CBS 60 Minutes Segment on UAPs

Thunderf00t seems unaware that FLIR1 wasn't taken by Fravor or Dietrich.

Kind of destroys the entire credibility of his video to not do that basic research.
 
I'm also looking forward to the time when we don't second guess the professionalism of pilots and military personnel who clearly understand what balloons and exhaust images look like... I
It's time to retire the "trained observer" myth. Being a trained professional does not make one immune to the same perceptual limitations that every other human being shares. In fact, in many cases (especially within the military and other technical fields) being "trained" only exacerbates the potential for perceptual and cognitive error, as it tends to make one overestimate one's ability to interpret what you think you see.
 
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The balloon hypothesis just doesn't hold water if we're going to accept the testimony from the pilots.
Why would we do that, though? Their testimony is the weakest piece of evidence we have for this stuff. We know that eyewitness testimony is profoundly unreliable, especially after 15 years of opportunity for confabulation and embellishment (or even 5 years, as in the case of the 2009 report).
 
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A balloon wouldn't produce the types of sharp movements they claim to have witnessed.

Some type of highly maneuverable rotor based drone would make more sense but doesn't really fit with their "it disappeared!" narrative.
Therein lies the rub, methinks. They claim to have witnessed events that they describe in their narrative, They put their memories of what they observed into words and try to convey to us what they saw. But memories are fallible and change over time, minds tend to fill in details not observed, often in support of the narrative the mind is building, and words often mean one thing to one person and snother to another (see: discussion of "minor movements" earlier in this thread (#32 - #34 above.) I'm not sure there is a need to explain how something might have happened that we cannot ever know how it actually happened, or even if it actually happened. That is not to cast aspersions on Fravor or any other witness -- they may well be telling the absolute truth as the recall it, in the best words they can, and we still have the same problem.
 
Apparently Obama joined the choir:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp6Ph5iTIgc


Yet none of the leaks so far are strong evidence of his or anybody's else words on this topic. Plot thickens.

How does the plot thicken?

Someone very jokingly asked the former president about "UAF," which is a misnomer, he said he had nothing extraordinary to tell us and then affirmed what everyone who knows anything about this topic already knows: there are things in the sky that behave in an unidentifiable way, and there are people who investigate that.

Then he joked that Reggie might be an alien. Okay so the plot has not thickened. He said 1. I have nothing interesting to tell you and 2. I can confirm that the situation you're all in the middle of is in fact a situation you're in the middle of and 3. I'm gonna make a joke about the guy with funny hair.

The plot did not thicken.
 
How does the plot thicken?

Someone very jokingly asked the former president about "UAF," which is a misnomer, he said he had nothing extraordinary to tell us and then affirmed what everyone who knows anything about this topic already knows: there are things in the sky that behave in an unidentifiable way, and there are people who investigate that.

Then he joked that Reggie might be an alien. Okay so the plot has not thickened. He said 1. I have nothing interesting to tell you and 2. I can confirm that the situation you're all in the middle of is in fact a situation you're in the middle of and 3. I'm gonna make a joke about the guy with funny hair.

The plot did not thicken.
Because we are not seeing in the leaks any UFOs/UAPs performing magic tricks. They are hardly even UFOs. Well, they could be hard to identify for us but surely nothing eyebrow raising and surely the military knows much more about them, if not everything, and surely there are enough plausible explanations to dismiss it completely and not to be a thing at all. Practically the "pyramid UFO" leak blew it all and the "transmedium object" is hardly amusing too - good that they cut few minutes out of it to prevent sudden onslaught of boredom. Plot thickens because it is hard to connect the dots and make any sense of the whole situation - what these people are telling us, what somebody else is showing us as evidence, the coming report and the current hysteria.
 
It's time to retire the "trained observer" myth. Being a trained professional does not make one immune to the same perceptual limitations that every other human being shares. In fact, in many cases (especially within the military and other technical fields) being "trained" only exacerbates the potential for perceptual and cognitive error, as it tends to make one overestimate one's ability to interpret what you think you see.
I think this is worth noting though the effect is minor and equally true in regards to people who primarily occupy themselves with debunking. Debunkers too tend to “overestimate” their ability to falsify claims.
 
