UFO, err, UAP, or maybe?

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I know that this is a controversial subject, but things are happening. The US military has destigmatized the subject a lot which I think is a good thing. This is an overview of what I have found on the subject.

What we know is that for about the last 10 years or so, the military has reported hundreds (maybe thousands by now) of UAP (UFO) sightings. Of which about 20 to 30 percent don’t have a good explanation for what they are. The majority of these sightings are of a metallic spherical object that is either stationary or moving (up to Mach 2). One such sighting was caught on video by a military drone in Iraq (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bt6_Potk5Q). This was released by the US government All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), among several other videos, for congress and the public.

Then David Grusch came out publicly as a whistleblower and said that he had interviewed many people in the government and the private sector who had been personally involved with actual craft of supposedly extraterrestrial origin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims). The difference with Grusch as opposed to all of the other whistleblowers is that he came out in the correct way. IE: he took his claims to the right people, who have the right security clearences, and with in the government organizations like the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG). Which said that Grusch’s whistleblower status and claims were “Credible” and “Urgent”.

Now with all of this we can not say, for certain, that any of this is extraterrestrial. The videos are not high quality enough and Grusch’s claims can not be proven publicly because that information is still classified. Although several congress critters do say that they have seen the evidence and that it matches what other whistleblowers have been saying and reporting to them. Last I read there were more than 6 other whistleblowers who have come forward and gave testimony to congress.

Now congress has attached the following to the Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for fiscal 2024…

But in the latest version of the IAA introduced in the Senate last week, lawmakers incorporated a mandate for any person currently or formerly under contract with the federal government that “has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the” government relating to UAP — “that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access” — to notify Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, director of the Pentagon’s new All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.

No later than 180 days after the IAA’s passage, the officials would also need to make “all such material and information” and “a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic [UAP] material” available to AARO for “assessment, analysis, and inspection.”

This is from an article here https://defensescoop.com/2023/06/27/senates-intelligence-authorization-bill-questions-reverse-engineering-of-government-recovered-uaps/. We will see how far that gets us. :slight_smile:

All I’m saying is that this feels different than all of the other times people have come out on this subject. But where it goes I don’t know.

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Sorry in advance for the long post.
I’ve been getting the same vibes. Seems like the gov’t wouldn’t be spending money on such things if there was no substance there.
I keep going back to what David Fravor (former US Navy pilot) talked about with his encounter, corroborated by his co-pilot and others: He claims to have seen a “tic-tac” shaped object, about 40 feet long, hovering over the ocean and having no visible means of propulsion. IIRC, he also stated that when he got too close, it accelerated instantly and ended up about 60 miles away in a matter of seconds.
People have been countering this saying that it’s just some US tech that is hush hush, and he wasn’t privy to. Here’s the problem with that: You don’t test new or advanced aircraft near where there other aircraft flying around; you could damage some really expensive planes or even get someone killed if something goes wrong. Plus, if the US was testing advanced aircraft in the area of its assets, the gov’t would have informed the commander of that fleet not to investigate, since he/she would have the proper clearance to at least be aware of such testing if nothing else.
Others have said that it’s advanced foreign aircraft, which is one of the reasons why this new agency (AARO) was formed – to find out if foreign countries are testing new things and assess the impact to US security. Here’s the problem with that: There are really only 3 or 4 other countries with the $ and know-how to build advanced aircraft:

  • Russia (no, they can’t even get funding to fill out their fleet of Gen-5 jets).
  • China (no, and forgive me on this fact, but they stole US military plans to build their Gen-5s, so I highly doubt they jumped several generations ahead so quickly).
  • India (doubtful).
  • Japan (doubtful, since they are a US ally and wouldn’t test advanced aircraft in the vicinity of US assets).

This leads me to believe that either Fravor and his fellow pilots are lying (for what reason?), or they’ve seen some advanced tech that we have no explanation for and could be of extraterrestrial origin. I’m not saying it is ET, but what else could it be? A foreign power reverse engineering UFOs? Maybe, but unlikely.

It’s all very interesting to me and I hope that we find out what’s going before I’m too old to care.

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So, is no one going to explain why the alleged footage in the age of 4K still looks like it was taken with a cheap 1960’s Polaroid knockoff (ie. no meaningful advance in the imagery of these things ever since the dawn of the UFO term)? The people searching for aliens visiting Earth continue to have the same problem as the cryptozoologists.

That said, I do not believe for one second that the current government here in the US at least would be above the idea of creating hoaxes as a means to gain power and to restrict freedom. We already have plenty of evidence of how a significant number of the people in power are striving to make our lives difficult for funsies (because in their minds, we are nothing more than helpless serfs who are incapable of intelligent decision making).

