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Highly Anticipated UFO Report Expected To Be Presented To Congress Later Today (go.com) 71

ABC News reports: A highly anticipated UFO report prepared by the U.S. intelligence community is expected to be presented to congressional committees on Friday, according to a U.S. official, but officials have told ABC News the report will not provide definitive explanations for the dozens of encounters reported by the U.S. military with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. And in a development certain to disappoint UFO enthusiasts who have hoped that the report may have found links to alien spacecraft, the report has not found any evidence to suggest any links to such theories, according to three officials. The report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was required by the Intelligence Authorization Act passed by Congress late last year. The U.S. intelligence community was given 180 days to prepare an unclassified and classified report on what the U.S. government knew about UAP's.
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Highly Anticipated UFO Report Expected To Be Presented To Congress Later Today

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  • by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @01:03PM (#61520868)

    If there is anything visiting us, the damn .gov will be the last to admit it.

    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:00PM (#61521090)

      Given that billions of people are carrying high-resolution cameras in their pockets nowadays, and given that the only "proof" we ever see is still low-quality grainy, far-away footage... the evidence that anyone from off-earth is visiting us seems pretty underwhelming.

      • ...well, unless they have a time machine too, that is, and just reset the timeline whenever they fuck up so bad they get caught, but for the rest of the time are generally sloppy and childish about it.

        I agree it's an unlikely long shot though. The far more likely explanation is that we've just discovered what Jeff Bezos does with his spare time.

      • OK. Where is your high-powered camera right now? Is it in your pocket? Your purse? Is it on? Can you invoke the camera, with the proper settings, RIGHT NOW? Oops. Too late. It's gone. That's why you don't have more good pics.

        • by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:58PM (#61521268)

          Have you been outside recently? Every third person is in the process of taking a selfie, they could shoot the UFO if there were any.

          Let me predict the outcome of this hearing: yes the existance of UFOs is confirmed. As in, flying objects that haven't been identified visually or via radar/transponders etc. There's still 0 evidence that it's aliens.

        • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @03:01PM (#61521280)
          A hundred million cars have dash cams running every minute the engine does, effectively covering entire cities round the world 24-7. Same with security cameras, many of which are high resolution even if long term file storage is compressed to lower resolution. Both have provided some amazing meteorite videos in quality no nonsense views we would lack due to the lack of time to start filming something. Strangely, there isn’t a single one of any alien crafts.
          • The aliens just know where all our good cameras are.
          • The thing is who looks at the camera video when you don't think there is anything to see on the camera video? I don't; it's there in case of an accident or if you happen to notice something and want to refer back to it later. Same with being out walking, who is looking up? I usually don't. I'm paying attention to the bottom 50% where things I need to see actually are. Security cameras pointed into the sky are practically useless right? Also, no one reviews the footage unless there is another reason, a
            • The thing is who looks at the camera video when you don't think there is anything to see on the camera video?

              These days for security cameras, and now self driving car prototypes, algorithms watch the video. Security cameras do far more than just background extraction and have many types and variations on highlighting all the interesting bits and making them easily searchable. Self driving cars may not look in the sky yet, but every last car has a veritable sensor suite often with software specifically for flagging anything unusual. This coverage will only grow exponentially.

          • I think you hit the nail on the head with the meteorite notation. That's probably what a portion of the reported sightings actually were.
      • We know experimentally that when a consciousness observes matter its quantum waveform collapses from a superposition of states into what we call "reality".

        Our extra-terrestrial biological-entity visitors are simply so evolved that they can "see" when a locale is under observation. So to avoid being detected, they can stay in areas unobserved. Its as if a human could "see" when a ship is being painted with radar, and where that radar is coming from. Granted it is becoming more difficult as more people ar

        • If my radar analogy was unclear, consider that the "radar" are our eyes (and other senses in general).

          A camera is simply a non-temporal extension of our eyes, without consciousness.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          Logically, in a technological development sense, it is harder to see them, than look for what is missing and then analyse the missing. Any technology used to hide your presence will not be effective at creating the area illusion of the area, the volume of of what they are taking up ie if an alien vessel is hovering an hiding it's presence, it will fail should a cloud pass through the locale it is taking up hovering in space. It can hide in the sky but not that effectively in a cloud being distorted by it's

        • They know instantly when you see them.
          Sometimes it's only the artifacts of their presence you can detect, but they still know.

