US not hiding aliens or UFO technology from the public, Pentagon says
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Each location has a pair of telescopes some distance apart, with CCD sensors and computer control. They scan the sky each night, record data, and automatically compare that with star catalogs and catalogs of orbital objects. New objects are logged. Because there are two coordinated telescopes some distance apart, distance can be obtained by triangulation. That's good out to earth orbit. That's how the US finds new satellites.
Interestingly, it can detect dark objects. If something blocks a star, that's noticed, because the system has a star catalog. If something blocks a star from view by both telescopes, and the star field in that area is otherwise normal, that's a hit. Not well known is that GEODSS has a light source. One of the telescopes can use a laser to illuminate satellites, so the other telescope can take a better picture.
If something is up there orbiting on a regular basis, GEODSS will detect it. This is where automated, computerized astronomy began.
MIT's Lincoln Lab operates LINEAR, which is a similar system using 1990s technology.[2] About 90% of near earth object discoveries came from LINEAR. This was kind of discouraging for amateur astronomers, who used to discover and report such objects. LINEAR did that automatically, in bulk.
There's a lot of automated sky-watching going on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan...
[2] https://archive.ll.mit.edu/publications/journal/pdf/vol11_no...
There are other classified space systems that operate further out. But the public data on UAP says they are detected coming in "above 80,000 feet", which would be too low for these satellites to detect, I guess?
I suppose if it was like star trek and there were space ships just floating around the solar system, and hanging out at Jupiter Station or whatever, these systems would get it. Do these systems have any blind spots or blind areas of the sky that they don't cover?
Are they radars or visual systems?
Regarding your other point about sightings that get explained: how many of those is it dishonest to include in UFO numbers to start with? If they're so easily explainable, probably a lot haha! :) Also, how many of those are poorly explained? Or unconvincingly explained? Could be a lot, too.
Including easily explainable things in the dataset only pollutes the data. No serious analyst would do that, for any data set.
Some databases you may be interested in if you want to see the big scale of the open data on this: NUFORC from US, CNES/GEIPAN from France, the 700 unexplained from Blue Book.
It might help you refine what you mean by "most". 51%? 91%? Where are you starting at? Reports of balloons or something that's a little more difficult?
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/03/th...
> What you won’t find in this report is any mention of Nimitz, Gimbal, or any of the other more puzzling cases about observed objects — on multiple sensors with independent verifications — that defy current explanation.
> So overall there is no reason to revise whatever your current views might be, at least provided those views were not the crazy ones in the first place.
I would imagine an alien civilization playing tag with the USN would have shown up on other locations or observations. The fact that these observations associated with the USN aren’t collaborated anywhere else in this reported is a good indication they are not from aliens, and one SHOULD absolutely revise ones opinion about the reddit hoopla over some plasma weapons. Which was, frankly, always wildly unsupported.
The only way that this report is unrelated to the USN stuff is if you choose to believe it’s unrelated. In reality this is just yet more evidence that aliens aren’t like hanging out off the coast of California. For which there has never been any evidence, unless you count speculation as evidence.
Repeat after me: there are no little green men playing flashlight tag off of southern california. The USN is doing weapons tests. The haven’t confirmed it because, you know, it’s a black project.
The best part of the "UFO" debate, for me, is the flames and the fervor of all these folks who really, really need to convince others that they're right. On both sides. And What if they are? It still ain't gonna patch the roof or plow the back 40.
(I'm in the "crazy views" section of the audience, i guess)
If we ran into aliens, there wouldn’t be any doubt about it for more than a week or two.
You may find both sides plausible, but the difference between plausible and likely is the difference between superstition and science. Aliens are plausible. But so are fairies, faster than light travel, and string theory. That doesn’t mean they’re likely.
Oh, but they are indeed "likely" (statistically speaking, considering the vastness of the Universe, and this planet being proof positive of life existing in that vastness), but aliens visiting here seems much less likely to me (again, given the vastness of the Universe).
> “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” ― Douglas Adams
> (I'm in the "crazy views" section of the audience, i guess)
At least you're not alone there. I'm right there with ya, brother (or sister, or little green alien, hell I dunno; It's the Internet; You're an "Internet person" somewhere "out there" in "the cloud"). ;)
I think this makes sense if you don't want to put in the time/effort to study it yourself, this rational approach of withholding judgement is commendable.
It's a sad testament to the polluted nature of this essential topic that this is where it is tho: that without dedicate effort you are unlikely to gain real insight.
We can think of this as if an effective "topic area denial" has been placed over this topic, obstructing any but the most focused/talented efforts to obtain information.
