
UFO: Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac breaks silence after 15 years - evo_9
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html
======
bloopernova
The Independent is simply rehashing an article in New York Magazine:
[http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-
q-a...](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-
navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html)

Would be better to link to the source, surely?

------
shartshooter
I stumbled upon this forum a while ago that seems to go into extreme depth
trying to understand the gimbal videos/purported UFO sightings

[https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-
nav...](https://www.metabunk.org/threads/nyt-gimbal-video-of-u-s-navy-jet-
encounter-with-unknown-object.9333/)

------
mellosouls
_Commander Fravor reflected on his sighting: "I have no idea what I saw. It
had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s. But I want to fly one"_

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/unidentified-
flying-object-navy.html)

------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-
flyin...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-flying-
saucer-chad-underwoord-dave-fravor-a9254671.html), which points to this.

------
bebop
Joe Rogan also had an interview with him recently:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ)

------
fortran77
This is just a summary of this article in NY Magazine:

[http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-
q-a...](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-
navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html)

------
jostmey
If the video is real then my guess is we are looking at a glider being towed
at supersonic speed.

The air-tow could be flying higher in the atmosphere beyond the reach of basic
ground defense systems. The glider would not give off a heat-plume but could
have enormous maneuverability

------
throwaway7951
[https://www.ovnis-armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm](https://www.ovnis-
armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm)

The above discusses exploiting the Bethe Formula to produce a radiant point at
some distant from a beam generator. IIUC the energy falloff suddenly increases
below a threshold energy level therefore the particle beam will deposit most
of its energy in a very short distance. Could the reported 'tic tacs' i.e.
bright white elongated balls be the result of this? Would explain the
supposedly physics defying nature of their aerial manoeuvres.

~~~
andbberger
See also: the writing of Tom Mahood [1], some of the best and most
authoritative I've ever seen on the subject. He also tears into Bob Lazar
which is a nice bonus.

[1] [https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-
strang...](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-
places/looking-at-the-bob-lazar-story-from-the-perspective-of-2018/)

------
suby
One of the most fascinating things about this UFO Navy story is that at least
one of the UFO's employed radar jamming after being spotted.[0] To me, this is
good evidence that we are not dealing with a currently unknown natural
phenomina.

[0] [https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-
ufo-u...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-pilot-recalls-encounter-ufo-
unlike/story?id=51856514)

~~~
thatsenough
Radar jamming is pretty well-known, isn’t it? For instance, you blast the
target with noise across radar’s bandwidth, drowning out the return signal.

There are various techniques and countermeasures, but it’s not alien
technology.

~~~
suby
Yes, it's well known. It's human technology, but it's also almost certainly
alien technology if we operate under the assumption that an alien species
built something capable of travelling across the stars.

Regardless, I'm not even necessarily saying that it is evidence of aliens.
Merely that it evidence against the idea that this is something which is
naturally occurring.

~~~
thatsenough
_Merely that it evidence against the idea that this is something which is
naturally occurring._

Ah, yes that’s true!

------
bloopernova
While I know that I'll never be able to sit down with the intelligence
analysts who looked at this video and sensor information, I really wish I
could convene some sort of group to do just that.

I'd love to see some calculations on how much energy this UFO would have
needed to perform the maneuvers it did. Whether there were any observable
atmospheric effects like a wake even though there was no exhaust seen. Did it
exhibit observable inertia, in other words did it move like bad movie special
effects, or did it move like something real?

In the comments in the NYMag original article, one person wonders if it was
the result of some advanced spoofing/decoy technology. I'm not sure what could
cause what the sensors observed, but the idea seems interesting and brings a
cause "down to Earth" so to speak.

~~~
mark-r
You would need to estimate mass before you could estimate energy. Any idea how
you'd do that?

~~~
bloopernova
No idea at all!

Maybe calculating for a range of different masses would then give a range of
possible energies involved.

Your point is pretty much why I'd like to see a bunch of experts dissect this
phenomena. I want to see scientific rigor applied to this, and to see what
conclusions can be drawn from the data available.

------
elkos
I don't claim that's the case but there's at least one missile:
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon))
hypothesised to produce plasma stealth
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth)).

My understanding is that a plasma stealth object should be high velocity and
be optically bright to visual and IR. I don't maintain an hypothesis that that
is the case but if any of my airmen would see such an object I would
definitely like to have a report on that.

------
blhack
Imagine trying to explain some fancy load balancing AWS deployment to somebody
who has never used a computer beyond a flip phone. It would be completely
foreign.

