UFOs Are a Common Sight, Former Military Official Tells Congress (Non Paywall in comments)

Going just on headline (paywall) this isn’t a surprise. Even astronomers will tell you they see things they can’t identify right away. Some are birds, some are balloons etc. it doesn’t always mean every UFO is an alien.

Floating balloons are also a common sight and they account for the vast majority of these UFO videos. It's really not that great of a mystery that tens of thousands of balloons are let go of on a daily basis and just floating around. When looking at a fixed object while in a fast moving object you end up with some interesting illusions. UFOs are seen regularly because a lot of things out there are unidentifiable, but that doesn't mean they are aliens. Shit loads of balloons though. 🎈

Anyone that thinks these "whistleblowers" are real should take a look at the track record of america on its treatment of real whistleblowers.

Real whistleblowers in the US go to prison, mysteriously die or flee the country to non-extradition countries.

This shit doesn't even stand up to the most basic level of critical thinking. If they were actually blowing the lid of some grand conspiracy that the US military doesn't want you to know they would be treated like that's what they're doing.

The claims are much bigger and much more serious. It’s not just that we see UFOs.

Under oath - the ranking intelligence officials claim that there is a SAP (top secret program) dedicated to recovering and reverse engineering non-human intelligence aircraft.

That non human bodies have been recovered.

The intelligence officials read into these programs have harmed and potentially even murdered people to keep the secret under wraps.

That the programs have no congressional oversight of actions or funds. That funds are being diverted in criminal ways - likely a fraction of the missing DOD money that cannot be accounted for.

This is all very serious before even considering the repercussions of non-human entities present on earth.

I watched the hearings yesterday, and I was mostly left with the impression that we need more investigations, and to kick some asses in the aviation world so that encounters with UAPs can be safely reported without sacrificing the career of the pilot in question by even talking about it.

Mostly it's stuff we already know about, the tictac and a couple other similar events. The most interesting thing by far to me is the report of a UAP that "split" a flight of F-18s. That means that it physically passed between two jets. Hard to say that it was a balloon or sensor defect in that event. I bring up balloons because lot of the UFO craze is caused by people just not knowing what they're seeing or now having the knowledge to contextualize a relatively static object appearing to move via parallax against a static background due to the movement of the observer source. It certainly wasn't helped by the fact that back in the day, the Air Force was doing MIB psyops to the locals who reported to the air force base when stealth fighters were first being developed and tested. Civilians then started mass reporting about "triangle UFOs" which were just F-117s before anyone even knew that those existed, and you got the pile of of fraudsters and people who just wanted their moment in the limelight.

What we're getting in the Congressional hearing isn't that. These are our most trained and experienced fighter pilots operating multiple sensor systems, all of which are showing events that to our current knowledge of physics are basically impossible, and compounded by confirmation from the Mk 1 Eyeball. Fooling the human eye is pretty easy, but trained observers like fighter pilots are harder to fool, but still possible. Fooling trained human observers and multiple different sensor systesm (FLIR, RADAR, and optical cameras) all at once is still possible, but harder. But the more sensor systems in play, the harder it is to fool all of them, and the incidents in question had the full sensor suite of multiple AEGIS mounting surface warships, multiple fighter pilots and weapons officers and the sensor systems of those planes from multiple different angles all in general agreement about the impossible behaviors of the UAPs.

At the tail end of last year, we just got the reveal of the latest and greatest in US secret weapons development with the B-21 and that was pretty much an iteration on known physics and known systems. B-21 is miles better than B-2, but it isn't a tictac, and when we look at the development of these kind of systems in the past, they generally take about a decade to go from conceptualization to prototype, and about another decade to go from prototype to public reveal. In that timeframe, B-21s would have been around during the right era for the tictac event and the one off Virginia Beach, but again, B-21s aren't magical supertech vehicles that can ignore all known physics. B-21s could probably have spoofed some of the sensors on the ships and F-18s that intercepted the Tictacs, but they still are a visible plane, no MCU style invisibility/colorshifting panels to make it look like a grey cube inside a transparent sphere, or just the smooth countourless description of the tictac.