I think this is worth noting though the effect is minor and equally true in regards to people who primarily occupy themselves with debunking. Debunkers too tend to “overestimate” their ability to falsify claims.
It isn't minor, though. The limitations of human perception, cognition, and memory are well-known and create wild misinterpretations of reality (see, e.g. https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html.) As to possible overestimation of the abilities of "debunkers," you're making a category error, as the kinds of perceptual errors that give rise to many (most?) UFO reports have nothing to do with the kinds of errors that might arise out of sober evaluation of the quality evidence after the fact, or forensic reconstruction based on that evidence. The one is completely unrelated to the other. And one is vastly more reliable than the other.
 
I am interested in the 2004 southern California encounter. Instead of talking about mutable perception of the pilots, I would rather note some things which are different from the much more dubious sightings in the other clips included in the piece.
  • Seems to have been at fairly close range (not in the low information zone)
  • Multiple redundant technologies seem to have tracked the object (A ship radar, two aircraft radar systems, another aircraft IR system, four sets of eyeballs)
  • Multiple perspectives on the object (which goes hand in hand with how many systems seem to have observed it)
Having said that it seems unlikely that the actual instrument data would still be around after all that time which is very disappointing, as it makes it hard to corroborate the recollections of the pilots.
 
I agree that Obama's comments are interesting in that he affirms the reports of objects or phenomenon behaving in a way that can't easily be explained in the context of conventional aeronautics. This is something that has been echoed by a pretty wide array of people at this point and not just the Bigelow/Puthoff/Reid circle of "true believers" within the government.

It is, of course, unclear whether Obama's statement comes from his government experience or simply from the same media consumption all of here have been exposed to.
 
Or it is epic case of miscommunication. They s
It is, of course, unclear whether Obama's statement comes from his government experience or simply from the same media consumption all of here have been exposed to.
Sounds like it is coming from his experience or trusted sources. I doubt that he would repeat some words about UFOs he heard from Ratcliffe on Fox . He stresses that what he is about to say is serious. Doesn't sound like a joke or something he read in the newspapers.

But the evidence so far is weak, could be argued that some of it is even fake. Confusion? Miscommunication?
 
It's time to retire the "trained observer" myth. Being a trained professional does not make one immune to the same perceptual limitations that every other human being shares. In fact, in many cases (especially within the military and other technical fields) being "trained" only exacerbates the potential for perceptual and cognitive error, as it tends to make one overestimate one's ability to interpret what you think you see.
Thanks for your response! I really enjoy looking at all angles.

So help me understand "exacerbates the potential for perceptual and cognitive error"... If military pilots are chasing exhausts in an age of IFF, doesn't that imply the opportunity for friendly fire losses if we are at war and wouldn't such a case be heavily investigated?

I don't know if you got a chance to look at the Minot AFB case, but for over 2 hours security personnel from multiple angles were chasing a red ball that moved around this extremely large base. As trained military security, what is the likelihood that the roughly 15 individuals (that we know about) or consistently mistaking something normal from multiple angles?

In the same case, air traffic control vectored the B-52 to investigate things that they are aware of in their airspace (it's not definite but it appears that they were tracking the object on ground radar)... Once again are these folks not the best prepared to recognize an unusual situation in their airspace?

Same thing with the B-52 crew. The bomber navigators were trained to use radar to track enemies as well as friendly aircraft for many reasons including refueling... So when they say they had return of an object that is bigger than our B-52 and they have experience seeing objects that are the size of b-52's, and they have the radar photos that have been analyzed recently, how can we dismiss their expertise?

And finally when the two pilots fly approximately 2,000 ft over the top of what they described as a big red Barn sized glowing object that appeared to be sitting on the ground, doesn't that bring up the question of why they think they see something on the ground at the base where they have been posted for many years?

If you haven't read it, Minot AFB is the case where I would most like to see skeptical input as I'm not aware of anyone making a case that in any way explains this well documented study.

