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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

#371

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

lamontcg wrote: post #259
themanmaran wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they're observed over military facilities because that's the only location with a rigorous surveillance system.

Or because they're sensor artifacts on military systems and those systems tend to be flown over military facilities.

> I have seen for myself on radar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)

Radar and infrared aren't infallible. The story of the pilot who saw something with his own peepers has my attention but I don't trust what they've only "seen" on instruments.

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

#372

Post by DangitBobby »

scotty79 wrote: post #158

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…

That's not nearly as fun.

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

#373

Post by tejohnso »

supernova87a wrote: post #147

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…

> Were the pilots reporting things seen with their eyes, or looking at imaging displays that have been processed

There are cases where multiple pilots are seeing an object with their eyes, while ship radar is picking it up, and also aircraft infra-red is picking it up at the same time. Multiple aircraft, multiple sensors, multiple sets of eyes.

Not only that, there is at least one case where a pilot engaged with the object, and the object responded with evasive maneuvers.

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

#374

Post by okdood64 »

supernova87a wrote: post #147

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…

It's incredible that armchair experts can dismiss something as a glitch from corroborated observations from some of the best aerial operators of the most powerful and well funded military on earth.

Yes, glitches exist, but don't yet account for all cases. One can read the congressional reports that say the same.

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

#375

Post by deadbeeves »

ethbr0 wrote: post #353
juskrey wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout my already 20 year IT career, I can't even count how many times I've come across extremely paranoid explanations, often in the verge of insanity, of regular computer behavior like basic non obvious algos or glitches. From people otherwise normal. What is interesting, almost never I could change person's mind, once toxic explanation is in. Recently, with all that internet marketing and real surveillance tec…

This speaks to both sides of the problem in getting to the truth. On the one hand, we sensationalize events farther than the data supports ("My radar showed extremely high velocity, so there must have been a craft moving at those speeds"). On the other hand, we use sensationalism to dismiss accurate reports ("You said your radar showed extremely high velocity, therefore what are you reporting, a UFO?"). The new appro…

You have to admit, given that resources are finite, the dismissive attitude is warranted. Why is it that alien spaceships (let's call them what people actually think is being discussed, and not just any random flying thing that we don't know what it is) only show up on equipment when you can barely tell what you're looking at, and never clearly and unambiguously from multiple places?

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

#376

Post by scarier »

deadbeeves wrote: post #370
nostromo wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m reminded of Aeroperú Flight 603. The pilots suspected their altitude indicator was wrong, so they asked air traffic control to confirm their altitude. They did and it agreed with their own readings so they ignored other indications that they were going to crash into the ocean, which is unfortunately what happened. Neither the pilots nor air traffic control apparently knew that both readings were supplied by the s…

That's amazing. So ATC didn't have the capability to measure the altitude of any plane themselves?

They can via primary radar, but the default displays secondary radar information (the transponder interrogation) as it tends to be significantly more precise. Surveillance radar has very coarse altitude resolution.

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

#377

Post by m3kw9 »

twic wrote: post #337
m3kw9 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here it’s always always like that as if the ufo has an earth camera detector, I fathom it may still be technically feasible if they are advanced enough. This would explain why nobody has had a clear picture taken of an UFO. /sarcasm

I've had this experience more times than i can count. Not with flying saucers, but with all manner of terrestrial things - animals, vehicles passing by, people doing things. You see it, you look at it for a bit, you think you should take a photo, and by the time you have your camera in hand and switched on, it's gone.

That’s what I’m talking about

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

#378

Post by dmitrybrant »

Interestingly, just this week we saw a perfect example of how an actual UFO sighting would play out, namely the Chinese spy balloon.

We saw real, actual photos of it in the sky, instead of grainy radar images and verbal testimony. We had a real acknowledgement of it from our government, and a real response to it, i.e. shoot it down. This is all very rational and satisfactory, and is exactly what would happen if there really was something unidentified in the sky.

This is all to say: purveyors of UFO/UAP theories really need to step up their game. Give us something better than "we can't give you actual photos because of stigma!!"

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

#379

Post by Rebelgecko »

nostromo wrote: post #347
scarier wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, I think the reality is even less interesting than that. US military aviators are trained to be proficient systems operators, but typically (and, I want to stress, very reasonably) have little or no education in EM/EO theory, and don't always understand the assumptions that engineers baked into these systems to optimize them for their primary use cases (which, in the case of targeting pods, is identification…

I’m reminded of Aeroperú Flight 603. The pilots suspected their altitude indicator was wrong, so they asked air traffic control to confirm their altitude. They did and it agreed with their own readings so they ignored other indications that they were going to crash into the ocean, which is unfortunately what happened. Neither the pilots nor air traffic control apparently knew that both readings were supplied by the s…

Something similar happened with the Hubble telescope's infamous blurry mirror

The manufacturer tried using two instruments to measure the shape of the mirror. One instrument said that the mirror had unacceptable error. The other said it was perfect. The latter instrument was designed to be more precise, so they went with that and ignored the measurements from the other null corrector which disagreed.

The problem was, the more precise null corrector was the same one that was used to help construct the mirror originally. All it could verify was that the mirror was built to the same specs as the null corrector. No one realized that the "better" null corrector itself was off until it was too late.

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

#380

Post by hcrean »

There is a genuinely terrifying explanation that fits all of the data-points: That something about routine exposure to the physical effects of flying military jets effects a pilot's perceptual accuracy.

This is also definitely something that would be on the hush rota; if your seasoned missile operator just reported overtaking Santa's sleigh at Mach something, it wouldn't inspire much confidence in either the new recruits or the public.

Combine that with targeting systems that likely have a strong false-positive-bias and you have a recipe for Earth having been visited by little green men.

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