At the very least I would have hoped that there would be more than just a link to the video, and a section saying that some convincing explanations have been proposed. Right now it looks like on the first day it was released, as if this case was still just as mysterious.
The gimbal one is almost insulting and shows the level of interest the military has on engaging with people on such things. The video is named after the explanation for it but they didn’t bother to acknowledge that.
If you want to be a conspiracy theorist, do consider the level of information and effort the org appears to be putting in.
While Mick West thinks it was Seagulls from the 1 video, the DoD has all sensor recordings and likely more videos, which were not leaked, and likely do the heavy lifting to disprove the seagull theory.
My mind instantly went to the show "Ghosted" where Craig Robinson and Adam Scott worked at "The Bureau Underground" investigating unexplained phenomena (ghosts, aliens, cryptids).
Got a good laugh out of the line "committed to transparency". I'd hope so but I'm not counting on it
If you are interested in this stuff, you may also want to check out an Apple TV show called Invasion. Season 2 just started. I think overall the beginning episodes were better though. It was really engaging.
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) means (A) airborne objects that are not immediately identifiable; (B) transmedium objects or devices; (C) and submerged objects or devices that are not immediately identifiable
It's a long running and well-known cover story for secret aircraft development. Which is why it is so popular near the base where they do so much experimental aircraft testing.
As a nation we should be vigilant that we have the best and the next best tech. Acting on the implicit faith that our nation monopolizes this niche in all federally funded defense companies is maybe misplaced particularly when we begin to lose global trade power and comparative wealth.
The easiest way to know it's not a foreign adversary is the fact that the US isn't claiming it to be. If it were actually foreign tech, the US would be beating the war drums 24/7 and using this opportunity to double their defense budget.
Only one of the four objects shot down earlier this year was a Chinese surveillance balloon, and that was also the only one we got pictures of. The other three were described as "objects". One of them was reported to have been "cigar-shaped", and other to have messed with one of the jet's electronics.
Regarding the object shot down over Canada:
> Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first announced Saturday's shootdown over the northern Yukon territory, saying Canadian forces would recover and analyze the wreckage. (...) Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand declined to speculate about the origin of the object, which she said was cylindrical in shape. (...) "The leaders discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin," it said in a statement.
Officially, they gave up the search after a few days.
And as for the object shot down over Alaska:
> But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said. (...) Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that. (...) Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet. (...) It’s unclear what the object looks like, or where it came from. On Friday, Ryder said it was traveling north east across Alaska. He declined to provide a physical characterization, only saying that it was “about the size of a small car” and “not similar in size or shape” to the Chinese surveillance balloon that was downed off the coast of South Carolina on February 4. (...) recovery teams are now collecting the debris that is sitting on top of ice in US territorial waters.
This one was also, officially, not recovered, for some reason.
If these are not bona fide UFO's, I don't know what to call them. What I know is that no government official called them "balloons", nor were they associated with China, nor did we get to see a single photo of them.
> One of the objects downed by the US Air Force using a $400,000 missile last weekend may have been a $12 balloon released by a hobby group, a report said.
> The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week that one of its balloons had gone missing, and that it may have been among the objects shot down by the US Air Force using a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile.
> The club said that it had been tracking the course of its silver pico balloon. Its last reported position was on February 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska.
> Pico ballooning involves flying high altitude balloons that resemble party balloons, then tracking their flight path as they travel across the globe. A pico balloon can cost anywhere from $12 to $180, according to reports.
> Most UFO sightings are completely banal things that are not recognized at the time, like camera artifacts and (unironically) atmospheric phenomena.
Completely agree, but in this case it was not a balloon. When asked specifically if these objects were balloons, a US general said no and that "we are calling them objects for a reason" (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-milita...). K9YO-15, the supposed missing balloon, eventually turned up and pinged again in late February and then March, weeks after the shooting down of those objects, as seen here: https://aprs.fi/info/a/K9YO-15
The weird thing with the three other objects besides the Chinese spy balloon we all saw pictures of, is that not a single image of the other objects was released. They were also shot down in known locations, but no debris at all were supposedly found. A few days after the first time ever that F22's shot down stuff over the continental US, the whole thing was buried, never mentioned again, and everyone was left thinking that they were all Chinese spy balloons, like the first one that was very publicly shot down.
The US has 46 million people living in rural areas with little light pollution. Europe is more densely populated than the US and urban light pollution is probably the only type of pollution that is significantly worse here than in the US.
There are of course also hundreds of millions of people in the developing world living in rural areas but they likely have other life priorities than noticing lights in the sky.
My point is that whatever it is it is probably a global phenomenon but only Americans are both geographically and culturally inclined (Hollywood) to notice and report it.
The "why only America" thing seems to come up in every discussion, yet if you pay attention to this stuff at all, you see videos and reports from all over the world, so I really don't understand where it is coming from.
It’s 99% legitimate counterintelligence programs propelled by con-men and neo-religions. The US Government has known since at least 1976 that foreign spies (then Soviets) viewed UFO believers as mentally weak and thus targeted them to exfiltrate classified information.
There are classified operations to test potential targets. And open intelligence networks to organize and connect disparate groups.
Different parts of the government benefit in various ways. It will never be explained because the government can’t stop its employees from believing in supernatural ideas.
If there is an illegal disinformation program or psyop, it is unconnected to the government and conducted over multi-decades. It will be extremely hard to prove until it becomes operational (ie in a hot war with China).
In the meantime, the og UFO promoters are aging and they have created a new religion to explain the mysteries of life and death. These are the same people behind Lue Elizondo and David Grusch.