I think that says something, too: why expend so much treasure to create confusion about something if there's nothing to hide?
for the millionth time, there IS something to hide. classified weapons research.
how can tech people be so willfully oblivious about this.
there is no topic area denial or whatever you’re talking about. no one is stopping anyone from discussing it, claiming anything, or publishing anything. there were hearings in congress for gods sake. what exactly do you think is being covered up here?
what’s happening is that the people who believe are upset that no one accepts their evidence. that’s all it is. this is not a both sides are equal situation. there is one side who knows the evidence to date is insufficient, and there is everyone else.
disinformation isn’t the issue. obfuscation isn’t the issue. cultural stigma isn’t the issue.
the issue is that the evidence is crap.
if you want to have people accept crap for evidence, pick something less titanic than the first evidence of intelligent life outside of earth, maybe try something smaller first like your aunt betty was talking shit about uncle joe. people will accept crap evidence for something like that.
1) it doesn't mean there's not anything else to hide. No obliviousness about that, the only obliviousness seems to be yours when you think that you can't have more Categories of hidden things, Cacti haha! :)
and
2) given that counterintelligence (CI) disinformation is used to protect classified weapons systems, it erodes your point that there's no disinfo or obfuscation.
> there is no topic area denial or whatever you’re talking about. no one is stopping anyone from discussing it, claiming anything, or publishing anything. there were hearings in congress for gods sake. what exactly do you think is being covered up here?
Your tone is a little bit hysterical. A desperation that erodes the seeming sureness with which you intend your words. Given that this topic has a documented history of being targeted with disinformation and counterintelligence (Blue Book, AARO), your assertion rings hollow.
Combine that with how the people present at the hearings in congress (including congressfolk themselves) have spoken multiple times about there being a coverup, and being stopped from discussing it (in a classified settings, SCIF denial), and that DOPSA has held up Grusch's op-ed, your take comes across as somewhat misinformed of the facts, to put it lightly.
I get it's possible to have that take from a distance, and even desirable. Doing so prevents you from having to update your priors or worldview to include what is understably very difficult-to-process information, to put it lightly. If that's what you're struggling with, there's no shame in that. Just take it at your own pace.
But try not to be abusive to other people with these types of hysterical outbursts and weak assertions aggressively offered. The implication of your words is that anyone who takes this topic with the seriousness it deserves, is some sort of cretin.
That's not a very nice thing to say, but I get it could be compensatory for you. I also get that from a distance it could be easy to form that opinion of this topic, because that opinion directly reflects the CI disinfo about this topic, that aims to discourage people from discussing it seriously by convincing them that only cretins would do so.
It's also incorrect. If you're up to it, it's a challenging intellectual engagement. One I think you'd be worthy of, once you calm down hahahaha! :)
I'm sure you might find this offensive but if you want to take it slow, it would be better to hold your tongue in public than speak about things you don't know, because I think that would only weaken the bubble you put around yourself, which is counter to your objective of protecting yourself from awareness of this reality.
Anyway, your view is a little bit behind the times of where the reality of this topic is, right now. I am thrilled however that you found my comment such a challenge to your (admittedly, I'm sorry to say) archaic view of this topic, that you were spurred to respond haha! :)
> what’s happening is that the people who believe are upset that no one accepts their evidence. that’s all it is. this is not a both sides are equal situation. there is one side who knows the evidence to date is insufficient, and there is everyone else.
There's truth to that. But it's not the whole picture. The "evidence" is actually really good, even in the open. The classified evidence is also really good. It's not actually a data problem. But I get you could be misled by the evidence seeming crap, if you start with a crap dataset: take all the good data and mix it in with lots of crap (obvious fakes, obvious balloons), and you get an incorrect picture that the data is crap.
That poisoning the evidence is actually one of the pillars of the disinformation CI activity on this topic. The fact that your viewpoint of denial carves out so nicely the contours of the disinfo in reverse makes me think you have a background in information warfare that you aren't sharing haha! :)
> disinformation isn’t the issue. obfuscation isn’t the issue. cultural stigma isn’t the issue.
These things are issues, and are meant to be issues. There are released government reports of the past where it's stated the CI objective is to persuade the public the topic is too ridiculous to discuss, in order to protect against public discovery of realities around it. Even among skeptics the disinfo CI of this topic is well established.
> if you want to have people accept crap for evidence, pick something less titanic than the first evidence of intelligent life outside of earth, maybe try something smaller first like your aunt betty was talking shit about uncle joe. people will accept crap evidence for something like that.
Hahaha! Dude maybe you're talking about your own life there, but I think you're just not informed of this topic. Unfortunately, it is not an "evidence issue", but that is a common CI/disinfo talking point.
AARO assesses that the incidents of UAP sightings reported to USG organizations, the
claims that some constitute extraterrestrial craft, and the claims that the USG has secured and
is experimenting on alien technology, most likely are the result of a range of cultural,
political, and technological factors.
AARO bases this conclusion on the aggregate findings of
all USG investigations to date, the misinterpretation of all reported named sensitive programs,
the lack of empirical evidence to support the USG reverse-engineering narrative, and AARO’s
assessment that the piece of metal alleged to be recovered from an alien spacecraft in the late
1940s is ordinary, of terrestrial origin, and possesses no exceptional qualities.Faster-than-light travel breaks all our current long-established & well-tested physics. But sure, Jan, some aliens really did stick a probe up your butt.
