
U.S. Navy drafting new guidelines for reporting UFOs - PhaedrusV
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/23/us-navy-guidelines-reporting-ufos-1375290
======
russellbeattie
This story is a rewrite of a WaPo story which is a rewrite of a Politico
story. The core of the story is that military pilots have been socially
discouraged in the past from reporting UAP's because of their association with
sci-fi UFOs, but the rise of sightings have made it important that they report
whatever it is they see, without stigma.

> There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified
> aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air
> space in recent years," the Navy said in a statement in response to
> questions from POLITICO. "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the
> [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each
> and every report.

> "As part of this effort," it added, "the Navy is updating and formalizing
> the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to
> the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the
> steps for reporting is in draft."

Why it's taken the U.S. Military this long to formalize this is the only head
shaking part. The word UFO in the headline is click bait.

~~~
cronix
We already learned they were fake with the Air Forces Project Bluebook in the
50s/60s. No need to look further. /s

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

~~~
armitron
Summary of conclusions:

"""

\+ No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an
indication of threat to our national security;

\+ There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that
sightings categorized as "unidentified" represented technological developments
or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and

\+ There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as
"unidentified" were extraterrestrial vehicles.

"""

Where do you learn that they are "fake" ?

~~~
hermitdev
UFO != "fake" or alien. UFO encompasses anything that couldn't be readily
identified. Be it a weather balloon, experimental craft or something a pilot
caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of their eye. If the pilot is
unable to identify it even due to lack of knowledge, it is deemed
unidentifiable. No aliens or conspiracies required.

I mean sure, there could be aliens or conspiracies involved, but it seems
unlikely given how poor people are at keeping even the smallest secret.

------
duxup
Considering the possibility that an unknown thing might be something that an
enemy has involvement with I'm surprised there wasn't a process already.

The data documented could prove useful later as intelligence if you learn that
it is something an enemy is up to, but maybe didn't know it at the time.

~~~
all2
> ... I'm surprised there wasn't a process already.

There was. The U.S. Airforce had the long-running Project Bluebook.

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

~~~
hermitdev
And History Channel in the US has a historical fiction based upon the
declassified Project Bluebook files. Only one season so far, but I found it
interesting.

Not having read the files themselves, I have no idea of the accuracy of the
show to the files. But, the show has been interesting and entertaining to me.
X Files reminiscent, but based on real reports.

Seems they're trying to take actual real world UFO/alien encounter reports and
wrap them into a fictional conspiracy (well, theoretical conspiracy) to make
for an entertaining show.

It also happens to star Aiden Gillen (Little Finger/Lord Baelish in Game of
Thrones).

~~~
komali2
There ya go History Channel, finally finding a somewhat decent line between
their history documentaries and Ancient Aliens.

------
themodelplumber
I wonder if this video release impacted the decision?

[https://youtu.be/G9D8dzl4zGk](https://youtu.be/G9D8dzl4zGk)

I remember when it came out it caused quite a stir.

Edit: Here's the Wikipedia page:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident)

~~~
Circuits
Yeah, personally, I would say it's pretty obvious that extraterrestrials,
aliens, little green men, are visiting our planet and have been for some time
now... not sure why this is so hard to accept but apparently there are a lot
of people who would rather die in a fiery car crash than admit that the snake
attached to their leg has in fact bitten them.

~~~
themodelplumber
There's something to that POV. Out of curiosity I looked around for relevant
podcasts and found a BBC World podcast [0] on the Rendlesham Forest Incident
[1] in which a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel brought along a geiger
counter, a tape recorder, and several other people to check out a possible UFO
in the forest.

The Colonel's final take is interesting, if a bit concerning for the more
exploration-minded: "I don't think we can do anything about it. I think this
is beyond us. So: Quit worrying about it."

Personally I'm interested in the benign-animalistic properties of these
phenomena. The entities often seem to have at least some basic sensing
capability (regarding e.g. 'noticing' aircraft in the vicinity) and their
reported maneuvers are in line with what I would expect from a less-
intelligent, but still instinctual, entity. I wonder if they would respond
additionally to stimuli such as playful maneuvers by nearby aircraft, things
like that. Way out there, but only an idea.

