Senators receive classified briefing on UFO sightings

[grss1982]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-briefs-us-senators/index.html

 

I'm surprised no one has posted it here yet.

 

IIRC, UFO sightings used to be just conspiracy theories but now the U.S. military actually monitors it?

 

This news makes me wonder if the military has a transformable F-14 somewhere or a repaired alien battle cruiser just in case. lol

 

Edited June 24, 2019 by grss1982

[Seto Kaiba]

44 minutes ago, grss1982 said:

IIRC, UFO sightings used to be just conspiracy theories but now the U.S. military actually monitors it?

The US military has been actively monitoring and investigating reports of unidentified flying objects in US airspace since the 1940s.

The most famous study was the one undertaken from 1952-1969 called Project Blue Book, but there were others that preceded it like Project Sign (1947) and Project Grudge (1949).  The most recent was the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program that ran from 2007 to 2012.

Long story short, UFO sightings are invariably people misidentifying natural phenomena or aircraft due to distance, lighting, prevailing atmospheric conditions, and/or the function of their camera equipment.  A fair few UFO sightings get reported when people accidentally spot aircraft that aren't public yet or aren't properly lit, like the slew of reports triggered by a collection of nuclear test detection balloons or the test flights of the Have Blue and Senior Trend prototypes of the F-117.  The U-2 spyplane was another craft frequently misidentified as a UFO due to its extreme operating altitudes.  The military naturally keeps an eye on these kind of reports to see if anything has leaked about secret programs or take action if they find something that might be an undetected foreign aircraft.

Where the conspiracy nuts come in is the theories about UFOs really being alien spacecraft come to do weird stuff like mutilate cattle or abduct people for anal probing... because a metal probe where the sun doesn't shine is a great way to meet and greet new species, right?  (The idea that there was a vast coverup of the existence of alien visitations has never looked sillier, given how bad our government is at keeping secrets nowadays.)

[Bolt]

Check out the Bob Lazar Area 51 documentary on Netflix.

UFO’s are quite common and Congress is finally forced to ask...what’s up??

when the military doesn’t know what they’re looking at, it makes one wonder..

Edited June 24, 2019 by Bolt

[VF-1A Cannon Fodder]

Here are a few insightful articles:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28453/navy-f-a-18-pilot-shares-new-details-about-ufo-encounters-during-middle-east-deployment

 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28231/multiple-f-a-18-pilots-disclose-recent-ufos-encounters-new-radar-tech-key-in-detection

 

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21000/highly-detailed-report-on-harrowing-encounter-between-f-a-18s-and-ufo-off-baja-surfaces

 

 

[easnoddy]

Yeah, there are tons of civilian and military pilot sightings of UFO's.  They're usually persuaded to "drop it" to prevent damaging to their careers.  Its about time the US went transparent on this.   

[Dynaman]

I've personally seen a UFO.  Just because I don't know what it was doesn't mean squat.  

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Bolt said:

UFO’s are quite common and Congress is finally forced to ask...what’s up??

This kind of briefing isn't actually an infrequent occurrance whenever someone makes enough noise about a defense-related topic.

It doesn't in any way, shape, or form indicate that the government is suddenly taking extraterrestrial theories seriously, just that a spike in reporting of this kind of thing merits another round of the same old same old investigatory panels like Grudge, Blue Book, and so on.  The reports get declassified a decade or so later and the whole thing turns out to have been a total doss.

 

4 hours ago, easnoddy said:

Yeah, there are tons of civilian and military pilot sightings of UFO's.  They're usually persuaded to "drop it" to prevent damaging to their careers.  Its about time the US went transparent on this.   

Usually when someone gets persuaded to "drop it", it's because what they saw was related to a classified military project... like the high altitude balloons that were being used to spy on Soviet nuclear testing, or night flights of prototype or classified aircraft such as the U-2, SR-71, F-117, or captured enemy aircraft like the ones tested as part of Project Constant Peg.

The truth always comes out in the end, but OPSEC is OPSEC while the project's going on.

[Sildani]

My grandfather wrote Blue Book. He had some pretty good stories to tell, but he always said that if there are aliens out there, we haven’t seen them yet. 

