Three videos have just been officially released by the Pentagon, and yes, they do show true “unidentified flying objects”—in the sense that they weren’t identified and they were flying. CNN describes the release. I believe these have been kicking around the internet for a few years, but now the release is official.
CNN:
The Pentagon has officially released three short videos showing “unidentified aerial phenomena” that had previously been released by a private company.
The videos show what appear to be unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while recorded by infrared cameras. Two of the videos contain service members reacting in awe at how quickly the objects are moving. One voice speculates that it could be a drone.
The Navy previously acknowledged the veracity of the videos in September of last year. They are officially releasing them now, “in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,” according to Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough.
“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems,” said Gough in a statement, “and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Have a gander:
In 2017, one of the pilots who saw one of the unidentified objects in 2004 told CNN that it moved in ways he couldn’t explain.
“As I got close to it … it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds,” said retired US Navy pilot David Fravor. “This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way.”
The Pentagon has previously studied recordings of aerial encounters with unknown objects as part of a since-shuttered classified program that was launched at the behest of former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. The program was launched in 2007 and ended in 2012, according to the Pentagon, because they assessed that there were higher priorities that needed funding.
Nevertheless, Luis Elizondo, the former head of the classified program, told CNN in 2017 that he personally believes “there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.”
“These aircraft — we’ll call them aircraft — are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of,” Elizondo said of objects they researched. He says he resigned from the Defense Department in 2017 in protest over the secrecy surrounding the program and the internal opposition to funding it.
Yes, of course we can’t dismiss these out of hand. What are they? Are they piloted by little green men with a long finger, like an aye-aye? Or are they things we already know about?
Before you drink the numinous Kool-Aid, have a look at one possible explanation (both videos, by the way, were sent to me by reader Don). According to the person who made the video, Mick West, the UFOs are images of jet engines mile away that produces glare in the camera lens—glare that rotates with the camera itself. Evidence in favor of a naturalistic explanation is the ability to reproduce these videos using images of jet engines, as well as seeing, at high resolution, the background rotate along with the “UFO”.
Well, watch the video and judge for yourself.
Interesting.
Sub
Solved.
Yeah, no doubt. Won’t have any impact on true believers. Doesn’t matter one little bit to them.
It’s all a smokescreen! The government releases these videos in order to “clear things up” and show more transparency. Bull! They’re just trying to throw us off the trail. Show us the rest of the videos! (satire, word of the week)
I know, right? We had such high hopes for Prof. CC, and now it turns out he’s part of the alien coverup.
Just another lizard obeying orders?
I like Mick West’s commentary. He sound like a wise, technically savvy, muckraker. He’s just got to be correct. Just listen to his voice.
I think military pilots are not to be trusted. They’re having too much fun.
They have a very different meaning of Zoom.
Most military pilots are not scientists, either. Some of them are also remarkably gullible, as I know from having worked with RAF officers on and off during my working career.
I assume they are recruited for their flying skill and not much else.
Most of the military pilots I know have engineering degrees.
The current USAF standards, as of today, include “The Air Force prefers a degree in the sciences, such as aerospace engineering, physics, computer science, or chemistry. To be competitive, you will need to have a high grade point average, generally 3.4 or above.”
I find that reassuring.
If there were aliens from another place, what would they possibly want here. Maybe specimens for their zoo.
Yup, I think we should keep as quiet as possible and not attract their attention. Our own record of “first encounters” with less technologically advanced members of our own species, yet alone others, is not a very happy tale.
Comedy. We humans are hilarious. Just look at the leaders we’ve elected.
They’re mad that we cancelled the TV show Single Female Lawyer.
My favourite answer to Fermi’s Paradox (not-a-paradox) is that life is rare and brief. We are like ships passing in the night. The ships are the aliens noisy/leaky epoch that we are either too early to see or too late to have witnessed. There are so many other possible answers to this question though.
It’s not much of a paradox, is it? as paradoxes go, it’s pretty leaky. More like a sieve, actually, there are so many ways to answer it.
Yep. Plus the fact that we’re just so far away from the alien civilisations Out There, and with the expansion of the universe the distance is increasing by another 74 km or so every second. And even if interstellar spacecraft could carry or extract enough fuel to travel to other stars, we’d still be stuck crawling along at the speed of light…
The encounter with the UFO Alien’s was they were selling toilet paper, masks, hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol and Corona Beer. The Aliens stood 7 feet away from humans and the Aliens did have on masks and a form or glove. The Aliens were able to take Visa or Master Cards.
There are such weird lifeforms on this planet already that the concept of alien life is pretty much beyond imagining.
“There are such weird lifeforms on this planet already . . . .” Exactly so!
‘Alien life’ has two meanings to me: a life form from another planet, or non-carbon based life e.g. Superman, who I suspect defecates iron-ore and micturates mercury.
Yeah, you believe this, I got a weather balloon in Roswell to sell you. 🙂
I was thinking lens flare from the camera itself, which would also easily move across the field if the plane turns or if the lens gimbals, and rotates if the camera rotates.
Yeah, when I first saw it I noted how the “object” moves exactly in whatever direction the camera is pointing. No videographer is that smooth. It’s a dead giveaway.
Another sighting debunked.
I used to believe in UFO’s as a teenager/young adult. As I started educating myself on the technical difficulties of space travel, I realized what an impossible task flying to other stars would be. Developing a ship that could attain light speed is only one of many problems. The energy needed, the time needed, the technology needed make it nearly impossible…at least for apes like us.
Here is my take- My Dad was in a position to access all available information about this sort of thing. Area 51 and such places held no mysteries for him, but lots of secrets to keep, of course.
I asked him about UFOs when I was a teenager. He told me that if they held confirmation of alien craft, or debris of such craft, he probably would not be able to tell me about it.
But, he could tell me that he did not personally believe in UFOs as extraterrestrial craft. That was good enough for me.
They’re wormholes piloted by pro wrestlers, which is a not fake sport.
Mike West has another video in which he explains in detail using a model what is happening with the camera to produce the effect of the rotating glare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X1PRDbtiF0&list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCVnqTx_c0P3O2t&index=4
He also has a video explaining in detail the nature of the third object (named the “Go Fast” object).
He uses the information on the screen together with a bit of slightly complex trigonometry to conclude that the object is:
A 6.6 foot weather balloon floating 13,000 feet above the surface of the Earth and 12,000 feet below the aircraft, carried along at 20-40 knots by the prevailing winds.
I’m not sure what happened there:
Here are the relevant videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X1PRDbtiF0&list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCVnqTx_c0P3O2t&index=4
Undocumented and From Outer space?
Whatever that was, it doesn’t look spaceworthy.
The one I had the energy to look at followed the camera, so it’s some form of artifact.
UFOs used to fly over my house every day, pre-Covid.
I know what they were, of course, airliners, but I couldn’t possibly have identified any one of them in a line-up. They were flying, they were definitely physical objects, and they were unidentified – therefore, UFOs.
Never mind.
“investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.” Something about that wording delights me. Can ‘phenomena’ actually intrude** on an area? Whatever, it conveys a nicely sceptical flavour to the pronouncement.
**Or whatever is the verb from ‘incursion’ – I can’t think what it might be. It isn’t ‘incur’ anyway.
cr
My bet for the first one is that it’s definitely a life form of non-human origin. I think it’s a ‘camera bug’ – a little mite or similar that lives inside cameras and occasionally tramps across viewfinders to the startlement of the photographer.
They seem to be scarcer in these electronic non-film days.
cr