The completely agrammatical "Latin" text in the AARO logo - somewhere on the level of English text one might find on a t-shirt sold on a street market in rural China - does not inspire confidence in the programme or its mission, as it suggests that
* some person in a high-up position is driven by a caricature of a notion of legitimacy conveyed by grandiose Latin mottos;
* this person does not have the diligence or attention to detail to be able to construct such a motto correctly, nor the capability for reflection to anticipate that he would fail to do so;
* either there is not enough of a culture of skepticism or criticism for anyone else to point out the mistakes and pull the emergency brakes, or there are not enough eyeballs even on fundamental materials like the programme's logo.
These are not features you want in a working group that you trust to sift through vague and contentious evidence on a topic marred by wishful thinking and military obscurantism. The group's findings therefore don't seem worth putting much stock in, and the main information that is conveyed by this is that there exist more amateurish and untrustworthy initiatives under the US military's aegis than one would expect.
> does not inspire confidence in the programme or its mission
Literally judging an entire book by it's cover.
This is the DoD. There is absolutely guidance and rules already in place for creating, developing and approving new insignia. It's highly likely the people involved in the program had the least to do with it, and it's terribly unreasonable to judge the entire group by it.
Yes, why not? Covers usually convey a lot of information about a book. Of all the books whose covers look like those an action manga, how many do you figure are a good resource for learning Polish? (Yes, in a way I'm acting deliberately obtuse about the proverb you are referring to, but the point is that there is nothing to that rule apart from it being a popular proverb. It is not hard to find proverbs that assert falsehoods.)
I don't know if the hypothetical scenario in which this logo was generated according to formal DoD-wide rules inspires any more confidence, either. It would just cast more suspicion upon other inputs that go into DoD-branded claims - if standard procedure for insignia produces this, what does e.g. standard procedure for documenting the circumstances under which a video was taken do?
> Of all the books whose covers look like those an action manga, how many do you figure are a good resource for learning Polish?
Manga are a good way to learn Japanese, so the Polish translations are probably an okay way to learn Polish. Not because the translation would be literal, because it won't be, just because the reading level is low.
(Well, the trend in action manga lately is to have incredibly complicated magic powers where the characters just stand around explaining them to each other, so maybe skip JJK.)
> Yes, in a way I'm acting deliberately obtuse about the proverb
I would call it intentionally ignorant. Please try googling for "best book for learning polish" then flip to the image search. Which one is actually the best? Can you tell from here?
> It is not hard to find proverbs that assert falsehoods.
Yet it is easy to find organizations with terrible logos that still do good work.
This logo isn't very cool, which is more of a surprise to me. But bad Latin is understandable - if your project is secret then you can't ask anyone to proofread it, and who's going to be offended? There aren't any native Latin speakers.
Basically, some EO sensors, some radar systems, RF spectrum monitoring and some ADS-B to calibrate against identifiable aircraft.
This is OK.
It can probably tell you "that's definitely something we understand". It can count things where it can't, and give you a little data to help you understand if it's something understandable, but rare enough to not be already in your system taxonomy.
It isn't enough to establish what a UAP is, but will give you an idea of the frequency of things you should probably spend more time and money and effort into identifying.
Interesting thing is, if you identify some hot spots of UAP activity through this, you can then start to collect more data, and then perhaps we can figure out what is going on: UAP are real, we know that thanks to the more honest, open and frank disclosures made in recent years. You don't need to believe they're of ET origin to believe they are a potential threat to [inter-]national security infrastructure. It's astonishing to me its taking this long to get this far, to be honest.
I highly recommend Mick West's work on reconstructing the situations in each of the released videos so far: https://www.youtube.com/@MickWest
His reconstructions make it clear that these phenomena result from properties of the optical system used in the sensors as well as diffusion of infrared light through miles of atmosphere.
>His reconstructions make it clear that these phenomena result from properties of the optical system used in the sensors as well as diffusion of infrared light through miles of atmosphere.
West's analysis is a shallow one masquerading as a deep one.
From his analysis on the (suggestively named) GIMBAL video, it's clear that the only thing his reconstruction proves is that the rotation ("It's rotating!") and outline is a result of the optics platform. I take no issue with that.
The DoD's claims about extraordinary flight characteristics are not, however, based on the silhouette or the rotation. They have all the flight data from multiple aircraft and ground systems. Their conclusion is based on, at least, additional information from the Situational Awareness display ("There's a whole fleet of them, look on the SA"), the longevity of their flight time (reportedly 12+ hours per Lt. Ryan Graves), and hypersonic flight maneuvers (simultaneously observed both visually and on radar, per Cmdr. David Fravor and SCPO Kevin Day).
Low-information UFO enthusiasts are the ones who got excited about the shape and rotation (which West focuses on), but the DoD never cared about that. Even the name GIMBAL suggests that they were already aware of those confounding effects prior to public release.
Everyone interested in the topic should watch the Mick West videos, but be careful not to make more of his videos than what's actually there (ie the subset of claims he can support with reconstruction data).
> it's clear that the only thing his reconstruction proves is that the rotation ("It's rotating!") and outline is a result of the optics platform.
In addition, I've found his demonstrations of airplane bodies appearing as wingless tic-tacs in atmosphere due to light scattering, a very similar effect in which jet exhausts infrared blows out the contrast making it difficult to see any detail at distance, demonstrations of bokeh lens flare in several videos, and his speed reconstructions in simulation to be really useful. Particularly several which seemed after analysis to be mylar balloons.
The process he demonstrates for looking up aircraft flight paths, loading them into Google Earth and interpolating through them is also really useful.
I really appreciate the data-driven occams razor approach he takes to analyzing all the available evidence.
I've still yet to hear anyone who insists that "these phenomena result from properties of the optical system" explain artifacts created by an optical system could also be observed visually by multiple trained pilots. When looking at all of the data, there are only two plausible conclusions one can reach. Either Cmdr. Fravor and all of the other Air Force officers are lying and in cahoots with the Navy to manufacture these events, or there is something tangible going on here that we don't understand.
West believes strongly that all reported phenomena will eventually be determined to have a prosaic cause. Further, ridicule and a discouragement of curiosity on the subject are of tantamount importance.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is similar. They both approach the subject with a very unscientific, bad faith attitude.
I disagree with them both. I have experienced something that I do not believe has a prosaic explanation. Further, I do not believe that relativity is the end of physics as Tyson or west so strongly imply.
Curiosity in this subject should be encouraged, not ridiculed.
I feel like people will take the "UAP are real" comment completely out of context. They're only saying that "things exist that we can't (yet) explain", which we already knew to be the case. And if there were in fact footage from a short enough distance to see things clearly, then we'd already know what it is.
