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Media The Military

'U.S. Navy Says UFOs Are Real, UFO Hunters Are Thrilled' (vice.com) 441

dryriver writes: Vice/Motherboard writes that since the U.S. Navy admitted that its pilots encounter unidentified flying objects all the time, and mainstream news outlets like the New York Times have devoted coverage to Navy Pilots' UFO encounter stories, old UFO hunters around the world feel vindicated, and many new younger people are taking an interest in the phenomenon.

For decades people who believe in UFOs, UFO lore and take UFO sightings and UFO encounters seriously have been widely ridiculed as stupid, uneducated, gullible, deluded or crazy. Now that highly trained military pilots are talking about encountering UFOs all the time and mainstream media doesn't ridicule UFO sightings anymore — this only took a few decades — a fundamental taboo appears to have been broken. UFO sightings are suddenly real, not a product of overactive imaginations, people mistaking clouds for aliens or people spreading fake news to sell books, seminars and videos.

The question is, why, for so long, did mainstream media systematically ignore and ridicule a phenomenon just about everybody around the world has some knowledge of and had some exposure to? And if UFOs are "officially not crazy" now, what else that still is ridiculed by the MSM may also turn out to be "officially not crazy" in the future?

As a counterpoint, long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. argues that "UFO's are real, they are unidentified flying objects. There is absolutely no evidence that they are Aliens.

"If people continue to equate them with little green men then they can still expect to be ridiculed."
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'U.S. Navy Says UFOs Are Real, UFO Hunters Are Thrilled'

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  • Terms (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 03, 2019 @02:40AM (#58698674)

    I don't ridicule people who see UFOs because it happens all of the time. A UFO is merely an Unidentified Flying Object.

    I DO ridicule people who claim to see alien spaceships, flying saucers and extraterrestrials.

    • Re:Terms (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LKM ( 227954 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @04:17AM (#58698906)
      Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic.

      Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify."
      Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!"

      We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.
      • Re:Terms (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @06:48AM (#58699402)

        Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic.

        Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify."

        Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!"

        It's not just "see things they can't clearly identify." It's seeing flying discrete objects they cannot identify, not fog in the distance. Navy pilots with the fastest jets, the latest technology right up close to these flying discrete objects, and they, or their command, are unable to identify. Then, the New York Times ran a story about it:

        These last few months have seen a surge in media outlets covering the UFO phenomenon. This week, the New York Times ran a story about two Navy fighter pilots who had multiple encounters with strange objects which seemed to perform impossible maneuvers. In one dramatic case, the pilots recounted a story of an object that looked like a “sphere encasing a cube” that flew in-between two fighter jets cruising in tandem just 100 feet apart.

        I have no idea what they're seeing. But these are credible sources, in some instances catching the scenes on aircraft video. I'm not saying LGM's, but it could still be something rather weird. What that is would be worthwhile to investigate. This is not Cletus, hallucinating on moonshine, making up stories. Liars and imbeciles have poisoned this field, but it seems there might be something real beneath the nonsense.

        • Identifying things in the air is much harder than you think though. Even today with radar, radio, IFF etc friendly aircraft in combat still shoot each other down. A few years ago the Russian's managed to shoot down one of their own on a training mission. With that in mind, that pilots can have trouble identifying their own buddies, flying in aircraft types they are intimately familiar with is it really all that surprising that they see stuff they can't identify all the time? I don't think so. Any aircraft f

          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            In the NY times article more than one pilot was discussing first what they were seeing and then managing to track on radar.

            Most of these skeptical arguments become very poor when there are not only multiple credible witnesses but instrumentation backing their accounts.

        • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          The navy aircraft are also flying at high speed, they have very limited time to eyeball what might be a very small object.
          Also their equipment is set up to detect threatening objects like other aircraft and missiles, it won't do so well at detecting a balloon or a plastic bag blowing around in the wind.
          Could you identify a piece of trash on the side of the road when driving past at 60mph? Now imagine flying past at 600+ mph...