Somewhere in the series, we find out Roger long since thought he was an "important" alien sent to earth for an important purpose. He then finds out he is really just a crash test dummy replacement.
If they are so advanced, and bother to come all the way here, then they just crash and discard it?
?
Here's a few possibilities:
- They are so advanced. Coming here is as easy for them, as riding a cheap bicycle to the store is for us. We discard our bicycles (just take a look at Shanghai, for instance). They break or get beat up, we don't stress it (I'm not speaking to the morality of that -- personally, I feel, "Those poor little abandoned bicycles!") -- and maybe they have a similar relationship with their crafts. And maybe even with their occupants, which may simply be pilots that are just avatar bodies, or drones.
- They're not that advanced and it's easy for them to come here (obviously via some means or pathway which is hard for most of us currently Earthbound humans to imagine right now!) and they fuck things up. But, their fuckups are cheap. Simple.
- They are actually here all the time, in great numbers. Let's say 40,000 per second, zipping around Earth, 24 hours a day, every day of the year. And let's say, in a good year, the government detects and picks up 16 - 20 crashed objects. Let's generously say there's 2x that that actually crash. So they have odds of crashing of around 1 in 30 billion trips. Our best air travel safety is 1 in 11 million flights. So they are around 1000 times safer than commercial air travel, at significantly (to our minds) higher demands. So that reframes their crashing from this incredible thing that splinters the fantasy of their apparently advanced natures, and paints it instead as, a pretty low defect rate indicative of a level of capability orders of magnitude beyond ourselves. In other words, not all that contradictory as we, in our own human limitations, first would think! Hahaha! :)
While this would explain the advancement/crash conflict, wouldn't the vast number of them also likely cause other artefacts, besides crashes? Even in near space, which we observe closely. Also: do you imagine a cloaking tech or dimension travelling for that scenario?
Definitely they are cloaked, or invisible. Besides the support of corroboration with our hypothesis explaining crashes, this is also supported by inconsistent visual confirmation for objects seen on radar, or FLIR. Sometimes people can see these radar/FLIR tracks with their eyes, sometimes not. People have also reported seeing them fade out, or instantly disappear.
Some amount of this invisibility could be due to teleporting, going through subspace, going to another dimension, or something else we don't really understand so well, rather than just optical camouflage.
Other artefacts are an interesting aspect, too. In such large numbers, we'd expect them to be picked up very frequently on advanced radars used by Earth's militaries. However, militaries have demonstrated a clear policy of withholding information that arises from these classified sensor platforms in order to protect the secrecy of their capabilities. In other words, they've basically admitted to the public that even if they were detecting them with advanced radar in large numbers, they wouldn't be telling us.
If we imagine them moving by teleporting discretely from point to point (with say a maximum jump distance of a few tens of km) rather than moving continuously, it could explain many things about both their anomalous "non interacting, transmedia, high speed, maneuverability", and also that, if they were so crowded, their 'traffic lanes' would also be sparse in motion as they skip large distance by moving discretely.
Really?
Well one way to think of it is no military will reveal tracks only accessible to their most classified radar systems, because all militaries wish to protect the secret capabilities of those systems.
If that doesn't suffice for you, we can go a bit deeper haha! :)
Perhaps you don't need to use the word "conspiracy" if that makes it hard for you to think about. I know that word has become loaded (CIA invented the term 'conspiracy theorist' apparently as a term of abuse to discredit any who threatened to reveal their secrets), and it's meant to (and indeed seems it can!) cloud thought, but all 'conspiracy' really means is "breathing together": con-spire.
But perhaps you can think of it rather like a loosely coordinated mutual self-interest, rather than the tighter collaboration suggested by conspiracy.
Whatever the reality may be beyond the classified veil, which may nevertheless surprise your priors, there's precedent for loosely coordinated mutual self-interest in a number of areas, that will also explain the lack of transparency the world's militaries seem to share around discussing and revealing plentiful data about the UFO topic:
- there's a classified but revealed international system in place for atomic test notifications between enemy nations, as well as rocket launches, to inadvertently avoid trigger global thermonuclear war.
- all nuclear states already 'conspire' to keep the technical and engineering secrets of atomic weapons out of public awareness, to preserve their own advantage (to, erm, annihilate each other ha! :S)
- sworn enemy special services / intelligence services often collaborate / interface together at a high level, in secret, in ways that would seem surprising to their populations who only have the picture of spy-vs-spy and enemy-nation
Given these pertinent existing realities, it's rather less hard to consider how all militaries would share a common goal of projecting strength and capability (for that is what they are required to do to accomplish their mission of protecting their populations), and that, if all Earth's militaries were confronted with a global threat, which well outpaced their own capabilities, and against which they had no effective defense, and had the choice to be able to A) tell their populations they were outmatched and essentially no longer 'fit for service', or B) keep that embarassing truth secret by any means necessary while continuing to pretend everything was fine, I think you'd likely agree with me that this 'conspiracy of the world's militaries' would rather choose A than admit to B. Would you not? Haha! :)
Secondly I think you'd agree that no 'conspiracy' was required in order to keep that so. :) hahaha :)
Really? How well did that work out in practice though?