In other words, nobody (credible) is claiming that aliens or anything of the sort exist.
Do you mean tictac and go fast videos ? Many military personnel, ex f35 pilots and other researchers had validated Ryan Graves and David Fravor claims and the footage - they aren't part of US technology. They had debunked Mick west skewed analysis and they are more credible than him . He never had flied a fighter jet he is a game programmer totally different areas of expertise
Being a retired pilot doesn't make you an expert on quirks in very high tech camera systems either or provide some natural credibility that blurry phenomenon in the sky are credible evidence of anything.
It wasn’t only video. The reason the planes were scrambled in the first place was because of hits from the ship’s radar. The planes also saw them on radar. The pilots also made visual contact, and testified under oath before Congress as to what they saw.
I’m sorry, but West is not convincing. He has a predetermined outcome in mind, namely, that there is nothing but man-made vehicles in the sky, and that there is zero chance for it to be anything else. Ever.
This conclusion does not match the evidence, and symbolizes a tragic incuriosity about the possibilities the universe holds.
> It wasn’t only video. The reason the planes were scrambled in the first place was because of hits from the ship’s radar. The planes also saw them on radar. The pilots also made visual contact, and testified under oath before Congress as to what they saw.
Unfortunately eyewitness testimony (even from trained pilots) is notoriously unreliable, and none of the other supposed evidence seems to be available for analysis.
Mick doesn't seem to shy away from looking at any available evidence. It's not his fault that nothing incontrovertible has shown up yet.
You’re going to need a lot more than video analysis and a handful of unverifiable eyewitness testimony (humans are famously fallible) to claim discovery of extra-terrestrial life.
Is anyone serious actually claiming extraterrestrial life is the main concern? My understanding is that the leading concern is some terrestrial military capability we don’t fully understand, but that could pose a military threat to US assets. The goal is to rule that out and then you can worry about aliens afterwards.
Every single data point in isolation can be ridiculated and twisted in many ways and this is what Mick West is doing. it is another story when you have series of multiple data points through long timeline with recurring patterns and have to make sense of them. UAPs are raported since at least WWII (foo figters), some accounts are traced even to ancient times.
That may explain some of the sightings. That article specifically mentions foo fighters in the context of night flying. Were foo fighters seen during the day too? (I haven't researched them at all)
Annie Jacobsen Book "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military has an interesting take on UFOs. The government actively perpetuated rumors about sightings to keep people from thinking top secret projects flying around the bases were real.
One telling thing about UFO sightings is the government's change in attitude compared to the last half of the last century.
It used to be that the government was trying to discourage reports. They would explain away everything that did get reported--usually reasonably because most sighting were just ordinary things that were misidentified but there were some that they never publicly had good explanations for.
They encouraged treating people who said they saw UFOs as kooks, and were successful enough that when pilots saw something they could not explain they would usually not report it because that could affect their career.
Lately that has flipped. Now they want reports.
The explanation that best fits the facts is that in the past what the people who weren't just misidentifying some normal thing were seeing were secret government projects that had accidentally been flown where they should not have been.
The government didn't want people to talk about those sightings because if too many people did talk about them it might be possible to piece together details about the program.
Now there are some sightings that don't fit with misidentification of normal things and that the government can't match up with any of their secret projects and they want to know what the heck is going on. They almost certainly don't think it could be extraterrestrials--foreign spies is what they are probably worried about.
They need more data, and so now they want people who see things to report it.
My belief is that their shift in attitude is because the cat is out of the bag... we know there is unusual stuff in the sky, so their best defense now is to pretend they don't know what they are, and asking for reports makes it more believable that it's not theirs.
I don't doubt people are skeptical about my opinion, and I don't blame them. But, keep in mind that many of the sightings are from Navy pilots, during planned Navy training missions. Oh, and the Navy has patents on some technologies that would explain some of these UAP sightings (if the technology in the patents works). Here are the patents:
I'm pretty skeptical. UFO believers and the Ancient Aliens crowd don't typically adhere to the scientific method, and so news like this doesn't sway me much.
I usually ignore this stuff, but it is pretty wild to see congressional documents talking about "non-human intelligences" intercepting F-22s and forcing them to abort missions. Seems pretty fanciful.
One thing that bugs me about the UFO/UAP disclosure folks is that they assume all military secrecy is part of some sort of coverup and not just normal military protocols.
Disclosing things that the military deemed anomalous reveals a lot about military capabilities. Simple things like where groups were, but… imagine you were an adversary doing a drone exercise and you see the US reporting it as UFOs. That would tell you a lot about limitations in US sensors AND that US drone tech was so far behind that they concluded it wasn’t a drone. The military will always err on the side of not oversharing.
So of course the military isn’t going to disclose. If we want to take this seriously, we need a non-military org that will monitor and report that is designed from the ground up for transparency. Seems like something a scientific agency like NASA could be well suited for
> One thing that bugs me about the UFO/UAP disclosure folks is that they assume all military secrecy is part of some sort of coverup and not just normal military protocols.
Who? This feels like a straw man argument. I am not aware of anyone who takes such a (ridiculous) position, and I follow this subject fairly closely.
> scientific agency like NASA could be suited for.
That agency was created a couple of years ago. It is called AARO. They just released their FY 2024 report:
From the hearing last week my main takeaway was that there is a program that nobody in Congress has oversight of. That alone is alarming but not entirely surprising given the abdication of Congressional authority to Executive agencies. I want to believe that the rumors of advanced craft recovery starting in the 40s are real. But, the reality is that UAPs are likely secret advanced human technology. The one thing that irks me about that conclusion is that historically acquisition/discovery of superior technology has been used for domination by the discoverer. Nobody has done that. None of the reported UAPs have been hostile. That alone seems to go against human nature. So, I'm left with a conclusion that doesn't make sense in human behavior terms.
The hearing just made me feel like "Independence Day" may have had it right. People in government know but don't tell the president for plausible deniability and non-permanence of the position.
This is so incredibly valuable that many are trying and failing. If it was possible, there would be at least one independent researcher who puts it on YouTube. These patents are not hiding in plain sight, everybody interested in advanced propulsion knows about them and knew about the research even before the patents.
Those patents, if real, would mean more than all other scientific discoveries in the last fifty years.
Quoting an article about him [0]: "every physicist we have spoken to over the better part of two years asserting that the “Pais Effect” has no scientific basis in reality and the patents related to it were filled with pseudo-scientific jargon".
Pais has of course offered no data, no evidence and no mechanism by which any of his so-called inventions would work.
Possibly. Given the era that this started it is more believable. If a small group secreted it away in the 40s it wouldn't be that difficult to keep it secret. I think that is where all the UFO reporter discrediting came in handy. Anybody that was in the know didn't share and outside reporters were painted as kooks which discouraged others from speaking up. Throw in a few "disappearances" of credible reporters and nobody wants to talk about it.
