Sorry, I’m late to the discussion, and know that some of these points have been made above. Still, a few thoughts/questions:
I think it’s tough to argue the specifics of the three videos because the response will always be: “well, we have more info that proves you wrong, but we can’t share it.” As a result, if there is a future discussion, I’d be curious to hear more about some of the topics below:
What is his theory/interpretation as a whole? I know the meta-bunk ethos is more about debunking specific incidents than evaluating broader theories, but I think it’s worth a discussion. A lot of folks in the UFO community fall back on “we don’t know/it’s a mystery/we need more research” storyline. Elizondo/TTSA came back to that a lot on their History Channel show. But this “take-away” is a cop-out -- that’s not how science works (scientists evaluate data AND offer conclusions), and that’s not how the government/military works -- surely they have investigated many possible interpretations of these videos, and have ranked them in terms of likelihood. When the government calls these ‘unidentified’, that’s government-speak for “we don’t want to talk about it,” and not “we have no idea -- it’s probably aliens.”
Mick, if your theory is correct (there are prosaic explanations), then that explains a lot of aspects of the data. That’s why Fravor’s military commanders seemed uninterested -- they also know there are prosaic explanations. And Mr. Elizondo supposedly left the government because they weren’t taking the issue seriously -- well, perhaps they aren’t taking it seriously because they know what’s going on and don’t see compelling evidence of anything unusual. And it explains why the scientific community isn’t terribly interested -- the data just aren’t compelling enough to entertain an extra-terrestrial explanation. At the end of the day, it’s blurry dots on a screen and anecdotal/eyewitness testimony, and probably mis-identification of military technology, or drones, or balloons, or commercial aircraft, etc.
Mr. Elizondo and the (former) TTSA team keep positioning this as a military threat. That’s a great storyline for advancing their agenda of generating interest in the topic. Well, if their theory is that this is an alien intelligence -- they could clearly conquer the earth with little trouble. Their technology must be so far ahead that we could offer little resistance. That war would last five minutes and we’d all be working in the mines (or whatever). The ‘threat’ storyline has been around for a long time -- aliens supposedly hacked nuclear missile sites back in the 70s, and Rendlesham Forest etc., but if they had that ability, why aren’t they doing it all the time? What is their purpose? Mellon has said he thinks the UAPs may be involved in surveying. Surveying they can’t do from space? With the technology for interstellar travel, and the supposed ability to defy physics as we understand it, what data are they collecting from surveying that they haven’t been able to get over the last 20 years?
Along similar lines, The Nimitz incident was in 2004! What’s happened since then? If it’s aliens, they were pretty bold about making their presence known in 2004. Where are all the incidents since? (although they will probably argue that there are lots of subsequent incidents, but we just haven’t heard about them)
Tom DeLonge is clearly on record (Joe Rogan podcast) as saying there are multiple species of aliens on earth, using us as proxies in an interstellar war. OK, well that’s at least a theory of some kind. Why wasn’t that on the History Channel show? If that’s their interpretation of the data, let’s hear more about that.
With the proliferation of cell phones, why hasn’t there been a proliferation of high-quality videos showing UAPs? The same can be said for Bigfoot -- why was there one “great” video (the Patterson/Gimlin film) 50 years ago, but everything since has been blob-squatches, despite the proliferation of cell phones and trail cams? That’s why the bigfoot community has increasingly gotten into “woo” explanations.
I believe Mr. Elizondo said in your interview that he “wasn’t getting paid for this.” But he presumably was getting paid by TTSA, and presumably he was paid by the History Channel. And presumably he’s paid for appearances at UFO conferences. It seems to me that the TTSA team engineered the release of the videos, and then joined a for-profit company whose explicit goal was to generate public interest in the topic, and they profited via their TV show. That is now more clear than ever as the sole remaining purpose of TTSA is entertainment given their recent streamlining. What happened to their divisions devoted to materials, for example? They never found any -- at least not any ever published or submitted for peer review. Amount of actual compelling data uncovered by TTSA: zero. But mission accomplished for driving public interest in the topic.
I could be wrong, but weren’t all three videos taken as part of training exercises? And does that mean the fighter jets aren’t armed? If so, that would be a perfect time for the government to experiment with technologies for creating the impression that there are hundreds of radar targets. Or radar targets that supposedly drop from space to the ocean surface. Or some kind of air/sea (“trans-medium”) balloons/drones. The UFO community often says the government/military would never test a technology on another group within the government/military without their knowledge, but I think history disproves that.
Also, was Mr. Elizondo also involved in Skinwalker Ranch? If not, what’s his take on that? That was clearly part of the genesis of this program via the Harry Reid/Robert Bigelow combo. If someone says aliens from another planet are visiting us -- ok, maybe, at least that’s conceivable is a science-driven view of the universe. But if you are talking about haunted ranches and immortal wolves etc. -- then you are going down a whole different rabbit hole. Again, what’s their theory that would tie together all of their supposed data?