The NY Times Headline is much more informative and interesting:
> U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out, Either
Sub header:
> A new report concedes that much about the observed phenomena remains difficult to explain, including their acceleration, as well as ability to change direction and submerge.
Those descriptions are a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government.
The purpose of the report is not to conclude whether any of this unexplained behaviour is due to alien craft. The purpose is to get the information out, stop pretending it doesn't exist, and provide a platform to move forward without the lies and the coverups. At least, that's what I gathered. Whether they actually manage to do that remains to be seen. It's already been a shocking past few years in terms of what has been admitted to and reported.
We already have the navy on record validating the authenticity of some of the footage, combined with multi-sensor data and eye witness reports indicating something very strange is going on. We also have several government officials who are on record that they are genuinely concerned. What we need now is transparency so that a multiple discipline, open investigation can be carried out publicly without stonewalling and obfuscation.
They exist. They are real. They aren't ours. They aren't an adversary's, because a) the military would never admit it if that were possible and b) if it were the case the adversary would have already taken over the world.
There's no evidence they were made by aliens, leprechauns, or ghosts. But there's evidence they were made. Not that they are swamp gas or funny clouds. So lets get past that, and realize there's something seriously insane going on, and it implies there is, or was, a capacity for non-natural creation + engineering by non-humans.
My 2c is extra-terrestrial civ is less likely than co-terrestrial civ (subterrainean/ocean) - but lets stop talking about this like they are hallucinations or possible atmospheric phenomenon.
> My 2c is extra-terrestrial civ is less likely than co-terrestrial civ (subterrainean/ocean) - but lets stop talking about this like they are hallucinations or possible atmospheric phenomenon.
Why?
This whole thing reminds me a bit of the "Havana Syndrome", in that:
- It's an extraordinary claim, presented with limited evidence.
- It defies obvious logical explanation (i.e., a motive).
- The phenomenon lacks a clear definition, leaving the door open for multiple disparate phenomena with different causes to be lumped together.
I believe the third aspect is really underemphasized as a causal factor in "hard to explain" phenomena: because this may in fact be multiple different phenomena, with different causes, it's likely that any single mundane explanation does not explain all observations, and thus appears to be a weaker explanation than it is.
This is sort of a "defender's dilemma" of strange phenomena: if you can't explain all of them, you appear to be unable to explain them. But because of the aforementioned definitional problem, that's not necessarily a surprising or meaningful thing.
To your specific point: the idea of a co-terrestrial civilization is extraordinary. I struggle to imagine the only evidence would be a few spurious radar signatures and odd videos.
"Self-replicating probes could exhaustively explore a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as a million years" - Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox]
The possibility of these things being extraterrestrial in origin does not seem that farfetched, honestly. If you assume something like a Von Neumann probe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...] to be possible (and I totally think one day we would make those), then the idea that someone else has already made one an that they are sitting around watching us, is not something that should be so easily dismissed.
No telling what these are, but I think the people assuming that some how human visual confirmation, video confirmation, multiple radar confirmation (on ship and in air), as well as Infrared confirmation of the same should shut up the "it's a camera artifact" or "sailor spinning tales" folks. Anyone care to do the math on how such a byzantine fault tolerant system could fail in so many different distinct cases over the last decade?
> They exist. They are real. They aren't ours. They aren't an adversary's, because a) the military would never admit it if that were possible and b) if it were the case the adversary would have already taken over the world.
can't speak to a), but as for b), it is possible that what they are and what they appear to be are very different things. Imagine, say, a drone swarm with a very flat profile that could turn their surfaces towards a target and tighten up to present a radar cross section and become highly visible, but could flip to an edge-on position and disperse to disappear to both eyes and instruments. Two such swarms could easily mimic an instantaneous movement over a large distance, among other effects.
In other words, they might be moderately more advanced technology masquerading as ludicrously more advanced technology, presenting the appearance of a threat far greater than their inventors can actually produce.
Is there? Everyone is overlooking the possibility that these 'crafts' are the aliens. They need not even be intelligent. If something evolved to overcome gravitation it would make sense that it did so in an environment where this was necessary for survival. What we think of as advanced technology might, in the context of living near a black hole, simply be the equivalent of evolving a first primitive method of propulsion, like a fin.
Co-terrestrial civilization is interesting, but it's difficult to understand how there would be no physical evidence.
The ocean would be most likely (subterranean would be much more visible for any access points, by satellite and land-mapping LIDAR, or seismographs detecting underground industrial activity). But we get detritus washing up all the time on shores; for example, Japanese debris from the earthquake landed on western North American shores.