Open to any and all ideas!
 
Thunderf00t seems unaware that FLIR1 wasn't taken by Fravor or Dietrich.

Kind of destroys the entire credibility of his video to not do that basic research.

I don't think he says that FLIR1 was taken by Fravor or Dietrich. What he says is that the video is inconsistent with the eye-witness accounts (by Fravor anyway.) Surely this is correct: FLIR1 doesn't resemble Fravor's account of the 'tic-tac' in any way. Yet Underwood, who did take the video, has repeatedly linked it to the tic-tac, a term which he claims to have coined himself:

A second wave of fighters, including pilot Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood, took off from Nimitz to investigate... Unlike Fravor, Underwood's fighter was equipped with an advanced infrared camera (FLIR). Underwood recorded the FLIR video, and coined the description "Tic Tac" to describe the infrared image, but did not himself see any unusual object.
(Source: Wikipedia article on 'Pentagon UFO Videos'.)

So you can hardly blame Thunderfoot for any confusion when the pilots themselves don't seem to know what they are talking about.
 
I doubt that he would repeat some words about UFOs he heard from Ratcliffe on Fox .
The New York TImes started this whole thing. Guarantee he reads the liberal leaning NYT.

but Reid's funding for AATIP started in 2007 until i believe 2012. So it's possible at some point he said "what's this program for? when he saw it come up in Congress synapses. But it was also cancelled in 2012 (Obama years) for being a waste of money, so .... I'm leaning towards his current words being from the NYT.
 
That's a big bundle of speculation there. It's not "The Navy" doing anything, that we know of. We don't even know if an individual sailor leaked these things. They are just as likely to have been leaked by the UAPTask Force or one of it's consultants.


The Chilean Navy ufo proves that professionals can make simple mistakes. Just like every other human being on Earth.
Thanks for the input!

I definitely recognize that my hypothesis (that the Navy wanted these leaks) isn't proven... However, it does connect a lot of dots (unless I'm missing something) and I'm not aware of other theories that explain the wide range of extremely unusual behavior... allowing cell phones in restricted areas, confirming the videos are real examples of uaps and not providing the usual explanations of stars and temperature inversions.

As far as the Chilean Navy, I'm certainly not saying that incorrect explanations never happen. In fact it's clear that the vast majority of sightings can be explained.

So that leaves a small number of very unusual cases... however that small percentage hasn't significantly changed since the early reports in the 40s and 50s and very few of those ancient unexplainables have since been explained.

Regarding the recently leaked US Navy incidents, I believe it's very important to skeptically consider all options. However when you combine them together and consider the first hand experience of two f-18 pilots and one of their wso's who engaged one of these things in full daylight, I haven't heard any explanations that connect all of these dots.

I may be very wrong but my guess is the Navy is going to reveal many many more events and some of them will include satellite data.

Once again there are some reasonable possible explanations for individual events, however I think a few more cases that report the same behavior we'll make it hard to dismiss these cases as a whole and I have military friends that think it is likely that many new cases will be documented.

As always, I'm open to input and appreciate your thoughts!
 
It's interesting we haven't heard from Douglas Kurth for a while.

He was after all the first person to see the disturbance in the water from his single seater F/A-18C

I still find it odd that Bigelow hired Kurth in Dec 2007 under BAAS. Kurth was then later a Project Leed for the AAWSAP project.
Very strange, but it's Bigelow, so anything goes I suppose. He has a history of hiring people involved in UFO stories , such as when he hired Bob Lazar and formed a small company for him to do research called Zeta Reticuli 2 in 1990
 
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WHat do you say about the Military Pilot who claimed that he and other Pilots were seeing UFOs nearly every day for years off Virginia ?

Are the craft any different today to those observed 50 - 60 years ago ?
If they were from Earth you would expect them to be becoming better, faster, the technology would be improving, but thats not really happening, the same types of objects continue to appear.

How can they move the way they do, its impossible. Its like they are inside their own "space" or outside of ours.
The effects on "pilots" of these craft, the forces from the rapid movement, even on electronic equipment would be severe.

