
UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots - myrandomcomment
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42405205/ufo-spotted-by-us-fighter-jet-pilots-new-footage-reveals
======
benjohnson
Keep in mind one branch of the military was successfully flying this in 1977:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Ha...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Have_Blue_bottom_view.jpg/220px-
Have_Blue_bottom_view.jpg)

(a picture of Have Blue - the precursor to the stealth fighter. It defiantly
looks like something out of this world to the eyes of someone in 1977)

~~~
dkersten
And then there's stuff like this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar)

So, really, its likely that any UFO is military in nature, rather than
extraterrestrial.

~~~
gfodor
This is a common retort (in my view, to make people feel better and not have
to consider the implications otherwise) -- here's the pentagon official in
charge of the program stating unequivocally that these are almost certainly
not related to any aircraft in any national inventory

[https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-
at-t...](https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-at-the-
pentagon-spent-million-to-study-ufos)

The thing that makes these interesting is the fact that they exhibit
aeronautic behavior, while tracked by multiple computers and witnesses, that
is not physically possible with known methods of propulsion, not because they
look like shiny discs.

~~~
deepnotderp
There's nothing that's not physically possible here, just bottlenecked by G
forces limitations on human passengers. Given the fact that drone technology
testing was extremely popular at the time, I wouldn't be surprised if it's
just experimental drone testing.

~~~
gfodor
How can you _possibly_ make this claim?

The director of this program is on record saying that after deploying
extensive analytical resources at the Pentagon onto all the evidence (cross
referencing radar signatures, satellite feeds, etc) and leveraging internal
expertise to rule out alternatives there remain cases for which there remains
no explanation consistent with the idea that these are aircraft in any
government's inventory or any other natural phenomena.

Either this person is lying, or somehow otherwise should be given no
credibility, or the government has decided to reveal that there are in fact
objects in the sky whose origin are, to the best of our country's ability to
analyze them, unknown. This person _specifically_ ruled out the idea in their
NPR interview that these objects are part of some hidden government advanced
aircraft program.

You can believe what you want to sleep better at night, such as that there is
in fact some hyper-advanced tech the government has that this program was kept
in the dark about, but there's not much wiggle room at this point other than
to accept that the level of public acknowledgement of the UFO phenomena by the
federal government (and particularly, the department of defense) has changed
significantly now and that there is a very high prior that there are objects
in the sky whose origins are a mystery.

~~~
amazingman
Indeed. I’m as skeptical as it gets re: UFOs—and in general, really—and I have
no idea how to process these videos without coming to the conclusion that
something _significantly_ outside of all current human understanding is going
on.

------
brango
I'm sold on the whole UFO cover-up thing. If you peel back the social ridicule
(very successfully induced by US government collaboration with Hollywood) and
consider the huge number of circumstantial reports from across the military
and non-military it seems pretty clear there's stuff in the skies of non-human
origin. Historical art suggests they've been flying for centuries.

There's also the publicly acknowledged reports of NASA and various
governments/military conducting investigations and spending millions of
dollars in the process.

Historically it would have been politically difficult for governments to come
out and admit this - and when they did (like after Roswell) it was quickly
retracted.

Peel back the social conditioning and reconsider the likelihood of this given
all the reports.

~~~
dsacco
I’m open minded to what you’re saying, and I agree that dismissing alien
contact due to popular zeitgeist is silly.

But here’s my problem with what you’re saying: where did they come from then,
and how did they get here? Why do we not have any evidence of their planet in
any reasonable distance from Earth? Given what we understand about modern
physics, we have three conclusions we can arrive at:

1\. We fundamentally misunderstand physics, in particular the central concept
that the speed of light is a hard speed limit on motion, and aliens are
capable of arriving here faster than light,

2\. The aliens have technology capable of arriving here from so distant a home
world that they are either inconceivably long lived or else their entire
society existed on a transport vessel for generations and generations,

3\. Sightings of UFO are examples of popular hysteria, and aliens are not, and
have never been anywhere near Earth.

