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Pentagon Announces Task Force To Study UFOs (vice.com) 83

Posted by msmash from the x-files-you-want-to-believe dept.
The Pentagon announced last week that it had elevated the status of its UAP task force following pressure from Congress and the fact that multiple instances have been reported of unknown objects reportedly making incursions into military airspace. From a report: According to an emailed statement from Pentagon spokesperson Susan Gough and a press release from the Department of Defense, on August 4th, the military approved the establishment of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). "The Department of Defense established the UAPTF to improve its understanding of, and gain insight into, the nature and origins of UAPs," read a statement made by Gough. "The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security."
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Pentagon Announces Task Force To Study UFOs More

Pentagon Announces Task Force To Study UFOs

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  • Likely just as pointless as the first time they did it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Likely just as pointless as the first time they did it.

      ET came to a similar conclusion: "Humans are not very tasty. Cows better: take more."

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I would guess they are going on the presumption that these are spy drones, not aliens from outer space.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        It's more like:

        If (possible_military_threat)
          {investigate_more();}
        else
          {give_file_to_somebody_else();}

    • Itâ€(TM)s not about aliens. Itâ€(TM)s about defending airspace and satellites, both of which are increasingly at risk from other state actors.

    • Greeting such an advanced presence with such a comparatively puerile display of aggression seems foolish.

      I don't disagree, but the ship has really sailed on this one. I can't emphasize that enough.

  • They already had Project Bluebook and similar programs in the past. They more or less dismissed everything as human judgement or perception error. I think it's a mistake to have a final conclusion for each case. Perhaps discuss the likelihood it's human judgement error, but don't select it as a final category. Not everything needs to be funneled into one category.

    Some cases were truly amazing. In one broad daylight case there was a military plane with 3 people on board, two pilots and passenger. A lens-shap

    • Re: "One member gazed at it out a side window"

      The non-pilot.

      Re: "because it was passing over a military base"

      Should be, "because the plane was passing near a military base when it encountered the object."

      Re: A lens-shaped object

      Kind of like a lentil bean.

      Re: "I'l see if..."

      Should be "I'll see if..."

      [Still google-binging...]

    • It's not just bluebook from the early days. There have been half a dozen invstigations announced in the last decade alone. The air force has been debunking UFOs in so many investigations for so long that I don't hold out any hope for impartiality. Unfortunately, the UFO kooks are just as bad. As soon as good evidence appears of something unusual, people like Giorgio Tsoukalos and the Funky Hairdo's come out of the woodwork and start blathering on about pyramid energy so loudly that no matter how good th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      They already had Project Bluebook and similar programs in the past. They more or less dismissed everything as human judgement or perception error. I think it's a mistake to have a final conclusion for each case. Perhaps discuss the likelihood it's human judgement error, but don't select it as a final category. Not everything needs to be funneled into one category.

      Bluebook was also likely hampered due to the fact that a lot of reports were probably of classified US military technology or property. For example, take early MiGs that the US government had managed to capture/recover and were capability testing. Their shape was rather different than the type of aircraft most Americans would be familiar with, and were often nothing more than unpainted, shiny metal bodies. From a far enough distance away (where you wouldn't be able to see the tail), they could easily be

  • Is XCOM losing the war? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Isn't this about the time that China announces that they have a pact with the aliens?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Speaking of leaders of nations, The Tinted One has said God is on his side. Why not add ET to the list of cosmic sponsors? "Millions of saucers came to cheer me. Biggest saucer crowd ever, believe me, looked like the kitchen at Grand Central Station..."

  • Drones are a thing now, somebody has to keep watching the sky.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Drones are a thing now, somebody has to keep watching the sky.

      That indeed could be why there is renewed interest on their part. Drones have added to the variety and shape of military threats to keep an eye on.

  • Of course (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When the news announced that the alien mothership was poised over the Whitehouse, my bowels rumbled and threatened to rupture. The DoD appeared to attribute it to sonic weapons fire from the ship itself, but the Earth people appeared to have a weapon of their own. A huge gas cloud of intestinal gasses rose up from the DC swamp. It enveloped the spacecraft, corroding its hull in a matter of minutes and causing extensive systems malfunctions. Fortunately for the entire world the ship then plummeted from the s
  • In space there are no innocent civillains to bomb.
  • Really this is 90% focus on normal, earth based issues. There is a reason they are using a different acronym and not UFO. People jump right to this idea of aliens, which is where that remaining 10% goes. Aliens would be cool (or highly scary), but really this is mostly about domestic terrorists and foreign countries doing Bad Things.
  • with cameras sending video to foreign spys, so yeah, i think all military installations should be prepared to knock all UFOs out of the sky that fly over, electronic jamming, maybe a boleros gun that opens a net that entangles in the propellers and takes them out of the air so they can be retrieved

  • I guess DJT doesn't like his current poll #s (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Monday August 17, 2020 @03:01PM (#60411373)
    Interesting timing....anything to get people talking about anything but Biden/Harris, eh? Trump is a master at exploiting the media. Something tells me if he doesn't get his poll numbers up, we'll hear a lot of interesting announcements from every branch of government. ...anything to get the news off them and him.

  • Thanks guys. Really on the ball, there. I feel like our airspace is totally secure. /sarcasm

    • Nothing of note was happening 80 years ago, there weren't "space aliens" then and there aren't now. The objects are natural or manmade.

  • "The mission of the task force is to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security."

    They're going to get a budget that can now be used 99.9% as a slush fund. Most of the work will be done by one person in the 30 seconds it takes to say "nope, that's ours, so it doesn't potentially pose a threat to our national security. Next!"

  • Besides space and time being incomprehensibly vast, there's this:

    https://www.corbettreport.com/... [corbettreport.com]

  • Is this what Space Force will be doing? Chasing UFOs?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Is this what Space Force will be doing? Chasing UFOs?

      If UFO means "unnaturally fat oaf"

      -5 mean

  • (dead)

  • UFO means "Unidentified Flying Object", it doesn't mean "alien".

    And you bet that the US military is interested in what is flying over their territory. The US certainly has its fair share of spy planes, drones and whatever classified stuff and know that they are not alone in that situation. And they are certainly very interested in spotting them.

    And even if it is just a pilot who saw the moon, they can use that info to teach pilots how to make a difference between the moon and a space station. Seriously thou

  • If this had begun 75 years ago I could take it seriously. Now, it just sounds like another whitewash.
  • Hasn't the US military been studying UFOs from, like, 1947 or so? So The Pentagon, in 2020, announces they are studying UFOs. The American people: (yawns and says) "yeah, we knew that -- decades ago..."
  • All other Presidents of the past have had access to information on potential alien activity and UFO sightings, but as trained "politicians", they have always done nothing. Donald Trump is not a politician and never was. He's a regular person who'd react in a regular-person way. When he became president and had access to that information, he ordered the creation of a Space Force. Imagine that... https://upbeatnews.com/mm-2/in... [upbeatnews.com] https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

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