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-570.html
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB187/index.htm
Two countries conducted a series of tests with no prior notification in 1998.
I suppose it worked out in the sense that we didn't have global thermonuclear war (at least in this timeline!) but not in the sense that it seems to work as, or as consistently as, expected.
We can see the same adhoc ranks-breaking and partial lack of coordination despite overall alignment in the attitude of release of UFO data by the world's militaries. There have been instances of violation of this policy, even while overall the dam has not broken.
Some instances: Belgian UFO wave military officials talking to media and releasing radar and other data, Mexican navy/airforce data, leak of Japan airlines radar tracks after confiscation, US Navy data (the famous videos from 2017, and a drip of subsequent videos), possibly the French CNES data (although as their policy has always been to release, not classified radar tracks but other, data such as reports, it may not be seen as a violation rather a persistent bucking of la trend).
I just skimmed the docs you listed. In the Indian case it's hard to be conclusive from the released docs without having the full classified picture, but I consider a possible (tho by no means firm) alternative hypothesis that CIA decided it would "turn a blind eye" to 1 nuclear test, because it recognized both: the utility of an Indian nuclear deterrent (perhaps strategically important as within striking distance between middle east and east asia); as well as the good will they would earn with their Indian partners by not be being seen to try to "hold India back", or embarrass them.
In addition, strategic considerations could have included not revealing the full extent of their classified detection capabilities to merely prevent something so (relatively) unimportant as a test, electing instead to feign incompetence and reserve acting on knowledge for future -- with the subsequent release of classified docs supporting this feint. Or, plausibly, a combination of such things.
Of course, it may simply have been incompetence, misjudgement, lack of preparation and lack of capability, as the made public docs may sketch.
All this highlights I suppose is how slippery history is, particularly when concerned with the activities of secretive organizations.
I'm no expert and there are several on HN that know fair more about nuclear technology than myself, it's also not a matter of history for myself as I was present at the time and a number of Australians were "detained" by the Indian Government at the time (they completed the work they were there to do in any case, only with personal armed guards and no option to leave early) and later questioned at some length by US personal when in transit through US airports.
If you hunt about there are many US TLA hosted documents that admit they weren't expecting either round of testing ( the 1970s not the 1990s ) when they happened, at best they had it as a possibilty.
The questions posed to Australian geophysicists and field crew were heavily weighted toward the "how come you people knew there'd be atomic tests and we didn't" end of the spectrum.
The answer to that is one specific Australian who organised the survey contract might have had an inkling .. but for everybody else it was just another radiometric survey with two quite large (crystal volume wise) quite sensitive radiometric spectrometers. Get to the job site, complete calibrations, begin survey area and Bang! surprise nuclear testing.
As a general impression the US appears to be far less able at on the ground first hand field work than many seem to think, than is projected in movies.
Much of the "evidence" for "weapons of mass destruction" came from third party non US sources and caused a stir when it was presented to the UN in a much massaged form to bolster the case Iraq had WMD's.
Snippets that originated with UK, French, Australian sources were jazzed up past recognition, mobile barrage balloon equipment became chemical weapon dispensers, and so on.
Holy shit you were there? That's interesting. Sounds like an Aussie survey team observing the test? But from your description of the conditions it seems India was a very wild place back then.
Well your account of it supports the sincerely ignorant thesis for this. Again, the questioning could be a ruse, or different parts of the US bureaucracy, but it's very interesting. And it sounds like you've made up your mind that it was sincere ignorance. It's all new to me so I'm keeping an open mind but I appreciate your perspective and facts. A healthy does of real experience is always welcome to counter all the narratives pushed every which way.
Regarding the Aussie survey team you were a member of being coincidentally present at the time of the test that to me sounds like just the kind of thing that (presumably Aussie) intelligence services would organize, a non confrontational and covert way to collect some data on it maybe? I don't know.
Sounds as if you're non too happy with how the US has massaged perceptions of various things, including possibly things drawn directly from or related to stuff you've contributed to, and want to speak truth to that power or at least expose the truths and lies. Well good on you! A strong system should never be afraid of the truth, and flip flops on truth send a discouraging signal about competence, etc.
Always full of surprises your account is haha! :)
:D I would. I've not thought that stuff as much as you did, maybe you're right.
Some of the ideas you raise — I wonder, why aren't non-government individuals finding these objects, parading them around? We have amateur astronomers tracking spy satellites for kicks.
And we all know people in government leak — we've had 60+years for troves of classified documents to have been leaked. Instead we get surgery on an alien puppet with grainy After Effects.
