
Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians Demand Answers - jbegley
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwqp5/tom-delonges-ufo-research-center-is-making-politicians-demand-answers
======
erik_landerholm
I feel like a lot of commenters on here must first be hearing of this or have
not even looked into the tic-tac case even a small amount.

You have a top gun pilot and his WSO on record saying they saw it visually
along with a huge underwater craft. It moved in ways that nothing using
conventional propulsion can. Hovering for example is extremely difficult, made
all the harder with no wings, blades or visible exhaust.

Long form interview: Part1:
[https://youtu.be/3L-XG1F_S7I](https://youtu.be/3L-XG1F_S7I) Part2:
[https://youtu.be/f7XJD_54aNk](https://youtu.be/f7XJD_54aNk)

There are about 20+ interviews with him on cnn, Fox News, Boston herald, ny
times, etc and he will be on joe Rogan soon.

I get the objections to the FLIR video or radar pings, but if you think it’s a
new jet or misdirection you have to say he and his WSO and many others are
liars or confused by our own tech. Our own tech means we have something well
beyond standard jet engines and fighter jet tech.

There are plenty more videos with even more details like the tic tacs (there
were many of them on radar) moving 20000+ mph, dropping in from 80000ft to
close to the deck. The details of the carrier fleet redirecting the jets to
the position of the tic-tac is very interesting as it wasn’t at their training
position...until it showed up their later. The FLIR video is from another
pilot who went after it, after captain fravor landed.

~~~
tclancy
>he will be on joe Rogan soon.

Well, shut my mouth.

~~~
erik_landerholm
I meant, it will be a 3 hr interview, instead of 45 minutes or 2 minute sounds
bytes, so it will probably cover all the parts of the story, as there are more
than I wrote about. I wasn’t saying that Rogan is some kind of badge of
legitimacy.

------
simonblack
I reckon it's misdirection. "We'll say it's a UFO, but really it's a
hypersonic plane in development."

Just like the SR71 had a cover story during its development phase. "The
wreckage was recovered in two days, and persons at the scene were identified
and requested to sign secrecy agreements. A cover story for the press
described the accident as occurring to a F-105, and it is still listed in this
way on official records." \- [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-
study-of-intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intelligence/kent-csi/vol15no1/html/v15i1a01p_0001.htm)

~~~
lamontcg
Its probably a system for "jamming" FLIR sensors an allowing the attacker to
project targets onto the system. The pilots were guinea pigs. Which is made
more plausible by the fact that the USS Princeton asked the Nimitz pilots
first if they were armed, and only after they informed the Princeton that they
were not that they were given the orders to investigate. There probably was a
real object -- since one was sighted but it was a drone with the advanced
jamming equipment (that they didn't want to accidentally get shot down). It
did not move at supersonic speed, but it projected an image onto the FLIR
sensor which did. The submerged object was probably a submarine that the
equipment was launched from.

~~~
Pyxl101
If that's the case, why not read the pilots into the test, even at a summary
level?

If the Navy had told the pilots, "You just experienced an advanced technology
test. Nothing to worry about" then they would have undoubtedly kept their
mouths shut and not talked to the media.

~~~
therein
I agree that would have prevented a lot of misunderstandings but Navy operates
this way all the time. They prefer a somewhat "blinded" subject.

~~~
ALittleLight
The subject would still be blinded though. You could tell them after the fact.
Then you get the real experience of a pilot encountering your system plus you
get the added benefit that they won't tell people about the "UFO" they saw.

~~~
hinkley
But what about the next experiment?

How are you going to keep the other pilots from figuring out they're test
subjects?

Especially if any word about the experiment got out. Swearing another pilot to
secrecy versus letting them think you're nuts for the rest of your lives, I
think they're gonna pick door #1.

~~~
maxharris
Isn't that a bit paranoid?

