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I suspect the reason the military decided to go on a public PR campaign about UAPs is to keep people looking for foreign drones zipping around. There's a distri

I suspect the reason the military decided to go on a public PR campaign about UAPs is to keep people looking for foreign drones zipping around. There's a distributed network of hundreds of millions of phone cameras in every corner of the country, and the UAP meme can be the motivation to record and amplify sightings of adversarial drones. Also, admitting that adversaries might be/are flying drones in US territory would be embarrassing domestically and internationally, and could cause a panic. Steeping it in mystery and hinting at "aliens" is silly and interesting enough to be a harmless spectacle.

asdff 4y ago
I don't think adversaries would be so brazen just for the sake of not having their equipment captured. It was a huge risk for the US to fly U2s over enemy territory because they would get shot down and the USSR reverse engineered one of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_S-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_S-13
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I think drone designs have become so disposable that the value of collected intelligence and dick-waving outweigh the risk of being caught and reverse engineered. Such programs have value in intelligence and psyops against the US. I think we'd also be shocked at just how trivial some of the drones are that are able to evade defenses or detection. I suspect we're good at detecting airplane-sized targets, maybe even ICMB-sized targets, but we have little to detect and stop drone-sized targets that can fly at relatively low altitudes, can be launched from inside the US, are easily smuggled and assembled domestically, etc.
  - asdff 4y ago
    It just makes you wonder what they would even be spying on if they were adversaries, because you could just go to san onofre beach with a set of binoculars if you wanted to observe these formations coming out of camp pendleton in an even more discrete manner than some newfangled drone that the military might very well detect, because you can never be sure of the adversaries capabilities. Dick waving ruins the element of surprise and also invites an arms race, that you'd be a fool to play against the US military industrial complex.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      > It just makes you wonder what they would even be spying on if they were adversaries, because you could just go to san onofre beach with a set of binoculars if you wanted to observe these formations coming out of camp pendleton in an even more discrete manner than some newfangled drone that the military might very well detect, because you can never be sure of the adversaries capabilities Reports of such sightings took place within restricted airspace, sometimes at sea and sometimes during training missions at sea. I imagine a close-up look at things from better vantage points could be valuable, especially if they're doing signals intelligence. I also see it as power projection and tickling the dragon's tail. Russia and China both have histories of doing similar things with jets and warships. Russia has a history of doing this with jets[1], they recently had their jets come "within 5 feet" of US Navy planes[2], as well as doing the same with their navy[3][4]. China, too[5][6][7]. > Dick waving ruins the element of surprise and also invites an arms race, that you'd be a fool to play against the US military industrial complex. Adversaries have a history of dick-waving, as does the US, and I don't think there's much of surprise in the fact that they're interested in espionage/psyops. IMO, that arms race started a long time ago, and our military puts out PR pieces about how they're using and developing drones for all types of applications. I don't think there's much risk with exposing advanced tech, either. I think Mick West did a good job at explaining the videos that are purported to show UAPs doing incredible things[8], and I don't believe those are actually highly advanced drones capable of bending the laws of physics. The point of drones is that they are cheap, disposable and easy to mass produce, so I don't think any groundbreaking advances in tech are being deployed here. Also, using drones sends the message that for every 1 drone the US detects now, they could've easily sent thousands, or more, if they wanted to. Ultimately, I think it's a mix of intelligence collecting and sending the message that they can get this close, they're watching and there's not much the US can do about it. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/14/a-strange-recent-history-of-russian-jets-buzzing-navy-ships/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/14... [2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-aircraft-buzz-us-navy-patrol-planes-feet/story?id=82933378 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-aircraft-buzz-us-nav... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-warship-aggressively-approached-u-s-destroyer-arabian-sea-navy-n1113501 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-warship-aggressiv... [4] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730593184/u-s-navy-russian-warships-unsafe-move-nearly-caused-collision-with-cruiser https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730593184/u-s-navy-russian-wa... [5] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-military-interaction-00045832 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-mili... [6] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinese-j-15-fighters-fly-directly-over-u-s-navy-destroyer-in-new-video https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinese-j-15-fighters-... [7] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/us-china-destroyers-confrontation-south-china-sea-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/us-china-destroyers-... [8] https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest
likeabbas 4y ago
The DoD did not decide to “go public” on UAP. The guy running the UAP program for the pentagon went rogue after he was denied a meeting with Secretary Mattis to discuss the national security implications of UAP in our airspace.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I didn't say they "[went] public", I said they "[went] on a public PR campaign", which is what they're still doing. I wasn't making a comment on who broke the story, I am commenting on the existence of the years-long PR campaign that the military keeps choosing write press releases about.
  - likeabbas 4y ago
    This isn’t a PR campaign. The DoD keeps actively trying to squash any conversation regarding UAP

