US House Panel Hearing on UFO/UAP sightings/reports

[Politesse]

I know many of you aren't from the US, but the issue doesn't just pertain to one country

I mean, we're the only country that thinks we see frigging aliens, so...

Sadly, no. There's plenty of "sightings" reported elsewhere.

So many literalists on this forum! I apologize for the shameful hyperbole; yes, technically speaking there are alien believers throughout the entire anglophone world, and a scattering of equivalent concepts in other places, especially if you want to take any report of an "unidentified flying object" as an perfect analogue to the much more specific and overwhlemingly preferred Western aesthetic of the metallic flying saucer populated by short, large-eyed dusky green or grey extraterrestrials.

But I would argue that 1.) this more specifically American portrayal of UFOs and aliens has a very specific pedigree tied very strongly to places where The Day The Earth Stood Still and E.T. showed in cinemas 2.) nowhere else in the world has the UFO trope been built to anything like the cultural and commercial juggernaut that it is here. Even towns like Tampico (for instance) on the other side of the border with a lot of reputation for sightings and folk interest in UFOs don't receive anything like the degree of corporate interest and exploitation as your Roswells and Area 51s up here in the North. Consequently, there are far fewer sightings, and the further south you go, folk classification of "weird flying stuff" as witchcraft or angels rather than aliens increases as latitude decreases.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

 

[TV and credit cards]

.

This is an extraordinary claim - and I have seen far from extraordinary evidence.

The existing clips of blurry dots captured by air force, are not convincing of anything. Many have already been explained.

Analysis

Regarding the Nimitz 2004 sighting.
If you watch the 60 Minutes episode, you'll know that three aircraft were reporting this sighting. Two pilots and then the (then XO) of the squadron went up. I think they refer to him as the CO. As I recall, his promotion was announced but was not official at the time.

For every half-baked speculation on what someone thinks they saw, there are equal numbers ready to speculate it away. It's comforting.

The fighter pilots who recorded and and immediately reported the Nimitz UAP are not some poorly educated, emotionally unglued individuals looking to make a name for themselves. They're navy fighter pilots and XO/COs at that. That is the name they've made for themselves. Not the type to start screaming, "I done saw a UFO". Poorly educated, emotionally unglued individuals do not get to become navy fighter pilots. And "I done saw a UFO" is not exactly a career enhancer.

This was shown to be not spacemen
Yes - even the fine men and women in uniform can be human.

Why do you give Mick West so much credibility? Who the hell is Mick West? That’s a rhetorical question. Do you think he is more knowledgeable about the equipment on the aircraft than the pilots? That three separate pilots knowledgeable about their aircraft recorded this anomaly. None of them could explain it. But then along comes Mick West, debunker extraordinaire and explains to these navy pilots what they really saw. And not just these pilots but everyone else who viewed the video and able to give a qualified opinion long before Mick West got his hands on one of them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Every conspiracy theory about a massive US government cover-up of something Earth shatteringly important, died when Donald J Trump became President.

That blowhard couldn't help but brag about it if it existed.

And if he somehow did manage to keep his mouth shut, the cleaning staff or visiting musicians at Mar-a-Lago would have let the cat out of the bag when they stumbled across the documents in the storage room where they stash their instruments before a gig.

If the US Government had an alien spacecraft in New Mexico, Trump wouldn't have stolen the plans for an invasion of Iran, while leaving the flying saucer stuff behind.

No. Your reasoning shows they're obviously garbage, but that won't do squat to stop them.

I'm thinking of some truther BS that got posted on here long ago. They supposedly dug up a piece of red hot molten steel. Never mind their "evidence" was a picture of some big piece of equipment holding it up with a grip on the top. Really now, you can grip the top of a liquid and pick it up?? They were so blinded by the crap they didn't see the obvious insanity until the point was hammered home.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A craft with those characteristics would not only need to use some form of faster than light propulsion but also need to control the gravity from ALL directions at once instantaneously to avoid the occupants becoming grease stains on the hull from the instantaneous acceleration.

All directions? No, it just needs a very high power drive that doesn't cause the passengers to feel acceleration. Just point it in the desired direction.

That doesn't match the description of the acceleration described in the OP. And gravity is probablyn the wrong word to describe the effect.

