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Navy Confirms It Has a Secret Classified Video of an Infamous UFO Incident, Says Releasing It Would Threaten National Security (vice.com) 230

The US Navy says it has classified documents and video related to a 2004 UFO encounter and releasing those materials would threaten national security. From a report: The Pentagon has Top Secret-classified briefings and a Secret-classified video about an infamous UFO incident, the U.S. Navy said in response to a public records request. The files concern the 2004 encounter between the USS Nimitz and a with strange unknown aerial objects. In 2017 and 2018, three videos of bizarre aircraft taken by Navy pilots from their fighter planes made national news. In December 2017, The New York Times ran a story about Navy pilots who intercepted a strange object off the coast of San Diego on November 14th, 2004, and managed to shoot video of the object with their F-18's gun camera. In September of 2019, Motherboard reported that the Navy confirmed the videos contained footage of "unknown aerial phenomena."

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request sent by researcher Christian Lambright seeking more information on the incident, the Navy said it had "discovered certain briefing slides that are classified TOP SECRET. A review of these materials indicates that are currently and appropriate Marked and Classified TOP SECRET under Executive Order 13526, and the Original Classification Authority has determined that the release of these materials would cause exceptionally grave damage to the National Security of the United States." "We have also determined that ONI possesses a video classified SECRET that ONI is not the Original Classification Authority for," the letter continued.

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Navy Confirms It Has a Secret Classified Video of an Infamous UFO Incident, Says Releasing It Would Threaten National Security

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  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:27PM (#59624214) Journal

    It's a new stealth weather balloon, apparently not stealthy enough yet.

    • by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:41PM (#59624264)

      Nimitz Encounter Proved Exotic Technology Thought of as Science Fiction Actually Exists [inmilitary.com]

      Rogoway emphasizes that “the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real. It isn’t the result of altered perception, someone’s lucid dream, a stray weather balloon, or swamp gas. Someone or some thing has crossed the technological Rubicon and has obtained what some would call the Holy Grail of aerospace engineering.”

      • by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:50PM (#59624304)

        From deeper in the same article, I guess it was a valid test case:

        In addition, the Nimitz was fielding a massive new upgrade to an advanced radar system for the F/A-18 Super Hornet and also a new Cooperative Engagement Capability technology. That capability implemented datalink and sensor fusion technologies for the entire carrier group, which provided advanced fidelity in the radar picture.

        Imagine taking radar and sensor data from all the ships and aircraft in a carrier group and combining it into a commanding real-time view of the battlefield. Such a massive upgraded system was being tested for the first time when the Nimitz had its first encounters with the now famous tic tac UFO.

        It occurs to me that a sanitized training environment and an incredible new sensor upgrade create an ideal testing condition to see if our own team can spot top secret, undisclosed aircraft.

      • Or maybe someone has technology which is able to spoof the existence of such technology. Imagine some type of system which could actively fool radar and visual tracking systems to make an enemy think a real object existed. Such a system would have applications for providing dummy targets to an enemy, to fool both defense grids and guidance/targeting systems for attack platforms. We definitely would not want anyone knowing about such capabilities.
        • According to CDR David Fravor (in charge of the team of hornets, whose team also saw the same things), he described a craft under the water with a cross shape just under the water right when they initially encountered the tic-tac. According to him the waves where breaking on it, and the tic-tac was hovering over it then started moving and whatever was below the water vanished. He was adamant it was not a sub, as he had seen many below the surface before breaking the waves.

          If it was a radar or instrumentatio

        • Or maybe there's just a bug in this new radar system they were testing out.

        • by aerodude ( 6530350 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @10:01PM (#59625048)

          The simplest explanation for a single vehicle breaking physics is that there were multiple vehicles all along, and the pilots / systems operators weren't aware. It seems to me that aliens is far less likely than some kind of active stealth drone that can be used to disrupt enemy sensor systems. This is especially the case given how difficult it is to estimate the speed of an object when you yourself are traveling at 600 knots, probably upside down.

