Live data from Hacker News

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

thehill.com

921–930 of 978 posts

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

#921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, according to your argument, because some people employ quantum physics in pseudoscience and woo, that makes quantum physics like religion. Sorry, you’re just wrong. The possibility of intelligent aliens is on firm scientific ground, which is why we have projects like SETI running. Aliens aren’t like gods or angels, regardless of how many times you repeat it. Certain people might treat them that way, just like…

You really don't seem to be getting my argument. Indeed, you don't seem to be trying. I never said the possibility of aliens somewhere in the universe and somewhere in time was scientifically impossible. Indeed, I've said the opposite, something you seem dedicated to missing if you're still acting otherwise. I am specifically saying that there's no scientific justification for using aliens as an explanatory device fo…

What you are doing is rejecting a valid hypothesis based on emotion and bias rather than evidence. Aliens could be causing the UAP that have been extensively documented by the US military. You have put forth nothing to rule it out. You can’t, because no conclusive evidence has been found so far (or at least made public) that rules it out.

We know intelligent aliens might exist. We know that if they did visit earth, it would mean that they have technology that far exceeds our own. We have extensive documentation of events that, naively, look like some kind of extremely advanced technology that is far beyond human capabilities. So far, we have found no natural explanation, no explanation involving instrument malfunction, and no explanation involving human actors. That doesn’t mean it’s aliens, but it does mean it could be. If you think they should be crossed off the list, you’ll have to do better than making assertions.

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

#922
post #80
post #20

I think what bothers us most about incidents like this is that any country or human organization that had massive air superiority over everyone else would inevitably use it to their advantage. And yet, here are the reports, but no one is coming forward to say "yes, we Canadians actually never cancelled the Avro Arrow and have been decades ahead of the rest of you all this time- now please remove that Danish flag from…

This assumes the advancements can give a significant military advantage, through cost of production and overall military effectiveness. And that the behaviour of other countries could be a problem to the manufacturing country--trade and cooperation etc. And if the advancements are used for spying then of course they'll be kept quiet for as long as possible. Showing your cards early, even if you think they're good, ma…

antigravity is a civilization changing technology that has unlimited economic value. the idea that the americans would use it exclusively for spying instead of colonizing the solar system and beyond is... improbable to say the least

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

#923

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.”

I find this thinking fascinating: "the pilots and the military don't know shit, they are easily fooled by bokeh. mick west, a video game programmer, will now explain how a classified f-18 FLIR targeting pod works and why its showing us a bird"

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

#924
post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can jab at me personally as much as you like. It doesn’t change a data recording of tracking a bird into evidence of UFOs.

but how come the pilots and other experts who use the system daily and have seen hundreds of hours of it in operation (with and without birds present) don't realize its a bird and some random dude on the internet correctly identifies it as a bird from a 90 sec video?

I have addressed this in another comment, apologies to the HN gods for saying again, but your raising a good point that deserves an answer. These are complex systems, they are working in a high stress distracting environment constantly multitasking, and human beings make mistakes.

This not a theory, we know for a fact highly trained people working in these sorts of conditions, even whole teams of them, can get things tragically wrong. It’s how we get blue on blue incidents even when pilots and controllers have plenty of time to review situations and make decisions, mid air collisions happen, it’s how the USS Vincennes command crew collectively at multiple levels of review misread tactical data and shot down flight 655. It’s how several navy crew have managed to fail their way into collisions. Many such incidents have been examined and investigated in meticulous detail. People sometimes simply misread the situation they are in, even collectively. It seems like sometimes one person makes a mistake and everyone else just goes along with it.

I know it seems unlikely, but we have many, many thoroughly documented cases. These are extreme statistical outliers, but there are thousands and thousands of such crews and teams constantly on alert all over the world in US service every day. Every now and then even some very unlikely events are going to turn out.

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

#925

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between claiming we know it all and that our understanding is incomplete. There's also a big difference between claiming something is incomplete and that something has to be rewritten from the ground up. I believe our knowledge is incomplete, I do not believe there is something out there that requires us to rewrite everything. The problem here is that to go down this path you need to violate…

millennia? modern physics goes back a couple hundred years tops. relevant physics that aka prohibits FTL travel is less than a hundred years old (theory of relativity)...

No, relevant physics that prevents FTL is information flow connected with time. This is why people keep referring to the light cone. In other words, something that happens tomorrow is not a causal factor for something that has happened yesterday. The ancients knew that the order of time marched ever forward and that the future does not dictate the past. Even the concept of entropy and disorder was understood at a basic level for quite some time. Probably even before we were humans we understood that an object that has shattered does not spontaneously place itself back together. Or that a log that burns from fire cannot be put back together. Or that the future doesn't influence the past. These are physics concepts so old that they are often forgotten about because they are so obvious.

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

#926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if I were an alien trying to monitor earth from space ships, and I had some sort of radar stealth technology, I'd also fly at night to avoid visual detection.

If you were an alien with the technology to cross the vast distances between the stars why in the hell would you need to monitor Earth from within the atmosphere flying your spaceship around? Earth technology exists to read a license plate from orbit. You can somehow build the technology for interstellar travel but can't manage to build telescopes? For the quarter the cost of Twitter you could build a pretty sweet Ea…

You're assuming that interstellar travel is so difficult that if it can be done, anything else can be done too. It's a fallacy a bit like someone from the 1500s assuming that any civilization that can put a man on the moon must have also cured all disease.

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

#927

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty incentives to including imaging as part of black boxes. Nothing unreasonable about it. It would help elucidate several non-UFO normal life kind of incidents.

If there were, they'd do it, but it doesn't help their business, so they don't.

Imaging and storage used to be much more expensive, so if this decision was to be reviewed today, I am pretty sure regulators would start requiring it.

Just because things are as they are, doesn't mean that they couldn't be better.

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

#928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

well he literally saw the object with his own eyes. do we have a debunk for fravors mark 1 eyeball sensor?

Maybe listen to the videos?

Do you think human vision is something that is absolutely 100% foolproof?

Why are there thousands of known optical illusions examples? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_optical_illusions

Have you heard of spatial disorientation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_disorientation

Do you think the human eye stereo baseline is large enough to determine the depth of objects more than 15m away?

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

#929
post #626
post #8

I worked on stealth aircraft that would occasionally cause civilian UFO reports. It was common for the reports to mention that these UFOs maneuvered unlike any man-made aircraft, which was always a good chuckle because they were usually just flying straight or banking normally. However when seasoned military pilots like Fravor speak on the matter, I listen. When a bunch of them speak about the same incident, I take t…

The now debunked sensor recordings were also reported by seasoned military pilots. You can even hear them discussing their observations on some of the recordings. In one of them they are patently misreading the sensor data displayed in the video. I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t thoroughly and permanently discredit this line of reasoning, I don’t know what will.

All of this just sounds like miscalibrated radar/ghost images etc. You've got extremely sensitive instruments for tracking stealthy vehicles, operating on somewhat noisy frequencies, no wonder you might sometimes see things that actually aren't there.

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

#930
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…

Mick West has one major problem. He takes a video, and works to create any sort of elaborate explanation with zero consideration given to probability or externalities. If he can create the same visual effect he then declares his concept as the "truth", and everything else "debunked." Zero effort is made to challenge his own conclusions or assess their probability. As an example in the Gimbel video [1], he concludes t…

I don’t get how you can write something like this, read it, and then tell yourself it makes sense. You think the videos are, in order of probability:

A recruitment advertising campaign, aliens, and then lastly a plausible camera illusion mixed with some unclear or just mistaken testimony?

Post reply on HN