How does an aquatic super-civilization exist for hundreds (presumably thousands) of years with absolutely zero debris arriving on shores, or any evidence of mining or other industrial activity that would be required?
Interstellar seems more likely but of course we have the challenges of time and distance to explain.
A terrestrial adversary could be prepping the battlefield. They supposedly submerge under water, so maybe they are just carry supplies close to our coasts or they are building something. They could also just be prepping a contingency plan that they don't plan to enact unless a war starts between the US and them.
>Senior US administration officials briefed on the findings of the report said that the majority of more than 120 incidents over the past 20 years did not derive from any US military or other advanced US government technology, according to The New York Times.
So they have no evidence that it's aliens, no evidence that it's US military technology, and no evidence that it's foreign technology. In other words nothing new has been discovered and we're still at square 1. Not really news, but I guess it's good to keep us updated.
The NYT article on the same topic includes this bit as well:
> In one encounter, strange objects — one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind — appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast.
I don't place a lot of trust into reports from a single pilot out at sea because of how widespread and wacky some visual phenomenon can look to the naked eye (and even to some sensory systems). Even two pilots in separate crafts might see the same illusion. In many ways these are similar to the old fuzzy images of UFOs from fifty years ago - irreproducible results inhibit real science.
But with something this consistently observable, this close to a major metropolitan area, I'm genuinely surprised that more military or research crafts weren't sent to observe. With the full weight of the intelligence and scientific community on this - we could at least rule out some of the hypotheses.
Not all the observations are explainable. However, if you take away one observation -- the claims about high-g acceleration and supersonic flight -- the following seems to fit: battery powered drones with regular (possibly quad) rotors, sea-launched (possibly from vessels disguised as merchant vessels) by a foreign power to observe US military.
This would explain: FLIR footage and close range radar, but no contact on long range radar. Would also explain why primarily Navy pilots have observed these objects while commercial pilots don't, and why they seem to be seldom seen over land. Also explains why all the sightings seem to be around the continental US. Also explains the lack of exhaust plumes. Also explains the lack of sonic booms (I know of no way a solid object could cross the sound barrier without a boom). Multiple such drones might also explain why they appear to travel faster than the fighters -- perhaps they are observing two identical craft.
All one has to do is discount the high-g claims as embellishment by pilots. I could be wrong, but I know of no way to account for all the observations.
It is hard for me to believe that modern radar systems would have any problems with tracking such drones. And one of the bizarre features of those UAP is that they appear and disappear from radar system suddenly so it is impossible to track their origin or final destination.
They seem associated with the ocean as well, many reports of the craft originating or disappearing into the ocean ("transmedium" vehicles).
Is it possible that there's some form of life that originates in the ocean, has evolved intelligence that is in a totally different paradigm than us, and this is their equivalent of going to "space"?
It makes sense in the macro-sense as well as we're very lucky to not be a water world in the habitable zone. Life evolved in the oceans far earlier than on land and we know very little about the ocean due to it's large size.
All the mealy UFO chatter (months of it!) makes me wonder if its just a big PR campaign to convince military people to actually report oddities. Maybe they [military] don't want to be seen as dumb for seeing something they can't explain, so they don't report possible foreign spy drones enough. So now the gov has to literally to psyop everyone into caring so the troops finally report sightings they can't explain.
Imagine the latest US military drone tech testing their drones by sending them over other US bases and doing weird stuff, flashing lights, making crazy patterns, etc, hoping for a funny report. But then: The base never reports anything. So the drone team has to go "oh crap, what else don't they notice?"
So to save face the gov launches a huge PR campaign saying "GUYS UFOS ARE REAL AND WE TAKE THEM VERY SERIOUSLY [so if you're in the air force please report when you see a weird light, thanks]"
(I have absolutely no evidence that this is remotely true)
For some reason all the news reporting I’ve seen about it breathlessly insinuates aliens without actually saying that because they’d be legitimately ridiculed. Alluding to it though brings in more viewers. Kind of disgusting.
I've heard a lot of credulous people describing these reports as proof of aliens. To me the idea that aliens exist is unsurprising, but aliens being here would imply FTL is possible, and that would be a huge discovery!
There are literally millions of people who expected this to be the big reveal about aliens. It's crazy how the US military has been teasing the UFO community during the last few years.
That’s how I interpret it. But I guess other people choose to interpret it as ‘little green men’. That makes it hard to investigate without ridicule. So maybe the name change is all about being able to do that?
In terms of hollywood and pop culture, UFO 100% means alien. It's a great example of a piece of niche jargon getting a non-niche meaning, which ends up kinda taking over the word.
