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That article completely ignores the eyewitness testimony from the navy pilots of the Tic Tac incident where they visually identify that the Tic Tac: 1) can hov

That article completely ignores the eyewitness testimony from the navy pilots of the Tic Tac incident where they visually identify that the Tic Tac: 1) can hover a few meters above the ocean without generating rotor downwash 2) can accelerate away at 100+g Both of those rule out any known drone or helicopter. David Fravor, one of the pilots, explains this in an interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

newsclues 5y ago
The us navy pilots were using imaging sensors to track those UFOs, so it’s possible that what they saw on their displays wasn’t UFOs.
- tristanj 5y ago
  No, the pilots saw the tictac with their own eyes. I recommend you watch the interview.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Of... FLIR
DennisP 5y ago
If reports like that accurate and it's a human adversary, we might as well shut down our military, it won't do any good anyway.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  Wrong - the enemy might not have enough of them and we haven’t tried shooting them yet AFAICT.
bob33212 5y ago
So there are really two options here. Either the instruments used to detect #1 and #2 are reporting inaccurate data, OR technology far beyond what the public knows about exists and has only been seen under circumstances where no one had a high resolution camera to get a detailed picture. #2 seems unlikely because the availably of high resolution cameras has gone up a ton in the past 10 years ( cell phones / satelites ), but a clear picture of a UFO has not shown up.
- anamexis 5y ago
  Or the US military is fabricating this.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Not saying they aren't, but what possible reason could they have for doing so?
    - srswtf123 5y ago
      Additional funding to fight this “new threat”?
      - krapp 5y ago
        Assuming the American military industrial complex doesn't already have a blank check and actually needs to justify spending anything to anyone, why would they concoct a threat as implausible as "aliens" when something more mundane, like "foreign drones" would be more likely to work?
  - meowface 5y ago
    Yes, this can't be dismissed. (It's also plausible the military could be intentionally deceiving some of its own personnel, for some purpose. So a military pilot recounting a story may not necessarily be lying.) Obviously such a claim would need evidence and a plausible motive and shouldn't be suspected without evidence; but, also obviously, it's one of many hypotheses that would have a much higher probability of being true than extraterrestrially-originated visitation.
lallysingh 5y ago
We don't know their weight, so we don't know how much downforce they have to generate. The water's not exactly still, either. Also, if they were radar-spy drones, they don't have to go home -- they've likely transmitted everything they need (overhead satellite or a nearby sub?). They're going away far enough to sink to the bottom of the ocean with little chance of recovery/identification. So, I can imagine drone that carries some basic RF sensors, a basic quadcopter (or equiv) propulsion system, then a one-time-use escape system. Perhaps a short-range turbine or simple chemical rocket.
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
  > We don't know their weight, so we don't know how much downforce they have to generate But we can make an educated guess. > Also, if they were radar-spy drones, they don't have to go home -- they've likely transmitted everything they need (overhead satellite or a nearby sub?). They're going away far enough to sink to the bottom of the ocean with little chance of recovery/identification. IIRC submarines have looked for them, following that theory. Nothing was found. > So, I can imagine drone that carries some basic RF sensors, a basic quadcopter (or equiv) propulsion system, then a one-time-use escape system. Perhaps a short-range turbine or simple chemical rocket. The drone theory makes a lot of sense when you ignore the fact that they are flying for over 10 hours non stop, and going faster than 160kt. Oh, and that they are also moving really fast once they are submerged.
  - lallysingh 5y ago
    Do you have a link to the analysis?
inter_netuser 5y ago
1) rotor downwash may not be visible enough from an F16 cockpit a mile away, if the drone is small enough. 2) 100g is likely within our capability today. Old, 400g tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)#Engines_and_propellant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)#Engines_and_p...
dplavery92 5y ago
The David Fravor interview linked describes an event in 2004 seen by fighters from the USS Nimitz and captured by the USS Princeton. This is a separate event, and perhaps with very different vehicles or phenomena, than the 2019 event near the USS Omaha that is described above.
pierrebai 5y ago
100g is an acceleration of 1000m/s/s, so after 1s the thing would be 1km away. Yet this was infer by eye. These fantastic values are made up on the spot and not instrument-based measurements. Also, these stories always assume radar have no failure mode, no false indications, no possibilities of fooling. IOW, enthusiasts ignores and never consider failures but adopt never seen, never encounters aliens with impossible tech that always happens in isolated area with no other capabilities to monitor. And all that does not even start to account for the impossibly large inter-stellar distances. I'll take weird failure over hugely fantastical theories.
- mordymoop 5y ago
