The video is only one piece of the evidence. The pilots are trained, and other sensor systems confirmed what the camera was showing. This analysis is pretty flimsy.
AFAICT no pilots saw this shape with their naked eye. They were miles away from the target and relying on what they saw via their sensors.
Edit: I'm betting half the downvotes are from people not picking up on my sarcasm, and the other half is from people picking up on my sarcasm.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
True believers rarely retaining their senses of humor was the point I was trying to make. I promise not to make fun of UFOs again.
This analysis doesn’t reject an actual object being tracked: it confirms it and describes it as one that causes IR glare!
And frankly the "this guy" appears to be someone with no expertise and who is strongly biased towards particular investigatory outcomes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_West:
> Mick West is a British science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs.
Not to say he isn't right in this case, but I'm equality unenthusiastic about "skeptics" like that as I am about conspiracy theorists.
Edit: on second thought, I'm somewhat more unenthusiastic "skeptics" like that. Conspiracy theorists can at least be entertaining sometimes, while "skeptics" tend to just bore you with self-assured arrogance while they take pot shots at low-hanging fruit.
Right up until they're sure that there's a child molestation ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn't have a basement, and someone goes and shoots up the place because the conspiracy theory was so damn entertaining.
I don't know about skeptics in general, but I found Mr. West's video to be pretty entertaining. He built some pretty impressive-looking simulations to support his claims.
I think conspiracy theories can be interesting and entertaining, but a lot of their theorists are kinda pathetic.
Yeah, it can be interesting to hear a dubunking from someone with an actual background in the field, but someone who's whole schtick is debunking is just as motivated to prove things wrong as the conspiracy theorists are to prove things right.
My working theory for what creates the lowest common denominator of internet comments, is that you have to believe whatever is necessary to believe to keep the conversation going.
If a skeptic debunks something by appeals to mundane facts relating to camera angles and physics principles, that closes the conversation. And for internet comment sections that is a problem. But, if them being right means they are arrogant, then we can talk about how arrogant they are, the nothing gets turned back into a something and the conversation can keep going.
And note the quotes around "skeptic," I'm not talking about people with real expertise in some area who show some crazy theory to be implausible or impossible.
Very true. We got some of the best TV in history in the form of the Stargate franchise from goofy '90s conspiracies.
If you're unwilling to even entertain that this might be a possibility because you want to believe... I guess do what you want.
What remains is still an unidentified flying object, but one whose behavior is reasonably mundane and doesn't require advanced technology to explain.
Space Data Corporation was operating as early as 1997. Their product is radio communications provided by balloon. IIUC, normally those balloons are tethered, but if a tether snapped and one got away and was caught in a high-altitude crosswind, you'd have a mostly-metal object catching sunlight and throwing it in weird ways as it tumbled.
It's not the pathogens people object to, so much as the slavery and genocide. Particularly, celebrating the originator and perpetrator of those crimes on the land where they were perpetrated.
By all means, write about Christopher Columbus in the history books (after Leif Erikson, who unlike Columbus actually set foot in America) but let's stop normalizing erecting statues to villains.
Yes, but we don't. We don't create statues of Christopher Columbus to place his actions in their proper historical context, or to memorialize his victims, any more than we do the Holocaust with statues of Hitler. We erect statues of Columbus because until relatively recently the entirely Eurocentric narrative about him considered him a heroic figure, and the subjugation of indigenous peoples a righteous and noble cause.
I think that’s more the norm with people, if they even think about Columbus at all.
The problem with contemporary dialogue is the refusal to allow for grey zones, for nuanced and balanced viewpoints. Who is this “we” that you project upon? Do you consider that this presumption and projection may by symptomatic of a neuroticism unique to a overly loud illiberal subculture in the US? I do, it’s all that gives me faith in the survival of the greater whole.
No. I consider that not everyone in the US is completely culturally detached from the legacy of colonialism, and that some people have perfectly valid reasons to object to statues of people like Columbus.
