Ask HN: Why are we not making the most of the recent UFO reports?

>By all accounts, the UAP were observed by these sensor platforms and pilots performing maneuvers which indicate intelligent control and technology beyond what we can duplicate at present, no matter how hard we try.

The public has very little insight into both what is "possible" to achieve by military aircraft, and more importantly in this context, their observational capability.

If the navy says that they spotted an unidentified flying object moving mach X at a distance of Y km, that tells geopolitical adversaries things like "they can monitor our railgun fire under these conditions."

Every piece of information we get from the military that isn't through investigation needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt, since it's always been released under the pretenses of information warfare and the tactical consequences of it being public.

And as an aside, not only does the public have very little insight into what the military and its contractors can do, the military itself has little insight into what other parts of the military are doing. It's entirely possible that one observation from one unit was entirely unaware of another unit doing another thing.

I understand your distrust of the military, but what does this skeptical outlook gain us? Do you think we stand to benefit more from dismissing these claims as potentially tainted than seriously investigating them? I do not think humanity has a strong track record of scientific or technological advancement when it talked itself out of gaining new knowledge.

It's not distrust of the military, and skepticism is the foundation of the scientific method. What I'm saying is that one possible explanation here is that UFO observations are just experimental aircraft and/or observational technology. While at the same time, we should be extremely careful in vetting evidence from military sources, since it's highly vetted before we see it.

The "distrust" you sense isn't really distrust, it's the understanding that all military intelligence is vetted before it reaches the public. In particular, they're extremely careful to disclose any information that would compromise operational security - especially as it relates to aerospace monitoring. The reason for this is that any observational capability of the US to detect objects at high altitudes/speeds influences the nuclear strategy of other nations (ie, if you plan for a first strike, you plan around the known capability of the US to detect it).

And that's where the skepticism comes from. Any disclosure about what was observed, how it behaved, and the conditions of the observation have real world impacts on US operational security, and any information regarding that should be taken with a massive grain of salt.

Basically, treat public intel from the military as a secondary source - not a primary one. That doesn't eradicate its value, but it puts more onus on you to be critical of it.

I would be concerned if this investigation was hamstrung by the a priori belief that the unidentified objects/artefacts/blips both existed as a technological device and were extraterrestrial in origin.

I suspect, sadly, that 'what we can learn' from this is close to nothing without firmer evidence.

Late to the party on this one, but I mostly agree with the OP regarding the magnitude of the evidence. Most of the comments here attempting to explain away the recent Navy reports as "experimental aircraft" are perhaps uninformed.

For instance, the Cdr. Fravor account published in the NYT a couple of years ago regarding the 2004 incident is extremely difficult to explain without considering otherwordly technology. For example, the instant acceleration/deceleration witnessed directly by several pilots and on multiple radar systems corresponds with exactly ZERO technology known to mankind. That type of acceleration has the same effect as smashing into a mountain at hyper-mach velocity. There is no mapping of the reported events to our current understanding of physics; it simply cannot be explained, so forget the idea that something we built could achieve those maneuvers.

Also the idea that Cdr. Fravor and other pilots who've come forward with their testimony are all lying or are somehow mistaking what they saw for atmospheric light tricks is ridiculous. Similarly, the Navy UFO cases that have more recently surfaced provide yet more of the same level of evidence -- Multiple pilots, multiple radar, infrared, and other tracking systems, etc. To put forward the idea that all these people are lying or are mentally unwell or are somehow sharing a group hallucination is to suggest a far more unlikely event than the ones they reported.

If you want more from this, then you would have to get folks to contribute to enhancing our detection and tracking capabilities to the point of identifying the unidentified objects. Distill the technology down to simpler and smaller devices that can be fitted onto more aircraft, ships, satellites, etc. Perhaps apply machine learning to piece together sensor data. Widen the useful spectrum of data that is gathered.

I agree that such an effort is needed for serious study, or maybe the weeks of radar tracks the navy may get declassified if enough scientists are interested, but I think there is ample performance data available from the pilots themselves to give us order of magnitude estimates of what they are capable of. From this trained experts can deduce much. I envision clever people having insights like this: http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/people/codoban/PHY138/...

I haven't looked into these too much but weren't some of the infrared ones explained as reflections within the optical system? The sun is a pretty bright source of light, with lots of radiance in the infrared... you can only prevent so many interreflections within an optical system with coatings - the sun (or its reflection) can get though at some angles and the tracking algorithms makes the optical system adjust to keep the artifact relatively stable.

Publishing these as 'unidentified' might be a good way to putyour own branch into the news cycle and acquire more money through political channels. Also, keeping enough of the environment/state in which the phenomena occured classified prevents any foreign actors from precisely identifiying weaknesses in the systems in use.

No, they are not reflections in the optical system. In fact, Raytheon is actually using this to advertise the system that was involved. I don't think they would be doing that if it was in fact a flaw in their system that was at fault. Also, they were tracked on radar, infrared, and visually. How does that that square with a flawed infrared system?

The involved Raytheon FLIR system for the Hornet is also getting replaced [0]. Maybe Raytheon will win the contract.

[0] https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/us-navy-looks-to-...

Skunkworks & Northrop Grumman sites are all within a 100 miles of the sightings. That's too much of a coincidence for me. "Highly advanced" projects coming out of those locations, usually run decades before anyone external even hears about them.

The radar operators report the craft could go from 80,000 feet to 20,000 or down to sea level in under a second. Out of sheer curiosity, what do you think they actually have at NG/LM that could move like that? I find that sort of performance to be beyond us, don't you? I can't see a skunkworks craft doing that, makes no sense to me.

A better question is, how do we have radar systems that can monitor aircraft at Mach 52 and tell that an object at 80,000 feet and 20,000 feet is the same thing? And why are they sharing that with the public?

edit: but to answer your question, a meteor.

We know this because the radar operators are on record in many mainstream media interviews telling us the radar can track these objects performing in these ways. Also, why do you doubt that the radar can tell the difference between an object at 80,000 or one at 20,000? Our entire system of air traffic control would fail if they couldn't do that. But, I will tell you, you are wrong, it could not be a meteor. Meteors don't hover at 20,000 feet for hours, nor do they suddenly decide to shoot back up out of the atmosphere after spending hours hovering at 20,000 feet. Do you have another guess?

I mean I've got plenty of guesses.

- The operator is lying or otherwise mistaken

- A radar jamming system under test

- Noise and/or weather effects

- Multiple objects

- Cyber warfare

This isn't to say that I don't think extra-terrestrial intelligence isn't probably out there. I just think it's extremely improbable that they made it to earth.

I also think it's possible that the measurement device reported an object, and a human saw it, but the device wasn't measuring something that was there. Either by malfunction or sabotage/stealth technology.

To start the conversation, I think we should immediately ask ourselves the following:

1) Given the performance observed, what sort of power generation technology could or could not be inside of these craft?

2) Is it even possible to build a 30ft - 40ft physical craft that can endure g-forces in the 10,000's? If not, does this force us to conclude it is some sort of warp drive and the craft isn't actually experiencing the forces the performance data would indicate?

I think that logical reasoning along these lines by experts might yield un-escapable conclusions that could inform us how they might work and how they can't possibly work, a start towards what we need to learn and might ignore along the way.

allow me to add that the UFO acronym becomes invalid.

Why? Did we change what we call these things because some people in power are afraid of the taint of woo and made up a new designation? I like UFO:)

All you have to do is negate the inertial mass of the aircraft. Simple :)