The declassified videos are interesting, if not old.
I just wonder what other video they have that they refuse to declassify.
and other Countries, why havent rogue Nations spilled the beans on UFOs ?

Perhaps just like America, nobody knows what they really are, they dont seem to want to contact us.
Then why visit us ?
 
Thanks for the input!

I definitely recognize that my hypothesis (that the Navy wanted these leaks) isn't proven... However, it does connect a lot of dots (unless I'm missing something) and I'm not aware of other theories that explain the wide range of extremely unusual behavior... allowing cell phones in restricted areas, confirming the videos are real examples of uaps and not providing the usual explanations of stars and temperature inversions.

As far as the Chilean Navy, I'm certainly not saying that incorrect explanations never happen. In fact it's clear that the vast majority of sightings can be explained.

So that leaves a small number of very unusual cases... however that small percentage hasn't significantly changed since the early reports in the 40s and 50s and very few of those ancient unexplainables have since been explained.

Regarding the recently leaked US Navy incidents, I believe it's very important to skeptically consider all options. However when you combine them together and consider the first hand experience of two f-18 pilots and one of their wso's who engaged one of these things in full daylight, I haven't heard any explanations that connect all of these dots.

I may be very wrong but my guess is the Navy is going to reveal many many more events and some of them will include satellite data.

Once again there are some reasonable possible explanations for individual events, however I think a few more cases that report the same behavior we'll make it hard to dismiss these cases as a whole and I have military friends that think it is likely that many new cases will be documented.

As always, I'm open to input and appreciate your thoughts!
I wouldn't hold out for satellite data, a good chunk of the data we can presume would be collected from the incidents, would probably be blocked because the specifications of said satellites tools are not publicly disclosed, and if it belongs to an entity like NRO they probably won't be dropping anything, in my opinion.
 
That is a very good point. I'm not a satellite guy but I get the idea if they release that demonstrate more resolution than expected they could give away capabilities. But couldn't they just dumb down the data?

Actually the thing that has surprised me the most amongst all of the Navy information was the detailed walkthrough of a literal ship pointing out where the forward magazine and the rear magazine are located.

Obviously that level of information isn't classified but it surprised me that they would emphasize "if you want to hit us with a missile this is the worst place to do it"..
 
Thunderf00t seems unaware that FLIR1 wasn't taken by Fravor or Dietrich.

Kind of destroys the entire credibility of his video to not do that basic research.

How does the identity of who's one side of a lens affect an analysis of what's being imaged on the other side of it? I only briefly skimmed his vid, and I don't remember him making a big thing about who took the vids at all. Care to post a quote from the vid demonstrating the importance of this trivium?
 
Because he puts it side-by-side with Fravor, and smugly mocks the motions seen in the video VS what Fravor said, implying to his audience that Fravor captured this video & presented it as evidence.

He uses it as one of his primary arguments against Fravor - that the video doesn't show what he described. But Fravor doesn't claim to have captured any video.
 
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unusual behavior... allowing cell phones in restricted areas, confirming the videos are real examples of uaps and not providing the usual explanations of stars and temperature inversions.
I don't think that is unusual behavior at all. I also take issue with your wording, "allowing"?, and DOD confirmed the footage was taken by Navy personnel they havent confirmed any of them are STILL unidentified. I dont think the Navy provides the public explanations until years later when the documents are released.

(but nice to see that you do know your Minot link was explained)

As far as your Navy leak theory... if anything, it would prove they are hoodwinking us and proving the Air Force right. Aside from Elizondos videos which we know Elizondo released himself (or it might have been Chris Mellon) for financial gain*, ... youve got a leak of a obvious bokeh, 3 pictures of obvious balloons and now this USS Omaha blob which frankly doesnt scream ufo to me at all. If the Navy is leaking these things then they are doing it to make ufologists look foolish.

*His ultimate reasons for release might not have been financial gain, but we cant deny he and TTSA started asking for donations right away. Not a good look.
 
