U.S. unable to explain more than 140 unidentified flying objects, but no aliens

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/ufo-report/2021/06/25/ba323b20-d52c-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html

by czottmann • 5 years ago

48 67 5 years ago

drewem2• 5 years ago

I think the Wall Street Journal had the best lede on this:

“U.S. intelligence officials have examined more than a dozen sightings of unexplained aerial objects that displayed no visible propulsion or that used technology beyond the known capabilities of the U.S. or its adversaries, according to a senior U.S. official describing a new report.“

chiefalchemist2• 5 years ago

Not to get too far off topic but the intelligence community isn't exactly a benchmark for truth and transparency. Within its arsenal is misinformation, and it's not afraid to use it.

Also, the recent reports I've watched and read all eventually mentioned "national security." Such mentions are euphemisms for more funding, more DOD budget, etc.

Granted, it could be aliens. Nonetheless there are plenty of earthlings who benefit from a misinfomation based narratives. Some of those benefitees are the source of the narrative.

Let's not lose track of the context. It matters.

gameswithgo• 5 years ago

people are also just wrong, and crazy, all the time.

BitwiseFool• 5 years ago

Intelligence Agencies are designed to deceive. That's their primary function. It is completely within the realm of possibility that this is some psyop, ploy for funding, or tool designed to throw off some foreign adversary about our technical capabilities.

jmkni• 5 years ago

Paywalled

jotato• 5 years ago

Does anyone have a link that isn't behind a paywall?

drewem2• 5 years ago

Stars and Stripes:

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2021-06-25/ufos-military...

tdfx• 5 years ago

Bypass paywall: https://archive.ph/v9mZM

ALittleLight7• 5 years ago

This is a poor title. What part of advanced technology and flying at considerable speed without discernable means of propulsion rules out aliens? Aliens weren't confirmed, or even mentioned, but my reading of the report is that aliens are more likely an explanation than I thought them to be yesterday, not less.

hn8788• 5 years ago

That's how I felt after reading it as well. Plus the part where it says that it's possible that we aren't getting any readings from them because they have advanced technology that we don't know how to create sensors for.

viraptor3• 5 years ago

There are at least two possible ideas when you are something that doesn't show on the radar: 1. A technology so advanced it doesn't show up on sensors. 2. Light / condensation / ... effect which makes you think you're looking at a solid object where the isn't any.

eindiran• 5 years ago

Once you have decided that the UAPs are technological objects, sure, it starts to seem more plausible that aliens are involved. But nothing in the report [0] indicates to me that there is any degree of confidence that the weird, unexplainable UAPs are technological objects.

[0] https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/do....

SideburnsOfDoom8• 5 years ago

What part of... rules out aliens?

Because

1) Ruling _in_ aliens requires proof. Insisting that this specific scenario be ruled out is classic "shifting the burden of proof" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

The train of thought that "we don't know what we saw, so ... aliens!" is somewhere between wishful and nutty. Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary proof.

2) claiming that it's _definitely_ "technology and flying at considerable speed without discernible means of propulsion" is itself a stretch. Given the supposed behaviour, a _very_ big stretch. More likely it's equipment failure, lens flare, sundog, bug-on-the-lens, etc.

3) the strong argument against this being real is how it is "perpetually liminal" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27354021

anonAndOn• 5 years ago

re #2: what's odd is that it is equipment failure that's been occurring for decades. One would hope that JIRA ticket wouldn't keep getting pushed back to the next sprint for 40+ years.

ALittleLight7• 5 years ago

1. I am not saying that these UAP are definitely aliens. I am saying that the findings of the report make aliens a more likely explanation. The report found that physical objects exhibited behavior that suggests advanced technology - including flying at considerable speed without discernible means of propulsion.

It's unfair to characterize this line of thinking as "We don't know what we saw, so aliens." Instead, what I wrote was more like "The report does not contradict aliens. The findings of the report are consistent with what we might expect from alien technology. I am updating my beliefs to increase the likelihood that these UAP are explained by aliens."

Your line about extra-ordinary claims is a bit misguided. For one thing, multiple observations by multiple witnesses and multiple sensor modalities in multiple instances across decades is pretty good evidence. I don't know what evidence you would expect to see if alien technology was operating in our atmosphere, but the described observations seem consistent with that conclusion.

2. The DNI report says "a Handful of UAP Appear to Demonstrate Advanced Technology" and "Some UAP appeared to ... move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion" and "Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation." That doesn't sound like "bug-on-the-lens" type observations to me.

Obviously I can't know how good the DNI evidence is. They haven't shared much of it. I don't think it's reasonable to conclude from the report that people are getting confused with lens flares or equipment failures though.

