"Here are the classified flight characteristics of what we believe to have been a Russian hypersonic weapon test but we don't know that for certain; we're pretty sure the Chinese weren't able to capture this data but we're going to hand it over to them now at the behest of domestic conspiracy theorists."
Yes, The Russians test their research missiles off the US coast, when they have huge, well controlled land and ocean areas where they need not fear any US snapshots and US jet chases...
Yep, and the 2004 incident happened during Navy training on a new radar system. The radar showed the "UFOs" coming from the area of San Clemente Island.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence though, because there's nothing on that island except for one of the Navy's UAV airstrips. They even warn that the UAVs are very small and hard for other pilots to see, so they have a safety perimeter around the island.
One would anticipate the Russians/Chinese would be very curious about any new radars, so if there are any Russian/Chinese stealth drones they may well be deployed to sniff the spectrum
Yes! Precisely! Somehow people started associating UFOs with flying saucers and aliens. How would they know it's aliens if the U stands for unidentified?
> Somehow people started associating UFOs with flying saucers and aliens.
I saw a video (that I can't currently find) of Feynman explaining this once.
The US government had a classified program that suspended 1940s saucer microphones from a balloon at a height in the atmosphere that would allow them to listen for Soviet atomic tests.
The balloon crashes and some reporters are out sniffing around. Someone with loose lips lets slip that it was a flying saucer. You can imagine what the artist's rendition based on that description looked like.
Then, since the program was classified, the official explanation becomes that it was a weather balloon or something, and a conspiracy theory is born.
Not sure where your source comes from, but the term came into popular use in the year 1947.
It was most likely first used after Kenneth Arnold's famous report where he described a "saucer-like" shape. That story blew up, and people started reporting "flying saucers" everywhere.
It even got into the heads of some government officials. For example, the initial press release given by the airforce for the Roswell incident was that they had captured a "flying disc". They later made a correction that it was a weather balloon, but you can see how the government making such statements would cause confusion and add to the mania.
Arnold has suggested his original remarks to the press referred to the motion of a saucer skipping across water rather than the shape too; his original report showed a semicircular front and triangular tail
His measurements could’ve been wrong, it’s nearly impossible to accurately measure distance and size in the air, using a tachometer to estimate speed is rather inaccurate under best conditions.
In 1947 your cockpit would likely not even have a true airspeed indicator, there would be no ground speed indicators, no radar nor any other electro optical ranging devices.
Whilst not supersonic it’s quite possible that he could’ve encountered one of these too or another flying wing variant.
This quite frankly more plausible than aliens as an explanation, the time frame of the sighting matches the period
during which the USAF was exploring a lot of flying wing designs and that it was also the first time that jet powered aircraft began to appear and when turboprops were reaching nearly transonic speeded.
So overall it’s very likely that what he saw was an experimental aircraft that was much faster than any aircraft that he encountered in the past and the slightest of errors in the estimation of size and range would have pushed any airspeed calculation into the supersonic range.
It's a fascinating theory because according to the official documentation, the YB-49 didn't fly until later in the same year. Between the XB-35 and YB-35 and YB-49, there weren't supposed to have been nine operational units that could simultaneously fly in formation. (Although this picture shows exactly nine aircraft bodies that are in various states of conversion [0].) So for this not-totally-outlandish theory to be true, the U.S. military would need to have been aggressively developing and flying these planes beyond the level that they've publicly reported, and they would have to keep those unreported operations secret for an additional 73 years. Which is quite a conspiracy, and maybe even a more interesting one than "aliens".
But if you're in the mood for conspiracy theories, Wikipedia's description of the end of the XB/YB series is pretty surprising as well: "Only two months later, all Flying Wing contracts were canceled abruptly without explanation by order of Stuart Symington, Secretary of the Air Force. Shortly thereafter, also without explanation, Symington turned down a request from the Smithsonian for the Air Force to donate one of these big wings to its collection of pioneering Northrop aircraft. All remaining Flying Wing bomber airframes, except for the sole YRB-49A reconnaissance version, were ordered chopped up by Symington, the materials smelted down using portable smelters brought to Northrop's facility, in plain sight of its employees."
(The motivation for this is supposed to have been contract favoritism, but it looks a lot more exciting if you accept the idea that there was of still-secret-to-this-day unreported flight testing happening in 1947 :)
I dunno, the flying saucer / alien stuff is kind of fun to watch people go nuts over and pretty harmless. I think a Goodyear blimp was mistaken recently for aliens too:
I take the meaning to be "unidentified to the general public, perhaps identified or speculated about in classified reports that have not yet been shared with Congress".
People are expecting the opening of the alien archive, including desiccated grey bodies, weapons that shoot blue blobs of light and wormhole generators.
Obviously they shoot purple blobs of light, amateur!
Jokes aside, yeah... this. Out of curiosity in late December I joined the MUFON group on Facebook. Oh my. Oh, oh my.