So help me understand "exacerbates the potential for perceptual and cognitive error"... If military pilots are chasing exhausts in an age of IFF, doesn't that imply the opportunity for friendly fire losses if we are at war and wouldn't such a case be heavily investigated?
Hmmm... I don't quite understand this question. Friendly-fire losses happen all the time, even outside of the usual fog-of-war situations. And pilots make mistakes all the time.

I don't know if you got a chance to look at the Minot AFB case,
I haven't, and this might not be best thread to discuss this case (maybe make one, if it doesn't exist already?). However, because we know that these kinds of stories ALWAYS grow in the telling, I would be very surprised if the ground-truth reality of the incident bore much relation to the accounts that you're giving here. Not that I'm necessarily accusing you of conscious embellishment - the story would have gone through many channels before it even got to you - but it's unavoidable and in their nature. This is why I personally don't put much stock in eyewitness accounts, unless there is a significant amount of corroborating evidence, and even then you have to be very careful - it's too easy for the "evidence" to contaminate the story, especially over half a century later.
 
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As trained military security, what is the likelihood that the roughly 15 individuals (that we know about) or consistently mistaking something normal from multiple angles?
An anecdote: a very good friend of mine that I've known for almost 30 years had an experience like this during his time in the Army. They were stationed in Germany and it was the days immediately after 9/11. They were all on edge and security was heightened. One night, all hell breaks loose when a sentry spots what he described as black clad men doing something near one of the base gates. Security personnel go out to investigate, and from there it spirals into an hour long hunt for what they now believe are two teams of terrorists attempting to breach their fence. It culminates in one sentry opening fire on one of the "terrorist teams" and kills one.

It was a wild boar.

Everyone immediately realizes that someone panicked from the onset and that it had been wild boar all along. Dozens of armed men went out to chase off some boar, because one guy misinterpreted a dark shape in the night.
 
Dietrich was interviewed by CNN last night. Mostly the same story other than her saying she was interviewed by AATIP... I don't recall her making that statement before. Sounds like she's going to be a new character in this saga, she even mentions 'UFOTwitter' lol.

 
WHat do you say about the Military Pilot who claimed that he and other Pilots were seeing UFOs nearly every day for years off Virginia ?
I'd say why didn't you take a photo. Why didn't they get intercepted? What exact did you "see"?
 
How can they move the way they do, its impossible. I
Can you clarify what you refer to here? Are you talking about the claimed but not documented maneuvers during the sighting by Fravor, et al? Or are you saying that the leaked videos document impossible maneuvers -- which to me does not seem to be the case.
 
WHat do you say about the Military Pilot who claimed that he and other Pilots were seeing UFOs nearly every day for years off Virginia ?

You can see reports of some of these sightings here in this article.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ts-from-navy-pilots-flying-off-the-east-coast

And that area also seems to have a balloon problem

https://www.pilotonline.com/ask/vp-...0190913-56a4334i7bbmxm4dwnqzap3beu-story.html

https://www.13newsnow.com/article/n...ases/291-d6a4de31-b6ea-4cf3-b0b0-9ecb92b913a8
 
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It isn't minor, though. The limitations of human perception, cognition, and memory are well-known and create wild misinterpretations of reality (see, e.g. https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html.) As to possible overestimation of the abilities of "debunkers," you're making a category error, as the kinds of perceptual errors that give rise to many (most?) UFO reports have nothing to do with the kinds of errors that might arise out of sober evaluation of the quality evidence after the fact, or forensic reconstruction based on that evidence. The one is completely unrelated to the other. And one is vastly more reliable than the other.

You misunderstand my point. I refer to the effect that an expert’s overconfidence leads to errors as a minor one. I say this because despite this potential expertise-induced error you mention, most rational people would still rather have a technical expert address a particular issue (whether it be car maintenance, brain surgery, or civil engineering, aircraft operation) than a non-expert.

And I maintain that a person who has successfully debunked a great number of false claims is subject to this same error of overestimating their ability. But as I said this effect is minor, as it is overridden by the necessity for their technical expertise.

If you were in need of someone to help you identify an aircraft in flight would you choose someone who had never flown or someone with vast amounts of flight time and a working knowledge of the visual characteristics of hundreds of different aircraft and what they look like from a variety of angles and distances?
 
