The video is only one piece of the evidence. The pilots are trained, and other sensor systems confirmed what the camera was showing. This analysis is pretty flimsy.

AFAICT no pilots saw this shape with their naked eye. They were miles away from the target and relying on what they saw via their sensors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

True believers rarely retaining their senses of humor was the point I was trying to make. I promise not to make fun of UFOs again.

This analysis doesn’t reject an actual object being tracked: it confirms it and describes it as one that causes IR glare!

What remains is still an unidentified flying object, but one whose behavior is reasonably mundane and doesn't require advanced technology to explain.

It's not the pathogens people object to, so much as the slavery and genocide. Particularly, celebrating the originator and perpetrator of those crimes on the land where they were perpetrated.

By all means, write about Christopher Columbus in the history books (after Leif Erikson, who unlike Columbus actually set foot in America) but let's stop normalizing erecting statues to villains.

Yes, but we don't. We don't create statues of Christopher Columbus to place his actions in their proper historical context, or to memorialize his victims, any more than we do the Holocaust with statues of Hitler. We erect statues of Columbus because until relatively recently the entirely Eurocentric narrative about him considered him a heroic figure, and the subjugation of indigenous peoples a righteous and noble cause.

I think that’s more the norm with people, if they even think about Columbus at all.

The problem with contemporary dialogue is the refusal to allow for grey zones, for nuanced and balanced viewpoints. Who is this “we” that you project upon? Do you consider that this presumption and projection may by symptomatic of a neuroticism unique to a overly loud illiberal subculture in the US? I do, it’s all that gives me faith in the survival of the greater whole.

No. I consider that not everyone in the US is completely culturally detached from the legacy of colonialism, and that some people have perfectly valid reasons to object to statues of people like Columbus.

You seem to understand the negative impacts of colonialism on an intellectual level, as a simple fact of history, but you also seem perplexed as to why anyone would care. Perhaps you should consider why someone would object to a statue of Columbus. Engage with the nuance you're referring to, by not dismissing those with views other than yours as being carriers of a social disease. Examine your own views and ask yourself why you consider it valid to keep a Columbus statue up to celebrate some of his accomplishments, but not to remove it as a statement of opposition to his other accomplishments.

It is now understood that all those weird stories about the Bermuda Triangle are caused by gas. But still people want to believe in other, more exciting stories because that is what we want it to be.

Edit: even the gas theory of the Bermuda Triangle is just that: a theory. The best explanation is probably nothing much is going on there.

Space Data Corporation was operating as early as 1997. Their product is radio communications provided by balloon. IIUC, normally those balloons are tethered, but if a tether snapped and one got away and was caught in a high-altitude crosswind, you'd have a mostly-metal object catching sunlight and throwing it in weird ways as it tumbled.

Visual confirmation I don’t find remotely compelling. Besides the notorious general unreliability of human observers, humans simply cannot distinguish between small, nearby objects traveling slowly and large, far objects traveling quickly without additional contextual clues (e.g., a tiny plane-shaped object in the sky is probably the latter). Factor in that they were validating their observations against a sensor displaying a misleading image—in other words, providing incorrect contextual clues—and I think it’s not hard to call into question the accuracy of any visual claims.

You don't think humans could get better at judging distance of objects with practice? It seems like if any humans on earth could reliably do it, it would be seasoned fighter pilots that have thousands of hours of experience doing that exact thing.

Without a reference point you are unlikely to be able to guess the distance of an aircraft, especially an unknown one.

I feel like people just want to believe. But this is a pretty satisfying explanation.

Here's a 4 hour interview with the pilot, David Fravor, on Lex Fridman's show where he goes into much more detail than you'll probably read elsewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E

This wasn't just a single radar. It was an AEGIS system compromised of multiple ships with state of the art radars, multiple plane radars, and visual confirmation by several pilots. They were tracking it for multiple days.

Is there a source to indicate that in the specific incident being covered by this article, that there is any evidence beyond the video itself?

There was a separate incident where there was a visual sighting and people are conflating the two.

If you're unwilling to even entertain that this might be a possibility because you want to believe... I guess do what you want.

My working theory for what creates the lowest common denominator of internet comments, is that you have to believe whatever is necessary to believe to keep the conversation going.

If a skeptic debunks something by appeals to mundane facts relating to camera angles and physics principles, that closes the conversation. And for internet comment sections that is a problem. But, if them being right means they are arrogant, then we can talk about how arrogant they are, the nothing gets turned back into a something and the conversation can keep going.

And note the quotes around "skeptic," I'm not talking about people with real expertise in some area who show some crazy theory to be implausible or impossible.

I don't know about skeptics in general, but I found Mr. West's video to be pretty entertaining. He built some pretty impressive-looking simulations to support his claims.

I think conspiracy theories can be interesting and entertaining, but a lot of their theorists are kinda pathetic.

Right up until they're sure that there's a child molestation ring in the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn't have a basement, and someone goes and shoots up the place because the conspiracy theory was so damn entertaining.

Yeah, it can be interesting to hear a dubunking from someone with an actual background in the field, but someone who's whole schtick is debunking is just as motivated to prove things wrong as the conspiracy theorists are to prove things right.

Very true. We got some of the best TV in history in the form of the Stargate franchise from goofy '90s conspiracies.