It's certainly worth joining simply to look at if one has a Facebook account. I certainly expected a little bit of suspension of disbelief but, wow. While some of the posts are serious "what was this" you'll find that very quickly someone will post either a horrible photoshop job, or an actual valid UFO (often what appears to be a plane with landing lights on) and quickly in the comments you get people talking about the races of aliens that have come and visited them/abducted them/communicated telepathically with them.
They've been going on about this 180 days bit since it was discovered and I honestly just can't with some of the comments/claims.
The President should have leaned into this harder. It could have been a really nice distraction for all the nutty people to get angry about that would have no effect on the country.
It's perfectly on brand for him.
He could have 'blamed the deep state' and frankly thrown in all sorts of fantasies.
And then even if that playpen got knocked over, it wouldn't matter.
And honestly: who wouldn't vote for someone who promised to show you all those aliens that the government is hiding! Seriously!
Of course 'it should be serious' ... but the reality is that politics is 90% theatre, and the current President's primary skill is this arena: 'The Apprentice' is work of masterful reality TV fiction, that is passed of as 'reality'.
Here is an angle that he could have taken:
"When I first became President they showed me some things.
Very, very interesting things.
Things you wouldn't believe.
Crazy things, that have been going on for the last 100 years.
UFOs. Secret Wars. Weapons. China. Russia.
... and a lot more.
You wouldn't even believe me without the facts!
I said: 'The American people have a right to know!'
But they said: 'This is classified Mr. President, and it's too sensitive for them'.
They have blocked me the whole time!
They are so afraid that you might find out the Truth!
They have been covering up for decades!
You, the American people, have a right to know!
But they are going to do everything they can to stop me.
The bureaucrats. The hidden apparatus. The press. The Agencies.
They don't believe you can handle the truth, but I DO!
I'm the President, but I can tell you that I'm putting my life in danger by doing this.
They will stop at nothing to keep these secrets!
If you re-elect me, I'm going to declassify it.
All of it!
NO. MORE. SECRETS!
UFOs. The wars. The 'other species'. The other side of the moon. The spacecraft - I'm telling you all of it!
You have a right to know!
It's time for Real Freedom, America!"
...
So this is much better reality TV theatre because despite the fact there's some legitimacy to information clearing, it would be largely, politically benign.
But it plays right into a deeply held populist concern in America and that is of course 'all those secrets' and it's a non-partisan issue.
It also plays right into his 'Me vs. the Evil Bureaucracy' populist narrative.
It's the 'ultimate conspiracy' with Libertarian shades that even more serious, intellectual types can buy into on some level - I mean really who wouldn't want to see all those secrets?
It's very tantalizing I think to everyone.
Most importantly - it's not hateful or divisive - a more benign kind of snake oil.
Instead of 'Insurrection on Capitol Hill' - you get 'Insurrection at Area 51' - which is a nice place to keep the plebes occupied.
Maybe somebody here can help me understand what I saw a couple of years ago.
Basically, I saw what appeared to be two satellites on a collision course. One was bright and travelling across my FOV from left to right fairly slowly. Then another much dimmer and faster light appeared in the right of my FOV and appeared to be on a collision course.
At the moment of apparent collision (from my POV) they appeared to very rapidly orbit around each other some number of times, before continuing on their original course. I believe the dim one was moving more slowly than before, but I am unsure.
This happened around July of 2018 I believe. From lat,lon of about 49.25,-123.12 looking south at the night sky at about 45°.
My best guess is it was an optical illusion, the two satellites were at different altitude and only appeared to be on a collision course from my point of view. Some sort of lensing effect? I don't know.
Can't explain it for you, but I saw something vaguely similar to that 10-15 years ago a couple hours drive south of there. Two satellite-type objects traveling across the sky roughly parallel and then they shifted trajectories so they crossed paths several times. Very perplexing.
I go camping near the Minnesota/Canada boarder, usually without packing along any electronics or cell signal. (I have occasionally carried a telescope in) I think it was Memorial weekend, 2019, where I saw a string of unusual satellites. Not something I'd ever seen before -- and we were all laughing that here we were, seeing UFOs, and not a single one of us had a cell phone. We found out when we were home that they were the Starlink launch.
UFOs have been pretty scarce in that whole region. Closest well-known one seems to be the 1953 sighting by Air Force ground radar. AF scrambled a still-missing F89 Scorpion & pilot Felix Moncla - it disappeared just off the tip of northern Michigan.
That's part of US legal system which always amuses me.
I think it's forbidden to have a bill with different matters mixed by our (Russian) parlament's bylaws, and I was pretty sure that's a popular stipulation in many parlament systems
The signal/noise ratio has always of course been terrible when it comes to this area, and there are tons of obvious hoaxes, charlatans, mentally ill people, and plainly bone-headed claims. However, this film does a good job of sticking to solid evidence from the best sources like former nuclear launch officers and former senate leader harry reid. It also does a good job of reviewing incidents over recent years from which military footage was released. I reccommend it to anyone wanting a good overview up to late 2020.
