UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Of course I don't!

You don't really get how rational analysis works, do you?

Yes. You might want to skim the Coles notes.

This is still beneath you. Again, I've made no claim about what did or did not happen.

So I'm obliged to address it. You are really making it look bad for UFO-buffs in general. You are displaying for all the world a UFO-buff that
- trolls instead of discusses,
- is self-admittedly virtually ignorant of factual knowledge of several key sciences relating to paranormal study, and
- wilfully lies in discussions, such as continuing to falsely say I made a claim, when you know perfectly well I did not.

Keep it up. You're discrediting your brethren without any help from us skeptics. I more you talk, the less work I have to do.

 

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More personal attacks and still no evidence of your claim. If you weren't claiming the radar was in error then why were you talking about radars being in error. It's totally a claim you were making. You're just backpeddling now because I called you on it. Typical skeptic tactic.

 

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This is simple repetitive trolling. There's no truthful content here. Keep it up.

 

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One would think that the Navy's admission that they don't have any idea what these were would make one even more curious and concerned about them. It's most emphatically not a dismissal of this event.

What is it that seemed to be flying around out there?

It seems to me that the basis and origin of a scientific attitude is curiosity about what appears to be happening around us.

Right. And Rumsfeld's very smart remark is applicable here too.

There are knowns. In the case of flying objects, one of these might be United Flight 202 from Sydney to San Francisco.

There are known unknowns. These are things that we know to be on the lookout for. In the case of flying objects, a known unknown might be an unidentified aircraft penetrating into restricted airspace even if we don't know the identity of the aircraft or where it originated. The procedure there might be, if the unknown aircraft fails to respond to warnings on the radio, to vector a jet to the location shown on radar and for the pilot to make a visual identification. Photos might also be taken. Happens fairly often.

And there are unknown unknowns. These are things that are totally unexpected and completely surprise us when they occur. In the case of flying objects, these 'tic-tac' sightings almost certainly qualify. (Unless they are one of our own secret projects.)

The significance is that the quality of the reports (radar, visual and camera) does appear to indicate that these things objectively exist, even if we never anticipated their existence and don't have a clue what they are. So the obvious conclusion (tentative as all real-life conclusions are given the possibility of error, and pending the receipt of more information) is that the likelihood has gone up dramatically that there are profoundly unexpected and unknown things (in terms of known aircraft performance) that do seem to be operating out there in objective reality.

And that's both fascinating and a little unsettling. It's something that the military should be very concerned about.

 

Just because they're not currently identified doesn't mean they're worth investigating.

 

Not sure about that
Performance outside of physics, a la tic-tac, I suspect are NOT outside of physics
The concern from my point of view, WHY do we think they are performing outside of physics?

What is wrong with ourselves or our equipment?

That would be my area of investigation

True, don't investigate the tic-tac, but investigate ourselves and why we are seeing tic-tacs

What is wrong with us or our equipment?

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I wonder about that too. You seem to be the one who introduced that idea.

I just suggested that these things seem to significantly outperform the current state of the art in aerospace engineering and don't resemble any known aircraft type. (Unless they have some super-secret ones tucked away somewhere like 'Area 51'.) I never meant to suggest that they are "performing outside of physics".

And now you are sneaking in an a-priori premise that these things can't exist. Except we don't know that, do we?

It's true that radar, visual observation and even video cameras can sometimes seem to detect things that aren't really there. But they typically are accurate much more often than not. (Otherwise we wouldn't use them as heavily as we do.) But false radar returns, visual misperception and camera abnormalities all typically happen for different reasons. So if radars, pilots and cameras are all in agreement regarding some contact, then the simplest explanation is that there really was something physically there. (That Ockham's razor thing again.)

Besides, if we are willing to dismiss radar, visual observation and camera imagery in this instance, why do we typically accept them in more mundane situations?

The photo below is a Russian TU-95 Bear (a very impressive airplane mostly used for long-range reconnaissance and electronic intelligence gathering today) that was detected on radar flying off the British coast and intercepted by a couple of RAF fighter jets. The British pilots visually identified it and photographed it (it displays some interesting white antennas on its dorsal spine and ventral belly that I expect the RAF engineering geeks can identify), but let it continue as it was in international airspace. The same kind of Bears often snoop around Alaska as well.