Fortunately we can all talk to millions of strangers around the world in an instant now. Even the kooks can find a community to share to that might be able to coorberate their story.
However, I find it difficult to believe that all other staffs, e.g. the retrieval teams, the scientists, can keep their mouths shut. Unless they live in a cave from birth to death.
Pinnacle of intelligence within the solar system is still pretty likely, even if not in the universe. People forget how brutally hard star flight is if you're not using scifi cheats.
It's been a while since I read it, so I can't promise it holds up, but I remember quite enjoying this novel with a similar premise (the solar system is quarantined in a giant bubble for unclear reasons, with a side of nanotechnology-driven apps for your brain).
Three times doesn't exactly seem like a lot, right?
And for UFOs-as-ETs, these intelligences would have had to spawn pretty near our solar system, and their existence overlap in time with mankind's tiny fraction of existence (truly a blip in the lifespan of the universe), and detect our existence (or at least our system as a worthwhile destination), and develop tech to take them here, and be interested in this undertaking, and have the resources for it, and not wipe themselves out in an accident, ecological disaster or global war, and after all of this choose to just do mysterious flybys and abductions and no formal contact with Earth.
Why do you believe that our current understanding of physics is the final one?
Let me propose a thought experiment. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that humanity has survived 100,000 years into the future. Now, let’s put you in a time machine and fast forward you to that distant future.
Would you be surprised to learn that relativity, and the limits it imposes, are viewed by those future humans as anachronistic and silly? Barely remembered artifacts of humanity’s Stupid Ages? That new discoveries were made over those thousand centuries, discoveries that we 21st century humans can only vaguely begin to comprehend?
Because you raised my biggest problem with modern cosmology: it’s arrogant assumption that Einstein is the end. But more importantly, that evidence indicating that relativity is not in fact the end — such as UAPs — is completely disregarded.
And the reason it is disregarded? Because relativity is the end! It’s circular reasoning at its absolute worst.
> Why do you believe that our current understanding of physics is the final one?
It doesn't have to be final, it just has to be reasonably descriptive of reality.
Even if we review our understanding, the universe is still a massive place and humanity's existence a mere blip. It becomes more about statistics and probability than physics, but yeah, our understanding of physics also makes ETs visiting Earth very unlikely.
If you mean to say "a major revision of physics would make it more feasible", I don't know. Maybe? Or maybe even less feasible! We have to approach this rationally, and so far reason and evidence both lean to "extremely unlikely".
> Let me propose a thought experiment [...] Would you be surprised to learn that relativity, and the limits it imposes, are viewed by those future humans as anachronistic and silly?
As a thought experiment it's a decent piece of science fiction, but as any sort of serious thought it seems like begging the question to me.
> It doesn't have to be final, it just has to be reasonably descriptive of reality.
Which it only is if you limit cosmology to spectroscopy and ignore UAP. If you start to examine UAP as a real thing, and ask questions about “how”, then it all falls apart.
I don't think that's true, or at least, you're jumping prematurely to conclusions and sort of begging the question too.
The "U" just means "unidentified", not "contradicting our understanding of physics" or "extraterrestrial intelligence".
There are many life forms on Earth that remain unidentified by many estimations, and we keep discovering new organisms. "Unidentified" doesn't have to violate our understanding of the universe.
But if it does, then our understanding is wrong. That means there are new things to discover.
One of the common reported characteristics of some UAP is that they are able to accelerate hypersonic speeds without a sonic boom.
If that is true then there are things to be learned here. You appear to be saying that this obviously cannot be true because it violates what we currently know.
I doubt any kind of lifeform can exist for that long, but even if it did, the rest of the objections apply. If it's in the other side of the universe, we will never meet. So it would have to be near, and [rest of my objections].
Yeah? But that's an argument against seeing any aliens up close (if you believe in that kind of thing), because presumably they're extremely unlikely too.
They're not there, or they're far away in time and space, with a remaining tiny chance that something incredibly unlikely happened.
Sumerian and early Mesopotamian mythology is very interesting reading. I won't say it's ''aliens'' but there are some strong hints of more going on at the rise of civilization then just neolithic people coming together and inventing writing.
I have this idea that sedentary agrarian urban civilization was something created by nomadic peoples to farm slaves. Hunter gatherers and pastoral peoples would be very hard to control. But if they took children, and raised them to be sedentary and dependent on agriculture they could have a stable of slaves.
In the 600 million years that our planet has had complex multicellular life, only about 130 of those years has any species here been able to communicate outside the planet. That's .00002% of the time, on a planet with multicellular life.
Maybe the norm is that intelligent life lasts a long time and we just happen to be born in the first tiny fraction of humanity.
But the observational evidence is that even given multicellular life, intelligence is extremely rare, and there is no evidence at all that it is likely to last very long.
> Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence.
It might depend on the origin of the universe. One theory involves an exponentially expanding spacetime driven by a quantum field. Fluctuations in that field can case a region of that expanding spacetime to greatly slow down its expansion and that region becomes a universe.
If that's how it happened our universe would just be one in a very very large collection of universes. In particular the rate of universe creation would grow exponentially and so the fraction of old universes would be exponentially smaller than the fraction of young universes.
If it takes a few billion years for the first human level intelligence to develop in a given universe and then hundreds of millions more years for the second intelligence to develop then of all the universes with at least one intelligence only a very very very small fraction of them would have more than one intelligence.
> In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range.
Another interesting possibility is that civilizations isolate themselves. It seems very unlikely that neighboring civilizations would be at the same level of technological development--there is just too much luck involved in becoming a civilization and in developing technology.
That suggests that first meetings between civilizations are very likely to involve civilizations with vastly different technology levels. They also are likely to have vastly different cultures and vastly different ethics and vastly different philosophies.
Maybe the more advanced will see it as their duty to help the other progress. Or maybe they they will view them like Europeans viewed the occupants of the Americas in the 16th century. Or maybe they will see them as animals and give them about as much consideration as we give the animals on a patch of wilderness that we want to use for something.
You can model how civilizations should behave when they learn of other civilizations using game theory. When a civilization learns of another than hasn't yet learned of them their choices are: (1) try to keep themselves secret from the other, (2) try to contact the other, and (3) try to destroy the other.
(We would not be able to choose #3 because we aren't technologically advanced enough, but we know ways to do #3 that we'll probably be capable of in a few hundred to a couple thousand years from now).
Assuming that a civilization puts much much much more value on its own survival than on the survival of other civilizations #3 is the option with the highest expected value. If you aren't to the point where #3 is possible than #1 gives the highest expected value.