0\.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswqmm](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswqmm)

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

~~~
Izkata
> I wonder if they would respond additionally to stimuli such as playful
> maneuvers by nearby aircraft, things like that.

Maybe they're not aliens and we just have undiscovered sky dolphins.

~~~
LyndsySimon
If you accept extraterrestrial origin, then it seems a stretch to assume that
they’re remotely controlled. It would make much more sense to have a quasi-
intelligence control the device in many cases. Why use a probe or other
closed-loop, deterministic system when you can use what amounts to the
intelligence of a trained animal?

------
Tossrock
People seem to break it down into three potential categories:
misinterpretted/bad data/not real, secret project carried out by other nation,
or extraterrestrial craft.

Extraterrestrial doesn't make sense, because of the difficulty in crossing
interstellar distances. But in the case of really solid evidence, eg the
Nimitz incident, neither of the first two categories really make sense either.

I think there's a fourth category that people aren't considering: Von Neumann
probes which self-replicated in-situ and are performing scouting /
intelligence gathering. When people consider Von Neumann probes independently,
there's always the question of, why don't we see any around? Given even modest
rates of travel and self replication, they should be at every star system in
the galaxy, if any were ever created.

Well, maybe they are around, and we have seen them.

~~~
noetic_techy
It’s the same answer for the Fermie paradox: If they are out there we would
see them... well what if we do? The problem is, people assume presence equals
contact. However Steven Hawking was right that contact would be dangerous and
stupid for any species bent on self preservation. Any sufficiently advance
species would likely STFU.

I’ll posit a 5th option: The emergence of a super intelligent AI thats
mastered certain technologies and is trying to hide its presence. Any
sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic/alien to us.

I also have always had a problem with the dismissal of FTL travel. “It cannot
be therefore it must not be” is not at all sound logic given our history with
technology. If you went back in time and gave the queen of England a nuclear
submarine, could she reproduce it? Her best and brightest advisor would look
at its propulsion system and declare “It cannot exist therefore it must not be
what it appears because only the wind can move you through the water!” You’d
be relegated to the same categories as the scientists who said traveling
faster than sound was impossible. The standard model of physics IS WRONG and
we know it, just like newtonian mechanics ultimately was wrong. Just because
we cannot fathom FTL does not preclude its existence.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _I also have always had a problem with the dismissal of FTL travel. “It
> cannot be therefore it must not be” is not at all sound logic given our
> history with technology._

There is an important difference here. In the history of technology, "high-
level disciplines" may sometimes be "overthrown" and completely be rewritten
frequently, making something impossible to be possible. But it rarely occurs
in foundation of mechanics. Even it has been revisited multiple times in the
past 200 years, things that were impossible in the past is still impossible
now, and possibly in the future, at least from a _macroscopic_ scale.

The mere existence of a nuclear submarine navigating the ocean in 1800s
England, as an object, _is compatible with_ the Newton's Laws of Motion.
Although nuclear reaction itself violates other known physics at the time, But
if compared to Newton's Laws of Motion, they are not as important. And
nowadays, Einstenian mechanics have replaced Newtonian mechanics, and it has
the same status as Newtonian mechanics had before.

That is, among all rational conclusions, those that is directly based on the
foundation of mechanics have the most "weight" than anything else, so
comparing to "640 KiB is enough for everyone", "humans have no means to
survive in the vacuum of outer space", "atomic weapons are impossible",
"supersonic flights are impossible", "cooling to absolute zero is impossible",
"accelerating to _c_ is impossible", the last statement is more likely than
other statements.

This is why I believe "no-FTL" argument has a strong point.

But well, I lied... It's well-known that general relativity does not directly
forbid one to wrap the spacetime to create worm-holes. So I agree with you,
the "no-FTL" has a strong point, but it's a non-issue anyway.

~~~
dogma1138
Relativity hasn’t replaced Newtonian Mechanics for 99.9% of the current use
cases it combined with Kepler’s Law of Motion is still used even in
astrophysics and astronomy at large the only points at which Newtonian physics
really breaks down is in the presence of strong fields and we are talking
about black holes type of strong fields or when you try to calculate things on
the scale of the observable universe.

