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Comment by lamontcg | Hacker News Reader

Its probably a system for "jamming" FLIR sensors an allowing the attacker to project targets onto the system. The pilots were guinea pigs. Which is made more plausible by the fact that the USS Princeton asked the Nimitz pilots first if they were armed, and only after they informed the Princeton that they were not that they were given the orders to investigate. There probably was a real object -- since one was sighted but it was a drone with the advanced jamming equipment (that they didn't want to accidentally get shot down). It did not move at supersonic speed, but it projected an image onto the FLIR sensor which did. The submerged object was probably a submarine that the equipment was launched from.

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If that's the case, why not read the pilots into the test, even at a summary level?

If the Navy had told the pilots, "You just experienced an advanced technology test. Nothing to worry about" then they would have undoubtedly kept their mouths shut and not talked to the media.

I agree that would have prevented a lot of misunderstandings but Navy operates this way all the time. They prefer a somewhat "blinded" subject.

The subject would still be blinded though. You could tell them after the fact. Then you get the real experience of a pilot encountering your system plus you get the added benefit that they won't tell people about the "UFO" they saw.

But what about the next experiment?

How are you going to keep the other pilots from figuring out they're test subjects?

Especially if any word about the experiment got out. Swearing another pilot to secrecy versus letting them think you're nuts for the rest of your lives, I think they're gonna pick door #1.

Isn't that a bit paranoid?

Say this was some new aircraft or FLIR spoofing secret test and the US knows that (insert adversary country) intelligence is aware of the program. How would seeing this video affect the adversary?

I guess what I'm saying is (whether real or fake) this could be a controlled leak for strategic benefit.

Or someone just screwed up the human side of it.

I think you know nothing about the Navy

Procedure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_to_know

> If that's the case, why not read the pilots into the test, even at a summary level?

Because (1) need to know, and (2) fueling conspiracy theories to keep an appropriate background level helps when you want to dismiss actual conspiracy as a conspiracy theory, which the government periodically needs to do, and people can play their role in that best when they believe what they are saying.

The US Navy does not do guinea pig exercise with live weapons because if pilots don't know it's a exercise, people die. One of these craft almost crashed into a fighter jet which is part of the reason so many personnel have come forward

Perhaps a case of CYA gone wild?

It moved way beyond super sonic speed and had the movement pattern of a “ping-pong ball bouncing off invisible walls”, while hovering. Capt fravor saw this with his eyeballs, unfortunately we can’t record that, yet.

No, more like the laser pointer dot can move faster than any cat could catch.

That doesn't mean the laser pointer wielder is moving that fast.

Huh? You think it’s some kind of projection? How do you explain the great, huge underwater vessel the 4 pilots saw? It was seen visually. The FLIR and radar reports were from different people on two separate training exercises and from the Princeton.

The pilots claiming to have seen the large underwater craft and the tic-tac saw it visually only. The radar on their planes could not pick it up. They watched it for 5 mins and engaged it ( flew at it aggressively, they did not have active weapons). That is where they saw it acting erratically and stopping and starting as if you threw a ping pong ball inside an invisible box before “noticing” them, and mirroring their movements as fravor flew down in a large circle, before cutting across the circle at the tic-tac. It then flew past them as “incredible” speed.

That would be quite the laser pointer to make that scene.

That literally screams "sensor bug". Did no one there ever see how light behaves once you start playing with mirrors? I also wonder how much software is processing is done on raw data in real-time, because some of what I read could be explained by algorithms hitting a corner case.

I mean, what's more likely? A magic propulsion system ignoring known physics, or some component in the complex sensory system of the plane falling into oscillation?

Seen visually means they saw it with their eyes. Yes there exist "sensor bugs" in human vision but multiple observers with same report suffering from "visual sensor bugs" is probabilistically absurd.

Assuming those reports are credible, which I see no immediate reason to doubt, the most plausible explanation must include technology that is far more advanced than anything we have or can imagine having today or in the next few decades.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The evidence in this case is very weak. Someone saw something.

"must include technology that is far more advanced than anything we have"

Unless we get actual pieces of that "advanced technology", the most probable explanation is that the people got confused. The same way we all get confused about million other things; like miracles witnessed by thousands of people or cops chasing UFO that turned out to be Venus.

I will repeat - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Reports may be credible, but the reporting on that reporting less so. The way I understand it, some people saw some thing, FLIR saw some thing, a ship radar is claimed to have seen some things, but there's little to actually connect these observations as being the same thing.

My current best theory is that pilots were seeing a reflection on the surface of water and got confused because FLIR had a possibly unrelated and buggy interaction between an internal reflection in optics and tracking software.

(As for the radar thing, I hear it being said that there was a radar that saw someting, but no concrete information is being presented.)

Now take it from the other way around. Say it's aliens, or supernatural beings. Then why on Earth would they behave in an exact way that makes the FLIR footage indistinguishable from a camera auto-tracking a reflection on its own optics? Why exactly this pattern?

Reflection on the surface of water doesn't pass muster, it's impossible given the pilot reports. There is a multitude of events that are _all_ correlated in time and space. So opposite to what you say, there is a lot to connect these observations.

Also, there are far more plausible scenarios than aliens or the supernatural that involve extremely advanced technology.

Sounds a lot more like sensor jitters or optical illusion than a 23rd century aircraft flying in nonsense patterns over a giant teleporting submarine.

That's interesting, but wasn't there also at least one visual sighting accompanying this FLIR stuff?

Many more than one, from both the fighter jets and ship personnel onboard vessels in the regions.

Minimum 4 pilots saw it, but only fravor and his WSO have been willing to speak about it.

"There probably was a real object -- since one was sighted but it was a drone with the advanced jamming equipment (that they didn't want to accidentally get shot down)."

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