It's possible the IR glare is an intentional countermeasure produced by the craft. It might sound far-fetched, but the military can already jam some cameras already, and they apparently license this technology too:

https://techlinkcenter.org/technologies/selective-camera-jam...

The US Navy has (admittedly controversial) patents for technologies that could produce a craft with these flight characteristics:

https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Salvatore+Cezar+Pais

The first time these craft were spotted on radar was during a Navy exercise where they were testing new radar equipment, and the craft were coming from the direction of San Clemente island (an island that is a Navy base). Here's a short video that talks about the radar sighting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyP79v9e84

In the Nimitz case, the "UFO" disappeared, and then met the pilots at their rendezvous point. How did it know where the rendezvous point was?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpcfeHI0Kk

Sightings of these UFOs have only ever been mentioned by US forces.

Who knows what is going on, but if I had to make a guess and I considered all of this information, it seems likely that the "UFOs" are experimental US aircraft.

> what is being seen in the video is actually infrared glare that hides a hot object behind it and only rotates in the way it does because the camera rotates when tracking the target from left to right

This is in the first 15 seconds of the YouTube video.

Fraver (not sure he was one of the ones in this incident) has a history of UFO pranks, shutting down engines and gliding over campfires then lighting up after burners when right over them, explicitly to give a UFO experience, and someone found a contemporaneous report of him doing it, so it wasn't just a story.

BUT... I don't think any US military pilot expects their cockpit recordings or FLIR video to be public at some later time, I'm not sure what the motivation would be to lie about this stuff. The harm to you as a respected pilot would be fairly severe, and you'd have to get your co-pilot to go along with it.

"Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin

BTW that like sounds like the crazy pilot guy from A-team

I find it very, very, very hard to believe that a fighter pilot would _shut down_ his engines in flight, at night, even more so if it's for a stunt.

Slightly more believable if he went to idle, and then full military power. Slightly.

If he never did it he pranked/lied about doing the prank and that is no better for credibility.

Given other potentially questionable behavior around this subject matter, yes, that absolutely calls their credibility into question.

Hmm.

It seems a little ridiculous to compare the one where he turned his engine off and on one time at night over a couple campers to the episode where multiple pilots see it, with multiple sensors seeing it from planes and from ships. He engaged in horseplay once, therefor anything he ever says should not be believed seems lame.

The camper incident caused a UFO report.

USAF and reitred officals have gone on record to say that they actively release doctored footage and/or false narratives, sometimes via pop culture figures, to muddy waters on current technology or to sow discourse among enemies. This reeks of n example of that, and not aliens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men

You must look at every statement they make separately. They give one fact that can be verified and then they tie lies or unverified stuff on that.

btw. Luis Elizondo is has not been charge of any UFO stuff. https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history...

I have no conviction on the UFO phenomenon other than it would be cool if aliens exist, and even cooler if they were already on Earth. Still, I can't get enough of it – I especially love thinking about the most epistemically offensive conspiracy theories, like "the moon is a spaceship" or "Antarctica is an alien base." I sometimes fall asleep to Ancient Aliens.

But, fact is, the only government agents with any "authority" in this "movement" – which became especially fervent around the dissolution of Q-Anon, btw – are people who worked for DIA in Information Operations. That is, their specialty is in manipulating the public, not alien technology.

The "Lue anon" moniker about sums it up. My theory is the recent reinvigoration of the UFO movement is an attempt by US intel agencies to pre-emptively herd the most impressionable people with their own controlled conspiracy, rather than allow a hostile actor to manipulate them during the next election.

Also, I predicted this 10 months ago, the last time "disclosure" was imminent, in a comment [0] that I think has aged well so far.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27339120

The late Senator Harry Reid of Nevada disagreed with you. <https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/politics/article/luis-elizondo...>

To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences (media & entertainment company) makes this stuff up and sells it.

https://tothestars.media/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company)

I happened to read the SEC filings when they were doing this and am certain it's fine and Vice reporters just don't know how startup finances work.

What I did notice is that the perfectly normal looking and very detailed Form C didn't say the company owned any IP from alien spaceships or was going to acquire it. Their website definitely suggested it though, so if you're lying you could sue for securities fraud.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/story/202...

They're all ATFLIR videos. It's basically the same thing - a far away hot object, likely another aircraft, turns into an IR cylinder-shaped blog on screen which is then incorrectly interpreted as being an actual cylinder. The apparent movement at the end is just the ATFLIR losing lock as the guy constantly zooms in and out.

Naive question: If a carrier group cannot, in essentially real-time, document three dimensional trajectories at this point (four if you include speed), what possible defense can they claim to have against evasive incoming missiles, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensor_fusion

Even with fusion, the fewer the sensors the less accurate the tracking will be. In these videos there may only be one or two sensors actually tracking the object.

Hitting a target with a missile is a somewhat different problem, you just have to get the missile there based on whatever data you have (which might be from the carriers sensor data, the missiles own sensors, or both). For example an IR missile doesn't know the location of its target, it just knows how far off center the IR light from the target is from the missiles current flight path and it can correct course based on that simple angular offset to eventually hit the target (with some additional math since the missile has to go to where the target will be when it gets there.) Similarly stopping an evasive incoming missile does not require that you know its exact location. Also as a defensive missile gets closer to the incoming missile it may be able to get better data on where its target actually is and how it is moving. Missiles move very fast so on the final approach there is not much ability to change direction at all, it would require too many g's to turn the missile, so you can model the final approach as a straight line. When it's close your own tracking systems probably work better as well because the targets cross section takes up more of the sky.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-pos...