------
one2know
The videos are of real aircraft recorded through a FLIR pod. When zoomed out
far enough the aircraft simply look like fuzzy ovals as demonstrated in this
video [https://youtu.be/jWjpnCKcj8M?t=136](https://youtu.be/jWjpnCKcj8M?t=136)

For some reason people in the military and government are trolling the public,
perhaps as part of a campaign to discredit news agencies.

~~~
devtul
I thought we were over the fact that news agencies don't need any help to
discredit themselves.

~~~
ddingus
We are far from that point. On some things, they do fine. Others have
conflicts of interest in play. We get messaged to.

------
andrewstuart
Ever since the 1970's mysterious UFO and bigfoot style videos have turned up.

Always, ALWAYS, _ALWAYS_ distant, blurry, out of focus and "from an
authoritative source". This is precisely the same as the 1970s.

Leonard Nimoy knew what was going on "In Search Of UFOs":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVFWJDPcPnk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVFWJDPcPnk)

~~~
tclancy
I took a sci-fi movie course in the 90s and the professor opened it by
mentioning people used to see great clipper ships in the sky.

The other telling moment was when he asked why UFOs only appear in places “so
small people have to take turns being the village idiot” and someone leapt up
to day, “You can’t prove it’s not true!”

~~~
hackerbabz
That’s fascinating. I wonder if people thought the royal navy was hiding
flying ship technology. Or, God forbid, the French had developed it first!

------
kart23
I think theres two possibilities that are believable for me. I dont think its
'aliens' or other extraterrestrials.

Either it is completely fake, made up by the navy to hide something else that
they wanted to cover up, and could also serve as a confusion tactic for other
countries aerospace programs, some sort of fake internal thing to tease out a
mole or another situation like that.

The other possibility is that it really is some sort of new propulsion device
being tested by a top-secret government agency or some other private party,
and somehow they made the fatal mistake of being sighted by the jet. I simply
dont believe the us military would release this video if it was actually a new
secret technology they were trying to hide.

~~~
Rebelgecko
What about a third option, it's a visual artifact on the FLIR recording?

~~~
vokep
This. It fits a lot of aspects of past "UFO" sightings that were actually just
a reflection. The major issue in this case is multiple witnesses, and also
supposedly multiple instruments detecting it (I've seen this claimed in
comments but not the evidence itself)

If the thing behaves as though it has no inertia and does all these amazing
movements, what else does? A reflection or otherwise illusory object can do
all that easily, in fact thats the default behavior.

~~~
erik_landerholm
How do you explain the pilots who said they saw it visually for 5 minutes?

~~~
cronix
And on other radar systems within the strike carrier group. The Nimitz event
was tracked on multiple systems of varying technologies, for multiple days,
not just the planes. FLIR was just one piece of the puzzle, of which video was
released.

~~~
repolfx
Because that carrier group was testing technology that combines sensor data
from all different vehicles by transmitting it between them to create a
unified view. Can't recall if that was a known fact or theory, but it's an
entirely plausible thing for the military to develop.

------
IAmGraydon
What I do consistently see uniting all of these articles is Tom Delonge and
TTSA, which has a big “Invest” button up at the top of their website.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to marketing in 2019. Looks like Tom Delonge is
operating some kind of quirky investment scam. Next up, a Blink 182 reunion
tour.

~~~
kfrzcode
Nah, it's an Angels & Airwaves tour. His band, known as AvA has been around
for more than a decade. He's been working this whole media conglomerate for
many many years, and this is just another part of it, IMO.

If you're interested in actually funding research in extraterrestrial life,
donate to SETI - [https://www.seti.org/donate](https://www.seti.org/donate)

------
dmix
I'm still not buying how they could be on a big deployment off the east coast
of the US and didn't have any other sensors pick it up besides two pilots next
to each other with FLIR camera autotracking it momentarily.

Not to mention the constant satellite and aerial radar coverage and other
networked stuff they have for these big deployments.

This isn't in the middle of the Indian ocean like the missing Malaysian plane.

