This is an opinion piece that I wrote. They removed one of my favorite lines, but I will repeat it here: In a way, the passage of time is its own form of evidence.
On a crystalline blue afternoon 20 years ago — Nov. 14, 2004 — four Navy pilots spotted a mysterious flying object 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. It looked like a Tic Tac candy, with no wings, no flight surfaces, no windows and no smoke trail. It moved like a high-speed ping pong ball at a speed later estimated to be 46,000 miles per hour.
The so-called "Tic Tac" incident eventually became one of the key episodes that led to an unexpected renaissance of serious interest in UFOs in 2017, and the pilots later appeared on "60 Minutes," CNN and elsewhere to discuss their experience. The event is often cited by believers in UFOs, short for unidentified flying objects, as the most credible sighting ever.
The overall tone of the UFO discussion shifted abruptly in March, however, when the U.S. government's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office released a highly skeptical report on the phenomenon. All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Director Sean Kirkpatrick argued that renewed UFO mania had been driven by a "whirlwind of tall tales, fabrication and secondhand or thirdhand retellings of the same."
That is a great line, they shoulda left it in. In re another line, the last one in the published piece:
External Quote:
This puzzling episode remains relevant, and it deserves continued investigation.
I would ask a question more or less asked in another ongoing thread, where this case came up: "How can it possibly be investigated further?" We have nothing to work with, just witness testimony from 20 years ago, testimony for which we have no analyzable supporting evidence, just additional testimony about what some of the supporting data (radar returns) might have shown. It's like grappling with fog, there is nothing you can grab and work with.
Hi Mike F, welcome.
I've not looked closely at the Tic Tac reports, but others here have. I was struck by the estimated speed quoted in your article,
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It moved like a high-speed ping pong ball at a speed later estimated to be 46,000 miles per hour
-which is 12.78 miles per second (or 74,030 kph, = 20.57 kilometres per second).
Quite a a bit more than Earth's escape velocity (6.95 miles per second, 25,020 mph; 11.186 km per second, 40,269 kph)
(Wikipedia, Escape velocity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity) and faster than the top stage of a Saturn V leaving Earth orbit for the Moon.
If it moved in a straight-ish line and was approximately of the size estimated, it's hard to see how it could have remained in sight long enough for a reliable estimate of speed.
-Or to register in the pilot's vision as more than a flash; the largest naval guns of the early-mid 20th century could routinely fire shells around a ton or more in weight, but very few people saw them in flight, they moved too fast for the eye to register or track.
Consider the 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 guns of the US Iowa class battleships; a 2,700 lb (1225 kg) AP shell would have a muzzle velocity of "only" 1705 mph, 0.473 miles per second; 2950 kph, 0.82 kilometres per second.
Data from Wikipedia, 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 gun; other nations had similar weapons.
I would doubt any account of someone claiming to have estimated the speeds of such shells by directly observing them in flight (as opposed to timing them from highly-visible launch to highly-visible impact).
Yet the Tic Tac- reportedly larger than a WW2 shell of course, but still of modest size, and supposedly observed reasonably close-to- travelled more than 26 times faster, and we get that figure from eyewitness reports...
Yet the Tic Tac- reportedly larger than a WW2 shell of course, but still of modest size, and supposedly observed reasonably close-to- travelled more than 26 times faster, and we get that figure from eyewitness reports...
If I recall correctly that figure is a calculation based on radar returns observed by Kevin Day on the recently upgraded AN/SPY-1 system aboard the USS Princeton. 60k feet/s ~ 41k mph.
From the "Executive Summary" published by George Knapp and thought to be part of a longer document prepared by BAASS/AAWSAP:
Yet the Tic Tac- reportedly larger than a WW2 shell of course, but still of modest size, and supposedly observed reasonably close-to- travelled more than 26 times faster, and we get that figure from eyewitness reports...
If I recall correctly that figure is a calculation based on radar returns observed by Kevin Day on the recently upgraded AN/SPY-1 system aboard the USS Princeton. 60k feet/s ~ 41k mph.
Possibly also from the UAPx guys. Kevin Kunth in a presentation on the UAPx findings says he applied basic physics to the ATFLIR video and calculated that the object, which I believe is the TicTac (?) was moving at Mach 50:
Source below.
That seems to be a little slower, but Mach seems to change with temperature:
External Quote:
The speed of sound is not a constant; in a gas, it increases proportionally to the square root of the absolute temperature, and since atmospheric temperature generally decreases with increasing altitude between sea level and 11,000 meters (36,089 ft), the speed of sound also decreases.
