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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

#821
post #596

Mick West's breakdowns of the Pentagon UAP videos was the nail in the coffin of this era of UFO hype for me. https://youtu.be/Le7Fqbsrrm8?t=665 These were supposed to be the smoking gun evidence. UFO believers inside the DoD and as high up as US Senators fought for years to get them declassified. As soon as they were public, they were all quickly identified as sensor glare, bokeh, or mis-understood perspective. More…

Check out the debunk of the debunk :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBt4CNHyAck

What a poor debunk of the debunk. I had respect for David Fravor but listening an ex F/A-18 pilot say confidently "There is 0% chance that I'm wrong" and keeping using argument from authority convinced me that he's just wrong.

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

#822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explanation fails to account for the multiple other sensors that picked them up, including several different radar systems and the fact that multiple pilots witnessed them with their eyes. However the other sensor data are classified which makes it impossible to draw any conclusions.

If they release the videos we will know! If they release the radar data we will know! If they release ...

to my knowledge radar data has not been released and I don't think it ever will be.

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

#823

ITT: Multiple fighter pilots (whose sole job is to understand aerial objects by eye and sensors), radar, camera and infrared have seen these. “It’s a glitch, lens flare and/or the pilots are stupid, but me a programmer is an expert in this.”

And yet, like us mere mortals, surely fighter pilots are susceptible to cognitive and perceptual biases and distortions particularly around phenomena at or beyond the edges of their training and experience.

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

#824
post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the US Government tells the world that North Korea has exploded a nuclear weapon than i can neither directly measure that myself nor do I have access to the data where and how the US Government knows that happens. Yet we all collectively believe that to be true. The Nimitz incident falls under the same category. I don't know what that was but the "debunking" by Mick West simply ignores most of the little evidenc…

> When the US Government tells the world that North Korea has exploded a nuclear weapon We do have the proof that North Korea and nuclear weapons exists. The US government could be lying about the tests like it lied about iraqis WMD but 1/ there are other sources 2/ its in the domain of plausability anyway. At the reverse, alien origin of UFO relies on unproved and impossible facts: 1/ the existence of life outside e…

> At the reverse, alien origin of UFO relies on unproved and impossible facts:

Some of them are unproved, none of them are impossible.

> 1/ the existence of life outside earth,

Life spontaneously emerging on earth implies at the very least the possibility that it can happen elsewhere

2/ the existence of technology outside earth,

Same as above, Crows and Apes using tools implies technology is a possible result of life.

3/ the possibility of FTL travel,

Nope, those probes could very well be subluminal, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

4/ the regulat visit of alien on earth,

Not regular, we just have to notice them at least once

5/ having a technology good enough to be almost undetected but not completely

Which is literally what every stealth tech we have made is.

6/ having an irresistible urge to crash in the US

There's probably 10x more UFO reports coming from outside the US, especially south america, than from inside the US and I have made no claim that I have heard any good evidence that any crashed UFO has been retrieved (though we have crashed some mars rovers in our time so it's not out of the realm of possibility that an alien species might crash their stuff on our planet)

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

#825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since there are numerous reports spanning decades and even dating to the 19th century, before manned flight, Manned flight dates to 1783, and engine-powered flight to 1851. Did you mean heavier-than-air flight?

Yes. Heavier than air flight. Thanks for that correction. Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person. There are several on record. It's a long interesting history that likely will never be explained to anyone's satisfaction since some of the reports from the late 19th century described airships that were operating low enoug…

> Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person.

Remember that the Kitty Hawk flights were done "secretly" with the hired photographer and some locals being the only 3rd parties present. The Wright brothers were back in Ohio flying advanced versions of their plane over farm fields before much publicity came of it, and even then almost nobody believed it. It was only when they took a plane to France and flew it around Le Mans that people truly believed.

EDIT - it was Le Mans, not Paris :)

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

#826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an irrelevant example. The question in THIS case is not whether "the wings fell off before or after hitting the water, if at all", but whether "there was a plane hitting the water at all" or "whether there even was a plane" (also a plane that was caught on multiple radars). It's simply not a good comparison. The Navy pilots say they see bogies on radar (not just visually) every day . Watch the "60 Minutes" broad…

Q: What's the most likely explanation? A: Problems/glitches/bugs with the extremely complex radar system. Q: What's a likely explanation? A: We don't really understand everything there is to know about radar. Q: What's the least likely explanation? A: Alien craft buzzing around that nobody has ever managed to get a clear picture of.

