SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In official statements, the US Navy has for the first time officially stated that the three UFO videos made public by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge's UFO research organization are footage of real "unknown" objects violating American airspace.
Navy spokesperson Joseph Gradisher told Motherboard that "the Navy considers the phenomena contained/depicted in those 3 videos as unidentified." Previously, the Navy never addressed the content of the videos. The terminology here is important: The UFO community is increasingly using the terminology "unidentified aerial phenomena" to discuss unknown objects in the sky.
John Greenwald, author and curator of The Black Vault, the largest civilian archive of declassified government documents, originally reported the news. Greenwald requested information in August from the Navy regarding the content of the three popular videos purporting to show anomalous aerial objects.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59w3zq/tom-delonge-nytimes-ufo-aliens-comparison
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @04:46PM (23 children)
"Unidentified" means just that, not identified.
Move along - there is nothing here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @04:56PM (20 children)
Yeah, the whole thing with UFOs in the military(where the term originated) is they see things flying in or near american airspace and very much want to know what they are.
Kind of a reasonable thing for a national military to be doing, keeping records of those things. Treating it as a national secret is the kind of dumb "everything is an intelligence risk" thinking that happened during the cold war and I really wish would go away. And it enables the "UFOs are aliens" weirdos.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:06PM
That's what they want you to think.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:17PM (1 child)
And it enables the "UFOs are aliens" weirdos.
The respectful term is "reality impaired". But they can't park in the handicapped space. *Space* Get it??
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 19 2019, @06:19PM
The politically correct term is "reality challenged".
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:18PM (6 children)
The UFO itself isn't a national secret. The systems and videos capturing the UFO are - they are taken on highly classified systems and releasing the video can tip your hat to the enemy on capabilities. The IR pod, it's functions, the aircrafts handling, where the aircraft was operating, etc.. and a myriad other things can be calculated by analyzing the videos carefully. See the presidents disclosure of the Iran rocket launch facility...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:21PM (5 children)
Yeah, and I understand their reasoning.
And I still think it's stupid and puts the vague possibility of giving some relatively innocuous information away to "the enemy" as far more concerning than hiding relevant information from the public. It's a bad habit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:24PM (4 children)
I don't think the exact specific capabilities of your nations weapons systems are exactly innocuous to give out to potential adversaries.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:31PM (3 children)
Yep, camera pictures are definitely specific weapon capabilities.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:35PM (2 children)
That aircraft isn't a passenger jet. What do you think that IR pod is for?
(Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:38PM (1 child)
You're exactly as annoying and addicted to classification as the US government.
Paranoia isn't policy.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @06:05PM
I'm not addicted to classification in any sense of the phrase. I believe we should know about these kind of phenomenon - it has no use being locked up in god knows where. I also am able to understand why the government wants to keep the edge on their investment in defense/offensive capabilities. At the end of the day the govt sees little value in educating you on UFOs and much more value in protecting their own asses. I believe their response to be relatively conservative - they know somewhat what they are giving up and some of these things they can redact / cut out so not to expose whatever is getting their panties in a bind - and somethings they fear they will overlook or perhaps they realize they can not know ahead of time what leaking certain pieces of information will add up to,, so their default is just to say classified and not worry about what they can potentially leak.
I'm not saying I agree with this. I just see the logic in it on their part.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Thursday September 19 2019, @06:15PM (3 children)
I thought that was the entire plan. Keep the "UFOs are aliens" weirdos busy hunting for green men instead of actually identifying secret aircraft and other things.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday September 19 2019, @07:00PM
I don't exactly think they're deflecting top men with that little misdirection.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday September 19 2019, @11:44PM (1 child)
They're grey, not green.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday September 20 2019, @03:58PM
Your .sig is appropriate for this discussion.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Thursday September 19 2019, @07:04PM (3 children)
So, it seems we have 4 possibilities here:
- American
- Russian
- Chineese
- Space aliens
Forgive me, but I find the first one not plausible. Any significant research of this stage would be exposed already say from Hilary's emails, Snowden's dump, and countless other hacks.
Chinese are not quite ready yet as well, which leaves only two: either green men are flying over the US or Mr Putin. Take whatever makes you sleep better.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday September 19 2019, @07:40PM (2 children)
You left out "line noise". And you really shouldn't have.
I once saw a UFO, quite an impressive one. Fortunately my wife, who was driving, was also interested in it so we followed it. It turned out to be a small Blimp with a transparent outer layer and a luminous inner layer advertising, IIRC, Nikon cameras (or possibly film). We were just on the wrong side of it to see the advertising message. If we hadn't followed it for nearly 20 minutes I still wouldn't have a guess as to what it was, as it seems to change shape and color dramatically.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday September 20 2019, @12:35AM (1 child)
I have also seen an impressive UFO that I was able to explain to myself later. Was it right or wrong explanation? I don't think it matters as it was plausible.
However, here we are talking about cases where the US military investigated and was not able to come up with an explanation. I'd guess they tried hard.
Thant's why I left it out.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 20 2019, @03:07AM
They may have tried hard, but sometimes the needed information just isn't available. So don't rule out noise as the explanation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @08:01PM (1 child)
Uhh... no.
Let's say the government of Freedomland is trying to create a new plane which can go mach 15. They forecast it will be ready in 2020, but as everybody in the workforce knows, projects are always behind schedule and over budget (both government and in the commercial world). They are currently doing test flights.
Do you as a citizen of Freedomland want the world (including your potential enemies) to know that their new military equipment is having problems turning left, or flying in the rain, or is likely not going to be combat ready until 2025?
If Google can keep their technology of how to find the best funny cat videos a secret, I'd think military technology is at least as valuable and important.
(Implicit, that a non-trivial number of these UFOs are government projects which are classified for above stated reasons.)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday September 20 2019, @01:14AM
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, photographs aren't particularly high-quality intel, especially not comparable to technical details of imaginary super-tech that doesn't exist.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:12PM (1 child)
I saw a UFO once. It was late at night moving across the sky with a short bright yellow trail behind it. I got out my 20x50 binoculars for a better look. It was a rocket doing a suborbital burn maneuver.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bart on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:25PM
I once saw a really cool sort of nested square of lights ufo in the French Luberon region at dusk. I somehow could tell it was really big, and came up out of the valley. My mind went like "no way, no way, that's not a plane, that's not a balloon, not Venus, not anything...". My heart was pounding, because it was so unreal.
Then it got closer, and I started to hear the sound of jet engines. Then they flew over me, and I could see that it was the "Patrouille the France" national fighter jet demonstration team flying in close formation. The sun had already set, so they were probably practicing formation flying in the dark.
It was really cool, and if it had been a little farther away, I would never have guessed the actual solution.