Which is in the general neighborhood of TWICE the speed Apollo capsules had during reentry (they moved slower as they got lower, down here where the atmosphere is thicker and jet fighters and hypothetical tic tacs fly around.
Imagine the heat produced by the friction or compression of an object moving at something around twice the speed of a returning Apollo capsule, but down here in the thick atmosphere! Imagine the lines of plasma streaking the sky, imagine the shock waves smashing into planes and even the ships down below! And you can't avoid that by super magic space technology, however your UFO moves at those speeds, you have to shove the air out of the way, and have it fall back into the gap you leave when you move on.
That would have been rather noticeable, yet none of our witnesses noticed it.
Of course, if the speed claims are based on a radar blip that is first seen here, then a second or two later a blip is seen way over there which are erroneously assumed to be the same object, THAT might be due to false returns and glitches in the radar. Or events being exaggerated in memory by witnesses. Both of those are known to happen, and neither would produce lines of incandescent plasma all over the place, or massive shock waves.
He actually corrected himself and said Mach 60 (12:53 - 13:10): "(...) that had to be at least (you can estimate what the maximum speed would have been) would have been 45 thousand miles an hour. That's like Mach 50...Mach 60. And that's what we estimated."
Mach 60 is equal to 46,036mph, which is close to the 45,000mph he mentioned.
Although the speed of sound varies with the properties of air at altitude, Mach number [M] for airborne craft is a standard value related to the speed of sound in air at 20°C and sea level, which is 343m/s (767.3mph; 666.7kts). Thus, 45,000mph is the equivalent to M58.7, regardless of the altitude associated with the radar return.
Given your thorough review of original witnesses' statements, would you say we have a consistent, reliable record of the encounter? Or would you say that we have contradictory witness statements with a small, agreed-upon core that amounts to "there was something white and lozenge-shaped in the air"?
He actually corrected himself and said Mach 60 (12:53 - 13:10): "(...) that had to be at least (you can estimate what the maximum speed would have been) would have been 45 thousand miles an hour. That's like Mach 50...Mach 60. And that's what we estimated."
Mach 60 is equal to 46,036mph, which is close to the 45,000mph he mentioned.
Which made him unsatisfied, so he corrected himself by choosing a Mach number closer to 45,000mph. Please, give an example of "*contains*" with the same connotation as you are using it, and which does not involve math.
Which made him unsatisfied, so he corrected himself by choosing a Mach number closer to 45,000mph. Please, give an example of "*contains*" with the same connotation as you are using it, and which does not involve math.
Which made him unsatisfied, so he corrected himself by choosing a Mach number closer to 45,000mph. Please, give an example of "*contains*" with the same connotation as you are using it, and which does not involve math.
Your post is even more malformed than just the impossible final request. Exactly what do you think he was unsatisfied with, and why?
He *clearly* wasn't unsatisfied with using one significant figure to express the speed, as he went from using a one significant figure estimate that didn't contain the intended value to a one significant figure estimate that did contain the intended value.
He *was* unsatisfied with the use of Mach 50, because, to one significant figure, it does not contain 45000km/h, but, oops, that would require maths, so clearly isn't the discussion you were aiming for.
Given your thorough review of original witnesses' statements, would you say we have a consistent, reliable record of the encounter? Or would you say that we have contradictory witness statements with a small, agreed-upon core that amounts to "there was something white and lozenge-shaped in the air"?
Mendel, there are inconsistencies in the witnesses accounts, and many of them are substantial. It is entirely possible that different people saw different things at different times. The stories do not line up 100%. Having said that, they line up much greater than 0%. A great deal of the testimony is mutually corroborative. So while it is not so hard to shoot down a unified explanation of the Nimitz encounter as an alien UFO, it is quite hard for people to construct a positive, credible and unified explanation that stands up to bullets any better.
I would add a couple of other things in response to earlier comments. The first is on the weight that should be given to witness testimony. The testimony of eyewitnesses (including people much less credible than the Navy pilots) is enough to put people in jail for life. While I agree that witness testimony can never be enough to "prove" that the Tic Tac was from outer space, I think that skeptics have been way too quick to wave their arms dismissively and say "pilots see weird things." This is a bit of a cop out in my view. Maybe one pilot or maybe two. But to just chuck the accounts of these particularly credible officers because some pilots see some weird things strikes me as wrapping this up in a bow way too easily.