Given the available evidence, Occam’s Razor suggests #3. I understand that
reports from distributed and disconnected sources can be encouraging, but
realistically speaking it still presents insufficiently extraordinary evidence
to me to abandon possibility #3.

~~~
ansible
I used to be fascinated with the UFO reports and such as a kid.

However, I grew up, and learned physics. And then later I learned about things
like Molecular Nanotechnology.

Aliens, as popularly conceived, have not been here, and will not be coming
here.

Why? I'll explain.

Space is big. Like, really big. The distance to the nearest star system is 4
light-years away. Even for a small object, it takes an enormous amount of
energy to get going at a "reasonable" speed, like at some fraction of the
speed of light. For an example of a more reasonably-sized object, Voyager 1
would take 70k years to get to the closest star system (4LY away) if it was
headed in the right direction.

But then you have to stop! If you accelerate up to 0.1c (very fast), you have
to decelerate to arrive at your destination. This is where the rocket equation
kills you. Even with super-mass efficient ion drives (which with our current
technology provide very low thrust), accelerating your spaceship to a
reasonable speed, and then have enough delta-V to stop at the destination
requires an even more crazy amount of energy.

If any aliens are headed to our solar system, we'd see their drive flairs from
a long way out.

The most efficient system is to use a light sail (really, a laser sail). This
is so you don't have to carry all that reaction mass with you, thus bypassing
the rocket equation. And then there's a trick where you detach most of your
sail, allowing it to reflect light back towards the ship for the deceleration
half of the trip.

But again, even for a small (like 1kg) payload, this requires a stupendous
amount of energy. And we'd see them coming because they'd be shining a big,
big laser in our direction.

There are also Bussard ramjet drives, and other speculated technology, but
these would all likely be slower because of the mass required to build it.

Now simply flinging out a bunch of von Neumann replicators out in every
direction would be much less obvious (though very slow), until the space dust
starts building infrastructure in our solar system... but that's a talk for
another day.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
But maybe the UFO are really old machines (like millions of years old) in
which case they can take all they time they need to travel and decelerate,
such that wouldn't produce drive flairs.

~~~
ansible
Anything is possible, but that doesn't seem likely.

It is helpful to think of what would aliens want from us that they can't get
at home.

Raw material, like in the mini-series V, Oblivion, Uplift War trilogy, etc? It
is too expensive to ship matter anywhere. If you need a lot of it for a
construction project, you'd be better off heading to the galactic core.

Maybe they want our cultural uniqueness? But they could easily simulate many
virtual worlds with different starting conditions, and poke around those
without leaving the comfort of home. That would be much easier, especially
after they get bored with humans.

And if they have advanced molecular nanotechnology, it isn't just waiting
millions of years for results. They are likely running at a much higher "clock
rate" than we are now. You can run an uploaded mind much faster than a
biological one. So these hypothetical aliens would instead be waiting billions
of years of subjective time for their probes to find something interesting.

~~~
brango
Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it'd be
pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents
have seeing children grow up.

~~~
ansible
_Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it 'd be
pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents
have seeing children grow up._

Maybe, but I find that unlikely.

If they do want to pursue those sorts of activities, then can do much more,
much faster while closer to home. Why settle for observing one naturally
evolved species, when you can make dozens (or thousands) of your own?

------
gmisra
For those interested in other "legitimate" UFO sightings, I'd recommend "UFOs:
Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record" by Leslie Kean
[1]. The author is an investigative journalist who sets out to interview
observers of relatively well-documented UFO encounters, and ends up speaking
mostly with military pilots from around the world. It's a good read, and is
even-handed and well written, especially considering the genre.

In the book, two things stood out to me. First, there are a quite a few UFO
sightings that are corroborated by non-human sensor data (mostly radar and
video). Second, the narrative paints a picture where US government officials
are much more secretive than any other nation, by far. Within that context,
the releases of the last few weeks are even more surprising.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in a modern, not-too-X-files-like
take on UFO phenomena.