        • Re:Terms (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @10:24AM (#58700562)

          Navy pilots with the fastest jets, the latest technology right up close to these flying discrete objects, and they, or their command, are unable to identify. Then, the New York Times ran a story about it:

          One thing to remember is that the USAF and USN (and probably other major air powers) routinely prescribe amphetamines [nih.gov] to pilots during tactical and training operations. This is not a secret. It's also not a secret that amphetamines increase the risk of hallucinations [nih.gov]. Specifically, the research on stimulant-induced-psychosis suggests that hyper stimulation of the brain causes it to become overly eager at pattern-matching, essentially overfitting visual stimuli.

          It's also known that sensory deprivation also causes the same kind of overly-eager pattern matching [mentalfloss.com] in which the sensory cortex strains to find some kind of order. Fun personal story, I once got a chance to sit for a few minutes in an isolated anechoic chamber and you will literally start hearing shit out of nowhere. No matter how much my conscious brain tried to insist that there is literally, scientifically, no sound in the room, as measured by a super expensive and calibrated/certified instrument, the sensory cortex was like "nope bro, definitely hearing shit".

          So putting it all together, we have pilots on stimulants known to cause hallucinations, flying over barren ocean with no signifiers or terrain, which is mildly monotonic/deprived, that all of a sudden report seeing objects with unreal physical properties. The most economical explanation is that they saw something real, and pattern matched it to a flying object. It's not a question of seeing things that are not there, it's a question of seeing something that is there and deciding whether it's actually a flying vehicle of sorts.

          [ None of this is to denigrate the pilots professionalism or credibility in a personal sense. These are external factors that would, as I reckon, cause just about anyone to start looking at things funny. ]

          • The video evidence [nytimes.com] and resulting follow up studies by the Navy make your case that these are "hallucinations" negligible.

            That said, there still is no evidence that these UFOs are extraterrestrial in nature.

          • As a teenager I stayed awake in excess of 3 days a few times, only using caffeine. For various irrelevant reasons.

            My experience was that serious hallucinations began the third night. Judging from subjective feelings of tiredness, it would be easy to predict similar hallucinations from chronic lack of sleep such as military pilots intentionally undergo as part of both training and operations.

            Once on the third night there two of us, and we both clearly heard sounds from the roof of an animal walking, we could

      • Re:Terms (Score:5, Funny)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @08:08AM (#58699748) Homepage

        What was said. "Of course we have a number of unidentified flying objects at sea. Some of them turn out to be aircraft, and some objects reentereing the atmosphere."

        What was heard. "UFO are flying saucers piloted by little green men."

        • Give these people credit.
          They don't think Extraterrestrial Life are Little Green Men, but Little Gray Men. Keep up.
           

      • Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic. Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify." Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!" We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.

        I'm not so sure. Yes, we have more cameras than ever before, but do you see the images from those cameras? For the most part, no, you don't. We only see what is elevated by the media, or goes "viral" on social media. And even then, we only see the images or video. What does it depict? We can all see the evidence but disagree on its meaning. We didn't know about this until the Navy decided to tell us. Otherwise we would have no knowledge of it, even though it exists.

        Some of these Navy pilots have see

        • Re:Terms (Score:4, Informative)

          by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @11:42AM (#58701204)

          Some of these Navy pilots have seen things like balls of light, with no wings or IR exhaust signature, doing things that are way beyond our understanding of state-of-the-art technology.

          It's called ball lightning and it's quite real. There's quality digital video of the phenomenon along with 0.78 seconds of high speed video, plus spectrographic recordings of the same incident. It's a thin plasma of vaporized silicon, calcium, iron, nitrogen, and oxygen. Basically vaporized dirt in air. Reasonably good artificial ball lightning was created in 2007 by intentionally vaporizing silicon with high voltages.

          There may be more than one type of ball lightning. There are a raft of different theories and exactly why some ground strikes generate it but most don't is unclear. It certainly exists though. That covers a great many incidents. It's not an unexplained technology. It's a not-very-well-explained natural phenomenon.