Because it is an outstanding topic, coming from the highest government places. That is indeed interesting. No reason to bring your negative vibes in here.
Someone on reddit a while back asked how come UFO pics and video are always so shaky and blurry. The answer of course is that if it was high res and steady cam we'd quickly be able to identify what it was so it stops being a UFO.
It's kinda like asking how come all the cars in the scrap yard have been in accidents.
Different teams within government often don't know what each other are doing. If there's a relative difference in both security clearance AND organization goals, there are very likely to be projects that will never be connected to phenomena. eg Drone Mesh network testing over naval ships or Stealth-Treaty-breaking experimental craft that are being developed nonetheless.
NASA literally spends Billions annually trying to find poop of single celled organism which might have existed eons ago in another plant, That's why it's hard for me to buy the U.S. Govt. covering up 'alien' story.
I wonder if we get good data in the report. The flybys of U.S. Navy ships had to have produced lots of sensor data. In particular, synchronized radar data, or electro-optical data if we're really lucky, from several ships in a task group would resolve many ambiguities. Most positional illusions break down when seen from multiple viewpoints.
Some of this stuff suggests someone fooling around with drones. But whose drones?
Once it is granted that the objects and their detectable properties are real, and not illusions, there are really only a few possibilities.
1) Advanced and highly secretive technology developed by some government.
2) The same, but by a group within our own government, but off-budget and highly secret (think NSA in the bad old days when it didn't officially exist).
3) The same, but by a non-governmental group of industrialists or similar, but still terrestrial.
4) Aliens
Given the occurrence of these phenomena around military deployments, bases, and nuclear facilities, my money's on #1.
Defaulting to aliens seems attractive to those who presume the technology is too advanced, seemingly violating the laws of physics, and thus an exotic explanation is required. This is illogical.
If the objects are real, and (big) if they are violating the laws of physics as we know them, that means that our understanding of physics needs to be revised. Physics is physics. Explaining it as "aliens" doesn't explain anything. If the physics is wrong (or rather, incomplete, which we already know is the case), then there is no reason to presume that some terrestrial group would be incapable of making and leveraging discoveries that would enable it to create these craft/drones.
We are not lacking in historical examples of tremendous technical advances far outpacing the current understanding. Germany, during WWII, made tremendous advances with the jet engine and in rocketry, even in robotic analog guidance systems, that shocked the scientists in the US. To this day, much of what we acquired with Operation Paperclip is still classified. Why? I'm not going to speculate, but there must be a reason we still don't know what all was acquired from the Germans by the US and Russia.
The same thing could happen again. If new physical principles were, at some point, discovered, leveraged, and developed by some group (governmental or otherwise), they have had quite a few decades to improve on it. Think about how far technology and materials science has come in the public arena in the last 50 years. Add in some exotic discoveries, and some group with the resources to leverage them, and a terrestrial explanation becomes quite plausible. No aliens required.
Weird how aliens always show up around USG locations and vehicles. All the land mass in the world and some how it's always around the super militarized North America.
My biggest question when I see statements about these UFOs being aliens is “Where is the mother ship”?
The constraints on something built to operate in the Earth’s atmosphere are much different than a ship that can actually cross interstellar distances.
So if we are seeing the equivalent of alien fighters (small, fast, highly maneuverable) there should also be the equivalent of an aircraft carrier which provides the long distance transport and logistics for these fighters.
[+] [-] king_magic|4 years ago|reply
> U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out, Either
Sub header:
> A new report concedes that much about the observed phenomena remains difficult to explain, including their acceleration, as well as ability to change direction and submerge.
Those descriptions are a tectonic shift on the topic from the US government.
[+] [-] tejohnso|4 years ago|reply
We already have the navy on record validating the authenticity of some of the footage, combined with multi-sensor data and eye witness reports indicating something very strange is going on. We also have several government officials who are on record that they are genuinely concerned. What we need now is transparency so that a multiple discipline, open investigation can be carried out publicly without stonewalling and obfuscation.
[+] [-] gfodor|4 years ago|reply
There's no evidence they were made by aliens, leprechauns, or ghosts. But there's evidence they were made. Not that they are swamp gas or funny clouds. So lets get past that, and realize there's something seriously insane going on, and it implies there is, or was, a capacity for non-natural creation + engineering by non-humans.
My 2c is extra-terrestrial civ is less likely than co-terrestrial civ (subterrainean/ocean) - but lets stop talking about this like they are hallucinations or possible atmospheric phenomenon.
[+] [-] md_|4 years ago|reply
Why?