          The fact is, an aircraft traveling ~60,000ft/s through an atmosphere with no sonic boom or heat trail is physically impossible. At that speed, the air in front of the vehicle would be plasma, even if the vehicle itself is completely impervious to heat (a quick head calculation tells us that that's around 15km/s, which is somewhere in the vicinity of Mach 40 at SSL -- that's almost twice as fast as shuttle re-entry, in much thicker atmosphere than what the shuttle goes through at that speed). You would literally need to exit reality in order for this to not be the case. If your target disappears from radar and instantaneously reappears in a different location, that's a good indication that you actually have *two* targets, and the first has managed to confound your sensor systems, while the second is now letting you know where it is. I think this is made even more likely given the fact that the pilot is primarily going to look for the object in the rough vicinity of where the aircraft's sensors tell them the object is.

          I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe it is aliens and I'm just a silly cynic. That said, I'll always defer to Occam's razor where possible, because the probability that it's aliens is unquantifiable. That would be the black swan event of all black swan events.

      • by Cito ( 1725214 )

        It was only a Folie à deux and nothing more...

        Now please look straight ahead into your web camera

        Thank you

    • It's Rover. https://youtu.be/op7IgFbT8l0?t... [youtu.be]

  • by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:31PM (#59624226)

    I predict everyone will come to the rational conclusion that the "UFO" was a man-made object of some provenance that the US wants to keep classified (drone research, something else) and _totally not_ that there are fucking aliens flying around.

    • I'd like to believe it's aliens.
      • If you want to believe, just watch this [youtube.com].

        Also just believe the explanations at the bottom and don't overthink it (like, "the objects accelerates so fast the camera can't keep track" .... of course it CANNOT be that the plane just changed direction).

        And be amazed by that "oblong shape" which surely cannot just be a spy balloon (which would explain why it's classified information).

        • of course it CANNOT be that the plane just changed direction

          Well no, it cannot. Watch the heading indicator on the HUD. It never changes. If you're going to be a smug fuck, at least pretend you're interested in accuracy and understand your sources.

        • I find it interesting that people immediately jump to Aliens as the identity of these sightings. While still unlikely to me, I personally think it would be more believable that these are time travelers from earth's distant future. These might not even be evolved humans, if the human race goes extinct at some point and they evolved from some other species that survived an extinction even millions of years from now. Before you flame me about time travel, explain how exceeding light speed is any more far f
          • I find it interesting that people immediately jump to Aliens as the identity of these sightings. While still unlikely to me, I personally think it would be more believable that these are time travelers from earth's distant future.

            Sorry, but I LOL'ed. I was expecting some rational explanation when you totally dropped that time-travel bomb on me.

            Nope.

      • I'd like to believe it's aliens.

        Except what you want to be true doesn't make it true.

        But don't let that get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

      • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

        you can believe all you want but that's pretty unlikely that they would have proof of aliens, would withhold it like this and nobody else would have it and said aliens only time was just that time.

        or or it's nothing of the sort but just fodder for conspiracy/ufo professionals.

      • I'd like to believe it's aliens.

        Remember: short, controlled bursts!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by organgtool ( 966989 )
      Have you seen the videos or heard the accounts of one of the pilots that witnessed the encounter, Commander David Fravor? Saying that these craft were made by aliens may be extremely far-fetched, but given the incredible speed and maneuvering of these aircraft, it's also extremely far-fetched to say that they were made by humans. That's what makes these videos so intriguing.
      • Can you point to a video showing that ?

        From what I've seen, they just observed the object with a crazy zoom. At that point anything moving forward (or even the plane not going right in that direction) would cause the object to shift left or right. If you ever looked at the moon with a telescope, it escapes your view in a few seconds.

        • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @05:26PM (#59624448) Homepage Journal

          Can you point to a video showing that ?

          Watch the Joe Rogan Experience episode with Fravor. There's also a YouTube channel dedicated to interviewing pilots and technicians who witnessed the events. It's all free for anybody who's curious.

          > From what I've seen, they just observed the object with a crazy zoom

          No. They talk about extensive eyes-on, targeting computer data, etc. The things dropped from 50K ft to 50ft in a couple seconds, made 90-degree turns at supersonic speed, etc.

