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It is nice to see some more rational explanations for these videos (instead of the constant alien/ufo drivel from most media outlets). The thing that still conf

It is nice to see some more rational explanations for these videos (instead of the constant alien/ufo drivel from most media outlets). The thing that still confuses me, though, is how these videos became a thing in the first place. We are not talking about some random civilians with a Polaroid trying to get pics of a lake monster. The Navy has (presumably high-tech) equipment for finding and tracking airborne phenomena and it is operated by (presumably qualified) professionals. It seems mission-critical that this technology/personnel would be able to accurately distinguish between lens flare/parallax/etc and actual aircraft maneuvers. I get that not everyone in the Navy has access to the same equipment/expertise, so maybe this is just a matter of some easily excitable folks ignoring the experts from the very beginning....

SerLava 5y ago
I don't feel like it can be much of a coincidence that there is a new branch of the US military with a currently low yearly expenditure compared to the other branches, which could potentially be the source of incredibly lucrative private contracts to corporations with former generals sitting on their boards.
- api 5y ago
  Bingo. There have been anomalous radar tapes, sightings, and videos since the 50s. Why is this suddenly an issue?
  - gfodor 5y ago
    The sequence of events began in 2017 - the idea we would all be talking about UFOs again at some point was evident to anyone paying attention then.
RobertoG 5y ago
You should check the interviews (there are several, including a 60 minutes) with the pilot David Fravor (1). There are two pilots and two wizards that saw the same with their own eyes (even I have only see the other pilot confirming it). That's an UFO. That doesn't mean that it's extraterrestrial. To say that it's extraterrestrial at this point, is, in my opinion, so ridiculous like to say that there is nothing to explain (like the author of the article seems to believe). (1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E (this is a great interview interesting in its own right, even without the UFO part)
- dau 5y ago
  How ridiculous the ET assumption is depends on the amount of plausible alternatives. And for the Nimitz encounter to be something mundane, several very different things must have glitched or been missinterpreted and one has to put how ridiculous THAT would be into perspective.
  - jamesdmiller 5y ago
    Yes, if it's aliens or a 1 in 10,000 glitch it's the glitch. But if it's either aliens or three such independent glitches, it's likely aliens.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > But if it's either aliens or three such independent glitches, it's likely aliens. That's still not true. It's more likely to be one glitch you haven't thought of than three successive glitches that you have thought of.
- vehemenz 5y ago
  It's not a UFO. If you don't know what something is, and equipment/sensors are a possible explanation, it makes more sense to say "UAP" (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) rather than "UFO". This is not pedantry but an important distinction. What the pilots saw were images in their retinas that they interpreted as an object. Claiming the unidentified phenomenon is an object is begging the question; we need to prove what the phenomenon is before we can rightly categorize it as an object.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  Judging by that video alone, there's just one guy telling a story. He says there were others who saw the same thing, but this interview alone does not prove that. Some other things that don't gel about his account: 1 - He says during his encounter he didn't turn on his helmet cam because he didn't think of it. Yet much of the rest of the interview is him talking about how highly trained he was (giving the impression that he's one of the best pilots the US has) and yet he made a critical mistake here exactly at the point where a video would be most useful in corroborating his testimony. I'd also like to know under what circumstances he's been trained to turn that camera on. If he went against his training by keeping that camera off, that would be a red flag. But we just don't know and the interviewer didn't even ask. There was also no discussion about whether the other person in the plane had a camera of his own, and if he did have one why he didn't turn it on, or if he did turn it on