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/10/14/will-ground-bas...

Systems do not become obsolete because they can be killed. They become obsolete when they no longer serve utility. Either something else does the job better, more efficiently or effectively or the nature of war has changed to the degree that its now irrelevant.

This mistake is most often made with Tanks and Carriers for some reason. The existence of Javelin ATGMs does not mean tanks are obsolete. And the existence of hypersonic AshMs does not make carriers obsolete. Those weapons do not replace the functionality of tanks and carriers.

Its like the common pop history myth that machineguns made horse cavalry obsolete in the first world war. It did not. Cavalry lasted through the war. Their tactics definitely had to change and adapt. And they were certainly used far more sparingly due to their low survivability but offensive cavalry weren't rendered obsolete until tanks came around. And horses in general weren't obsolete until armies became fully mechanized and replaced them with trucks. Some armies didn't manage that until after WW2.

Likewise the Battleship was not obsoleted because carrier aircraft could kill it easily. It was obsoleted because carrier aircraft and later smart weapons meant combat now happened over the horizon and those big guns weren't contributing to fleet actions anymore

Its been possible to kill a tank since literally the first battle they were employed. Ballsy German artillerymen learned that British tanks were not immune to a direct hit from a field gun fired over open sights. And Carriers have always been vulnerable to antiship weapons. Be it torpedoes from a sub, dumb bombs from an aircraft or fancy high tech missiles today.

So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?

1. Detect the carrier. Sounds easy but they can move at 30+ knots, and can be quite difficult to detect when they want to hide.

2. Provide targeting data. This is needs to be much more accurate than just detecting that a carrier is operating "near" this point. Most weapons will require relatively precise data for this.

3. Transmit this data rapidly to the launch systems. Every minute counts as old targeting data is relatively useless.

4. Launch the weapon. This means keeping aircraft or missile batteries safe from attack, and getting the weapons in range of the carrier.

5. Have the weapon reach the target area. This means a reliable weapon with a low failure rate.

6. Have the weapon avoid any ECM or other countermeasures that might affect its targeting.

7. Have the weapon avoid any defenses, either the layered defenses (SAMS, point defence guns), fighters, etc.

8. Have the weapon detonate properly, in the best spot.

Lots of things to go wrong in this "kill-chain." Lots of places to interrupt, disrupt or out-right kill the weapon.

And sure we hear a lot about Russian super weapons like Zircon and the silly torpedoes. But as the Ukraine war is showing, a lot of Russian stuff sounds great until you see it in action. Or it's a Potemkin weapon, or too expensive.

Look at all the burning Russian tanks. These aren't monkey models sent to client states like Iraq. These are top of the line, with ERA etc. Yet most don't have Arena/Trophy, and are getting killed by a weapon designed 30 years ago.

Now perhaps the DF-21 deployed by the PLAN is more reliable than the Russian crap. But unless things get hot in the South China Sea we'll never know.

You mean 95% of the ones on that list, which was made by an external observer. It's also a military engagement each time one of their vehicles gets exploded by a TB2 drone strike.

Their equipment losses: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

Most of these aren't in battle, it's because their equipment breaks on its own because they didn't maintain the tires for years, or runs out of fuel because everyone in the supply chain sold it for food money.

The Wikipedia map is good, but it's also out of date on that page, and the positions haven't moved much since then.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offens...

I'm skeptical of any list of equipment losses being comprehensive on both sides. We are very much in a fog of war situation.

The map you linked looks fairly dire to me. The Russians control the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea at this point, and all of Ukraine's eastern border. With Belarus to the north, it leaves Ukraine landlocked with only its western border for imports and exports (mainly via Poland). There's a cauldron

Russia has already captured many of the major cities east of the Dnieper, and it will be harder and harder for Ukraine to supply the eastern front, particularly across that river.

And you do realize that satellites don't "lock" onto anything. They orbit around the earth. Geosynchronous orbits aren't used by RORSATs. Spyplanes? What spy planes? Russian maritime surveillance aircraft have limited range, (as do the PLANs) and can't see an infinite distance. Google the earth's curvature and you'll be able to find out how radar is limited.

Russia's military is a Potemkin village. Has been for decades if not longer. The only thing they have that's a threat is their nuclear weapons, and I'm even starting to wonder how reliable those are.

You keep talking about how dangerous Poseidon is. But Status-6 hasn't even been deployed, and probably never will. Why not talk about how dangerous Tsar Bomba is? And it's estimated speed is closer to 60mph.

I grew up when the Soviets were all 10 feet tall, with super T-80 tanks, with SS-20 missiles, nuclear powered cruisers and all sorts of scary stuff. Most of it turned out to be junk or too expensive for the USSR to afford. Same with Russia.

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/02/russian-n...

"The missile can be armed with a nuclear or conventional warhead and has been tested several times over the last few years in the Barents Sea and White Sea regions, both from surface warships and the latest class of multi-purpose submarine."

Sometimes it matters what a country spends its budget on rather than how much.

This is all noted by our own DOD: https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/201...

"U.S. efforts to reduce the roles and numbers of nuclear weapons, and convince other states to do the same, have included reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile by over 85 percent since its Cold War high. Potential adversaries, however, have expanded and modernized their nuclear forces."

