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U.S. government prepares to issue landmark report on UFOs

31 points by ch33zer 5y ago

mindcrime 5y ago
Seems like we already got the gist of this "report" from what's already been leaked / disclosed. "Of the unidentified 'things' out there, we know they aren't our military. Beyond that we don't know, but we don't think it's a foreign country or aliens. But it might be either. Or both. Or something else. Any questions?" And of course anything really interesting will be in the "classified annex". So in short, the general public will know exactly as much about UFO's / UAP's after this report is published as they do today. This helps, how?
- atlasunshrugged 5y ago
  Probably just serves as a confirmation as to what exactly is true that has been reported and making minor clarifications but agreed, there probably won't be a ton of net new information for the public. But the fact that the government is sharing is interesting since they've been tight lipped about this for a long timel
  - aliasEli 5y ago
    It may also contain new cases that we don't know yet.
- IAmGraydon 5y ago
  Not our military, not foreign country, and not aliens. That leaves…ourselves in a different time/dimension?
  - jfoutz 5y ago
    That really angry guy with the offices under a volcano. They've got lots of security in slick looking outfits. Might also be a couple of mice, you know, the one with the gigantic head.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    The leaked info is that there is no evidence for or against it being aliens and that it is not a domestic asset. I don’t think foreign assets have been completely ruled out but we’d better hope that’s not the explanation.
  - krapp 5y ago
    Elves. It has to be elves. The collective belief of Flat Earthers made it possible for them to return from the Undying Lands, but now they have a space fleet.
  - slipframe 5y ago
    > Not our military, not foreign country, and not aliens. That leaves… A prototype jet owned by Lockheed and flown by a civilian test pilot. That could be called "not our military" without lying. A weather balloon launched by some civilian agency could also be "not our military."
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    I suppose Silurians of some sort, hidden deep underground or under the oceans, might not exactly count as "aliens". So maybe that?
- King-Aaron 5y ago
  I think one thing it does is knocks out a lot of the de-facto 'debunker' style arguments that it's a balloon/swamp gas/weather phenomena etc when the government concludes that it's a physical object with an unknown point of origin that they've critically analysed and concluded that they don't have an answer for.
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    To some extent I guess. But arguably even dating back to the Project Blue Book[1] days, the USG has always conceded that some small portion of "UFO" events were actually inexplicable. Sure, they maintained that most UFO incidents had prosaic explanations, but I don't think they ever argued that it was "all". Compared to the conclusions from PBB: The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations: 1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security; 2. There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and 3. There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles. It seems like the biggest change in the messaging may be around (2). And I guess that's something... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
atlasunshrugged 5y ago
Just started reading Skunk Works about about Lockheed and so far its focused a lot on their stealth tech and they offhand mention that they would build something like a flying saucer if they could figure out how to power it; this was in the 60's or so, so while the government says it isn't something we or another government has created, I wouldn't be shocked.
- cma 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_wing
notJim 5y ago
I really hope there's more than what we've seen so far. The videos I've seen have basically been debunked as visual artifacts, namely parallax which exaggerates the apparent speed, and artifacts from triangular apertures commonly used in night vision. You can look on YouTube for videos demonstrating these effects.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  Well that’s two. Some people think the rotation in the gimbal video might be caused by image stabilization but that doesn’t explain the object itself or the commentary about there being a fleet of them. The cockpit photos are also unexplained. The video of the object that was supposedly one of dozens swarming a navy group is unexplained. The events surrounding the tic tac are also unexplained. Not saying it’s aliens but there’s a lot of weird shit happening around military assets that needs serious explaining.
  - scottshamus 5y ago
    I think we’re going to discover that the people operating these sophisticated instruments aren’t properly trained on how to handle anomalies in their data. One of them was simply an out of focus nightvision system with a triangle focal ring. The tic tac video is most likely a large sea bird and the fighter pilots didn’t properly understand how parallax at high zooms looked. This YouTube video is pretty snarky but it’s a decent overview of it. https://youtu.be/VCH7BWGpl5s https://youtu.be/VCH7BWGpl5s
    - throwaway316943 5y ago
      I think you’re talking about the gofast video which is not the tictac or “flir” video from 2004. Gofast and gimbal were from 2014 and 2015.
  - slipframe 5y ago
    Since all of this material was published together and is coming from the same sources, I think even just a few of the videos being debunked damns the rest of it. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link. I am confident they are lying about those two videos, and that gives me good reason to doubt everything else they've published even if I can't find the tell-tale flaws in the other material. The way I see it, the pilots are lying, probably as part of a special 'retirement plan' of getting book deals pandering to kooks. The US Navy on the other hand is being cagey, making statements that might technically be true but deeply misleading[0], and aren't directly contradicting the pilots. My guess is the USN decided these pilots' lies serve the Navy's interests as well. [0] Navy claims the GoFast video is: "Subject Area: UAV, Balloons and other UAS" ... well it's a balloon, so they're 'not lying'...
BrissyCoder 5y ago
It's just bugs in instrumentation.
- mmcconnell1618 5y ago
  I'm open to the possibility that there are bugs in the sensor software or hardware but what I can't seem to explain is the situations where you have many different systems all seeing the same thing at the same time. I believe in at least some of these cases you have one or more pilots with visual, sensors on at least one nearby aircraft, radar from multiple ships in the supporting carrier groups, etc. Even if the whole network of instrumentation had been hacked by some malware to produce fake results, you still have the humans in the loop seeing things too.
  - kcplate 5y ago
    While it would be fairly complex to coordinate multiple systems to simulate a UAP, it certainly wouldn’t be impossible. It also would not be out of character for the US government to run an exercise to measure how a military unit would manage themselves in an unusual situation. I am not saying that is what is happening here, but it seems certainly more likely than some unknown foreign super tech, aliens, extradimensional beings,time travelers, or unknown terrestrial intelligence doing it. Occam’s razor and all that…
- zarmin 5y ago
  Nope.
- CodeArtisan 5y ago
  Bugs that appeared on camera, radar, and human vision at the same time.
  - BrissyCoder 5y ago
    Did they appear on human vision though? You know... other than just via VDUs?
booleandilemma 5y ago
I wish we’d have footage of an actual thing rather than just a grainy black and white video of a black dot. Something that looked like something you know? A floating black dot doesn’t look like anything and probably isn’t anything. https://images.app.goo.gl/NH5j1UEcfiU5T9ti9 https://images.app.goo.gl/NH5j1UEcfiU5T9ti9
- vecplane 5y ago
  That's definitely a bird.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lp0_on_fire 5y ago
Spoiler: It's not little green men.
- robmerki 5y ago
  True, they're likely gray.
  - BrissyCoder 5y ago
    I'm just keen to ask them if they ever found a use for the Blockchain.
dang 5y ago
This isn't strictly an announcement of an announcement [1] but it's at least a report of a report, which means we should probably wait for the actual thing. One principle here is that there's no harm in waiting [2]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20announcement%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
cnt100 5y ago
Good that we have a steady stream of diversions from real issues by government reports on UFOs, diversity, rainbows etc. The Pentagon seems to be overstaffed.
- thrill 5y ago
  The Pentagon does what it's told.
aliasEli 5y ago
What is interesting to look at in this report is which known UAP's by US army personal are not included. Those are probably secret US projects.

