I'll admit my bias up front of hoping that alien life does exist. That said, I'm pretty sympathetic to the argument that much of this could be explained with equipment malfunctions given the prevalence of identification from military sources. However, one thing I'm not sure I understand is why it's happening mainly in the U.S. America is a gigantic exporter of weapons systems, especially when it comes to aircraft (much to France's ire). Wouldn't some of those same malfunctions/anomalies be happening in other countries who are using the same equipment?
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
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
More work is absolutely needed. But in this case, let me quote the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence with regards to the data he's seen on UAPs: "Currently, the extraterrestrial hypothesis best fits the facts".
From my perspective it doesn't pass muster. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and we simply don't have that evidence. "Trust us, we have the evidence, no you can't see it." is not good enough. I have looked at the publicly available evidence, read the analyses, and thought long about this (as have many others). In my best estimate there is either a concerted effort by eccentric military leaders to t…
He said “fits the facts”, not “evidence shows.”
Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#433Are there reports of UAP by other countries around the world?
Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#434Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#435In 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…
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…
I would love to hear what some of these explanations were
Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#436We spend trillions in military programs. If many pilots are saying they see something crazy in the sky, and are backed by other eye witnesses, on board radar, and supporting ships radars, the only reasonable response is investigations. There shouldn’t even be a discussion about that, it should be an immediate default.
Further, there is something in various sovereign airspaces that refuses to abide by international flight rules.
Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#437Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#438In 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.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
For all their powerfullness and funding, I expect something better than 240p imagery. Particularly when it happens all the time in one of the most heavily instrumented naval test ranges on earth.
But that’s just me.
Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#439Earlier 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…
A barometric altimeter and altitude reporting transponder are self contained units with separate determination of altitude based on pressure. The source in common they share is the static (pressure) system.
In the case of this flight, maintenance tape covered the static ports, rendering all instruments that use the static pressure system, significantly in error. Although there's more than one port, and thus redundancy, the maintenance operation covered all of the ports.
Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given what we’ve learned about the challenges of interstellar travel, it’s safe to assume that any civilization capable of visiting us would be thousands of years beyond our current understanding of physics. If you compare our current understanding of physics to what humans knew thousands of years ago, it’s logical that the technology of an interstellar civilization would be as far beyond our understanding as a nucle…
You said you don't think aliens and magic should be the same category, but now argue that they'd be so advanced that, would it even be differentiable from magic?
It would be differentiable in the same way any more advanced technology than what we have now would be. It will have been created through scientific research and engineering, just like our own technology. Not understanding how something works doesn’t make it magic.