"Russia possesses significant advantages in its nuclear weapons production capacity and in non-strategic nuclear forces over the U.S. and allies. It is also building a large, diverse, and modern set of non-strategic systems that are dual-capable (may be armed with nuclear or conventional weapons). These theater- and tactical-range systems are not accountable under the New START Treaty and Russia’s non-strategic nuclear weapons modernization is increasing the total number of such weapons in its arsenal, while significantly improving its delivery capabilities. This includes the production, possession, and flight testing of a ground-launched cruise missile in violation of the INF Treaty. Moscow believes these systems may provide useful options for escalation advantage. Finally, despite Moscow’s frequent criticism of U.S. missile defense, Russia is also modernizing its long-standing nuclear-armed ballistic missile defense system and designing a new ballistic missile defense interceptor."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...

Russia says they've lost 400 men, USINT says 7K. Who's telling the truth? They're both known to lie.

We can be relatively sure, based on the numerous maps of Russian advances that eastern Ukraine will fall in the next couple of weeks. You let me know if that's a win or a loss. I'm not sure. It's certainly a thing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60506682

Emerging threats may change tactics, operations and spur development of countermeasures but they wont make an entire weapons system obsolete unless the change the nature of war.

>Given the technology mentioned by GP, the small number of Carriers in service and the utter impossibility of hiding them, it would appear that such a solution does exist for Carriers.

Carriers are not impossible to hide. A CSG that doesn't want to be found can do so. The ocean is a very big place. There are also grades to knowing "where" something is. Just knowing there is a carrier in the South China sea is valid for strategic planning but not much else. Knowing its somewhere to the south west of Taiwan can help plan operations but wont put warheads on foreheads.

A complete kill chain involves getting very precise and timely targeting information. This is something that needs to be done with some kind of sensor, RADAR, Thermal, Sonar etc. It must be timely because carriers are moving targets. A mere set of GPS coordinates is not good enough. By the time your missile gets there they will be wrong. So that means you need something nearby with a datalink and proper sensors to give targeting data. This could be a sub listening with sonar, a strike aircraft painting the carrier with radar or using an IRST to pick up its heat signature. It could be a warship of your own.

Point is, these kill chains are long and complicated and if you break it at any point your attack will fail or wont happen at all. Hypersonic missiles have very long kill chains, some of the longest. And they haven't been proven out in combat. "Finding" a CSG is much easier said than done.

Strategic nuclear weapons, which one of the items you are referencing is, have been the “make it all go away” button for lots of things since they were created, but…MAD.

As for conventional anti-shipping missiles, people have been arguing that about carriers since weapons like the Exocet were available, but today, as then, remain at best highly speculative.

> So while it seems to be true that Aircraft Carriers are not obsolete in peacetime or in a conflict with minor powers, aren't they obsolete in the context for which they were created--namely, war with another great power?

Maybe, but so what? MAD has made war between great powers even more the exception among wars involving great powers than it was in the past, and it's almost always been the exception.

1. Current or future means of intercepting hypersonic missiles.

2. The ability to disable or reduce the enemy’s ability of launching hypersonic missiles, or of pinpointing and accurately tracking the exact location of aircraft carriers.

We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.

In an all out war with Russia, our carriers would be big, slow, sitting ducks against Mach 20 missiles with variable speed and high maneuverability as well.

https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/why-russias-hyper...

"The missile flies with an advanced fuel that the Russians say gives it a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. And it's so fast that the air pressure in front of the weapon forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems.

U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up."

Say hello to SM-3. It has successfully intercepted hypersonic RVs in testing. Is it perfect? No. But if it done anything, the last month has made me feel more confident in what the US claims their weapons can do and dismissive for the Russians.

>We also have no defenses against 100 megaton underwater torpedo nukes that can be detonated miles from a carrier group and still wipe it out.

No such weapon exists. And if it did it would be wildly impractical. The largest nuke ever made was the Tsar Bomba and it was only 50 megatons and too large to be practical.

And we do have a counter to nuclear torpedoes. Its called the West's nuclear deterrence. Using a nuke on a carrier means nuclear war and nobody wants that.

But I think they provide overlapping, but different, roles. But missiles and torpedoes is why aircraft carriers travel in carrier groups that have defensive capabilities against torpedoes and missiles.

Occam’s razor is more likely - the west vastly overestimated their capability practically the entirety of the Cold War, and you’re doing it again now.

Maybe because they've barely been training those pilots and know the planes would likely be lost if used above Ukraine? Pilots in the Russian Air Force have supposedly been averaging less than 100 flight hours a year, which is next to nothing.

Tanks being used by Russia in Ukraine:

T-72A T-72B3 OBR.2016 T-80BV T-80U T-80BVM T-90A

IFVs:

BMP2 BMP3 BMD4M

SAMs:

Tor Buk Pantsir

Fighters and Helos:

SU-25 SU-30/35 Su-34

Mi-24/35 KA-52 Mi-28

None of this is "monkey model" stuff like the the USSR sent to client states. These are all top of the line. Same with the artillery and missiles used. All the best the Russians have in any decent numbers.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/03/14/us/r...

The Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo.