So where does that leave things? What next? JMartJr pointed out accurately that there is nothing left to work with at the moment. That appears to be true based upon the latest statements by Kirkpatrick. But I would note that my Netflix feed is full stories about "cold cases" that were broken where an unexpected witness or file or piece of physical evidence emerged. I just finished watching the new one about the Zodiac killer--an event that got much more dedicated official and unofficial attention that this one--and new important developments arose decades later. I get that the context is entirely different, and I get that this issue demands "extraordinary proof." But I do not think it is out of the question at all that more evidence is out there that would shine light on this event.
One final note on the speed of the object. There are many calculations to the speed of the Tic Tac, and my article links to one of them. The point is less to argue for that particular speed than to highlight the fantastical nature of this story (which I would have made clear with more than 650 words; it is important). To come up with these numbers, the analysts either took Day's observations of the objects dropping, the pilots visual observation of the Tic Tac zooming out of visual view or the trip to the CAP point. These are all intrinsically speculative, and although I am not a scientist I appreciate that they defy accepted science--which is, on the one hand, fundamentally non-credible, but on the other what makes the story fascinating.
I would add a couple of other things in response to earlier comments. The first is on the weight that should be given to witness testimony. The testimony of eyewitnesses (including people much less credible than the Navy pilots) is enough to put people in jail for life. While I agree that witness testimony can never be enough to "prove" that the Tic Tac was from outer space, I think that skeptics have been way too quick to wave their arms dismissively and say "pilots see weird things." This is a bit of a cop out in my view. Maybe one pilot or maybe two. But to just chuck the accounts of these particularly credible officers because some pilots see some weird things strikes me as wrapping this up in a bow way too easily.
Pilots make extremely poor eyewitnesses because they are trained survivors not trained observers. They see everything through a threat-first lens because a false-positive doesn't really matter but a false-negative can be catastrophic. When you are operating in these conditions it's actually detrimental to be objective. In this scenario it is better to be biased.
Fravor also said in the Lex Friedman podcast that he was able to eyeball the size of the featureless rapidly moving object of unknown distance to him. When pressed on how he did it he had no real answer. I am phone posting and unable to source this right now but if pressed I will find the clip.
It would be impossible for him to eyeball a featureless object he is not familiar with when he doesn't know the size of it or distance from him. If someone has the type of over-confidence that let's him think he has some sort of super human stereoscopic vision I don't think it's a stretch to say that he might exaggerate other parts of the story as well. I don't think it's a coincidence that his side of the story says the encounter lasted five minutes and that Dietrich said it only lasted about 10 seconds. Wild discrepancy that aligns well with someone lionizing their story.
Mendel, there are inconsistencies in the witnesses accounts, and many of them are substantial. [...] it is quite hard for people to construct a positive, credible and unified explanation that stands up to bullets any better.
And it happens to innocent people with distressing regularity. However, in a murder case there's a murdered body, and therefore a murderer, and the court is simply in error about who it is. In a UFO report, it's unclear what even happened. That's not comparable.
While I agree that witness testimony can never be enough to "prove" that the Tic Tac was from outer space, I think that skeptics have been way too quick to wave their arms dismissively and say "pilots see weird things."
We are actually saying, "pilots see ordinary things under unusual circumstances". Nobody expects a party balloon at flight level 250, and any pilot can be excused for not recognizing it right away as they roar past at 500 knots.
We acknowledge that the witnesses saw something they could not identify, but it does not follow that they saw something extraordinary.
And we usually have some good guesses what they saw, and often we can even identify the cause of the sighting.
So where does that leave things? What next? JMartJr pointed out accurately that there is nothing left to work with at the moment. That appears to be true based upon the latest statements by Kirkpatrick. But I would note that my Netflix feed is full stories about "cold cases" that were broken where an unexpected witness or file or piece of physical evidence emerged.
If a Martian lands in front of 30 Rock and tells NBC news "that was me", sure. But then, "the passage of time is its own form of evidence", which I take to mean if that was going to happen, it already would have.
One final note on the speed of the object. There are many calculations to the speed of the Tic Tac, and my article links to one of them. The point is less to argue for that particular speed than to highlight the fantastical nature of this story (which I would have made clear with more than 650 words; it is important). To come up with these numbers, the analysts either took Day's observations of the objects dropping, the pilots visual observation of the Tic Tac zooming out of visual view or the trip to the CAP point. These are all intrinsically speculative, and although I am not a scientist I appreciate that they defy accepted science--which is, on the one hand, fundamentally non-credible, but on the other what makes the story fascinating.
The conclusions defy accepted science, the observations do not.
Radar antennas are these big rotating things (targeting radar excepted). If it looks in a certain direction, then its next look is going to be seconds later. The radar then has to match what it sees now to what it saw 3 seconds ago. If you have a blip down low, and you saw a blip up high 3 seconds ago, then either you saw an object drop impossibly fast, or you saw two unrelated spurious radar returns. One of these conclusions is only possible for someone who believes in nonhuman craft with magical properties; but for a scientist, only one conclusion is possible.