Jeremy Corbin and George Knapp were on Rogan recently talking about Grusch and what was said seemed like some really poor decision making on Grusch part, not least of which was Grusch decision talking to those guys. In that way, what you say is believable. BUT it does not explain the credible eye witness and sensor data around sightings such as tic tac and others. So, in my view the reality must be somewhere in between. Whether that's extraterrestrial or not, hanlons razor suggest not.
I think skepticism can go to the same kinds of extremes as believing. While a significant percentage of reports is surely a mixture of crackpots / people with unknown agendas, I find it hard to discard just about everything on one of these basis.
No, skepticism should be your default stance w.r.t. extraordinary claims.
That many people are heedless, shallow of thought, and frightened of ignorance in similar patterns should not be taken as evidence that _some_ of their flights of fancy are fact.
There is a difference between healthy skepticism and blind, fanatic skepticism. The latter is not far from the dark ages when the church was burning people for claiming the earth is not flat or not the center of the universe, only in a more civilized environment, but still anything outside the currently accepted norm is disregarded as impossible and the people with such claims are ridiculed, just as it is happening with me now, and not even because of claiming something, just giving it the benefit of the doubt. This is not how scientific progress is made. Given the amount of evidence and witnesses, it at least deserves to be studied, not just coldly dismissed.
Sort of off topic, but I got stung by the "AKSHUALLY" bug. I just wanted to say that the term, "fanatic skepticism", isn't a possible outcome. Definitionally, skepticism clearly means you wouldn't be fanatic of anything. In reality this is cognitive dissonance, not skepticism.
Anyway, personally, I think this is a topic that needs serious skeptical focus. I don't just want immediate knee-jerk reactionary opinions on what people saw -- I want honesty as new information is gained. New thoughts on what you saw? Give those updates.
I hope that we're not alone in the universe and, honestly, I think it would probably impact me more if we were alone in such a vast *thing*.
Yes, cognitive dissonance might be the correct description of this, thanks! still, the definition of it holds for this case.
I also don't want to rely on speculation / jumping to conclusions, but just the same, don't want it entirely dismissed as some outrageous "cannot happen" thing. Serious research needs to be done.
It's entirely possible the government exposes individuals with SCI type clearance to disinformation or fabrications to convince them they are real, and then watches them to see if they can keep it a secret. This would be a ideal way to conduct audits within groups exposed to leading technology. Then, to be fair, many of these people are conveying their observations truthfully but were just encouraged to draw to wrong conclusions from the experience.
sure, that's entirely possible, and even that all the recently released information is just that. but again, until this is proven, it's unfair to dismiss everything with such an explanation. it deserves a thorough investigation and study.
> It's a propaganda strategy to prime the American public to support inevitable offensives against China.
You are giving the US government way too much credit about playing the long-game at an expert level while hiding its motives and being united of purpose.
I've seen how the US motivates itself to war (e.g. the invasion of Iraq) and it is clumsy, obvious and with lots of infighting.
That's clearly a false claim. The US had a long history of combatting the USSR successfully to give one example, spanning the entire post WW2 Cold War era. That included preparing the US population and military for a possible war with the Soviets (which also successfully included building far superior military hardware vs what the Soviets were producing). It wasn't clumsy for the most part, it was exceptional. That included battling them economically, industrially, with espionage, with long-term allies, in locations outside of Europe, and so on. It was a united political front overwhelmingly.
Yes, there were exceptions, and they don't refute the overall.
Iraq was trivial compared to half a century of standing off with the Soviet Empire.
The USSR is long gone. Russia is a joke. The US superpower remains. The US won in part thanks to the US political machine playing the long game, and very often doing it in a united fashion.
There is very wide political unity when it comes to certain enemies, one of those now is the CCP. Major threats to the US superpower positioning almost always draw out unity among the political class, over whatever term is required.
I give you that the US government efforts to contain Soviet Russia was much different than the Iraq war - eg. unified populace for the most part, long-term, strategic but also relatively open and explicit. I would also argue it wasn't a war, so it is a different thing all together.
I guess I was referring to the specific idea that this was a plan to establish a cause belli.
Yeah, they were telling obvious lies about Afghanistan, and that was a war that would have had plenty of support anyway. They’re not exactly subtle about this kind of thing—though it works regardless, so I guess they don’t need to be.
> A mechanism for members of the general public to make reports will be announced in coming months.
Anyone know who's hiring for this program and whether I can be an investigator? I'd love to be the one who pours through piles of looney reports of UFO activity, looking for any sign of intelligence.
It's clear that the Crab People have infiltrated both governments at the very top and are rapidly driving the surface world towards total nuclear annihilation so that the almighty crustaceans may rule the Earth once more.
I thought the Grusch news a few months back was going to be... something, but it hasn't been.
All we get (if you peruse the UFOs subreddit at least, or twitter) is people like george knapf and the other dude that makes the documentaries like skyranch, everyday saying stuff like "My source in DOD says BIG intel drop coming VERY SOON.". They literally say that stuff everyday. It's getting to QAnon levels of ridiculous.
I've always loved that phrase, as it unpacks so many ways. Have the original version of the poster in my office.
I want to believe
As in, you currently do not, but you desire to, but you need something to convince you, and the current evidence you've seen is unconvincing, which means you have standards of proof.
It doesn't get more honestly scientific than that.
> "... will launch a secure reporting tool on the website to enable current and former U.S. government employees, service members, or contractors with direct knowledge of U.S. government programs or activities to contact AARO directly to make a report."
If you join NASA you can become the "Planetary Protection Officer", which would be the first time I'd actually enjoy handing out business cards to people.
(The job is much more mundane than the title sounds.)
There's also the International Earth Rotation Service, but they're depending on inertia to get their job done.
(Their actual job is to coordinate very precise measurements of the earth's rotation to determine how its rotation is shifting relative to atomic time).