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8287034-ufos](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8287034-ufos)

~~~
timothevs
Thanks for sharing the book.

I agree that the releases from the US Gov the last few weeks have been VERY
surprising, nearly a 90 degree shift from the "deny everything" policy that
they assumed for the last few decades.

Going one step further, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I
just wonder, what actually has changed to prompt this change in policy of
denying everything

~~~
LyndsySimon
I've been suspicious for some time that the US federal government believes
that there is likely to be sort of major societal upset in the near future. I
can't imagine that it would be "Disclosure", though. I don't know what it
could be.

------
cattown
Entertaining, almost convincing. I want to believe.

However we know it is one of...

* A hoax, like hundreds of other videos of UFO sightings.

* One branch of the military testing a piece of equipment another branch is not able to identify.

* A video showing an actual space craft built by aliens from another planet.

Consider which of these is most likely and which is least likely. Consider
also that extraordinary claims should be backed by extraordinary evidence.

I'm surprised BBC picked this up.

~~~
jl6
Could also be a genuine error like a fly on the lens or a bug in the
viewfinder software.

~~~
deepnotderp
That's a thermal camera, so I'm a little bit doubtful it's a bug, plus there
were apparently multiple witnesses and computers there.

~~~
jl6
This story got picked up because there’s actual video footage. But
unfortunately only one video. If there were multiple observers, why can’t we
see multiple videos?

------
vorotato
Hey meta question here, why do dupes not link to the thing they're a duplicate
of. Kinda sounds like it would make navigating to dupes a lot less of a pain.

Not meta comment, aren't all flying objects UFOs until you've identified them?

~~~
ryandvm
Meta Answer:

HN eschews all modern UI affordances as a form of status signalling. It's like
how millionaire startup founders like to wear cargo shorts and hoodies.

It's Y Combinator's way of saying, "we're so fucking successful we can afford
to have a site that eclipses even Craigslist in un-usability."

~~~
CaptSpify
Alternative view: "We're successful _because_ we have a site that works
simply, without much unneeded complexity, and choose to keep it simple for the
sake of our users."

~~~
vorotato
Links are notoriously complex. One time I had a user whose head exploded when
they saw a link to a duplicate.

------
27182818284
If you haven't watched the video, especially the one with the two pilots
chatting about the object, you should. If anything it is at least entertaining
and will remind you quite a bit of the ATC scene from Close Encounters.

------
ComputerGuru
My only issue with this - and I can’t figure a way out - is that this was a
program launched in secrecy, funded with soft money, officially shut down five
years ago but by all accounts has continued to operate in the dark... yet we
get all this info, military videos, and more from individuals that
participated in said program all in public and without extreme anonymity, etc
such that would be typical in such a case.

I just don’t see why if we had a “confirmed” ufo sighting on military video
that was a product of such a program, would we really discussing this in such
a manner?

------
slg
Was this how the video was released? It seems edited specifically in a way to
cause the most mystery. The video starts and ends with it in sight of the
camera. There is obviously more to the encounter which raises the question,
why was it edited out?

~~~
thrill
The video is either edited for stabilization or that is the smoothest tracking
while banked of another flying object that I've seen - or it's something in
the camera system.

~~~
LyndsySimon
It's the camera system. Another forum where I was reading about this has lots
of military and ex-military pilot members, and they identified the make and
model of the imaging equipment that was used. No one there seemed to question
the validity of the video itself.

------
sddfd
Meh, is this getting picked up by every news outlet?

What important news is getting buried? ;)

~~~
SubiculumCode
I assume because there is a feeling that the footage is not faked (as footage
of UFO's tend to be), and because the military's incentives to fake a UFO
video are usually very much in the opposite direction (i.e. nothing to see
here, carry on).

~~~
Waterluvian
I actually think it's perfect. Imagine they have future tech that absolutely
crushes any current or next-gen competitors. The public is nosey and every
year becoming more and more able to record high quality footage.

So let's drum up the "crazy" about UFOs. So when real UFOs are seen (the ones
we created and want to keep secret) nobody can get a serious dialogue going
because the UFO signal-to-noise ratio is awful. Everyone will focus on how
crazy anyone sounds when they claim they have UFO footage. Especially when one
of our military partners or adversaries manage to snag some airborne or
satellite imagery of it.

