A much better article on it here, with about 100% less snark.
Still not sure what I think about only the military doing the investigations now. I liked the idea of a non-military organization doing the investigations.
So while this seemed good:
“Navy and air force crews now have step-by-step procedures for reporting UAPs on their kneeboard, in the cockpit,” Bray said.
This seemed more of the same doublespeak:
“we want to know what’s out there just like you want to know what’s out there.” But he added that his top goal was to keep U.S. military personnel and bases safe.
“We are also mindful of our obligation to protect sensitive sources and methods,” Moultrie said in his opening remarks. “Our goal is to strike that delicate balance – one that will enable us to maintain the public’s trust while preserving those capabilities that are vital to the support of our service personnel.”
“We do not want potential adversaries to know exactly what we see or understand,” Moultrie said later in the hearing, which was followed by a closed-door, classified session.
I thought for whatever flaws AATIP / AAWSAP programs had, they started the initial integrated database gathering that sounds like it’s still being used, and pushed for investigation into more than just military-only incidents. The problem with keeping it military investigated is who polices the investigation? Does one department compete with the other for the best incident? Or the least incidents? Do they give a shit when something happens in front of 1000 civilians versus a couple of fighter pilots? Scientific based investigation deems we should be using a collection of those able to asses multiple parts of what is seen and goes on, not just a FLIR video gatherer.
Also why wouldn’t you share this with close allies? “Here’s what we saw, did you see anything different?” “What do you guys think about X, Y, and Z?” If this truly is a worldwide phenomena and one that isn’t a dire threat to our armed forces, why only have the armed forces investigate it?
I can think of two explanations. These are our platforms and we’re keeping them secret. Or, we have no idea what they are and they expose our weaknesses, and we want to keep those weaknesses secret.
If these were foreign military you’d think we’d be collaborating with allies on identifying them.
Agreed.
It just annoys me that for anything regarding disclosure to the public that you would put military people in charge of the overall project or communication.
I suspect that the truth may be very mundane and banal–these phenomena are just what they seem, unexplained but unremarkable glitches in the matrix as it were. No one really wants to devote a lot of energy and resources to chasing will o’ the wisps around when there are much more important things to be doing.
Now, whether this view is accurate, or the right one to have, I leave to others. But I suspect that some variation on “jeez, let me get back to doing real work” is a better explanation for most of this than some sort off Secret Squirrel clandestine cover up scenario.
I would say that this view is extremely accurate. :)
I think the increased transparency and willingness to release this stuff to the public probably comes from someone high up in defense information realizing that this stuff is a big fat nothingburger, and not releasing it probably causes more issues for DoD than just putting it out there.
(BTW, if folks in this thread do Twitter, do give Mick West a follow. He does a terrific job of debunking and explaining what so many “UFO sightings” actually are.)
Particularly in an environment where this sort of conspiratorial nonsense is threatening to consume democracy itself, I have to admit I’ve lost all patience with the “it’s aliens!” crowd. Everyone is walking around with HD video cameras in their pockets, and the best the aliens crowd have are fuzzy dots and obvious fakes. There are a lot of clear cut reasons why it’s really transparently not aliens (as outlined extensively in this thread) but that alone really should be sufficient for most folks.
I read this a lot and to be fair, there are a TON of people that carry things around in their pocket that are amazingly powerful to get data these days. It’s certainly a valid argument. And yet … nearly any video is debunked, nearly any picture debunked, nearly anything isn’t, “reliable.” And it reminds me of Mars.
Centuries ago astronomers swore that water flowed on mars and that what they could see through telescopes showed just that. And things advanced, and for sure, there was NO water on mars and it never had it! And then we moved forward yet again, etc, etc. Even now, the official answer changes as we go from only in the form of ice at the poles to yes there is underground flow and actual seepage of water in different areas and it does indeed look like Mars had flowing surface water at one time. And these still changing answers come about with us having multiple orbiters taking high resolution pictures, multiple missions of direct rovers on the surface and many more powerful telescopes and cameras that are quite advanced and spend a ton of time on the study of that planet.
My point here isn’t Mars but rather that as we advance and as we can devote more things to trying to find answers, sometimes the answers change. And maybe that answer is, “these are all nothing, rest easy, Earth, you’re safe from the crazy aliens.” Or maybe that answer is, "well we aren’t sure what this is and is going on and maybe we really should talk about it and at least apply more scientific investigation and principles to what we can determine.