  Along these lines, I wish people would be extremely specific about what their eyes actually saw versus what they inferred. As you say, what Fraver saw seems to have been a reflective object that seemed to be close to the water’s surface, which vanished, and then later possibly another reflective object some distance away. If I wanted to do a magic trick along these lines, I would have two silver balloons a distance apart, pop one and then draw attention to the other. This would make it seem like the first had flown impossibly fast. I’m not saying this is what happened, but this sort of thing has to be considered when the only other explanation being offered is completely outlandish.
- bzbarsky 5y ago
  At 1km/s^2 after one second you would be 0.5 km away. (Average speed over that second is half the final speed, or just memorize s = 0.5at^2, whichever is preferred.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
  > 100g is an acceleration of 1000m/s/s, so after 1s the thing would be 1km away. Yet this was infer by eye. These fantastic values are made up on the spot and not instrument-based measurements. These values are deducted by an estimation of the space traveled and an estimation of the time it took. And these estimations are consistent with the ones that come from the radar operators. Also keep in mind that 100 G is a very conservative middle value. They said "hey, what if our estimations are really, really off", and provided a lower and upper boundaries for the g-forces, that are 40 G and 521,770 G, respectively. > I'll take weird failure over hugely fantastical theories. I'll take decades of constant and consistent reports over "skeptical" conclusions deducted from wrong a priori probabilities.
mckeed 5y ago
Does anyone know if it's possible for these objects to be suspended by wires from a less-radar-visible drone higher up?
- kijin 5y ago
  Suspended objects will behave like a pendulum as they change their speed and/or direction. I suspect they're going to look very different from the trajectory of a self-propelled object.
pc86 5y ago
Even a Navy pilot has no actual basis or experience on which they can justify a claim to "visually identify" a 100+g acceleration. The downwash, sure (though it's just as likely they simply didn't see it, it was obscured, or had the craft been a few inches lower you'd see it).
- libertine 5y ago
  Except they are probably the best people to at least take a guess of the distances covered in air and the amount of G's such maneuvers would be subject to, since they're the ones flying around at high speeds, covering great distances and dealing with high G's. Plus, isn't that part of what the whole dog-fighting thing?
jameshart 5y ago
I found this Tyler Rogoway article quite compelling: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-the-ufos-navy-pilots-are-encountering-be-airborne-radar-reflectors https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-th... The fact is that when pilots say 'there's no way a balloon could do that' or 'that doesn't look like any drone I ever saw'... pilots aren't necessarily best placed to assess the realistic flight possibilities or appearances for a drone or a balloon, because they're imaginign balloons and drones they've seen before, and aren't considering the range of possibilities for what could be created.
- libertine 5y ago
  >pilots aren't necessarily best placed to assess the realistic flight possibilities or appearances for a drone or a balloon Who are best placed to identify things flying around if not pilots with hundreds (or thousands) of hours flying? That's why they say they've never seen anything like it, and they don't know any tech that could do what those 4 pilots observed.
  - jameshart 5y ago
    When you see a magician do a card trick, and a professional poker player says ‘I’ve never seen a deck of cards do that before’, does her thousands of hours of poker playing bear on whether or not the magician is actually a wizard?
    - libertine 5y ago
      I don't get that analogy, poker players aren't trained to use cards, or to do movements with their hands. Hell, a friend of mine is semi-pro poker player and sucks at shuffling. And you'll say: you're just nitpicking the idea is that pros aren't pros at everything. I'm not, I'll even fix that analogy for you: a croupier gets impressed by card trick. Now the problem is, pilots are trained observers, and they get to see a lot of things from their jets. Cars, trucks, houses, rivers, trees, ships, helicopters, drones, different types of planes - not only because they do recon, they also have to target some of those things, and they train a lot for it. Distances, sizes, cost of maneuvers, etc. With that said: what other type of people are best trained to take a guess at what things are from up above? Drone operators? Balloon operators? Weather balloon folks? Aerospace engineers? Can they be fooled still? Probably - but if you can fool 4 pilots at the same time, their tens of million of dollars jets with sensors, and the most advanced radar systems, all at the same time, then you're not a magician - you simply have tech way superior to what those guys have. That's the thing, it doesn't even need to be an actual craft. If it's something that can create optical illusions on jet pilots and jam radars, how are they supposed to do anything if their senses and systems fail?
natch 5y ago
What they describe from their vantage point of many thousands of feet up is not hovering, it's more like flitting back and forth with no discernible trajectory. Like a large flake of ice falling. The other pilot said the motion was like if you dropped your cell phone in the kitchen and it was bouncing around before settling down. Exactly like a falling massive but flat flake of snowy ice that fell off of an object that had entered the atmosphere from outer space and fallen to the water, where the early chunks remained causing whitecaps. Not hovering. Erratic motion.