asdff 4y ago

I don't think adversaries would be so brazen just for the sake of not having their equipment captured. It was a huge risk for the US to fly U2s over enemy territory because they would get shot down and the USSR reverse engineered one of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_S-13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_S-13

heavyset_go 4y ago
I think drone designs have become so disposable that the value of collected intelligence and dick-waving outweigh the risk of being caught and reverse engineered. Such programs have value in intelligence and psyops against the US. I think we'd also be shocked at just how trivial some of the drones are that are able to evade defenses or detection. I suspect we're good at detecting airplane-sized targets, maybe even ICMB-sized targets, but we have little to detect and stop drone-sized targets that can fly at relatively low altitudes, can be launched from inside the US, are easily smuggled and assembled domestically, etc.
- asdff 4y ago
  It just makes you wonder what they would even be spying on if they were adversaries, because you could just go to san onofre beach with a set of binoculars if you wanted to observe these formations coming out of camp pendleton in an even more discrete manner than some newfangled drone that the military might very well detect, because you can never be sure of the adversaries capabilities. Dick waving ruins the element of surprise and also invites an arms race, that you'd be a fool to play against the US military industrial complex.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    > It just makes you wonder what they would even be spying on if they were adversaries, because you could just go to san onofre beach with a set of binoculars if you wanted to observe these formations coming out of camp pendleton in an even more discrete manner than some newfangled drone that the military might very well detect, because you can never be sure of the adversaries capabilities Reports of such sightings took place within restricted airspace, sometimes at sea and sometimes during training missions at sea. I imagine a close-up look at things from better vantage points could be valuable, especially if they're doing signals intelligence. I also see it as power projection and tickling the dragon's tail. Russia and China both have histories of doing similar things with jets and warships. Russia has a history of doing this with jets[1], they recently had their jets come "within 5 feet" of US Navy planes[2], as well as doing the same with their navy[3][4]. China, too[5][6][7]. > Dick waving ruins the element of surprise and also invites an arms race, that you'd be a fool to play against the US military industrial complex. Adversaries have a history of dick-waving, as does the US, and I don't think there's much of surprise in the fact that they're interested in espionage/psyops. IMO, that arms race started a long time ago, and our military puts out PR pieces about how they're using and developing drones for all types of applications. I don't think there's much risk with exposing advanced tech, either. I think Mick West did a good job at explaining the videos that are purported to show UAPs doing incredible things[8], and I don't believe those are actually highly advanced drones capable of bending the laws of physics. The point of drones is that they are cheap, disposable and easy to mass produce, so I don't think any groundbreaking advances in tech are being deployed here. Also, using drones sends the message that for every 1 drone the US detects now, they could've easily sent thousands, or more, if they wanted to. Ultimately, I think it's a mix of intelligence collecting and sending the message that they can get this close, they're watching and there's not much the US can do about it. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/14/a-strange-recent-history-of-russian-jets-buzzing-navy-ships/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/04/14... [2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-aircraft-buzz-us-navy-patrol-planes-feet/story?id=82933378 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-aircraft-buzz-us-nav... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-warship-aggressively-approached-u-s-destroyer-arabian-sea-navy-n1113501 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-warship-aggressiv... [4] https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730593184/u-s-navy-russian-warships-unsafe-move-nearly-caused-collision-with-cruiser https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730593184/u-s-navy-russian-wa... [5] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-military-interaction-00045832 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/chinese-jet-us-mili... [6] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinese-j-15-fighters-fly-directly-over-u-s-navy-destroyer-in-new-video https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinese-j-15-fighters-... [7] https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/us-china-destroyers-confrontation-south-china-sea-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/02/politics/us-china-destroyers-... [8] https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest https://www.youtube.com/c/mickwest

likeabbas 4y ago

The DoD did not decide to “go public” on UAP. The guy running the UAP program for the pentagon went rogue after he was denied a meeting with Secretary Mattis to discuss the national security implications of UAP in our airspace.

heavyset_go 4y ago
I didn't say they "[went] public", I said they "[went] on a public PR campaign", which is what they're still doing. I wasn't making a comment on who broke the story, I am commenting on the existence of the years-long PR campaign that the military keeps choosing write press releases about.
- likeabbas 4y ago
  This isn’t a PR campaign. The DoD keeps actively trying to squash any conversation regarding UAP