At the end of the day we're left with another single location, single
perspective anecdote which there were already countless before.

~~~
spydum
West coast right? Weren’t there other similar stories from ATC and commercial
pilots? [https://www.foxnews.com/science/ufo-evidence-recordings-
reve...](https://www.foxnews.com/science/ufo-evidence-recordings-reveal-air-
traffic-controls-confusion-at-strange-craft-over-oregon)

~~~
dmix
There was two videos released by NYT, one was over the east coast. I haven't
dug into the pacific north west incident, like I did the other one. Didn't
really hold my interest.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/navy-pilots-ufo-reports-
confirm...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/navy-pilots-ufo-reports-confirmed-
new-york-times-military-unidentified-flying-object/)

> Lieutenant Graves still cannot explain what he saw. In the summer of 2014,
> he and Lt. Danny Accoin, another Super Hornet pilot, were part of a
> squadron, the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Va.,
> that was training for a deployment to the Persian Gulf.

> The pilots began noticing the objects after their 1980s-era radar was
> upgraded to a more advanced system. As one fighter jet after another got the
> new radar, pilots began picking up the objects, but ignoring what they
> thought were false radar tracks.

Note: new radar can suggest more than just better capabilities but possibly
less experience and more complexity (harder bugs).

My question: where are the really smart people at NASA or w/e with deep
understanding of spaceflight and theoretical physics? So I far I only see
excited posts from military bloggers and a some guys who sell books about
aliens.

------
rblion
I was a skeptic of a lot of things until I saw some flying orbs around Mount
Shasta, California last October. I saw similar moving orbs again in upstate NY
this year on two occasions. I don't know what I saw but they were not weather
balloons, satellites, planes, planets, stars, or meteors.

Anyone here ever see something similar?

~~~
driverdan
> I don't know what I saw but they were not weather balloons, satellites,
> planes, planets, stars, or meteors.

If you don't know what they were then you can't rule out these other things.

~~~
rblion
I used an astronomy app on my phone to verify the satellites, planets, stars,
meteors part.

They moved around in a non-linear fashion at will, they were intelligently
operated. One of them disappeared in a flash...

~~~
michaelmrose
How do you know they were intelligently operated?

~~~
rblion
What organic phenomenon moves around like that? is what we asked ourselves.

One of the people with me was from Columbia University and he is as 'rational'
as they come, even he was baffled...

~~~
Pyxl101
Next time you see it, break out your phone or camera and capture a video. Then
we can discuss the actual video!

------
brennankreiman
There’s this article that talks about how they could be radar reflecting
balloons specifically designed to be seen by the navy to test their response
and radar capabilities, like we have in the past against other countries.

[https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-
th...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-the-ufos-
navy-pilots-are-encountering-be-airborne-radar-reflectors)

------
ComplexSystems
As a mundane note, what is the reason that the audio quality in this video is
so poor? It sounds like they're using walkie talkies from the 1970s. How can
the US military, which spends more money than anyone else, have _Navy pilots_
using heavily distorted audio communication systems that aren't even as good
as a standard cell phone?

~~~
sneak
Practical voice comms do not require very high fidelity or resolution, so
there is little reason to spend resources increasing the quality beyond the
threshold of intelligibility. It works and works well. What point would an
upgrade serve? They aren’t singing through it.

~~~
acchow
So that you can actually hear what the other person is saying

------
sy229
This video shows the uncensored HUD from an FA-14, along with showing it's
capabilities in automatically tracking fast moving objects.

THIS is the reason why the video should not have been released.

------
geomark
I watched Joe Rogan interview Bob Lazar [1] which seemed mind blowing if
everything he said was true. But then I went and researched it and seems more
likely he came up with some fantastic stories to keep himself out of prison
after he got caught taking a bunch of friends up to the mountains to watch
some classified experiements of a particle beam device. It's not my field of
study, but some opinions I read were that the government is developing, not
offensive weapons, but devices to confuse enemy sesors (radar, FLIR and
visible light sensors, including human eyes). They claimed that a beam of
charged particles could be focused such that it would create a glowing ball of
plasma(?) at a distance and sensors would interpret is a craft of some sort.
Since it is a particle beam it can be moved around in ways no solid object
could.

So these things are tests of this particle beam confuser, not alien
spacecraft. I dunno. With my limited understanding is seems more likely.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWz4SXfyCQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEWz4SXfyCQ)

~~~
akhilcacharya
The idea that it’s a guinea pig test of a submarine directed anti-FLIR system
is the only plausible explanation to me.