------
ThisIsJustABug
# # #

How can people be so Blind??? Look Carefully! That is Just a small Insect (a
Bug) walking on the camera's lens! (or on the window that the camera is
looking through, on it's inner side) How can't you see it? (you can almost see
it's legs!) You can see that it's a bug by it's stability, a target outside
the aircraft, like for example another plane would NEVER be so stable related
to the aircraft's sight. This also explains why it looks so blurry, that is
because the insect is walking on the camera's lens (or on the inside window)
and therefore it's out of focus.

Probably it was a Night Flight so they saw it only through their IR camera and
not from their aircraft's window. Test it, find a small insect and locate it
very close to your smartphone's camera, see how similar it looks to what you
see here... (The glow in the video is because of the IR camera).

Pilots can get wrong like any other human been, Many pilots crashed into the
sea becouse of Spatial Disorientation, they got confused and thought that the
sea is the sky. Also In 2004 Mexican aircraft pilots thought that they are
following a UFO but later it turn out to be just some Oil platforms (in the
sea below them) that they saw in their IR camera, search in Google for more
information about that.

Probably they did some maintenance works on the aircraft on a hot day/night
before it took off and some bugs went inside, this things happens!

------
em3rgent0rdr
At first I thought it was a spec of dirt stuck on the window, because it kept
its position constant relative to the moving airplane. But then when it
twisted, I had to give up that explanation.

~~~
kristaps
Camera could be gimbal mounted, behind a fixed glass dome - if the speck is on
the dome and the camera gimbal moves, it would appear like "the UFO" rotating.

~~~
colanderman
Watch the angle displayed near the top of the screen. It passes 0° precisely
when the object rotates. I say you're the winner.

(I think the speck would have to be on the lens itself though; a speck on the
dome would stay fixed during gimbal rotation. Speck on the lens rotates by
virtue of the DSP compensating for the camera rotation to keep the world
level.)

I suppose also the "shape" of the object could be lens flare (or another
imaging artifact) due to the object being very bright. At least some portion
of such an artifact would track with the lens as well.

~~~
LyndsySimon
Note that it's a thermal camera - the object is showing up as very hot
compared to the background of the sky.

Also, the "halo" effect is an artifact of the imaging system I'm told.

~~~
colanderman
The sky is thermally very cold. Something room temperature would show up much
brighter.

~~~
LyndsySimon
When the MFD says "BLACK", black is hot. When it says "WHITE", white is hot.
It switches partway through - the object is hotter than the background.

~~~
colanderman
Yes, I know. But almost any object is hotter than the sky, especially if you
are above cloud cover. If you own an IR thermometer, point it at the sky on a
clear day to see what I mean (you'll get readings well below 0°F).

So just because the object is hotter than the sky & clouds doesn't mean much.
It could be "room temperature" (say, an insect or fresh bird poo). Or it could
be reflective, and simply be reflecting the heat of the plane or camera
itself.

What would be helpful is to know the range of temperatures represented by that
image. The object is overexposed, so at least we could get a lower bound on
its temperature.

