evidence at face value, Occam's razer and all that. I doubt they would try and fool our enemies by claiming aliens. It's not just radar, it's the consistency between eyewitness reports, video, and radar. I'm only talking about the recent military sightings that are being declassified.
  - rOOb85 5y ago
    What if it's not about making the enemy believe in aliens, but making the enemy believe there is technology available that is "other worldly" advanced. Basically a psyop.
    - krapp 5y ago
      Any adversary modern enough to be worth the effort knows what the laws of physics are, and they have a working intelligence apparatus that likely gives them an idea of what our cutting edge technology should be capable of. No such adversary would likely believe the claim that the US has suddenly developed physics-defying technology thousands of years ahead of what should even be feasible, which they just recently decided to leak like a sieve about. And the only thing the US does with this technology is troll their own military. If it is a psyop, it's a stupid and obvious one.

ecommerceguy 5y ago

I'm not sure what to believe but I like to get 2 sides of a story. I found this site very interesting. https://www.uaptheory.com/ https://www.uaptheory.com/

tsimionescu 5y ago
That article is claiming that the accelerations some have computed based on instrument readings for some unidentified objects are impossibly high. To avoid this impossibility, they claim that the only logical explanation is that the craft are curving space time in such a way as to actually have 0 acceleration, which they claim is somehow possible. First of all, the only theory of curved space-time that we have doesn't allow 'at will' curving, by simple conservation laws. Second of all, the amount of curvature needed to achieve the apparent acceleration is proportional to that acceleration, and so is the mass-energy required to produce that curvature. If it were possible to curve space time so much that you appear to accelerate at 12000g, you should also be able to accelerate to 12000g. I haven't done the math, but I would expect the amount of mass required to be well above the Schwartzschild limit, meaning that whatever the UAP was before attempting such a maneuver, it would quickly become an easily-identified black hole afterwards. Obviously, the explanation that is far more in line with current physics than the article's exotic space-curvature drive would be various glitches in the instruments used to assess the speed of the 'objects'.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Looking up the math a little bit, and assuming that in order to curve space-time enough to achieve 12000g you would need a mass that is 12000 times the earth's mass, the Schwarzschild radius for such a mass is 106m. So, if the observed object was less than 212m across, it could not have appeared to accelerate at 12000g by curving space-time without collapsing into a black hole.

crazydoggers 5y ago

The linked video in the article showing how a triangle iris creates triangle ufos is brilliant, and seems obvious after you see it. https://youtu.be/-r2oaQWmqkk https://youtu.be/-r2oaQWmqkk Debunking this stuff is not as exciting as believing in aliens, which is why it’s a never ending battle. But the problem is when people who can make policy get duped. Again, we need better science education and should demand such for those we elect.

13years 5y ago
This is why those we elect should never be involved in science. It was never supposed to be the role of government. The expectation that those we elect should be knowledgeable over the entire domain of knowledge that represents important things we care about is unreasonable and is why they always fail our expectations. Instead, the domain of their responsibility should be very limited as to not impact everything in our lives.
- slver 5y ago
  Those we elect are not “involved in science”. Still you’re supposed to have higher bar for representatives, instead of saying “representatives are dumb”. You realize this essentially says those being represented are also dumb. Or there is a systemic flaw to address
  - 13years 5y ago
    Government is involved in science everywhere. Through both policy and investments. Everyone always points out how some politician has failed to understand some aspect of technology or some particular deep domain of knowledge. This problem is never going to get better because it isn't feasible that those who spend their lives mostly trying to understand how to campaign and influence you to vote for them are going to deeply understand anything about complicated subjects of the world. It is the entire reason the original role of government was essentially to protect your liberties. Not decide how you should live your life or what is true or false in the realm of deep fields of knowledge.
- 5y ago

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jeppesen-io 5y ago

This is a rather irritating article - the publicly available knowledge tells me it’s not known what this is. There have been reports from U.S. military pilots that can’t explain what it is. Thats with the stigma of talking about this, until recent policy changes I have no idea what these events are - but I’m suspicious of anyone who feels comfortable to say it absolutely is or is not anything specific As mentioned in this thread, even with the cameras in a military fighter jet, video is hard to get in good quality at the distances seen in aviation

