It was common for the reports to mention that these UFOs maneuvered unlike any man-made aircraft, which was always a good chuckle because they were usually just flying straight or banking normally.
However when seasoned military pilots like Fravor speak on the matter, I listen. When a bunch of them speak about the same incident, I take them at their word.
I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t thoroughly and permanently discredit this line of reasoning, I don’t know what will.
In the end, there is zero accountability or consequences for these kinds of articles and the sparse "unclassified" information is fuzzy enough to inject all kinds of speculation. This is not to dismiss the topic as a whole, it's the framing that I find weird.
I am not leaning in either direction at all. Optical phenomena, sensor artifacts, weather, foreign or compartmentalized tech, or aliens... The point is not to be contrarian - it's important to keep an open mind until proven otherwise. However, this heavy X-Files like framing of mysterious otherworldy tech roaming around military facilities is somewhat over-the-top and doesn't really seem to (!) serve the case.
Also, there are probably also projects that are compartmentalized to a degree where part of the military does not know about other parts of the military doing/building/researching specific stuff. What better way to test your capabilities than exposing them to real world scenarios against the arguably most advanced defense systems on the planet?
The information is just too sparse to reach any meaningful conclusion so it's ideal clickbait media material, even if the topic itself is serious and important.
On the other hand the Pentagon analysts had all the time they could want to do the same analysis and still got it wrong. But you don't need to take anyone's word for it, look at the footage yourself and you can do all the calculations independently with middle school geometry.
My priors are (but not limited to): 1)"These 10n Navy folk, who do this all day, and seen this stuff over months, across FLIR, radar, visual, from multiple planes and ships, cannot be wrong, and their sensors cannot be wrong in such a consistent way as to create such an artefact, it just seems extremely low probability."; also, 2)"Reports of UAP/UFO going back 100s of years (or 1000s if you want to include the Bible), but at least far enough back that it's not anomalies in sensor data."; also, 3)"Millions of MUFON reports and abduction reports around the world. All these people can't be lying/insane." etc...
Thank you for informing me of this valuable analysis. I think any serious Navy aviator / navigator who looked at this could easily perform the same simple math. If these folk are not denouncing clearly some of these videos, or at least publicising alternate theories for those where alternate theories reasonably exist...it smells bad for the credibility of the enterprise.
Unless the analyst from that video is completely self-servingly misrepresenting what the radar metrics mean...How to corroborate their interpretation of those numbers? Important question.
I think sometimes we underestimate the power of social media in today's outrage and conspiracy driven culture, which is all but impossible to contain. I've said it what seems like a thousand times now - I believe there would be much more positive than negative as a result of shutting the internet off indefinitely.
"I think sometimes we underestimate the power of social media in today's outrage and conspiracy driven culture, which is all but impossible to contain. I've said it what seems like a thousand times now - I believe there would be much more positive than negative as a result of shutting the internet off indefinitely."
I'm not sure if there is much more I can say explicitly. By people I'm assuming you mean the average person with social media access, which is the prime medium for people to get in a huff on. It doesn't matter what objective facts are presented by the DoD. Social media will run with it to the extremes, just like kids would playing the "Chinese whispers" game.
That being said, I'm making a joke about shutting the internet off, but there is some truth to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6nox5_QStw&t=1082s
This despite the existence of people like Rendlesham's Colonel Halt, and so on, is, indeed, a very interesting military-UAP venn-ecosystem. I think it's a fascinating combination to study.
Military psychology also naturally disincentivizes "looking into things" (see for example Colonel Halt's thoughts on "what to do about it"[1]) and there's a ping-pong false dichotomy that develops: Did we make it or didn't we; Did we cause it or didn't we. It's the perfect recipe for meaningless distraction from very important questions.
This problem also further isolates important aspects of the military role in potentially damming up exploration & science efforts, especially when we examine its comparatively premium level of day-in, day-out access to what are de facto scientifically-capable exploration & discovery tools.
Is it any wonder, in that light, that the accompanying de facto "scientists", i.e. pilots, radar operators, and privileged officers, are seeing extraordinary things? No. And that's a huge opportunity wrapped up in a problem, because the chartering mindset interferes.
1. “There’s no doubt it was something beyond anything we know or understand. […] I have concerns, but I don’t think we can do anything about it. I think this is beyond us.”