I know we’re all talking about things that seem absolutely silly but why not try?
One thing that always struck me was Carl Sagan’s short discussion on the book from Edwin Abbot about, Flatland. And Carl uses the same scenario to describe a two dimensional world and how it would interact with a three dimension being, or rather, be completely baffled at that interaction. Physics theory today even discusses the 10 dimensions proposed in string theory. And thus I’m left feeling like, what if we’re just three dimensional ants and will never understand that perhaps we interact with multidimensional things on a day to day basis that we just don’t understand. Maybe we should continue to talk about and study it, even if it seems silly.
I posted one or two of his videos in this thread. He is calm and thorough in his analysis.
The issue I learned is that if the military, the professionals, can’t identify sometimes flying objects, then either they don’t have good enough equipment or training (or both). If infrared cameras are confusing, then they need better training…
I don’t think anyone is saying don’t look into this stuff. Anything that we observe we should try to understand, and if we can’t immediately figure it out, further study is warranted of course. It’s a matter of focus, priorities, and context really.
The only scenario in which failure to devote lots of energy and resources to pursuing UFO sightings is one where there actually are aliens or fantastically advanced tech of some sort that poses a threat. And that seems, well, a pretty far stretch. I’m willing to take the risk of overlooking the crab people of Alpha Centauri in our midst to focus our resources on more immediately useful stuff.
You’re talking to someone that teaches this stuff for a living. The Mars analogy isn’t particularly valid. Early understanding of water on Mars was based on 1) erroneous assumptions about all planets being similar to Earth and 2) the appearance of “canals” that were actually a reflection of blood vessels from the astronomers eye in the telescope optics. Hell, maybe that last one is a good analogy after all.
Thing is, even once we realized there were no canals and that you couldn’t just assume it was there, there was no science that actively ruled out water on Mars, or even made it particularly improbable. In truth, we know there was liquid water on Mars’ surface at an earlier point in its history, we know how the atmosphere changed to eliminate that surface water, and we have every reason to suspect there may be subsurface liquid water to find.
The alien question, on the other hand, is pretty straightforward. No, we’re not being visited. There are, as mentioned, a mountain of reasons detailed in this very thread why that is the case. There is absolutely no scientific case of any kind in support of the visitation idea, and never has been.
And if you’re going to invoke Sagan, the correct reference is Demon Haunted World, which extensively covers aliens, alien abduction, and how all of it is more a reflection of human psychology than anything unexplained in the outside world.
Then you probably should pay more attention to Mick West’s explanations. :)
“Highly trained pilots sometimes make mistakes. Experts, even military ones, sometimes miss the obvious. Sometimes a UFO is simply a badly misidentified plane.”
The real conclusion from all of this is that military personnel badly need a better education in optics and relative motion.
I forgot to mention, thanks for the reference, added as following!
No worries, I’m not trying to step on toes here and why I also mentioned your argument was very valid. I would just hope that as a country we do keep our eyes open and continue to investigate whatever we see, even if it leads to being nothing. By putting ANY type of strange events into a bit bucket of, “nothingburger,” perhaps we might end up stepping on something that might prove valid (in whatever way that may or may not mean) or enlightening to us as a phenomena we now understand better.
Investigating unexplained phenomenon is, of course, a good idea. Putting a lot of resources toward a few thoroughly innocuous cases that are readily explained by undertrained pilots is, perhaps, less so. But my suggestion here isn’t “don’t investigate UFO’s” it’s “UFO’s are not extraterrestrial in origin.” If the Chinese have some new advanced aircraft that’s messing with our detection systems that’s definitely something we want to know, but only a vanishingly tiny percent of the stuff being discussed rises above the “mundane explanation” threshold.
And seriously, don’t underestimate just how weird some weather can be.
I only scan for UFOs in the Ultra Violent and Infra Dead spectra.
lol u guys are gay for UFOs
RichVR
2011
Considering anal probes I’d say it was the other way around.
“And all that we have learned is that one in ten doesn’t really seem to mind”
Look, you all know and I know that this shit isn’t about life on other planets, utopian tech fantasies, Cold War paranoia, or government secrecy.
It’s about one thing and one thing only: butt stuff. That’s the only curiosity or penetration into dark secrets involved. All you UFO guys are backing up gingerly toward butt stuff.