31 points by ch33zer 5y ago

Seems like we already got the gist of this "report" from what's already been leaked / disclosed. "Of the unidentified 'things' out there, we know they aren't our military. Beyond that we don't know, but we don't think it's a foreign country or aliens. But it might be either. Or both. Or something else. Any questions?" And of course anything really interesting will be in the "classified annex". So in short, the general public will know exactly as much about UFO's / UAP's after this report is published as they do today. This helps, how?

atlasunshrugged 5y ago
Probably just serves as a confirmation as to what exactly is true that has been reported and making minor clarifications but agreed, there probably won't be a ton of net new information for the public. But the fact that the government is sharing is interesting since they've been tight lipped about this for a long timel
- aliasEli 5y ago
  It may also contain new cases that we don't know yet.
IAmGraydon 5y ago
Not our military, not foreign country, and not aliens. That leaves…ourselves in a different time/dimension?
- jfoutz 5y ago
  That really angry guy with the offices under a volcano. They've got lots of security in slick looking outfits. Might also be a couple of mice, you know, the one with the gigantic head.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  The leaked info is that there is no evidence for or against it being aliens and that it is not a domestic asset. I don’t think foreign assets have been completely ruled out but we’d better hope that’s not the explanation.
- krapp 5y ago
  Elves. It has to be elves. The collective belief of Flat Earthers made it possible for them to return from the Undying Lands, but now they have a space fleet.
- slipframe 5y ago
  > Not our military, not foreign country, and not aliens. That leaves… A prototype jet owned by Lockheed and flown by a civilian test pilot. That could be called "not our military" without lying. A weather balloon launched by some civilian agency could also be "not our military."
- mindcrime 5y ago
  I suppose Silurians of some sort, hidden deep underground or under the oceans, might not exactly count as "aliens". So maybe that?
King-Aaron 5y ago
I think one thing it does is knocks out a lot of the de-facto 'debunker' style arguments that it's a balloon/swamp gas/weather phenomena etc when the government concludes that it's a physical object with an unknown point of origin that they've critically analysed and concluded that they don't have an answer for.
- mindcrime 5y ago
  To some extent I guess. But arguably even dating back to the Project Blue Book[1] days, the USG has always conceded that some small portion of "UFO" events were actually inexplicable. Sure, they maintained that most UFO incidents had prosaic explanations, but I don't think they ever argued that it was "all". Compared to the conclusions from PBB: The Air Force supplies the following summary of its investigations: 1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security; 2. There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and 3. There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles. It seems like the biggest change in the messaging may be around (2). And I guess that's something... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book

atlasunshrugged 5y ago

Just started reading Skunk Works about about Lockheed and so far its focused a lot on their stealth tech and they offhand mention that they would build something like a flying saucer if they could figure out how to power it; this was in the 60's or so, so while the government says it isn't something we or another government has created, I wouldn't be shocked.