To be sure, I Want To Believe, but I also try not be a butterfly to my fantasies.
Sure, but what's your occam's razor take? I don't think Occam here justifies a denial of all data. That seems more like fantasy or pseudoscience.
> Some of the ideas you raise — I wonder, why aren't non-government individuals finding these objects, parading them around? We have amateur astronomers tracking spy satellites for kicks.
That's a good point. I'm not sure why. It seems some of the reasons could be: they are often cloaked to amateur level capabilities, but advanced sensor systems can detect them; or, perhaps selection bias where there stories from 'credible' military witnesses end up reaching more people, which is likely to be an artefact of CI disinfo as these folks are more controllable than civilians; or, a bias of the objects themselves to do ISR over military airspace; or, even as has been reported by witnesses, anything they obtain (photographs, fragments, objects) are confiscated by people from 'government' who tell them not to talk about it and try to gaslight them that it was nothing; or even because militaries may occasionally be able to bring down and capture these, but given that, individuals would have a harder time securing one.
You don't have read far into the history to find cases that include interactions like the confiscation mentioned, if you doubt there's anything to those last few points (I don't think you doubt that, tho! Haha :))
> And we all know people in government leak — we've had 60+years for troves of classified documents to have been leaked. Instead we get surgery on an alien puppet with grainy After Effects.
That's true about leaks, but it's a common (amateur, sorry to say haha!) error to think that there has been "perfect secrecy" around this topic.
Rather, this topic has very clearly been "hidden in plain sight", surrounded by a moat of protective disinfo and counterintelligence.
There have been many documents leaked about this, many "insiders" have come forward (real or fake), and much data is there already.
These leaks haven't been covered as widely in the media, perhaps, as other big leaks on other topics, which may contribute to an impression you may have that there is nothing out there about this. The craftily engineered 'topic area denial' arising from decades of CI disinfo can explain part of this, as well as more direct connections with media.
David Grusch and his "40 secret whistleblowers" is merely the latest in a long line of insiders, but this one has reached a little further into public awareness it seems.
> To be sure, I Want To Believe, but I also try not be a butterfly to my fantasies.
I think you can do both. Don't be so afraid of your desires and imagination, that you don't trust yourself to investigate something. I mean, it seems only a CI/disinfo engineered aversion to trusting yourself to explore this topic, when the same dynamic is at play in anything: from science, to creating a new product, to writing a book, right?
It is sad tho that you seem to think others are being butterflies to what you see as their fantasies, sad that you need to try to mischaracterize it like that.
And sad that you feel you need to denigrate the minds, beliefs and analysis abilities of others like that, so you can feel safe? Because you can't find a reconciliation of this in your own brain? Rather than being open to that, you have to shut it down?
You shouldn't treat other people like that. But also not treat yourself like that. If you're stopping yourself from thinking about this topic, because you think 'Oh, it's just fantasy', that's ridiculous. It's just like being imprisoned by the decades of legacy CI disinfo programming around this. Don't be like that, you're better than that! :)
i mean that. The more people that look at this, and unblinker, and unleash themselves from whatever imagined limitations have curtailed their thinking on this particular topic, that they would have no trouble deploying elsewhere, the better it is! This thing is a problem or an opportunity for humanity, we need lots of people lookin' at it.
It's ok if you want to stay in the shadows, but just don't try to keep anyone else there with you. That's abusive.
That kind of abusive attitude is sadly an artefact of the decades of CI disinfo that tried to obfuscate the topic by discouraging people from consider it by persuading them it was a fool's game. It's not a fool's game. The fool's game is where you stand right now -- if you think it's too ridiculous to consider.
I get if you just don't want to consider it, because it's too difficult, because no time, whatever -- and that's fine! -- but that's different. Have a good one! :)
If an alien race did develop FTL travel then it makes sense that they'd make a beeline for the most interesting things in their local vicinity, and it makes sense that the most interesting thing would be a planet with intelligent life on it. So we'd expect a visit from nearby aliens soon after they invent FTL. But that means they'd be doing so when the tech is new and the kinks are still being worked out - they'd be doing the equivalent of voyages across the Atlantic in the 1600s. You'd expect a fairly high accident rate.
Yeah, but if you take the vast distances they would have to travel into account, it would be like your 1600s ship sinking on the last nanometer right at the destination harbour wall.
Even if it is, it is completely justified to think that an intelligence so advanced would have no motivation to probe Jan.
OR you need crazy physicists nightmare engines like antimatter rockets.
One or the other.
Yes, but we generally don't have to go to a lot of trouble to find specimens.
"I'm also skeptical of scientists who assume an anomalous observation must be an error, because we know our physics. It's surprising to me because we don't know our physics: we don't have a quantum theory of gravity. And quantum theory makes a difference." - Kevin Knuth
"Engineering is the act of using physics to find workarounds to problems and unfamiliar engineering can look a whole lot like anomalous physics." - Kevin Knuth
Unfathomably unlikely to be able to? But we don't know what an alien species would be capable of? So preemptively limiting their capabilities only to the sphere of what we currently know, or a little beyond that, seems like it would not be a faithful model of alien capabilities.