3. That doesn't seem like an argument at all. Any thing which we have observed for a while but haven't explained would fit this description of being "perpetually liminal". UFOs fit the description worse than most things because they aren't very "perpetual". UFO sightings go back ~70 years. That's hardly perpetual. It's also not the case that we always know roughly the same amount. This report for example uses evidence to advance our understanding, arguing that they are physical objects, that they may emit RF energy, and that they have capabilities we do not.

double0jimb0• 5 years ago

Dude, the pentagon left the door wide open saying “we don’t have the technological capabilities to determine the origin of these phenomenon”. And that “we won’t be able to report the origin of these phenomenon until we have the technological capabilities to do so”. I mean what other answer is their besides “it’s aliens” (as in it’s non-human technology)

This report was an AP reading comprehension test.

blacksmith_tb• 5 years ago

I can't help but think of Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - it seems like the Navy's reports could almost equally plausibly be attributed to dragons or spirits? I personally think the universe is probably packed with aliens, but it's a big place, so it'd be almost as improbable that they're flitting around Earth's atmosphere as dragons...

sjg007• 5 years ago

Why would aliens only fly drones? Why not land them or do other stuff.

viraptor3• 5 years ago

There are two things that just don't seem plausible at all for me in those stories:

1. Previous article mentions "For some Navy pilots, UFO sightings were an ordinary event: ‘Every day for at least a couple years’" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/17/ufo-sightin...) Is DoD too cheap for a bunch of GoPros? If the incidents are that common and a potential security issue, why don't we have validated days worth of high quality video footage already? It seems we can't keep army secrets secure from soldiers taking selfies, but a daily occurrence has barely one annual photo?

2. Given how many non-military flights there are every single day, how do we not have people noticing the same objects from them? Where are the flights with multiple people taking independent videos of the same unidentified object on their phones? (Essentially this issue https://xkcd.com/1235/)

creamytaco• 5 years ago

1. Why do you assume that all the data that was made public is all the data there is? It's highly likely the government has additional classified information of much higher fidelity.

2. These phenomena are concentrated around military bases and other areas of "interest". Hardly places where you'd expect non-military flights to frequent.

viraptor3• 5 years ago

1. "government has additional classified information" is basically "information doesn't exist" for us. It may also have classified information on Bigfoot or anything else.

2. The objects have to get to those places though. So either the assumption is that they're deployed right next to the base and the launch sites can't be detected, or it can travel in science-defying ways while avoiding all commercial air traffic, but can't avoid military aircraft and just taunts them. I still find both much less plausible than visual artefacts or people lying.

issa• 5 years ago

I would love for it to be aliens, but it seems like one of the least likely explanations. Occam's razor doesn't magically give you an answer, but humans flying drones seems like it should be the obvious explanation.

dheera• 5 years ago

If aliens showed up on Earth it would be FAR more likely to be observed and photographed by multiple civilians than the military. Civilian eyeballs outnumber the military by a couple orders of magnitude. You'd probably see it on Instagram first.

0xy• 5 years ago

You've got this opposite. If aliens were observing us, they would be far more likely to observe our capabilities and military installations than civilian stuff.

atweiden• 5 years ago

Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport, 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CYFEZFNl6E

Milwaukee, 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mkRgPGncn0

https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOVHS/

bad_alloc• 5 years ago

This would be terrible since it means encountering a species with an aggressive first-contact approach and technological superiority.

X6S1x6Okd1st• 5 years ago

But a really good sign that we haven't been wiped out yet.

lurkmurk• 5 years ago

What is the goal of this campain to re-introduce aliens into the public discourse? Interestingly, it seems that the "smart" people are now falling for it (washington post, hn, certain subreddits and podcasts...).

gruez2• 5 years ago

What is the goal of this campain to re-introduce aliens into the public discourse

To what end?

tyleo• 5 years ago

I doubt that. The interesting part is that there _is_ a goal even if we don't know what it is:

* US Government is telling the truth - goal may be to figure out what these are.

* US Government is lying - goal may be to mislead an adversary.

Those are just two examples. I find UFOs interesting because its hard to understand the government's intention here and fun to speculate.

SideburnsOfDoom8• 5 years ago

Assuming that "US Government" has a single coherent goal is an event worse error than assuming the same of e.g. Microsoft (1)

Quite possibly: one faction in one branch of "US Government" is manoeuvring for power / money / status from another branch. Uncovering "truth" might be quite irrelevant to this goal; there's a lot of post-truth stuff happening there at present.

https://ritholtz.com/2013/07/organizational-charts-of-amazon...

staticassertion5• 5 years ago

When did aliens leave the public discourse? Right now there's a bit of a flare up, because that's how modern media works - some story is done, gets clicks, everyone rides the SEO trend for a while until something else crops up.

I don't think there's much more to it than that.

spfzero• 5 years ago

You can read the report itself here: https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-...

makeworld• 5 years ago

Actual PDF: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelima...

okareaman3• 5 years ago

The most obvious explanation is that the American defense department is probing Chinese and Russian military with advanced drone technology and they would like the Chinese and Russians to think that the American military is also being probed and are equally baffled by it. PsyOps in other words. I doubt they are buying it. I assume that when the Chinese or Russians encounter any unexplained tech it is assumed to be the American military given our vast expenditures on military tech and our track record of high tech accomplishments.

sschueller• 5 years ago

I think it is way simpler than that. They want money for a new thing that will cost a lot and yield no results requiring more money. Hunting UFOs is an endless money pit.

okareaman3• 5 years ago

Since when did the defense department need elaborate pretexts for their endless money pits?

excalibur• 5 years ago

This just in: The government is not able to identify what UFOs actually are.

dang• 5 years ago

Related ongoing thread:

Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27635934

xrayarx• 5 years ago

Where is the actual report? The referenced article does not contain a link. Where is it?

U.S. unable to explain more than 140 unidentified flying objects, but no aliens

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