That’s me (and also nearly everybody here) with regards to aviation and war
making aviation machines. So while these articles and stories are definitely
interesting, they might as well be fairy tales. The way our minds are
reconstructing these things, and the way the mind of somebody involved in the
relevant fields here (whatever they even are!) are likely very different.

That all said: if somebody has a link to any more well informed discussions
about this, I sure would love a link!

~~~
djsumdog
Joe Rogan did a great Podcast with one of the pilots in this incident:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eco2s3-0zsQ)

Here's a short clip from it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIG-i2WCfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIG-i2WCfg)

He's really knowledgeable, has a ton of flight experience and carefully
details everything his and the other pilots see from their aircraft.

~~~
blhack
Yeah I loved that episode! I would love to see somebody who could lean against
him intellectually interview him though.

~~~
multiplegeorges
This is a criticism that could be made of every Rogan episode.

------
willis936
After reviewing the footage with someone familiar with IR imaging, they
pointed out that it looks like a FLIR sensor that was pointed at the sun for a
prolonged period. There is only one piece of evidence and it doesn’t seem
sufficient.

------
cybert00th
I have a friend who has worked in US military black ops projects since at
least the early '90s.

And back in the mid '90s he told me there were aircraft being built and tested
which had flight characteristics similar to those described here.

This report is about a sighting in 2004, so it's more than possible that
10-ish years on, advances had been made that make this sighting quite
believable.

(edited grammar)

------
8bitsrule
If these are alien craft, maybe they're not flying through space ... or even
warping space (Alcubierre-ish) but just leaping through it. Like stepping
through a curtain.

If our whole understanding of space is wrong, then they'd be asking themselves
"why are they making it so hard?".

------
Tistel
I have heard a couple of podcasts that had some very credible US pilots
talking about this. I think detecting life on other planets or aliens here
would be great (so long as they are not trying to kill me yada yada). But, the
most down to earth explanation is signal/sensor warfare testing.

Bare with me for a moment. The web is part of the sensor array of a spider.
There are species of insects that tap on spider's webs to send a false
positive signal to the spider on the web that a tasty prey has become trapped.
The spider goes over to where on the web the vibrations indicated the prey is
trapped and _bang_ the spider gets killed by the assassin bug.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-11628322](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11628322)

There is some evidence these signal warfare systems are being developed:
[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-
secret...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secretive-
nemesis-electronic-warfare-capability-will-change-naval-combat-forever)

I think these are newest iterations of the Wild Weasel style of counter
weapons:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel)

they could make drones go a fuel wasting wild goose chases etc. Or make the
other sides drone defend the eastern front while you fly in from the west etc.

more signal warfare stuff:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka)

~~~
b06tmm
When I was in the Navy (1977 ~ 1981), our A-6E was equipped with an ECM suite
that was designed to intercept and process pulse signals, automatically select
the optimum countermeasures technique, and then apply the technique. One of
these countermeasures was to send a return signal back to the radar, "telling
the radar that the aircraft had accelerated (beyond the speed of light) and
was now on the opposite horizon. The effect of this was reported to be a
snapping off of the radar mast or tipping over of the mobile trailer the radar
was in due to the torque of the radar dish moving to the new location.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
That's hilarious! _Somebody_ probably had a lot of fun coming up with and
testing that idea.

~~~
b06tmm
There was several different programs the ECM would use and this is the only
one I can remember at the moment.

When I went to the ECM school on the system, the first part of the class was
listening to pilots being chased by surface to air missiles. The class was in
a little building and it was Top Secret classified at the time. We could take
notes, but they were locked up in a safe and we couldn't take them back to the
squadron.

------
mfer
I'm reminded of other HN conversations on the patents around technology that
could theoretically make this happen.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21208051)

------
mattlondon
What I find kinda interesting about this is the HUD apparently being able to
"lock on" or track or whatever the object.

Are these HUD things around the object just visual bounding boxes around
something with high contrast, or are the HUDs doing sensor fusion with IR and
radar and other things? Not just for UFOs but I've seen similar things from
gun cam footage in Iraq etc and wondered how it works.

~~~
thdrdt
There is a Joe Rogan podcast with David Fravor, a pilot who also saw it. I
believe he explains it's all visual locking but there are a lot if different
camera types.