where that video is. 2 - No one on the ship or any of his commanding officers said anything about the anomaly or did anything about it, and neither did he. The pilot says this is because they were all too busy and because the object didn't have another country's flag on it, but that doesn't seem credible. If you see something that seemingly defies physics and flies faster than any known technology, it seems very unlikely that no one investigated it or even talked about it... for 16 years. He said he had debriefings and that's where they learn things. What was the debriefing for this mission like? Did they talk about this anomaly? If not, why not? At the beginning of his story he said he was actually ordered to investigate the anomaly. You'd think there'd be some discussion afterwards at the briefing about what he and the other people he claims saw it actually saw, and the people who ordered him to check it out would want to hear about what he saw first hand. But he said no one talked about it. Unbelievable.
gdubs 5y ago
I’ve always been more on the skeptic side, FWIW — but the two pilots on 60 Minutes came across as very credible. And they — and others — claimed to have seen these things with their own eyes. The one pilot described the object as being around the same size as their fighter jet. I’m not arguing it’s “aliens” — just saying that while we’ve only seen grainy weapons-tracking footage, there seems to be a decent number of pilots who have seen similar objects first-hand. Not sure we can dismiss it as equipment glitches.
- soared 5y ago
  OP's point is in that situation the government should/would have data gathered from onboard sensors about the UFOs. A fighter jet costs hundreds of millions of dollars, so we'd expect there to be various sensors with recordings of these objects, rather than just pilot's eyesight and memory.
  - hooo 5y ago
    Why do you think they don't have more data on these events?
    - marc_io 5y ago
      Luis Elizondo (which was at the time the senior official in the U.S. government responsible for the UAP program) explicitly said in a recent interview that there is actually more data “layers“ connected to the videos. https://youtu.be/Eozxt_HnPu4 https://youtu.be/Eozxt_HnPu4 around 52min) The issue is that the data is classified and it was not released yet, making it more difficult to independently prove those claims.
  - abnry 5y ago
    All the scenarios in my mind are bad. Either (1) we have actual aliens, which in bad inasmuch it is freaking crazy and novel; (2) the government is incompetent in identifying the physical effects manifesting in the sensors and is okay in exposing their incompetence; (3) a non-US nation-state has superior technology, which suggests a potential bad future geopolitical outcome; or (4) the government is running a psych-op on its people and deliberately pushing misleading information for some purpose, such as to subtly signal to other nation-states that they have advanced technology.
deleted 5y ago
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hooande 5y ago
I think the answer is the Law of Large Numbers. Think about the total number of air missions that the US military conducts on a daily basis. If only 1% of those are anomalous in a way that's difficult to explain, that's a lot of odd occurrences every year. No matter how high tech the equipment or how skilled the operators, there will always be events that sync up in a way that defies explanation. Even if it's only 1% of 1% that fall into this category, that's still several instances every few years. I don't question the pilots or radar operators who report seeing things they believe to be extraterrestrial in origin. But with enough missions, sooner or later the radar data will synch up with human eyes in a way that seems to indicate almost anything.
hliyan 5y ago
Agreed. This is the most credible article on the subject I've seen to date. The last one I came across [1] was written by what looked like a smart and dedicated person going through some impressive mental gymnastics to arrive at this gem: "As derived above, UAPs create distortions in spacetime to create geodesics along which they move free of accelerations." [1] https://www.uaptheory.com https://www.uaptheory.com
fdfasd2312 5y ago
It takes a good bunch of a lifetime to simply get access to most of the equipment you mention, not to mention those are the most oversighted jobs in the world. Nobody wants crazy or unskilled people handling super powerful hardware with almost no countermeasure aside of taking them down with some similar hardware (ships, aircraft).