P.S. If the hypothesis is true that the "TicTac" was a secret weapon/craft launched from a submarine, then we might learn of this eventually.
Noted on this point. I would be curious to get your assessment of the possibility that new information might emerge about the X-43A (and attendant jets and balloons) that might explain things.
My point on the eyewitness evidence was less that they could put the Tic Tac in prison for murder than thet this particular eyewitness testimony, in my personal opinion, has been systematically undervalued in some quarters. I would guess that part of the reason for that is the broader lack of credibility of eyewitness testimony in this arena.
This just reminds me that there are people out there who Lue spoke to who believe they saw secret US tech because that's what Lue told them they had seen. He told us so in his book.
It'd be cool to have them testify that they've seen secret US tech. All under oath cos they'd be telling the truth.
Noted on this point. I would be curious to get your assessment of the possibility that new information might emerge about the X-43A (and attendant jets and balloons) that might explain things.
My point on the eyewitness evidence was less that they could put the Tic Tac in prison for murder than that this particular eyewitness testimony, in my personal opinion, has been systematically undervalued in some quarters. I would guess that part of the reason for that is the broader lack of credibility of eyewitness testimony in this arena.
We have seen witnesses have parallax error (i.e. a wrong expectation of the object's size/distance) and the attendant (unavoidable!) mistake regarding the object's speed and movements.
We have seen witnesses lose sight of an object and think it "zoomed off".
These witnesses were no less credible than Fravor or Dietrich, they were simply mistaken (in a situation where we could determine that they were).
I'd call it a "broader lack of reliability", because a testimony can be honest (and to the best of the witnesses ability) but still be unreliable.
What do you think would change if we valued that testimony more? @Mick West has had a nice long chat with Alex Dietrich. What more should we do, or how should our stance change, and why?
@Mendel clarified it in the post below, I have removed the now irrelevant sections in this post, but leave you with my extrapolation of "flat square circle", as you might appreciate it:
Now, one use of "contain" (not "*contain*") is less, because if Mach 50 does not contain 45,000mph, but Mach 60 contains it (i.e. bounds it), it means Mach 90 also contains it, and it also means Mach 60 contains 0mph and every negative number.
This should be in DMs.
If you measure speeds in 10s (what @FatPhil calls 1 digit of precision), then "Mach 50" denotes all speeds from Mach 45 to just about Mach 55, i.e. an interval. This interval does not contain 45,000 mph, but the "Mach 60" interval does.
This should be in DMs.
If you measure speeds in 10s (what @FatPhil calls 1 digit of precision), then "Mach 50" denotes all speeds from Mach 45 to just about Mach 55, i.e. an interval. This interval does not contain 45,000 mph, but the "Mach 60" interval does.
What do you think would change if we valued that testimony more? @Mick West has had a nice long chat with Alex Dietrich. What more should we do, or how should our stance change, and why?
I come from a background in mainsteam media--which is very driven by zeitgeist. I suppose that upon further reflection the thing that I would change would be the meta-narrative around Nimitz. The top-tier media zeitgeist was excessively positive for UFO coverage when the topic became safe in 2017, and now it is excessively negative as pertains to this particular event. I think that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, and this has been dismissed in a group with a lot of other things that are less interesting.
Noted on this point. I would be curious to get your assessment of the possibility that new information might emerge about the X-43A (and attendant jets and balloons) that might explain things.
It occurs to me that I do have an opinion on that, for what it's worth.
AARO was set up with strong whistleblower protections and had full cooperation across the DoD and the IC. In their historical report, they've related how they managed to match up some witness claims with actual secret projects (without revealing what these were). It feels likely that if there was a secret project that caused the TicTac sighting, someone would have told AARO about it last year, and AARO would have told the public.
I think that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, and this has been dismissed in a group with a lot of other things that are less interesting.
The timeframe for Tic Tac and the X-43A overlap. However only 3 X-43As were built, and all were single use, each flight ending with a ditching in the Pacific.
It was an unmanned scramjet demonstrator, and set jet speed records of Mach 9.68 in 2004.
They were black, unlike the reported Tic Tac.
Carried aloft by a B-52, on separation the X-43 was initially boosted by a Pegasus rocket which is white, but is unmistakeably a rocket:
The X-43A is the black slender thing at the nose of the rocket.