[https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ](https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ)

~~~
mathgenius
I'm interested, but this is all I have to say about it: get a bunch of
physicists in a room and I'm sure they could come up with 100 other possible
theories for this other than "aliens did it". I'm not saying these theories
will be particularly convincing, some of them may involve time-travel
(physicists are a whacky bunch) but these UFO people seem to be locked into a
way of thinking of these things as solid objects zooming around, "an f-18
couldn't do that" etc. etc. Meh.

------
dragonelite
Aliens, traverses interstellar space just to troll humans.

~~~
bufferoverflow
Or they just don't care about humans, but are sucking out some valuable
resource that we're not aware of. I keep thinking about that Bob Lazar
interview, he claimed these alien aircraft fly off of a stable isotope of
element 115. What if that element was rare, and they are mining it from, say,
the core of our planet.

------
BrandoElFollito
I am not following UFO information but I think I have only heard about them in
my country (France) only twice in the last 15 years.

I heard about cases in the US much often. US are also probably 3 times or size
(population) and 10 times (or whatever) military size - so maybe the numbers
are consistent across countries.

I wonder however how much culture plays a role in the sightings. All UFOs in
movies land in the US. You have Area51 and the extraterrestrial highway. You
have Roswell and tranformers inside the Hoover Dam.

If I see a weird thing in the sky, UFO will be the 7th possibility on my list.
Maybe in the US UFOs landing is business as usual for pepole ?

~~~
fritzthecat
I have seen strange things happening while camping out under a Cessna 172
together with fellow european pilots in Sedona, Arizona in 1995. Multiple
lights in the Sky, zigzagging across the sky in very similar fashion to what
those F18 pilots report. I know you were trying to be cynical, but maybe there
is something strange going on there.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
No, I am not trying to be cynical.

My point is that if the news/reporting on UFOs in the US is much more
prevalent than in, say, France, it is no surprise that people jump to that
conclusion quicker than elsewhere. The movies are one another reason for that.

This is just an idea, I do not know how statistically sound this is. To give a
counterexample, everytime I switch on the radio on a station which is supposed
to have people talking (France Culture for instance) and I hear music, I
assume they are on strike. I do not think than an American would jump on that
conclusion.

------
sys_64738
Usually these are waved off as being weather balloons being buffeted by the
wind.

------
JRKrause
Is there any part of this footage that can't be explained by a bit of matter
stuck on the FLIR lens? Even it being apparently "cold" seems well explained
by the dust/bug whatever casting a shadow onto the IR sensor array.

~~~
djsumdog
The pilots claim they physically saw it too. And the pilot who made the video
was the 2nd group up from the first who claimed they saw it from their
cockpits.

And the FLIR was tracking the target moving. If it was a piece of dust stuck
on, it would have looked as if it were moving the same speed of the aircraft,
wouldn't it?

------
GhettoMaestro
Ah there it is, the ol' modified limited hangout[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout)

------
mylons
I want to believe.

------
ubertoop
I wonder... Could you project an image into the atmosphere via satellite.

Maybe this was just an image.

It accelerated with apparently 0 mass. It left no exhaust plumes. It was
invisible to radar EVEN as they got close.

Fit's all the criteria for something that isn't really even there.

~~~
jameslk
Wasn't it captured on radar? That should eliminate this possibility

~~~
egfx
Yes, you can detect projections via radar. This projections aspect was also my
thought on this for a while and I did some research on it. I’ll append the
link to the paper later. Another thing that comes to mind is there was a post
here recently that talked about concentrated laser beams technology which
looks interesting to consider.

Probably the easiest way to explain the erratic behavior.

~~~
egfx
Here is the source:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=AZoSALzL3V4C](https://books.google.com/books?id=AZoSALzL3V4C)

------
oh_sigh
There sure are a lot of "I want to believe"-ers in this thread, who are
presumably mostly normal, rational individuals for most of their lives until
something like UFOs tickles them the right way.

I bet a lot of these same people have their minds boggled that some people are
anti-vaxxers, or think global warming isn't real.

------
rolltiide
What about the patent based on this observation filed and granted to the
Secretary of the Navy?

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en)

~~~
lammalamma25
I think Occam's Razor says a good lawyer convinced the patent office to make a
bad decision. Could be wrong, but this is easily explained by incompetence.

~~~
rolltiide
What's the issue with this patent? It is a parallel construction of what was
observed without the prior observation being specific enough for prior art.

And if there was to be coercion or convincing, the US Navy Secretary would be
good enough you'd think?

------
jijji
last week a story came out quoting an air force general saying that
"technology exists that could transport a human anywhere on earth within an
hour" [0]...

[0] [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31445/recently-
retired...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31445/recently-retired-usaf-
general-makes-eyebrow-raising-claims-about-advanced-space-technology)

~~~
joshuaheard
I think he was referring to the new NASA supersonic plane, and meant "hours",
not "hour".