Now, all that being said, I don't think that it was "little green men" either. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence after all, and what evidence we have is some combination of sparse, classified, and disorganized. I think that right now we have unexplained behaviors from unexplained objects and our best approach going forwards is going to be to try and collate data and coordinate the study of it to try and figure out what causes these events.

At the same time, I don't think that these events are the result of foreign actors either. If China had that kind of tech, we wouldn't have seen the pathetic excuse for balloons this year, and they probably would have made a play for Taiwan by now. If Russia had that kind of tech, they wouldn't be rolling out T-55 rustbuckets to fight in Ukraine. Clearly the answer is South Korea and the pro-Starcraft scene is there to train the pilots in microing such a highly versatile and responsive craft. I for one welcome our new Korean overlords. :p

The thing that stands out to me there is that it's multiple ships and planes tracking this and producing this data. If it was like a glitch in the AN/SPY radar on an AEGIS equipped ship like the Princeton, then that same glitch wouldn't also have shown up on the FLIR and optical cameras of an F-18 as well as the radar of the E2 and the non-AEGIS equipped ship like the Nimitz. Repeat down the list for possible sensors. There exists commonality, like all the F-18s would have had the same kind of radar, but that doesn't extend to the E2 nor the ships.

But as mentioned in the hearing, the only publicly available release of that data is the FLIR camera. What's shown on the video I've seen several different "debunkings" of, all of which with various explanations, although the most common is basically thermal lens flare, but that still doesn't explain the eyeball reports nor the radar tracks, but unfortunately we have none of that data available publicly. And this is all of course predicated on the idea of these eyewitnesses being credible. If the follow-up hearings happen and the DoD under congressional pressure releases the radar data from the Princeton and Nimitz that day and it doesn't track with what the people in the hearing today were saying, then that blows a giant hole in the story.

And that's assuming that it's not another misunderstanding that winds up easily explained. Like when we started doing manned space missions, the pilots reported "foo fighters" as dancing lights outside the Mercury spacecraft. Well, it turned out that the Mercury had an issue with condensation on the interior of the windows and that the light from the sun when coming in not diffused from the atmosphere would create an optical illusion of dancing lights. Similar thing with "flying dutchman" ships floating above the horizon where it is merely an optical illusion created by certain atmospheric conditions that create a false horizon. But it'd have to be one hell of a phenomena to show up on multiple sensor systems like that.

At the end of the day, I still don't know. The rational skeptic in me says it probably isn't aliens, but at the same time, unless these fighter pilots are lying under oath, (and Grusch was very clear to couch everything in terms of "this is the hearsay that others have told me, and everything else goes under SCIF") I don't have the imagination to postulate as to what it could be.

The "there is no good evidence" problem is why I want the radar tracks for Nimitz and Princeton released. They'd either confirm the tictac story, or just blow it away entirely, because a large part of what makes that one so compelling is that it was ostensibly tracked from so many different angles from so many different types and models of military radars. If David Fravor was lying about those radar tracks showing the impossible events he describes, then we can dismiss his claims entirely. If the radar tracks show a mostly consistent behavior, then it lends credence to the UAP, and we can discuss it in good faith without having to try and justify it constantly to skeptics. It's one thing when we just have the one FLIR clip. It's another if we have the radar returns from an E2 Sentry, the USS Nimitz, the USS Princeton, and the squadron of F-18s.

Besides, at this point, it's not like these are bleeding edge capabilities. These are all systems that have been around longer than I've been alive. The newer shit is all far and away superior, and so releasing a bit of the information for fighter and naval sensors developed in the fucking EIGHTIES isn't exactly going to be giving up the game to China.