newsclues 5y ago

The us navy pilots were using imaging sensors to track those UFOs, so it’s possible that what they saw on their displays wasn’t UFOs.

tristanj 5y ago
No, the pilots saw the tictac with their own eyes. I recommend you watch the interview.
- newsclues 5y ago
  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Official_UAP_Footage_from_the_USG_for_Public_Release.webm https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/FLIR1_Of... FLIR

DennisP 5y ago

If reports like that accurate and it's a human adversary, we might as well shut down our military, it won't do any good anyway.

captainredbeard 5y ago
Wrong - the enemy might not have enough of them and we haven’t tried shooting them yet AFAICT.

bob33212 5y ago

So there are really two options here. Either the instruments used to detect #1 and #2 are reporting inaccurate data, OR technology far beyond what the public knows about exists and has only been seen under circumstances where no one had a high resolution camera to get a detailed picture. #2 seems unlikely because the availably of high resolution cameras has gone up a ton in the past 10 years ( cell phones / satelites ), but a clear picture of a UFO has not shown up.

anamexis 5y ago
Or the US military is fabricating this.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Not saying they aren't, but what possible reason could they have for doing so?
  - srswtf123 5y ago
    Additional funding to fight this “new threat”?
    - krapp 5y ago
      Assuming the American military industrial complex doesn't already have a blank check and actually needs to justify spending anything to anyone, why would they concoct a threat as implausible as "aliens" when something more mundane, like "foreign drones" would be more likely to work?
- meowface 5y ago
  Yes, this can't be dismissed. (It's also plausible the military could be intentionally deceiving some of its own personnel, for some purpose. So a military pilot recounting a story may not necessarily be lying.) Obviously such a claim would need evidence and a plausible motive and shouldn't be suspected without evidence; but, also obviously, it's one of many hypotheses that would have a much higher probability of being true than extraterrestrially-originated visitation.

lallysingh 5y ago

We don't know their weight, so we don't know how much downforce they have to generate. The water's not exactly still, either. Also, if they were radar-spy drones, they don't have to go home -- they've likely transmitted everything they need (overhead satellite or a nearby sub?). They're going away far enough to sink to the bottom of the ocean with little chance of recovery/identification. So, I can imagine drone that carries some basic RF sensors, a basic quadcopter (or equiv) propulsion system, then a one-time-use escape system. Perhaps a short-range turbine or simple chemical rocket.

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
> We don't know their weight, so we don't know how much downforce they have to generate But we can make an educated guess. > Also, if they were radar-spy drones, they don't have to go home -- they've likely transmitted everything they need (overhead satellite or a nearby sub?). They're going away far enough to sink to the bottom of the ocean with little chance of recovery/identification. IIRC submarines have looked for them, following that theory. Nothing was found. > So, I can imagine drone that carries some basic RF sensors, a basic quadcopter (or equiv) propulsion system, then a one-time-use escape system. Perhaps a short-range turbine or simple chemical rocket. The drone theory makes a lot of sense when you ignore the fact that they are flying for over 10 hours non stop, and going faster than 160kt. Oh, and that they are also moving really fast once they are submerged.
- lallysingh 5y ago
  Do you have a link to the analysis?

inter_netuser 5y ago

1) rotor downwash may not be visible enough from an F16 cockpit a mile away, if the drone is small enough. 2) 100g is likely within our capability today. Old, 400g tech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)#Engines_and_propellant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)#Engines_and_p...

dplavery92 5y ago

The David Fravor interview linked describes an event in 2004 seen by fighters from the USS Nimitz and captured by the USS Princeton. This is a separate event, and perhaps with very different vehicles or phenomena, than the 2019 event near the USS Omaha that is described above.

pierrebai 5y ago

100g is an acceleration of 1000m/s/s, so after 1s the thing would be 1km away. Yet this was infer by eye. These fantastic values are made up on the spot and not instrument-based measurements. Also, these stories always assume radar have no failure mode, no false indications, no possibilities of fooling. IOW, enthusiasts ignores and never consider failures but adopt never seen, never encounters aliens with impossible tech that always happens in isolated area with no other capabilities to monitor. And all that does not even start to account for the impossibly large inter-stellar distances. I'll take weird failure over hugely fantastical theories.