Newtonian mechanics is still very accurate and very useful if it wasn’t it
wouldn’t be thought on an undergraduate and even graduate levels, ironically
it’s also what we’ve used to figure out things like oh shit were missing a lot
of matter in the universe.

If it wasn’t so darn close to being accurate in pretty much every scenario
things like MOND wouldn’t have a reason to exist either because for quite a
while in fact until the confirmation of gravitational waves there was enough
wrong with general relativity to cast doubt on it too, however even with
gravitational waves killing most of the modified Newtonian candidates
Newtonian mechanics is a darn useful tool still and it’s usefulness would
likely never go away.

------
vortico
Makes sense with the rise of unmanned enemy drone use.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
Well... not in the sense that these things apparently exceed not just our own
aircrafts' capabilities, but seem to use propulsion technologies that don't
obey the known laws of physics. Enemy states have drones, for sure. But enemy
states having drones that use super fast non-air-burning engines would be
staggering.

~~~
grayed-down
Not at all sure why they're graying you down, but you make some very good
points. There are just way too many credible witnesses who have observed
objects in the sky far outperforming the principals of aeronautics and the
laws of physics as we know them.

~~~
codezero
Human beings are almost never credible witnesses. We are deceived by the
simplest optical illusions.

~~~
grayed-down
I disagree. Reasonable people can see and understand things that they know to
be unreasonable; like your comment for example.

~~~
codezero
I agree with you. I think there is a spectrum on which a person can be very
reliable and not at all reliable.

I think that when seeing any unknown phenomenon there is nobody who can be
100% reliable. They can be a data point, but that should be the extent of it
until more information is available.

~~~
grayed-down
Then we probably agree more than disagree in this regard.

What I do know as someone with degrees in mathematics and physics and several
years in the USAF, is that some very smart people that I have personally
spoken with have seen artificial objects in the sky that move in ways that
they cannot explain nor do they have imaginative basis on which to speculate
about such performances.

~~~
nogridbag
There are lots of incredibly smart people who believe in religion and believe
their religion is the only true religion. Nine times out of ten their religion
also happens to be the religion they were born into. If that example is too
controversial, we can try another. There's plenty of smart people who voted
for and still support Donald Trump.

~~~
grayed-down
<sigh/>I'll stipulate your point if you agree that Atheism and Trump hatred is
your religion. Because hey, you need just enough faith to believe what you
believe as I need to believe what I believe.

------
0003
They reference Chris Mellon, who is a part of Tom Delonge's To the Stars
organization. I am not an expert here but he has this public benefit
corporation that always struck me as weird. It's like a charity, but Tom
Delonge gets interest and royalties from it. Also: in 2017 they recognized 25M
in stock comp expense... Like WTF. That is not possible for a company that is
basically worthless.

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1710274/000114420419...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1710274/000114420419006365/tv509356_partiiandiii.htm)

~~~
dmix
> The company’s Science Division is a theoretical and experimental laboratory,
> challenging conventional thinking by discovering a new world of physics and
> consciousness-related possibilities and exploring how to use them to affect
> the world positively. Through its Advisory Board, TTS AAS has access to
> world-renowned scientists with advanced knowledge to pursue the company’s
> research projects, including Human Ultra-Experience Database, Engineering
> Space-Time Metrics, Brain-Computer Interface, and Telepathy.

Yes this sounds a bit quacky...

> The company’s Aerospace Division is dedicated to finding revolutionary
> breakthroughs in propulsion, energy, and communication. We currently employ
> and intend to employ additional lead engineers from major Department of
> Defense and aerospace companies with the capability to pursue an advanced
> engineering approach to fundamental aerospace topics ranging from Beamed-
> Energy Propulsion to warp drive metrics. Our team will seek to develop next-
> generation energy and propulsion concepts for spaceflight, as well as new
> technologies for space communications.