Accompanying text reads,
External Quote:
A modified Pegasus rocket ignites moments after release from the B-52B, beginning the acceleration of the X-43A over the Pacific Ocean on March 27, 2004. The second X-43A hypersonic research aircraft and its modified Pegasus booster rocket accelerate after launch from NASA's B-52B launch aircraft over the Pacific Ocean on March 27, 2004. The mission originated from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Minutes later the X-43A separated from the Pegasus booster and accelerated to its intended speed of Mach 7.
The concept isn't mine, I learnt about it in primary school when we were first being introduced to decimal notation (with the emphasis not to confuse dp's with sf's) - it's even got a wikipedia page about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures
I would add a couple of other things in response to earlier comments. The first is on the weight that should be given to witness testimony. The testimony of eyewitnesses (including people much less credible than the Navy pilots) is enough to put people in jail for life. While I agree that witness testimony can never be enough to "prove" that the Tic Tac was from outer space, I think that skeptics have been way too quick to wave their arms dismissively and say "pilots see weird things." This is a bit of a cop out in my view. Maybe one pilot or maybe two. But to just chuck the accounts of these particularly credible officers because some pilots see some weird things strikes me as wrapping this up in a bow way too easily.
For me, it is not an arm wave accompanied by "pilots see weird things," though it might seem that way. My problem with cases where there is witness testimony and nothing else is that it is not possible to do any sort of meaningful analysis, because witnesses make mistakes frequently and sometimes even lie. Recognizing this is not saying "all witnesses are wrong all the time" or "all witnesses are liars." It is saying that, absent OTHER evidence, there is no reliable way to know which part of a witness statement is true and accurate, and which isn't. There is no way to tell if the testimony is 100% correct, which it might be, or 100% wrong, which it might be, or correct in some parts and wrong in others.
Your analogy to testimony in court is useful -- let's assume a court case where, like the Fravor et al incident, there is NO corroborating evidence. So our court case is a witness, Mr. F, tells us that he saw somebody commit a murder using unknown technology that behaved in unlikely ways, say a phaser, set to "kill," or something equally unknown and advanced. A couple of co-workers confirm the general story, not exactly but reasonably closely, given the limits of memory and how prone humans are to errors in observation. But there is no body, no weapon, no bloodstains, no missing person, no CCTV footage or footage from a webcam across the street, nothing -- just the story. (To be analogous to the reports of radar weirdness, we can add that we are told that some folks say they had seen footage from CCTV cameras in the area for a week or so prior, showing what they said looked like stuff being phasered. But the footage is not available, probably been erased, sorry about that!)
I think you'd agree that after an investigation that turned up those stories, but does not get any supporting evidence at all, there is not going to be a court case, much less a conviction! There is also not going to be a lot of point in continuing to "investigate" the story, as there is nothing there to investigate given that no supporting evidence has been found in 20 years, and we are informed that any evidence that might have once existed (radar records, say) no longer exists!
Re: "particularly credible officers" -- in what way are these officers particularly credible? I don't have any real reason to doubt their integrity and honesty (though, for me, Cdr. Fravor's admission that he used to try and spoof UFOs with his jet to fool the yokels back in the day is a BIT of a worrisome point as one assesses his reliabillity when making a UFO report. see below.) And please understand, I am not saying they are less credible than anybody else, I am wonderign why you think they are MORE credible. They were young military aviators, a group (as a group, not necessarily every individual member of the group) known to live fast and party hard and push limits and the like. They were highly trained to operate a very complex aircraft and to recognize the known threats (and known non-threats) that they might encounter in the course of their job. But they were not trained to identify spaceships from Omicron Perseii 8. And they were not somehow made infallible -- the number of "friendly fire" incidents, or the number of crashes resulting from pilot error, indicates they are capable of error, just like eerybody else. Yes, such incidents are comparitively rare, but in thousnds and thousands of missions, a few will result in such an error that results in tragedy. Might it be reasonable that out of thousands and thousand of mission, a few will result in errors that lead the the less tragic result of a UFO report? I think so.
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External Quote:
some things
3:48
are explainable because I got asked to
3:50
tell this so because we're kind of I
3:52
have a sick sense of humor at times so
3:54
like I said I had all these koala (unintelligible to me -- jm)
I don't think that totally disqualifies Cdr. Fravor as a witness, we all did some stupid stuff when we were younger and like I said above, fighter pilots tend to have fun HARD when they have FUN! But it belongs in the discussion...
The timeframe for Tic Tac and the X-43A overlap. However only 3 X-43As were built, and all were single use, each flight ending with a ditching in the Pacific.
It was an unmanned scramjet demonstrator, and set jet speed records of Mach 9.68 in 2004.
