I read this in the New York Times a few days ago and thought I'd find some discussion about it, but no .... so ....
‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects
I'm struck by the similarity of this to a book I've read some .... 40 years ago? No clue about author or title .... But UFO's were first spotted using an advanced radar, like the story talks about. (The story has the first Earth star ship see them again after the first jump to Alpha Centauri.) Secondly, it strikes me as hugely strange that if the government claims nothing is going on (area 51 anyone?) everybody is sure that there's some kind of a huge cover-up. Now they are opening talking about UFO's that have been tracked, there is no hue and cry about aliens or what not?? One of the leading theories that it is some kind of government program the Navy knows nothing about? .... Aw, give me a break!
I don't know what to think! Ideas?
Hey Parson,
Been reading the
Fortean Times for decades now and this is bread and butter to it. The story in has been reported in it for a good couple of years.
This is kinda complex, but I will try and break down what I understand to be happening.
Radar is a notoriously finicky technology. For civilian radar and commercial travel they simplify it by forcing all flights to install a transponder and then the radar system is forced to just track objects which have a transponder. The reason they do this is that the atmosphere is extremely complex and radar will highlight a huge number of false positives, see 'Radar Angel' echoes for example. Essentially civilian radar just ignore most of the data they are getting back. Obviously military systems can't work on this trust system, so have to work on all the data that returns, which means, by definition it must be more advanced and able to analyse and work with a much more complicated data set.
Now the fact we don't seem to have air forces around the world chasing shadows constantly suggests to me that, generally speaking these military systems work most of the time! But they are bound to, at times, pick up anomalies and weird conditions. Pilots, both civilian and military are bright people, but they are not trained as atmospheric physicists. Yes they will see and pick up strange things that they cannot explain - I'd say there's still a great many phenomena that we haven't come close to explaining, but that's science for you - but I do think even these people can misunderstand info coming in, get confused or just not have enough info at the time to really comprehend what they have found.
As for cover ups...I'd suggest that generally all types of aircrew are reluctant to report anything they see - even if it is, as I suggest, interesting atmospheric phenomena that isn't little green men or genuine mistaken identification of some more mundane phenomena - as I am sure they will fear this might lead to them being taken off flying one way or another. Although in recent years there do seem to be more stories coming through. (Maybe this attitude is changing though?)
For the videos that the AATIP (organisation mentioned in the article) provided recently, for example. it was interesting that a couple of them came from training flights, suggesting that the pilots were getting used to their equipment. Although we can not convincingly state what any of the objects really were, analysis does seem to contradict what the pilots were reporting. So rather than tracking objects going at hypersonic speeds, it has been estimated that they were in fact going at about 80-100km/h. The likelihood is that the Navy has analysed the images and reports and probably concluded that, given the facts, they were very probably mundane objects misidentified by the pilots. The video images were, I believe Infra-red, so they will not give a proper image of what the object really was.
One must also question the motives of certain groups. The AATIP were set up with a bit of spare defence cash by 2007 by Senator Harry Reid on the urgings of his friend Robert Bigelow. Now Bigelow is big in 'anomalous' research. He for example was involved in observing what was happening on Skinwalker ranch, but also did research on cattle mutilations and other UFO topics, and has been doing this for decades. The AATIP have disbanded (but still continue, I think with private funds, under the name 'To the Stars Academy of Science & Arts') I think because of all the material they produced, they didn't show anything of substance. (There's a quote to that effect in the Wikipedia article on them, so I nicked that!). So I expect that the US Navy took a more pragmatic approach to all this data and evidence and probably just shrugged it off, on the reasons I gave above. After all, it's not as if any of the above has damaged any of their equipment, attacked their personal or tried to contact them. (At least that we know about
). Whereas it's in the interests of the AATIP to promote the mystery. Plus it makes better copy than US Navy pilots chasing weather balloons/sea birds.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm open about all possibilities regarding this topic, and would love it if there really was something weird there.
But my rough guess is that, ignoring all the tall tales, fibs, lies and fictional accounts (there are many!):
99.9% of 'real UFO' sightings are observations of totally mundane objects or interactions that people completely misunderstand
of the 0.1% left over, 99.9% are observations of rare natural phenomena that we do probably understand
of the 0.001% now left over, 99.9% are observations of natural phenomena we don't understand or have come across before, and...
...the remainder is, perhaps, some weirdness that goes beyond our current understanding of the universe. Maybe. Always best to keep an open mind, even while remaining sceptical.
