UFOs?

[whitesoxnation]

I’ve tried not to denigrate the aviators in all of this. They clearly saw something that they can’t explain. It’s hard to really make any kind of assessment once the media get ahold of the various video clips. The one that gets the most airplay, with the saucer looking object in the FLIR video, or the NVG triangles one, are so clearly optical artifacts that it’s pretty laughable at this point that they’re being held up as “evidence“ of flying saucers or exquisite adversary technology. That should cause most people to be skeptical about the entire thing.

When I saw the NVG triangle one I immediately thought someone needed to turn their pos lights down.

 

[RoarkJr.]

I'm no SWO but everyone seems to be talking about this right now.

 

[wink]

...the decision to conflate UFOs and UAPs into a single category was a huge Public Affairs blunder by DoD.

Am curious why you think this. It is clear that the public has come to conflate UFO with alien spacecraft and little grey humanoids, conveniently forgetting what the "U" means. If we knew of alien technology or inhabited spacecraft by difinition they would not be UFOs. To me UAP broadens the possible identifications of the observation and gets some distance on the perjorative UFO=Alien. In any case, not enough of the public differentiates between UAP and UFO for it to constitute a public relations disaster.

 

[Pags]

Am curious why you think this. It is clear that the public has come to conflate UFO with alien spacecraft and little grey humanoids, conveniently forgetting what the "U" means. If we knew of alien technology or inhabited spacecraft by difinition they would not be UFOs. To me UAP broadens the possible identifications of the observation and gets some distance on the perjorative UFO=Alien. In any case, not enough of the public differentiates between UAP and UFO for it to constitute a public relations disaster.

Id think the problem is that UFO came to mean aliens as opposed to "crap in the sky that's not a bird, a plane, or superman" so they made a new name to cover "crap in the sky" but it still got confused in the public's mind as aliens. Just because people see more drones and other random flying stuff over the past decade doesn't mean that all this stuff is aliens. So when some office starts tracking an increase in UAPs because there are more drones around and people are reporting them more often and then this office says to it's bosses that they've seen more UAPs uninformed people or people who want proof of aliens see this as the smoking gun.

 

[wink]

Id think the problem is that UFO came to mean aliens as opposed to "crap in the sky that's not a bird, a plane, or superman" so they made a new name to cover "crap in the sky" but it still got confused in the public's mind as aliens. Just because people see more drones and other random flying stuff over the past decade doesn't mean that all this stuff is aliens. So when some office starts tracking an increase in UAPs because there are more drones around and people are reporting them more often and then this office says to it's bosses that they've seen more UAPs uninformed people or people who want proof of aliens see this as the smoking gun.

Of course. No disagreement. But why would the adoption of UAP over UFO be a public relations problem as Brett suggested?

 

[Pags]

Of course. No disagreement. But why would the adoption of UAP over UFO be a public relations problem as Brett suggested?

Because it's resulted in an increase in reports and and people still think it means aliens. So now when the CNO says "we're concerned with UAPs" some folks hear the xfiles theme song and think he's talking about little green men or xenomorphs and instead he's talking about assholes with drones. They should have called it Terrestrial Sky Crap to account for all the drones, balloons, etc and to draw a circle that clearly excludes aliens so then the PAOs of the world don't have to waste their time fielding questions about aliens.

 

[wink]

Because it's resulted in an increase in reports and and people still think it means aliens. So now when the CNO says "we're concerned with UAPs" some folks hear the xfiles theme song and think he's talking about little green men or xenomorphs and instead he's talking about assholes with drones. They should have called it Terrestrial Sky Crap to account for all the drones, balloons, etc and to draw a circle that clearly excludes aliens so then the PAOs of the world don't have to waste their time fielding questions about aliens.

Is that all? Well then, since every UFO believer is eagerly awaiting the DOD report, maybe the authors will go out of their way to clear that up. After all these years and the more recent hype, the people who believe in visitations and anal probes will be the first to read it.

 

[Mirage]

I'm admittedly ignorant on the issue, but it seems many, many officials (ranging from Obama to deputy SECDEFs to Senators) have had the opportunity to clear that up if they wanted to. I've yet to look into it deeply, but all the comments I've seen them make seem to explicitly NOT say they are ruling out the possibility these are not extraterrestrial.

 

[CAMike]

These aren't illegal aliens, these are just little humans from our future. Progressivism and Scientology on Earth became a Kapitol Krime in 2028 and they've come back to Field Day this planet.

 

[Pags]

I'm admittedly ignorant on the issue, but it seems many, many officials (ranging from Obama to deputy SECDEFs to Senators) have had the opportunity to clear that up if they wanted to. I've yet to look into it deeply, but all the comments I've seen them make seem to explicitly NOT say they are ruling out the possibility these are not extraterrestrial.

Obama and others saying "we don't know what they are" is a wink and a nod to the existence of aliens only if you REALLY want it to be. Otherwise its a vanilla official govt answer of "we have no definitive answer." And that's the problem here: people who are truly convinced that these are aliens will take any answer as confirmation of their belief.