          Some of the pilots suspect these are new designs out of Plant 42, which is close, and the men-in-flightsuits showed up quickly to confiscate the 8mm tapes. Apparently with a gravity drive - materials in a static gravity field can't do those things. Given what all the highly-qualified witnesses saw, from different ships, at different times - we have to go with observation and factor out what we know is impossible. Deduction leaves a few possibilities on the table, which are all pretty extraordinary.

          • There is a long history of pilots claiming to see crazy shit like that, and then it turning out to be just misinterpretation of what they saw. I think it was the Brazilian air force a few years ago that put out a video claiming to show a flying saucer because of crazy speeds etc, and then a handful of people on reddit spent a few hours analyzing it and proved conclusively that it was a civilian airliner. Even provided the actual flight number and tracking data.

        • There are dozens of videos about it on youtube. Just google "Nimiz encounter".

    • There could even be fucking aliens flying around, but what the videos are capturing are not fucking aliens.

      But what if they were? What does it mean to society on a practical level? There's nothing we can do to stop them from flying around Earth, or even our locality. They don't appear to be interested in communicating with us. The only thing left is to piss away money on wild, speculative endeavors, which is wasting money nations presumably don't want to waste.

      • Exactly. Wake me up when the aliens actually do something besides fly around and mutilate cattle. Even if they are here puttering around it doesn't mean anyone actually needs to give a fuck. If the US gubmint has a bunch of secret alien tech, the Chinese have already stolen it all.
    • by sheph ( 955019 )
      Well honestly without knowing all the details what makes more sense? That the revelation of an alien craft would be a matter of national security? Or a sophisticated craft created by a foreign enemy, and /or our ability to detect it? I know which one seems more like a matter of national security to me. But I also don't discount the government's desire to keep everything a secret whether it makes sense or not.
      • by tsqr ( 808554 )

        Well honestly without knowing all the details what makes more sense? That the revelation of an alien craft would be a matter of national security? Or a sophisticated craft created by a foreign enemy, and /or our ability to detect it?

        What makes sense to me is that the national security issue has nothing at all to do with the alien/sophisticated craft and everything to do with video revealing advanced sensor fusion capability.

        • Discovering aliens here on Earth would indeed be cause for alarm. From a self-preservation outlook, the US government wants to continue to exist and an alien showing up would cause untold amount of social dishevel that may well destroy the government.

          I kind of doubt most humans could actual handle aliens being here and actually being REAL.

          It would be both incredible and terrifying all at the same time. They probably wouldn't mean us harm, but how could we not be afraid? We don't even trust other humans, how

          • by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @07:29PM (#59624692)

            They are already here. First Contact won't be made public until ~2030 -- by then there is fuck all the governments can do about it.

            There is nothing to be concerned about.

            Q. Are you interested in the ants living in your back yard?
            A. Neither are the aliens. If they wanted you dead you _already_ would be (which you have an all new set of problems/opportunities to deal with but I digress.)

            Why? Because Man is not the sharpest tool in the galactic shed. He is just another dumb animal that hasn't figured out how to live on this planet without money -- yet EVERY other animal has been doing this for MILLIONS of years.

            As one alien joked:

            You mean you have to pay to live on the planet you were born on!?!?!?

    • Yup, that's it or they fucked up and don't want anyone to know.
      If they really do have proof of alien UFOs then I'm sure SETI would like to know.

    • by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @05:13PM (#59624404)

      While it may be that the internet is 90% pornography, that does not imply that those aliens were fucking. Odds are, they were attending to their exploration or scientific or military duties, too busy to be fucking at the moment. Suppose they were tourists. If you spent a small fortune for the sightseeing adventure of a lifetime, you would be sure to be on deck to see the sights at the destination, leave the fucking for later. I respectfully dispute your comment.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Either that, or in investigation they found a flaw/weakness in their systems that was causing artifacts and they don't really want that getting out either.
    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @05:30PM (#59624468)

      My assumption is that the national security angle isnt the UFO, but rather the sensors tracking it. If they were to release the video it could give away a level of detail or other capabilities of sensor packages that the US hasn't confirmed it possesses. Sort of like when Trump tweeted that photo of the North Korean launch failure that demonstrated a higher level of resolution than was known.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I remember doing the trig when the story was first in Slashdot years ago. The thing isn't moving particularly fast, and the "instant" acceleration the video claims is far from instant, and isn't really anything particularly special.