If you have some sort of acceleration-shielding drive it's probably involving gravity control in some fashion. Yeah, we don't know how to do it but there's nothing theoretically impossible about it. Anything else and you need some sort of gravity generator to protect the occupants anyway, so clearly you have some ability to manipulate gravity.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My questions are: Is Grusch a true believer that is a patsy for the grifters like Knapp and Elizondo? Is he in on the grift? Is he part of deliberate disinfo scheme? Is it a foreign scheme to fuck with the intelligence apparatus?

I think it's just general don't-trust-the-establishment garbage. The Republicans are really big on getting the faithful to not listen to anything but what they're told to believe.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Also want to note that I'm not a UFO nut or even a relative believer of extraterrestrial beings. Like many of you, I would have to see MUCH more evidence before I'd draw any conclusions, but I do believe that there's much more going on than what is common knowledge in regards to these events. We already have evidence for the coverups and gov't/corporate collusion to facilitate them. There also may be a perfectly logical explanation for many of the reports we've seen over the past several decades that has nothing to do with "aliens" or other-worldly beings, but there are too many similar reports and too many from at least reasonably credible sources for there to be no explanation at all. I'm just hoping that in my lifetime I'll get to hear some of it

What evidence?

Also, note that it's in the government's interest to perpetuate UFO nonsense--because sometimes it's black stuff. Roswell finally got declassified after 50 years--the government knew all along but didn't want to admit it. And note the corollary--they'll be interested in investigating reasonable UFO sightings because they might be foreign spy drones.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A thousand years ago, people got abducted by angels and devils, or saw them, or witches. Not aliens. Only since movies about aliens have come out that people now see them.

And after the angles/demons it was fae.

 

[bilby]

So many literalists on this forum!

Is this your first day here?

 

[bilby]

I suspect that alien spacecraft are inherently fuzzy and out of focus, due to their use of quantum physics in place of our good old fashioned American physics*.








As promoted by good old fashioned Americans, like Sir Issac Newton

 

[Shadowy Man]

.

This is an extraordinary claim - and I have seen far from extraordinary evidence.

The existing clips of blurry dots captured by air force, are not convincing of anything. Many have already been explained.

Analysis

Regarding the Nimitz 2004 sighting.
If you watch the 60 Minutes episode, you'll know that three aircraft were reporting this sighting. Two pilots and then the (then XO) of the squadron went up. I think they refer to him as the CO. As I recall, his promotion was announced but was not official at the time.

For every half-baked speculation on what someone thinks they saw, there are equal numbers ready to speculate it away. It's comforting.

The fighter pilots who recorded and and immediately reported the Nimitz UAP are not some poorly educated, emotionally unglued individuals looking to make a name for themselves. They're navy fighter pilots and XO/COs at that. That is the name they've made for themselves. Not the type to start screaming, "I done saw a UFO". Poorly educated, emotionally unglued individuals do not get to become navy fighter pilots. And "I done saw a UFO" is not exactly a career enhancer.

This was shown to be not spacemen
Yes - even the fine men and women in uniform can be human.

Why do you give Mick West so much credibility? Who the hell is Mick West? That’s a rhetorical question. Do you think he is more knowledgeable about the equipment on the aircraft than the pilots? That three separate pilots knowledgeable about their aircraft recorded this anomaly. None of them could explain it. But then along comes Mick West, debunker extraordinaire and explains to these navy pilots what they really saw. And not just these pilots but everyone else who viewed the video and able to give a qualified opinion long before Mick West got his hands on one of them.

This feels a bit like an ad hom: “I don’t know who Mick West is therefore his arguments must be wrong” and an appeal to authority for the pilots.

Go to metabunk.org and read the discussions. Then judge the arguments by their merits.

There’s a difference between knowing how to operate equipment and knowing how the equipment actually works.

An actual fighter pilot made a YouTube video trying to debunk one of Mick’s arguments and so immediately demonstrated such egregious misunderstanding of how photography and optical imaging equipment works I couldn’t even get past a few minutes of his video.

There’s no reason to grant these pilots unquestionable expert opinions. I’m not saying they didn’t see something strange but from the arguments made and the discussions on metabunk there are good reasons to question some of their conclusions. Or at least to grant some credence to alternative hypotheses.