[https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-
superso...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-supersonic-
research-aircraft-cleared-for-final-assembly)

~~~
jijji
maybe... but the video of him speaking [0] (at the 12:00 minute mark) is
unambiguous with his words -- "less than an hour" was his actual quote, and
there is no mention about any specific plane or technology.

[0] [https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw](https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw)

------
CyanLite2
So let me get this straight: We believe an alien civilization has traveled
across the galaxy with faster-than-light technology, and has deployed aircraft
that has broken our known laws of physics. But is susceptible to 1970s-era
infrared radar technology? Okay. Got it.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Maybe they don't care if we see them?

------
spookyuser
Hypothesis: Any aliens advanced enough to build an objecting moving as
impossibly as the pilot says would also be advanced enough to not be detected
doing so.

~~~
faissaloo
Intelligence in one area doesn't mean intelligence in another, it may also be
that they don't care about being spotted.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Yep. We send drone deep into the ocean. To an Orca this is magical technology
that isn't trying to cloak it's self.

------
sschueller
Aliens would be cool but I highly doubt it. In my opinion from all I heard and
read it really sounds like an unknown weather phenomenon.

~~~
justinclift
> Aliens would be cool ...

Wouldn't that depend on capabilities and intentions?

~~~
meddlepal
They'd still be cool even if they were here to strip mine our planet, anally
probe us, and then enslave our species... it would just be a kind of shitty
situation all in all though.

~~~
justinclift
We definitely have different definitions of "cool". ;)

------
willis936
Anytime I try to pursue the UFO question I feel like I’m being intentionally
gaslighted by government agencies. The public-ish analysis of UFOs, AATIP is
an incredible farce. They focused on star trek warp drives and after the
funding dried up they started hanging out with Blink 182 to smoke weed and pat
each other on the back for being crazy alien believers. These aren’t sound
scientific minds that are capable of analyzing the evidence available. Those
people exist and I’m certain their analyses do as well, but no one gets to see
them.

I struggle to even come up with narratives as to why this specific case would
be made public. Perhaps the intelligence agencies knew it wouldn’t be possible
to cover up so the best they can do is release the evidence that was expected
to make its way to the public and say nothing about it officially. If I put on
a tinfoil hat I could say that the AATIP’s purpose was to instill doubt that
aliens exist, but that would imply that they do exist. It seems that the
intelligence agencies are behaving like they want to give as little
information as possible about it. I can’t imagine the AATIP was made top-down.
It appears to just be a congressman’s publicity stunt.

~~~
Jd
Sometimes it has an easy explanation given typical information asymmetries and
incentive structures. For example, you don't give away any of your external
intel during a war (i.e. cold war) in the case that you are identifying
something by your enemy that might be trying to hide from you. Letting them
know you can detect them would be stupid. Also, for similar reasons, record
and catalogue every strange phenomenon in case it could be something.

The natural correlate from a citizen perspective is that the government is
hiding something (i.e. UFOs). Of course it is, that's the point. But then the
point becomes less of a point the less justification there is for wartime
behavior, which then leads to increased speculation that the government is
hiding something which at some points boils over into widespread public
sentiment.

Then at that point there is both incentive to do selective release and for the
media to cover it since they know readers want to read about UFOs, etc.

I think that's the Ockham's razor here.

~~~
baybal2
I don't think one can cover just anything in an open society. Even the truly
secret military gear like the original H-bomb, F-117, A-12, anti-powerline
bombs, and navy stealth helicopter were impossible to hide completely. At
least the fact of their existence was out long before the public saw them.

Even in paranoid USSR, people knew of computer guided recon drones, spy sats,
Shkvals, Dvinas, R73 and Strelas — all of which were more secret than the
bomb, and were equally bordering on "sci-fi" and unbelievable to the layman at
the time.

The leak of Shkval's existence was of particular embarrassment to the Union's
military and counterintelligence. Supposedly, there were less than 50 people
in the whole Union who were privy to info on them in full, but even before it
entered service it became an "urban myth" among civilians in military cities
and such.

~~~
narag
_I don 't think one can cover just anything in an open society._

If you really want to apply common sense to the hypothesis that aliens are
real and here, consider the possibility that aliens themselves have become
much more careful since the fifties, just because they know we have more tech
to detect and intercept them and governments are no longer able to hide
anything.

Or maybe they have a spy net on the ground already.