In short, we could be in a galaxy full of civilizations but they are all avoiding doing anything that would let others detect them because they don't want to be the target of someone else's option #3.
You can also consider the possibility that the intelligent civilizations of the universe don't even consider us a life form. I think about that a lot. "Maybe god and its creatures are not even aware we're here."
Moist pebble apes might be a short lived fluke. Our civilization has existed for an insignificant amount of time and even primates could be just a flare in the pan.
I think some country has developed some very cool drones with non-traditional propulsion. I'm imagining gyroscopes inside mounted on gimbals, and when pressure is applied to the gyroscopes they cause the spheres to spin and bend through the air like a ping pong ball, but in a controlled fashion. The spheres are supposed to be 3-6m wide, so filled with helium could have enough lift to counterbalance 50 pounds of equipment.
Metallic Orbs Intercept F-22 on CONUS Air Surveillance and Control Mission: While performing aroutine Airspace Surveillance and Control Mission in the Eastern Air Defense Sector, an F-22 fighter observed multiple UAP contacts at mission-altitude. Moving to intercept, the F-22 pilot noted multiple metallic orbs - slightly smaller than a sedan - hovering in place. Upon vectoring towards the UAPs, a smaller formation of the metallic orbs accelerated at rapid speed towards the F-22, which was unable to establish radar locks on the presumed-hostile UAPs. The F-22 broke trajectory and attempted to evade but was intercepted and boxed in by approximately 3-6 UAPs. One UAP maneuvered in proximity (> 12 meters) to the area directly starboard of the cockpit; there the UAP established a rigid spatial relationship with the F-22, maintaining its exact position and orientation parallel with the F-22' s cockpit despite multiple evasive rolls and maneuvers. Surrounded by the presumed-hostile UAPs, the F-22 was forced out of the mission area under the escort of the UAP formation.
It seems to me that the document was pretty demonstrably proven to be a hoax. You can find the arguments and evidence online, I'm not really in a mood to hash it out here.
But anyone will believe anything they like. If you want to believe it isn't a hoax you have to contend with the typographic and other anomalies that seem to show otherwise.
Yes, documents are online but how you can prove that those are hoax? The last analysis I know the guy made cross reference checks using modern search engines and newspaper databases and things where matching. I don't want to say that documents are real but for sure I never saw any argument that would definatly say that it was hoax.
I said I believe it's a hoax. I never claimed to be able to prove anything. I believe the evidence that purports to show that the documents aren't genuine, which you can refer to. Even a lot of people in the UFO community don't find the Majestic 12 documents credible.
You can't prove they're real, either, although you might believe they are. On balance however there seems to be more evidence against them than for them.
To force our enemies to question whether there’s a chance we could have been in touch with aliens and received some of their technology. That seriously changes the calculus when deciding whether to launch in a MAD scenario.
Usually when UAP-related news items like this make
it to the HN front page they don’t last very long. If this lasts even two hours I’ll be (pleasantly) surprised.
Most HN readers, it seems, feel the subject to be abjectly ridiculous and downvote accordingly.
It's almost as if there's a cadre of actors (not just on HN) who's job it is to quickly jump on any UFO -related topic and ensure they post as much misinformation and nonsensical points to muddle any serious discussion. Hmm...
You would think they would finally give up, given the cat is outta the bag, even the minuscule but legitimate evidence provided by insider govt sources, since at least 2017.
At least the upvoting ratio seems to be good on this thread, let's see how long that last.
Is it just me or does the architecture diagram at the top of the page from the “DOD Document” leaves a lot to be desired? It almost gives you no information about the actual system at all
It's a blowup from this document.[1] That's worth reading.
- Drone activity is up, and drone overflights of nuclear plants are being detected. One drone crashed and was turned over to cops.
- The most common report (63%) is one of lights in the sky, no additional data. Most unresolved cases are in that category.
- The next biggest category is spherical objects. Most of those turn out to be balloons.
- Starlink satellites generate a fair number of reports.
- MIT Lincoln Labs is apparently integrating the Gremlin system.
What's needed, and what Gremlin is supposed to provide, is telescopic cameras at multiple locations that can be quickly focused on a single target. Lights in the sky seen from one point don't tell you much, but if you have three separated cameras pointed at the thing, you know where it is.
The old GEODSS system, from the 1980s and still operating at a few locations, was similar, but aimed at near-space objects. The Ground-Based Optical Deep Space Surveillance System was a set of about eight telescope pairs worldwide. This was the beginning of automated astronomy. Each station surveilled the whole sky, and checked off all lights against a star map. Anything unknown got looked at. Both telescopes would point to the same object, and the telescopes were far enough apart to triangulate low-orbit satellites. Three sites are still running, and have been upgraded several times.[2]
GEODSS was tied into various USAF and NORAD radar systems, so items of interest seen on radar could be looked at, too.
GREMLIN sounds like a mini version of GEODSS. More local, and intended for in-atmosphere objects.
The completely agrammatical "Latin" text in the AARO logo - somewhere on the level of English text one might find on a t-shirt sold on a street market in rural China - does not inspire confidence in the programme or its mission, as it suggests that
* some person in a high-up position is driven by a caricature of a notion of legitimacy conveyed by grandiose Latin mottos;
* this person does not have the diligence or attention to detail to be able to construct such a motto correctly, nor the capability for reflection to anticipate that he would fail to do so;
* either there is not enough of a culture of skepticism or criticism for anyone else to point out the mistakes and pull the emergency brakes, or there are not enough eyeballs even on fundamental materials like the programme's logo.
These are not features you want in a working group that you trust to sift through vague and contentious evidence on a topic marred by wishful thinking and military obscurantism. The group's findings therefore don't seem worth putting much stock in, and the main information that is conveyed by this is that there exist more amateurish and untrustworthy initiatives under the US military's aegis than one would expect.
(The motto itself seems to have come from a misremembered or ineptly modded Marcus Aurelius quote popular in motivational posters: https://ehoreka.myshopify.com/products/mundus-mutatur-vita-n...)
> does not inspire confidence in the programme or its mission
Literally judging an entire book by it's cover.
This is the DoD. There is absolutely guidance and rules already in place for creating, developing and approving new insignia. It's highly likely the people involved in the program had the least to do with it, and it's terribly unreasonable to judge the entire group by it.
> Literally judging an entire book by it's cover.
Yes, why not? Covers usually convey a lot of information about a book. Of all the books whose covers look like those an action manga, how many do you figure are a good resource for learning Polish? (Yes, in a way I'm acting deliberately obtuse about the proverb you are referring to, but the point is that there is nothing to that rule apart from it being a popular proverb. It is not hard to find proverbs that assert falsehoods.)