This whole thing reminds me a bit of the "Havana Syndrome", in that:
- It's an extraordinary claim, presented with limited evidence.
- It defies obvious logical explanation (i.e., a motive).
- The phenomenon lacks a clear definition, leaving the door open for multiple disparate phenomena with different causes to be lumped together.
I believe the third aspect is really underemphasized as a causal factor in "hard to explain" phenomena: because this may in fact be multiple different phenomena, with different causes, it's likely that any single mundane explanation does not explain all observations, and thus appears to be a weaker explanation than it is.
This is sort of a "defender's dilemma" of strange phenomena: if you can't explain all of them, you appear to be unable to explain them. But because of the aforementioned definitional problem, that's not necessarily a surprising or meaningful thing.
To your specific point: the idea of a co-terrestrial civilization is extraordinary. I struggle to imagine the only evidence would be a few spurious radar signatures and odd videos.
[+] [-] walexander|4 years ago|reply
The possibility of these things being extraterrestrial in origin does not seem that farfetched, honestly. If you assume something like a Von Neumann probe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...] to be possible (and I totally think one day we would make those), then the idea that someone else has already made one an that they are sitting around watching us, is not something that should be so easily dismissed.
No telling what these are, but I think the people assuming that some how human visual confirmation, video confirmation, multiple radar confirmation (on ship and in air), as well as Infrared confirmation of the same should shut up the "it's a camera artifact" or "sailor spinning tales" folks. Anyone care to do the math on how such a byzantine fault tolerant system could fail in so many different distinct cases over the last decade?
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|4 years ago|reply
can't speak to a), but as for b), it is possible that what they are and what they appear to be are very different things. Imagine, say, a drone swarm with a very flat profile that could turn their surfaces towards a target and tighten up to present a radar cross section and become highly visible, but could flip to an edge-on position and disperse to disappear to both eyes and instruments. Two such swarms could easily mimic an instantaneous movement over a large distance, among other effects.
In other words, they might be moderately more advanced technology masquerading as ludicrously more advanced technology, presenting the appearance of a threat far greater than their inventors can actually produce.
[+] [-] noodles_nomore|4 years ago|reply
Is there? Everyone is overlooking the possibility that these 'crafts' are the aliens. They need not even be intelligent. If something evolved to overcome gravitation it would make sense that it did so in an environment where this was necessary for survival. What we think of as advanced technology might, in the context of living near a black hole, simply be the equivalent of evolving a first primitive method of propulsion, like a fin.
[+] [-] mediaman|4 years ago|reply
The ocean would be most likely (subterranean would be much more visible for any access points, by satellite and land-mapping LIDAR, or seismographs detecting underground industrial activity). But we get detritus washing up all the time on shores; for example, Japanese debris from the earthquake landed on western North American shores.
How does an aquatic super-civilization exist for hundreds (presumably thousands) of years with absolutely zero debris arriving on shores, or any evidence of mining or other industrial activity that would be required?
Interstellar seems more likely but of course we have the challenges of time and distance to explain.
[+] [-] booleandilemma|4 years ago|reply
Strong words for what’s essentially a blurry black dot on a grainy black and white video.
It’s 2021, until we see a clear video of an actual vehicle that looks like something other than a blurry smudge I’m not believing anything.
[+] [-] bostonsre|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meowster|4 years ago|reply
Maybe they're happy with the status quo. Or maybe it's a benevolant group (not anyone's adversary).
Or maybe it's ours (the U.S.) and it's being released this way as to pretend it's not ours.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] swebs|4 years ago|reply
So they have no evidence that it's aliens, no evidence that it's US military technology, and no evidence that it's foreign technology. In other words nothing new has been discovered and we're still at square 1. Not really news, but I guess it's good to keep us updated.
[+] [-] icyfox|4 years ago|reply
> In one encounter, strange objects — one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind — appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast.
I don't place a lot of trust into reports from a single pilot out at sea because of how widespread and wacky some visual phenomenon can look to the naked eye (and even to some sensory systems). Even two pilots in separate crafts might see the same illusion. In many ways these are similar to the old fuzzy images of UFOs from fifty years ago - irreproducible results inhibit real science.
But with something this consistently observable, this close to a major metropolitan area, I'm genuinely surprised that more military or research crafts weren't sent to observe. With the full weight of the intelligence and scientific community on this - we could at least rule out some of the hypotheses.