But again Lazar has been a crank for decades (I think the first reference to
an alien at Area 51 named Elvis is from him, later popularized in Perfect
Dark), so even that theory is a bit out there.

~~~
ozzmotik
oh i was always wondering where Elvis' name came from in that game. thanks for
sharing a potential bit of provenance

------
narrator
My apologies in advance to any Stone Age Tribesmen in the audience or those
otherwise triggered by this analogy:

Meanwhile on Totally Isolated Uncontacted Stone Age tribe of 1940s Hacker
News:

Chief's Spear Chucking brigade confirms through song and ritual dance
reenacment that they actually saw a thing flying through the air that looked
like a very large bird, but appeared to be made of some form of advanced stone
technology and had unusual round things on it that the great elders who first
came up with breaking rocks to make them into sharp things imagine could be
used, in the far distant future, to move large loads around with relative ease
compared to current methods.

Posters on Stone Age Tribe Hacker News say that this is actually a trick by
monkey spirit, a large bird, or possibly some sort of advanced flying machine
that great elder came up with that's made from bird feathers and shiny rocks
that he's not telling us about, the idea that other people besides our little
tribe could be inhabiting the earth being completely ludicrous.

------
almost_usual
What you will hear are actual U.S. fighter pilots, who are highly trained
observers and weapons systems operators (WSO), in an excited state over the
experience.

"What the [expletive] is that thing?" "Oh my gosh, dude"

------
NateEag
Time for me to burn some karma.

What evidence do we have that these phenomena are strictly natural?

There are some ingenious explanations in this thread of how you could create
something like this effect with known technology.

If we don't a priori eliminate it on the grounds it is impossible (as a
Christian, I do not, but many here do), I imagine that supernatural beings
trolling humans (especially modern scientific reductionists) could look a lot
like this and is also a plausible explanation.

If you have a grudge against the concept of the supernatural, maybe think of
it as "graduate students got drunk and starting messing with the Earth-
universe simulation".

~~~
thomascgalvin
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

The principles of science do not allow us to rule out the possibility that
these events are the result of alien life or supernatural phenomena. But it
does give us plenty of evidence that there are more mundane, more plausible
explanations.

And when you're faced with a potentially world-changing revelation, like
confirmed contact with extraterrestrial life, it is basic due diligence to
speculate on and rule out those mundane explanations first.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth. But you have to eliminate first. That is how you arrive at
new knowledge, and that is how paradigms are shifted.

Could it be supernatural beings trolling humanity? Sure. But such an
extraordinary claim requires correspondingly extraordinary evidence. That it
was a secret, terrestrial weapons system designed to confound FLIR also
requires evidence, but it's a much more likely explanation, and can generally
be accepted as probable with correspondingly less evidence.

~~~
NateEag
I understand all that.

If the entities actually behaved as described (which is a big if, no doubt -
people make mistakes and a military test might be trying hard to deceive them)
- no visible exhaust, massive instaneous acceleration/deceleration, etc...

Sure, it could absolutely be a natural phenomenon.

But it's not crazy to say the claimed hoofbeats sound kinda stripey.

~~~
neuroticfish
>people make mistakes and a military test might be trying hard to deceive them

A couple people have mentioned this in this thread and my problem with it is
that a military test designed to deceive that same military's personnel seems
dangerous in a way that could cause people to lose their lives. Unless you
mean that a different military is testing?