They were black, unlike the reported Tic Tac.
Carried aloft by a B-52, on separation the X-43 was initially boosted by a Pegasus rocket which is white, but is unmistakeably a rocket:
The X-43A is the black slender thing at the nose of the rocket.
Accompanying text reads,
External Quote:
A modified Pegasus rocket ignites moments after release from the B-52B, beginning the acceleration of the X-43A over the Pacific Ocean on March 27, 2004. The second X-43A hypersonic research aircraft and its modified Pegasus booster rocket accelerate after launch from NASA's B-52B launch aircraft over the Pacific Ocean on March 27, 2004. The mission originated from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Minutes later the X-43A separated from the Pegasus booster and accelerated to its intended speed of Mach 7.
For me, it is not an arm wave accompanied by "pilots see weird things," though it might seem that way. My problem with cases where there is witness testimony and nothing else is that it is not possible to do any sort of meaningful analysis, because witnesses make mistakes frequently and sometimes even lie. Recognizing this is not saying "all witnesses are wrong all the time" or "all witnesses are liars." It is saying that, absent OTHER evidence, there is no reliable way to know which part of a witness statement is true and accurate, and which isn't. There is no way to tell if the testimony is 100% correct, which it might be, or 100% wrong, which it might be, or correct in some parts and wrong in others.
Your analogy to testimony in court is useful -- let's assume a court case where, like the Fravor et al incident, there is NO corroborating evidence. So our court case is a witness, Mr. F, tells us that he saw somebody commit a murder using unknown technology that behaved in unlikely ways, say a phaser, set to "kill," or something equally unknown and advanced. A couple of co-workers confirm the general story, not exactly but reasonably closely, given the limits of memory and how prone humans are to errors in observation. But there is no body, no weapon, no bloodstains, no missing person, no CCTV footage or footage from a webcam across the street, nothing -- just the story. (To be analogous to the reports of radar weirdness, we can add that we are told that some folks say they had seen footage from CCTV cameras in the area for a week or so prior, showing what they said looked like stuff being phasered. But the footage is not available, probably been erased, sorry about that!)
I think you'd agree that after an investigation that turned up those stories, but does not get any supporting evidence at all, there is not going to be a court case, much less a conviction! There is also not going to be a lot of point in continuing to "investigate" the story, as there is nothing there to investigate given that no supporting evidence has been found in 20 years, and we are informed that any evidence that might have once existed (radar records, say) no longer exists!
Re: "particularly credible officers" -- in what way are these officers particularly credible? I don't have any real reason to doubt their integrity and honesty (though, for me, Cdr. Fravor's admission that he used to try and spoof UFOs with his jet to fool the yokels back in the day is a BIT of a worrisome point as one assesses his reliabillity when making a UFO report. see below.) And please understand, I am not saying they are less credible than anybody else, I am wonderign why you think they are MORE credible. They were young military aviators, a group (as a group, not necessarily every individual member of the group) known to live fast and party hard and push limits and the like. They were highly trained to operate a very complex aircraft and to recognize the known threats (and known non-threats) that they might encounter in the course of their job. But they were not trained to identify spaceships from Omicron Perseii 8. And they were not somehow made infallible -- the number of "friendly fire" incidents, or the number of crashes resulting from pilot error, indicates they are capable of error, just like eerybody else. Yes, such incidents are comparitively rare, but in thousnds and thousands of missions, a few will result in such an error that results in tragedy. Might it be reasonable that out of thousands and thousand of mission, a few will result in errors that lead the the less tragic result of a UFO report? I think so.
--------------------------------
External Quote:
some things
3:48
are explainable because I got asked to
3:50
tell this so because we're kind of I
3:52
have a sick sense of humor at times so
3:54
like I said I had all these koala (unintelligible to me -- jm)
I don't think that totally disqualifies Cdr. Fravor as a witness, we all did some stupid stuff when we were younger and like I said above, fighter pilots tend to have fun HARD when they have FUN! But it belongs in the discussion...
Okay, these are fair points. I will pursue the court analogy a little further.
The first thing I would say is that the "facts" are mostly in evidence at this point. We are all looking at the same core body of evidence and have probably reached mostly the same conclusions--with differences in emphasis perhaps driven by our background philosophical convictions on these issues. So some of this is semantic, and all of this is subject to change if this turns out to be a cold case that is one day shifted by new evidence.