Unfathomably unlikely actually care sufficiently to visit? I think there's two parts to this: if we assume it is easy; and if we assume it is hard. If it's easy for them to visit here, we don't need the "care" factor in that product to be so important. It's easy enough, then they don't have to particularly care about it very much to be here. But if it's hard for them to be here, I agree that's a tricky question. How do you discern intent without interrogating an alien or reading their mind? Hahaha! :)
Kevin Knuth lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlYwktOj75A
Don't we even already have an example of this one? I remember triangle-shaped UFOs with either 3 or 5 lights being a thing for a while, then years later we find out about the B-2 bomber, which looks like that when it's landing.
Definitely there are secret programs that have cool tech built with clever engineering from humans from Earth. Some of this engineering may be even beyond conventionally accepted propulsion, as discussed in this American Alchemy video by Jesse Michels where he talks about the B-2 potentially using the Biefield-Brown effect, or ionic lift to reduce drag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTEWLSTyUic
JM wants to suggest that most UFOs could be 'prosaic' secret program technology. Certainly some are, and USAF CI has used fake UFO stories to protect those secrets in the past. But I think the idea that all or even most are human tech, or that humans have tech that can replicate the 'anomalous observables' (5000G maneuvers, no flight control surface, no propulsion, no exhaust, super speed, transmedium), is very unlikely.
Some reasons:
- the UFO disinfo narratives heavily bias towards this suggestion, and extend to various colors of what is most likely fantasy: a secret space program that's gone interstellar, a breakaway civilization that lives on Mars, Space Nazis, etc...The point is, if you're trying to control perception so much, you're unlikely to have any results in reality (as much as you may want them!)
- if we had this tech why wouldn't we have deployed to dominate economically or geopolitically?
- historical UFO sightings (1800s) predate our technological civilization.
- reliable reports of UFOs in the 30s - 50s that have the same anomalous flight, but predate modern aerospace, materials and electrical sciences.
- if any of what is identified as supposed human-made human-operated anomalous craft are actually genuine ET/NHI spaceships, these could be from civilizations 1000s to millions of years advanced of us. It's unreasonable to think we could catch up with such lofty achievements in just 100 years, clever as we may be! Haha :)
- the argument the government doesn't tell us because it's our own secret program is weaker than the government doesn't tell us because we have no secret programs that can compare to this. Ass covering and relative incompetence are more likely than anomalous uber tech that we sly-brag about but haven't really used.
Like, I get that most of the headlines about this stuff get clicks by talking about "zomg aliens", but everything I've read on this topic that ever seemed even slightly credible has tended to lean more towards these UAP's being totally terrestrial phenomena, just utilising one specific technological capability that we are not aware humans have developed (the ability to somehow manipulate the relativistic mass of an object within a given space).
IMO that's a much more likely scenario than reverse engineered aliens.
To someone in 1850, the concept of the atomic bomb, a technology that would give humans the power to end all life on earth, would have seemed unfathomably more advanced than their understanding of human capabilities.
If a government invented the Newcomen steam engine, but kept it secret... what would happen?
(a) There would have been far slower development, because as many ideas wouldn't have been tried, because it was secret.
(b) There would have been mysterious black box engines wherever it was used, or power sheds with big DO NOT ENTER signs.
Point being, you can't have a secret technology AND have it develop at the pace of an open technology AND use it.
Specifically for aerospace/engine applications, the government would use the craft for... what?
Can't fly it where it might be shot down. Can't fly it over populated areas. What the heck do they do with it that's useful?
Considering the years of first flights, not to mention initial design and construction work, that seems rather advanced for the times, certainly looking inconceivably alien to any outsider. And would continue to do so during their hey-days of operation.
They'd still be useful today, but there are other options availabe now, which can compensate to fill that gap, though there are people saying still not fully.
Now? If you're running a secret program, eventually it turns up.
See almost certain RQ-180 photos: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/09/07/americas-ne... https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/p...
The idea that there's a physics-breakthrough craft / technology out there, in active use, just isn't plausible.
... unless it's invisible?
But the UFO crowd (surprisingly?) doesn't seem too eager to accuse the government of having invisible craft.
That's just a temporary gap in coveruppage. They will just be tagged 'Do not snap!' cybermagically, and all the locked down gadgets will comply!1!!
Keep it as an ace up your sleeves?
1. If you keep it very strictly hidden, development will be slow and based on the zietgiest comment above, you are at risk of your enemy discovering the same technology by chance and completing it one unit of time before you. So you must work as fast as possible even if this risks some leakage.