      • High resolution within, what, 10-20 feet? Up in the sky? Not so much.
      • I always have trouble figuring out which pixel is supposed to be the alien craft. The UFO pixel doesnâ(TM)t look that different from the Bigfoot pixel.

    • I rate the chances of them saying "Yes, it's aliens!" at around 0.0000000000000000000000000%

      Only a drooling foil-hatter will be 'anticipating' this.

  • by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @01:07PM (#61520888)

    UFO!=Aliens

    Maybe some politician has something important they want to push through and this 'congressional hearing' is a decoy

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Yeah, this is highly anticipated by crackpots and ding-dongs. There aren't any fucking aliens running around in stereotypical "UFO"s. We should definitely stop calling them UFOs as that just riles up the rabble. Just call them unknown aircraft or something, UFOs implies aliens even though it's "technically" correct. It's like "dark matter", which due to the mysterious name has caused all sorts of woo to be latched onto it and all manner of bad scifi plots to be derived from it.
    • I agree. Most likely not aliens. But, I'm not sure that makes me feel better.

      Someone is flying shit around that is so far advanced that it is surprising and scary to military personnel.. The exact people who regularly use "cutting edge" technology.

      I mean, if these reports that we've been hearing about are accurate, these dood-dads make an F-35 look like a jalopy. What the fuck did that $1T in taxes pay for? What if these belong to China?

      • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @01:23PM (#61520966)

        What if these belong to China?

        If these craft belong to China, then China would be planing to be on Mars within the next 10 months, not the next 10 years.

        • If these craft belong to China, then China would be planing to be on Mars within the next 10 months, not the next 10 years.

          Not even close; it would mean the CCP fought with Nazis on the far side of the moon decades ago and colonized Mars shortly thereafter.

      • One also has to ask, if America did have Alien flying technology and have got it working then why arn't they using it for all sort of space stuff now. With Alien Tech we could get to Mars tomorrow with Alien Warp and save ourselves trillions in cash to spend on getting our crap planet back from climate change brink

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          We're not going to Mars until the radiation problem has been licked. I think it unlikely that flying tic-tacs will help us with climate change.

    • UFO means unidentified. You have to seperate out different issues. There are the issues like what can it do, is what it does suggestive of an advanced propulsion that might suggest advanced physics, like anti-gravity. Whose is it is a separate question, and whatever it is could very well being and most probably terrestrial origin. In either case, anything antigravity is big news, and if you can prove that, its not kooky, because there would be well physics laws that would underlie it. Remember that for cent

      • thats what i am thinking, it could be china, russia or the usa with some secret drone tech they are testing, it could be any technologically advanced enough nation, all it takes is the brains and resources to put these UFO's in the air
        • by cusco ( 717999 )

          Why does it have to be a "technologically advanced enough nation"? There are corporations with income larger than the tax revenue some countries.

    • We're not saying it's aliens, but...
      it's aliens.

  • Only in America. I guess they can't understand how another country could have something they don't.
  • The X-Files was one of the best shows made, and certainly the best network TV Sci-Fi of the 1990s, but it also has "accomplished" making lots of otherwise "normal" folks believe they're Fox Mulder, and it's not just with scientific phenomena. Not only are complicated scientific phenomena conspiracy theories the chic thing, as they've been for a while, but the outrageous ones are also now in style. You no longer need to fear being considered a kook if you believe that Romana Didulo is Queen of Canada and t

    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @02:17PM (#61521138) Journal

      I found a written record from the 1700s that showed people believed the conspiracy theory that the Holy Roman Emperor (in Germany) was secretly submissive to the Pope. Shakespeare mentions other conspiracy theories (although he also writes about actual conspiracies, so).

      I'm sure if we go back to the Egyptian and Sumerian days, we can probably find other conspiracy theories.