You misunderstand my point. I refer to the effect that an expert’s overconfidence leads to errors as a minor one. I say this because despite this potential expertise-induced error you mention, most rational people would still rather have a technical expert address a particular issue (whether it be car maintenance, brain surgery, or civil engineering, aircraft operation) than a non-expert.
But are pilots "technical experts" on the perceptual and cognitive defects that might cause them to be unable to recognize otherwise mundane phenomena in the heat of a moment? Even J. Allen Hyneck himself stated, “Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses” (The Hynek UFO Report, 1977, p. 271), yet I would bet a whole dollar that if a poll was done among military pilots their self-assessment would be exactly the opposite. This is the attitude that results in statements that amount to "I know what I saw, and it wasn't a _____!" (fill in mundane explanation), lapped up by a credulous public which venerates these guys, and is hostile to any notion that they might be wrong about what they think they saw. So the effect really isn't minor at all. It has a profound impact on the perceived weight of claims.
 
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But are pilots "technical experts" on the perceptual and cognitive defects that might cause them to be unable to recognize otherwise mundane phenomena in the heat of a moment?
If you were to replace an experienced fighter pilot—the “mythological” trained observer—with your ideal witness to “in the heat of the moment” identify a phenomena (I’m not sure how you’ve determined whether it’s mundane or not without identifying it), who would you choose?

I’m arguing that given the circumstances under which a sighting like the Nimitz sighting was made, you can’t argue that we would more likely know what the object was or wasn’t had we replaced the four Navy airmen and women, all trained observers, with people who were not trained to identify and pursue objects in flight.

Though their expertise might make them overconfident to some unknowable degree (as is true in any area of expertise), the value of their expertise in identifying and pursuing objects in flight far outweighs the minor effect of that overconfidence.
 
If you were to replace an experienced fighter pilot—the “mythological” trained observer—with your ideal witness to “in the heat of the moment” identify a phenomena (I’m not sure how you’ve determined whether it’s mundane or not without identifying it), who would you choose?

I'd choose the pilot, but ideally I'd like a neutral observer in the plane to provide a second opinion. But in any case I think it's the wrong question to ask. The problem is not that someone else is better qualified than the pilot to make a 'heat of the moment' assessment, but that no-one is going to be reliable in that situation. That's why it is so important to have photographic evidence or other instrumental records.
 
If you were to replace an experienced fighter pilot—the “mythological” trained observer—with your ideal witness to “in the heat of the moment” identify a phenomena (I’m not sure how you’ve determined whether it’s mundane or not without identifying it), who would you choose?
There is no "ideal" witness. That's my point.

I’m arguing that given the circumstances under which a sighting like the Nimitz sighting was made, you can’t argue that we would more likely know what the object was or wasn’t had we replaced the four Navy airmen and women, all trained observers, with people who were not trained to identify and pursue objects in flight.
I'm not arguing that we'd be more likely to have an explanation with a different set of observers. I'm arguing that the confidence that such an incident could not possibly have a mundane explanation (which is the implicit message of all of the public appearances of Fravor et al) introduces error that we would not otherwise have from an observer who accepts that their perception is fallible. (To her credit, Alex Dietrich states upfront in her recent CNN interview that her recollection may be faulty, but then she plows ahead anyway). This isn't about resolving uncertainty regarding what it actually was that Fravor et al think they saw, it's about the assumption that the explanation must necessarily be exotic, because of the perceived infallibility of our superhuman heroes.

Though their expertise might make them overconfident to some unknowable degree (as is true in any area of expertise), the value of their expertise in identifying and pursuing objects in flight far outweighs the minor effect of that overconfidence.
Maybe, maybe not. If overconfidence causes them to dismiss the idea they that might be mistaken, we create a whole new type of error that we would have otherwise had.
 
There is no "ideal" witness. That's my point.