[SuperDimensionalDave]

If any of you knows a retired air traffic controller (needs to be retired already and they’ll tell you why) talk to him or her regarding this subject. Probably have some interesting stories to tell. My uncle is a retired Air Force ATC. No direct sightings with his own eyes and no solid information. But he did say that they would get unidentified contacts periodically that would be pulling maneuvers and speeds that not only no current known military aircraft was capable but that no human pilot could survive.   He served in the 70’s-80’s and retired mid 90’s.  Take from that what you will. 

[easnoddy]

Yeah,  the documentary i saw,  the pilots said the UFOs they saw generally went VERY fast and uncomfortably close. Don't think balloons move like that. Civilian and military pilots alike.

[jvmacross]

[MILKAUTICO]

40 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

Damm.. LOL

[Hikuro]

Some years back I remember watching movies of people talking about the US having a space force in the army and a force within the navy and the army denies the naval existence while the navy side is supposedly the most advanced. Ships that dwarf the Macross kind of size.

i shrugged a lot of that stuff and didn’t believe it, then  one day there was talk of disclosure approaching from an elderly man who worked for a number of military aerial contractors and even helped in the space program.

low and behold trump brings up the space force and I was like “wait a damn minute....”

[Bolt]

The truth is out there...lol.

Ya, I absolutely believe some instances are really just classified operations or aircraft that military and civilian alike aren’t privy to. But as mentioned above, when UFO’s are moving at speeds and pulling maneuvers that would turn humans into jelly bags, you have to wonder. Now we can go down the “unmanned “ aircraft route. And even the “we have secret aircraft that can do things you wouldn’t believe “ route. But , again, as mentioned above, these sightings have been going on for decades , back to a time when I’m pretty sure we didn’t have any such technology, even in secret.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Bolt said:

[...] But as mentioned above, when UFO’s are moving at speeds and pulling maneuvers that would turn humans into jelly bags, you have to wonder. Now we can go down the “unmanned “ aircraft route. And even the “we have secret aircraft that can do things you wouldn’t believe “ route. But , again, as mentioned above, these sightings have been going on for decades , back to a time when I’m pretty sure we didn’t have any such technology, even in secret.

Most UFO sightings, particularly those in the "impossible maneuvers" category, almost invariably turn out to be stationary or slow-moving objects or weather phenomena which only appeared to be moving quickly or in an impossible manner for an aircraft due to the observer's shifting perspective, the technological limitations of camera equipment, and the local atmospheric conditions.

One of my favorite examples of this is a cryptid called an "Air Rod", "Skyfish", or "Solar Entity", which is not visible to the naked eye but shows up on old-model cameras and still photo cameras with a slow enough shutter speed.  Conspiracy theorists had it that these were either surviving early flying insects from the Devonian period or aliens.  They turned out to be a simple imaging artifact caused by interlaced video recording.  The hyperfast Air Rods were perfectly ordinary moths and flies being lent the illusion of amazing speed by the interlaced recording process being slightly too slow to capture them in one static position during the creation of a frame, causing them to appear in the video as a fast-moving streak rather than the relatively slow moving insects they actually were.  Human eyes can produce similar illusions in rapid eye movements (called saccades), because the way our brains actually process vision is not at all dissimilar to digital video compression.  Your brain even fudges the data to hide the visual effect of rapid movements of your eyes from you (saccadic masking), and the ensuing spatial update when your brain draws a fresh frame after a saccade can lend objects the illusion of rapid motion or even sudden disappearance.

TL;DR, the fast moving objects tend to be (accidental) camera tricks or failures of the sh*tty codec your brain uses to process vision.  Congrats on being a wetware computer running a ~3 billion year old spaghetti code kludge of hacks that "just worked" at the time.

Edited June 25, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[Sanity is Optional]

So, my dad's actually seen something he couldn't identify, while he was out flying his Cessna.

It had lights, and was more or less immobile, and then suddenly shot straight upwards (which means realistically, it was on a constant bearing, rather than constant position).

Could have been a drone, most likely a powerful one due to the speed he said it moved upwards at.

Edited June 25, 2019 by Sanity is Optional

[pengbuzz]

Meanwhile, on a small island in the Bonin Island chain in the pacific....