Good lord... I wish life were this interesting but alas this is just bs. The guy testifying has zero direct evidence.

source: trust me bro

or whatever, I won't waste my time with this bs. "Alien" UFOs would never exist on this planet

1. Why should Aliens care about us specifically? We are seriously not that important in the grand scheme of things
2. We have no evidence of lifeforms intelligent enough to build spacecraft
3. We have no evidence of lifeforms intelligent enough to build spacecraft fast enough to arrive here from a place that we weren't able to observe yet
4. "Anyone capable of traveling interstellar distances would not be "captured" by us.
   It's like saying a caveman could capture an F-15" - quoting someone from a Reddit post about this bs story

I will actually human centipede myself if the stories about "aliens", that y'all want so much to be true, were true in the slightest.

Decades from now when you hear about modern drone technology, it will make a lot more sense.

Yea, once there is any video evidence that doesn't look like the worse camera in history held up by a parkinson's patient I'll actually consider believing in UFOs. Like cmon folks, all cameras are 1080p now at least with auto stabilisation and they are literally everywhere, if there are any aliens on earth there would be an actual proper video at this point.

Non Paywalled
and.. A replay of the hearing

At least post the archive/12ft/whatever without paywall

The one time I saw a "UFO", a little digging turned out to be a known training drone from the Army training center down the road.

I see so many people discounting the subject of UAP entirely, all because of one man's hearsay. I'm putting this response to a user I made here as a response to this post:

Putting all the focus on Grusch is a mistake when there was verifiable video footage and radar to match multiple eyewitness accounts for the Nimitz/Tic Tac event. There was a good foundation established for the need to address the near-misses between the UAP and airforce as well as commercial aircraft. People can just pocket or dismiss Grusch's claims, but that's not all there is to this subject...

What do you make of Comander Fravor's testimony on the Nimitz/Tic Tac event, in which there were multiple eyes on the object, video footage, and radar that was all in line with the reported event? (The radar data was seized by high-ranking Navy officials, if you believe the words of the Cheif Radar Operator on the Nimitz that day)

Seems unreasonable to totally dismiss the possibility of non-human intelligent life, especially when scientists/organizations like UAPx are taking it seriously and have been analyzing the Nimitz videos. There's also the Galileo Project at Harvard, which believes they may have recovered manufactured material from an interstellar object (believed to have been aided by propulsion) from the ocean floor off Papua New Guinea. Scientists and physicists are starting to give this subject credence (not necessarily Grusch's claims, but all of the other information and evidence) and I disagree with the literal anti-intellectual rejection of all information because of one man's claims.

This National Geographic docuseries on Hulu really made me confront the notion that there may be some truth to the idea that there are more advanced non-humans out there. This documentary isn't like the big-haired History Channel nonsense... It is based off of declassified reports, credible former government officials, military, airforce, etc. Highly recommend at least just giving that first episode free on YouTube a shot.

Here is The Falcon Lake incident, in which there was physical evidence corroborating the eyewitness report. Included in the physical evidence was irradiated scrap metal melted into a rock at the claimed landing site, and an irradiated coin. He also had physical wounds from the event that corroborated his claims, and he fell very ill immediately after.

Unless you think we had a nuclear-powered aircraft like that in 1967, a simpler explanation really might be that hyper-advanced nonhuman entities may exist. Now, that doesn't mean all or any of Grusch's claims are true. I'm not even touching on that when there is already so much compelling information out there.

I'm not going to pretend we're anywhere close to having all the answers as a species. We're just hairless apes that are too smart for are own good, but not as smart as we think we are. Healthy criticism is a good thing, but dismissing everything outright is not. I consider myself a very skeptical person. But it's not up for debate whether or not our government had a UAP monitoring program. That has been established, having been created by Harry Reid. That's been established fact since 2017.

Whether or not they are of human-origin, UAP do exist and therefore should be studied. Here is some declassified UAP footage other than the widely covered Nimitz encounter.

Here is a very compelling photograph that a National Geographic mapping plane captured in 1971, during a project funded by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute. They believed they captured a flying disc at the moment of entry or exit of the water, as the camera captured a photo about every 13 seconds. It was estimated to be about 160ft in diameter.