I don't know if the hypothetical scenario in which this logo was generated according to formal DoD-wide rules inspires any more confidence, either. It would just cast more suspicion upon other inputs that go into DoD-branded claims - if standard procedure for insignia produces this, what does e.g. standard procedure for documenting the circumstances under which a video was taken do?
> Of all the books whose covers look like those an action manga, how many do you figure are a good resource for learning Polish?
Manga are a good way to learn Japanese, so the Polish translations are probably an okay way to learn Polish. Not because the translation would be literal, because it won't be, just because the reading level is low.
(Well, the trend in action manga lately is to have incredibly complicated magic powers where the characters just stand around explaining them to each other, so maybe skip JJK.)
> Yes, in a way I'm acting deliberately obtuse about the proverb
I would call it intentionally ignorant. Please try googling for "best book for learning polish" then flip to the image search. Which one is actually the best? Can you tell from here?
> It is not hard to find proverbs that assert falsehoods.
Yet it is easy to find organizations with terrible logos that still do good work.
Also organizations with amazing logos that do horrible things: see DEA badges like the cocaine intelligence unit. Cool as anything.
My understanding is that cool obscure logos are normal for secret military projects: https://www.wired.com/2010/11/secret-insignias-from-the-blac...
This logo isn't very cool, which is more of a surprise to me. But bad Latin is understandable - if your project is secret then you can't ask anyone to proofread it, and who's going to be offended? There aren't any native Latin speakers.
Next time someone sees Eliezer on here, tell him someone must have taken inspiration from his methods.
Edit: Godric Gryffindor and the Methods of Google Translate, by the way.
Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum
Romanes eunt domus!
The "AARO" text itself reminds me a lot of Scientology material
Basically, some EO sensors, some radar systems, RF spectrum monitoring and some ADS-B to calibrate against identifiable aircraft.
This is OK.
It can probably tell you "that's definitely something we understand". It can count things where it can't, and give you a little data to help you understand if it's something understandable, but rare enough to not be already in your system taxonomy.
It isn't enough to establish what a UAP is, but will give you an idea of the frequency of things you should probably spend more time and money and effort into identifying.
Interesting thing is, if you identify some hot spots of UAP activity through this, you can then start to collect more data, and then perhaps we can figure out what is going on: UAP are real, we know that thanks to the more honest, open and frank disclosures made in recent years. You don't need to believe they're of ET origin to believe they are a potential threat to [inter-]national security infrastructure. It's astonishing to me its taking this long to get this far, to be honest.
> UAP are real
I highly recommend Mick West's work on reconstructing the situations in each of the released videos so far: https://www.youtube.com/@MickWest
His reconstructions make it clear that these phenomena result from properties of the optical system used in the sensors as well as diffusion of infrared light through miles of atmosphere.
From his analysis on the (suggestively named) GIMBAL video, it's clear that the only thing his reconstruction proves is that the rotation ("It's rotating!") and outline is a result of the optics platform. I take no issue with that.
The DoD's claims about extraordinary flight characteristics are not, however, based on the silhouette or the rotation. They have all the flight data from multiple aircraft and ground systems. Their conclusion is based on, at least, additional information from the Situational Awareness display ("There's a whole fleet of them, look on the SA"), the longevity of their flight time (reportedly 12+ hours per Lt. Ryan Graves), and hypersonic flight maneuvers (simultaneously observed both visually and on radar, per Cmdr. David Fravor and SCPO Kevin Day).
Low-information UFO enthusiasts are the ones who got excited about the shape and rotation (which West focuses on), but the DoD never cared about that. Even the name GIMBAL suggests that they were already aware of those confounding effects prior to public release.
Everyone interested in the topic should watch the Mick West videos, but be careful not to make more of his videos than what's actually there (ie the subset of claims he can support with reconstruction data).
> it's clear that the only thing his reconstruction proves is that the rotation ("It's rotating!") and outline is a result of the optics platform.
In addition, I've found his demonstrations of airplane bodies appearing as wingless tic-tacs in atmosphere due to light scattering, a very similar effect in which jet exhausts infrared blows out the contrast making it difficult to see any detail at distance, demonstrations of bokeh lens flare in several videos, and his speed reconstructions in simulation to be really useful. Particularly several which seemed after analysis to be mylar balloons.
The process he demonstrates for looking up aircraft flight paths, loading them into Google Earth and interpolating through them is also really useful.
I really appreciate the data-driven occams razor approach he takes to analyzing all the available evidence.
I've still yet to hear anyone who insists that "these phenomena result from properties of the optical system" explain artifacts created by an optical system could also be observed visually by multiple trained pilots. When looking at all of the data, there are only two plausible conclusions one can reach. Either Cmdr. Fravor and all of the other Air Force officers are lying and in cahoots with the Navy to manufacture these events, or there is something tangible going on here that we don't understand.
West believes strongly that all reported phenomena will eventually be determined to have a prosaic cause. Further, ridicule and a discouragement of curiosity on the subject are of tantamount importance.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is similar. They both approach the subject with a very unscientific, bad faith attitude.
I disagree with them both. I have experienced something that I do not believe has a prosaic explanation. Further, I do not believe that relativity is the end of physics as Tyson or west so strongly imply.
Curiosity in this subject should be encouraged, not ridiculed.
> I have experienced something that I do not believe has a prosaic explanation.
Many people have. I have a friend who credits God for helping her find the perfect pair of shoes for her wedding.
The range of what can be explained by a prosaic explanation is wider than most people like to admit.
how do you know He didn’t?
I feel like people will take the "UAP are real" comment completely out of context. They're only saying that "things exist that we can't (yet) explain", which we already knew to be the case. And if there were in fact footage from a short enough distance to see things clearly, then we'd already know what it is.
In other words, nobody (credible) is claiming that aliens or anything of the sort exist.
Do you mean tictac and go fast videos ? Many military personnel, ex f35 pilots and other researchers had validated Ryan Graves and David Fravor claims and the footage - they aren't part of US technology. They had debunked Mick west skewed analysis and they are more credible than him . He never had flied a fighter jet he is a game programmer totally different areas of expertise
Being a retired pilot doesn't make you an expert on quirks in very high tech camera systems either or provide some natural credibility that blurry phenomenon in the sky are credible evidence of anything.
It wasn’t only video. The reason the planes were scrambled in the first place was because of hits from the ship’s radar. The planes also saw them on radar. The pilots also made visual contact, and testified under oath before Congress as to what they saw.
I’m sorry, but West is not convincing. He has a predetermined outcome in mind, namely, that there is nothing but man-made vehicles in the sky, and that there is zero chance for it to be anything else. Ever.