You seem to understand the negative impacts of colonialism on an intellectual level, as a simple fact of history, but you also seem perplexed as to why anyone would care. Perhaps you should consider why someone would object to a statue of Columbus. Engage with the nuance you're referring to, by not dismissing those with views other than yours as being carriers of a social disease. Examine your own views and ask yourself why you consider it valid to keep a Columbus statue up to celebrate some of his accomplishments, but not to remove it as a statement of opposition to his other accomplishments.
It is now understood that all those weird stories about the Bermuda Triangle are caused by gas. But still people want to believe in other, more exciting stories because that is what we want it to be.
Edit: even the gas theory of the Bermuda Triangle is just that: a theory. The best explanation is probably nothing much is going on there.
Without a reference point you are unlikely to be able to guess the distance of an aircraft, especially an unknown one.
Visual confirmation I don’t find remotely compelling. Besides the notorious general unreliability of human observers, humans simply cannot distinguish between small, nearby objects traveling slowly and large, far objects traveling quickly without additional contextual clues (e.g., a tiny plane-shaped object in the sky is probably the latter). Factor in that they were validating their observations against a sensor displaying a misleading image—in other words, providing incorrect contextual clues—and I think it’s not hard to call into question the accuracy of any visual claims.
You don't think humans could get better at judging distance of objects with practice? It seems like if any humans on earth could reliably do it, it would be seasoned fighter pilots that have thousands of hours of experience doing that exact thing.
I feel like people just want to believe. But this is a pretty satisfying explanation.
Here's a 4 hour interview with the pilot, David Fravor, on Lex Fridman's show where he goes into much more detail than you'll probably read elsewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E
This wasn't just a single radar. It was an AEGIS system compromised of multiple ships with state of the art radars, multiple plane radars, and visual confirmation by several pilots. They were tracking it for multiple days.
Is there a source to indicate that in the specific incident being covered by this article, that there is any evidence beyond the video itself?
There was a separate incident where there was a visual sighting and people are conflating the two.
It's possible the IR glare is an intentional countermeasure produced by the craft. It might sound far-fetched, but the military can already jam some cameras already, and they apparently license this technology too:
https://techlinkcenter.org/technologies/selective-camera-jam...
The US Navy has (admittedly controversial) patents for technologies that could produce a craft with these flight characteristics:
https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Cezar+Pais
The first time these craft were spotted on radar was during a Navy exercise where they were testing new radar equipment, and the craft were coming from the direction of San Clemente island (an island that is a Navy base). Here's a short video that talks about the radar sighting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyP79v9e84
In the Nimitz case, the "UFO" disappeared, and then met the pilots at their rendezvous point. How did it know where the rendezvous point was?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpcfeHI0Kk
Sightings of these UFOs have only ever been mentioned by US forces.
Who knows what is going on, but if I had to make a guess and I considered all of this information, it seems likely that the "UFOs" are experimental US aircraft.
> what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it and only rotates in the way it does because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right
This is in the first 15 seconds of the YouTube video.
Fraver (not sure he was one of the ones in this incident) has a history of UFO pranks, shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them, explicitly to give a UFO experience, and someone found a contemporaneous report of him doing it, so it wasn't just a story.
Given other potentially questionable behavior around this subject matter, yes, that absolutely calls their credibility into question.
Hmm.
It seems a little ridiculous to compare the one where he turned his engine off and on one time at night over a couple campers to the episode where multiple pilots see it, with multiple sensors seeing it from planes and from ships. He engaged in horseplay once, therefor anything he ever says should not be believed seems lame.
The camper incident caused a UFO report.
BUT... I don't think any US military pilot expects their cockpit recordings or FLIR video to be public at some later time, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to lie about this stuff. The harm to you as a respected pilot would be fairly severe, and you'd have to get your co-pilot to go along with it.
"Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin
BTW that like sounds like the crazy pilot guy from A-team
I find it very, very, very hard to believe that a fighter pilot would _shut down_ his engines in flight, at night, even more so if it's for a stunt.
Slightly more believable if he went to idle, and then full military power. Slightly.
Also the last weekend I caught a 40" bass.
If he never did it he pranked/lied about doing the prank and that is no better for credibility.
You must look at every statement they make separately. They give one fact that can be verified and then they tie lies or unverified stuff on that.
btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff. https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history...