If Fravor and Dietrich and the other pilots were testifying in a court of law, we would be allowed to consider their eyes, their body language, their comportant and many other little things that we consider probative of the truth. I deem these details, in their case, to make them credible (to me). There are multiple accounts from different perspectives, and they have told essentially the same story for many years despite no personal reward in it for them and very strong incentives to abandon the entire topic. None of them came into this as UFO believers, and they have stared down many critics. Their overall personal histories--not that I am an expert--seem to be honorable, if not quite honorable. I am somewhat persuaded by their persistence.
This does not tell me that UFOs exist. But it nags at me. I do not think it was an optical illusion, nor do I really see how it could be a test craft from a submarine. So if I was a juror, I would not say that they have proven that the Tic Tac was an alien craft from outer space--and I do not think that has been their position--but they have proven to me that something very weird happened out there that is not explained and remains relevant. That's my position.
I come from a background in mainsteam media--which is very driven by zeitgeist. I suppose that upon further reflection the thing that I would change would be the meta-narrative around Nimitz. The top-tier media zeitgeist was excessively positive for UFO coverage when the topic became safe in 2017, and now it is excessively negative as pertains to this particular event. I think that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, and this has been dismissed in a group with a lot of other things that are less interesting.
Obviously, you're in the media, while I'm just a consumer and as I enjoy being on Metabunk, I like others here, kinda nerd out on UFO stuff. Having said that, it appears to me that the positive vibes created in '17 via the NYT article are still blowing strong today. That article introduced the Nimitz (tictac) event, the amazing Navy videos and Lue Elizondo, the head of the government's official UAP/UFO program, AATIP.
Much of Kean's article turned out to be wrong. AATIP was an unofficial unfunded side hustle. The real UAP/UFO program was AAWSAP, and it was looking for ghosts and werewolves at Skinwalker Ranch. The Navy videos weren't all that compelling for the most part. The hero of that article, Elizondo, was recently called out for claiming a reflected ceiling lamp was a mother ship UFO.
Nevertheless, Favor was at the last congressional hearings and here we are gearing up for more UFO hearings, including Elizondo fresh off his ceiling lamp gaff. As Mick noted above, for the Nimitz case in particular there just isn't much more to do with it. We have Favor's accounts, which do shift over time and other witness recollections from 15-20 years ago and possibly the FLIR video.
While the Nimitiz case itself may have faded a bit, the overall UFO narrative, especially as created by the NYT article, is still dictating congressional time-wasting today.
I just finished watching the new one about the Zodiac killer--an event that got much more dedicated official and unofficial attention that this one--and new important developments arose decades later.
Having been a youngster in the Bay Area with a father in law-enforcement at the time of the Zodiac, I've always been interested in this. AFAIK, it's still never been solved. There was some attempted DNA analysis but no match and cartoonist Robert Graysmith suggested a couple of people, but nothing came of that.
My point on the eyewitness evidence was less that they could put the Tic Tac in prison for murder than thet this particular eyewitness testimony, in my personal opinion, has been systematically undervalued in some quarters. I would guess that part of the reason for that is the broader lack of credibility of eyewitness testimony in this arena.
One problem is that we don't know which details of the eyewitness reports are reliable, and which have been caused by misperception and after-the-event post-rationalisation.
Take the perception that the object moved like a ping-pong ball. This sounds unlikely to be accurate or a real physical effect, but how could such a misperception become part of the stories of at least two observers? Consider the fact that the observers were both located in vibrating and rapidly moving jet aircraft, and they were attempting to observe something they could not identify at a significant distance. If the object there were observing had been recognised as (for instance) a well-known type of jet aircraft (either US or foreign-made) then their perceptions of vibration and erratic movement would have been edited out of their perceptions and memories - because these observers would know that 'jets don't jump about like that'. But since the object remained unrecognised, the (perfectly normal) shake and vibration observed by the witnesses could not be compensated for or eliminated.
Later, I presume that all the witnesses to this event reviewed Underwood's FLIR video clip - a clip which also shows random jumping about and apparent rapid movements - but these movements, in the clip, seem very likely to be caused by the vibration of the plane, and by the movement of the camera as it tries to lock onto the object, and eventually fails to lock on altogether. When the witnesses saw this apparently random movement in the clip, they may have recognised it from their own recollections, thus falsely projecting a random 'ping-pong' movement onto their own experience. I suggest that this makes the recollection of sudden, erratic movements unreliable. In reality the object could very easily have been moving smoothly, at unremarkable speed, with no erratic component.
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Similarly, Fravor and Dietrich recall seeing two small 'L'-shaped legs underneath the 'tic-tac';
These features have become part of the iconic 'tic-tac' representation that is used in CGI reconstructions of this event.