 

[bilby]

Yeah, we don't know how to do it but there's nothing theoretically impossible about it.

Well, that depends on what you mean by "impossible". I suspect it's several orders of magnitude more difficult to build a device to shield oneself against the very high acceleration of a vehicle you're inside, than it would be to build a device to shield oneself against the heat at the surface of the Sun. And such an effective shield against heat is waaaaay beyond our current engineering capabilities.

 

[Shadowy Man]

For example, there was recently a discussion on Metabunk of where multiple pilots from two different airplanes said they saw a giant ship in the air but once these planes and the time of observation were determined it was easy to show that a recently launched starlink satellite train was exactly where they would have been looking. pilots are humans too and they’re used to judging sizes and distances to other airplanes. When something unusual appears their perceptions can be tricked and their assessments can be flawed.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I suspect that alien spacecraft are inherently fuzzy and out of focus, due to their use of quantum physics in place of our good old fashioned American physics*.








As promoted by good old fashioned Americans, like Sir Issac Newton

Fuck yeah!

 

[marc]

Many years ago there was some 'mysterious lights' in the sky that was making the news. One newspaper, figuring a black photo with a handful of white spots would not be very compelling, so someone cut out a boomerang shape around the lights, and pasted it onto a twilight sky photo. yea.. nice journalism standard ya got there.

I think the main plausible theories was either balloons, or flares just beyond some nearby mountain ridge. One reason for that was nothing was reported showing up on radar (did anyone actually check?) A co-worker at the time then argued that it makes sense that aliens would have the technology to defeat radar... I asked if they are so concerned with not being detected by radar, then why did they leave their exterior lights on making them clearly visible at night??

 

[bilby]

I asked if they are so concerned with not being detected by radar, then why did they leave their exterior lights on making them clearly visible at night??

This has always struck me as an odd omission. The USAF doesn't send its stealth aircraft over enemy territory lit up like a bunch of Christmas trees; Why would alien visitors do so?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I asked if they are so concerned with not being detected by radar, then why did they leave their exterior lights on making them clearly visible at night??

This has always struck me as an odd omission. The USAF doesn't send its stealth aircraft over enemy territory lit up like a bunch of Christmas trees; Why would alien visitors do so?

It might be that the people imagining these alien encounters are simply mimicking what they see in the movies and in the night sky generally.

Nah. Can't be that.

 

[JohnG]

he described the maneuvers of the flying pill-shaped vessel as erratic and insanely fast. Far faster than any modern technology or propulsion systems that we or anyone on Earth has today. And it did so with no wings and no thermal exhaust or thrust signatures. A lot of sightings going back pre-80's described vessels hovering over certain areas and then suddenly and rapidly leaving the area, almost instantaneously. Before this hearing I was pretty convinced that there were tests going on for advanced craft and that would obviously be good reason to hush the sightings and crashes of such craft, but the way he (and others) describe the movements seem far beyond anything we're currently capable of, and even farther further than what a human could endure inside of one of these craft. Not to say they couldn't be un-manned of course.

This was shown to be not spacemen
Yes - even the fine men and women in uniform can be human.

Any flying object is a UFO if you're sufficiently bad at identifying objects.

Even if one is not inherently bad at it, a person is going to see optical illusions from time to time.

I really don’t see the difference between this and Bigfoot sightings. Bold claims are being made with zero evidence except some blurry dots.

Always blurry dots.

Although some people are putting a bit more effort into their fake tik-tok videos the last few years.

 

[barbos]

Just declare war on aliens already, so that everyone forgets about War on Russia you're losing.

 

[marc]

I used to watch a lot of those UFO sighting specials on TV as a kid. One 'sighting' video I remember well was sooo bad. The film captured a blurry light in the darkness. The show commented on the UFO's ability to alter its shape, and incredible maneuverability! I could make the exact same film given a dark room and a single lightbulb. 'Altering its shape' was the person playing with the focus, never managing to get it right. The maneuver the UFO made I have dubbed the 'bump the camera mans elbow' maneuver. I mean really.. even if you were to accept the idea that a ufo had the ability to shoot up 60 ft, move to one side 25 ft, then drop down through its starting point, going another 20ft past that, then loop around back to its starting point in the span of 1 second... why?? why would any pilot perform such a maneuver?