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As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

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Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#181
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the thing that gets me. A 767 costs hundreds of millions of dollars and yet I’ve filmed better videos with a potato. Why is the pilot filming with his smartphone? Why does the plane not have a sophisticated high-quality purpose-built camera system that can record phenomena like this?

Huh? Are you seriously asking why commercial airliners don’t have 4K GoPros to record UAP/UFOs?

No, that’s not what I’m asking, because a GoPro costs about $400. I’m asking why they don’t have something 10x better than a GoPro.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#182

In grad school in astronomy, there was a fellow grad student who was extremely excited after a night's observations that he'd discovered something remarkable -- it was a long hoped for distant galaxy that appeared in his images that night, and had all the right spectral signatures because it appeared in different filters, different exposures, and you could see it there in the image files, raw. Turned out, it was nois…

> I wonder how much some of these unidentified phenomena might be checked for some similar effects.

come on, man. at some point, after enough of these reports, toeing the line you're toeing starts to look ludicrous. these are trained observers, pilots who know what to expect in the sky. and do not take lightly that there is still a certain amount of embarrassment (a social cost) to even coming forward, so to even make this claim is still a brave act at this point.

At least watch this 60 Minutes short piece (NOTE: literally only 13 minutes of your time, not "an hour", although admittedly, the show's name might suggest otherwise) about this phenomenon with interviews with real Navy pilots before you assert things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just a science thing or they didn't care about the security risk, I don't see why they'd keep forming new organizations that are increasingly secretive.

Because it's not just a science thing. It's a potential threat. Threat is defined as capability x intent. We are seeing these things with insane capabilities, but not really any intent (other than maybe observing our technology).

We have AARO for addressing the threat. Why is that not good enough?

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#184
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three videos is not a preponderance of data. The number of photos taken in the past day exceeds the number of photos taken in the past year exceeds the number of photos taken in the 20th century. We have cameras in space, we have cameras everywhere we have people, so then where is the expected increase in observations? UFO sightings have been relatively steady, with peaks and valleys as the zeitgeist ebbs and flows.…

If the events happen mainly at altitudes, smartphones have a hard time capturing them. There’s also the argument that since these would be super-intelligent beings, they might aim for a level of exposure that they’re confident won’t make the grand public believe in their existence.

>There’s also the argument that since these would be super-intelligent beings, they might aim for a level of exposure that they’re confident won’t make the grand public believe in their existence.

The public by and large, more or less, already believes in their existence. There are actual religions built around aliens, this has been been a part of pop culture since the 1940s. If they're trying to obey something like the Prime Directive and prevent cultural contamination then they seem to be doing a terrible job. Picard would be ashamed.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#185

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better. Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something…

What's "fantastical" about unexplained lights?

I mean, I GN an adult Dungeons and Dragons centered on multiple worlds and I love considering different worlds and how they might work. But the people who extrapolate the unexplained to a claim that there's some fantastical things that science is suppressing seem so starved for "the fantastical" that they're distorting the entire situation. Science isn't there to squash your fun. Science doesn't deny that uncertainty is a constant part of ordinary human experience - scientifically established positions are merely a reliable tip of an iceberg of uncertainty.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#186
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the descriptions, the aliens act like we would with a slightly better tech: they act like rangers in a national forest monitoring suspicious activity of smart beavers, but otherwise don't mess with the wildlife.

That's just the ones we can see.

We call them smart beavers, but the other beavers call them conspiracy theorists.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#187

I'm really surprised by fascination with mystery that many HN users display here. After all software developers and systems administrators of all people should be the first to doubt veracity of output of various devices and what their users believe about them and their output. Besides, US military has a history of intentionally misleading the public about what they are developing, with cover stories of aliens. Is it…

Topic aside, people have blind spots when it aligns with their beliefs.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said to another commenter, I'm not discounting the possibility of this being human tech. But, wouldn't adversaries need other ships or satellites to launch this holographic plasma from, and wouldn't we have tracked those before seeing the tic-tac (or other unidentified craft) on radar? Many reports are actually happening over the United States airspace. How could the military not track the planes the plasmas are…

It's classified US technology, obviously. That's why it mostly appears near military installations that have significant power production capabilities (things like nuclear aircraft carriers, possible nuclear submarines). The fact that the military isn't investigating it implies to me that they already know what is it. Now why they're letting pilots talk about it on the Joe Rogan experience I don't know, but whether t…

Let's take this hypothesis and run with it. What you're saying is there's a faction of the government that is fucking with our military operations and endangering our pilots. How is this not headline news? How is this not a problem?

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, in fact all the time. You just don't hear about it because of stigma. See this NARCAP (civilian flight safety) report https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20 for a case where a FedEx flight crew documented an encounter with the commonly reported pulsating orb type anomaly. There is a video. Observed behavior: > The UAP/Light came from above and stopped/hovered near FL37, about the same altitude as the aircraf…

That video looks like a distant light / laser that's tracking the airplane, going on and off target.

The "going on and off target" effect seen here is likely the camera's autofocus.
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