------
methodover
Reposting my comment from yet another HN post on these pretty mundane videos.

Gofast is just a weather balloon.

[https://youtu.be/PLyEO0jNt6M](https://youtu.be/PLyEO0jNt6M)

Gimbal is a jet. The perceived rotation is an artifact of the camera rotating
on a gimbal.

[https://youtu.be/4X1PRDbtiF0](https://youtu.be/4X1PRDbtiF0)

Nimitz is also a jet. It’s far away, and blurry.

[https://youtu.be/s1oTg0kxzDs](https://youtu.be/s1oTg0kxzDs)

It would be really cool if these were alien spaceships. They’re likely not.

------
anon234345566
Lots of people like to think about alien vessels, UFOs, in a positive light.
But very few though about how would world powers would actually react to
dangerous aliens, like something that could just drill into your advanced air
defenses without leaving any trace all available sensors.

One possible outcome could be just to agree to keep their presence under
plausible deniability, just till something lands somewhere infront thousands
of witnesses (considering our simulated scenario, based in the current
situation, "very public" actions are not the alien's playbook).

The other obvious outcome should be to precisely coordinate military presence
in the planet, trying to cover any territory with some kind of military
response - the ASAP one+highly guarded airspace close to key
infrastructure/cities in the planet - in case of detections / ingress of UFOs.

Kind of obvious, you would need to agree with ALL the players, Russian Fed,
China, India, and a dozen more. The nuclear players with missiles capable of
targetting stuff in low orbits should be the premium resources,

Space related industry should be developed at accelerated pace, and attempts
to reach close things in the solar system would be at some point almost a
monthly thing.

There are a tons of ones, many which you won't find in any scifi book, because
the scenario where you just watch UFOs (IF you can detect them), trying to do
something on the planet without knowing WTF is going on for decades is not a
compelling base for anything entertaining

~~~
arrakeen
the new york times had an article a few years back that touched on the issue
of what might happen when we do make extra terrestrial contact:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/magazine/greetings-et-
ple...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/28/magazine/greetings-et-please-dont-
murder-us.html)

------
semerda
Anyone notice the pilot switched between BLK and WHT mode and on both
occasions the designator was coming back as COLD! Shouldn't a designator with
an exhaust or any machinery in motion return HOT? Or did I get this wrong?

~~~
bendbro
Perhaps it was the brightness or contrast of the sensor autoadjusting?

~~~
semerda
Nah in the intro they explain all the parts of the display unit and one of
those was the state of tracked objects between these 2 modes. So the pilot
checked the heat from each object using 2 different sensors (BLK & WHT) and
both returned cold. Weird.

------
derefr
Anyone in this thread familiar with Electronic Warfare? Specifically, the EW
arms race between a guided missile's "eyes", and decoy signals created by
things that don't want to get hit by said missiles? (Or, better yet, between
large-scale MIRV missiles, that don't want their warheads to get hit by
interceptor systems, and the sensors on those interceptor counter-missiles. In
that case, you'd call these techniques
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetration_aid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetration_aid)
s.)

Consider that we now have reasonably-cheap, high-quality cameras and feature-
detection ASICs that we can plop into missiles. Oh, and wide-band software-
defined radios, too, to cheaply range-find our targets all over the spectrum.
(Remember, SDR radios are expensive _for consumers_ , but that's an artificial
supply-limit, precisely because of their military applications.) Consider what
sort of decoys would be required to _trick_ all that fancy sensor tech. Now
consider what such decoy emissions would look like to human eyes, or any other
sensor. If you can trick a Sufficiently-Advanced Missile, you can trick
anything.

(For fun, also consider the modern menagerie of cheaply-available parts that
you could shove into such a decoy: a laser rangefinder, a short-throw
projector, an optical stabilization array, some negative-index metamaterial
"scales" that can be flipped on and off—like those glittery pillows!—some more
SDRs, a MIMO signal-shaping antenna array. Oh, and an ultrasonic humidifier,
because emissions won't diffract off of thin, non-turbulent air.)

Presume you have a bunch of these mesh-networked together (or all slaved to a
stealthed aircraft so far above that it's out of range of your instrumentation
unless you know exactly where to look), and that they're built with hard real-
time links to one-another such that they can execute perfectly-timed hand-offs
of the emissions-signature they're working together to project.

In short, picture a bunch of projectors you can't find, working to create a
moving multi-spectral hologram in the sky. Picture one of the projector-drones
gliding into place "underneath" the projection, just in time to give off a
sonar return—and then wandering away again.

None of this is impossible. None of this is even particularly challenging if
you spend $100MM/yr on it. And this is just what someone who doesn't _know
about_ any of the classified stuff can imagine.