The only thing that seems to be a real business if the entertainment division.
Which makes sense as a part of their business. Selling ideas through media
rather than actual useful science research.

~~~
jnurmine
Look at what the CIA paid for during the height of the Cold War. Remote
viewing studies going on for years (STARGATE), MKULTRA and whatnot... A lot of
money went around.

------
dontbenebby
Maybe the days of the US being the only country whose special access projects
are mistaken for alien spacecraft are numbered:

[https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/et-denied-many-
uf...](https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/et-denied-many-ufos-are-
just-super-secret-military-aircraft-23816)

It's a little amusing to me that people assume if it's not American, it must
be alien.

Maybe they're just Chinese?

If another country _is_ buzzing us with their new tech, it makes sense to not
want some sailor to refuse to report it out of fear they'll be branded insane.

------
cmroanirgo
From the article:

> _“If I came to you and said, ‘There are these things that can fly over our
> country with impunity, defying the laws of physics, and within moments could
> deploy a nuclear device at will’ — that would be a matter of national
> security.”_

What is it about the military mindset that absolutely must see everything not
101% under their control as something potentially hostile? _If_ these really
are craft from other systems, then it's pretty clear that they have
exceedingly superior flight capabilities. So, for me at least, the logical
extension to that thought is: "if they're here for a fight, they'll win."
Considering that they are harrassing military installations rather than the
general populace (ie, they buzz pilots and military bases, but not cities),
isn't it congruent that they're trying to send a message rather than inflict
interstellar war? (If that's what they are)

~~~
TenaciousValor
In the quoted statement, only one of those statements--"defying the laws of
physics"\--is perhaps beyond the purview of the military. We don't allow
aircraft to willy-nilly cross borders, and neither does any other country in
the world. (Border crossing is obviously permitted, but there are procedures
and rules to follow. International incidents can arise when they aren't.)
Also, using the example of deploying a nuclear device may be cliche, but what
about a conventional weapon? Should there be any less concern about an
unregulated aircraft capable of dropping explosive ordinance?

At a fundamental level, any military is tasked with guarding the land its
sovereign occupies. You can't blame them for being careful because there's
always the small, remote chance that an adversarial, human government could
inflict harm if the military isn't looking. But that's precisely it: no one
knows where these craft come from. Based on the hard information available to
us the public, it's equally possible that the craft came from another galaxy,
Mars, Russia, or Canada. We just don't know, and we can't just sit back and
watch because there may be a legitimate threat.

------
Paperweight
The thing I don't get about UFOs, assuming the alien hypothesis, is why are
there so many different kinds of them.

Surely aliens would have settled on one, perfect, scalable vehicle design
after millions of years of refinement? Spherical, probably. Instead, we get
saucers, spheres, cigars, triangles...

~~~
adrianN
Fashion might be important to rich alien kids too.

------
nkamoah17
Hey, check this out! I made a really cool map of all UFO sightings across the
world for a hackathon at my school.(3 months ago) This news reminded me of it.
Looking at the map, it makes sense that the US Navy is worried. :) Data was
scraped from National UFO Reporting Center.

The map is available at:
[https://fusiontables.google.com/data?docid=15hfFOU0UAwfx7U95...](https://fusiontables.google.com/data?docid=15hfFOU0UAwfx7U95YqfY1IZeaxhCEXLg0FJZ5-bx#map:id=3)

------
dredmorbius
See also at WashPo: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
security/2019/04/24/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
security/2019/04/24/how-angry-pilots-got-navy-stop-dismissing-ufo-sightings/)

------
nikkwong
One question I have is why these objects are only detected via sight and
radar. Don't we have so many telescopes pointing at the sky that if something
were to be approaching our planet, someone would notice before they entered
our airspace?

~~~
ceejayoz
We struggle to detect stealth aircraft from our own civilization more than a
few dozen miles away.

If a species can travel from star to star, it can likely evade our detection.
Telescopes are basically worthless for spotting anything small or stealthy -
asteroids are fairly regularly discovered _after_ they whiz by the planet.

Of course, the other part of the answer is that these things are likely
terrestrial, and didn't come from space in the first place.

------
sidcool
The sci-fi fan inside me badly wants this to be an alien encounter. I am
holding on to life just so that I get to witness humanity's first encounter
with extra terrestrial intelligence. But that's probably unlikely.

~~~
logjammin
I'm not seeing the usual web indications that this is sarcasm or irony, so I
wanna say that if you're really just "holding on to life" for whatever single
reason, aliens or not, there's good help out there if you want it. You're
loved and needed. Be well dude/dudette.