“So: Quit worrying about it.” -- From just after the 8m mark in:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswsp9
(An example of a rather stunning mindset, given the circumstances, and in comparison to the known-reliable mindset of exploratory effort / scientific learning & exploration)
Civilian just sees something and unless it's really weird presumes that it's outside of their knowledge area but that makes sense because their universe of unknowns is large.
Presumably they are trained on distinguishing aircraft from birds and weather balloons. If they see something "impossible" given that training, then there's clearly something that needs an explanation.
Extremely detailed visual and sensor events.
Tons of human witnesses. Tons of activity.
There was a detailed Reddit thread on the incident from a Seaman many, many years ago long before news of the Tic Tac came out.
I’m on mobile but perhaps someone else can paste the thread URL.
Could be an elaborate hoax but that’s one heck of a long con game.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/16If5PVe6ouxeDwNbtu0iC?si=8...
The Tic Tac UFO? That's probably one of the best explained events (debunked). Short answer is that there was sense misreading and a gimbal lock. Some people even simulated it[0]. I wouldn't call this an elaborate hoax, but an optical illusion and an event that took some expertise to understand. Expertise that a pilot wouldn't have.
I should add that finding that link was nontrivial. Faster through Google but searching through YouTube just came up with UFO videos and no debunking. This is probably part of the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY
He lists some pretty amazing capabilities around 2:10.
We have multiple naval aviator eye witnesses of the physical object, with testimony (fravor and the female wingman, I forget her name)
We have testimony of the Princeton’s AEGIS radar operator that these things were “popping in at 80k feet and dropping to sea level in a few seconds”, that “they disappear on radar and the sub would get a ping in the same area tracking 200+ knots underwater”
We have the intentionally degraded video of the same object from another intercept (the people who went out after fravor, his jet didn’t have recording capability). This is the video a certain washed up video game developer claims to have debunked by pointing a flashlight at a webcam.
This operation was testing a new version of the navy’s most advanced radar/integrated tracking system at that time (2004) that was substantially more powerful/sensitive than anything that came before it. Make of that what you will.
Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich
But he googled $Event + Debunked and watched 2 minutes of the first explanation that came up. Mick West said it's debunked so it must be so, after all, any good skeptic will click the first link and believe any debunk instantly because that's the science way^tm
Lets take an example of the Tic Tac from the incident, that was supposedly moving very fast.
If it had a physical presence, ie could interact with the world, it would seem very likely that pilots would describe the resultant shockwave. Depending on the possibilities of the propulsion system, its highly likely that you would get EM interference, possibly even some physical disturbance if the craft came close to the observing plane.
If it didn't have a physical presence, like it was folding space or something and traveling in a bubble, then it seems very, very strange that an advanced civilization can fold space to effectively travel without any impact on the world, but let the EM radiation that is light/heat leak out. You would think they could just be fully invisible.
Sure, if the thing is some new earth tech or natural phenomena there are plenty of assumptions you can make. But in the face of something else?
For example, Aliens living among us for a while, undetected, and having the ability to place false memories in peoples heads because they mapped out how human brain works down to the neuron level (thanks to their massive compute clusters) is way more believable.
Also you act like the science and the laws are settled but we all know science doesn't work like that. New discoveries happen all the time its that for the laws of physics those changes don't happen often.
What laws of physics revelations will the next Newton or Einstein offer us?
Like flying very fast without producing a shockwave and only leaking some residual light and heat?
One benefit of this explanation is it predicts we'll see more of these strange phenomena even as our technology gets better and the possibility of simply being mistaken is driven way further down. If we stop seeing them suspiciously around the same time as big advances in sensor and sensor integration tech, all the more reason to bet on old observations being mistaken/hoaxes/conspiracies than actually aliens.
I'm not sure why you're speculating on unknowable alien motives. The only thing that matters is agreeing on whether there is something unusual here that requires an explanation. If it turns out to be aliens, then you can speculate on their motives.
I don't trust the military or Congress since they're happy to spend money on ESP or telekinesis studies and still not be able to reach a conclusion.
Military pilots have mistaken Venus as a UAF.
I can't just trust an eyewitness account of something fishy as evidence for exterrestrial beings visiting us with faster than light speed vehicles.
Some other stuff were stealthy cruise missiles. Not too big but they flew so low that they would cause some “shock and awe”.
You mean dudes who are under constant stress, likely sleep deprived, and likely have some health issues due to the physical demands of the job?
Those probably would be the last people I listen to.