So... why should we believe that these Bears really physically exist and are making these kind of flights, while dismissing the 'tic tacs'? It's radar, visual and camera evidence in both cases.

The biggest difference seems to be one's preexisting willingness to accept the possibility that whatever was observed might in fact be real.

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KNOW perhaps shade to strong

Healthy suspect can't exist, better

Fire breathing dragons don't KNOW (perhaps add in our backyard)

Healthy suspect can't exist elsewhere

As per being a ex Radio Technician Ground RAAF if a Radar operator is happy to see mundane stuff on the screen because of their training and knowledge of the capabilities of the equipment and it's limitations. If they see a tic-tac on the screen they ask me to fix it. Generally they don't send me outside to look for a tic-tac

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You're just making a fool of yourself at this point.

"The Princeton’s highly advanced radar had been picking up mysterious objects for several days by then. The Navy called them “anomalous aerial vehicles,” or AAVs—a term the military preferred to unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, which had been tainted by its association with flying saucers, little green men and countless crackpots.

According to Day, the AAVs appeared at an altitude greater than 80,000 feet, far higher than commercial or military jets typically fly. Initially, the Princeton’s radar team didn’t believe what they were seeing, chalking up the anomalies to an equipment malfunction. But after they determined that everything was operating as it should and they began detecting instances in which the AAVs dropped with astounding speed to lower, busier airspace, Day approached the Princeton’s commander about taking action.

“I was chomping at the bit,” he says. “I just really wanted to intercept these things.

Two fighters were diverted to intercept one of the strange objects. When they first arrived on the scene, the pilots didn’t see any flying objects. But they did observe what the lead pilot, Commander David Fravor, later referred to as a “disturbance” in the ocean. The water was churning, with white waves breaking over what looked like a large object just under the surface.

Then they noticed one of the objects flying about 50 feet above the water. Fravor, the commander of the elite Black Aces squadron who was a Top Gun program graduate with more than 16 years of flying experience, described it as about 40 feet long, shaped like a Tic Tac candy and with no obvious means of propulsion: "It's white. It has no wings. It has no rotors. I go, 'Holy sh*t, what is that?'"


Even odder were its swift and erratic movements, which Fravor described to HISTORY as something he had never seen in his life: “This thing would go from one way to another, similar to if you threw a ping-pong ball against the wall.”

Another Navy pilot who served as Fravor’s wingman in the air that day—and who spoke to HISTORY on condition of anonymity—gave an account very similar to Fravor’s. Now a high-ranking Navy officer, she was a rookie pilot back in 2004. She remembered being terrified, watching as the more experienced pilot tried to intercept the strange craft: “It was so unpredictable—high G, rapid velocity, rapid acceleration. So you’re wondering: How can I possibly fight this?”

As Fravor flew around it, he says the craft ascended and came right at his plane: “All of a sudden it kind of turns and rapidly accelerates—beyond anything I’ve seen—crosses my nose, and…it’s gone.”

As the Tic Tac accelerated into the distance, according to Day, Navy jets began launching off the carrier to try and intercept the other mysterious objects the Princeton’s radar was tracking.

While Fravor wasn’t able to capture the encounter on video, one of the pilots who took off after he landed was able to track it down. He managed to capture video of a Tic Tac, using a highly sensitive infrared camera."---- https://www.history.com/news/uss-nimitz-2004-tic-tac-ufo-encounter

 

I wonder why

Oh that's right because so many jump from UFO to little green men because the countless crackpots find something with nothing there as compelling evidence of space travel

And at what distance did Fravor, the commander of the elite Black Aces squadron who was a Top Gun program graduate with more than 16 years of flying experience notice the Holy Shit tic-tac?

Would this be in the range of "not following the laws of physics"?

"not following the laws of physics"? again?

Really? Hands up all those who have infrared vision.
Brain fart thought - what's wrong with a high quality sharp as a tack HD colour video? SOMETHING WE COULD GO TO THE MOVIES AND WATCH ON THE BIG SCREEN?

To easy?

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Exploding ignorance syndrome: the tendency among skeptics where the more information they're given the more questions they have. It's an infinite regression.