These metalic orbs have been observed all over the world, they have no obvious signs of propulsion, and our government has admitted this is not our tech, and that it's beyond our capabilities.

There is a YouTube channel with years worth of apparent footage of these orbs tagging and being pursued by aircraft (from the Navy to the Sherrif's department choppers equipped with infrared cameras). I don't agree with all of this individual's views, but his footage is in line with the accounts of pilots and some of the declassified footage. It's definitely not verified, but it's there for the people who ask "Why isn't anyone capturing these things on film?" This guy has been allegedly recording these around Marina Del Rey since 2017.

Let's not forget project Blue Book, General John Samford's address, the Congressional UFO hearings 50+ years ago, and the information available in the national archives... Here is a French government/military/civilian scientific collaborative study on the subject from 1978 (PDF warning), which determined the most reasonable explanation for the objects was the E.T. hypothesis (their conclusion). Not to mention this tidbit from Canada recently:

"A Manitoba member of Parliament wrote Canada's minister of defence this spring suggesting the country has participated in a secret multi-nation program devoted to "the recovery and exploitation" of material from unidentified aerial phenomenon, more commonly known as unidentified flying objects or UFOs."

In the face of all this information, I now am at this impasse in which I'm forced to consider that it's actually more reasonable to believe there are other, more intelligent species in the universe. It's one thing to argue this is secret human tech we're seeing right now, but it's outlandish to me to consider the notion that we had tech like this going back to the 40s.. or even just dating back to the Falcon Lake incident.

There were mass sightings across the US to the point that our Airforce openly acknowledged their existence and initiated Project Blue Book. There's just no way that was our tech back then, right around the time in which we first discovered the power of the atom. There's no way we had atomic flying aircraft without any obvious signs of propulsion, rapid acceleration, and moving at enormous speeds without breaking the sound barrier dating back earlier than the 50s...

I personally reached the tipping point in which I genuinely believe it's less reasonable to deny the existence of UAP. Characteristics of these UAP have remained consistent across decades, our government has admitted they exist, secret black projects have been uncovered, many documents have been declassified and leaked... I find it much harder to believe that all of this consistency across decades is merely coincidence.

If anyone reading this truly considers themselves a rational skeptic, please at least watch the first episode of the documentary I linked and read the information from my comment before responding to me.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, full stop.

There's nothing saying that this isn't something of our own creation.

The Roswell incident exposed the existence of Mylar -- something human-made, classified, but other-worldly in appearance and texture to anyone who might have seen it at that time... Now something mundane enough to be used as potato chip bags.

This seems psy-op-ey

I'll believe that "unidentified flying objects" are a common sight. I'll believe that some of those look like they could be alien spacecraft. That doesn't mean we've actually encountered aliens.

My theory has always been that these are higher dimensional shapes passing through a 3d membrane. The erratic darting around makes more sense in that context... It's like if you drop a chain into the water, just looking at where it hits the surface it would seem like 2-4 orbs jumping around with incredible speed, but in reality it's not moving in relationship to the surface, so it wouldn't have water resistance except as it falls through the 2d slice

I mean I'd love for these to be aliens, but darting around impossibly is a very strange way to communicate... This also tends to happen around certain regions more than others. That makes sense to me, depending on the hyper geometry I think you'd expect to see

Hell, maybe it is higher dimensional aliens playing with us like we play with fish sometimes, just dropping things in the water and watching us get all excited

If UFOs are a common sight, then why have we not seen a good picture of them? Wtf is going on with all this hype over UFOs, when there's not a single image. Almost everybody nowadays has a camera

It's a duck it does quack quack

Paywalled

These days propaganda and lies spread by the government to cover up things they shouldn't do is also a common sight

I'm looking at a live stream of the house hearing and I'm looking at all the politicians that are there and I can't believe than these are the people that are going to overlook how we get in contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life. We're so fucked.

please downvote this paywalled bullshit.

Hmm yes politics....