To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (media & entertainment company) makes this stuff up and sells it.
I happened to read the SEC filings when they were doing this and am certain it's fine and Vice reporters just don't know how startup finances work.
What I did notice is that the perfectly normal looking and very detailed Form C didn't say the company owned any IP from alien spaceships or was going to acquire it. Their website definitely suggested it though, so if you're lying you could sue for securities fraud.
I have no conviction on the UFO phenomenon other than it would be cool if aliens exist, and even cooler if they were already on Earth. Still, I can't get enough of it – I especially love thinking about the most epistemically offensive conspiracy theories, like "the moon is a spaceship" or "Antarctica is an alien base." I sometimes fall asleep to Ancient Aliens.
But, fact is, the only government agents with any "authority" in this "movement" – which became especially fervent around the dissolution of Q-Anon, btw – are people who worked for DIA in Information Operations. That is, their specialty is in manipulating the public, not alien technology.
The "Lue anon" moniker about sums it up. My theory is the recent reinvigoration of the UFO movement is an attempt by US intel agencies to pre-emptively herd the most impressionable people with their own controlled conspiracy, rather than allow a hostile actor to manipulate them during the next election.
Also, I predicted this 10 months ago, the last time "disclosure" was imminent, in a comment [0] that I think has aged well so far.
The late Senator Harry Reid of Nevada disagreed with you. <https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/luis-elizondo...>
USAF and reitred officals have gone on record to say that they actively release doctored footage and/or false narratives, sometimes via pop culture figures, to muddy waters on current technology or to sow discourse among enemies. This reeks of n example of that, and not aliens.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/202...
They're all ATFLIR videos. It's basically the same thing - a far away hot object, likely another aircraft, turns into an IR cylinder-shaped blog on screen which is then incorrectly interpreted as being an actual cylinder. The apparent movement at the end is just the ATFLIR losing lock as the guy constantly zooms in and out.
Naive question: If a carrier group cannot, in essentially real-time, document three dimensional trajectories at this point (four if you include speed), what possible defense can they claim to have against evasive incoming missiles, etc.
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-pos...
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/10/14/will-ground-bas...
But I think they provide overlapping, but different, roles. But missiles and torpedoes is why aircraft carriers travel in carrier groups that have defensive capabilities against torpedoes and missiles.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/us/r...
Maybe because they've barely been training those pilots and know the planes would likely be lost if used above Ukraine? Pilots in the Russian Air Force have supposedly been averaging less than 100 flight hours a year, which is next to nothing.
Occam’s razor is more likely - the west vastly overestimated their capability practically the entirety of the Cold War, and you’re doing it again now.
Tanks being used by Russia in Ukraine:
T-72A T-72B3 OBR.2016 T-80BV T-80U T-80BVM T-90A
IFVs:
BMP2 BMP3 BMD4M
SAMs:
Tor Buk Pantsir
Fighters and Helos:
SU-25 SU-30/35 Su-34
Mi-24/35 KA-52 Mi-28
None of this is "monkey model" stuff like the the USSR sent to client states. These are all top of the line. Same with the artillery and missiles used. All the best the Russians have in any decent numbers.
The Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo.
It doesn't need to get anywhere near a carrier group to knock out the entire group. It is twice as powerful as the largest nuke ever detonated (at 57megatons) and a Russian sub can carry four of these torpedoes:
“All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 km (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, doors, and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 km (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi)."
Not by much, not per capita (of the obvious target), and both sides are treaty-limited to the same number of 'ready' weapons.
> Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo
You're getting your information from Russian propaganda sources. Credible estimates put it at more like perhaps 2MT.
Carrier effectiveness and utility is diminished by some weapon systems, but they are still effective for many roles and purposes.
Systems do not become obsolete because they can be killed. They become obsolete when they no longer serve utility. Either something else does the job better, more efficiently or effectively or the nature of war has changed to the degree that its now irrelevant.
This mistake is most often made with Tanks and Carriers for some reason. The existence of Javelin ATGMs does not mean tanks are obsolete. And the existence of hypersonic AshMs does not make carriers obsolete. Those weapons do not replace the functionality of tanks and carriers.