~~~
guardiangod
Yeah, I watched Spider-Man:Far From Home as well.

Seriously though, the pilots reported visual sighting as well. Projecting a
hologram is one thing, projecting one while flying at 800km/hr is another.

~~~
derefr
> Yeah, I watched Spider-Man:Far From Home as well.

I haven't; what was in the movie?

> Projecting a hologram is one thing, projecting one while flying at 800km/hr
> is another.

Like I was saying: short-throw laser projectors (or rather, in this case,
_long_ -throw projectors, but same diff, tech-wise.) Have a missile vanguard
blow through the airspace first, making the air turbulent and perhaps "doping"
it with some dyes so that the vapor-trail blends back into the sky. Then fly
out your penaids, have them assume static positions _around_ the diffractive
"canvas", and then start throwing emissions at the "canvas." Reorient some
lasers a tiny little bit, and now it looks like you've got something glowy
accelerating at Mach 6 along your "canvas." But it's not a violation of the
laws of physics—it's just light (and RF, and IR, and...)

But my real argument wasn't meant to be a constructive proof about what
properties penaids _should be able to_ have. My point was that, given the tech
that's cheap enough for any nation on earth to put into each and every
counter-missile, if certain nations (ahem) want to retain _air supremacy_ ,
they're going to want to develop something that can fool that sensor tech. The
result would be the EW equivalent of a "deepfake": a decoy that fools cameras
better than our eyes, feeding AI more discriminant than our brains. What hope
do we humans have of telling such a decoy apart from a real UFO?

~~~
carlisle_
>I haven't; what was in the movie?

Pretty much exactly what you're describing haha (with obviously a fair bit of
artistic license).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4onAJ-3FAM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4onAJ-3FAM)

------
pokstad
Sounds like the equivalent of a cat chasing a laser pointer. What if this is
an artifact of a space based weapon pointing at various points on the ocean?

------
newnewpdro
I suspect we won't learn what this is until there's another major armed
conflict bringing all the latest toys out of the shed.

------
einpoklum
If ultra-advanced space aliens can hide large spacecraft from the Earth's
population, and also do whatever it is they do without having a noticeable
effect on Humanity, then, well - I say _let them_.

Either it's all just a collection of circumstantial mis-understandings and
mis-interpretations, or at some point they'll do something we notice. Just
don't worry about it.

Remember civilization is in grave danger regardless of that from global
warming, running out of non-renewable resources, and last but not least
nuclear war. Try to focus on making sure the aliens still have people to mess
with...

------
NGC404
~same topic

now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008930)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008988)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997012](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20997012)

older:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828448](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828448)

~~~
wildrhythms
Would just like to piggyback on this to say that the wording of what is "real"
is very specific:

>[the Navy] designates the objects contained in these videos as unidentified
aerial phenomena.

That is to say, the videos are "real" in that the source is genuine (captured
by the U.S. Navy and not a doctored hoax), but the Navy is not making any
other statement on what appears in the video.

------
i_feel_great
I have always wondered why the US government never took advantage of this sort
of thing to make serious money. Just think of a massive extraterrestrial-
themed resort in the desert in the vicinity of Area 51. Think of all the
licensing deals.