This conclusion does not match the evidence, and symbolizes a tragic incuriosity about the possibilities the universe holds.
> It wasn’t only video. The reason the planes were scrambled in the first place was because of hits from the ship’s radar. The planes also saw them on radar. The pilots also made visual contact, and testified under oath before Congress as to what they saw.
Unfortunately eyewitness testimony (even from trained pilots) is notoriously unreliable, and none of the other supposed evidence seems to be available for analysis.
Mick doesn't seem to shy away from looking at any available evidence. It's not his fault that nothing incontrovertible has shown up yet.
You’re going to need a lot more than video analysis and a handful of unverifiable eyewitness testimony (humans are famously fallible) to claim discovery of extra-terrestrial life.
Is anyone serious actually claiming extraterrestrial life is the main concern? My understanding is that the leading concern is some terrestrial military capability we don’t fully understand, but that could pose a military threat to US assets. The goal is to rule that out and then you can worry about aliens afterwards.
Nobody saying little green man here. Do you actually think you don't have life outside of US?
Every single data point in isolation can be ridiculated and twisted in many ways and this is what Mick West is doing. it is another story when you have series of multiple data points through long timeline with recurring patterns and have to make sense of them. UAPs are raported since at least WWII (foo figters), some accounts are traced even to ancient times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autokinetic_effect?wprov=sfla1
That may explain some of the sightings. That article specifically mentions foo fighters in the context of night flying. Were foo fighters seen during the day too? (I haven't researched them at all)
EDIT: Actually the foo fighters wiki article is pretty even handed I think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter?wprov=sfla1
Annie Jacobsen Book "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military has an interesting take on UFOs. The government actively perpetuated rumors about sightings to keep people from thinking top secret projects flying around the bases were real.
If you’re interested in this, the documentary “Mirage Men” is fantastic.
One telling thing about UFO sightings is the government's change in attitude compared to the last half of the last century.
It used to be that the government was trying to discourage reports. They would explain away everything that did get reported--usually reasonably because most sighting were just ordinary things that were misidentified but there were some that they never publicly had good explanations for.
They encouraged treating people who said they saw UFOs as kooks, and were successful enough that when pilots saw something they could not explain they would usually not report it because that could affect their career.
Lately that has flipped. Now they want reports.
The explanation that best fits the facts is that in the past what the people who weren't just misidentifying some normal thing were seeing were secret government projects that had accidentally been flown where they should not have been.
The government didn't want people to talk about those sightings because if too many people did talk about them it might be possible to piece together details about the program.
Now there are some sightings that don't fit with misidentification of normal things and that the government can't match up with any of their secret projects and they want to know what the heck is going on. They almost certainly don't think it could be extraterrestrials--foreign spies is what they are probably worried about.
They need more data, and so now they want people who see things to report it.
My belief is that their shift in attitude is because the cat is out of the bag... we know there is unusual stuff in the sky, so their best defense now is to pretend they don't know what they are, and asking for reports makes it more believable that it's not theirs.
I don't doubt people are skeptical about my opinion, and I don't blame them. But, keep in mind that many of the sightings are from Navy pilots, during planned Navy training missions. Oh, and the Navy has patents on some technologies that would explain some of these UAP sightings (if the technology in the patents works). Here are the patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10322827B2/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190348597A1/en
The shift also coincides with the advent of nation states dramatically ramping up use of small, sometimes stealthy drones.
Also high-performance quadcopters are much cheaper to make and if someone is flying one around that shouldn’t be, it’s worth knowing about.
The chances that a UFO is actually a nefarious drone have gone up a lot over the past 20 years.
The difference is now that mass surveillance is complete, they want the crazies to craze, so they can be barred from positions of importance.
What's HN's take on "Immaculate Constellation"?
I'm pretty skeptical. UFO believers and the Ancient Aliens crowd don't typically adhere to the scientific method, and so news like this doesn't sway me much.
I usually ignore this stuff, but it is pretty wild to see congressional documents talking about "non-human intelligences" intercepting F-22s and forcing them to abort missions. Seems pretty fanciful.
What does HN think about this?
One thing that bugs me about the UFO/UAP disclosure folks is that they assume all military secrecy is part of some sort of coverup and not just normal military protocols.
Disclosing things that the military deemed anomalous reveals a lot about military capabilities. Simple things like where groups were, but… imagine you were an adversary doing a drone exercise and you see the US reporting it as UFOs. That would tell you a lot about limitations in US sensors AND that US drone tech was so far behind that they concluded it wasn’t a drone. The military will always err on the side of not oversharing.
So of course the military isn’t going to disclose. If we want to take this seriously, we need a non-military org that will monitor and report that is designed from the ground up for transparency. Seems like something a scientific agency like NASA could be well suited for
> One thing that bugs me about the UFO/UAP disclosure folks is that they assume all military secrecy is part of some sort of coverup and not just normal military protocols.
Who? This feels like a straw man argument. I am not aware of anyone who takes such a (ridiculous) position, and I follow this subject fairly closely.
> scientific agency like NASA could be suited for.
That agency was created a couple of years ago. It is called AARO. They just released their FY 2024 report:
https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY2...
But AARO is still in the department of defense. We need an agency that has nothing to do with the military
From the hearing last week my main takeaway was that there is a program that nobody in Congress has oversight of. That alone is alarming but not entirely surprising given the abdication of Congressional authority to Executive agencies. I want to believe that the rumors of advanced craft recovery starting in the 40s are real. But, the reality is that UAPs are likely secret advanced human technology. The one thing that irks me about that conclusion is that historically acquisition/discovery of superior technology has been used for domination by the discoverer. Nobody has done that. None of the reported UAPs have been hostile. That alone seems to go against human nature. So, I'm left with a conclusion that doesn't make sense in human behavior terms.
The hearing just made me feel like "Independence Day" may have had it right. People in government know but don't tell the president for plausible deniability and non-permanence of the position.
“advanced human technology”. The idea that we’ve kept some advanced propulsion technology “secret” for decades seems farfetched
What if the Navy is hiding this technology in plain sight at the patent office?
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10322827B2/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190348597A1/en
A lot of experts think these patents are BS, but I guess there is the possibility that they're not.
This is so incredibly valuable that many are trying and failing. If it was possible, there would be at least one independent researcher who puts it on YouTube. These patents are not hiding in plain sight, everybody interested in advanced propulsion knows about them and knew about the research even before the patents.
Yes everybody following UAPs knows about them, but I would imagine a lot of people reading this thread are not aware of them.
Ah, Salvatore Pais.
Those patents, if real, would mean more than all other scientific discoveries in the last fifty years.
Quoting an article about him [0]: "every physicist we have spoken to over the better part of two years asserting that the “Pais Effect” has no scientific basis in reality and the patents related to it were filled with pseudo-scientific jargon".
