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Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

dni.gov

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Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#51

Post by y04nn »

dandelany wrote: post #29

Nine pages? All this hoopla for the month leading up to the release and we get NINE measly pages with no supporting documentation? am I missing something? I expected to see something similar in quality/detail to an FAA accident investigation, this is a worthless executive summary.

I would not call it a report either, this is a request for more funding, the last sentence is:

> The UAPTF has indicated that additional funding for research and development could further the future study of the topics laid out in this report.

I would be more interested in a BEA style analysis of each incident. But at least it lays down some possible causes:

  - Airborne Clutter
  - Natural Atmospheric Phenomena
  - USG or Industry Developmental Programs
  - Foreign Adversary Systems
  - Other
And I would say the the order reflect the decreasing probability of each cause.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#52

Post by busyant »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #40

A reminder that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. This is just a report on what the military saw in the air and could not identify. It neither confirms nor denies popular ideas about aliens visiting earth. In most cases, you can guess these are probably aircraft from other countries. In some cases, they may be experimental aircraft being developed in secret by some organization or other. I am someone who thi…

> I am someone who thinks there likely is alien activity on earth

Can you elaborate on why you think this (or provide some additional detail)?

For example, do you mean "intelligent" life? Or is this more along the lines of panspermia?

Thank you.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#53

Post by trasz »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #34
ALittleLight wrote: post #30

This seems awfully brief and doesn't have much detail. The tittle says it's a "preliminary" report. Is this the expected UAP report or just a preliminary document about it? I would want to see summary statistics for each reported incident and descriptions of the most compelling phenomenon. This document raises a lot of questions and answers few. The document says they have 21 reports of UAP that "appear to demonstrat…

> I'm also not really impressed by their idea to use "advanced algorithms" and "machine learning". Are UFO encounters so frequent we need to resort to big data? I had that same thought - on first read this report seems to contain summary analysis of 144 UAP incidents. Not the sort of numbers that immediately make me think "I need ML to process those!"

144 _reported_ incidents. They also talk about how some of the cases going unreported. It would make sense to sieve through the radar data (I'd guess all the ATC radars are being recorded, because why not?) to look for those.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#55

Post by Y_Y »

beckingz wrote: post #20
hirundo wrote: post #18

Next: A conspiracy theory that the government is covering up the fact that UFOs don't exist.

If UFOs don't exist why would we need to give money to the military industrial complex to track UFOs and Chinese air traffic?

https://fas.org/irp/nro/fy08/cbjb.pdf

That's a question for the National Reconnaissance Organisation.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#56

Post by krferriter »

dandelany wrote: post #29

Nine pages? All this hoopla for the month leading up to the release and we get NINE measly pages with no supporting documentation? am I missing something? I expected to see something similar in quality/detail to an FAA accident investigation, this is a worthless executive summary.

They referenced 18 cases in which "observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics". Of course this does not mean the object/phenomenon actually exhibited unusual movement or flight characteristics, rather that the person who observed it thought it might have been.

They need to list each of those 18 key cases they referenced, as well as what their current state of knowledge about each is. One incident they say they already know for certain was just a balloon, but they don't say which incident it was. Maybe this is just a preliminary document, but if so, or if they think this is sufficient, it's not sufficient and we do need a deeper report. The longer this drags on the more wild stories some people in the public and press will spin to justify their belief that a lot, or even most, of the UFO sightings are really aliens visiting Earth.

Worth noting that those 18 key cases came from a pool of 144 cases meeting the criteria "witnessed firsthand by military aviators and that were collected from systems we considered to be reliable", which came from a larger (size unspecified) pool of less reliable reports. They also point out that the reports disproportionately come from the area immediately surrounding US military testing/training facilities.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#57

Post by tailspin2019 »

trasz wrote: post #53
tailspin2019 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also not really impressed by their idea to use "advanced algorithms" and "machine learning". Are UFO encounters so frequent we need to resort to big data? I had that same thought - on first read this report seems to contain summary analysis of 144 UAP incidents. Not the sort of numbers that immediately make me think "I need ML to process those!"

144 _reported_ incidents. They also talk about how some of the cases going unreported. It would make sense to sieve through the radar data (I'd guess all the ATC radars are being recorded, because why not?) to look for those.

Yep that's fair enough. And satellite imagery too I guess.

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#59

Post by DoreenMichele »

busyant wrote: post #52
DoreenMichele wrote: post #40

A reminder that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object. This is just a report on what the military saw in the air and could not identify. It neither confirms nor denies popular ideas about aliens visiting earth. In most cases, you can guess these are probably aircraft from other countries. In some cases, they may be experimental aircraft being developed in secret by some organization or other. I am someone who thi…

> I am someone who thinks there likely is alien activity on earth Can you elaborate on why you think this (or provide some additional detail)? For example, do you mean "intelligent" life? Or is this more along the lines of panspermia? Thank you.

No, I don't care to elaborate on my personal opinions about this topic. I only noted that because I habitually remind people on HN that UFO just stands for Unidentified Flying Object and the reason the US government is interested is for national security reasons.

I noted it just to suggest "If you are inferring that I am on your side in thinking only nutters believe in aliens you are wrong."

I have no desire to have that conversation here. Comments on this topic are consistently appallingly bad by HN standards and my only desire is to say "Keep it real people. This is not a government report on aliens. That's not what this is."

Re: Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

#60

Post by iagovar »

staunch wrote: post #15

> "Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation." Yeah, if we could just get a copy of that data real quick, that'd be greeeaat.

This. It's 2021. Release something or just shut up. A potato quality video from a fighter that clearly has way better video and capabilities is not gonna cut it for me, sorry.
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