------
jeiting
Does anyone have a link to a "long read" taking this apart based on the
evidence? The NYT article doesn't really provide a good skeptic's analysis.

~~~
crispyambulance
Yeah, the NYT article was a thrilling read and quite unusual to see on the
landing page ([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-
prog...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-
harry-reid.html)).

Unfortunately, the sources in the story DO NOT inspire credibility...

    
    
      >"...said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]...
    

This guy has also been involved in "paranormal investigations" and "zero-point
energy research" according to wikipedia. Nice fodder for the X-files, but not
reality. It is a pity that the NYT reporter didn't take more skeptical view.

------
cmroanirgo
Dr Steven Greer of the disclosure project[1] recently made a dvd, called
'Unacknowledged'. It's been #one on iTunes documentary (apparently) for a
while. In it he talks about 'Unacknowledged Special Access Projects' (USAPs),
which basically are illegal. The core of these USAPs is the UFO issue and he
has countless witness testimonies from irrefutable military and private
personnel, and has advised many people in Washington (CIA director, president
elects) about them and they are generally amazed (apparently). One of the
things he explicitly mentions (and has been doing so for years), is that there
is a secret agenda and that False Flag UFO encounters will be released, which
will allow the military industrial complex to continue enslaving humanity.

To the point: recently, he's been vocal to state that all these UFO reports in
the media over the last few days are just preliminary Flase Flag UFO events,
designed to confuse and obfuscate the real problem.

[1] [http://siriusdisclosure.com/](http://siriusdisclosure.com/)

------
_nalply
I once saw something I can't explain. Two spots on the night sky a bit larger
than a star and of the color of an incandescent light about a half thumb on an
outstreched arm apart. They were slowly moving across the sky, however with a
swinging movement forward and backwards about a thumb with a period of two
seconds. Like two people side by side walking together two steps ahead then a
step back the whole time, just in the sky and this was a smooth movement.

Then suddenly one of the two lights went out. The other one continued the same
movement and also went out about a minute later.

This steady swinging movement is an unexplainable riddle for me.

A friend of mine also sighted something in the bright day sky of Spain. He
told me that he looked up and then that thing whooshed away in an incredible
speed over the Mediterranean Sea.

It's really weird. Either our senses and even the technical equipment like
cameras are just fooled or we have extremely strange things going on over our
heads.

~~~
Avamander
I know a family friend, ~ 80-year-old woman, told me that she one day looked
out of the window and saw a really dark, saucer-like object, far, hovering
over the woods, she said she blinked, rubbed her eyes, walked outside and it
was still there, yelled for her kids to wake up and look out of the window but
when her kids woke up it was too late, the object just vanished. She got
visibly annoyed when her kids started chuckling at the story.

Rational me doesn't want to believe me, but well, what if it was _something_.

------
colanderman
There's an angle displayed near the top of the screen, which counts down to 0°
L and then starts counting up from 1° R.

That transition happens at precisely the moment that the object rotates.

Count me as convinced by the "speck of dust on gimbal-mounted camera" idea
[1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848)

------
neo4sure
NIce distraction while the biggest tax overhaul for a long time is
steamrolling over. Maybe we can ask the aliens to pay off our debt.

------
mrgreenfur
Does anyone think it could be a reflection or a trick of light that is
dependent of the viewers position? Eg it's int he same position relative to
the viewer and then suddenly "flys away" because the conditions for it to be
visible have changed?

------
tiplus
I am not sure about UFO sightings because it seems unlikely to me that aliens
would approach us like this.

However, given the huge amounts of exo planets discovered everywhere around us
in the last year or two, I consider it highly unlikely that we are alone.

------
rrauenza
Possibly related?

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/boeing-unveils-new-
pl...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/boeing-unveils-new-plane-
mystery-aircraft/)

~~~
signa11
how ? the link that you provide is from 2k17, while the article is from 2k4...

~~~
dguaraglia
New planes go through extensive experimental phases. The F-35 took over a
decade from _first flight_ to being generally available and that’s not even
considering the several competing aircraft that were weeded out before the
F-35 was selected.

Not saying you are wrong, but a 13 year span doesn’t necessarily rule out the
link OP posted.

------
simonblack
Dirt on the camera lens or image-sensor.

------
ThisIsJustABug
Comment.

------
WaltPurvis
Well, I mean, it's a flying object, and they clearly can't identify it, so
it's not a "possible" UFO, it's the literal definition of a UFO.

~~~
rdiddly
Yeah, pet peeve of mine. The word "possible" was added inappropriately. They
are absolutely sure, already, that it's a UFO. Which isn't saying much, and
deliberately so. It's the first and vaguest thing they call it. If they ever
found out what it was, they would _stop_ calling it a UFO. So a more accurate
title, if you're optimistic about it being some particular (identified) thing,
such as (I presume) alien spacecraft, would be "Possible Non-UFO Spotted by US
Fighters."

Misspelled "Camera" also.

Edit: Well this comment is obsolete now that they updated the title. Good
work!

------
pqh
"Possible UFO" is a silly phrase if you think about it.