------
sixQuarks
something smells fishy. He never looked at the object with his own eyes.
C'mon. How can you not verify with your own eyes whether this thing was real
or not? He says he was trying to capture the best video for later analysis. He
couldn't have just glanced at the object for a second to make visual
confirmation?

~~~
ComputerGuru
He explained that.

> _No. I was more concentrated on looking at the FLIR. It was inside of 20
> miles. You’re not going to see it with your own eyes until probably 10
> miles, and then you’re not going to be able to visually track it until
> you’re probably inside of five miles, which is where Dave Fravor said he saw
> it._

These are trained military pilots. Our eyes can’t see an object like that
twenty miles out. If the system has a lock and it tells you it’s that far
away, you don’t waste time and lose focus by trying to see for yourself
something you already know you won’t be able to make out with the naked eye.

Additionally, it’s not as if no one saw it with their naked eye. Fravor’s word
is as as good as his, and he says saw it. The value here is in the fact that
this pilot is telling you _he was watching the machines confirm what his
colleague had seen_. I take man + machine as a harder proof than two men, and
not much less than 2 men + machine.

Edit: also seen by the squadron commanding officer:

> _And it was also seen, via eyeballs, by both my commanding officer, Dave
> Fravor, and the Marine Corps Hornet squadron commanding officer who was out
> there as well._

So, yeah. Two men + machine, rather than three men + machine.

What I find more interesting is that NORAD didn’t debrief him, which means
they either knew who was behind it or were already tracking it separately and
knew what they needed to know (both very possible). Or perhaps since
everything he saw and all his maneuvers were better documented in the real-
time system logs dump and FLIR capture than he would be able to reliably
recall, there was literally nothing he could add.

~~~
seiferteric
This is why I believe what they saw was some sort of test of a FLIR defeating
tech. Like an IR laser projection from a sub launched drone. It explains why
it could move so fast and have no propulsion, it was just a laser dot moving
around the sky and he was the cat chasing it around.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I’m not sure how you can project anything into space that would be seen _with
continuity_ by both man and machine to look and act the same (keep in mind IR
and visible light have different properties). If you’ve ever played with a
laser pointer you’ll know what I mean: it drives the cat crazy when it
jumps/skips/disappears because now it’s being projected on a different plane
of surface (in the air: a different cloud or haze). It’s the continuity of
movement (rather than many other “UFO” sightings reporting an object “suddenly
appearing somewhere else in the sky”) that makes this all the more intriguing.
An explanation Must take all this into account, and whatever it is, alien or
terrestrial, it’s really cool tech, much more exciting than what you describe.

~~~
whatshisface
Take a look at the Bragg curve. This explains it:
[https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-
strang...](https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-
places/bluefire-main/bluefire/particle-beams-and-saucer-dreams/)

~~~
mortenjorck
I wasn’t sure what to expect from that link, but it’s actually a really cool
bit of educated speculation.

 _> A device based upon this principle would make a really exquisite radar
spoofing tool. The ionized plasma would give a good radar return, giving
targeting radars something else to lock on to, instead of incoming aircraft.
The ability to project an object of apparent solidity to enemy radar,
instantly manipulatable, would be a most valuable little toy to have in your
bag of tricks._

------
baybal2
I think if we ever see an alien, he will either fly to us in a completely
enormous nuclear rocket which we will spot years before his arrival and
deceleration. This is in the case if there is really no other way to traverse
stars besides conventional rocketry.

But in case if there is a way to trick any of the fundamental physics we know
after all, then very likely the guy will come right at our porch, and they've
probably done so many times without us even noticing, and will only contact
us, if ever, on their own terms.

Given the premise is right, and somebody can really do something on the level
of fundamental physical force manipulation for space travel, then there would
be no reason for them to not dispense with conventional space travel
altogether, or at least to a reasonable extent where this technology is more
practical than giant nuclear rockets.

And the same goes for things like stealth technology, or inertia control. If
somebody can arbitrary manipulate gravity, entropy, or fundamental forces to
travel stars, or make traversable wormholes, then inertia cancelation,
invisibility by directly manipulating light, undetectable radio comms, and
power sources unlimited or almost so by heatsink capacity should be child's
play for them too.

~~~
wonderwonder
This assumes they are not coming from some giant station on the other side of
our sun, parked there for the last several hundred years. They could also be
anywhere in our solar system, that our technology is not advanced enough to
detect. We cant really keep track of all the space rocks floating near us and
they aren't trying not to be seen.