Its like the common pop history myth that machineguns made horse cavalry obsolete in the first world war. It did not. Cavalry lasted through the war. Their tactics definitely had to change and adapt. And they were certainly used far more sparingly due to their low survivability but offensive cavalry weren't rendered obsolete until tanks came around. And horses in general weren't obsolete until armies became fully mechanized and replaced them with trucks. Some armies didn't manage that until after WW2.
Likewise the Battleship was not obsoleted because carrier aircraft could kill it easily. It was obsoleted because carrier aircraft and later smart weapons meant combat now happened over the horizon and those big guns weren't contributing to fleet actions anymore
Its been possible to kill a tank since literally the first battle they were employed. Ballsy German artillerymen learned that British tanks were not immune to a direct hit from a field gun fired over open sights. And Carriers have always been vulnerable to antiship weapons. Be it torpedoes from a sub, dumb bombs from an aircraft or fancy high tech missiles today.
So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?
1. Current or future means of intercepting hypersonic missiles.
2. The ability to disable or reduce the enemy’s ability of launching hypersonic missiles, or of pinpointing and accurately tracking the exact location of aircraft carriers.
We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.
In an all out war with Russia, our carriers would be big, slow, sitting ducks against Mach 20 missiles with variable speed and high maneuverability as well.
https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/why-russias-hyper...
"The missile flies with an advanced fuel that the Russians say gives it a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. And it's so fast that the air pressure in front of the weapon forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems.
U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up."
Say hello to SM-3. It has successfully intercepted hypersonic RVs in testing. Is it perfect? No. But if it done anything, the last month has made me feel more confident in what the US claims their weapons can do and dismissive for the Russians.
>We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.
No such weapon exists. And if it did it would be wildly impractical. The largest nuke ever made was the Tsar Bomba and it was only 50 megatons and too large to be practical.
And we do have a counter to nuclear torpedoes. Its called the West's nuclear deterrence. Using a nuke on a carrier means nuclear war and nobody wants that.
1. Detect the carrier. Sounds easy but they can move at 30+ knots, and can be quite difficult to detect when they want to hide.
2. Provide targeting data. This is needs to be much more accurate than just detecting that a carrier is operating "near" this point. Most weapons will require relatively precise data for this.
3. Transmit this data rapidly to the launch systems. Every minute counts as old targeting data is relatively useless.
4. Launch the weapon. This means keeping aircraft or missile batteries safe from attack, and getting the weapons in range of the carrier.
5. Have the weapon reach the target area. This means a reliable weapon with a low failure rate.
6. Have the weapon avoid any ECM or other countermeasures that might affect its targeting.
7. Have the weapon avoid any defenses, either the layered defenses (SAMS, point defence guns), fighters, etc.
8. Have the weapon detonate properly, in the best spot.
Lots of things to go wrong in this "kill-chain." Lots of places to interrupt, disrupt or out-right kill the weapon.
And sure we hear a lot about Russian super weapons like Zircon and the silly torpedoes. But as the Ukraine war is showing, a lot of Russian stuff sounds great until you see it in action. Or it's a Potemkin weapon, or too expensive.
Look at all the burning Russian tanks. These aren't monkey models sent to client states like Iraq. These are top of the line, with ERA etc. Yet most don't have Arena/Trophy, and are getting killed by a weapon designed 30 years ago.
Now perhaps the DF-21 deployed by the PLAN is more reliable than the Russian crap. But unless things get hot in the South China Sea we'll never know.
They have taken nearly the entire Black Sea coastline and most major cities east of the Dnieper River. That entire eastern part of Ukraine will collapse imminently under Russian advances.
And meanwhile none of the aforementioned weapons systems have been engaged.
Detecting a carrier is trivial. They are large above surface vessels that leave a huge wake. 30 knots is nothing. And once locked its trivial for satellites or spy planes to track. We even publish the location of our carriers: https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/vessels/USS-Enterprise-(...
Russia is a spacefaring, highly advanced military. They have all of the targeting capabilities you describe.
