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The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

nytimes.com

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Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#141

Post by glenstein »

frankquist wrote: post #71
volgo wrote: post #56

IMO, the fishy part of the article is the cronyism involved in this program: "The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entreprene…

Say that you are interested in investigating puzzling phenomena, and you have the money. What more logical step is there than to approach your senate majority leader friend? Such oddball connections are probably the only the way such a program would ever get funded. Edit: well, obviously he didn't have the money. Misspoke. I meant the means (a company with the required infrastructure).

For me, the logical next stop would be to pause and think very long and very hard about why the subject isn't treated as legitimate by mainstream science.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#142

Post by valuearb »

“The Pentagon quietly ran a $22 million program to study unidentified flying objects from 2008 to 2012 at the behest of former Senator Harry Reid, the New York Times reported on Saturday, after considering numerous accounts of unexplained phenomena that could involve advanced technology developed by foreign governments or even aliens dropping in to spy on our crapsack world. For years, this program had federal contractors scurrying around trying to identify unexplained phenomena like Mulder and Scully instead of developing new and innovative ways to kill people.

The unclassified but secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was funded $22 million from 2008 to 2011, with the vast majority of the funding going to Bigelow Airspace. That’s a company conveniently owned by one of Reid’s friends and donors, Robert Bigelow”

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#143

Post by eplanit »

frankquist wrote: post #71
volgo wrote: post #56

IMO, the fishy part of the article is the cronyism involved in this program: "The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entreprene…

Say that you are interested in investigating puzzling phenomena, and you have the money. What more logical step is there than to approach your senate majority leader friend? Such oddball connections are probably the only the way such a program would ever get funded. Edit: well, obviously he didn't have the money. Misspoke. I meant the means (a company with the required infrastructure).

Or, say you are a major donor to your senate majority leader friend. What more logical step than the senate majority leader getting millions of taxpayer dollars funneled to your company to investigate puzzling phenomena. With your income increased, you're more able to keep donating to the friend in the senate.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#144

Post by avenoir »

My grandmother's sister was married to a man who served as Captain of the 1st rank on a nuclear submarine in the Soviet and maybe even Russian Navy (I don't know exactly when he retired). As I found out later in life, he was also one of the liquidators of Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the effects of which ultimately led to his early death in early 2000s. I know for sure he already retired from military by mid 90s when I was about 10 or 11. Right around that time, me and my pops used to visit them in Moscow on just about every summer break and I remember during one of our stays with his family my dad asked him about this particular subject. His response is something I still remember word-for-word which would translate roughly to "We know they exist. There are people (in the government) working on this. I don't know anything more and this is all i can tell you." I'm not trying to make any conclusions here or get ridiculed. Just sharing something that came from a man who must've had a pretty high clearance in Soviet military. Or maybe he was just trolling us lol

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#145

Post by swendoog »

From the article:

"A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered"

Wait, what? What are the "technologies discovered"?

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#146

Post by pfisch »

krapp wrote: post #115
fapjacks wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To deny that something unexplainable has been happening in the skies is really disingenuous. We have very expert, specialist organizations whose primary responsibility it is to know what's happening in our skies. You take these two things and remove the context of "UFOs" and suddenly it's not crazy that they're doing something about it, but crazy that they're not doing something about it. The context of "UFOs" is lad…

Robert Bigelow doesn't believe "something unexplainable" has been happening in our skies - he believes the explanation for those things is alien spacecraft. He isn't interested in seaching for truth, he has an agenda. It's also disingenuous to skip over more plausible explanations, including hoaxes, the memetic effect of UFO culture, classified military aircraft and disinformation campaigns, and misidentification of…

This is not a hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Ai...

I'm not saying it was an alien craft, but there are a limited number of plausible explanations for an event like this and none of what you listed is a plausible explanation.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#147

Post by vadimberman »

volgo wrote: post #56

IMO, the fishy part of the article is the cronyism involved in this program: "The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entreprene…

This.

Also, may I add, what was the aerospace research company paid for exactly? Wasn't the project just filing reports and talking to people?

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#148

Post by deepnotderp »

jorblumesea wrote: post #83

The fact that the military is not concerned is the most telling sign. In many ways the military would rather you believe in flying saucers instead of looking for black projects and it's suspected that the original UFO myths were perpetrated by the government to cover up top secret aircraft development. Had someone seen the SR-71 in the 70s, it would have been considered a UFO or "alien technology" because it was so a…

Honestly after seeing the crazy stuff the Su 47 Berkut is capable of, I'm almost certain half of these things are just experimental drones.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#149

Post by vadimberman »

api wrote: post #77
gfodor wrote: post #50

It's been pretty clear for some time now for those who study the facts that there is a very good chance there are real objects in the sky that maneuver in ways that conventional aircraft are unable to and cannot be explained adequately as other observed phenomenon. The taboo around this subject due to the common hypothesis they are due to extraterrestrials is a shame because there's been plenty of documented evidence…

Part of the problem is all the crazy mythology around the subject. But strip that off and it has always seemed to me that there is an interesting residue of facts. It's not enough to prove anything but it's enough to be intriguing. One possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that they are here but are just not making overt obvious contact. If this were true we'd probably be talking about a "post-singularity" super in…

> One possible answer to the Fermi paradox is that they are here but are just not making overt obvious contact

Exactly.

There's simply no reason to, except maybe sheer curiosity or some legal issues. What would we want from an uncontacted Amazonian tribe?

But even if they wanted, from the political point of view, who would you even talk to? People of the planet Earth, bypassing their governments? Every government of every country?

Plus, what about the possible social upheaval? They would be guilty.

No matter how you spin it, it's more trouble than it's worth. It is, however, essential to keep a potential competitor under surveillance, especially when they are rapidly developing.

Being spotted though, that I find improbable. There are numerous ways we could eliminate signs of contact with a society at the level of, say, X century, and that's just one thousand years gap. With a greater gap, it would probably be like competing with wild baboons over a Nobel prize.

Re: The Pentagon’s U.F.O. Program

#150

Post by kevinskii »

avenoir wrote: post #144

My grandmother's sister was married to a man who served as Captain of the 1st rank on a nuclear submarine in the Soviet and maybe even Russian Navy (I don't know exactly when he retired). As I found out later in life, he was also one of the liquidators of Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the effects of which ultimately led to his early death in early 2000s. I know for sure he already retired from military by mid 90s when…

When I was in submarine sonar school, one of my instructors claimed to have heard sounds under the sea that were not of this world. He said that they made him believe in alien visitation.

In the many years and countless thousands of miles of voyages that followed, I never heard a goddamned thing. Oh well.

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