~~~
elif
Maybe its identification is classified. E.g. the speaker is implying "i cannot
confirm or deny whether this is identified"

------
ucha
It's not a possible UFO, just a UFO. U stands for unidentified not extra-
terrestrial.

------
ataturk
Why disclose this now? The incident took place 13 years ago.

------
cyberpunk0
Suppose Tom delonge is on to something then haha

------
0xFFC
Excuse me, I am generally a naive person. But what is your take on this video?
Do you think this is legitimate? Do you think this “proves ” there are UFOs?

Or this could be just a strategy for another goal?

For example, somebody mentioned they are trying hard to redirect attention
from something else?

Update: I put the word prove in quotations.

~~~
dkersten
The video quality is terrible, so who knows, but I've _never_ seen any UFO
footage that had any kind of decent quality video. Hell, a 2004 camera phone
would be _almost_ as good as this video. Yes, yes, its in the dark and moving
fast and whatnot, but I thought that the military would have had much better
imaging tech, even back in 2004, than this grainy low res thing. May as well
be someones camcorder.

The only thing it has going for it, in my opinion, is that the pilots would
have been pretty used to seeing stuff in their cameras and would know the
difference between something ordinary and something extraordinary. I do think
its more likely that it was some military test plane than something
extraterrestrial though, personally.

~~~
forgotpassagan
They intentionally degrade the quality of to avoid giving competitors data.
I'm sure Congress has seen the original, and it's pretty startling that they
still think the object is a legit UFO

~~~
dkersten
> I'm sure Congress has seen the original, and it's pretty startling that they
> still think the object is a legit UFO

This is just conjecture though. Its pretty difficult for us to have a
meaningful discussion about whether Congresses reaction is noteworthy without
knowing for sure what they did or didn't see.

Based on what _we_ have to work with, I'm not seeing anything noteworthy here
besides some ATC/pilot folks conversation looking at a black smudge on a
grainy sky. I guess unless we got to see the original video, its impossible to
tell, really.

> They intentionally degrade the quality of to avoid giving competitors data.

Do we know this for sure? Is there a source for that?

~~~
forgotpassagan
It's been precedent for a long time. For example, we could have much better
satellite photos but it's illegal to sell footage with resolution better than
1 pixel/meter. If they're doing it publicly for commercial satellite imagery I
have zero doubts similar secret restrictions for video quality exist for
military footage taken with optics

------
narrator
So where does the rubber hit the road? Oh, you saw a UFO flying around, great.
Might as well be 1 million lightyears away if they aren't going to give us
advanced technology. The first wheel the people of the interior of Papua New
Guinea ever saw was on the bottom of a Japanese airplane flying overhead, so
there's that. Seriously, we might as well be a primitive tribe in the Amazon
seeing an airplane flying overhead in the 1950s. Ho hum, time to get back to
work scavenging for food.

~~~
FeistyOtter
There is a very deep soviet science-fiction novel by brothers Arkady and Boris
Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic. It is relatively unknown in western world, which
is very sad since in Russia it is considered one of the pinnacles of Soviet-
Russian science fiction works. The plot is as follows:

One day, several strange zones appeared in the world, on a line that extends
to a star Deneb. The brave 'stalkers' found all sorts of strange and
miraculous objects there - artefacts (some people will remember a popular
russian game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with similar things): they can kill and they can
cure, but what we do know that the civilization that left them exists on an
unfathomable scientific level to us and we can not even start to comprehend
them, these objects are like magic to us.

And these strange zones, these strange objects were just a waste to this
civilization. They just traveled through the cosmos and did not even notice us
when they dumped them, like we, humans, do not notice ants that crawl under
our feet while we take a picnic near a road.

~~~
narrator
I read that book. It was the most deeply pessimistic sci-fi book I have ever
read. Lots and lots of smoking and drinking too. I liked it though.

