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What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

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Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#91

Post by kenneth »

remir wrote: post #64
SteveNuts wrote: post #5

My guess is it's the US military projecting. They've almost certainly got covert flying vehicles cruising around so naturally they'd want to know about any sightings of their own craft, or an enemy doing the same thing in the airspace. What better way to gauge how well the tech is working than by crowdsourcing the sightings?

There have been reports of UFO sightings for 50+ years. This is not a new phenomenon. There were reports of UFOs during WW2 (so called Foo Fighters). If this existed during WW2 it means it started development way before that. The implications that such level of technological advancement was available at that time, and is still under active funding and development today doesn't add up.

UFOs aren't all the same. Each sighting could be something different. A UFO just means "unidentified" — what might be flying unidentified today is very different from 50 years ago, given the technological advancement since.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#92

Post by jcranmer »

colordrops wrote: post #28
hiccuphippo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why keep it a secret? If we somehow where able to meet humans with a technology level below ours, wouldn't it make sense to give them technology to better themselves?

When has the human instinct ever been to give away an advantage over others?

Judging by the number of times people have tried and failed to prevent knowledge of "advanced weapons" from leaking... pretty much all of human history.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#93

Post by rl3 »

remir wrote: post #64
SteveNuts wrote: post #5

My guess is it's the US military projecting. They've almost certainly got covert flying vehicles cruising around so naturally they'd want to know about any sightings of their own craft, or an enemy doing the same thing in the airspace. What better way to gauge how well the tech is working than by crowdsourcing the sightings?

There have been reports of UFO sightings for 50+ years. This is not a new phenomenon. There were reports of UFOs during WW2 (so called Foo Fighters). If this existed during WW2 it means it started development way before that. The implications that such level of technological advancement was available at that time, and is still under active funding and development today doesn't add up.

>If this existed during WW2 it means it started development way before that. The implications that such level of technological advancement was available at that time, and is still under active funding and development today doesn't add up.

I tend to agree it doesn't fit, but one way of looking at it is, even if highly improbable: the fundamental physics breakthroughs were made back then, and ever since the craft have been updated with modern avionics and electronics suites.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#94

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

remir wrote: post #49
hiccuphippo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why keep it a secret? If we somehow where able to meet humans with a technology level below ours, wouldn't it make sense to give them technology to better themselves?

Why would you give powerful and highly advanced technology to a race that is constantly fighting itself and doesn't value its native environment enough to protect it?

At least we recognize it? If there are other sentient races like ours, who's to say we aren't the best off? There's a lot of ways that races like ours can fall off the deep end (such as an actual all-out nuclear war), but it could also be possible that we're the worst off, too. Some people care about the environment, but it's hard to get started and become civilized without pollution and deforestation and all the other things that come with needing fuel- England could very well have run out of trees at some point had they not gone "oh, this is bad, let's fix this". One cannot expect the first version of an air conditioner to be 100% efficient and not leak refrigerant into the atmosphere, but over time, because of it, we have the basis for being able to send food across the entire world and populate it (at a cost [1]). We, as a race, also have the basis for very efficient power generation, in the form of nuclear reactors (my favorite kind, uranium salt, can run for a long time and are much more efficient than light water ones are, not to mention less polluting, and its failure mode is much less spectacular- they just didn’t get developed, unfortunately). As far as it goes, we’ve done pretty well, but there is, as always, room for improvement.

[1] Such as Hawaii, where everything is slightly more expensive.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#95

Post by everdev »

themagician wrote: post #67
dontbenebby wrote: post #61

My favorite conspiracy theory (emphasis on theory, this is pure speculation) is they're Chinese drones. The logic basically goes that 3M accidentally created a force field[1] in a factory[2], factories are mostly in China now, so if "running a factory" leads to antigravity tech, China would be the ones to develop it. As much as "I want to believe", if it's true they're not American, it's quite possible they're not al…

“I've noticed a weird kind of racism in some folks who talk about China: they simultaneously think they'll conquer the world and that they can't invent technology on their own.” That’s just normal racism. Mexicans are too lazy to work, but come here and steal our jobs. Muslims come here to force Sharia Law on everyone, but fail to integrate and keep to themselves. Illegals are using public services for free, but pay…

Any blanket criticism of millions or billions of people is bound to be highly inaccurate and also have some non zero degree of accuracy just due to the sheer numbers of people and how common these traits are in any population.

Racism is taking the non-zero existence of a complaint and extrapolating it to the broader population without caring to get to know the individual people.

Unfortunately, it was probably an evolutionary survival technique that worked thousands of years ago but has pretty disastrous consequences today.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#96

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

georgespencer wrote: post #10
mrob wrote: post #6

"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.

See also Hitchens' razor: "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Have you considered Kitchen's sink? "I wash my hands of this matter."

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#97

Post by colordrops »

jcranmer wrote: post #92
colordrops wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has the human instinct ever been to give away an advantage over others?

Judging by the number of times people have tried and failed to prevent knowledge of "advanced weapons" from leaking... pretty much all of human history.

leaking != giving away

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#98

Post by jvanderbot »

runjake wrote: post #74
jvanderbot wrote: post #68

Having dealt with some of these systems, let me tell you up front, its entirely possible it's nothing. I've seen tracks like those suggested in the article pass directly overhead support vessels during maneuvers, and theres nothing there. It can happen a few times a day or even hour, and just means your sensor fusion is a bit janky. tfa: "This, in turn, provides very high fidelity 'tracks' of targets thanks to teleme…

If you watch the videos in the article interviewing crew members, they express great doube that these were sensor anomalies. They mention replacing equipment, doing several re-calibrations, and that the detections were multi-spectral and even corroborated on separate craft and sensor packages. I'm a former military avionics dude who worked on systems like this, including "black" stuff. I don't believe in extraterrest…

Fair enough. I definitely can't comment from an aviators perspective, just that I'm not suprised if system anomalies propegate wrong. Obviously a lot of folks are taking it seriously.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#99

Post by edoo »

jvanderbot wrote: post #68

Having dealt with some of these systems, let me tell you up front, its entirely possible it's nothing. I've seen tracks like those suggested in the article pass directly overhead support vessels during maneuvers, and theres nothing there. It can happen a few times a day or even hour, and just means your sensor fusion is a bit janky. tfa: "This, in turn, provides very high fidelity 'tracks' of targets thanks to teleme…

Well they sent up aircraft to check out the tracks and got video of an unidentified object.
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