Pais has of course offered no data, no evidence and no mechanism by which any of his so-called inventions would work.
[0] https://www.twz.com/39012/the-navy-finally-speaks-up-about-i...
Possibly. Given the era that this started it is more believable. If a small group secreted it away in the 40s it wouldn't be that difficult to keep it secret. I think that is where all the UFO reporter discrediting came in handy. Anybody that was in the know didn't share and outside reporters were painted as kooks which discouraged others from speaking up. Throw in a few "disappearances" of credible reporters and nobody wants to talk about it.
Fortunately we can all talk to millions of strangers around the world in an instant now. Even the kooks can find a community to share to that might be able to coorberate their story.
However, I find it difficult to believe that all other staffs, e.g. the retrieval teams, the scientists, can keep their mouths shut. Unless they live in a cave from birth to death.
There have been leaks from people claiming to be part of retrieval teams. Of course anonymously and without any proof. Their stories are fun though.
Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence.
In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range.
Pinnacle of intelligence within the solar system is still pretty likely, even if not in the universe. People forget how brutally hard star flight is if you're not using scifi cheats.
Check out Vlad the astrophysicist, it's interesting.
Given how ridiculously long it took intelligence to develop on earth, I'm not so sure. Intelligence might be the hardest hard step.
I do like your idea that we're in a quarantine though.
It's been a while since I read it, so I can't promise it holds up, but I remember quite enjoying this novel with a similar premise (the solar system is quarantined in a giant bubble for unclear reasons, with a side of nanotechnology-driven apps for your brain).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel)
That's still enough time for it to have happened 3 times over in this universe.
Three times doesn't exactly seem like a lot, right?
And for UFOs-as-ETs, these intelligences would have had to spawn pretty near our solar system, and their existence overlap in time with mankind's tiny fraction of existence (truly a blip in the lifespan of the universe), and detect our existence (or at least our system as a worthwhile destination), and develop tech to take them here, and be interested in this undertaking, and have the resources for it, and not wipe themselves out in an accident, ecological disaster or global war, and after all of this choose to just do mysterious flybys and abductions and no formal contact with Earth.
Too many "and"s for me...
> had to spawn pretty near our solar system
Why do you believe that our current understanding of physics is the final one?
Let me propose a thought experiment. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that humanity has survived 100,000 years into the future. Now, let’s put you in a time machine and fast forward you to that distant future.
Would you be surprised to learn that relativity, and the limits it imposes, are viewed by those future humans as anachronistic and silly? Barely remembered artifacts of humanity’s Stupid Ages? That new discoveries were made over those thousand centuries, discoveries that we 21st century humans can only vaguely begin to comprehend?
Because you raised my biggest problem with modern cosmology: it’s arrogant assumption that Einstein is the end. But more importantly, that evidence indicating that relativity is not in fact the end — such as UAPs — is completely disregarded.
And the reason it is disregarded? Because relativity is the end! It’s circular reasoning at its absolute worst.
> Why do you believe that our current understanding of physics is the final one?
It doesn't have to be final, it just has to be reasonably descriptive of reality.
Even if we review our understanding, the universe is still a massive place and humanity's existence a mere blip. It becomes more about statistics and probability than physics, but yeah, our understanding of physics also makes ETs visiting Earth very unlikely.
If you mean to say "a major revision of physics would make it more feasible", I don't know. Maybe? Or maybe even less feasible! We have to approach this rationally, and so far reason and evidence both lean to "extremely unlikely".
> Let me propose a thought experiment [...] Would you be surprised to learn that relativity, and the limits it imposes, are viewed by those future humans as anachronistic and silly?
As a thought experiment it's a decent piece of science fiction, but as any sort of serious thought it seems like begging the question to me.
> It doesn't have to be final, it just has to be reasonably descriptive of reality.
Which it only is if you limit cosmology to spectroscopy and ignore UAP. If you start to examine UAP as a real thing, and ask questions about “how”, then it all falls apart.
Which is exciting.
I don't think that's true, or at least, you're jumping prematurely to conclusions and sort of begging the question too.
The "U" just means "unidentified", not "contradicting our understanding of physics" or "extraterrestrial intelligence".
There are many life forms on Earth that remain unidentified by many estimations, and we keep discovering new organisms. "Unidentified" doesn't have to violate our understanding of the universe.
But if it does, then our understanding is wrong. That means there are new things to discover.
One of the common reported characteristics of some UAP is that they are able to accelerate hypersonic speeds without a sonic boom.
If that is true then there are things to be learned here. You appear to be saying that this obviously cannot be true because it violates what we currently know.
I think that is tragically unscientific.
It might be like a lot if there could have been intelligent civilizations 8 billion years older then us.
I doubt any kind of lifeform can exist for that long, but even if it did, the rest of the objections apply. If it's in the other side of the universe, we will never meet. So it would have to be near, and [rest of my objections].
Seems very unlikely to me.
We're are extremely unlikely by any available measure.
What's the argument you're making?
Yeah? But that's an argument against seeing any aliens up close (if you believe in that kind of thing), because presumably they're extremely unlikely too.
They're not there, or they're far away in time and space, with a remaining tiny chance that something incredibly unlikely happened.
That does kinda fit with stories of the Anunnaki creating humans as an experiment. Keep the science project contained to see what they do.
Sumerian and early Mesopotamian mythology is very interesting reading. I won't say it's ''aliens'' but there are some strong hints of more going on at the rise of civilization then just neolithic people coming together and inventing writing.
I have this idea that sedentary agrarian urban civilization was something created by nomadic peoples to farm slaves. Hunter gatherers and pastoral peoples would be very hard to control. But if they took children, and raised them to be sedentary and dependent on agriculture they could have a stable of slaves.
In the 600 million years that our planet has had complex multicellular life, only about 130 of those years has any species here been able to communicate outside the planet. That's .00002% of the time, on a planet with multicellular life.
Maybe the norm is that intelligent life lasts a long time and we just happen to be born in the first tiny fraction of humanity.
But the observational evidence is that even given multicellular life, intelligence is extremely rare, and there is no evidence at all that it is likely to last very long.
> Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence.
It might depend on the origin of the universe. One theory involves an exponentially expanding spacetime driven by a quantum field. Fluctuations in that field can case a region of that expanding spacetime to greatly slow down its expansion and that region becomes a universe.
If that's how it happened our universe would just be one in a very very large collection of universes. In particular the rate of universe creation would grow exponentially and so the fraction of old universes would be exponentially smaller than the fraction of young universes.
If it takes a few billion years for the first human level intelligence to develop in a given universe and then hundreds of millions more years for the second intelligence to develop then of all the universes with at least one intelligence only a very very very small fraction of them would have more than one intelligence.