      The hypothesis that it's a drone, probably a US military one taking part in the exercise, is a reasonable one.

  • by rldp ( 6381096 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:33PM (#59624234)

    Navy made no comment on this particular case. Threat to national security is buried in the definition of Top Secret classification.

    The reason it is Top Secret is because it could contain technical information about the F-18's gun camera. Not because the government is hiding flying saucers.

    UFO "researchers" wear the same clown shoes as bigfoot hunters.

  • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:43PM (#59624276) Journal

    It seems most likely that the objects could have been muscle-flexing by Russia, China, or some other technically capable adversary. Of course they wouldn't want to admit that, because the "threat to national security" would be a loss of confidence in our ability to defend against such things, or the ignition of WW3. It's better to handle that through private channels. Even *this* administration would have its limits on revealing something like that.

    ie, it's never aliens.

    • It seems most likely that the objects could have been muscle-flexing by Russia, China, or some other technically capable adversary. Of course they wouldn't want to admit that, because the "threat to national security"

      Perhaps. But historically the military has used such things to get more funding. Just look at the space race. In the arms race (the US was never behind the Soviet Union) fear helped the military to out build the USSR. The MiG-25 was originally thought to be an air superiority fighter rather than the interceptor that it was. So this motivated the USAF to build the F-15.

      It's more likely that they don't want to reveal something about the fighters that the footage is from. Russia and China are the two m

    • It's most likely that the objects were American-made, assuming they aren't space aliens. No other country spends nearly as much money on their military, and we must assume there are all kinds of undisclosed projects going on. There are allegedly trillions of dollars of Pentagon money unaccounted for, so it's quite possible to hide very large expenses in the budget. IOW we are the most likely nation in the world to pull off something truly new.

      The military obviously wanted to keep the whole thing secret but

  • by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @04:57PM (#59624334)

    the USA just introduced a missile that will fly around radar and other sensors. this was probably a better oneor a hypersonic version that's still in development.

    hypersonic engines are a reality, I heard the limiting factor now is the missile materials to keep the warhead safe until needed

    • Stealth overcomes the defenses of a country by hiding; a hypersonic missile is easily trackable by a microphone.

      If you have an array of microphones, you can pinpoint it's location precisely.

      To destroy it, all you have to do is put something in front of it; it does the rest.

      A stream of machine gun bullets where it's going to be works incredibly well.

      • by DogDude ( 805747 )
        Have you considered notifying the various world governments about your insights? The scientists and other professionals working on these project might want to know that they're wasting their time, since Grog6 says that hypersonic missiles can be tracked by microphones and brought down by machine gun bullets.
    • hypersonic engines are a reality, I heard the limiting factor now is the missile materials to keep the warhead safe until needed

      The only warhead for US hypersonic weapons is .5mv^2

  • but it's ALIENS!

    https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ancient-aliens

  • by kfh227 ( 1219898 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @05:16PM (#59624422)

    People need to understand the cameras and video taking this footage are from classified and possibly top secret cameras. And releasing the footage would reveal top secret information about the camera's abilities.

    Thus it is classified as top secret.

  • Living in San Diego sailing with members of the armed services this sighting was brushfire banter and hush hush in the same breath. These pilots not only saw something they captured it. Pilots know each other; its a fraternity. Amongst themselves the encounter was " legit" sighting, confirmed and unequivocal.

  • is a national security threat. I really wonder who is sticking their heads in the sand now! In their infinite wisdom there is no need to know they have prepared to fight the last war again.
    History tells us most politicians and bureaucrats always prep to fight the last war.and the next conflict will catch them totally clueless.

    ' Just my 2 cents ;)
    • I wonder if our Air Craft carriers are just big expensive targets for hordes of drones each with a single weapon capable of doing some real damage if it hits

      And that is just what anyone with resources can almost do now.