2. If you have worked in secret and somehow perfected a technology, it will manifest itself in your negotiations as your negotiation style or forcefulness will likely change given your perception of comparative position or bargaining power. We have not observed a drastic change in global geopolitical order to support this claim so it is unlikely someone has an ace up their sleeve. Not saying it is impossible, sometimes people do show discipline just saying it is unlikely based on the other comments on this thread.
US politics don't seem more hawkish/fear mongering than normal. China is hesitantly ready to invade Taiwan. Russia can't win a war against a much smaller power.
I think these things would be different if some people knew I could change mass of objects like that -- Think of the ballistic implications!
Basically, if we are soon able to accelerate at 5000g, then interstellar flight is quite possible. In which case I would like to see the suns set on a world orbiting binary stars, please.
given the state of human avarice, I find it hard to believe that there could be technology this advanced being held by the US, or any of the other powers, that wouldn't be being (ab)used to further dominate the world stage
This is definitely in a bunch of those conspiracy theories. Hollow earth, lizard people, etc.
If OpenAI had kept quiet about ChatGPT, people would still be saying that kind of performance was decades away, just like they did with every other AI breakthrough in my life 6 months before they became news.
Hardware is harder, but again, there's a whole modern religious movement founded on the premise that the Douglas DC-8 (IIRC but it doesn't matter which) was too advanced for mere humans to have designed it and therefore aliens.
I've also heard that some of the Japanese leadership in WW2 initially refused to believe the destruction of Hiroshima could have been caused by the successful use of a nuclear bomb.
I'm still surprising people today with Google Translate working on live images.
Real advancements are often zeitgeist: plenty of people discovering things in parallel.
Military doesn't have the money to do every research hidden in parallel.
Alone for the fact that you would need to create a shadow society (to make sure you are not getting sold out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varginha_UFO_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanfretta_UFO_Incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronezh_UFO_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Cargo_Flight_1...
I am "agnostic" and ignorant in this topic but beyond complot theories is there something substantial or interesting to look at related to possible alien visits? I am not asking on a pro UFO subreddit tough.
personally i'm in the "alien life definitely exists but it probably hasn't been here" camp, but i've never seen a convincing debunk of the nimitz tic tac uap. again though, it's not evidence of alien visitors, it's just evidence that some people saw something weird.
The priors help support that. But when 100,000 people come forward saying they saw a craft/ were abducted/saw an alien, it's still considered unlikely. The only difference is your priors.
If the government confirmed NHI presence and activity on Earth tomorrow, your priors would likely be updated, and you'd re-evaluate your assessment of all that other witness testimony! :)
> reviewed all official government investigatory efforts since 1945
One could interpret these two statements as “We found UFOs between 1940 and 1945”.
What did Gorbachev see?
- Arthur C. Clarke
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propu...
"Today the Pentagon and its current UAP investigative program, AARO, issued a public report that is intentionally dishonest, inaccurate, and dangerously misleanding.
This report only makes it more abundantly clear to Congress that they must take more legistlative action to demand transparency."
- Lue Elizondo https://twitter.com/LueElizondo/status/1766231733236584545
"The United States government has gathered a great deal of information about UAPs over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people. That is wrong."
- Chuck Schumer, senate majority leader
"This new report is not going to satisfy anyone. To begin with, it is a case of the DoD and the IC investigating themselves without even the independence that Inspectors General enjoy. Obviously, there is a huge potential conflict of interest. Imagine a small office at the DoD trying to investigate the Iran-Contra affair. Congress did a great job with that inquiry, something that would have likely been a whitewash if the Executive had tried to investigate itself."
- Christopher K. Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
Everyone has cell phone cameras, so it seems unlikely we'd have 0 footage of anything.
This Netflix show's first episode was the spookiest real evidence I've seen -- A guy got a bunch of first hand accounts of faster than we can travel objects and then FOIA-d the government to get ATC tower data and corroborated it.[1]
I appreciate this argument, but the tech is not so good you can effectively take highly zoomed in shots of fast moving objects and have it be really visible. Try it some time. My Pixel 8 is impressive, but I still do not feel it produces better video than my (middle-aged) eyes can see at objects in the sky.
...for a hypothetical government agency that would hesitate to keep secrets or tell lies. There might even be such a thing, somewhere, we can't totally discount the possibility. But that's hard to imagine for a military-adjacent unit.
Secondly even if it was a UFO of extraterrestrial origin, I would imagine upon crashing or sensing it is in danger, it would send a beacon to whoever sent it, alerting our presence to whatever. And this could easily be perceived as an act of war.
Next best thing is, Earth technology is more advanced than we are led to believe. At least military-wise.
Malfunction, unanticipated conditions or pilot error, same reason human craft crash.
> Why do UFOs always seem to crash in reports?
They don't. I'm struggling to think of any UFO claim that ends in a crash except for Roswell. Almost always UFO sightings end with it disappearing, often by appearing to make sudden apparently impossible accelerations.