It doesn't need to get anywhere near a carrier group to knock out the entire group. It is twice as powerful as the largest nuke ever detonated (at 57megatons) and a Russian sub can carry four of these torpedoes:

“All buildings in the village of Severny (both wooden and brick), located 55 km (34 mi) from ground zero within the Sukhoy Nos test range, were destroyed. In districts hundreds of kilometers from ground zero wooden houses were destroyed, stone ones lost their roofs, windows, doors, and radio communications were interrupted for almost one hour. One participant in the test saw a bright flash through dark goggles and felt the effects of a thermal pulse even at a distance of 270 kilometres (170 mi). The heat from the explosion could have caused third degree burns 100 km (62 mi) away from ground zero. A shock wave was observed in the air at Dikson settlement 700 km (430 mi) away; windowpanes were partially broken to distances of 900 kilometres (560 mi)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba

Not by much, not per capita (of the obvious target), and both sides are treaty-limited to the same number of 'ready' weapons.

> Poseidon is a 100 megaton nuclear torpedo

You're getting your information from Russian propaganda sources. Credible estimates put it at more like perhaps 2MT.

That's assuming they can actually hit and inflict sufficient damage.

Also, you need to re-read your own sources.

> 100 megaton nuclear torpedoes that travel at 120mph (which Russia has).

The article is estimating that it's at most 2 megatons (still a lot, but 50x smaller) and that it's NOT supercavitating, so it would not travel at 120mph.

The other article does not support the conclusion that carriers are obsolete, at all. It poses the question, but does not answer it.

Carrier effectiveness and utility is diminished by some weapon systems, but they are still effective for many roles and purposes.

If you use nuclear weapons on another nuclear power, carriers are going to be the least of your concerns.

I'm not sure about Russia's or China's anti ballistic technology. I know their hypersonic tech is superior to our own currently.

But what if a country could deploy nuclear weapons against another nation and defend themselves against incoming missiles, due to a temporary technological advantage? It changes the game. I'm not sure if that's where we're at currently, but I know that the hypersonic and nuclear tech is why we are so hesitant to enter the Ukrainian war outright.

If you think hypersonic weapons are any deterrent to the US involvement in Ukraine, you're just being silly. The Russians don't even have enough Kalibr cruise missiles to take out a 3rd rate military. They don't have enough money (or perhaps just too much corruption) to install active defenses for their MBTs (no Arena/Trophy).

The only reason we don't have US troops in Ukraine is because of the SS-18 Satan and Bulava SLBM.

And no one has an effective defense against the number of ICBMs/SLBMs on each side. The ABM systems around Moscow are too few to counter the number of warheads assigned, and the US missile defense is too raw (and also out of position) to defend against Russian missiles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKyP79v9e84

I don't think we can trust the accounts of anyone in the employ of the government, past or present, when it comes to this kind of thing.

For all we know to misinform is the mission, propaganda if you will.

Consider how much of what you said above is practically verbatim regurgitation of their vernacular. Jargon is often abused to sound qualified, smart, and authoritative. AKA B.S. alert.

This just seems to be a way that the government can point to an “expert” and say it was nothing, thereby alleviating the need for the government to comment on the “nothing”.

I’m guessing the classified file on this is very interesting.

In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.

In their 2021 annual meeting notes [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b5a458fe749405f83225...], To the Stars Academy notes that "Christopher Mellon, a member of TTSA’s advisory board, [is] no longer with the company" implying he was employed by them in some fashion. Thus prior to 2021, he likely stood to benefit commercially from these films' distribution, particularly when he was quoted alongside them.

Pilot Chad Underwood gave private testimony to the senate congressional committee on this gimbal video stating the object did rotate without changing direction or altitude - a feat which is impossible by our current understanding of physics. So assuming the "drone" in gimbal belongs to something of terrestrial origin, either our government his hiding ground breaking physics capabilities or some other country on this planet has - both of which are terrifying.

>In the case of relying on Christopher Mellon's credentials, I'd point out that he has a commercial interest of some kind with To The Stars Academy, the production company which seems to be behind all of these videos' presence on the History channel.

I agree TTSA has sketchy origins, I've looked quite a bit into it. Chris Mellon comes from one of the wealthiest families in America, so I would have to assume that this venture could not have netted him enough money to make it worth while for him to lie to congress about this. He was the major architect to the Gillibrand amendment in last year's NDAA creating the new UAP office, and he and Lue Elizondo been regularly meeting with the Senate Intelligence committee to further pursue this topic. And to go on that, Lue Elizondo (former head of AATIP) made no money from his time at TTSA or the Unidentified TV show. If someone needed money, it would have been him imo.

It's clear whomever, or whatever, possesses this superior technology could fly circles around and/or obliterate us on a whim, but has expressly decided not to, and instead simply announced: "Hey, I have this."

If they/it perceived us as a threat, we'd surely be gone already. That leaves only our hopefully sane response, to influence what happens next.

Being terrified would be exactly wrong.

The technology they are displaying is awesome, but it is something we should be very wary of.

Our capabilities can be well enough assessed from the comfortable safety of billions of kilometres away simply from watching our relentless broadcasting of them in all directions for decades if not centuries now.

We even sent out devices at the limits of our sphere of physical influence, introducing ourselves and with instructions on how to understand what we say.

Certainly, by simple initial analysis of even our most basic technology they could then monitor our own satellite networks on a whim and see all of the same things about ourselves that we do, in realtime and in totality.