      Maybe we do a Vanderbilt, sell/dump the ships and rather than rails(in his case) we go space carriers. At that point what is any planetary bound force going to do.

      Just my 2 cents ;).
    • wait to 20 so Maverick can't get an DD for buzzing the tower.

  • The question is: who built it?

  • OMG the fuck nuts were right all along! I'll bet the Earth is flat and God is real too!
  • Why its classified (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @06:02PM (#59624536)

    The likely answers as to why this is classified is:
    1.The video shows secret US technology and the US doesn't want the bad guys finding out about said technology and what it can do
    2.The video shows secret technology from the bad guys and the US doesn't want the bad guys finding out that the US knows about said technology and what it can do
    or 3.There is something about where and/or how the video was shot that would compromise security if the video was released (such as details of the camera used to film it)

    I seriously doubt its actually ET come to visit us (be they little green men in flying saucers, guys with snakes in their head, guys with pointy ears or otherwise)

    • I seriously doubt its actually ET come to visit us (be they little green men in flying saucers, guys with snakes in their head, guys with pointy ears or otherwise)

      You're probably right, but at times like this I'm reminded about just how little we actually know about our celestial neighborhood [dur.ac.uk] that we've been making RF noise in.
      Despite what the inverse square law says about the strength of those signals 50 light years out, they are still there for a sufficiently advanced civilization to pick up on.

      I just find it hard to be completely dismissive of these incidents, when we really have no way of knowing what's out there.

    • What if this was the F-18 targeting version of Tesla autopilot going into the ditch because the breakdown lane looked like an off ramp to the computer. Just saying.

    • I seriously doubt its actually ET come to visit us (be they little green men in flying saucers, guys with snakes in their head, guys with pointy ears or otherwise)

      Considering what we have found out already about manned vs robotic space exploration, it's much more likely to be the aliens' machines.

  • Part of me wishes such things were real.

    Presumably the thrust to weight would be astronomical, better than anything we got.. and presumably with inertial dampers.

    Where do I sign up to drive one of those?!

  • If anyone wants to check it out. We have a beautiful, interesting little planet here. :)
  • Either the vehicle in the recording is actually a US made spy vehicle, or the technology monitoring / recording / intercepting the UAP is still highly classified.
  • Is this the same navy that uses Windows to control missile cruisers? Just asking.

  • The videos are obviously doctored. At 00:31 the counter at the bottom of the screen displays 4220A. At 00:42, from the attitude indicator, the plane is flying level. Yet the sea is scrolling bottom-left to top-right. Then from 00:46 the attitude indicator shows a slight turn to the right, then a sharp turn to the left. Yet there is no change in direction indicated by the movement of the sea. At 01:04 the counter at the bottom of the screen indicates 4253A then the screen is inexpertly cross-faded into an e
    • The camera is a turret with a large range of motion. The whole point of it is to lock onto a target and follow it as the plane maneuvers. The overlaid indicators show the camera's orientation. They get the lock pointing about 40 degrees left and 25 degrees down, and as they are flying past the object and much higher, the camera swivels further to almost 60 degrees left and 35 degrees down to track the target. So yes, it is pointing sideways.

  • The US Navy has said UAPs are real.

    What would they know?

  • So, lets assume the following are true:

    1. The object(s) were visible by the human eye.
    2. The object(s) were captured on radar.
    3. The object(s) were captured by the F/A-18's on board camera.

    If all these are true, and all of the case materials thus given would indicate so, then these sightings could not have been an artifact in the radar or camera systems as they were visually confirmed by highly trained pilots who should be able to distinguish many types of aerial phenomena.

    So as far as we know th
  • There are planty of videos about the incident, including interviews with the pilots, on youtube.
    What is the point in trying to conceal it further?

  • by BubbaDave ( 1352535 ) on Thursday January 16, 2020 @10:59AM (#59626618)

    It doesn't have to be an object moving at high speed making impossible turns, it could be a 'projected' phenomena such as plasma ball formed by an energy weapon that deposits its energy at a distance, or potentially through the intersection of multiple beams.

    Why a device/weapon like that would be used in a way that would simulate a vehicle would make for an interesting thought experiment.

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