> It seems a bit unlikely that an advanced craft that can levitate without propulsion and travel across stars would just crash or be taken down by a missile or at the time of the 50s by artillery shells.
It's doubtful that Earth has been visited by UFOs but if we had been, this seems like an extremely likely outcome to me! Think about the horrific engineering challenge that would be faced by any alien spacefaring race on inventing an FTL drive: they need to create a ship that can travel vast distances, handle almost any kind of planetary conditions found on arrival, deal with completely unknown alien technology (ours) and presumably there's some pretty harsh stealth requirements in there too. Frankly that sounds like a recipe for constant disasters as they figure out how to balance all those requirements.
I think the intuition here is that because our current physics says FTL is impossible, if an alien race were able to do it that'd imply a godlike level of perfection. This seems like a very dubious assumption. If FTL is possible then we don't know how hard it is or how many breakthroughs are required to get there. It's conceivable that an alien race might develop an FTL drive whilst being only slightly more advanced than ourselves. It's certainly not obvious why this specific invention implies unlimited technological capability in every imaginable field, which isn't something usually posited for any other kind of discovery.
I agree with you though, no reason to assume that these aliens would have definitely solved all of the engineering challenges visiting a planet might pose, especially considering our own track record shows that we are relatively good at getting stuff to its destination in the solar system, but not so great at low altitude manoeuvres or landings when we get there.
(to be clear, I don’t think that we’ve been visited by aliens, just that it doesn’t seem to be impossible).
Free, to try and find a game,
Cards for sorrow, cards for painAARO is project blue book/condon committee all over again. Ostensible investigation, directed to reach a negative conclusion^0? Theatre to deal with public momentum and rising interest in a topic deemed too scary to broach, by persuading people there's nothing to see.
It's sad that the US turns so much obvious disinformation at its own citizens. The ultimate effect of this is not to protect national security, but to very effectively undermine it.
Aside from disinformation efforts like AARO (or we can say that AARO has been infested with, or strong-armed by the counterintelligence camp, even if it is not entirely a disinfo effort), another aspect is that actual sincere government oversight investigation is thwarted by multiple layers of obfuscation:
- investigators may not have the correct title 50 and title 10 accesses to request info
- info may be prevented from any public disclosure by the atomic secrets act
- investigators with authority to access records may be denied by those who hold the records
- records may be in black programs / SAPs the existence of which cannot be revealed to investigators
- the records may be put outside of any government oversight at all by moving them into beyond black programs: the corporate/contractor side of an actual black budget/bigoted SAP
- reactive security: if a SAP/program name is revealed outside the bigot list, it is immediately disbanded, given a new identity, and restarted, making it hard to pin down (similar to how shell companies work, I guess)
- contractors / privates that hold recovered materials don't want to divulge in order to protect potential future profits. I get that, and think it's fair, but it should function like patents: you get your 20 years, and if you can't work it within that time, it goes public. If we had that policy, most of the stuff would already be out.
The ultimate point is to keep information that should be studied and widely understood secret. The reason to do this, I think, is because the truth is too embarrassing for governments to reveal, not because it is too 'shocking' for the public to accept:
- non-humans are interacting, mostly covertly, with Earth and our governments cannot coordinate effective defence. In other words, our Earth governments are not the top dog, and cannot fulfill their mandate to protect us. Such failure is unlikely to be admitted, and would conceivably lead to a crisis of confidence in the authorities.
- this NHI tech is way advanced of our tech, and despite decades of study, we have no capability to reproduce, no answers, nothing to be proud of, nor show off. So, we're not the smartest, and our technology and understanding is very inferior in comparison. Again, this is pretty embarrassing for governments to admit.
I think it's incredibly sad that national security as used here, appears to be securing the national leadership from embarrassment, rather than the nation from threats.
The strategic weakness of this approach makes the sense of failure all the more acute: we could most effectively study and understand that tech in the open; and we could most effectively prepare a defense to hostile NHI by public awareness and education. Yet, it seems as if, in order to protect their organizations from the embarrassment of their failure, they are selling out everyone else and our future.
Not to mention the other major strategic failure: by keeping secret the activities of an infiltrating and invading force, you effectively run cover for their covert activities, in effect collaborating with them.
I find this attitude of our government, and defense contractors, charged as they are with our protection, to be the most disgusting aspect of the face-saving secrecy policy they continue to unwisely employ in their fear.
At best, it's primitive human psychology, not befitting of people who should make these big decisions that affect the world.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee#:~:text=In%20...
There's an old canard in the skeptical community that no one ever believes one conspiracy theory. You start out believing in one conspiracy for reasons, and it opens a floodgates to where every other conspiracy theory starts to seem perfectly plausible.
And people might have been pushed into earlier conspiracy theories on their journey to full blown nutjob for political reasons, but by the time you get to UFOs it's usually pure organic "well why NOT?"
> it's more an outgrowth of the rise of the conspiracy mindset
Certainly could be a relationship there.