      • Re:Terms (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Shaitan ( 22585 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @08:49AM (#58699980)

        In fairness we do have pictures and video all the time, if this were 30 years ago we would "know" that they're here.

        Nobody believes in video and pictures anymore and chances are that skepticism has risen so high that even a government sponsored tour of an alien wreckage would be believed to be a hoax and propaganda.

        • If UFOs were flying saucers full of little green men, the president would definitely be tweating about it as soon as he was briefed.
          • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

            And nobody would believe that either.

            I'm not saying there are little green men. But the question of whether or not there are little green always raises one of my big pet peeves.

            "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

            There is no logical basis for this. The problem is that what is or is not extraordinary is defined by bias and nothing more.

            In many cases the subjects which draw this standard aren't particularly extraordinary at all. A given object being little green men might be statistically ex

            • "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

              There is no logical basis for this. The problem is that what is or is not extraordinary is defined by bias and nothing more.

              What sort of idiot conflates the existence of inherent human bias with the absence of anything other than bias?

              Oh. Dude, that's pathetic.

              It simply makes no logical sense to arbitrarily raise or lower the bar for claims as a function of community bias.

              OK then why do you run all the way to one of the extremes when measuring bias? Why are you so affected by it, if you understand your own words? I think perhaps you repeated the words without internalizing the semantic details. (aka, the meaning)

          • There is pretty much zero chance were I a member of the deep state that I would brief Trump on such a thing...
      • Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic.

        Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify."

        Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!"

        We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.

        This is a good general principe to sort the wheat from the chaff as far as rare events go, prior to omnipresent cameras.

        Tornados, tsunamis, plane crashes, train crashes, car crashes murders, very few films, but nowadays many video instances. (Oh look! Tsunamis aren't a 100 foot giant crashing wave Superman can freeze, but rather a 30 foot swell that rolls in and in and in.)

        Aliens, UFOs (qua alien space ships), fairies, demons, ghosts, chupacabrasziz, Big Feets, Nessie, etc. Nuthin'! Or ultra grainy pictu

      • I see UFO all the time.
        I don't know If a saw a Meteorite, or an airplane, an odd shaped cloud...
        The issue is sometimes it take too much time to identify something, a Navy Pilot if they spent time to Identify that something, they may have already crashed their airplane.

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @07:44AM (#58699614) Journal

      One evening I was standing outside when I saw just abpve the tree line what seemed to be an aircraft, a light in the sky, moving in ways that planes don't, and can't. (I have some pilot training and aeronautical engineering training). Zipping back and forth, up and down in ways that human-built craft can't do. I pointed it out to my friends, who also saw it. All agreed an airplane made by man doesn't fly that way. Nobody had ever seen anything fly like that.

      Then the strange, out-of-this-world object flew *in front* of a tree. It was a lightning bug, also known as a firefly. We had thought it was much further away nowand going much faster. One the problems with objects in the sky is that the eye can't tell how far away it is, and therefore how big it or how fast it's going. Another problem is that when a small light is moving toward or away from you it seems to stop, so a regular airplane can "hover and immediately reverse direction", as seen by the observer who sees only a 2D version of its 3D movement.

      Another time, several of my relatives saw a glass of ice tea pushed halfway across the table by a spooky invisible force. Hearing about it, I did some experiments and found that every time you placed some ice tea in that type glass at that side the table, after several minutes condensation would run down the side of the glass. This would very effectively lubricate the interface between the glass and the table top (also glass), allowing the glass to slide across the slightly unlevel table.

      I've learned that people see things which can only be explained by aliens, ghosts, or magic. I used to work as a professional magician, so I know magic, which would explain these things, consists of mirrors and misdirection.

      • by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @08:50AM (#58699986)

        I've learned that people see things which can only be explained by aliens, ghosts, or magic. I used to work as a professional magician, so I know magic, which would explain these things, consists of mirrors and misdirection.