cma 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_wing

notJim 5y ago

I really hope there's more than what we've seen so far. The videos I've seen have basically been debunked as visual artifacts, namely parallax which exaggerates the apparent speed, and artifacts from triangular apertures commonly used in night vision. You can look on YouTube for videos demonstrating these effects.

throwaway316943 5y ago
Well that’s two. Some people think the rotation in the gimbal video might be caused by image stabilization but that doesn’t explain the object itself or the commentary about there being a fleet of them. The cockpit photos are also unexplained. The video of the object that was supposedly one of dozens swarming a navy group is unexplained. The events surrounding the tic tac are also unexplained. Not saying it’s aliens but there’s a lot of weird shit happening around military assets that needs serious explaining.
- scottshamus 5y ago
  I think we’re going to discover that the people operating these sophisticated instruments aren’t properly trained on how to handle anomalies in their data. One of them was simply an out of focus nightvision system with a triangle focal ring. The tic tac video is most likely a large sea bird and the fighter pilots didn’t properly understand how parallax at high zooms looked. This YouTube video is pretty snarky but it’s a decent overview of it. https://youtu.be/VCH7BWGpl5s https://youtu.be/VCH7BWGpl5s
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    I think you’re talking about the gofast video which is not the tictac or “flir” video from 2004. Gofast and gimbal were from 2014 and 2015.
- slipframe 5y ago
  Since all of this material was published together and is coming from the same sources, I think even just a few of the videos being debunked damns the rest of it. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link. I am confident they are lying about those two videos, and that gives me good reason to doubt everything else they've published even if I can't find the tell-tale flaws in the other material. The way I see it, the pilots are lying, probably as part of a special 'retirement plan' of getting book deals pandering to kooks. The US Navy on the other hand is being cagey, making statements that might technically be true but deeply misleading[0], and aren't directly contradicting the pilots. My guess is the USN decided these pilots' lies serve the Navy's interests as well. [0] Navy claims the GoFast video is: "Subject Area: UAV, Balloons and other UAS" ... well it's a balloon, so they're 'not lying'...

BrissyCoder 5y ago

It's just bugs in instrumentation.

mmcconnell1618 5y ago
I'm open to the possibility that there are bugs in the sensor software or hardware but what I can't seem to explain is the situations where you have many different systems all seeing the same thing at the same time. I believe in at least some of these cases you have one or more pilots with visual, sensors on at least one nearby aircraft, radar from multiple ships in the supporting carrier groups, etc. Even if the whole network of instrumentation had been hacked by some malware to produce fake results, you still have the humans in the loop seeing things too.
- kcplate 5y ago
  While it would be fairly complex to coordinate multiple systems to simulate a UAP, it certainly wouldn’t be impossible. It also would not be out of character for the US government to run an exercise to measure how a military unit would manage themselves in an unusual situation. I am not saying that is what is happening here, but it seems certainly more likely than some unknown foreign super tech, aliens, extradimensional beings,time travelers, or unknown terrestrial intelligence doing it. Occam’s razor and all that…
zarmin 5y ago
Nope.
CodeArtisan 5y ago
Bugs that appeared on camera, radar, and human vision at the same time.
- BrissyCoder 5y ago
  Did they appear on human vision though? You know... other than just via VDUs?

booleandilemma 5y ago

I wish we’d have footage of an actual thing rather than just a grainy black and white video of a black dot. Something that looked like something you know? A floating black dot doesn’t look like anything and probably isn’t anything. https://images.app.goo.gl/NH5j1UEcfiU5T9ti9 https://images.app.goo.gl/NH5j1UEcfiU5T9ti9

vecplane 5y ago
That's definitely a bird.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lp0_on_fire 5y ago

Spoiler: It's not little green men.

robmerki 5y ago
True, they're likely gray.
- BrissyCoder 5y ago
  I'm just keen to ask them if they ever found a use for the Blockchain.

dang 5y ago

This isn't strictly an announcement of an announcement [1] but it's at least a report of a report, which means we should probably wait for the actual thing. One principle here is that there's no harm in waiting [2]. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22announcement%20of%20an%20announcement%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

cnt100 5y ago

Good that we have a steady stream of diversions from real issues by government reports on UFOs, diversity, rainbows etc. The Pentagon seems to be overstaffed.

thrill 5y ago
The Pentagon does what it's told.

aliasEli 5y ago

What is interesting to look at in this report is which known UAP's by US army personal are not included. Those are probably secret US projects.