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Comment by v3ss0n | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean tictac and go fast videos ? Many military personnel, ex f35 pilots and other researchers had validated Ryan Graves and David Fravor claims and the footage - they aren't part of US technology. They had debunked Mick west skewed analysis and they are more credible than him . He never had flied a fighter jet he is a game programmer totally different areas of expertise

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Being a retired pilot doesn't make you an expert on quirks in very high tech camera systems either or provide some natural credibility that blurry phenomenon in the sky are credible evidence of anything.

It wasn’t only video. The reason the planes were scrambled in the first place was because of hits from the ship’s radar. The planes also saw them on radar. The pilots also made visual contact, and testified under oath before Congress as to what they saw.

I’m sorry, but West is not convincing. He has a predetermined outcome in mind, namely, that there is nothing but man-made vehicles in the sky, and that there is zero chance for it to be anything else. Ever.

This conclusion does not match the evidence, and symbolizes a tragic incuriosity about the possibilities the universe holds.

> It wasn’t only video. The reason the planes were scrambled in the first place was because of hits from the ship’s radar. The planes also saw them on radar. The pilots also made visual contact, and testified under oath before Congress as to what they saw.

Unfortunately eyewitness testimony (even from trained pilots) is notoriously unreliable, and none of the other supposed evidence seems to be available for analysis.

Mick doesn't seem to shy away from looking at any available evidence. It's not his fault that nothing incontrovertible has shown up yet.

You're right that eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, and that the supporting evidence - multiple independent radar traces from multiple different radar systems (ship and aircraft systems are built by different manufacturers, have different sensitivies, etc.), plus the video, plus the eyewitness testimony, plus the fact that while the raw data is not available to you to analyse the people who have analysed have sworn under oath that it all corroborates each other - may not be enough to meet your arbitrary bar, but I'm prepared to accept witness testimony which says "we don't know what that was, and perhaps we should figure that out some more", rather than your claim that because you can't independently verify it, we shouldn't figure out what it was because a guy on youtube can explain one single aspect of that evidence in a way that doesn't actually align with the entire scenario.

You’re going to need a lot more than video analysis and a handful of unverifiable eyewitness testimony (humans are famously fallible) to claim discovery of extra-terrestrial life.

Is anyone serious actually claiming extraterrestrial life is the main concern? My understanding is that the leading concern is some terrestrial military capability we don’t fully understand, but that could pose a military threat to US assets. The goal is to rule that out and then you can worry about aliens afterwards.

Unexplained phenomena as secret military tech is not controversial and never has been. It even meshes well with government denials -- of course, if it's an F-117 test during the Cold War or whatever.

People have been using this to imply ETs, even in this comments section, and it seems disingenuous to me to pretend otherwise or act surprised.

Since forever, the rational explanations for Groom Lake phenomena and similar, after filtering the obvious "bunch of liars trying to sell books", has been "top secret military tech" or "meteorological phenomena". Where's the news in that?

The news is that the US military is acting very much like they aren’t responsible for recent sightings, and they’re as interested in finding the source as the UFO enthusiasts are. A non-US military with advanced, unexplainable military capabilities (on US soil!) is every bit as interesting a story as actual ETs are.

A non-US actor would be interesting indeed, and it's also more likely than ETs.

However, let me point out that this:

> The news is that the US military is acting very much like they aren’t responsible for recent sightings

... has multiple prosaic interpretations that are also relatively likely. To name a few:

- "The news" is not the US military. You have at least one level of indirection there.

- The US military saying something doesn't make it what they truly believe. Disinformation is a real military thing. Even disinformation aimed at a third party (e.g. rival nations who could believe the US military is asking its own population [things]).

- Inter-agency rivalry is a thing. Top secret projects may not be known to everyone within a military.

- Drones are now widespread, so the US military encouraging the usual UFO believers to be on the lookout may help them spot actual threats. It doesn't have to be anything physics-defying, just true unidentified flying objects.

- Finally, though less likely in my opinion, it could be the US military believes in UAPs of physics-defying or even ET origin, but it's just another case of Men Staring at Goats. I mean, in their history they have believed all sorts of kooky things with zero backing evidence.

The recent interest in UAP phenomena goes well past the news media and has resulted in multiple Congressional hearings and an entirely new DoD office. You’re absolutely right that disinformation and internal confusion are all good explanations for what’s going on now; with that said, if the historical explanation was “the US military covering up its own test aircraft by discrediting witnesses with UFO rumors” it’s a little hard to explain the sudden shift in strategy.

> it’s a little hard to explain the sudden shift in strategy

Not really. Adversaries have caught up, with stealthy aircraft and drones.

We’re in the “huh, what was that?!” spot the Russians and Chinese and Syrians and whatnot are quite used to being in.

Nobody saying little green man here. Do you actually think you don't have life outside of US?

Not any life that violates the known laws of physics.

Some people in this comments section are implying ETs. Let's be honest here.

Nobody in official doc is saying it's evidence of ET life.

In fact, while evidence of intelligent ET life visiting this planet would be shocking to us a species philosophically, theologically and scientifically, it would in any many ways be better than the hypothesis they are actually trying to prove/disprove:

That an adversary has an advanced aircraft that can outrun allied aircraft with ease, and can embed itself into restricted airspace easily, at will, and we don't know what the intentions are.

This isn't an experiment in finding ET. This is an experiment in defending national and international airspace from an unknown phenomenon that could be a threat.

People hand-waving away the explorations of this stuff has done more harm to national and international security than any other train of thought from the scientific community. We're meant to be interested in learning new things, not just finding things that fit our existing models - especially when that new thing could be a weapon from some unknown adversary.

Consider the madness of a Chinese weather balloon not too long ago - why is this somehow not as important?

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