        One evening I was out in a field in the mountains enjoying my hobby of Amateur Astronomy.

        Then in the east this triangular array of lights shows up. I thought - Oh shit, here Mr Skeptic is, seeing the archetype of UFO's.

        So the thing continued across the sky in front of me. Strange bankings and other movements Red and white lights, and occasionally a strong beam shot out from it.

        So I grab my handy binoculars, and problem solved. This was three Chinooks flying in formation, and the lads were having fun with their searchlights, I suppose. Then the thwocka-thwocka noise showed up and confirmed it. UFO becomes IFO's

        I suspect this has happened many times, and the less skeptical just assign it to a UFO.

      • by kilfarsnar ( 561956 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @08:55AM (#58700014)

        One evening I was standing outside when I saw just abpve the tree line what seemed to be an aircraft, a light in the sky, moving in ways that planes don't, and can't. (I have some pilot training and aeronautical engineering training). Zipping back and forth, up and down in ways that human-built craft can't do. I pointed it out to my friends, who also saw it. All agreed an airplane made by man doesn't fly that way. Nobody had ever seen anything fly like that.

        Then the strange, out-of-this-world object flew *in front* of a tree. It was a lightning bug, also known as a firefly. We had thought it was much further away nowand going much faster. One the problems with objects in the sky is that the eye can't tell how far away it is, and therefore how big it or how fast it's going. Another problem is that when a small light is moving toward or away from you it seems to stop, so a regular airplane can "hover and immediately reverse direction", as seen by the observer who sees only a 2D version of its 3D movement.

        Did your radar lock onto that object? That is what some of these Navy pilots have reported. They have tracked them doing "impossible" maneuvers. They could certainly be experimental drones. But I think you are minimizing what is being reported by relating it to your experience with a firefly.

      • So, one night when I was young, my brother, some friends and I were sitting in a truck listening to my friend's new sound system (otherwise known as damaging our hearing) in my father's drive, out in the middle of nowhere. I'm looking out the window, and I see what appears to be an event sized firework launching strait into the sky from just up the road. Like, maybe half a mile. It was a glowing ball of light heading strait up, leaving some smoke behind. Shortly after I pointed it out to my friends, it

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      The mere fact that something is "unidentified" means that we don't know what it is, the chance of such an object being alien is extremely small. Most likely they will have reasonable and utterly mundane explanations like balloons or trash being blown around by the wind.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      What it means is that there is a legitimate mystery(s), not necessarily that extraterrestrials are visiting. People often confuse the two.

      It's odd because normally such announcement would create major media attention. The military has habilitally denied there was any real mystery for several decades. However, the unusual celebrity in the White House has overshadowed this change of stance.

      Maybe that's why they chose to announce it now. If you don't want the bruha of reporters buzzing around, then wait until

  • real (Score:4, Insightful)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @02:40AM (#58698676)

    UFO sightings are suddenly real, not a product of overactive imaginations

    Just because someone reports a UFO sighting does not mean they don't have an overactive imagination.

  • So do I, Martin S. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @02:42AM (#58698686) Journal
    "As a counterpoint, long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. argues that "UFO's are real, they are unidentified flying objects. There is absolutely no evidence that they are Aliens."
    So do I.
    Don't get me wrong: there would be little else I'd like to see than actual starfaring aliens visiting our little planet. It would be the Ultimate Game-changer. But until we've got them right in front of us, irrefutable, it's all speculation and potential delusions. Even when we've got them in front of us there'll still have to be some suspicion that it's some sort of elaborate hoax, and some people won't be convinced even if they shake hands with an alien (Flat Earthers and Moon Landing Deniers, I'm looking at you).
    • by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @08:27AM (#58699862)

      > But until we've got them right in front of us, irrefutable, it's all speculation and potential delusions.

      NASA's own footage Evidence: The Case For NASA UFOs [youtube.com] says otherwise.

      We've already had Full [disclosureproject.org]Disclosure [disclosureproject.org] back in 2001. Everyone stuck their head in the sand and ignored it.