> In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range.
Another interesting possibility is that civilizations isolate themselves. It seems very unlikely that neighboring civilizations would be at the same level of technological development--there is just too much luck involved in becoming a civilization and in developing technology.
That suggests that first meetings between civilizations are very likely to involve civilizations with vastly different technology levels. They also are likely to have vastly different cultures and vastly different ethics and vastly different philosophies.
Maybe the more advanced will see it as their duty to help the other progress. Or maybe they they will view them like Europeans viewed the occupants of the Americas in the 16th century. Or maybe they will see them as animals and give them about as much consideration as we give the animals on a patch of wilderness that we want to use for something.
You can model how civilizations should behave when they learn of other civilizations using game theory. When a civilization learns of another than hasn't yet learned of them their choices are: (1) try to keep themselves secret from the other, (2) try to contact the other, and (3) try to destroy the other.
(We would not be able to choose #3 because we aren't technologically advanced enough, but we know ways to do #3 that we'll probably be capable of in a few hundred to a couple thousand years from now).
Assuming that a civilization puts much much much more value on its own survival than on the survival of other civilizations #3 is the option with the highest expected value. If you aren't to the point where #3 is possible than #1 gives the highest expected value.
In short, we could be in a galaxy full of civilizations but they are all avoiding doing anything that would let others detect them because they don't want to be the target of someone else's option #3.
A few months ago there was a PBS Space Time episode on this so called "Dark Forest" scenario, which you might enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U
I watch PBS spacetime assiduously.
You can also consider the possibility that the intelligent civilizations of the universe don't even consider us a life form. I think about that a lot. "Maybe god and its creatures are not even aware we're here."
Moist pebble apes might be a short lived fluke. Our civilization has existed for an insignificant amount of time and even primates could be just a flare in the pan.
I think some country has developed some very cool drones with non-traditional propulsion. I'm imagining gyroscopes inside mounted on gimbals, and when pressure is applied to the gyroscopes they cause the spheres to spin and bend through the air like a ping pong ball, but in a controlled fashion. The spheres are supposed to be 3-6m wide, so filled with helium could have enough lift to counterbalance 50 pounds of equipment.
Possibly for some of the reports. Does that explain foo fighters from WW2? How about the "F-22 escort" report?
I will admit, I'm not easily shaken but that F-22 intercept report has been living in my head rent free for the past few days.
May I please have a link to the intercept report you refer to?
This one perhaps? https://www.twz.com/air/first-look-at-mystery-object-shot-do...
https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/cannon-212_20241113_154...
I get strong "Majestic 12" vibes from it.
Which is to say, I assume by default it's a hoax. The name alone just seems too on the nose.
And what if "Majestic 12" was not a hoax...?
It seems to me that the document was pretty demonstrably proven to be a hoax. You can find the arguments and evidence online, I'm not really in a mood to hash it out here.
But anyone will believe anything they like. If you want to believe it isn't a hoax you have to contend with the typographic and other anomalies that seem to show otherwise.
Yes, documents are online but how you can prove that those are hoax? The last analysis I know the guy made cross reference checks using modern search engines and newspaper databases and things where matching. I don't want to say that documents are real but for sure I never saw any argument that would definatly say that it was hoax.
I said I believe it's a hoax. I never claimed to be able to prove anything. I believe the evidence that purports to show that the documents aren't genuine, which you can refer to. Even a lot of people in the UFO community don't find the Majestic 12 documents credible.
You can't prove they're real, either, although you might believe they are. On balance however there seems to be more evidence against them than for them.
What would be the purpose of a hoax like that?
To force our enemies to question whether there’s a chance we could have been in touch with aliens and received some of their technology. That seriously changes the calculus when deciding whether to launch in a MAD scenario.
I'd say that nuclear bombs themselves already change that calculus, which the US obviously has. No need to account for aliens.
Misinformation? I don't know. I'm not basing my opinion on anything but vibes.
So is everyone else (myself included). At least you're honest about it.
> What’s HN’s take
Usually when UAP-related news items like this make it to the HN front page they don’t last very long. If this lasts even two hours I’ll be (pleasantly) surprised.
Most HN readers, it seems, feel the subject to be abjectly ridiculous and downvote accordingly.
You've noticed that too?
It's almost as if there's a cadre of actors (not just on HN) who's job it is to quickly jump on any UFO -related topic and ensure they post as much misinformation and nonsensical points to muddle any serious discussion. Hmm...
You would think they would finally give up, given the cat is outta the bag, even the minuscule but legitimate evidence provided by insider govt sources, since at least 2017.
At least the upvoting ratio seems to be good on this thread, let's see how long that last.
I'd bet that this is what some of the sightings are https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/05/11/us-nav...
Is it just me or does the architecture diagram at the top of the page from the “DOD Document” leaves a lot to be desired? It almost gives you no information about the actual system at all
It's a blowup from this document.[1] That's worth reading.
- Drone activity is up, and drone overflights of nuclear plants are being detected. One drone crashed and was turned over to cops.
- The most common report (63%) is one of lights in the sky, no additional data. Most unresolved cases are in that category.
- The next biggest category is spherical objects. Most of those turn out to be balloons.
- Starlink satellites generate a fair number of reports.
- MIT Lincoln Labs is apparently integrating the Gremlin system.
What's needed, and what Gremlin is supposed to provide, is telescopic cameras at multiple locations that can be quickly focused on a single target. Lights in the sky seen from one point don't tell you much, but if you have three separated cameras pointed at the thing, you know where it is.
The old GEODSS system, from the 1980s and still operating at a few locations, was similar, but aimed at near-space objects. The Ground-Based Optical Deep Space Surveillance System was a set of about eight telescope pairs worldwide. This was the beginning of automated astronomy. Each station surveilled the whole sky, and checked off all lights against a star map. Anything unknown got looked at. Both telescopes would point to the same object, and the telescopes were far enough apart to triangulate low-orbit satellites. Three sites are still running, and have been upgraded several times.[2] GEODSS was tied into various USAF and NORAD radar systems, so items of interest seen on radar could be looked at, too.
GREMLIN sounds like a mini version of GEODSS. More local, and intended for in-atmosphere objects.
[1] https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY2...
[2] https://www.spaceforce.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Article/2197...
Useless but cool-looking diagrams are the lifeblood of governent slide decks, so I'm absolutely not surprised.
That seems likely to be intentional.
[flagged]
There's no need to distract people from something they don't care about.
Why would they even bother trying to distract us from the genocide? Americans voted in droves for more of the genocide.
Hell, Democrats protest voted against their own candidate and implicitly voted for more of the genocide.