Live data from Hacker News

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

thedrive.com

141–150 of 173 posts

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

#141
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Von Neumann probes make silent, sharp, right angled turns at impossible speeds with no visible thrust, defying the known laws of physics. It can't be evidence of aliens if it isn't even possible.

I don't know "how" they do it, but those kind of motions do remind me of how AI agents move in computer games when unconstrained by the rules of physics.

perhaps some alien in another dimension was moving his mouse a different direction?

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

#142
post #30

I'm not really one for compilation videos, but I stumbled across this one when looking for info on the tic tac incident and it's pretty interesting - 4 Most Compelling Videos Of UFOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7pgMfzTEZc

The thing I don't understand is where did they get the footage of the F-18's chasing it? And why did they only get/release a few seconds and not the entire video? If it's this important, then why only release a sneak peek?

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

#143
post #133

this is probably military needing new legal framework to operate according to now that china plans to land and stay on the moon, India has tested satellite shooting weapons and russia has been investing in its 'space force'

Efficient Anti-satellite weapons are low-tech if we are talking about space-to-space combat. Heck, I read an article in Russian that argued that bows+arrows or catapults/ballistae could be efficient weapons when compared to lasers that you see in SciFi.

claiming to be able to shoot down a satellite with a catapult is not the craziest argument a russian may have made.

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

#144
post #7

If these incidents were aliens, I would expect a lot more reactions from the military, politic, and financial markets. All reactions seem muted. Secondly, why would aliens reveal themselves in such a way? Either land on the White House lawn or stay out of sight. This 50 year UFO appearances, with some but not really a lot of witnesses, don't make sense for me.

It could be the alien equivalent of anthropology or zoological grad students trying to study indigenous life on our planet. Encounters could be explained as them pulling drunk pranks on the natives.

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

#145
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And to be clear, anomalies do occur -- maybe even frequently.

I've seen all sorts of odd stuff on radar that did not actually exist and was some atmospheric backscatter issue or whatever.

Is this case, based on the public information as presented, there is too much correlating data from disparate systems to write it off.

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

#146

The last time this got a lot of publicity in the 80s, it was cover for tomahawk missile testing. The other possibility is some nut job in the administration has a pet project.

>missile testing This reminds me of something I saw that I never really talked about. Maybe about 7 years ago, I was out bicycling at around 10pm at night outside of Socorro NM (a small desert college town), and to the west I saw a light appear from behind some mountains steadily heading up and north in a slightly curved path. I thought it was a plane or a helicopter until it suddenly disappeared after about 30 secon…

My dad saw something like that a long long time ago and we later found out it was a helicopter or small plane searching for weed grow sites. (Very common in our neck of the woods in the 90s and staggering waste of taxpayer resources)

Some atmospheric phenomenon that I don’t recall made it appear much closer than it actually was. (He was intrigued enough to talk to a friend who was an atmospheric science professor) In his case the repetition was the chopper flying box patterns to search.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's actually schemes to detect stealth aircraft through the changes in signal strength they induce in cell phones below their flight path. Not precise enough for targeting, but good enough to put up a plane to confirm...

I suppose that's plausible, but is it realistic? What's the range of a cell phone signal? The signals from the cell towers will be aimed parallel with the ground. There is going to be an inverse square relationship with the signal strength and distance. A stealth plane is also more likely to be up way high too. The more signals there, the more populous the area, the more likely that a plane would be even higher. How…

> Maybe if the stealth plane was 50,000ft or lower, but considering comercial traffic usually flies up to 39,000ft, and some private traffic at 45,000ft, you probably won't find stealth aircraft below 50,000ft.

F-117 service ceiling was 45,000 ft according to Wikipedia - B-2's is 50,000ft. Ironically, the B-2 has some design compromises to allow it to operate at low altitudes for penetrating strikes, as stealth wasn't quite as trusted when it was being designed - and low altitudes allow operating below the horizon from radar installations. (The B-21 renderings look like they've dropped those compromises - high altitude penetration only)

I'll agree that using cell phones to detect the presence of stealth aircraft is more than a little dubious, though.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we have so many expert people with professional equipment looking at the sky daily yet we never get any sight from them with verifiable data. It's always personal anecdotes from amateurs.

> we never get any sight from them with verifiable data This is false. In the above example of the Nimitz, we have sighting by two professional pilots, and radar/scanner readings. This is not a lone example.

[deleted]

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

#149
post #39

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?

Nick Cook wrote a book in 2001 entitled The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity . It's notable because Cook was an editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, a legendary and reputable defense publication of the utmost credibility. A few years ago in a thread similar to this I discussed[0] and dissected[1] the book. My conclusion was that Cook is mistaken, but given incidents like this, and the fact…

That was a fascinating Sunday morning diversion, thanks!

I can easily believe there was a programme researching that. There's been research into all sorts of crackpot ideas, especially in wartime. The film The Men Who Stare at Goats was based on a true story of US military research, and there was WW2 research into death rays after all.

Mistaken, or failed research that was well secreted? It took 30 years for Bletchley Park to leak, despite involving thousands.

Cook now seems to be a defence consultant specialising in climate change.

Another one to add to my impossibly long reading list though. :)

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

#150
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nick Cook wrote a book in 2001 entitled The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity . It's notable because Cook was an editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, a legendary and reputable defense publication of the utmost credibility. A few years ago in a thread similar to this I discussed[0] and dissected[1] the book. My conclusion was that Cook is mistaken, but given incidents like this, and the fact…

It never hurts to wonder. If we assume the Tic Tac is a man made craft, it doesn't seem a far stretch to also assume it may employ antigravitics. Perhaps it can be traced back to Die Glocke [1]. Your linked HN posts also mention Hutchison, an interesting character who appears repeatedly down the rabbit hole, where you'll also discover Schauberger and Leedskalnin. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in these topics, wh…

Per your link:

>"Although no evidence of the veracity of Witkowski’s statements has been produced, they reached a wider audience when they were retold by British author Nick Cook, who added his own views to Witkowski’s statements in The Hunt for Zero Point.[4]"

The WW2 "Bell" experiment narrative was actually my largest complaint with Cook's book. While it makes for a fantastic story that's pretty much screenplay material, it's very unlikely to be true.

Post reply on HN