Ingesting our transmissions and emissions and assessing our capabilities would be something they could do far more thoroughly than we can ourselves. They'd likely also be able to project what we'll have ten or twenty years from now in detail.

Sending a craft in can only reasonably be interpreted as "hi" given a context of technological dominance, which by necessity is founded on informational dominance.

Equity investor. No conflicts there!

“in our restricted military airspace”

In fact, they’re actually the most heavily instrumented research, development, test and training areas on the planet. Let me repeat that: research, development and test.

https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrsw/installations/navbas...

What an incredible coincidence. Alien trolls or Occam’s razor?

And with all that, all we get are appeals to authority and fuzzy pics.

It’s akin to “Air Force pilots bewildered by objects over Area 51, must be aliens!”

The ODNI specifically stated in the 144 cases of UAP they were not able to identify that exactly none of them were from testing US Special Access Programs technology. This is in the official report http://dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-As...

>“Christopher Mellon served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is a private equity investor and an adviser to the To the Stars Academy for Arts and Science” > Equity investor. No conflicts there!

He left TTSA in 2021 and he's still a national security advisor to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's also from one of the wealthiest families in the world, being a direct line from Carnegie Mellon. Typically when you are born wealthy you are naturally an investor in things you believe in.

I’m going to be extremely generous and assume you have actually not read the report you state says exactly none of them were SAPs.

What your source actually says:

“USG or Industry Developmental Programs: Some UAP observations could be attributable to developments and classified programs by U.S. entities. We were unable to confirm, however, that these systems accounted for any of the UAP reports we collected”

His interview with Terry Virts, former astronaut, was pretty eye opening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YSrVhCS-rc

What I do find interesting is the overlap between people who buy into various conspiracy theories and people who are religious, were religious or would otherwise be likely to be religious.

There’s some fascinating psychology here and I think it boils down to a combination of wishful thinking and the comfort derived from there being a Grand Plan rather than just a collection of random stuff that just happens.

“Can’t be explained” is typically “hasn’t been explained yet”. Lack of an explanation is nothing more than that. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I approach this from the other direction. Given the huge benefits of a Dyson Swarm and the fact that it seems to require no exotic materials and no more physics it looks increasingly likely that we are very alone in the Milky Way and even if we aren’t it requires an awful lot of hubris to suggest a species would spend the considerable effort and tens of thousands of years to come here and hide.

Like this is Main Character Syndrome at its finest.

You may not have meant this by your comment, but in general I find a related analysis common among atheists, that religious people believe what they do because it feels good. I find that's often wrong, and when generally applied condescending, as if atheists are simply more emotionally mature. On the contrary many religious people will tell you they believe what they do because it seems to them to be true.

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

One might consider the existence of the universe extraordinary evidence (for the existence of God).

That said I think we can mostly agree that based on what we know so far, "aliens" is a fairly implausible explanation for any given unexplained phenomenon. Where ever you fall on that debate, I don't think it has anything to do with religious beliefs except as far as the biases of the people who conduct these psychology studies goes.

Albert Einstein was once asked to clarify his faith, here is his reply:

“Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.”

I read this often and maintain the attitude that scripture, science, art are all branches of the same Tree.

Have you considered that having a tree where one of the branches lets you believe things based on little, bad, or no evidence, and those beliefs are then unable to be challenged, which leads to you being able to make laws based on those beliefs, is not a great idea? I sure wouldn't eat an apple from that tree!

This applies to all of the most visible proselytizers of religion, politics, economics, operating systems, and text editors, among others.

But we have 4.543 billion years worth of evidence showing that life REALLY likes to live. To get from a single celled organism to me typing to you over the internet tells me there's probably something universal to this process.

To me it's a lot more "Main Character Syndrome" to suggest we are wholly unique and alone in the universe. We are the special chosen species that made it out of an infinite number of probabilities. Sounds insane.

Intelligence as we commonly refer to it is not a given in evolution. Evolution seeks forward propagation of genetic material, it doesn't seek an "intelligent" state.

It's reasonable to assume there is life elsewhere in the universe. It's quite a bit more of a stretch to assume there is _intelligent_ life elsewhere in the universe, aside from the problem of defining what intelligence is.

There are an estimated 8.7 million species on earth. The common interpretation of intelligence puts the ratio of intelligent-to-non-intelligent species we know of at about 1:8,700,000. Nothing I've seen in the literature on evolution suggests that evolution will lead to intelligence under than definition. Mammals led to humans, and only after the dinosaurs were wiped out by a mass extinction event.

So while I can't say for sure that intelligent life is more or less common at a universal scale, it makes far more sense to assume the rest of the universe and the mechanics of evolution are consistent with what we see on Earth. I don't think we'd be that unique in the cosmos, which seems to me to be an egotistical thing to think, anyway.

Or maybe it happens all the time. But with only one sample, we have no data either way.

Sure we do, that one instance of life pushes the needle in favor of life. A fun exercise is to imagine or visualize the concept of nothingness, as far as you can take it. Eventually you realize even the "idea of nothingness" negates the meaning of "nothingness." You reach a paradox in awareness that you're incapable of resolving because to do so would mean the idea didn't exist in the first place. Applying it to life, the existence of life negates the existence of no-life, and increases the probability in our favor.

Functionally I think life is more commonplace than anyone realizes, and we're probably just incapable of understanding life outside of our perception of reality.