    • I wonder exactly what is so outlandish about the idea that a group of elites that secretly do messed up stuff with kids and engage in occult related activities, because their connections and wealth allows them to. I don't buy into Alex Jones narratives but I find it interesting when creeps like Podesta have emails like this. [wikileaks.org]

      It wasn't even that long ago that it was considered absurd that the Catholic Church was involved in covering up and shielding their errant priests. Or that it was declared racist and inf

    • The majority of folks on this planet think there is some sky fairy watching over them 24x7. We're a very irrational lot. The only thing that surprises me anymore is we somehow made it to the top of the food chain.
  • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @01:21PM (#61520958)

    I would have thought that they would have wanted to release the report late on the Friday night of a major holiday weekend.

    Either that or they also couldn't find filing cabinets in disused lavatories.

  • Fear is the foundation of every government’s power

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Right on cue, another Post-Modern They're Out to Rule Us whine indicating some vast nefarious conspiracy. Who do you figure it is this time? Think now, amaze with your insight.

      • Recent (~last 300 yrs) "news" organizations tend to show that he is correct. Every headline, and every slanted writing, is designed to instill fear and outrage so that you can be manipulated by your "betters." Witness every single election campaign in the USA. That is proof of what he says. So why are you whining?

  • Unclassified: "Nothing to see here, move along." Classified: "Lie lie lie weather balloon lie."
  • Foreign powers with super advanced tech would not risk handing their secrets directly America by stupidly zooming around American aircraft carriers where it could easily get shot down or simply crash. Aliens would similarly not be so stupid.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Yep, it is well-known that aliens are super-intelligent and think like we do, only better. Maybe they are using their astounding abilities to consistently win the Powerball lottery. They are very, very sneaky.

    • My Lord, they're coming from the hills... ...Run away from the hills! Run away from the hills. If you see the hills, run the other way!

  • While there is an excellent chance that some of these UAPs are naturally occurring phenomena, domestic/international skunkworks, or extraterrestrials, the greatest mystery is understanding whether the federal governments can tell the difference. Nuclear war has been considered over weather-related misobservations. It would not take much more than that to fool them or us into believing one of these UAPs might be an attack. As such, it would not take aliens much effort to trick us into destroying ourselves
  • the report will be ambiguous with speculation and opinion, so it will be just another suspenseful anti-climatic let down to those hoping for some real ET evidence,
    • maybe they identified the previously unidentified flying objects, and they're not spaceships from another planet and therefor aren't full of little grey beings.

  • It'll be the .gov equivalent of a shrug emoji.
  • by skoskav ( 1551805 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @03:02PM (#61521282)

    I want to point out that recently popularized UFO/UAP videos were quickly debunked, shown to have reasonable and mundane explanations behind them. I'm not expecting this report to present any better evidence of aliens or advanced technology.

    If you think you'd enjoy well-presented analysis of UFO videos, maybe with lessons in optics and trigonometry, one debunking source in particular is Mick West's channel. A cured selection of recently popularized UFO videos debunked:

    * Omaha [youtube.com] "Splashing" in the water corresponds with a distant jet engine glare dropping below the horizon

    * Triangular UFO [youtube.com] Out-of-focus aperture artifacts of a jetliner

    * Gimbal [youtube.com] Jet engine glare rotation caused by artifact of the gimbal-mounted camera system

    * FLIR/Nimitz/Tic-tac [youtube.com] Matches an out-of-focus low-resolution back-lit jetliner

    * Go Fast [youtube.com] Wind-speed object the pilot thought was was much faster due to parallax

  • Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday June 25, 2021 @03:03PM (#61521288)
    I can only assume we have run out of countries to be afraid of, leaving only fear of alien UFOs to boost defense spending.
  • ...there was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
  • First off, only 2 people are working on this report and the Pentagon has purged some of the higher resolution footage, so I'm not expecting anything to come of this. But on the Pentagon's action, that says to me that some of this stuff is ours; and just recently the Navy for some really cool sci-fi sounding devices, like inertial dampeners.

    And I don't think aliens from another star system have ever visited our Earth, and I'd absolutely love to be proven wrong about this, unless these so called aliens ar
    • And I don't think aliens from another star system have ever visited our Earth

      If they had visited, at the least they would have used a giant laser to scribe an alien phallus across the continent of western Europe.

  • If the US Government has not found any evidence of aliens the UFO report will contain nothing exciting.

    If the US Government has found evidence of aliens... the UFO report will contain nothing exciting.

  • We are the aliens!

  • The UFOs are not from space. They are Chinese and Russian drones!

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