100 megaton nuclear torpedoes aren't silly. They're extremely dangerous. They can trigger tsunamis, and destroy anything within tens of miles and cause third degree burns out to hundreds of miles.
I'm not sure you understand the scale of what you're dismissing.
You mean 95% of the ones on that list, which was made by an external observer. It's also a military engagement each time one of their vehicles gets exploded by a TB2 drone strike.
Their equipment losses: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...
Most of these aren't in battle, it's because their equipment breaks on its own because they didn't maintain the tires for years, or runs out of fuel because everyone in the supply chain sold it for food money.
The Wikipedia map is good, but it's also out of date on that page, and the positions haven't moved much since then.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens...
I'm skeptical of any list of equipment losses being comprehensive on both sides. We are very much in a fog of war situation.
The map you linked looks fairly dire to me. The Russians control the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea at this point, and all of Ukraine's eastern border. With Belarus to the north, it leaves Ukraine landlocked with only its western border for imports and exports (mainly via Poland). There's a cauldron
Russia has already captured many of the major cities east of the Dnieper, and it will be harder and harder for Ukraine to supply the eastern front, particularly across that river.
And you do realize that satellites don't "lock" onto anything. They orbit around the earth. Geosynchronous orbits aren't used by RORSATs. Spyplanes? What spy planes? Russian maritime surveillance aircraft have limited range, (as do the PLANs) and can't see an infinite distance. Google the earth's curvature and you'll be able to find out how radar is limited.
Russia's military is a Potemkin village. Has been for decades if not longer. The only thing they have that's a threat is their nuclear weapons, and I'm even starting to wonder how reliable those are.
You keep talking about how dangerous Poseidon is. But Status-6 hasn't even been deployed, and probably never will. Why not talk about how dangerous Tsar Bomba is? And it's estimated speed is closer to 60mph.
I grew up when the Soviets were all 10 feet tall, with super T-80 tanks, with SS-20 missiles, nuclear powered cruisers and all sorts of scary stuff. Most of it turned out to be junk or too expensive for the USSR to afford. Same with Russia.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/02/russian-n...
"The missile can be armed with a nuclear or conventional warhead and has been tested several times over the last few years in the Barents Sea and White Sea regions, both from surface warships and the latest class of multi-purpose submarine."
Sometimes it matters what a country spends its budget on rather than how much.
This is all noted by our own DOD: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/201...
"U.S. efforts to reduce the roles and numbers of nuclear weapons, and convince other states to do the same, have included reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile by over 85 percent since its Cold War high. Potential adversaries, however, have expanded and modernized their nuclear forces."
"Russia possesses significant advantages in its nuclear weapons production capacity and in non-strategic nuclear forces over the U.S. and allies. It is also building a large, diverse, and modern set of non-strategic systems that are dual-capable (may be armed with nuclear or conventional weapons). These theater- and tactical-range systems are not accountable under the New START Treaty and Russia’s non-strategic nuclear weapons modernization is increasing the total number of such weapons in its arsenal, while significantly improving its delivery capabilities. This includes the production, possession, and flight testing of a ground-launched cruise missile in violation of the INF Treaty. Moscow believes these systems may provide useful options for escalation advantage. Finally, despite Moscow’s frequent criticism of U.S. missile defense, Russia is also modernizing its long-standing nuclear-armed ballistic missile defense system and designing a new ballistic missile defense interceptor."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...
Russia says they've lost 400 men, USINT says 7K. Who's telling the truth? They're both known to lie.
We can be relatively sure, based on the numerous maps of Russian advances that eastern Ukraine will fall in the next couple of weeks. You let me know if that's a win or a loss. I'm not sure. It's certainly a thing.
Strategic nuclear weapons, which one of the items you are referencing is, have been the “make it all go away” button for lots of things since they were created, but…MAD.
As for conventional anti-shipping missiles, people have been arguing that about carriers since weapons like the Exocet were available, but today, as then, remain at best highly speculative.
> So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?
Maybe, but so what? MAD has made war between great powers even more the exception among wars involving great powers than it was in the past, and it's almost always been the exception.