Given that life exists, here are two possibilities: life is common but we just haven't seen other life yet, or life is unique and necessarily we're it. Since those two possibilities look exactly the same to us, what data can we have to prefer either one?

If we ever did see other life, then we could be confident that it's everywhere. But without seeing it, we don't know. We can only guess, according to our personal preferences.

In fact, I'd go further. Compared to not looking at all, looking for life and not finding it increases the likelihood that we're alone. Maybe not by that much, since astronomy isn't all that good yet, but the more we look without finding, the more rare we'll know life to be.

Humans evince resistance to an obvious reality, we can't know what is unknowable, that is to say, that which we are incapable of experiencing. I can't know what another person experiences let alone some living entity built according to some alternate template.

Logic dictates a conclusion that other life likely exists in the universe. Also the odds favor that we can't know what it is given the intrinsic limits to what humans are capable of knowing.

But if you accept that the Dyson Swarms are a likely outcome then we have a while bunch of negative data points in systems within even thousands of light years of us.

That then brings into focus the hypothesis about Dyson Swarm. Such a thing can be built incrementally, requires no material stronger than stainless steel and requires no energy tech beyond solar power. It is a massive engineering challenge to be sure but not requiring new physics is significant.

This doesn't account for the fact that you don't know what - if any - benefits do exotic materials and funky physics might bring if they exist and are feasible to exploit. The benefits might be so much larger than Dyson Swarms, that it would be wastful\unnecessary to use Dyson Swarms, except maybe as a hobby or as a low tech fallback for civilizations like camping enthusiasts and survivalists. Why bother with stars when you have tech to live in the 21 dimensions that those born-yesterday biologicals can't even sense yet ?

The Dyson 'Paradox' doesn't strike me as much of a paradox, imagine if a group of ants looked at the sky and wondered why aren't extraterrestials building tunnels inside the moon's regolith like ants do on Earth. It's just assuming too much. It's of course a valid scenario, it just isn't the only one.

You seem keen to make fun of dogmatic people but attaching a hypothetical concept which is so trivial and fringe to your mental model seems like pretty dogmatic behavior. If you’d never heard of a Dyson Swarm, like the vast, vast majority of people haven’t, would your view of extraterrestrial life have significantly changed?

The problem as I see it with this area is it's been far too stigmatised, so no researchers would ever dare touch it for fear of being labelled conspiracy theory believing nutcases. That sentiment is now dying off thankfully and we can start to find out what on earth is going on.

Why are you convinced by a hobbyist with no academic background? He is a retired video game programmer.

We don't have extraordinary evidence therefore it's not possible that it's anything weird doesn't seem very scientific.

Because there isn't sufficient evidence to open them in the first place. Might as well claim it is unicorns and dragons, you don't have any evidence it isn't.

The process isn't hey look at that, must be aliens.

Relative to what? Other pilots who fly the same aircraft? All fighter jet pilots in the Navy? All pilots of all types of navy aircraft?

> Simply putting your head in the sand or attempting to debunk this documented phenomena with patently absurd explanations like "a lens flare" or "it was only Venus" isn't good enough for thoughtful people.

So yeah I'm nitpicking that the poster inserted an invented fact that these were the Navy's "top pilots" to support their position while being a dismissive jerk.

He or she deserves no better.

I don't think it is an invented fact. Top is ambiguous and has to refer to >50 percentile at a minimum. A commander of a squadron of f18s in the navy that graduated the navy's top gun program is most definitely above the 50th percentile (I would argue he would be in a very elite group of pilots that is much better than just half of others).

I definitely don't support condescending comments, but you too were dismissive.

There are multiple plausible hypothesis to explain these things, just dismissing the whole conversation as not worth discussing or being impossible seems very unscientific.

The thing that bothers me the most about this sort of discussions is that it's all done on "paper"[1]. It would be helpful to actually release a balloon, or whatever object you think it was, and check if you can reproduce the glare and other sensor data.

If it's very easy to reproduce then we can be more confident in that explanation and probably nail down more detailed characteristics of that object. Once we have that we can look where this object could've come from. For example, if it points to a balloon, did a company/organization lose a balloon in that time frame? Once we have all this info we would have an explanation that's more robust than someone saying: "It might be possible this and potentially that"

This requires money, time and the hardware. So I guess it's unlikely that will ever happen.

[1] Not saying it's useless. Those calculations and/or simulations are very useful to limit the types of objects it could be.

It's very normal to not be able to prove what caused an event. This morning I heard a sound, it sounded pretty much exactly like a car horn, but maybe it was something else. We'll probably never know.

It's an excellent point that any organization serious about determining the cause would be conducting experiments, I can go honk some car horns and see if I find one that sounds similar. It doesn't seem like that happens with "UAP research", or the US Navy

There’s still a huge engineering gap between our current tech and the theoretical possibility of a Dyson Swarm. I don’t find it at all implausible that such a thing would need too much energy, effort, collective will, or some other resource, to make it practical. There could still be plenty of stealthy sub-Dyson civilizations, or even supra-Dyson civilizations that have found it in their interest not to be detectable.

Robin Hanson has the most plausible ET hypothesis to explain these UFO observations. Basically it goes:

1) Life only evolved once in the galaxy.

2) However it spread to one or more stars its system of origin through the process of panspermia.

