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US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

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Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#371

Post by wing-_-nuts »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #358
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former government employee, I doubt they work directly for the government. The government loves to outsource everything remotely technical to contractors in my (dated) experience. The GS and even the SES pay scales they offer are laughable in comparison to what one can get in the private sector.

Correct, but if you do 5 years in the military, and 15 in FedGov, you can then retire at your GS-15 / SES grade and get a pension + guaranteed healthcare. Then you start your 2nd career at GD or Lockheed or Microsoft, et al, and get 300k per annum.

I think you're really overstating it. I know guys that have done the military / fed / contractor shuffle. Getting above gs 12 damned near impossible, and when they figure that out, they go into contracting for ~100k+ positions, but it's not 300k. If you play it right, yeah you can fully retire at 55 with a small pension and (hugely important!) health insurance, but someone who went tech sector from the jump can easily retire at 40 if they really set their minds to it.

For other fields though, it can make sense.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#372

Post by mustacheemperor »

lend000 wrote: post #139

All the people here claiming new types of drones and secret programs dating back decades have clearly never worked in defense. Most of the US military, the best funded in the world, is decades behind the private sector on computing technology -- it's honestly unthinkable to me that their propulsion technology would be decades (or centuries) ahead. The best engineers and scientists have taken Silicon Valley jobs payin…

Do you think the jet engines being built at Pratt & Whitney to power the F-35 and developed for the NGAD fighter are behind the private sector?

Not like P&W is a government owned company, either - the private sector and the military are closely integrated, that's the military industrial complex.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#373

Post by moffkalast »

RetpolineDrama wrote: post #366
tptacek wrote: post #292

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

> Another is a Stanford biologist who started producing debunked materials science papers about allegedly alien artifacts (that turn out to look a lot like ordinary machine parts). Source? >At one point she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". "Gimball" is not credibly discredited, calling it such highlights your bias and calls your other points into question. EDIT: HN is a terrible website for having actual di…

Yeah it's more like been confirmed with the recent airspace intrusions? They're almost certainly all some kind of foreign spy drones which exploit the alien stigma by being designed to look as alien as possible. Any sightings would be instantly dismissed as nonsense, which is a real galaxy brain psyops move.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#375

Post by WalterBright »

scrlk wrote: post #361
WalterBright wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, much of the stealth radar technology on the Skunkworks' stealth airplanes came from a Soviet research paper. Personally, I would have thought such a paper was disinformation. Maybe the Soviets did, too!

"While working in Moscow, Ufimtsev became interested in describing the reflection of electromagnetic waves. He gained permission to publish his research results internationally because they were considered to be of no significant military or economic value." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Ufimtsev Looks like he's still publishing papers in this area: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37344722000

> they were considered to be of no significant military or economic value

Oops!

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#376

Post by runjake »

tptacek wrote: post #292

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

> she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". (sic)

When/where/by whom was the Gimbal video discredited?

I’m especially curious because I’m somewhat of an “expert” in the area (having worked on those sensor systems and seen tons of footage in a former life) and I think it’s a legitimate object of some sort [1]. Though I don’t believe it’s extraterrestrial.

1. Eg. The footage of a purported object speeding right over the ocean looks just like a cruise missile flying low level.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#377

Post by Aerbil313 »

subsubzero wrote: post #362
tptacek wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, that video illustrates either a camera glare artifact, or alien technology very carefully tuned to replicate a camera glare artifact.

yeah the person(Mick West) who did the debunking is a retired gaming software engineer who is also somewhat of a known troll and has zero background in the field of avionic systems used by the fighter pilots. Some of his debunking statements are borderline absurd, you have a sighting that is seen on FLIR, radar and has an eyewitness testimony along with video and his statement is the pilot who has flown for 10 years…

Not to mention it's seen hundreds of times by hundreds of personnel and devices again and again over the years.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#378

Post by jandrewrogers »

lend000 wrote: post #139

All the people here claiming new types of drones and secret programs dating back decades have clearly never worked in defense. Most of the US military, the best funded in the world, is decades behind the private sector on computing technology -- it's honestly unthinkable to me that their propulsion technology would be decades (or centuries) ahead. The best engineers and scientists have taken Silicon Valley jobs payin…

> Most of the US military, the best funded in the world, is decades behind the private sector on computing technology

This assertion embeds many assumptions not in evidence. Closed source computer science R&D, not only to which the US defense establishment have access but in many cases funded, is decades ahead of open source and academia in many key areas, not just in obvious areas like cryptography but data structures and algorithms, as well as exotic hardware.

It doesn't explain UFOs, but the idea that the most advanced public computer tech is decades ahead of what elements of the US DoD have doesn't pass the smell test. At worst there is parity and in some areas there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence of capability that should not be possible if you solely went on public computing literature. (As a well-known example, there is empirical evidence that graph analysis capabilities exist that are vastly more scalable than is explainable by literature.)

Not everyone aspires to be a code monkey at Facebook for the money. There are extremely talented computer scientists working in US government, especially the secretive parts, that could instantly get a job at any FAANG company if they wanted to -- I've met many of them -- but they don't. The notion that the US DoD does not have access to "the best engineers and scientists" is dubious.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#379

Post by ggm »

RetpolineDrama wrote: post #366
tptacek wrote: post #292

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

> Another is a Stanford biologist who started producing debunked materials science papers about allegedly alien artifacts (that turn out to look a lot like ordinary machine parts). Source? >At one point she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". "Gimball" is not credibly discredited, calling it such highlights your bias and calls your other points into question. EDIT: HN is a terrible website for having actual di…

Are you promoting radical scepticism and believe we should abjure from pro or con cases or are you a believer? They're not the same. Do you apply the same criterion to all rebuttals or only rebuttals of this kind? How topic specific is your concern with credibility ? And, forgive me but why should we care about your opinion over others?

You are in some ways invoking appeal to authority but then... All debunking is at some level an appeal to authority. I am unquestionably promoting an appeal to authority above btw.

Since there's no point discussing this "evidence" with a believer, I ask what you would consider viable credible discrediting. My suspicion is, no discrediting would meet your standard and you are not actually prepared to accept any alternate basis, such as lens flare.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#380

Post by RetpolineDrama »

vadansky wrote: post #300
tptacek wrote: post #292

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

>the now-discredited "Gimball Video" Source? I don't think there was ever a consensus that it was discredited. Googling "Gimbal Video discredited" doesn't give me anything definitive.

No credible debunking of "Gimball" exists, despite Mick West proponents. Mick made himself look like a complete fool, and the response to his video by _actual_ fighter pilots is pretty embarrassing for him

https://youtu.be/Tyw4JA00AMc

https://youtu.be/vNjB3LxBw_0

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