Emerging threats may change tactics, operations and spur development of countermeasures but they wont make an entire weapons system obsolete unless the change the nature of war.
>Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.
Carriers are not impossible to hide. A CSG that doesn't want to be found can do so. The ocean is a very big place. There are also grades to knowing "where" something is. Just knowing there is a carrier in the South China sea is valid for strategic planning but not much else. Knowing its somewhere to the south west of Taiwan can help plan operations but wont put warheads on foreheads.
A complete kill chain involves getting very precise and timely targeting information. This is something that needs to be done with some kind of sensor, RADAR, Thermal, Sonar etc. It must be timely because carriers are moving targets. A mere set of GPS coordinates is not good enough. By the time your missile gets there they will be wrong. So that means you need something nearby with a datalink and proper sensors to give targeting data. This could be a sub listening with sonar, a strike aircraft painting the carrier with radar or using an IRST to pick up its heat signature. It could be a warship of your own.
Point is, these kill chains are long and complicated and if you break it at any point your attack will fail or wont happen at all. Hypersonic missiles have very long kill chains, some of the longest. And they haven't been proven out in combat. "Finding" a CSG is much easier said than done.
That's assuming they can actually hit and inflict sufficient damage.
Also, you need to re-read your own sources.
> 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).
The article is estimating that it's at most 2 megatons (still a lot, but 50x smaller) and that it's NOT supercavitating, so it would not travel at 120mph.
The other article does not support the conclusion that carriers are obsolete, at all. It poses the question, but does not answer it.
If you use nuclear weapons on another nuclear power, carriers are going to be the least of your concerns.
I'm not sure about Russia's or China's anti ballistic technology. I know their hypersonic tech is superior to our own currently.
But what if a country could deploy nuclear weapons against another nation and defend themselves against incoming missiles, due to a temporary technological advantage? It changes the game. I'm not sure if that's where we're at currently, but I know that the hypersonic and nuclear tech is why we are so hesitant to enter the Ukrainian war outright.
If you think hypersonic weapons are any deterrent to the US involvement in Ukraine, you're just being silly. The Russians don't even have enough Kalibr cruise missiles to take out a 3rd rate military. They don't have enough money (or perhaps just too much corruption) to install active defenses for their MBTs (no Arena/Trophy).
The only reason we don't have US troops in Ukraine is because of the SS-18 Satan and Bulava SLBM.
And no one has an effective defense against the number of ICBMs/SLBMs on each side. The ABM systems around Moscow are too few to counter the number of warheads assigned, and the US missile defense is too raw (and also out of position) to defend against Russian missiles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion
Even with fusion, the fewer the sensors the less accurate the tracking will be. In these videos there may only be one or two sensors actually tracking the object.
Hitting a target with a missile is a somewhat different problem, you just have to get the missile there based on whatever data you have (which might be from the carriers sensor data, the missiles own sensors, or both). For example an IR missile doesn't know the location of its target, it just knows how far off center the IR light from the target is from the missiles current flight path and it can correct course based on that simple angular offset to eventually hit the target (with some additional math since the missile has to go to where the target will be when it gets there.) Similarly stopping an evasive incoming missile does not require that you know its exact location. Also as a defensive missile gets closer to the incoming missile it may be able to get better data on where its target actually is and how it is moving. Missiles move very fast so on the final approach there is not much ability to change direction at all, it would require too many g's to turn the missile, so you can model the final approach as a straight line. When it's close your own tracking systems probably work better as well because the targets cross section takes up more of the sky.
I don't think we can trust the accounts of anyone in the employ of the government, past or present, when it comes to this kind of thing.
For all we know to misinform is the mission, propaganda if you will.
Consider how much of what you said above is practically verbatim regurgitation of their vernacular. Jargon is often abused to sound qualified, smart, and authoritative. AKA B.S. alert.
I came here to say this.
There will be no further discussion.
This just seems to be a way that the government can point to an “expert” and say it was nothing, thereby alleviating the need for the government to comment on the “nothing”.
I’m guessing the classified file on this is very interesting.
Flimsy is an extremely generous and flattering word if you know anything about the details of this case or the testimony of the Navy's top pilots who witnessed and tracked this object from different vantage points both visually and with instruments.