~~~
ianai
People don’t actually want the government to be a for profit enterprise. It
would mean the government being influenced by private interests with money.

~~~
ryacko
They government prefers to grant franchise licenses to organized crime.

------
cryptozeus
Isn’t that something that these sightings are always seen by USA pilots or
military!

------
vinceguidry
It should be reminded that UFO means "unidentified flying object" not that
it's totally unexplainable. Just that there wasn't enough to go on to figure
out what they were at the time.

------
arthurcolle
Alternative discussion on the same subject matter:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21008930)

------
djsumdog
Before he passed away in the early 2000s, Peter Jennings did a really good
documentary on UFOs called Seeing is Believing.

It's one of the most comprehensive and least weird/edge/conspiracy
documentaries for its time and it's still interesting today. He goes into how
pilots saw many unidentified objects going back several decades.

I think there are a lot of people who acknowledged these sightings do exist,
but there has to be some explanation; some natural phenomenon we haven't
identified and discovered.

------
ulisesrmzroche
Y’all, UFOS aren’t fucking stupid

Obviously their tech is vastly superior to ours, except for cloaking and
espionage?

------
luxuryballs
Whenever I see “UFOs are real!” or “it must be a UFO!” I immediately in my
head think, of course if it’s flying and you don’t know what it is, it’s an
Unidentified Flying Object, why wouldn’t that be real??

So what I’ve done is accepted the fact that usually what people mean is an
UNIDENTIFIABLE Flying Object, and it makes me feel a little bit better...

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mrhappyunhappy
I read somewhere that it's much easier to convince people of conspiracy
theories once they have doubt in one. It is my theory that the UFO phenomenon
is a means of injecting doubt into people's minds to make them a bit paranoid
and question the reality of things. Once they believe something is going on or
have doubts, it's easier to sell them on other half truths, lies and
conspiracy theories. I have no proof of this but I suspect a vast majority of
ultra conservative voters exhibit mental frameworks of people who believe in
conspiracy theories. UFO coverage could be means of creating doubt and
reinforcing conservative behavior. In short - it's a play to create, recruit
and retain the ultra conservatives for the sole purpose of voting. Of course I
realize the irony of my statement considering this in itself sounds like a
woowoo conspiracy theory.

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godelski
Reading the linked Vice article

>"Based on pilot accounts, encounters with these UAPs (unidentified aerial
phenomena) often involved complex flight patterns and advanced maneuvering,
which demand extreme advances in quantum mechanics, nuclear science,
electromagnetics, and thermodynamics.” - Walker

> Republican representative Mark Walker of North Carolina

This is laughably stupid. QM and nuclear science? Can we call out politicians
for just throwing in words that they don't know what they mean? Seriously, I
think we should call these people out. I'll even laugh at the extreme part.

My bet is that these things are just some test drones. They might have
advanced materials and so you can't trust a lot of the data coming into the
FLIR sensor. I don't think it would surprise anyone here that the people
making the "most advanced sensors _on the market_ " 1) have more advanced
sensors being researched/tested 2) don't perform adversarial attacks on those
sensors during testing. As for the visuals, well drones can pull Gs that
pilots can't. So if we can't trust the sensor readings (speed and size) and we
just see something zipping around, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a drone
_could_ be the culprit.

As to the article, this is clearly misdirection. But that's part of warfare.
[https://youtu.be/qOTYgcdNrXE?t=1281](https://youtu.be/qOTYgcdNrXE?t=1281)

~~~
elif
If you're going to call his use of those terms incorrect, can you explain a
craft travelling supersonic without jets or rockets, leaving no emissions,
utilizing no airfoils, consistent with our understanding of physics?

~~~
jazzyjackson
I don't know, the video didn't show me that the objects traveled at any speed
-- that's from the pilots testimony, but maybe it appeared to move against the
backdrop as they were banking around it. I would expect fighter pilots to be a
good judge, but maybe you lose some sense of velocity when you're surprised by
something you haven't seen before.

Separately, radar operators saw something they didn't understand. It could
have been noise as they are now looking out for tiny drones and very small
radar signatures, they have sensitivity turned way up. Sometimes you see
things that aren't really there.

I'm honestly going weather balloons on this one.