~~~
lolc
That would be really weird for them to be hiding from us behind the sun.
What's in it for them? They arrive in Sol to set up a base but the carbon-
based predators on the wet planet must not be disturbed. Why should they care
about us in that specific way? That tale sounds a lot like typical human
hubris to me.

~~~
wonderwonder
Why do we have rules about disturbing the tribes in the amazon or the
Sentinelese. Maybe there are established rules about contacting primitive
cultures? Maybe they are just watching for the Fermi Paradox to take care of
us.

~~~
ojosilva
We tend to try to predict alien behavior basing it more or less on our own,
10000 year-long history. If intelligent life that travels the billion-old
stars actually exists, I doubt we would be able to put their intentions and
modus operandi into words with our constrained ideas and limited, lonely
planet vocabulary.

~~~
krapp
Of course, for most of that history, the default result of a more
technologically advanced culture meeting a more primitive one was the former
immediately enslaving or committing genocide against the latter.

And let's be honest, if the Sentinelese were sitting on anything worth killing
for, they would be long dead or "civilized" onto a reservation by now.

~~~
lolc
Here we're talking about meeting a culture not made of human subjects. We know
nothing. When they're able to cross interstellar space we're unlikely to have
anything they'd want. They'd be so advanced technically we might not even
detect them given our limited understanding of physics.

The thing I do see an alien species could want from us is our capability to
understand a blueprint and to reassemble them physically from transmitted
information. Because that is how they might travel between galaxies. Their
assembly, I hasten to add, would be a rather stupid thing to do on our part.
If we want to live. But we might do it anyway because we're curious.

How are the scenarios of brute predators, noble protectors, or imperial fleets
any more worthwhile to consider than those of the incessant replicators? My
answer: Because our culture likes that kind of tale. Because we project our
predatory and social features onto an unknown.

So whenever somebody explains phenomena like blips on a radar with an alien
species that happens to be eerily similar to us I think of how people made god
in their image and either rail against the blatant human-centrism or just
disengage.

------
CommieBobDole
As much as I want to believe, I feel like this almost has to be some sort of
disinformation campaign, either to cover up some sort of testing that the US
military is doing and thinks someone else might have seen, or to make US
adversaries think that we've made some sort of fundamental breakthrough and
we're ineptly trying to cover it up by calling it a UFO. Probably the latter.

Would be interesting to read the article about this in 50 years or so once the
political landscape has changed and it's safe to declassify, but I doubt I'll
be around then.

~~~
awb
One of the pilots in this incident was on Rogan saying how they used to fly
silently without lights above remote campsites, then once they saw a campfire
blast the lights and go straight up. They'd laugh as the UFO reports flowed
in.

Similarly, the stealth fighter was in operation for 20 years before the public
knew about it.

It's not unrealistic to consider top secret tech as a possible explanation.

One counter point is usually: If we had tech this amazing, we'd be putting it
to use commercially. However this tech might be autonomous and might need to
be considering the G forces supposedly at play.

~~~
CalChris
No, the stealth fighter was not in operation for 20 years before the public
knew about it. The F-117 was delivered in 1982 and operational in 1983. It was
'declassified' in 1988 and displayed in 1990. And it wasn't even a fighter. It
was for ground attack.

[https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/f-117.htm](https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/f-117.htm)

~~~
djsumdog
I thought maybe the poster was talking about the SR-71, but it too didn't stay
classified for very long.

~~~
bathtub365
It also wasn’t stealth, or an attack aircraft.

~~~
catalogia
> _The second operational aircraft[38] designed around a stealth aircraft
> shape and materials, after the Lockheed A-12,[38] the SR-71 had several
> features designed to reduce its radar signature. The SR-71 had a radar
> cross-section (RCS) around 110 sq ft (10 m2).[39] Drawing on early studies
> in radar stealth technology, which indicated that a shape with flattened,
> tapering sides would reflect most energy away from a radar beam 's place of
> origin, engineers added chines and canted the vertical control surfaces
> inward. Special radar-absorbing materials were incorporated into sawtooth-
> shaped sections of the aircraft's skin. Cesium-based fuel additives were
> used to somewhat reduce exhaust plumes visibility to radar, although exhaust
> streams remained quite apparent. Kelly Johnson later conceded that Soviet
> radar technology advanced faster than the stealth technology employed
> against it.[40]_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird)

To be clear, a 10m^2 radar cross section is enormous compared to the F-117
(0.001 m^2) The F-117 was in a completely different league than the SR-71, but
the SR-71 was in fact designed to be stealthy.