mordymoop 5y ago
Along these lines, I wish people would be extremely specific about what their eyes actually saw versus what they inferred. As you say, what Fraver saw seems to have been a reflective object that seemed to be close to the water’s surface, which vanished, and then later possibly another reflective object some distance away. If I wanted to do a magic trick along these lines, I would have two silver balloons a distance apart, pop one and then draw attention to the other. This would make it seem like the first had flown impossibly fast. I’m not saying this is what happened, but this sort of thing has to be considered when the only other explanation being offered is completely outlandish.
bzbarsky 5y ago
At 1km/s^2 after one second you would be 0.5 km away. (Average speed over that second is half the final speed, or just memorize s = 0.5at^2, whichever is preferred.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y ago
> 100g is an acceleration of 1000m/s/s, so after 1s the thing would be 1km away. Yet this was infer by eye. These fantastic values are made up on the spot and not instrument-based measurements. These values are deducted by an estimation of the space traveled and an estimation of the time it took. And these estimations are consistent with the ones that come from the radar operators. Also keep in mind that 100 G is a very conservative middle value. They said "hey, what if our estimations are really, really off", and provided a lower and upper boundaries for the g-forces, that are 40 G and 521,770 G, respectively. > I'll take weird failure over hugely fantastical theories. I'll take decades of constant and consistent reports over "skeptical" conclusions deducted from wrong a priori probabilities.

mckeed 5y ago

Does anyone know if it's possible for these objects to be suspended by wires from a less-radar-visible drone higher up?

kijin 5y ago
Suspended objects will behave like a pendulum as they change their speed and/or direction. I suspect they're going to look very different from the trajectory of a self-propelled object.

pc86 5y ago

Even a Navy pilot has no actual basis or experience on which they can justify a claim to "visually identify" a 100+g acceleration. The downwash, sure (though it's just as likely they simply didn't see it, it was obscured, or had the craft been a few inches lower you'd see it).

libertine 5y ago
Except they are probably the best people to at least take a guess of the distances covered in air and the amount of G's such maneuvers would be subject to, since they're the ones flying around at high speeds, covering great distances and dealing with high G's. Plus, isn't that part of what the whole dog-fighting thing?

jameshart 5y ago

I found this Tyler Rogoway article quite compelling: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-the-ufos-navy-pilots-are-encountering-be-airborne-radar-reflectors https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-th... The fact is that when pilots say 'there's no way a balloon could do that' or 'that doesn't look like any drone I ever saw'... pilots aren't necessarily best placed to assess the realistic flight possibilities or appearances for a drone or a balloon, because they're imaginign balloons and drones they've seen before, and aren't considering the range of possibilities for what could be created.

libertine 5y ago
>pilots aren't necessarily best placed to assess the realistic flight possibilities or appearances for a drone or a balloon Who are best placed to identify things flying around if not pilots with hundreds (or thousands) of hours flying? That's why they say they've never seen anything like it, and they don't know any tech that could do what those 4 pilots observed.
- jameshart 5y ago
  When you see a magician do a card trick, and a professional poker player says ‘I’ve never seen a deck of cards do that before’, does her thousands of hours of poker playing bear on whether or not the magician is actually a wizard?
  - libertine 5y ago
    I don't get that analogy, poker players aren't trained to use cards, or to do movements with their hands. Hell, a friend of mine is semi-pro poker player and sucks at shuffling. And you'll say: you're just nitpicking the idea is that pros aren't pros at everything. I'm not, I'll even fix that analogy for you: a croupier gets impressed by card trick. Now the problem is, pilots are trained observers, and they get to see a lot of things from their jets. Cars, trucks, houses, rivers, trees, ships, helicopters, drones, different types of planes - not only because they do recon, they also have to target some of those things, and they train a lot for it. Distances, sizes, cost of maneuvers, etc. With that said: what other type of people are best trained to take a guess at what things are from up above? Drone operators? Balloon operators? Weather balloon folks? Aerospace engineers? Can they be fooled still? Probably - but if you can fool 4 pilots at the same time, their tens of million of dollars jets with sensors, and the most advanced radar systems, all at the same time, then you're not a magician - you simply have tech way superior to what those guys have. That's the thing, it doesn't even need to be an actual craft. If it's something that can create optical illusions on jet pilots and jam radars, how are they supposed to do anything if their senses and systems fail?

natch 5y ago

What they describe from their vantage point of many thousands of feet up is not hovering, it's more like flitting back and forth with no discernible trajectory. Like a large flake of ice falling. The other pilot said the motion was like if you dropped your cell phone in the kitchen and it was bouncing around before settling down. Exactly like a falling massive but flat flake of snowy ice that fell off of an object that had entered the atmosphere from outer space and fallen to the water, where the early chunks remained causing whitecaps. Not hovering. Erratic motion.