lend000 5y ago

Confidently making conventional statements about truly unknown phenomena is the easiest way to seem smart, if you aren't. Lots of psychological barriers are preventing people from examining this topic with an open mind (on both sides of the debate, mind you -- ufology can become borderline religious if you stray too far). Fundamentally, it's an annoying topic because it's currently unprovable. If there were really aliens here for as long as consistent phenomena have been observed (at least since the 1940's, but possibly for most of human history), then the ball would be in their court. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to assume that such an advanced civilization would have the capability to keep a low profile if desired, even if they had a significant amount of activity on our planet. And if the types of organizations (militaries of rival superpowers) that could collect interesting data did so, could they and would they really disperse it on a wide scale against the wishes of "the phenomenon?" The interesting ones are the close encounters. Someone in this thread might scoff at testimony describing unmistakably unidentifiable phenomena that lacks compelling video evidence, while simultaneously reposting "I believe victims" on Twitter. Pick one. Do you think credible witness testimony is admissible, or do you not? Millenia of justice systems are built on this concept. Even "hard evidence" all comes down to trusting the people in the chain of custody, since things can be doctored so easily nowadays. Want to claim crazy or spontaneous mass hallucination? Prove it. Show the mechanism in the brain. Reproduce in a lab. Put a name to the disease. The burden of proof is on you to describe why our justice systems are built on a complete farce. I personally have sane family members, who, in a group, circa 1970, had a close encounter in broad daylight so unmistakable there is no way it could have been anything but an intelligently controlled flying object with incomprehensible capabilities. And shamefully, being a rational and proud engineer, I did not believe them until the last few years when really interesting data started coming out on the phenomenon and I did a deep dive. Do I know what these objects are? No. But I'm pretty confident the guys I knew who went on to work in defense couldn't come up with objects being described given 100 years, let alone with the technology available decades ago. Most of the DoD is running on 10-25 year old Windows machines.

jeppesen-io 5y ago
Thank you - You said in a much more eloquent way than I did in this thread This line hit home for me > Lots of psychological barriers are preventing people from examining this topic with an open mind (on both sides of the debate, mind you

CommieBobDole 5y ago

While I don't think these are aliens or represent some sort of advanced military technology based on previously-unknown principles of physics, I can't really get behind the article's "Nothing is going on here, this is just people misunderstanding how cameras work" explanation either. There is some sort of reason that the US military has been oddly open about all this. My thought would be that it's some sort of disinformation campaign, though it's hard to tell who it's directed at and what the exact purpose would be. But if the US military was seeing stuff they can't explain and they thought it might be an adversary (or aliens, who would fall into the category of "potential adversary until proved otherwise"), the last thing they'd do is publicly admit to being bamboozled. My thoughts on what this might be are, in descending order of probability: - An attempt to convince US adversaries that we have developed some sort of advanced capability (see the various odd patents filed by the Navy and Salvatore Pais), and that we're falsely claiming we're seeing these things as part of a disinformation campaign to draw attention away from it. "No, we definitely don't have any secret glowing, non-ballistic hypersonic drones we're going to defeat you with in the next conflict. You definitely shouldn't spend billions of dollars trying to counter something like that". - An attempt to convince US adversaries, who have developed some sort of advanced drone which we have been able to identify and counter, that we have not in fact identified and countered it, and are completely incompetent and clueless. "Oh no, what is that terrifying and confusing thing that we keep seeing? Definitely not that new advanced Chinese drone that we stole the plans for in 2016 and can shut down remotely with the press of a button. Nope, no idea. Please don't improve it, since we clearly have no idea what it is". - An attempt to draw attention away from actual aircraft we've developed whose capabilities are similar to (but probably more in line with established physics) the aircraft seen in the released videos. "Yeah, we're seeing those things too. No idea what they could be. Let us know if you figure anything out" I guess there's still a possibility that it's actual aliens, and they're trickling the information out to avoid a panic, but that would be so far down the list that it's not really part of the same list anymore. But even in that situation, it would only happen after there was contact and they were reasonably sure of their motivations; if they were still unknown, then this information would be classified at the highest level, and we would probably not know about it.

dillondoyle 5y ago

senectus1 5y ago

Unidentified Flying Object != Alien Its just an object, that appears to be flying that we have not yet identified. Nothing even remotely controversial about that.

crazydoggers 5y ago

I came back to check on comments here. I cannot believe how poor most of these comments are. It’s unbelievable. HN used to be a place where educated, well though out discussions occurred. Now there’s barely an ounce of critical thought. It’s horrible and sad. Why? I can only surmise. HN perhaps has gotten more popular, more cool, so has had in influx of more people? Either that or I’m getting older and the newer generation has lost even more critical thought ability than I’d imagined. Seriously I cannot believe that almost all comments here are conspiracy minded comments arguing against an article that is simply clear and critical thinking. I beg and implore anyone reading this to read the following book. Even if one person does and learns better critical thinking abilities, it’d be a win. https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ref=nodl_ https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Da... For the time being, I feel like I need to step away from HN comments altogether. It ends up being the most depressing part of my day.

thelastinuit 5y ago

Like Fran: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTermh1w_0A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FTermh1w_0A