I implore everyone to watch these two interviews with Christopher Melon, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. And to read the DNI report on UAPs It will change your entire perception of these incidents and show you to view them as true national security issues.
1. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2V0uWX1C4m8xEL0HHYqbnE?si=e...
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdxcgS4spRM&t=1393s
3. https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelima...
There are unknown objects flying with impunity in our restricted military airspace, some that exhibit characteristics that nothing of human origin can accomplish. This should terrify you.
Edit: Why the downvotes? Please explain to me your logic. I'm just listing things that people with credibility in our government said, including the Department of National Intelligence.
It's clear whomever, or whatever, possesses this superior technology could fly circles around and/or obliterate us on a whim, but has expressly decided not to, and instead simply announced: "Hey, I have this."
If they/it perceived us as a threat, we'd surely be gone already. That leaves only our hopefully sane response, to influence what happens next.
Being terrified would be exactly wrong.
The technology they are displaying is awesome, but it is something we should be very wary of.
Our capabilities can be well enough assessed from the comfortable safety of billions of kilometres away simply from watching our relentless broadcasting of them in all directions for decades if not centuries now.
We even sent out devices at the limits of our sphere of physical influence, introducing ourselves and with instructions on how to understand what we say.
Certainly, by simple initial analysis of even our most basic technology they could then monitor our own satellite networks on a whim and see all of the same things about ourselves that we do, in realtime and in totality.
Ingesting our transmissions and emissions and assessing our capabilities would be something they could do far more thoroughly than we can ourselves. They'd likely also be able to project what we'll have ten or twenty years from now in detail.
Sending a craft in can only reasonably be interpreted as "hi" given a context of technological dominance, which by necessity is founded on informational dominance.
In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.
In their 2021 annual meeting notes [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b5a458fe749405f83225...], To the Stars Academy notes that "Christopher Mellon, a member of TTSA’s advisory board, [is] no longer with the company" implying he was employed by them in some fashion. Thus prior to 2021, he likely stood to benefit commercially from these films' distribution, particularly when he was quoted alongside them.
Pilot Chad Underwood gave private testimony to the senate congressional committee on this gimbal video stating the object did rotate without changing direction or altitude - a feat which is impossible by our current understanding of physics. So assuming the "drone" in gimbal belongs to something of terrestrial origin, either our government his hiding ground breaking physics capabilities or some other country on this planet has - both of which are terrifying.
>In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.
I agree TTSA has sketchy origins, I've looked quite a bit into it. Chris Mellon comes from one of the wealthiest families in America, so I would have to assume that this venture could not have netted him enough money to make it worth while for him to lie to congress about this. He was the major architect to the Gillibrand amendment in last year's NDAA creating the new UAP office, and he and Lue Elizondo been regularly meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee to further pursue this topic. And to go on that, Lue Elizondo (former head of AATIP) made no money from his time at TTSA or the Unidentified TV show. If someone needed money, it would have been him imo.
Equity investor. No conflicts there!
“in our restricted military airspace”
In fact, they’re actually the most heavily instrumented research, development, test and training areas on the planet. Let me repeat that: research, development and test.
https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrsw/installations/navbas...
What an incredible coincidence. Alien trolls or Occam’s razor?
And with all that, all we get are appeals to authority and fuzzy pics.
It’s akin to “Air Force pilots bewildered by objects over Area 51, must be aliens!”
The ODNI specifically stated in the 144 cases of UAP they were not able to identify that exactly none of them were from testing US Special Access Programs technology. This is in the official report http://dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-As...
>“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science” > Equity investor. No conflicts there!
He left TTSA in 2021 and he's still a national security advisor to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's also from one of the wealthiest families in the world, being a direct line from Carnegie Mellon. Typically when you are born wealthy you are naturally an investor in things you believe in.
I’m going to be extremely generous and assume you have actually not read the report you state says exactly none of them were SAPs.
What your source actually says:
“USG or Industry Developmental Programs: Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected”
His interview with Terry Virts, former astronaut, was pretty eye opening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YSrVhCS-rc