      On Wednesday, May 9th, 2001, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena.

      Regardless of how many times people keep ignoring the truth we are not alone you'll get your wish by 2030 when First Contact can no longer be officially denied. It will force this planet of spiritual teenagers to question every basic assumption and dogma we've held onto for the past few thousands years.

      i.e. What is their?

      * Math
      * Science
      * Philosophy
      * Religion
      * Economic
      * Politcs
      etc.

      The ironic thing is that we are aliens to them!

  • I mean of course (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @02:44AM (#58698690) Journal

    Was it ever in doubt that UFOs are real? If somebody builds a trebuchet and flings stuff around that is too far away for me to identify, it's a UFO.

    That the term is colloquially used to describe alien spaceships doesn't change that fact.

  • I believe in nothing, Mr Lebowski.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    They are being ridiculed for immediately jumping to the conclusions "Aliens!"

  • by Anonymous Coward

    but it was aliens

  • by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @02:55AM (#58698726)

    Everybody is carrying good quality camera phones now, so if there are UFOs flying around, we should also have good footage of them.

    Show it.

    I remember more footage showing up in the 70s/80s, when virtually nobody carried a camera.

    • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @04:16AM (#58698904)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by havana9 ( 101033 )
      Thre are some differences. In the '70 nobody used the telephone to share cat photos, memes and inane jokes. Thre was more time to stay outside and watch the stars, and also the light pollution was lower.
      There was more interest of UFO, like some serials UFO, project UFO too, ant that was a proxy of cold war fears.
      Nowadays when sometimes weird happens, like fighter jets suddently take off and fly supersonic at a low height people is thinking OMG terrorists rather than OMG Aliens.
    • Everybody is carrying good quality camera phones now, so if there are UFOs flying around, we should also have good footage of them.

      No you don't understand. Aliens, bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster only visit the Silent Generation as they don't own fancy cameras.

    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      Well, duh!

      The aliens have stepped up their game and developed better stealth technology that prevents modern digital sensors from recording their presence.
      However like all technology according to the laws of Hollywood their technology does have a weak point and does not work well on old analogue cameras using film! There they can only affect the optics and make them appear out of focus and blurry. Unfortunately for us humans the prevalence of digital equipment has made it too difficult to get your hands
    • by DThorne ( 21879 )

      This is primarily my argument against Bigfoot, Nessie, ghosts, (alien driven) UFOs and all their ilk. I was staring wide-eyed at the skies coming out of my third consecutive showing of CE3K back in the day, I even briefly considered Chariots of the Gods as a possibility - sure, why not? If you wanted to research something you had to go to the library, seeing Bigfoot glancing back at us while casually walking through the woods required watching a movie or tv show. Information was magnitudes of order more dif

      • Just like The Amazing Randi squashing psychic powers, the power of information sharing has eliminated alien conspiracies for any reasonably skeptical thinker. I'm enough of a skeptic to be happy to consider just about anything, but nothing has convinced me yet.

        Randi is a fraud, just like those he sought to expose. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cu... [telegraph.co.uk]

        One better known complainant was Dr Rupert Sheldrake, the Cambridge biologist whose controversial idea of morphic resonance allows for the theoretical existence of ESP. To test his notion, Sheldrake ran a number of studies on a dog that seemed to know when its owner was coming home.

        Following a burst of publicity for Sheldrake, Randi told a journalist, “We at JREF have tested these claims. They fail.” But wh

    • by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @06:34AM (#58699338)
      Don't be stupid; there are tons of pics out there; both dated and current... good luck verifying anything (one way or even the other), though... but it doesn't matter;no one's going to convince you that their observations were legitimate (you already know they weren't) and vice versa... the only thing that would change that would be if you observed something of a presumably-artificial nature on your own which changes your own perspective.. and for that, you need no corroborating evidence; you'll know you saw it and that'll be enough... and if you have an ounce of self worth, you won't give a fuck if anyone believes you.
    • In the 70s and 80s, people were also more apt to be looking around them and not looking down at their phones. That's a two edged sword.