3) This sister planet that shares a common life origin with us evolved an advanced civilization that predates ours by 10-100 million years.

4) However at some point between the tech to travel between stars and full Dyson spheres, this sister civilization developed a highly anti-growth world government.

5) They've sent local probes or outposts to study us because we're interesting as a sister branch in the tree of life, and also concerning as a fast growing civilization that contravenes their anti-growth norms.

This explains why we have spacefaring ETs poking around but no resource gobbling Dyson spheres expanding through the light clone. If civilizations were widespread, then almost certainly one would be gobbling resources. But if there are only two civilizations, ours and theirs, it's quite believable that the earlier of the two fell into an anti-growth world government.

The very early universe was relatively warm. Simple or even complex life could've evolved and spread through parts of the Universe with relative ease given the much shorter distances. It seems highly unlikely though given the rarity of metals (in the astronomical sense; meaning anything other than hydrogen and helium) and the likely needed timescales. This probably means at best it was organic molecules of some level of complexity.

There are later versions of this where panspermia occurred much more recently, either intentionally or not.

Whatever the case it's all unprovable speculation. If we ultimately the same unlikely patterns repeating on different wrolds then I guess we can revisit.

So how recent in this hypothesis did this occur? There are fossil records for people going back millions of years. Are we talking all life? Or just people? If it's all life then we need to go back billions of years, at which point we're just talking about spreading amino acids. Such a connection will be similar to our fraternal bond with bananas.

> However at some point between the tech to travel between stars and full Dyson spheres

This seems unlikely. Why? Because the tech for a Dyson Swarm is basically stainless steel, solar panels and the ability to build things in space in large quantities. The last one is significant of course but is largely gated on the high cost of getting things into orbit, which is something likely to plummet in the coming centuries.

Saying we could build a self-sustaining orbital within 1,000 years I don't think is a stretch. Only industrial scale separates building 1 and building a million.

But there's another problem: people often neglect the energy cost of interstellar travel. It's... massive. And this is even assuming you solve the reaction mass problem. Interstellar travel almost seems predicated on a Dyson Swarm simpsly to have sufficient energy.

> ... also concerning as a fast growing civilization that contravenes their anti-growth norms.

This is a well-trodden avenue of thought on the Fermi Paradox. What if alien civilizations just stop growing? If there's 1, sure that might be possible. But what if there were 1,000? Would they all follow this path? It gets increasingly unlikely that not one would grow significantly. Non-growth civilizations would be at an extreme disadvantage with another who has vastly more energy and matter at their disposal. Like you almost have to grow just in case someone else does.

But all of this just seems like highly selective curve overfitting to reach the desired conclusion that UFOs are alien in origin.

https://tothestars.media/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company)

It is, and I cannot stress this enough, entirely unhelpful for you to ascribe it to main character syndrome or compare it to the belief in an omnipotent God.

If sources of truth in human societies like governments and scientific institutions would stop lying or misleading people nearly constantly then you could call conspiracy people lunatics, or fringe. But you simply cannot.

Not only are people being lied to, but they are being actively disinformed for "their own good." There are massive socializing forces that have taken an active role in manipulating society based around the idea that they know better.

And the ironic part is that, to a degree, they do know better. People act stupid in groups and have important information WITHHELD for various reasons that make it impossible to discern the truth.

If you want to start minimizing the amount of bullshit beliefs that people hold, supernatural or otherwise, you can start by tearing down the systems that are used to create false narratives which push people into those beliefs.

It seems like the tendency to accept a higher power in control of your life and the world leads to believing in other earthly powers being able to exert vast control over the world.

But seriously, I assume all these types of people have this sort of localized, my-version-is-the-right-version theories, since they do the exact same thing with their religion.

Dyson Swarms are only plausible if your society is still stuck in an exponential growth mode. It assumes technological advancement, but stagnant sociological development, or perhaps even worse; pathological development, like a hegemonising swarm.

I think that many UFO theories make the same mistakes. They assume high tech aliens with low tech motives.

Since we haven't been able to build such a thing I think it's fair to say it requires something or other that's exotic to us.

- This is certainly a very interesting interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIUBjvY4PnQ

- There are visual observations, and what are, ( by military standards), flimsy short images/video.

- This analysis partially explains one part of it, without excluding the presence of an object.

- There is also Radar data, but it has not been published or time correlated to the reported visual observations.

Observations:

- These Aliens only seem to want to goof around with folksy US pilots.

- Pilots known to simulate UFO sightings, fans of UFO invasion stories and stories of Russians shooting UFO's and getting shot back. ( watch the interview...).

- These Aliens show up exclusively during their training time and with sightings restricted to areas with US carrier groups exercises.

Also...

- The Aliens don't show up with their "Tic Tac's" or seem to be interested on the Ukraine conflict.

- They don't care about EU or Latin America citizens...

- Don't want to play around with the Russian or Chinese Air Force.

- They don't show up in the data of any of the existing Military satellites capable of reading a bus ticket on the ground from 400 km.

- These Aliens don't show up in the observations of the thousands of professional and amateur astronomers, that scan the sky a total of thousands of hours every night, using some of the most exquisite optical instruments available.

I would say: They either don't exist, or if they do, they are pretty dumb and we have nothing to fear.

Why do you say aliens? It seems more likely they are experimental human developed aircraft.