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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

#771
post #341

We 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.

Yeah! It’s only our fear that it is legitimately something revolutionary that causes us to ‘protect ourselves’ by not looking at it… and it’s that same fear that causes us to pretend it is not legitimate, only because we’re afraid that it is. Which then causes us to not just do the rational thing of facing it and investigating it. We’re basically denying our first highly-informative impression because we don’t want i…

It also shows the outstanding success of the psyops in the 60s to discredit anyone reporting UFOs.

Once you remove your socialised biases, it would seem obvious there's something intelligent there worth investigating.

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

#772
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous acceleration to over 20,000 mph Would't it mean that the footage doesn't actually show real objects then? Maybe, but consider the context: even if the acceleration was more "reasonable", wouldn't you feel something's missing? I mean any indication of a propulsion system, like reaction gases or propellers. My point is: if we're watching something we have no…

Sure it could be a "field" that might as well be described as magic. But where's the craft's interaction with the atmosphere? Normally an object traveling thousands of miles an hour hits a fair amount of atmosphere. An object traveling fast enough actually turns atmospheric gases into a plasma. Plasma is not only hot but will reflect radio waves. Now you need to invent a second magic technology that explains the lack…

Sure it could be a "field" that might as well be described as magic.

Do you believe in magic? That's a pretty good difference for me.

Now you need to invent a second magic technology that explains the lack of plasma trails following the path of this supposedly hypersonic object.

I don't, fields have gradients, but there's a previous question here, at least for me.

If you start with the premise that this kind of phenomenon is impossible, this is a waste of time: pilots are confused, land observers are wrong, radars glitch and the USAF is fooling us to cover for something.

Why even bother to look at videos or listen to what witnesses have to say? That can't be right.

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

#773
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a bizarre strawman [1] that doesn't prove your point at all. Here we have multiple professional pilots reporting similar events, with recorded evidence from the tracking systems on their fighter planes. And enough evidence that even Congress has authorised to look into it further. It probably is all some natural thing happening, but it's not some hoax by teenager girls in the 1920s. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Professional pilots are not trained observers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34670921

That objection only works because the people on the ship had an expectation of what the fault could be. Presumably fighter pilots have expectations of what other aircraft, balloons and birds could be, and these phenomena defy those characteristics. These just don't seem comparable.

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

#774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous devices wouldn't need to send signals back home. They might be fully autonomous. Also, I don't think we can rule out aliens within our solar system. An alien civilization beneath the ocean of some moon?

> Autonomous devices wouldn't need to send signals back home. They might be fully autonomous. To... what? Study a civilization and do nothing with the data? > Also, I don't think we can rule out aliens within our solar system. An alien civilization beneath the ocean of some moon? Yeah, we pretty much can. Odds are extremely low. Now, life might exist, but not advanced space fairing life. Those civilizations produce a…

And of course it is easy to know in every case what those changes look like and what this noise sounds like. At every point of development.

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

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no reason to think FTL travel is possible This seems like fairly closed thinking. We’ve observed strange behavior at the quantum level. We have plausible theories of wormholes and multiverses. It’s conceivable that some civilization has assembled FTL travel from these and other natural phenomena yet unknown. > it's economically unreasonable to think some species is going to invest in generation ships We’re…

This is exactly how the spiritualists sounded in their day. They had facially plausible theories of the phenomena they claimed to observe with no actual evidence described in ways that fit in with the gaps in understanding of the moment. I too consume a lot of science fiction, but it's important to remember that it's just writers making shit up. Perhaps FTL is possible. Perhaps angel are real. Both are things people…

The fact that there is no way to know means that at most we should say "no idea". It is also the least knowledge we should pretend to have on the subject.

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

#776
post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would chatGPT "trivially fake" paper readouts digitised and signed in real time from multiple sensor sites controlled by multiple independent countries and legal jurisdictions? > and I have 0 way to verify any of this. That would be because you haven't joined any geophysical data organisations .. and that'd be on you.

I notice "argument from personal ignorance" is common in "believer" circles (not just of aliens, but of all kinds of conspiracy theories). If you happen to be well educated enough to provide a detailed explanation of why a particular thing they've said doesn't hold water, it's frustratingly common for them to fall back on "well I'm not an expert, I don't know all the details, I'm just asking questions." Somehow it ne…

But that is not my argument. I am not an expert in Seismic Sensors, yet I believe the experts that tell me this happened. The military Experts directly witnessing the Nimitz events and the sensors they are trained on tell me something really extraordinary happened. The best "ordinary event misinterpreted" explanation comes from a game developer turned professional skeptic that ignores a heap of evidence and direct testimony from the experts. I tend to believe the experts with the caveat that the best explanation I can think of is either:

a) they witnessed an alien probe, potentially the equivalent of a mars rover from an advance civilization or

b) this is a big Psyop by the CIA.

I believe North Korea has nukes on the same premise that it's more likely a diverse set of experts saw what they saw and interpreted the sensors they work with every day correctly than that it's all a big psyop by the CIA to fake NK Nukes. Where do you see the difference between both cases?

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

#777
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> You have to admit, given that resources are finite, the dismissive attitude is warranted.

Why? It costs almost nothing to just collect data. How do you know they're not witnessing advanced tech from another nation? Or maybe it's a pervasive flaw in our sensors. Seems like those are both well within the military's mandate. Even if it's just an interesting new physical phenomenon, it would be great to have some evidence.

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

#778
post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coincidence theory at its finest.

I know, right? Just by coincidence the little green men decided to single out some pranksters to reveal themselves to. Definitely the most likely explanation. /s

Sure, so the best idea is clearly to just chalk it up to a prank and ignore it rather than try to prove it.

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

#779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The government works for the citizens. We citizens should be able to know what is happening above our heads.

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

#780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely disingenuous to just link that video as an authoritative source (when it's not... in any way). You should also put Ryan Grave's response to that video - https://youtu.be/vNjB3LxBw_0

Except for that the reply doesn't actual counter any of the analysis made in the sceptic video, but instead criticises Mike for taking a sceptic approach and disregarding the audio from the pilots (because they essentially see the same thing as we see in the video). This is the typical approach one sees over and over again from most people invested in some sort of conspiracy theory, they never reply to technical crit…

> because they essentially see the same thing as we see in the video

If the pilots see the same thing with their eyes then that significantly undermines West's theory, because human eyes wouldn't have the same visual artifacts as these sensors. It would have to be an extreme coincidence for this all to line up just right across multiple sensor systems and human eyes as well. No impossible, but very implausible.

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