      Also, it seems to me, not being able to get good footage is a part of this phenomenon. We've got phones with cameras that can give a level of detail that was previously only available to professional photographers, yet the footage appears to capture the exact same amount of detail as it did when people were filming on VHS camcorders. That can't be a coincidence.

      Whatever UFOs

  • It is literally many of these pilots' job to identify Unidentified Flying Objects. There is still no evidence that any of the UFOs so far come from space or have anything to do with extraterrestrials.

    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      If you mean that it's their job to intercept bogies that cross into the ADIZ unidentified, well yes. But, maybe the AF and Navy would get more interest if they put up ads for UFO interceptors.

  • Unknown Flying Object - as in stuff in the sky they could not immediately identify, (msot of which either never found out about what it was, or Venus, or a cloud, or part the way the moving camera of a fighter jet work - like the recent one). And I would prefer "Non Recognized Flying Phenomena" frankly by now UFO is loaded not to say poisonned as term - too many people immediately jump at the lowest probable explanation by many order of magnitude : extra terrestrial. In reality the navy is just saying "yeqa
    • yup, what if it is just reflections on glass, some shiny button reflecting on their flight suit on the canopy being picked up on camera, or something else similar to that, make all the inside of the aircraft non-reflective which means buttons, buckles, gauges on the dashboard, the helmet face, (everything non-reflective) then see if the aliens disappear in the next few flights
      • by l0n3s0m3phr34k ( 2613107 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @07:01AM (#58699434)
        That the specific incident was picked up by multiple craft, tracked by the aircraft systems in multiple wavelengths (visible, infrared, and aircraft-based radar) would indicate the Jacksonville, FL incident of 2015 was not inside the aircraft. The object's speed in the NYT is quoted at being "hypersonic", other sources peg the speeds at over 1,200mph. While we humans do have a few planes that can reach those speeds, none of them can make high-degree turns WHILE going those speeds.

        So, that leaves three possibilities (in order of probability). 1, it's some type of high-speed previously unknown natural phenomena. 2, it's some non-public unmanned research craft or 3. it's something artificial and not man-made. One possibility I read about is a high-speed missile test. [darpa.mil]
        • maybe a secret military drone, of any aircraft the pilot is the weakest thing, too many g-forces and it can cause pilots to pass out, or worse, cause health problems or even death, remove the pilot from the aircraft and the only limits is the laws of physics
  • by julian67 ( 1022593 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @03:17AM (#58698782)

    I can clear this up:

    If the Navy say It's not aliens then it is aliens.
    If the Navy say It is aliens then it is aliens.

    Even though it's not aliens. Probably.

    You're welcome (especially if you're an alien).

    Remember UFO fans, you can't say alien without saying lie ;)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "If people continue to equate them with little green men then they can still expect to be ridiculed." Why that? We all now that little green men can be real. In east Ukraine and on the Crimean there were plenty of them.
  • Unidentified/unknown flying objects are real.

    Aliens on Earth are not.

  • by scdeimos ( 632778 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @04:03AM (#58698888)

    I've no doubt that UFOs have always been real, there's just no evidence that UFOs are aliens.

    Amazing how all this "UFOs (aliens) are acceptable now" crapola has come out just in time for the History Channel's new program... Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation.

    Wouldn't it be great if they were aliens, though? We could continue to obliterate our planet and there'll still be life in the Universe.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      We could go fuck their planet up for a change of pace.

    • there's just no evidence that UFOs are aliens.

      You poor, textbook-obsessed Aspie: there are fucking tons of evidence but it's all anecdotal; there's no empirical evidence (not that isn't full of blacked-out redactionsm anyhow) but that isn't remotely the same thing.