I'm not arguing that we'd be more likely to have an explanation with a different set of observers. I'm arguing that the confidence that such an incident could not possibly have a mundane explanation (which is the implicit message of all of the public appearances of Fravor et al) introduces error that we would not otherwise have from an observer who accepts that their perception is fallible. (To her credit, Alex Dietrich states upfront in her recent CNN interview that her recollection may be faulty, but then she plows ahead anyway). This isn't about resolving uncertainty regarding what it actually was that Fravor et al think they saw, it's about the assumption that the explanation must necessarily be exotic, because of the perceived infallibility of our superhuman heroes.


Maybe, maybe not. If overconfidence causes them to dismiss the idea they that might be mistaken, we create a whole new type of error that we would have otherwise had.
I had no idea I stated that pilots were infallible, or superhuman. It seems as if you’d prefer me to defend a position I never took. I would argue that the witnesses in the Nimitz incident would also hesitate to defend their status as infallible superhuman heroes.

I’ll leave it at that and wish you well.
 
I thought Dietrich's reason for coming forward was rather interesting. She stated she wants to reduce the stigma around reporting anomalous sightings among aircrews and, presumably, service members in general. This seems to be a common theme through this whole narrative... the destigmatization of reporting unidentified things in the air or water. It makes one wonder why this stigma ever developed within the military, would it not have always been pertinent to report unidentified aircraft (or whatever) in case it might represent a threat?
 
I am interested in the 2004 southern California encounter. Instead of talking about mutable perception of the pilots, I would rather note some things which are different from the much more dubious sightings in the other clips included in the piece.
  • Seems to have been at fairly close range (not in the low information zone)
  • Multiple redundant technologies seem to have tracked the object (A ship radar, two aircraft radar systems, another aircraft IR system, four sets of eyeballs)
  • Multiple perspectives on the object (which goes hand in hand with how many systems seem to have observed it)
Having said that it seems unlikely that the actual instrument data would still be around after all that time which is very disappointing, as it makes it hard to corroborate the recollections of the pilots.
I think us skeptics should take the eyewitness accounts of the Nimitz incident seriously. One can both agree that the handful of videos that have been released show nothing that seems out of the ordinary, and agree that multiple naval aviators saw something that day, and our explanations for what they saw are imperfect.

While there certainly are discrepancies in the eyewitness accounts, they're not overwhelmingly different, particularly in key details: whitewater, object near whitewater, object leaves very quickly.

The leading explanations seem to be:
  • submarine that releases a missile or drone
  • aerial craft (eg drone) that has Harrier-style hovering capability
  • some sort of atmospheric/optical effect, perhaps over shoals or a whale
The second seems to me to be the most likely. The "irregular" movements of the craft over the whitewater could be explained by the craft hovering consistently but the whitewater moves due to its nozzle pointing in different directions. The rapid acceleration away could just be a normal acceleration away, combined with human error in the witnesses.

But this explanation is imperfect, particularly when we reckon with the fact that drones 15-20 years ago weren't as advanced as they are today.
 
It makes one wonder why this stigma ever developed within the military,
maybe someone reported a kid's Batman balloon. maybe 15 servicemen freaked out over a red ufo that didn't move and it turned out to be Mars.

and the majority of servicemen tend to be very young, and very young men are often ... goofy. They "bust on" each other. Not sure what word to use.

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I had no idea I stated that pilots were infallible, or superhuman. It seems as if you’d prefer me to defend a position I never took.
Not at all. I was clarifying my own position. I have no opinion on which position you chose to defend.
 
Dietrich is not wasting any time in establishing herself as a new character in the saga quickly becoming full blown 2021 UFO Hysteria. She's now implying she has unreleased "reports" and what looks like two VHS tapes connected with all of this. Even for the most skeptical of us this situation is becoming pretty interesting.



Source: https://twitter.com/DietrichVFA41/status/1395084428762886149


Okay, so I think I’ve gathered up all the stuff for “Show & Share”. I realize this will generate an avalanche of new/repeat questions. Appreciate patience!
No this is not going in the moving truck. It’s now packed in the car with me. Maybe if I get pulled over I can convince the cop to give me a warning by dangling a UFO report in his face.
 
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