~~~
mcphage
> I don't know, the video didn't show me that the objects traveled at any
> speed

That’s because you’re watching a YouTube video that was filmed on a potato,
instead of actually, y’know, _being there_.

~~~
jazzyjackson
Well my point is all the conjecture of this unexplained supersonic movement is
all hearsay based off eye witnesses. I don't trust eye witnesses, maybe they
saw something maybe they didn't, but I haven't seen anything that seems to
hold any water.

~~~
mcphage
I do get that. On the other hand, if you look at the believability
hierarchy—while eye witnesses rank pretty low, drive-by internet commentators
rank significantly lower still.

------
bdowling
Could this be the Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik)

~~~
DuskStar
No, for a huge number of reasons - not least of which being timing (the cruise
missile is in early development now, and these videos are 5+ years old)
performance (cruise missiles can't do what the objects in the video did, even
if nuclear powered - nuclear power is more an endurance feature anyways) lack
of fallout (unshielded directly cooled reactors produce quite a few
interesting isotopes) and location (why would the Russians fly a missile like
that anywhere near the US?).

------
wavefunction
unidentified flying objects are definitely unidentified flying objects, an
anonymous source at the US Navy reports

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hanoz
[https://youtu.be/MMiKyfd6hA0](https://youtu.be/MMiKyfd6hA0)

------
sabujp
so those definitely weren't missles, no afterburners, no wake.

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patientplatypus
I wonder what this will do to the "AREA 51 RAID" planned for September 20th.
Weird times we live in.

~~~
gnulinux
It will not happen. It's just a meme. 2 people are already arrested, thousands
of people are not stupid enough to raid an American military base.

------
tempsy
Anyone feel like this is a bit of a troll move, especially given the viral
Facebook event to storm Area 51 is supposedly happening in a few days? What
prompted them to say this now?

~~~
friendlybus
Shhh it's an art project. Let people analyze it as science as if it were ever
meant to be done so that way.

------
RickJWagner
There's enough anecdotal material available now that I don't consider myself a
scoffer. I'm curious about UFOs and don't really know what to think about
them.

Also, several politicians have made curious statements about 'releasing
information to the public'. If there was just nothing there, I don't think
they'd be talking about it.

Looking forward to the day (I think) when we all know what's out there.

~~~
coffeefirst
Historically UFO sightings spike at times of high and amorphous cultural
anxiety. Sometimes they turn out to be radar quirks, or experimental aircraft,
or nothing at all. But if anything, given the culture, I’m surprised we don’t
see more UFOs.

------
gfodor
My theory is that these are old autonomous probes that are part of a system
designed to prevent any civilization from developing technology which would
threaten the origin.

It’s a relatively inductive thing to assume that if humans get past any great
filters we will look upwards for external existential threats by those other
civilizations which do not get through, and whose failure may be due to
development of tech which could harm us. A fair countermeasure would be to
deploy autonomous probes that slowly blanket the galaxy and monitor and
destroy threats. It would genuinely surprise me if we are here in 100 years
that we wouldn’t have created and deployed such technology as a way to protect
our ancestors future from external threats. This only makes sense once all
major x-risk is paid down due to manmade technology and natural threats, but
once so it seems inevitable this is the next thing our civilization will seek
to protect against.

My suspicion is that these are real, are inaccessible to us, and always will
be, at least until we get close to any kind of galaxy-level x-risk technology
like AGI. At which point, we will either be wiped out or will be warned.

It’s actually quite a boring explanation since it doesn’t require too many
leaps of logic, doesn’t break any laws of physics, and leaves us potentially
alone in the present day universe (the origin of these may be long gone.)