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To prove something… you have to prove something…

…of course a 5-year old kid could think that because it is unable to tie it’s own shoes then all the adults got help from aliens… or maybe are even aliens by themself… :thinking: so if they got help from their parents… then they also might be aliens themself… :question: :no_mouth: … the parents… and the kid…

Anyway… ever heard of any glitches in computer programs… ever ?? So all those camera views do have some computer generated overlays… and of course military programs never fail… they never do shot up camels… or even show a target which in fact is one of their own troops… ?? NNNooooooo…

And of course extrateristians… because they have nothing better to do than use an emmensive amount of energy to warp them through space over millions of lightyears to just appear somewhere on earth…

:thinking: …or maybe teen aliens after their weekend party ( ← or whatever they call this…) cruising with their parents ( ← or whatever they call this… maybe they lay eggs ??) interstellar vehicle ( ← or whatever they call this…)

Ohhh and by the way… a prove is not those claims of people who show “actual footage” of any mystic creature/technology which are screen shots from cinematic movies ( ← even not neccessarly from hollywood )… ( in those sometimes even blender is used :rofl: )…

Ohh and another one: don’t ask: if you think this is not extraterristian then what is it then… That’s totally the wrong method…

Just watch this:

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To be honest, I did not expect anyone would take this sort of stuff serious. Apparently, I was wrong.

The great thing about those sorts of evidence is, if you show it to scientists, they usually come up with explanations:

If you just take a bunch of people, preferably politicians, for an “investigation”, the results appear way different…

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I didn’t mean to imply that it was extraterrestrial, merely trying to find a plausible explanation for craft that do not exhibit known flight characteristics. Computer glitches or camera anomalies don’t affect what Fravor saw with his own eyes. I don’t think he’s delusional or lying, and I would assume he is competent enough to recognize something that should behave the way known aircraft operate. According to his testimony, what he saw wasn’t behaving in a way that can easily be explained with current tech.

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It is a problem for sure, currently these system were not designed to capture UAP data, they were designed for combat and to look at known foes. And you know that even in the military, if it isn’t broke don’t upgrade it. Some military systems still use 8in floppy disks from 45 years ago. I have some other thoughts about this later.

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I just used you as a generalisation of someone… ( non -native nglish speaker here :wink: )… and i didn’t read “his” report… but then…

…well… no examinable data… no prove… so nothing to discuss… :person_shrugging: … even if he is the pontifex…

( …well… this one might have believed he had seen something… also he is a very competent in his own craft… but this also might get more off-topic than the actual thread… )
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Eye witness accounts don’t have to be malicious or anything like that. Another option is, they can simply be wrong, as in this example:

Jump to 2:51:50 in case it doesn’t start there (it is worth watching to around 2:55:08)

If something doesn’t behave as it should, it may just be Bart Simpson.

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There are a lot of issues with the current UAP data that we have, and there can be uncountable explanations for the data because of it’s uncertainty. There are people taking this issue on, so hopefully, we will have some much better data soon. I know that the military is in the progress of upgrading their equipment to better capture UAP data. Also there is progress in the public sector as well with Dr Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project (https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo). The project has designed and built a sensor platform with understood sensors that are also calibrated to capture UAP data. They have plans for 5 or 6 of these platforms that will be deployed around the world.

I like Dr Loeb’s thinking on this as he said the biggest problem is that most of the military UAP data is classified and that is impossible to work with. Here is what he said in a recent interview (https://www.wgbh.org/news/science-and-technology/2023/04/26/the-sky-isnt-classified-harvard-astronomer-on-studying-the-extraterrestrial)

My approach to this puzzle is that rather than deal with past events that were anecdotally reported with compromised instruments that we can never revisit because the data was collected from months or years ago, it’s much better to have instruments that are fully under our control.

After all, the sky is not classified; it’s only the sensors that the government used that are classified that make the data classified. The best data is not available to us, to scientists, or to the public simply because it was collected by sensors that are classified that the government doesn’t want adversaries to be aware of.

Dr Loeb just finished an expedition to Papua New Guinea where they used a magnetic sled to look for remains of a meteor that they believe to be of extra solar origin. The initial data looks interesting but they have a lot more work to do on the samples before we can say anything about them. I’m looking forward to their findings when they are finished. Also you can follow the expedition here https://avi-loeb.medium.com/.

I’m just as skeptical as everyone here, but things are definitely afoot. :slight_smile:

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The amount of reasons for me to believe that something unusual, unexplainable is going on is pretty much zero.

It simply appears as if people are stirring things up and because it is about UFOs, they get a lot of attention. That’s it.

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Why would Fravor/other “eyewitnesses” lie? I dunno, why did a doctor lie about vaccines causing autism 20 years ago? People lie, a lot, especially when there’s fame or glory or even just notoriety to gain from it.

The real question is, which has already been posed- why would an advanced civilization travel for dozens of lightyears or more to our planet just to fly around and screw with people randomly? Either they’d be here for a reason- in which case, we’d know about it, because they’d be killing us all or stealing our resources (most likely wood and water), or they’re not here for any reason and they’re just wasting time and fuel flying around and screwing with people. That doesn’t make any sense. What does make sense is that people would lie about this for clout. We know that’s verifiable, because people do that literally every day.