Somehow I doubt that little green men managed to cross light years of space, enter our atmosphere undetected, and then get found by a USN jet in controlled airspace. If they can do the first two things, why would they do the third? I get it that there are lots of people who get really excited about the notion that there almay be aliens out there and one day someones going to come on TV and say, "guess what america? They're heeeeereeeee!" But no amount of FOIA requests is going to make that happen.

 

[Mirage]

Obama and others saying "we don't know what they are" is a wink and a nod to the existence of aliens only if you REALLY want it to be. Otherwise its a vanilla official govt answer of "we have no definitive answer." And that's the problem here: people who are truly convinced that these are aliens will take any answer as confirmation of their belief.

Somehow I doubt that little green men managed to cross light years of space, enter our atmosphere undetected, and then get found by a USN jet in controlled airspace. If they can do the first two things, why would they do the third? I get it that there are lots of people who get really excited about the notion that there almay be aliens out there and one day someones going to come on TV and say, "guess what america? They're heeeeereeeee!" But no amount of FOIA requests is going to make that happen.

Seems like this thread has circled back on itself.

Saying "We don't know what they are, but we're pretty positive they're of earth" wouldn't be so hard, would it? I agree the likeliest option by far is the UAP are not extraterrestrial, but ruling it out because it seems implausible seems as unscientific and dumb as ruling out that a foreign power has greatly surpassed our own technology and is flaunting it in our face in our own back yard. Both are very unlikely and neither should be ruled out until the facts allow you to.

 

[Brett327]

Am curious why you think this. It is clear that the public has come to conflate UFO with alien spacecraft and little grey humanoids, conveniently forgetting what the "U" means. If we knew of alien technology or inhabited spacecraft by difinition they would not be UFOs. To me UAP broadens the possible identifications of the observation and gets some distance on the perjorative UFO=Alien. In any case, not enough of the public differentiates between UAP and UFO for it to constitute a public relations disaster.

No. It does the opposite. As soon as some bushy-tailed junior defense reporter FOIAs the stats on reported UAPs and see it skyrocketing, it invites a supernova of stupid questions and will be interpreted by some as evidence of impending alien invasion. Much better to separate out the “identifiable if you try harder” category of obvious drone encounters from the legitimately unidentifiable stuff.

 

[Mirage]

No. It does the opposite. As soon as some bushy-tailed junior defense reporter FOIAs the stats on reported UAPs and see it skyrocketing, it invites a supernova of stupid questions and will be interpreted by some as evidence of impending alien invasion. Much better to separate out the “identifiable if you try harder” category of obvious drone encounters from the legitimately unidentifiable stuff.

You should be sure to write a letter to Obama, John Ratcliff (former Director of National Intelligence), the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the AATIP, etc etc and let them know these are "obvious drone encounters". They have far more access to the pertinent facts and evidence, but I'm sure they'll be relieved to know that you solved the case and we can all stop wasting our time and tax dollars.

Or perhaps we can all accept that none of us know, and be ok with that instead of trying to fill that void in our minds with "facts" based on nothing but intuition.

 

[Pags]

Seems like this thread has circled back on itself.

Saying "We don't know what they are, but we're pretty positive they're of earth" wouldn't be so hard, would it? I agree the likeliest option by far is the UAP are not extraterrestrial, but ruling it out because it seems implausible seems as unscientific and dumb as ruling out that a foreign power has greatly surpassed our own technology and is flaunting it in our face in our own back yard. Both are very unlikely and neither should be ruled out until the facts allow you to.

At the end of the day the bosses are repeating what their advisors and SMEs tell them. And if they're anything like most engineers they shy away from certainty in either direction and speak in terms of risk, uncertainty, and likelihood. And since they haven't told The Boss that they're definitively not aliens (or the other way) The Boss isn't going to start making definitive statements.

No one's saying rule it out. We're just saying that it doesn't need equal billing with far more likely answers.

Several years ago I was watching a documentary on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald (With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more / Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty) and in the final 15min they presented 3 scenarios that each took 5min to propose how she sank:

1. Waves opened a hatch and water came in
2. Waves drove the bow under and the ship took on water
3. Aliens

1 and 2 are pretty believable and likely scenarios that, without a smoking gun proving one or the other, serious naval architects can discuss and debate. These scenarios are worth the air time. 3 isnt worth discussing for 5sec let alone 5min because the likelihood (ie %) is so low compared to the other two.

Or maybe another scenario, if you were betting your paycheck on what's causing UAPs, how much would you put on aliens?

 

[Brett327]

You should be sure to write a letter to Obama, John Ratcliff (former Director of National Intelligence), the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the AATIP, etc etc and let them know these are "obvious drone encounters". They have far more access to the pertinent facts and evidence, but I'm sure they'll be relieved to know that you solved the case and we can all stop wasting our time and tax dollars.

Or perhaps we can all accept that none of us know, and be ok with that instead of trying to fill that void in our minds with "facts" based on nothing but intuition.

Don’t be a brick.