If the radar system exhibited other types of "steady anomalies identifying nonexistent objects in space" that didn't happen to fit the "UFO expectation", we would be hearing of those too, no? Have we? Since the whole point of a radar system is identifying friend, foe or possible collision courses, it would seem to be extremely important that this basic function of a radar be extremely reliable, no?

Also, what are the chances that both the radar AND the person's eyesight (which saw the object in the first place) are failing in the exact same way and with the exact same concordance? That has to be absolutely astronomical.

So, no. You didn't compute your probabilities correctly in this case. Try again.

It's like when people trivially dismiss eyewitness observers for "seeing things" every single time. I just Googled, and US citizens drive 3.2 trillion miles each year on US roads, which most of the time have two-way traffic with NO divider in between. If observers were as inaccurate as dismissals suggest, we should also be seeing FAR more accidents, head-on collisions etc. The error rate of the human visual system (if not the memory system which is admittedly often faultier) has to be extremely low to see the RELATIVELY low number of accidents we see. It's fundamental to survival for the human visual system to be as precise and accurate as possible.

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

#827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what now? Those things you listed aren’t actually optical illusions, are they? Pretty sure the sky is actually blue.

There’s nothing in the sky that’s actually blue. You won’t get blue stains on an aircraft. It’s because of weird radiation thing that happens in many contexts. Including the irises of people with “blue” (transparent) eyes.

I have a blue blanket that doesn’t leave blue stains on anything either. That’s not a robust definition of what it means for something to be a certain color.

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

#828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Heavier than air flight. Thanks for that correction. Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person. There are several on record. It's a long interesting history that likely will never be explained to anyone's satisfaction since some of the reports from the late 19th century described airships that were operating low enoug…

> Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person. Remember that the Kitty Hawk flights were done "secretly" with the hired photographer and some locals being the only 3rd parties present. The Wright brothers were back in Ohio flying advanced versions of their plane over farm fields before much publicity came of it, and even the…

I didn't know that. I assumed that the flight generated enough publicity that they became instantly famous.

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

#829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take the word of few random soldiers and some output of some devices over accumulated effort of generations of scientists who brought us all of technology and you accuse others of hubris? It's quite a hubris to say that something is evidence of violation of known laws of physics on the basis of personal direct observation and output of devices that you find trustworthy only because known laws of physics do work a…

The majority of scientists thought flight of large mechanical objects was impossible until the Wright brothers did it https://northeastern.digication.com/a_declaration_of_impossi... It's hilarious how you assume that the summary of the collective ideas of scientists today know everything that is physically possible when there are many examples throughout history where the collective understanding of physics has been…

> [...] there are many examples throughout history where the collective understanding of physics has been wrong and it takes unique individuals to prove them wrong.

Yes. And every time the correct solution eventually reached was not 'alien technology at work'.

> There is data to suggest the objects are moving at speeds that defy our current understanding of physics.

That nullifies all the science since Newton, including Newton.

> There's no reason to not keep following the data.

Yes, and in the recent case of registering FTL neutrinos data was followed right up to faulty connection in the measurement device.

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

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person. Remember that the Kitty Hawk flights were done "secretly" with the hired photographer and some locals being the only 3rd parties present. The Wright brothers were back in Ohio flying advanced versions of their plane over farm fields before much publicity came of it, and even the…

I didn't know that. I assumed that the flight generated enough publicity that they became instantly famous.

It was reported, but not believed. Even over the course of the few years back in Ohio, the Dayton newspapers wrote stories and reporters witnessed flights, but the rest of the world thought it was all lies.

EDIT - it should probably be pointed out that the Wright brothers didn't think that powered flight, in and of itself, was all the useful without a method to control the aircraft. That's what they really worked on and really their most important contribution. There were a lot of people working on flying machines all over the world, but the Wright brothers had radically different ideas on how to control the aircraft (and ultimately they were correct). So there was a lot of incentive for others in the flying community to discount their success until it was too late to deny it.

In France (5 years after Kitty Hawk), they were flying circles, figure 8s, etc and people were truly shocked by what they saw. And then they took men and women up as passengers to experience it. That's when they became famous.

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