[jvmacross]

 

[Old_Nash]

8 hours ago, jvmacross said:

[F-ZeroOne]

Its worth pointing out that the term "Unidentified Flying Object" does not have to mean the same as "Flying Saucer" [1] though I accept the two are often lumped together.

Every so often, a work colleague will exclaim how they've seen a really bright light in the early morning/late evening and they're wondering what it is. You can probably see where I'm going with this; it is of course Venus, one of the most easily identifiable objects in the sky, yet its pretty common for people not to know this. 

I'veseen what I first took as a UFO, and would probably have claimed as such if I hadn't heard the "whoosh" of a Chinese lantern igniting at the same time. Someone from further away might not have had the audio cue to tip them off.  

[1] Which I'm using as a generic term for "possible alien spacecraft" here.

Edited June 25, 2019 by F-ZeroOne

[Dynaman]

> Its worth pointing out that the term "Unidentified Flying Object" does not have to mean the same as "Flying Saucer"

Just this kind of thing is what aggravates me the most about the UFO types - they are worse then a certain company saying they have full rights to "Robotech" when asked what rights they have to Macross - means just as much.

[Seto Kaiba]

Yup... the "space aliens" angle isn't something that's taken seriously in investigation of UFO reports by government authorities.

When the government looks into UFOs they mean one of three possible explanations:

1. Unidentified and undetected foreign aircraft operating in US airspace (BAD)
2. A leak in OPSEC surrounding testing of some classified new aircraft or technology (Bad, but not as bad as #1)
3. Misidentification of something normal (Annoying and a waste of time, but the answer they want to reach)

[JB0]

I REALLY wish you UFO nuts would stop taking photos every time I fly home to visit the family. I don't take pictures of YOUR weirdo cars.

[Nightbat]

I'm with NdGT on this one (first 12 minutes):

 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2019 by Nightbat

[Bolt]

“ i’m not saying we haven’t been visited..” 5:11 min in.  But basiicly, like most scientists and non scientists , he’s open to the idea but saying show me the proof. Fair enough. 

At 13:58 NDT is talking about the ingredients for life in the universe. Also relevant..

Edited June 26, 2019 by Bolt

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

On 6/25/2019 at 9:24 PM, JB0 said:

I REALLY wish you UFO nuts would stop taking photos every time I fly home to visit the family. I don't take pictures of YOUR weirdo cars.

As soon as you stop molesting our moo-cows! 

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Valkyrie Hunter D said:

As soon as you stop molesting our moo-cows! 

Hey, I only did that once! I needed some milk, and was learning as I went.

[Mazinger]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Hey, I only did that once! I needed some milk, and was learning as I went.

Wow, !

[derex3592]

LMFAO!!!!! 

[Nightbat]

On 6/27/2019 at 10:05 AM, JB0 said:

Hey, I only did that once! I needed some milk, and was learning as I went.

That wasn't a cow, that was a Bull!

[JB0]

42 minutes ago, Nightbat said:

That wasn't a cow, that was a Bull!

Well no WONDER I had so much trouble!

[Valkyrie Hunter D]

8 hours ago, JB0 said:

Well no WONDER I had so much trouble!

[F-ZeroOne]

The thing I find funny about the whole cow thing is that this was sometimes blamed on so-called "Black Helicopters" - and it turned out during the bin Laden raid that  the US military really did have Black Helicopters!

[Nightbat]

9 hours ago, JB0 said:

Well no WONDER I had so much trouble!

Well, for what it's worth, he is eagerly awaiting your return

[Nightbat]

28 minutes ago, F-ZeroOne said:

The thing I find funny about the whole cow thing is that this was sometimes blamed on so-called "Black Helicopters" - and it turned out during the bin Laden raid that  the US military really did have Black Helicopters!

Then again, who says they weren't acquired via "1-800-Rent-A-Chopper, Virginia , WA"

"Rent-A-Chopper, how can I help you?"

-"Yes, this is US Special Forces. We would like to hire a few helicopters to kill a #1 terrorist"

"Why hello there Sir! Sir, we at Rent-A-Chopper will put in the extra effort to aid our Proud nation. I think I may just have the thing for you Sir

No questions asked and we'll automatically add the Veteran's bonus on the lower deductable on damage or loss,...

....and how will you be paying sir? Credit Card? Cash? Bitcoin?"

-"Taxmoney"