~~~
sidcool
Thanks for your concern. It was not actually sarcasm but exaggeration to
express my excitement.

~~~
logjammin
Ah okay, good!I'm glad

------
TomMckenny
I would worry a great deal more about the fact that advanced Naval units can't
identify (let alone deal with) some classes of aircraft than I would worry
about aliens.

------
tehjoker
"Langley won't tell us what they're doing in our training airspace so we'll
make a public stink until they spill the beans."

------
pleemin
Tom Delonge is HYPED.

~~~
slouch
Did he ever release the alloy of thin metals that he thinks was created in
space? That was the thing I heard that caused me to think, "well, hey, if he's
got this hunk of space metals, i should probably tune in again."

~~~
PhaedrusV
I've been keeping half an eye on his "to the stars academy" ever since I heard
him on Joe Rogan, but I haven't seen any tech releases yet.

------
yters
UFO just means "unidentified flying object," which could include things like a
balloon, a meteor, another airplane, etc.

Not sure why everyone immediately jumps to "Navy admits there are aliens!"

~~~
cmroanirgo
From the article:

> _In some cases, pilots — many of whom are engineers and academy graduates —
> say they observed small spherical objects flying in formation. Others say
> they’ve seen white, Tic-Tac-shaped vehicles. Aside from drones, all engines
> rely on burning fuel to generate power, but these vehicles all had no air
> intake, no wind, and no exhaust. "It's very mysterious, and they still seem
> to exceed our aircraft in speed," he said, calling it a "truly radical
> technology."_

> _" Imagine you see highly advanced vehicles, they appear on radar systems,
> they look bizarre, no one knows where they're from. This happens on a
> recurring basis, and no one does anything,"_

> _“Pilots are upset, and they’re trying to help wake up a slumbering
> system,”_

> _In 2017, the Pentagon first confirmed the existence of the Advanced
> Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a government operation launched in
> 2007 to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats.” As the Post’s
> Joby Warrick reported, the investigation ranged from “advanced aircraft
> fielded by traditional U.S. adversaries to commercial drones to possible
> alien encounters.”_

etc, etc.

So no there's little that _explicitly_ states UFO is all about ET, but the
inference is very high, considering the credibility of the witnessess and the
frequency in which such things occur. That the sightings are typically over
restricted airspace (military bases) is also rather indicative that these
sightings are not balloons, other (known) aircraft, nor meteors.

~~~
derefr
I don’t see what privileges the hypothesis of “aliens” over “other countries’
aerospace R&D assets being used in an intelligence-gathering capacity.”
Especially given the “seen over [i.e. examining] military bases” part.

~~~
rotexo
For that matter, what privileges "other countries' aerospace R&D assets being
used in an intelligence-gathering capacity" (when those R&D assets at the very
least bend what is possible in aviation) or "aliens" or "von neumann probes"
or whatever over "inexplicable information is being released in a targeted
fashion by some party intent on distracting the public from ongoing news
events?"

~~~
derefr
Usually the null hypothesis (“the reports are made up”) is denied by the fact
that these events can be—and are—just as often observed by neutral (but not
naive amateur) observers. Often these events are reported by private pilots
who were flying in the airspace, or air traffic controllers in civilian
airports who see the thing on their radar, or meteorologists examining
satellite imagery.

There are also reports that come from government-affiliated persons, but where
those affiliations are very distant. Unless you believe that the US government
somehow manages to get their shit together _way_ better for UFO propaganda
than they do for, say, evidence-sharing in criminal investigations, then I
personally find it implausible that entities as distant from one-another as
the US Navy, the National Weather Service, and NASA, would all be speaking
from the same side of their faces.

(And also, re “distraction”—who exactly does a UFO report distract? There’s
never been one that’s made front-page news AFAIK. Local news of a UFO sighting
[without any local UFO crackpots to get inured to] might work to distract a
very small town from a psy-op going on in the area, but even a moderately
large city wouldn’t even notice the news. You’d do much better covering up a
psy-op with, say, an amber alert. That usually becomes 24-hour local news
coverage!)

~~~
rotexo
Fair enough, this stuff is weird and there are no good explanations available.
Until something happens that truly forces me to update my informal priors,
though, I still think your middle paragraph is more likely than "a country has
access to physics-bending technology" or "aliens."

------
craftinator
Your tax dollars at work =D