SerLava 5y ago

I don't feel like it can be much of a coincidence that there is a new branch of the US military with a currently low yearly expenditure compared to the other branches, which could potentially be the source of incredibly lucrative private contracts to corporations with former generals sitting on their boards.

api 5y ago
Bingo. There have been anomalous radar tapes, sightings, and videos since the 50s. Why is this suddenly an issue?
- gfodor 5y ago
  The sequence of events began in 2017 - the idea we would all be talking about UFOs again at some point was evident to anyone paying attention then.

RobertoG 5y ago

You should check the interviews (there are several, including a 60 minutes) with the pilot David Fravor (1). There are two pilots and two wizards that saw the same with their own eyes (even I have only see the other pilot confirming it). That's an UFO. That doesn't mean that it's extraterrestrial. To say that it's extraterrestrial at this point, is, in my opinion, so ridiculous like to say that there is nothing to explain (like the author of the article seems to believe). (1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E (this is a great interview interesting in its own right, even without the UFO part)

dau 5y ago
How ridiculous the ET assumption is depends on the amount of plausible alternatives. And for the Nimitz encounter to be something mundane, several very different things must have glitched or been missinterpreted and one has to put how ridiculous THAT would be into perspective.
- jamesdmiller 5y ago
  Yes, if it's aliens or a 1 in 10,000 glitch it's the glitch. But if it's either aliens or three such independent glitches, it's likely aliens.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > But if it's either aliens or three such independent glitches, it's likely aliens. That's still not true. It's more likely to be one glitch you haven't thought of than three successive glitches that you have thought of.
vehemenz 5y ago
It's not a UFO. If you don't know what something is, and equipment/sensors are a possible explanation, it makes more sense to say "UAP" (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) rather than "UFO". This is not pedantry but an important distinction. What the pilots saw were images in their retinas that they interpreted as an object. Claiming the unidentified phenomenon is an object is begging the question; we need to prove what the phenomenon is before we can rightly categorize it as an object.
pmoriarty 5y ago
Judging by that video alone, there's just one guy telling a story. He says there were others who saw the same thing, but this interview alone does not prove that. Some other things that don't gel about his account: 1 - He says during his encounter he didn't turn on his helmet cam because he didn't think of it. Yet much of the rest of the interview is him talking about how highly trained he was (giving the impression that he's one of the best pilots the US has) and yet he made a critical mistake here exactly at the point where a video would be most useful in corroborating his testimony. I'd also like to know under what circumstances he's been trained to turn that camera on. If he went against his training by keeping that camera off, that would be a red flag. But we just don't know and the interviewer didn't even ask. There was also no discussion about whether the other person in the plane had a camera of his own, and if he did have one why he didn't turn it on, or if he did turn it on where that video is. 2 - No one on the ship or any of his commanding officers said anything about the anomaly or did anything about it, and neither did he. The pilot says this is because they were all too busy and because the object didn't have another country's flag on it, but that doesn't seem credible. If you see something that seemingly defies physics and flies faster than any known technology, it seems very unlikely that no one investigated it or even talked about it... for 16 years. He said he had debriefings and that's where they learn things. What was the debriefing for this mission like? Did they talk about this anomaly? If not, why not? At the beginning of his story he said he was actually ordered to investigate the anomaly. You'd think there'd be some discussion afterwards at the briefing about what he and the other people he claims saw it actually saw, and the people who ordered him to check it out would want to hear about what he saw first hand. But he said no one talked about it. Unbelievable.

gdubs 5y ago

I’ve always been more on the skeptic side, FWIW — but the two pilots on 60 Minutes came across as very credible. And they — and others — claimed to have seen these things with their own eyes. The one pilot described the object as being around the same size as their fighter jet. I’m not arguing it’s “aliens” — just saying that while we’ve only seen grainy weapons-tracking footage, there seems to be a decent number of pilots who have seen similar objects first-hand. Not sure we can dismiss it as equipment glitches.

soared 5y ago
OP's point is in that situation the government should/would have data gathered from onboard sensors about the UFOs. A fighter jet costs hundreds of millions of dollars, so we'd expect there to be various sensors with recordings of these objects, rather than just pilot's eyesight and memory.
- hooo 5y ago
  Why do you think they don't have more data on these events?
  - marc_io 5y ago
    Luis Elizondo (which was at the time the senior official in the U.S. government responsible for the UAP program) explicitly said in a recent interview that there is actually more data “layers“ connected to the videos. https://youtu.be/Eozxt_HnPu4 https://youtu.be/Eozxt_HnPu4 around 52min) The issue is that the data is classified and it was not released yet, making it more difficult to independently prove those claims.
- abnry 5y ago
  All the scenarios in my mind are bad. Either (1) we have actual aliens, which in bad inasmuch it is freaking crazy and novel; (2) the government is incompetent in identifying the physical effects manifesting in the sensors and is okay in exposing their incompetence; (3) a non-US nation-state has superior technology, which suggests a potential bad future geopolitical outcome; or (4) the government is running a psych-op on its people and deliberately pushing misleading information for some purpose, such as to subtly signal to other nation-states that they have advanced technology.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hooande 5y ago

I think the answer is the Law of Large Numbers. Think about the total number of air missions that the US military conducts on a daily basis. If only 1% of those are anomalous in a way that's difficult to explain, that's a lot of odd occurrences every year. No matter how high tech the equipment or how skilled the operators, there will always be events that sync up in a way that defies explanation. Even if it's only 1% of 1% that fall into this category, that's still several instances every few years. I don't question the pilots or radar operators who report seeing things they believe to be extraterrestrial in origin. But with enough missions, sooner or later the radar data will synch up with human eyes in a way that seems to indicate almost anything.

hliyan 5y ago

Agreed. This is the most credible article on the subject I've seen to date. The last one I came across [1] was written by what looked like a smart and dedicated person going through some impressive mental gymnastics to arrive at this gem: "As derived above, UAPs create distortions in spacetime to create geodesics along which they move free of accelerations." [1] https://www.uaptheory.com https://www.uaptheory.com

fdfasd2312 5y ago

It takes a good bunch of a lifetime to simply get access to most of the equipment you mention, not to mention those are the most oversighted jobs in the world. Nobody wants crazy or unskilled people handling super powerful hardware with almost no countermeasure aside of taking them down with some similar hardware (ships, aircraft).