However this may also be a misremembering or conflation with the FLIR clip, since in one frame the oblong blob that is the subject of the clip appears to grow two smaller appendages underneath.
This fleeting glimpse of an apparent structure in the video clip may have been sufficient to fix the idea of 'appendages' in the minds of the witnesses, especially since Dietrich in particular only saw it for a few seconds (by her account) and from many thousands of feet away. However, it is perfectly possible and likely that these appendages are nothing more than random noise in a very fuzzy image.
I don't see it as proven that something paranormal (or even threatening) happened to Fravor and his colleagues, and thus I don't think the incident should have as much influence as it had because it's really not that special, in the grand scheme of things.
OT: I saw exactly that yesterday in a clip (which, I regret to say, I can no longer find) in a Facebook group on archaeology. A man constructed that, and easily rolled large concrete cubes as an illustration of a method that ancient builders might have used to move very heavy objects. Pure speculation, of course, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.
While the Nimitiz case itself may have faded a bit, the overall UFO narrative, especially as created by the NYT article, is still dictating congressional time-wasting today.
I predict that Congress and the traditional establishment media are going to move on different tracks. While Congress appears likely to lean into this issue, there have been multiple subtle indications of retreat at NYT, WaPo, CNN and elsewhere. You can see this in the quantity of coverage, space, tone, headlines and nut graphs. UFO stories had the wind at their backs, now it is in their faces. The various existential editorial crises facing these institutions will make them more cautious. Separately, the Zodiac documentary is "This is the Zodiac Speaking," a big theme of which is the emergence of important new evidence in the decades after the killings.
An interesting theory, I'd more expect "financial crises facing these institutions will force them to further embrace click-baity fluff reporting in order to make money."
I would prefer your scenario, I hope you are right and I am wrong. ^_^
OT: I saw exactly that yesterday in a clip (which, I regret to say, I can no longer find) in a Facebook group on archaeology. A man constructed that, and easily rolled large concrete cubes as an illustration of a method that ancient builders might have used to move very heavy objects. Pure speculation, of course, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.
So if I was a juror, I would not say that they have proven that the Tic Tac was an alien craft from outer space--and I do not think that has been their position--but they have proven to me that something very weird happened out there that is not explained and remains relevant.
I think that's a reasonable opinion. From maybe a more sceptical perspective, I might re-phrase part of that statement as
"...they appear to believe that they saw something extraordinary, and we don't currently have a good explanation for their sighting or the possibly anomalous sensor returns; therefore it's interesting but we don't know how relevant it might be."
The jury analogy might be problematic; Fleischmann and Pons believed they had evidence for cold fusion; both were respectable scientists: Put in front of a hypothetical jury to testify as to the truth of their (mistaken) findings the day after their press conference of 23 March 1989, I'm pretty sure they would tell the truth -as they saw it- and the jurors would be convinced (see Wikipedia, Cold fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion).
Well-trained pilots do make errors interpreting visual cues, sometimes in literal life-or-death situations.
On March 28 2003 during the invasion of Iraq, A-10 pilots believed they were observing enemy trucks- to the extent of saying what type of truck they might be- and persuaded themselves that orange aerial identification panels, used solely for the purpose of identifying US / friendly ground forces, were in fact missiles carried on the trucks. The A-10s attacked the vehicles- friendly light tracked vehicles (not trucks) correctly displaying aerial identification panels.
We have the pilot's in-flight communications (posted here) in the "How Can Highly Trained Military Pilots Possibly Misinterpret Things They See?" thread.
It's grim listening, but I think of interest.
I predict that Congress and the traditional establishment media are going to move on different tracks. While Congress appears likely to lean into this issue, there have been multiple subtle indications of retreat at NYT, WaPo, CNN and elsewhere.
Agreed. After the election, politics will go front and center. As for congress, I still think it's a few people and today's hearings didn't seem to advance much of anything. A few in UFOlogy will take Shellenberger's Immaculate Constipation Constellation documents as a major breakthrough, but after reading through it, I doubt it will stand up to scrutiny.
Or, more inclined to go with something that generates more clicks and views, unfortunately. I'd never heard of News Nation until they got into UFOs with Ross Coulthart, who I also had never heard of. Obviously, News Nation is far behind the other networks and going full UFO alienates some while capturing a small but dedicated viewership. A formula places like the Discovery networks has seized on the last 20 years. Granted, that's not a news organization, but the financial institution my wife worked at seemed instant on adopting practices from the tech world because they worked in the tech world.
Separately, the Zodiac documentary is "This is the Zodiac Speaking," a big theme of which is the emergence of important new evidence in the decades after the killings.
