Classified UFO videos would 'harm national security' if released, Navy says:
The U.S. Navy holds unseen videos of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), as the Department of Defense (DOD) prefers to call them — but will not release the footage publicly because it would "harm national security," a Navy spokesperson wrote Wednesday (Sept. 7).
The admission came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the government transparency site The Black Vault, which has previously shared thousands of pages of UFO-related documents received via FOIA requests to the CIA and other government agencies. The Black Vault filed the FOIA request to the U.S. Navy in April 2020 — just one day after the Navy declassified three now-infamous videos shot by Navy pilots showing high-tech aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways. The Black Vault requested that the Navy now turn over any and all other videos related to UAP.
More than two years later, the government responded with a letter that both confirmed that more UAP videos exist and denied the request to turn them over due to national security concerns.
"The release of this information will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities," Gregory Cason, deputy director of the Navy's FOIA office, wrote in a response letter. "No portions of the videos can be segregated for release."
[...] It's clear, however, that the U.S. military takes the potential threat of UAP very seriously. In May 2022, the DOD held its first public hearing on UFOs since the 1960s. The hearing primarily discussed a June 2021 Pentagon report that revealed U.S. Navy pilots had reported 144 UAP sightings since 2004. More recently, the DOD announced that it will receive federal funding to open a new office focused exclusively on managing reports of UFO sightings by the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 12 2022, @03:56AM (11 children)
The videos I saw did NOT "showing high-tech aircraft moving in seemingly impossible ways." Those videos showed SOMETHING that appeared to move in ways that defied our understanding of physics. There are no identifiable high-tech aircraft in the videos. Among the hypotheses forwarded, are glitches in the lenses and/or the software, or some combination of both. A blurry blob could be a high-tech aircraft, maybe. Or, it could be a smudge on a lens, and the software trying to compensate for the smudge. Or, it could be even less than that. All anyone knows for sure, is that the video appears to have captured something.
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2022, @04:33AM (1 child)
While the maneuvers a fighter plane makes when trying to bring a smudge on the lens in the firing cross would show the capabilities of the said fighter plane (and the stupidity of its pilot). That may be a secret the Navy could want to keep hidden (especially the second part)
(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday September 13 2022, @01:15AM
I concur, any videos showing the stupidity of a naval pilot is definitely worth keeping top secret.. it is assuredly a threat to national security
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 12 2022, @06:37AM (1 child)
Crop circles.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday September 12 2022, @06:43AM
Crop duster circles.
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(Score: 3, Redundant) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 12 2022, @10:09AM (3 children)
The videos represent a threat to national security because they expose flaws, ghost images, in the tracking systems of our weapons systems.
Calling them UFOs in the first place is the mistake, unless we are playing 5d chess and want our adversaries to think we are that dumb...
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(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 12 2022, @03:42PM (1 child)
That's probably why they are called "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" now, specifically because we don't know whether it's an "object" in the first place!
But I be you complained about the rename TOO!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 12 2022, @04:13PM
Well, the sad part is, judging by the cockpit audio from the F-15 out of Jacksonville, the pilot was either acting dumb on purpose or he really believed he was tracking an actual thing and not just an artifact of the system.
Of course, being stationed in Jacksonville, some of that local gullibility may rub off on the pilots.
I'd expect a professionally trained defender of our skies to come out with a more detached, clinical analysis with statements like: "uh, tower, the tracking system is showing a blip moving mach 3 at angels 2 northbound. Yeah, and now it just made what must have been a 500G left turn and is registering mach 3.5 still at angels 2, heading straight in for Brunswick." What I recall of the audio was more like "whoooweee, lookit that sucker go, mach 3 at angels 2 northbound. Oooooh! just made a 90 degree left, moving mach 3.5 now holding angels 2." They _could_ have realized it was an artifact, but nothing in their words or inflections communicated that.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday September 12 2022, @03:44PM
And that would be especially true if they suspect some of the "UFO"s are in fact intentional deceptions by a potential adversary - the last thing you want to do is let them know exactly how well their system worked.
There's also probably a lot of sensitive information like actual performance capabilities of both the aircraft and tracking systems that could be extracted from the recordings. Information that militaries generally try to avoid sharing publicly.
I know for intelligence agencies the reason for classifying things often has less to do with the information itself, than what the fact that we have that information reveals about our intelligence-gathering capabilities. E.g. the fact that Putin visited his mistress on Tuesday isn't a secret we want to keep from him - but the fact that we know about it is, since his mistress and his secretary are the only ones who could have told us.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 12 2022, @06:48PM (2 children)
Did any humans (pilots, weapons officers, etc) see this with their own eyes?
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(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 12 2022, @11:22PM
Uhhhh - in most cases, I think not. Those little white triangle things that were tracked repeatedly in the Pacific? I think that they were seen with the naked eye. You got me curious now - let me try to check on that . . . Hmmmm - perhaps not . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch? [youtube.com]v=dPrYVmYkL5w
This testimony before congress appears to show a few moments of visual light images, recorded with a camera, maybe a cell phone, may or may not be related to the UAPs near San Diego https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPuPl9cH08A [youtube.com]
FWIW, those tic-tac UAPs were first spotted by the USS Princeton, operating some new-fangled updated radar. No one else was seeing those things, UNTIL Princeton reported them, and ships and aircraft started searching that target area. So, maybe faulty radar, leading to other operators responding with suggestability? I dunno . . .
I did find a couple videos where "artistic liberty" was used to enhance what is seen in the videos. Actually, CGI has been used more convincingly in movies and elsewhere.
I'm finding no evidence that anyone actually eyeballed those things with their own eyes.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Tuesday September 13 2022, @12:40AM
I have seen an UFO once; long time ago. I was stargazing from my friend's balcony when I suddenly realized that one star was actually moving toward me. It appeared very fast as brightness increased dramatically over perhaps 10-20 seconds. It looked like a rocker exhaust pointed at me. Then it just disappeared - turned off. I was actually scared as it was during high risk nuclear times and I was young. I could not come up with any explanation as well as my friends.
Years later I did - or have read, I don't remember - that it was probably a satellite turning and reflected sun toward me.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 12 2022, @04:46PM
Its "easy" for a nationstate to build a plane that pulls 10G, or a missile that pulls 30G, or a drone that pulls (classified)G, at least for a short enough range LOL, but its easy to watch footage of a track to get a sense of just what our tracking limits are and how close we came to slew rate limits or whatever, then the next model's design specs are guaranteed to be "Whatever the maximum the American's can track-while-scan based on footage plus 10% so it'll now be untrackable"