[+] [-] hliyan|4 years ago|reply
This would explain: FLIR footage and close range radar, but no contact on long range radar. Would also explain why primarily Navy pilots have observed these objects while commercial pilots don't, and why they seem to be seldom seen over land. Also explains why all the sightings seem to be around the continental US. Also explains the lack of exhaust plumes. Also explains the lack of sonic booms (I know of no way a solid object could cross the sound barrier without a boom). Multiple such drones might also explain why they appear to travel faster than the fighters -- perhaps they are observing two identical craft.
All one has to do is discount the high-g claims as embellishment by pilots. I could be wrong, but I know of no way to account for all the observations.
[+] [-] superfist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spideymans|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radicaldreamer|4 years ago|reply
Is it possible that there's some form of life that originates in the ocean, has evolved intelligence that is in a totally different paradigm than us, and this is their equivalent of going to "space"?
It makes sense in the macro-sense as well as we're very lucky to not be a water world in the habitable zone. Life evolved in the oceans far earlier than on land and we know very little about the ocean due to it's large size.
[+] [-] simonsarris|4 years ago|reply
Imagine the latest US military drone tech testing their drones by sending them over other US bases and doing weird stuff, flashing lights, making crazy patterns, etc, hoping for a funny report. But then: The base never reports anything. So the drone team has to go "oh crap, what else don't they notice?"
So to save face the gov launches a huge PR campaign saying "GUYS UFOS ARE REAL AND WE TAKE THEM VERY SERIOUSLY [so if you're in the air force please report when you see a weird light, thanks]"
(I have absolutely no evidence that this is remotely true)
[+] [-] babelfish|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 6gvONxR4sf7o|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tangy_fluid|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OldGoodNewBad|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ngoldbaum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sliq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwkoss|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brundolf|4 years ago|reply
Maybe this is just so unavoidable as a marketing/PR strategy these days that even the military feels compelled to participate?
[+] [-] hbosch|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] starkd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weego|4 years ago|reply
Someone on reddit a while back asked how come UFO pics and video are always so shaky and blurry. The answer of course is that if it was high res and steady cam we'd quickly be able to identify what it was so it stops being a UFO.
It's kinda like asking how come all the cars in the scrap yard have been in accidents.
[+] [-] Supermancho|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] UncleOxidant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swader999|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliekelly|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notJim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Abishek_Muthian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] firefoxd|4 years ago|reply
It's just bokeh:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2oaQWmqkk
[+] [-] Animats|4 years ago|reply
Some of this stuff suggests someone fooling around with drones. But whose drones?
[+] [-] teilo|4 years ago|reply
1) Advanced and highly secretive technology developed by some government. 2) The same, but by a group within our own government, but off-budget and highly secret (think NSA in the bad old days when it didn't officially exist). 3) The same, but by a non-governmental group of industrialists or similar, but still terrestrial. 4) Aliens
Given the occurrence of these phenomena around military deployments, bases, and nuclear facilities, my money's on #1.
Defaulting to aliens seems attractive to those who presume the technology is too advanced, seemingly violating the laws of physics, and thus an exotic explanation is required. This is illogical.
If the objects are real, and (big) if they are violating the laws of physics as we know them, that means that our understanding of physics needs to be revised. Physics is physics. Explaining it as "aliens" doesn't explain anything. If the physics is wrong (or rather, incomplete, which we already know is the case), then there is no reason to presume that some terrestrial group would be incapable of making and leveraging discoveries that would enable it to create these craft/drones.
We are not lacking in historical examples of tremendous technical advances far outpacing the current understanding. Germany, during WWII, made tremendous advances with the jet engine and in rocketry, even in robotic analog guidance systems, that shocked the scientists in the US. To this day, much of what we acquired with Operation Paperclip is still classified. Why? I'm not going to speculate, but there must be a reason we still don't know what all was acquired from the Germans by the US and Russia.
The same thing could happen again. If new physical principles were, at some point, discovered, leveraged, and developed by some group (governmental or otherwise), they have had quite a few decades to improve on it. Think about how far technology and materials science has come in the public arena in the last 50 years. Add in some exotic discoveries, and some group with the resources to leverage them, and a terrestrial explanation becomes quite plausible. No aliens required.
[+] [-] Udik|4 years ago|reply
The fact that it says that (at least some) encounters did actually occur and that they cannot be explained is already some news.
[+] [-] notional|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|4 years ago|reply
The constraints on something built to operate in the Earth’s atmosphere are much different than a ship that can actually cross interstellar distances.
So if we are seeing the equivalent of alien fighters (small, fast, highly maneuverable) there should also be the equivalent of an aircraft carrier which provides the long distance transport and logistics for these fighters.
[+] [-] booleandilemma|4 years ago|reply
If so, what the heck are they seeing out there?
Have other country’s militaries reported seeing anything?