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Pick one
Both cannot be true of the same event

Imploding believer syndrome

1 - one who visibly shrinks in the presence of questions for which they have no answer and start to realise they have no idea if their belief is real or not because they never asked the question

2 - one for which everything is compelling, unless proved otherwise

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Drum roll, in answer to my question
*****
Regarding the visual sightings reported by Fravor, Nickell questioned how he could see "what a forty-foot object was doing from forty miles away" and characterized the "confusion and incompleteness in the reports" of the training mission as a "comedy of errors".[30]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident
*****
Ummm - anyone care to comment? Any rebuttals? Any further information?

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And here we have

*****
Fravor also reported seeing a second object during his encounter that was the size of a Boeing 737 sitting just below the wavetops, with waves breaking over the top. Fravor spotted the Tic Tac-like object hovering over the larger UAP.

https://www-popularmechanics-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.popularmechanics.com/military/amp29091438/ufo-video-facts/?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE=#aoh=15691509054076&referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s&ampshare=https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a29091438/ufo-video-facts/
*****
In technical language a twofer

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Almost late edit but more light reading

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/

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The funny part is that if they had said "We've ruled out little green men in alien spaceships" the loons would have had kittens.

 

Joe Nickell looks to me like a walking-talking example of the so-called 'Dunning-Kruger effect'. Nickell does possess a good PhD, but it's in Literature. He doesn't have any technical background that I'm aware of. Certainly none in military aviation (he's a 1960's draft-dodger). And here he is posturing as if he's a bigger authority on what Fravor observed than Fravor himself, the highly experienced squadron commander who has been interviewed.

The 40 miles away thing seems to be Nickell's own invention. My own reading of pp. 7 and 8 of the 'Executive Summary' (the pages that reference Fravor)

https://media.lasvegasnow.com/nxsglobal/lasvegasnow/document_dev/2018/05/18/TIC TAC UFO EXECUTIVE REPORT_1526682843046_42960218_ver1.0.pdf

indicate that his and another jet were vectored in by a controller called 'Poison' which was also feeding them data to their onboard displays. 'Poison' called out "merge-plot" (indicating that the jets and the target's radar images superimposed, suggesting that they were (more or less) in the same spot. (Not Nickell's 40 miles away.)

Fravor directed the other jet to remain up above and started to visually scan for the target. The first indication was a water disturbance, a frothyness in the water like it was boiling. Then Fravor saw a white object above this area of disturbance and described it as hovering like a Harrier. He began to descend to visually inspect the target when it began to move. There seem to be conflicting reports of its movements, but Fravor says that he thought that the object had oriented its long axis to point at his descending jet.

Then the target darted away and 'Poison' called out seconds later that they had the target near Fravor's 'CAP point' 40 miles away. (Suggesting extraordinary speed and acceleration seemingly in advance of current technology.) So the 40 mile 'CAP point' thing wasn't the distance at which Fravor first saw the target, which is what Nickell seems to imply. It was the distance that the object might have just darted off to.

Don't take my word for it, read it in the link above. (Fravor's part starts on p.7)

Of course we can obviously question the authenticity of the 'Summary'. But the Navy has verified the authenticity of the entire event and Fravor has given some interviews that coincide with the account in the Summary. So I'd rate it as at least as good as anything that Joe Nickell pulls out of his butt.

 

I shot video for Joe once, he was investigating a "chupacabra" found dead a few miles from Springfield, IL. After leaving the farm where it was killed I said the possibility proper death litany for that poor mangy coyote.

 

****
Unfortunately, there are different versions of Fravor’s subsequent experience. First the New York Times, mentioning the churning water, states that “some kind” of white, oval aircraft about thirty to forty feet long was “hovering 50 feet above the churn.” But as Fravor descended, the object ascended toward him. He said, “We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point” (Cooper 2017b).

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/

*****
And yet the above seems to indicate Fravor himself as the origin of the 40 mile distance

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Right..they were 40 miles away from their cap point, and in less than a minute radar showed the ufo traveling to that cap point. What's the issue here besides Nickel lying that that's how far the ufo was when Fravor sighted it?

 

Picture shown on history website:

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Actual released footage:

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Anybody have a reference to the best video footage of the event that isn't created in PhotoShop?