  • Especially during the 1950's-1960's people were continually being arrested when they reported UFO sightings. Many of which were also forcibly put into psychiatric evaluation. Decades later, many discovered what they saw were prototype military vehicles. Vehicles the powers-that-be said didn't exist. Which meant these people were wrongfully held.

    What would happen today if it was found out this attitude of illegal detainment was occurring? One word: Lawsuit.

    This statement is being made so the military has pla

  • We know how tight lipped any military usually is about giving out any information at all. Now they do explain, that "UFO" just means "Unidentified Flying Object", and that "the possibility of an extraterrestrial cause is so unlikely that it competes with many other low-probability but more mundane explanations." (Leon Golub, astrophysicist), but it's still an admission, that there's things zipping around in US-airspace that the US-military can't explain (and hence not control).

    So usually one would expect so

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      I think it is less that they are 'admitting' it any more than usual, and more that the History Channel is spinning up a new special and has been getting the hype started.
  • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @05:20AM (#58699064)

    Pilots are generally among the least crazy people we have, and UFO sightings by both pilots at the same time are common.

    Most of the time they are illusions triggered by the way pilots think when they are flying their planes. What I mean is that pilots what people are watching for when they look at the sky are objects like other planes, clouds, and maybe large birds. It makes sense, because these are the kinds of objects one has to watch out for in order to safely fly a plane.
    What they are not prepared for are things like a bug flying in front of the cockpit window. If it happens fast enough, with no sense of scale, it is easy to mistake for a very fast moving, airplane-size object. If you have read spoiler [wikisource.org], you will probably get the idea.
    On the opposite side of the spectrum is the moon. In the proper configuration, it is easy to mistake for a a flying-saucer-like object, a few miles away, because that's the kind of distance pilots expect things of interest to be. In fact, after doing some calculation based on the time, position, and description of the UFO sighting, the moon is often a perfect match.

    Why do pilot don't know these things? After all, they are supposed to be smart, right? Simply that their job is to fly a plane, not to do astronomy, so their mind is focused on what's important for the safety of the flight. And mistaking the moon for a UFO is much less of a problem than colliding with an aircraft you misinterpreted as the moon.

  • Also in keeping, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Trump are real, news is fake.

  • They have an autopilot and are on speed(drug).

    When I would be under such stress and sleep deprevation I would also see white elephants except I would call them U.R.O. Unkown Road Objects.

  • The number of airline flights daily is staggering! So do we have proportionally more reports from airline pilots? I've seen some, but proportionally more means like 1000's of times more than military reports. If that is not happening, then I must conclude that UFO's are biased toward tracking military targets, and thus they are likely of military origin themselves. (I mean, not the same military...)
  • They just don't care about us! :)
    Just imagine if we actually had up close contact with the occupants of an interstellar craft, and they just..couldn't be bothered, consider us lower than amoeba, and just totally ignore us as we are just not worth their time. .

  • ...They aren't likely to be aliens. It's most likely one of Uncle Sam's new "silver bullet" planes/drones that are being tested against our conventional fighters to see how they evade detection/intercept.

    Though given how resurgent Russia has acted the past few years, it's not out of the question that it's *their* silver bullet. The recent spate of UFO observations is roughly correlated with the recent resurgence in antagonism from Russia. And our military wouldn't like admitting that they could overfly

  • Of course they are fucking real. UFO is an unidentified flying Object. Anything from a balloon, meteor, drone or bird can be a UFO. This is NOT them saying aliens are real as the conspiracy nutters would like you to believe, it is an acknowledgement that sometimes pilots see shit they can't readily identify, put this in the "no shit sherlock" bucket.
  • I see UFOs every day. I saw one just minutes ago. Clearly an airliner, but otherwise unidentifiable to me personally. One could get a big kick out of this: dumb fucks don't realize what we're really saying, bwahhahahaha!

  • My theory is that they are tourists from the future (or possibly school children) come back in time to learn about the world as it was. Doesn't require aliens with long distance space travel who visit for tiny amounts of time and then leave having done nothing. Unfortunately, it does require time travel.
  • UFO != little green men

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