Yes some of the same people (pilots, radio operators etc) where interviewed in The Fighter Pilot Podcast (which is awesome btw) and they came across very very well. The thing that I don't think the NYT story captured well was how long the incursions had been going on for (a few weeks), how wide (some where found on the East Coast also) and how many others had seen it (Mexico also picked it up).
Especially because it has to be unclassified: "We see things and sometimes we don't know what they are". And various other more complicated ways of saying that.
Our universe is huge. We dont even a number to describe the amount of planets out there.
If there is life on earth that come from a single cell organism, there will be millions of life forms that evolve.
Aliens is not fact more like a belief. I grew up with x-files so i want to believe.
If there are man made or alien made advanced crafts, governments and secret agencies in government will have vastly intelligence about them.
This is the interesting part and important part: if government approves that there are objects that uses technology and physics in different ways , this will challenge thousands of minds that will lead to disruption in the tech and physics.
The Agencies that are responsible in investigating/securing/storage/and study, operate outside the sphere of Government. Everything is on a need to know basis and even POTUS lacks the ability to access the information.
They shot down Clinton attempts and they will shoot down any other attempt from Government.
There are videos on Youtube of President Clinton discussing his requests concerning UFO's and how it didn't really go anywhere. Harry Reid (Former House Minority leader) also discusses at length the abundance of information that is kept secret and how even the President doesn't have access to it.
I'm not making it up, just repeating what these folks are saying. There are countless interviews of Government officials (Senators, Congressional members) basically being told to fuck off when looking for answers or information.
Why not educate yourself and instead of dismissing them as nonsense.
Because even 10 years ago there were hand held jet drones that could do everything and more than any grainy UFO footage. All UFO footage is merely tech that the authorities at the time hadn't been able to label at the time.
I don't talk about my singular UFO experience too often. Last time was 2013, so I guess I'm due again.
It was spring break, 1996. I drove down from Sonoma State University to Orange County. From there me, my best friend from 1st grade, his highschool crush Angie (who awkwardly had a crush on me) and her younger sister Psyge (damn hippies) go to the grand canyon (another undocumented adventure). We are on our way back and stop at a diner near Joshua Tree. We drive under an hour from there and randomly pick a spot to drive off the freeway (just past Wiley's Well Rest Area off the 10fwy) and set up camp again. We have no drugs, no alcohol, and have spent a number of days together in campsites and hotels and are still in a rather good mood. It gets dark and gets a little cold. We have a raging fire. We are playing truth or dare. I pretend to throw an earring into the fire (I had dropped it in a safe edge of the fire pit where it wouldn't get hurt, with a bit of sleight of hand) and we're all abuzz about how I just destroyed Angie's nice earring and ruined the set. Then I look up. There are lights on, what appears to be, the bottom of a craft. It's floating toward us from far away, but something doesn't look right. We think there's an airbase nearby because of all the planes/helicopters flying over a ridge (across the highway and in the distance over 20 miles away) during the daytime, which is still visible by moonlight. This thing is heading from another distant place, toward the ridge (and ostensibly to the ocean). This is going to pass over us along it's path. We can't tell what it is. We can't tell if it's a formation of multiple things or 1 thing...it can't be one thing. This thing might be big. Like a building, big. Nothing appears that big unless you're really close. It must be really really low to appear that big, or it would have to be unimaginably massive. We tend the fire down and turn off the music blaring from the car, for better vision and out of nervousness. It flies near and then directly over us, blocking out the stars. A couple city blocks worth of stars are eclipsed by this silent black triangle. Even at a couple thousand feet, it's unimaginably sized. The only thing comparably massive I have seen is a cruise ship and this was bigger than The Angels Baseball Stadium. Dead silently, it floats over the highway and on toward the far ridge. Traditional craft (copters and/or planes) come from the same direction the UFO came from and along the same path toward the ridge and craft, then the UFO's lights start to move and it's tilting and then folding in a way that should not be possible, but it's just too far to make out at this point. Then the lights and shadow disappear behind the far ridge. Similar reports of what I saw (although not identical) can be found:
Back in 2001 there were still sites listing the other sightings of the same thing (and other unusual things) seen @ Joshua Tree around that time. Many of those accounts seem to have been lost to web-rot, some are featured on various Alien Encounters video trash.
Interestingly, a boeing employee posted (on some random site) about stealth blimps that the US was developing, in secret, in violation of a stealth-tech non-proliferation treaty. One of the prototypes was a massive triangular blimp (there's a site now: http://www.thestealthblimp.com/). This is likely what my friends and I saw. I never once believed it to be some sort of alien craft, but it did disturb me for awhile.
How about 25 years ago of an object zipping across the night sky at lightning speed and hopping around like a ping pong ball? To me it wasn't a drone or anything real or tangible at all. For me, it was most likely to be a projection that looked like something solid in the sky.
Exactly how far and how fast? No. Just like you can’t know exactly how far or how fast a plane or a bird is. But I guarantee you that it didn’t move like anything else I’ve ever seen in the sky. As far as how it looked, nondescript, like a star.