The simple explanation is that people lie for clout. The complicated explanation is that an advanced civilization is somehow willing to spend billions upon billions and travel for decades just to steadfastly keep themselves a secret from us. Why on earth would they do that? Simplicity wins, for me

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I have no problem with you thinking that, but there is too much data now for me to just dismiss it out of hand. Something is going on, and we really need to get to the bottom of it. I would rather be informed than ignorant if something does break unexpectedly.

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This is a data problem and I could come up with a million other possibilities that would fit the data just as well as your explanation. It’s the same as the problem with the Fermi Paradox, which there are an infinite number of solutions for. Coming up with these kinds of solutions is fun and all, but in the end doesn’t move us forward any.

Dr Kipping in his Cool Worlds channel goes into the details of the problems and possible solutions for the Fermi Paradox and is a must see in my opinion…

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I don’t think I am ignorant, because all the data I have come across so far was either useless because it was not detailed enough/unsharp/… or it could be explained.

Chances are so small that something could be found, that I literally consider it a waste of time (and money. But I don’t care about that, because I am not in a country that wastes resources on that kind of topic.).

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It’s all about statistics, you can say some of the data is wrong, but you can’t say all of the data is wrong. Especially when we don’t have all of the data we need for a good determination. I like Arthur C Clarks quote “If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” We can not make a definitive determination either way until we have more and better data. But you would have us not look at all so we would be ignorant of the truth behind all of this.

It doesn’t matter if it turns out that all of this was some kind of hoax in the end. We will still know more than we know now and the money was not spent in vain. And if it does turn out to be an advanced technological civilization, it will change our world forever. Either way, we have advanced our understanding.

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Another question- what does it matter? Let’s say there is some highly advanced civilization out there that could improve our lives with technology. We wouldn’t use it.

How do I know this? Because we, as humans, have been fully capable of powering our entire electric grid system exclusively with solar power at no additional cost to anyone for decades. We could have stopped global warming completely decades ago. We, as a society, actively chose not to.

We can cure diabetes- which was a death sentence not that long ago- but we chose to lock insulin behind thousands of dollars a month paywall. People still die of diabetes, not because the technology isn’t there to save them, but because they can’t afford it.

Here’s one that’s less about the paywall and more about stupidity- people still die of rabies in 2023. It’s honestly unfathomable how this could be possible, we have a miracle drug that can prevent people from dying from the only virus known to have a 100% fatality rate (without timely vaccination, you will die from rabies.) How? Because the anti-vax community has decided that the rabies vaccine is filled with microchips or whatever, and so they refuse to take it even after contact with a wild animal. And then they die, because rabies doesn’t give a crap about what you believe.

It’s famously known that global hunger and starvation could be completely fixed with 6 billion dollars. We don’t need alien technology to stop people from starving to death- we already could, if some billionaire would just set aside some of their wealth to help people instead of wasting it on vanity trips to the bottom of the ocean.

Any societal problem you can imagine- a quick bit of research will show, there’s already a solution. It just will never make it into the lives of ordinary people.

Every problem you can imagine already has a solution invented and ready to go that’s rotting behind a paywall somewhere, or wasted by human stupidity, or both. Adding alien technology to the mix wouldn’t change anything.

If aliens are real and if they’ve visited Earth- which I’ll admit is honestly pretty likely- it wouldn’t make even the slightest difference in the average person’s life. All that money spent searching for aliens could be spent on far more useful things, like global poverty or eliminating malaria or so forth. But no, aliens are a much better use of money :roll_eyes:

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I agree with you 100%, except maybe the alien tech part. :wink: We could be so much farther along than we are if we would use our resources better. This is one of the down sides of free will, it does cost us. But I don’t buy the we shouldn’t be spending money on {xyz} because we could use it for {abc}. We can do both and we probably should be doing all of it. This needs a solution that I don’t know if we will ever have one. It’s that pesky human nature that gets in the way every time. You can put in place a tyranny, because that is the only solution that might work, or allow free will and live with the consequences.

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…unless they impose a dictatorship over Earth and sort out for us things like proper governments and scale-able economic systems =D That might have an effect… but then again, might not.

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Wikipedia: Fermi Paradox:

…the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years…

This is the basic reason why this is so paradoc !?!?

…so: a few million years to earth… a few million years back to planet X… a few million years back to earth…

You know there are some discussions here on BA with some hours delay… which stop unresolved… because the OP never answers…

Or put it this way… if any E.T. life form which do have interstellar travel ever “detects” earth (even hundred or thousend years ago) then they are by far more superior when this “detection” takes place and even more superior when this info get to them (even not taking into account that the analysis of millions on detections will take… lllooooonnnngggg )…
…so:

Why would they be interested in us ??

…expect maybe the ask themself: Did they exterminated themself yet? ( ← or better: some milllion years ago…)

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